Don Justiniano was their main benefactor. He invariably attended early Mass on Sunday along with his wife and two of his daughters. He didn’t inspire the least confidence in either Sabina or Tancredo. Something dark, violent, and complicated lurked within this small man surrounded by watchful bodyguards. Like a human trap, a vast spider’s web in which Almida and the sacristan might find themselves struggling like mosquitoes. Every visit from Don Justiniano meant a case full of money, cases which Reverend Juan Pablo Almida and his sacristan, Celeste Machado, hid carefully on the first floor of the presbytery. On one occasion Don Justiniano had agreed to have lunch with the Father in the presbytery dining room; they had dined alone, behind closed doors. The three Lilias had outdone themselves: spicy potato stew, avocados, passion-fruit pudding, flank steak, fruit cocktail, chicken with dried fruit and almonds, saffron rice with parsley, triple dairy flan, melon, soursop sorbet, stewed curuba fruit and a creamy cheese with honey that the Lilias called manna. But it had all been in vain, because in the end, lunch had been delivered from the kitchens of the Hilton Hoteclass="underline" American-style fried chicken breasts, pork loin in sherry, eggs à la king, ravioli in sauce, curried rice, and a Normandy pear tart. Father Almida had apologized to the Lilias. “Don Justiniano insisted,” he had told them. “We could not convince him otherwise. What could we do, given that it’s his charity that enables us to offer up good works to God? Even though I told him myself that he’d enjoy the flavors cooked by the ladies of our parish much more, three pious women who have been with us helping to do God’s work for years, three humble and devout cooks a million times better than any French chef, because they cook with love.” This was how Father Almida spoke and charmed his helpers, but only when buoyed up by calmness and inner peace. Now they were in the presence of an irascible, shattered priest who frightened them when Sabina announced that Ballesteros was on the line. It appeared that he was not on his way to the church either.
“This cannot be.” Almida took the telephone from her. At his side, the almost albino Sabina Cruz resembled a plaster figurine, another of the Lilias. There was a clap of thunder; one flash of lightning after another lit the garden blue.
“Father Ballesteros,” Almida began, “this is the first time I have asked another priest for assistance. I have an urgent, unavoidable appointment, for the good of my parish, and they assured me here that you had promised to come. I’ve stood in for you on three Sundays.”
There was an expectant silence. No doubt Ballesteros was excusing himself, but they could not hear him, so Tancredo and the sacristan devoted the silence to ignoring one another. Their gazes clashing when they heard Almida’s exasperated voice, they turned to look at him, clutching the receiver like a drowning man.
“But he hasn’t shown up either,” he was protesting. “Knowing him as I do, it is quite possible that he won’t get here until next year, do you hear me?”
Silence again. Then they followed the Father’s gaze as it moved to the doorway of the office. On the threshold, alongside one of the Lilias, listening to every word, drenched to the skin, a priest stood waiting. Reverend Father Juan Pablo Almida hung up slowly and sighed.
“Father Matamoros,” he said. “A very good evening to you. You’re a Godsend.”
II
For as long as Tancredo can remember, that was the night that shed light on all of his nights, a different and devastating night, the beginning or the end of his life, agony or resurrection, God alone knows which. A solemn night, its strangeness and passion surpassed even the first night he and Sabina had at last lain entwined in a shadowy corner of the courtyard after years of innocent play, and sinned hour upon hour until dawn, as if making up for a century of distance.
The bottle of liqueur was still on the table when Almida and Machado ran out to the courtyard, into the rain, to get into the Volkswagen. The three Lilias escorted them, each armed with an umbrella. The parish’s two highest representatives seemed to be running away, their heads bent beneath the umbrellas’ protective hollows, their bodies mackintoshed and dark, fleeing toward their unfathomable destiny.
Father Matamoros, Almida’s unexpected replacement, stood waiting in the office; as soon as he saw Tancredo returning from the altar, he collapsed into the nearest chair. “This pious throat still has five minutes,” he said. “Give me some of that” — pointing to the bottle. “What is it?” he asked. “Ah, hazelnut liqueur. Very sweet.” To the amazement of Sabina, who had just come back in, he drank the rest of the bottle — 25 per cent proof, according to Almida’s prudent words — from one of the recently used coffee cups: his roguish eyes, deep and black, lit up for a moment. “It’s good against the cold,” he said, rubbing his wet hands together.
Of indefinable age, Father Matamoros — Reverend Father San José Matamoros del Palacio — was indeed a rare bird in the parish church, gray and featherless, come from heavens knows where. He wore dark clothes and a gray turtleneck sweater instead of a dog collar; his jacket looked borrowed, it was too big for him; his round-toed school shoes, almost black, were scuffed and the soles were gone, the laces white; he wore square glasses, one lens cracked down the middle, one arm mended with a dirty strip of sticking plaster.
The liqueur finished, he ran with Tancredo to the sacristy (the rain was getting worse and pooling in the garden gutters, overflowing across the stone passage), where, out of breath, he inspected his surroundings, especially the pious hangings that adorned the walls. He crossed himself before a Botticelli Virgin and seemed to pray with his eyes, awestruck; Tancredo took advantage of the moment to find a towel and dry the priest’s face and hair, his dripping hands, his birdlike neck. Matamoros let him do this without taking his eyes off the merciful Madonna of the Magnificat. Then he sighed and took another look around him, nodding. He noted, with a certain irony, an ancient black telephone on a little table. He was surprised by this tucked-away telephone corner, where he also glimpsed a plain, empty chair surrounded by a throng of plaster angels, dismayed virgins and saints, a sort of vanquished army with broken noses, missing arms, half their wings gone or stained, white-eyed, their faces scratched, hands broken and fingers cracked, a strange crowd waiting, no doubt, to be taken off to a resuscitating craftsman, or taken away by the dustman. Matamoros smiled to himself. “A phone for calling God,” he said. He took a small yellow comb from his pocket and tamed his mass of wayward hair, using as a mirror the enormous gold ciborium which Almida never wanted to use during his Masses, only God knew why. From the same pocket Matamoros drew a bottle of mouthwash, and — to the hunchback’s embarrassment — took two or three slugs, which he spat unceremoniously into that same ciborium. “This’ll have to be washed,” he said, and only then looked at Tancredo, staring like a bird of prey. “You’re my acolyte, right?” he asked, giving the other man’s hump the inevitable once-over. He smiled without malice. “Put this,” he ordered, “on the altar.” As he spoke, he handed Tancredo a glittering, beautifully cut glass cruet filled with water. “I mix the wine with this,” he said, and then, his eyes on a bronze crucifix, as if offering an explanation to the Almighty: “During Masses I prefer to drink water I’ve brought myself.” Then he allowed himself to be helped into the sacred vestments without taking his blazing eyes from the attentive hunchback, from his looming hump, which Matamoros examined frankly. “Another cathedral,” he said, pointing to it.