“Don’t move,” he hears his father say loudly and clearly. “He isn’t a an old woman and he isn’t pregnant.”
The cleric smiles beatifically at the boy.
“Thank you for the thought, my son,” he says, half-closing his eyes. Then to his father: “The boy is well brought up.”
“We try our best, Reverend.”
“His intentions were good.”
“That’s right. But I take care of his good intentions.”
“Of course you do.”
The priest nods and blinks affably. Raising his hands and turning his head to one side like a father confessor, he appears to have sunk into a sympathetic meditation, when he hears the other man say:
“I also take care of handing out the beatings if he deserves them.”
“Of course. You are concerned for your son. That’s good.”
“You see, Reverend Father, my beatings have more God, a lot more God in them, than anything you or Bishop Modrego hand out at Mass.”
The nearby passengers forced to witness the scene start to look away. It’s not so much that they don’t want to hear, but that they wish they were a long way away. After a brief pause, the intrepid Rat-catcher resumes the charge.
“The wine you lot use for consecration is useless.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It’s not worth shit.”
“My word. Well anyway,” the priest intones, with an unexpected saintly calm, “we’re not going to argue over that, are we? Although believe me, you make me very sad, my man, very sad.”
“You know where you can stick your sadness.”
“I’ve no idea what your intentions are, but I must ask you not to set such a bad example for your son. I’m asking you as a favour.”
“A bad example? Me, a bad example? Listen, in your schools they teach something called The Formation of the National Spirit, a piece of crap blessed by the Church that almost left my boy a gibbering idiot. So don’t talk to me about bad examples, Reverend.”
I wish the earth would swallow me up, he thought. He’s got rat poison under his fingernails, in his voice, his eyes, and in everything he says, and there’s no-one who can stop him now.
“In my church we teach other things as well,” the cleric points out.
“The thing is, I don’t believe in the church as the saviour of souls and all that stuff.”
“Aha.”
“My wife does. She’s a believer.”
“You don’t say? Laus Deo.”
“Yes, she’s friendly with priests. But she doesn’t want anything to do with the bishop. We keep our scorn for canons, bishops and the hierarchy.”
“Well, well. But there’s no need to get so worked up.”
“My wife only goes to church to pray. You know, Kyrie Eleison and such like.”
“From what I can see, my son, you’re fortunate to have the wife you do …”
“I don’t believe,” the Rat-catcher butted in, “that you lot help us get to heaven. I really don’t.” Then in an insolent imitation of a nasal, clerical voice, he adds: “Alll theese cassocks in the streets! Alll theese cassocks? Where will it end with alll theese cassocks?”
“Oh my Lord, my Lord!” the priest shakes his head wearily, then blows out his cheeks, his snorts sending his white, bushy eyebrows into even greater confusion. He stares at the boy’s father and for a moment it appears he is about to rebuke him. But, filling his lungs with air and patience, and lowering his eyes mildly, he adds: “Look, I’m sure that deep down you are a good Christian. The problem is you don’t know it.”
The great Rat-catcher throws his head back, as if trying to avoid the cleric’s hypocritical halitosis, and steals a look at the pale, podgy hands folded across his prominent belly. Now he’s laughing to himself, thinks the boy.
“That’s possible, Reverend, that’s possible. Will you believe me if I say that sometimes in dreams I see myself falling to my knees at the feet of your bishop, exclaiming: Your Most Holy Eminence, I’m lost! Lost without hope, Your Eminence!” He pauses, then changes his tone, “Well, my humblest genuflection, Reverend Father. The truth is, I don’t know if I am a good Christian. What I’m not, and that you can be sure of, is the servant of a Church that parades the Sentinel of the West with such great pomp.”
There it is, he’s come out with it, the boy groans, closing his eyes tightly as he hears the guffaw that follows this hoary anti-clerical rant, the stupidly sacrilegious boast, not just foolhardy but extremely risky, as his mother is constantly reproaching him. Fortunately she’s not here to see the scene.
“You’re not looking for trouble, are you?” the priest can be heard muttering. But the incorrigible loudmouth has said his piece and now stands there proudly, laughing on the inside. Let’s hope he doesn’t insist, thinks the boy, let’s hope this doesn’t end up at the police station. He can feel the huge paw circling round his shoulders once more, and so decides to concentrate on reading the adverts over the tram windows: Cerebrino Mandri for headaches and neuralgia, it never fails and blah blah blah. Tobías Fabregat Raincoats, elegance and comfort in instalments or in cash, and blah, blah, blah. Luis Griera’s Bridal Bouquets and blah, blah, blah. C. Borja, buttons lined while you wait. NO BLASPHEMING OR SWEARING. Youth, beauty and vigour with Bella Aurora every day, and blah, blah, blah, an advert that always makes him think of a friend of his mother’s, Señora Mir, and the shiny, bronze fish-tail she wears in her cleavage.
When he turns back he sees the priest’s sly glance as he raises a finger to his lips as if to say: best not to pay him any attention, my boy. Although the cleric’s huge head has something rugged and wild about it, as though an invisible wind were ruffling his white hair and eyebrows, the expression on his face does not reveal the slightest annoyance or offence, but rather a cheerful, stubborn benevolence, a calmness that arouses a certain sympathy in the boy. At the end of one of the priest’s eyebrows he spots an incredibly long white hair that curls dramatically upwards; the tram wheels grate as it turns into Plaza Lesseps and then clanks its way on to the tracks of the Travesera de Dalt. The nearest passengers have long since turned to statues, offering only their backs and the napes of their necks.
His father’s histrionic, reckless behaviour with the priest is nothing new to him. Nor is the fact that he decides to get off the tram a stop before the right one. When he gets the signal, the boy stands up and follows him, case in hand, to the rear platform, from where they both prepare to jump down to the pavement as the tram slows for a bend. The boy leans out first, and gets ready to jump carefully, hanging onto the rail with his left hand and feeling ostentatiously for the ground with his foot. As a result, his father has to suddenly alter his trajectory in order to avoid knocking him over, and in doing so slightly twists his ankle. When he starts to walk on it, the ankle becomes painful, so he curses and lets out a few very theatrical “ow!”s. They have quite a way to go to reach home; he has the case slung over his shoulder and his father limping alongside him. Even so, the Rat-catcher strides out impetuously and there is something comical about the way his arms swing so wildly to the squelching rhythm of his rubber boots.