[56] In any case, even if he could have gone south and avoided the village, it was only one more surrender: the years behind him were littered with similar surrenders-feast-days and fast-days and days of abstinence had been the first to go: then he had ceased to trouble more than occasionally about his breviary-and finally he had left it behind altogether at the port in one of his periodic attempts at escape. Then the altar stone went-too dangerous to carry with him. He had no business to say Mass without it: he was probably liable to suspension, but penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death. The routine of his life like a dam was cracked and forgetfulness came dribbling in, wiping out this and that. Five years ago he had given way to despair-the unforgivable sin-and he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of the heart. For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had a word for his kind-a whisky priest-but every failure dropped out of sight and out of mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret-the rubble of his failures. One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace. Until then he carried on, with spells of fear, weariness, with a shamefaced lightness of heart.
The mule splashed across the clearing and they entered the forest again. Now that he no longer despaired it didn't mean, of course, that he wasn't damned-it was simply that after a time the mystery became too great, a damned man putting God into the mouths of men: an odd sort of servant, that, for the devil. His mind was full of a simplified mythology: Michael dressed in armour slew a dragon, and the angels fell through space like comets with beautiful streaming hair because they were jealous, so one of the fathers had said, of what God intended for men-the enormous privilege of life-this life.
There were signs of cultivation: stumps of trees and the ashes of fires where the ground was being cleared for a crop. He stopped beating the mule on: he felt a curious shyness. ... A woman came out of a hut and watched him lagging up the path on the tired mule. The tiny village, not more than two dozen huts round a dusty plaza, was made to pattern: but it was a pattern which lay close to his heart; he felt secure-he was confident of a welcome-that in this place there would be at least [57] one person he could trust not to betray him to the police. When he was quite close the mule sat down again-this time he had to roll on the ground to escape. He picked himself up and the woman watched him as if he were an enemy. Ah, Maria, he said, and how are you?
Well, she exclaimed, it is you, father?
He didn't look directly at her: his eyes were sly and cautious. He said: You didn't recognize me?
You've changed. She looked him up and down with a kind of contempt. She said: When did you get those clothes, father?
A week ago.
What did you do with yours?
I gave them in exchange.
Why? They were good clothes.
They were very ragged-and conspicuous.
I'd have mended them and hidden them away. It's a waste. You look like a common man.
He smiled, looking at the ground, while she chided him like a house-keeper: it was just as in the old days when there was a presbytery and meetings of the Children of Mary and all the guilds and gossip of a parish, except of course that ... He said gently, not looking at her, with the same embarrassed smile: How's Brigida? His heart jumped at the name: a sin may have enormous consequences: it was six years since he had been -home.
She's as well as the rest of us. What did you expect?
He had his satisfaction: it was connected with his crime: he had no business to feel pleasure at anything attached to that past. He said mechanically: That's good, while his heart beat with its secret and appalling love. He said: I'm very tired. The police were about near Zapata ...
Why didn't you make for Montecristo?
He looked quickly up with anxiety. It wasn't the welcome that he had expected: a small knot of people had gathered between the huts and watched him from a safe distance-there was a little decaying bandstand and a single stall for gaseosas-people had brought their chairs out for the evening. Nobody came forward to kiss his hand and ask his blessing. It was as if he had descended by means of his sin into the human struggle [58] to learn other things besides despair and love, that a man can be unwelcome even in his own home. He said: The Red Shirts were there.
Well, father, the woman said, we can't turn you away. You'd better come along. He followed her meekly, tripping once in the long peon trousers, with the happiness wiped off his face and the smile somehow left behind like the survivor of a wreck. There were seven or eight men, two women, half a dozen children: he came among them like a beggar. He couldn't help remembering the last time ... the excitement, the gourds of spirit brought out of holes in the ground ... his guilt had still been fresh, yet how he had been welcomed. It was as if he had returned to them in their vicious prison as one of themselves-an émigré who comes back to his native place enriched.
This is the father, the woman said. Perhaps it was only that they hadn't recognized him, he thought, and waited for their greetings. They came forward one by one and kissed his hand and then stood back and watched him. He said: I am glad to see you ... He was going to say my children, but then it seemed to him that only the childless man has the right to call strangers his children. The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands: he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn't look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were girls: a thin washed-out child-of five, six, seven? he couldn't tell-and one who had been sharpened by hunger into an appearance of devilry and malice beyond her age. A young woman stared out of the child's eyes. He watched them disperse again, saying nothing: they were strangers.
One of the men said: Will you be here long, father?
He said: I thought, perhaps …I could rest ... a few days. One of the other men said: Couldn't you go a bit farther north, father, to Pueblita?
We've been travelling for twelve hours, the mule and I The woman suddenly spoke for him, angrily: Of course he'll stay here tonight. It's the least we can do.
He said: I'll say Mass for you in the morning, as if he were [59] offering them a bribe, but it might almost have been stolen money from their expressions of shyness and unwillingness. Somebody said: If you don't mind, father, very early ... in the night perhaps ...
What is the matter with you all? he said. Why should you be afraid?
Haven't you heard ...?
Heard?
They are taking hostages now-from all the villages where they think you've been. And if people don't tell ... somebody is shot ... and then they take another hostage. It happened in Concepcion.
Conception? One of his lids began to twitch, up and down, up and down: in such trivial ways the body expresses anxiety, horror, or despair. He said: Who? They looked at him stupidly. He said furiously: Whom did they murder?
Pedro Montez.
He gave a little yapping cry like a dog's-the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He said: Why don't they catch me? The fools. Why don't they catch me? The little girl laughed again: he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound, but couldn't see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child-bury it quickly and forget and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.