“There’s no happier pair than a boy and a dog,” he heard Matamoros say.
And, much later, pulling him out of his reverie, he heard the voice of a Lilia: “This cat acts like it’s out on the streets: open your mouth out there, and they’ll snatch your tongue.”
As she was saying this, the thieving cat had just appeared and disappeared, now carrying off a great strip of crackling. The Lilias watched the speedy getaway, but this time they did not move from their places. Instead of leaping up, they shook their heads and poured themselves more wine; they might even have smiled.
“One remembers forgotten songs,” Father Matamoros said. “I’m remembering one for absent friends. I learned it years ago from the poet Fernando Linero, who played the piano as if he were strumming the clouds.”
First he cleared his throat with a good swig; it was the end of the bottle, which one of the Lilias replaced as if by magic, as though not wanting to miss a moment of the song; setting the bottle at the priest’s right, she waited as San José burst into song like one more lonely traveler with no place to go, just him and the road, and as he sang his eyes roamed over Tancredo and the Lilias in the candles’ flickering gloom. What’s that cat doing on the table, so sure of itself? Tancredo fretted for a second — washing its whiskers, listening attentively to Matamoros’s song. Now other cats are sauntering across the table, there’s one, the epitome of elasticity, wisely settling on the rabbit, unhurriedly finishing off the golden throat, savoring it, spitting out little bones, and no one seems to notice, no one looks at it, the song goes on, the candles crackle as if in response, now the cats even stop eating, seek their lairs with astonishingly calm expressions, set out, reach a corner of the table and leap off one at a time, settle themselves back in their niches, watchful, their eyes fixed on Matamoros’s voice, “Dancing,” Tancredo said to himself, suddenly noticing the Lilias, “they’re dancing” — and so they were. Driven by a lilting waltz Matamoros was whispering, the adoring Lilias were weaving about the kitchen in a silent dance, sunk in a vertigo of the spirits, suspended in the air as if beneath a waterfall, their eyes half-closed, arms raised. Tancredo did not know how much time went by, but suddenly saw that the cats were emerging from their niches again, leaping one by one onto the edge of the table and from there into the darkness; they jumped inordinately slowly, springing lazily into the air, seeming to hang motionless aloft for two or three seconds before disappearing, and at the same time he saw the Lilias were no longer there, it was extraordinary, not a single Lilia seated or dancing around the table. He discovered that Matamoros had stopped singing, but could only shake off the spell of the last song by reaching up and linking his hands behind his head as if stretching. So he was alone with Matamoros; since when? The two of them in the most profound silence; no, Father Matamoros was talking about dreams, telling a dream, or was he singing it? What was Father Matamoros’s dream about? How long had he been talking about dreams? Seated at the table, they regarded one another attentively, each on the verge of a word; whose turn was it to speak? Without knowing how, Tancredo resumed the conversation, as if he really had been holding that non-existent conversation with the Father, or did it exist? Whatever the case, he said or carried on saying, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that he had dreamt, Father, that he had an Indian slave-girl, tied up with a chain like an animal, and that he took her for a walk through a sunlit meadow, the sun, the smell of the sunshine, “everything full of the most terrible lustfulness, Father, hanging over our heads, it was impossible not to take her in my arms, the soft moss offered itself, the leafy oak gave its shade, she stretched out wearily on the grass, it wrapped itself around her like a sheet, offering her rest, and, with the same chain I used for leading her about, she drew me toward her, as if I were the animal and not her, and she spread her legs and all her Hell burned me, Father.”
In the silence, one of the candles was dying. Here Matamoros interrupted.
“Why Hell?” he asked.
“Because of the heat.”
“The heat, yes, but why Hell?”
“The terrible lustfulness.”
“Love, the absence of love.”
“Love?”
“Like Joseph in Egypt, I too interpret dreams.”
Then Tancredo was not ashamed any more to hear himself telling the Father of his eternal animal fear. I’m telling him of my fear, I should ask him to hear my confession, he thought. “Father, let this be a confession,” he said. “God bless you, my child, of what do you accuse yourself?” “Of wanting to kill myself.” “In order not to kill someone else?” “In order not to kill someone else, Father.” “Speak freely. There exists the secrecy of the confessional, of sinners heard in confession; but in the end God and the dead hear us, see us, they are listening to us.” “I don’t care if the dead are listening,” Tancredo shrugged, his head spinning, “or God.” “God doesn’t care about that either,” Matamoros replied. He seemed to Tancredo to be dozing off; his eyes were closed; he was nodding. Then Tancredo saw him shudder and take a hurried drink. He was reborn.
“What is there to fear?” the priest asked. “There’s no sin in wishing to die in order not to kill. These are wearying times, human times. There are good times and bad, and at wearying times the best thing to do is rest.”
At last Tancredo was able to make his confession.
“No one can rest here,” he said. “We’re worked to death.”
To tell you the truth, he thought quickly, everyone here wants to kill Almida and his sacristan.
They were talking in whispers, taking frequent drinks, their heads bowed, resting on one hand, their other hands holding the glasses of brandy, while the Lilias remained out of sight. “I’m tired of all this, Father, not because I don’t want to do it, but because I can’t do it, my head’s bursting,” something like that. Tancredo shook his head. Was he drunk too? Most likely, because finally he talked about Sabina, his entire life with Sabina, and not just his life, he even revealed where she was at that time of night. “What time is it, Father?” “The time of the heart, my son.” Matamoros drank, attentive now. “Where is that furious girl,” he asked, “where’s she waiting for you?” “You’re not going to believe me, Father.” “Where, my son?” “At the altar, Father, or, more precisely, beneath the altar; it’s her way of telling me she wants me to go away with her; she says if I don’t go she’ll stay there until Almida comes and finds her.”