Marta exclaimed, “Father, you do not know what you are saying.”
“I am not talking as a priest now, Marta. A man has the right to think aloud to his wife. Even a madman, and perhaps I am a little mad. Perhaps those years in Asuncion in the barrio have turned my brain, so here I am waiting to kill an innocent man…”
“You are not mad, Leon,” Aquino said. “You have come to your senses. We will make a good Marxist of you yet. Of course God is evil, God is capitalism. Lay up treasures in heaven-they will bring you a hundred percent interest for eternity.”
“I believe in the evil of God,” Father Rivas said, “but I believe in His goodness too. He made us in His image-that is the old legend. Eduardo, you know well how many truths in medicine lay in old legends. It was not a modern laboratory which first discovered the use of a snake’s venom. And old women used the mould on overripe oranges long before penicillin. So I too believe in an old legend which is almost forgotten. He made us in His image-and so our evil is His evil too. How could I love God if He were not like me? Divided like me. Tempted like me. If I love a dog it is only because I can see something human in a dog. I can feel his fear and his gratitude and even his treachery. He dreams in his sleep like I do. I doubt if I could ever love a toad-though sometimes, when I have touched a toad’s skin, I am reminded of the skin of an old man who has spent a rough poor life in the fields, and I wonder…”
“I find my disbelief a lot easier to understand than your kind of belief. If your God is evil…”
“I have had more than two years in hiding,” Father Rivas said, “and we have to travel light. There is no room in our packs for books of theology. Only Marta has kept a missal. I have lost mine. Sometimes I have been able to find a paperback novel-like the one I have been reading. A detective story. That sort of life leaves a lot of time to think and perhaps Marta may be right and my thoughts are turning wild. But I can see no other way to believe in God. The God I believe in must be responsible for all the evil as well as for all the saints. He has to be a God made in our image with a night side as well as a day side. When you speak of the horror, Eduardo, you are speaking of the night side of God. I believe the time will come when the night side will wither away, like your communist state, Aquino, and we shall see only the simple daylight of the good God. You believe in evolution, Eduardo, even though sometimes whole generations of men slip backward to the beasts. It is a long struggle and a long suffering, evolution, and I believe God is suffering the same evolution that we are, but perhaps with more pain.”
“I am not so sure of evolution,” Doctor Plarr said, “not since we managed to produce Hitler and Stalin in one generation. Suppose the night side of God swallows up the day side altogether? Suppose it is the good side which withers away. If I believed what you believe, I would sometimes think that had happened already.”
“But I believe in Christ,” Father Rivas said, “I believe in the Cross and the Redemption. The Redemption of God as well as of Man. I believe that the day side of God, in one moment of happy creation, produced perfect goodness, as a man might paint one perfect picture. God’s intention for once was completely fulfilled so that the night side can never win more than a little victory here and there. With our help. Because the evolution of God depends on our evolution. Every evil act of ours strengthens His night side, and every good one helps His day side. We belong to Him and He belongs to us. But now at least we can be sure where evolution will end one day-it will end in a goodness like Christ’s. It is a terrible process all the same and the God I believe in suffers as we suffer while He struggles against Himself-against His evil side.”
“Is killing Charley Fortnum going to help his evolution?”
“No. I pray all the time I shall not have to kill him.”
“And yet you will kill him if they don’t give in?”
“Yes. Just as you lie with another man’s wife. There are ten men dying slowly in prison, and I tell myself I am fighting for them and that I love them. But my sort of love I know is a poor excuse. A saint would only have to pray, but I have to carry a revolver. I slow evolution down.”
“Then why…?”
“Saint Paul answered that question, ‘What I do is not that which I wish to do, but something which I hate.’ He knew all about the night side of God. He had been one of those who stoned Stephen.”
“Do you still call yourself a Catholic, believing all that?”
“Yes. I call myself a Catholic whatever the bishops may say. Or the Pope.”
Marta said, “Father, you frighten me. All that is not in the catechism, is it?”
“No, not in the catechism, but the catechism is not the faith, Marta. It is a sort of times two table. There is nothing I have said which your catechism denies. You learned when you were a child about Abraham and Isaac, and how Jacob cheated his brother, and Sodom was destroyed like that village last year in the Andes. God when He is evil demands evil things; He can create monsters like Hitler; He destroys children and cities. But one day with our help He will be able to tear His evil mask off forever. How often the saints have worn an evil mask for a time, even Paul. God is joined to us in a sort of blood transfusion. His good is in our veins, and our tainted blood runs through His. Oh, I know I may be sick or mad. But it is the only way I can believe in the goodness of God.”
“It’s much easier not to believe in a God at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, perhaps the Jesuits left one germ of the disease in me, but I have isolated it. I keep it under control.”
“I have never spoken aloud like this before-I don’t know why I do now.”
“Perhaps because you think there is no more hope?”
“Ted,” the voice which Doctor Plarr was beginning to hate called from the inner room, “Ted.”
Doctor Plarr made no motion to rise.
“Your patient,” Father Rivas reminded him.
“I’ve done all I can for him. What’s the good of mending his ankle if you are going to put a bullet through his head?”
“Ted,” the voice came again.
“He probably wants to ask me what vitamins Clara ought to give his baby. Or when he ought to be weaned. His baby! The dark side of God must be having a hearty laugh about that. I never wanted a child. I would have got rid of it if she had let me.”
“Speak lower,” Father Rivas said, “even if you are jealous of the poor man.”
“Jealous of Charley Fortnum? Why should I be jealous?” He couldn’t control his voice. “Jealous because of the child? - but the child’s mine. Jealous because of his wife? She’s mine as well. For as long as I want her.”
“Jealous because he loves.”
He was aware of the way Marta looked at him. Even Aquino’s silence seemed a criticism.
“Oh love! That’s not a word in my vocabulary.”
Marta said, “Give me your shirt, Father. I want to wash it ready for the Mass.”
“A little dirt will not matter.”
“You have slept in it for three weeks, Father. It is not good to go up to the altar smelling like a dog.”
“There is no altar.”
“Give it to me, Father.”
Obediently he stripped off his shirt; the blue was faded by the sun and stained with the marks of food and the whitewash of many walls. “Do what you want,” the priest said. “All the same it is a pity to waste our water. We may need all we have of it before the end.”