You see, father, one of the men said, why ...
He felt as a guilty man does before his judges. He said: 'Would you rather that I was like ... like Padre José in the capital ... you have heard of him ...?
They said unconvincingly: Of course not, father.
He said: What am I saying now? It's not what you want or what I want. He said sharply, with authority: I will sleep now ... You can wake me an hour before dawn ... half an hour to hear your confessions ... then Mass, and I will be gone.
But where? There wouldn't be a village in the state to which he wouldn't be an unwelcome danger now.
The woman said: This way, father.
He followed her into a small room where all the furniture had been made out of packing-cases-a chair, a bed of boards tacked together and covered with a straw mat, a crate on which [60] a cloth had been laid, and on the cloth an oil-lamp. He said: I don't want to turn anybody out of here.
It's mine.
He looked at her doubtfully: Where will you sleep? He was afraid of claims. He watched her covertly: was this all there was in marriage, this evasion and suspicion and lack of ease? When people confessed to him in terms of passion, was this all they meant-the hard bed and the busy woman and the not talking about the past ...?
When you are gone.
The light flattened out behind the forest and the long shadows of the trees pointed towards the door. He lay down upon the bed, and the woman busied herself somewhere out of sight: he could hear her scratching at the earth floor. He couldn't sleep. Had it become his duty then to run away? He had tried to escape several times, but he had always been prevented ... now they wanted him to go. Nobody would stop him, saying a woman was ill or a man dying. He was a sickness now.
Maria, he said. Maria, what are you doing?
I have saved a little brandy for you.
He thought: If I go, I shall meet other priests: I shall go to confession: I shall feel contrition and be forgiven: eternal life will begin for me all over again. The Church taught that it was every man's first duty to save his own soul. The simple ideas of hell and heaven moved in his brain: life without books, without contact with educated men, had peeled away from his memory everything but the simplest outline of the mystery.
There, the woman said. She carried a small medicine bottle filled with spirit.
If he left them, they would be safe: and they would be free from his example: he was the only priest the children could remember. It was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God-in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake, even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken with the enormity of the problem: he lay with his hands over his eyes: nowhere, in all the wide flat marshy [61] land, was there a single person he could consult. He raised the brandy bottle to his mouth.
He said shyly: And Brigida ... is she ... well?
You saw her just now.
No. He couldn't believe that he hadn't recognized her. It was making light of his mortal sin: you couldn't do a thing like that and then not even recognize ...
Yes, she was there. Maria went to the door and called: Brigida, Brigida, and the priest turned on his side and watched her come in out of the outside landscape of terror and lust-that small malicious child who had laughed at him.
Go and speak to the father, Maria said. Go on.
He made an attempt to hide the brandy bottle, but there was nowhere ... he tried to minimize it in his hands, watching her, feeling the shock of human love.
She knows her catechism, Maria said, but she won't say it. ...
The child stood there, watching him with acuteness and contempt. They had spent no love in her conception: just fear and despair and half a bottle of brandy and the sense of loneliness had driven him to an act which horrified him-and this scared shamefaced overpowering love was the result. He said: Why not? Why won't you say it? taking quick secret glances, never meeting her gaze, feeling his heart pound in his breast unevenly, like an old donkey engine, with the balked desire to save her from-everything.
Why should I?
God wishes it.
How do you know?
He was aware of an immense load of responsibility: it was indistinguishable from love. This, he thought, must be what all parents feeclass="underline" ordinary men go through life like this crossing their fingers, praying against pain, afraid. ... This is what we escape at no cost at all, sacrificing an unimportant motion of the body. For years, of course, he had been responsible for souls, but that was different ... a lighter thing. You could trust God to make allowances, but you couldn't trust smallpox, starvation, men. … He said: My dear, tightening his grip upon the brandy bottle ... he had baptized her at his last visit: she had [62] been like a rag doll with a wrinkled, aged face-it seemed unlikely that she would live long. ... He had felt nothing but a regret; it was difficult even to feel shame where no one blamed him. He was the only priest most of them had ever known-they took their standard of the priesthood from him. Even the women.
Are you the gringo?
What gringo?
The woman said: The silly little creature. It's because the police have been looking for a man. It seemed odd to hear of any other man they wanted but himself.
What has he done?
He's a Yankee. He murdered some people in the north.
Why should he be here?
They think he's making for Quintana Roo-the chicle plantations. It was where many criminals in Mexico ended up; you could work on a plantation and earn good money and nobody interfered.
Are you the gringo? the child repeated.
Do I look like a murderer?
I don't know.
If he left the state, he would be leaving her too, abandoned. He said humbly to the woman: Couldn't I stay a few days here?
It's too dangerous, father.
He caught a look in the child's eyes which frightened him-it was again as if a grown woman was there before her time, making her plans, aware of far too much. It was like seeing his own mortal sin look back at him, without contrition. He tried to find some contact with the child and not the woman; he said: My dear, tell me what games you play. … The child sniggered. He turned his face quickly away and stared up at the roof, where a spider moved. He remembered a proverb-it came out of the recesses of his own childhood: his father had used it- The best smell is bread, the best savour salt, the best love that of children. It had been a happy childhood, except that he had been afraid of too many things, and had hated poverty, like a crime: he had believed that when he was a priest he would be rich and proud-that was called having a vocation. He thought of the immeasurable distance a man travels-from [63] the first whipping-top to this bed, on which he lay clasping the brandy. And to God it was only a moment. The child's snigger and the first mortal sin lay together more closely than two blinks of the eye. He put out his hand as if he could drag her back by force from-something; but he was powerless; the man or the woman waiting to complete her corruption might not yet have been born: how could he guard her against the nonexistent?
She started out of his reach and put her tongue out at him. The woman said: You little devil, you, and raised her hand. No, the priest said. No. He scrambled into a sitting position. Don't you dare ...
I'm her mother.
We haven't any right. He said to the child: If only I had some cards I could show you a trick or two. You could teach your friends ... He had never known how to talk to children except from the pulpit. She stared back at him with insolence. He said: Do you know how to send messages with taps-long, short, long? ...