Well, good-bye, Maria.
Good-bye.
He walked across the plaza with his shoulders hunched: he felt that there wasn't a soul in the place who wasn't watching him with satisfaction-the trouble-maker whom for obscure and superstitious reasons they preferred not to betray to the police; he felt envious of the unknown gringo whom they wouldn't hesitate to trap-he at any rate had no burden of gratitude to carry round with him.
Down a slope churned up with the hoofs of mules and ragged with tree-roots there was the river-not more than two feet deep, littered with empty cans and broken bottles. Under a notice which hung on a tree reading: It is forbidden to deposit rubbish ... all the refuse of the village was collected and slid gradually down into the river. When the rains came it would be washed away. He put his foot among the old tins and rotting vegetables and reached for his case. He sighed: it had been quite a good case: one more relic of the quiet past.... Soon it would be difficult to remember that life had ever been any different. The lock had been torn off: he felt inside the silk lining. …
The papers were there: reluctantly he let the case fall-a whole important and respected youth dropped among the cans-he had been given it by his parishioners in Concepcion on the fifth anniversary of his ordination. ... Somebody moved behind a tree. He lifted his feet out of the rubbish-flies buzzed around his ankles. With the papers hidden in his fist he came round the trunk to see who was spying. ... The child sat on a root, kicking her heels against the bark. Her eyes were shut tight fast. He said: My dear, what is the matter with you ...? They came quickly open-red-rimmed and angry, with an expression of absurd pride. She said:
You ... you ...
Me?
You are the matter.
[76] He moved towards her with infinite caution, as if she were an animal who distrusted him. He felt weak with longing. He said: My dear, why me ... ?
She said furiously: They laugh at me.''
Because of me?
She said: Everyone else has a father ... who works.
I work too.
You're a priest, aren't you?
Yes.
Pedro says you aren't a man. You aren't any good for women. She said: I don't know what he means.
I don't suppose he knows himself.
Oh, yes, he does, she said. He's ten. And I want to know. You're going away, aren't you?
Yes.
He was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock. She said: Tell me- enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection-she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss. He said: My dear, be careful ...
What of? Why are you going away?
He came a little nearer: he thought-a man may kiss his own daughter; but she started away from him. Don't you touch me, she screeched at him in her ancient voice, and giggled. Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast: but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew-the saving or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love. He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber-Maria's hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk; and the police beating the forest-violence everywhere. He prayed silently: O God, give me any kind of death-without contrition, in a state of sin-only save this child.
He was a man who was supposed to save souls: it had seemed quite simple once, preaching at Benediction, organizing the guilds, having coffee with elderly ladies behind barred windows, blessing new houses with a little incense, wearing [77] black gloves ... it was as easy as saving money: now it was a mystery. He was aware of his own desperate inadequacy.
He went down on his knees and pulled her to him, while she giggled and struggled to be free. He said: I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that. He held her tightly by the wrist and suddenly she stayed still, looking up at him. He said: I would give my life, that's nothing, my soul ... my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are-so important. That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent. He said: You must take care of yourself because you are so-necessary. The President up in the capital goes guarded by men with guns-but, my child, you have all the angels of heaven- She stared back at him out of dark and unconscious eyes: he had a sense that he had come too late. He said: Good-bye, my dear, and clumsily kissed her-a silly infatuated ageing man, who as soon as he released her and started padding back to the plaza could feel behind his hunched shoulders the whole vile world coming round the child to ruin her. His mule was there, saddled, by the gaseosa stall. A man said: Better go north, father, and stood waving his hand. One mustn't have human affections-or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child. The passion to protect must extend itself over a world-but he felt it tethered and aching like a hobbled animal to the tree trunk. He turned his mule south.
He was travelling in the actual track of the police: so long as he went slowly and didn't overtake any stragglers it seemed a fairly safe route. What he needed now was wine-and it had to be made with grapes: without it he was useless; he might as well escape north into the mountains and the safe state beyond, where the worst that could happen to him was a fine and a few days in prison because he couldn't pay. But he wasn't ready yet for the final surrender-every small surrender had to be paid for in a further endurance, and now he felt the need of somehow ransoming his child. He could stay another month, another year ... jogging up and down on the mule he tried to bribe God with promises of firmness. ... The mule suddenly [78] dug in its hoofs and stopped dead: a tiny green snake raised itself like an affronted woman on the path and then hissed away into the grass like a match-flame. The mule went on.
When he came near a village he would stop the mule and advance as close as he could on foot-the police might have stopped there-then he would ride quickly through, speaking to nobody beyond a buenos días, and again on the forest path he would pick up the track of the lieutenant's horse. He had no dear idea now about anything: he only wanted to put as great a distance as possible between him and the village where he had spent the night. In one hand he still carried the scrumpled ball of paper. Somebody had tied a bunch of about fifty bananas to his saddle beside the machete and the small bag which contained his store of candles, and every now and then he ate one-ripe, brown, and sodden, tasting of soap. It left a smear like a moustache over his mouth.
After six hours' travelling he came to La Candelaria, which lay, a long mean tin-roofed village, beside one of the tributaries of the Grijalva River. He came cautiously out into the dusty street it was early afternoon: the buzzards sat on the roofs with their small heads hidden from the sun, and a few men lay in hammocks in the narrow shade the houses cast. The mule plodded forward very slowly through the heavy day. The priest leant forward on his pommel.
The mule came to a stop of its own accord beside a hammock: a man lay in it, bunched diagonally, with one leg trailing to keep the hammock moving, up and down, up and down, making a tiny current of air. He said: Buenas tardes. The man opened his eyes and watched him.
How far is it to Carmen?
Three leagues.
Can I get a canoe across the river?
Yes.
Where?
The man waved a languid hand-as much as to say anywhere but here. He had only two teeth left-canines which stuck yellowly out at either end of his mouth like the teeth of long-extinct animals which you find enclosed in clay.