How far did you travel yesterday? Perhaps twelve leagues.
Even a mule needs rest.
The priest took his bare feet out of the deep leather stirrups and scrambled to the ground. The mule for less than a minute [83] took a longer stride and then dropped to a yet slower pace. The twigs and roots of the forest path cut the priest's feet-after five minutes he was bleeding. He tried in vain not to limp. The half-caste exclaimed: How delicate your feet are! You should wear shoes.
Stubbornly he reasserted: I am a poor man.
You will never get to Carmen at this rate. Be sensible, man. If you don't want to go as far off the road as the finca, I know a little but less than half a league from here. We can sleep a few hours and still reach Carmen at daybreak. There was a rustle in the grass beside the path-the priest thought of snakes and his unprotected feet. The mosquitoes jabbed at his wrists: they were like little surgical syringes filled with poison and aimed at the bloodstream. Sometimes a firefly held its lighted globe dose to the half-caste's face, turning it on and off like a torch. He said accusingly: You don't trust me. just because I am a man who likes to do a good turn to strangers, because I try to be a Christian, you don't trust me. He seemed to be working himself into a little artificial rage. He said: If I had wanted to rob you, couldn't I have done it already? You're an old man.
Not so very old, the priest said mildly. His conscience began automatically to work: it was like a slot machine into which any coin could be fitted, even a cheater's blank disk. The words proud, lustful, envious, cowardly, ungrateful-they all worked the right springs-he was all these things. The half-caste said: Here I have spent many long hours guiding you to Carmen-I don't want any reward because I am a good Christian: I have probably lost money by it at home-never mind that ...
I thought you said you had business in Carmen? the priest said gently.
When did I say that? It was true-he couldn't remember … perhaps he was unjust too. ... Why should I say a thing which isn't true? No, I give up a whole day to helping you, and you pay no attention when your guide is tired. …
I didn't need a guide, he protested mildly.
You say that when the road is plain, but if it wasn't for me, you'd have taken the wrong path a long time ago. You said yourself you didn't know Carmen well. That was why I came.
[84] But of course, the priest said, if you are tired, we will rest. He felt guilty at his own lack of trust, but all the same, it remained like a growth only a knife could rid him of.
After half an hour they came to the hut: made of mud and twigs it had been set up in a minute clearing by a small farmer the forest must have driven out, edging in on him, an unstayable natural force which he couldn't defeat with his machete and his small fires. There were still signs in the blackened ground of an attempt to clear the brushwood for some meagre, limited, and inadequate crop. The man said: I will see to the mule. You go in and lie down and rest.
But it is you who are tired.
Me tired? the half-caste said. What makes you say that? I am never tired.
With a heavy heart the priest took off his saddle-bag, pushed at the door and went in-to complete darkness: he struck a light-there was no furniture: only a raised dais of hard earth and a straw mat too torn to have been worth removing. He lit a candle and stuck it in its own wax on the dais: then sat down and waited: the man was a long time. In one fist he still carried the ball of paper salvaged from his case-a man must retain some sentimental relics if he is to live at all. The argument of danger applies only to those who live in safety. He wondered whether the mestizo had stolen his mule, and reproached himself for the necessary suspicion. Then the door opened and the man came in-the two yellow canine teeth, the finger-nails scratching in the armpit. He sat down on the earth, with his back against the door, and said: Go to sleep. You are tired. I'll wake you when we need to start.
I'm not very sleepy.
Blow out the candle. You'll sleep better.
I don't like darkness, the priest said. He was afraid. Won't you say a prayer, father, before we sleep?
Why do you call me that? he said sharply, peering across the shadowy floor to where the half-caste sat against the door. Oh, I guessed, of course. But you needn't be afraid of me. I'm a good Christian.
You're wrong.
I could easily find out, couldn't I? the half-caste said. I'd [85] just have to say-father, hear my confession. You couldn't refuse a man in mortal sin.
The priest said nothing, waiting for the demand to come: the hand which held the papers trembled. Oh, you needn't fear me, the mestizo went carefully on. I wouldn't betray you. I'm a Christian. I just thought a prayer ... would be good ...
You don't need to be a priest to know a prayer. He began: Pater noster qui es in coelis ... while the mosquitoes came droning towards the candle-flame. He was determined not to sleep-the man had some plan: even his conscience ceased to accuse him of uncharity. He knew. He was in the presence of Judas.
He leant his head back against the wall and half closed his eyes-he remembered Holy Week in the old days when a stuffed Judas was hanged from the belfry and boys made a clatter with tins and rattles as he swung out over the door. Old staid members of the congregation had sometimes raised objections: it was blasphemous; they said, to make this guy out of Our Lord's betrayer; but he had said nothing and let the practice continue-it seemed to him a good thing that the world's traitor should be made a figure of fun. It was too easy otherwise to idealize him as a man who fought with God-a Prometheus, a noble victim in a hopeless war.
Are you awake? a voice whispered from the door. The priest suddenly giggled-as if this man, too, were absurd with stuffed straw legs and a painted face and an old straw hat who would presently be burnt in the plaza while people made political speeches and the fireworks went off.
Can't you sleep?
I was dreaming, the priest whispered. He opened his eyes and saw the man by the door was shivering-the two sharp teeth jumped up and down on the lower lip. Are you ill?
A little fever, the man said. Have you any medicine?
No.
The door creaked as the man's back shook. He said: It was getting wet in the river ... He slid farther down upon the floor and closed his eyes-mosquitoes with singed wings crawled over the earth bed. The priest thought: I mustn't sleep, it's dangerous, I must watch him. He opened his fist and [86] smoothed out the paper. There were faint pencil lines visible-single words, the beginnings and ends of sentences, figures. Now that his case was gone, it was the only evidence left that life had ever been different: he carried it with him as a charm-because if life had been like that once, it might be so again. The candle-flame in the hot marshy lowland air burned to a smoky point, vibrating. ... The priest held the paper close to it and read the words Altar Society, Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, Children of Mary, and then looked up again and across the dark hut, saw the yellow malarial eyes of the mestizo watching him. Christ would not have found Judas sleeping in the garden: Judas could watch more than one hour.
What's the paper ... father? he said enticingly, shivering against the door.
Don't call me father. It is a list of seeds I have to buy in Carmen.
Can you write?
I can read.
He looked at the paper again and a little mild impious joke stared up at him in faded pencil-something about of one substance. He had been referring to his corpulency and the good dinner he had just eaten: the parishioners had not much relished his humour.
It had been a dinner given at Conception in honour of the tenth anniversary of his ordination. He sat in the middle of the table with-who was it on his right hand? There were twelve dishes-he had said something about the Apostles, too, which was not thought to be in the best of taste. He was quite young and he had been moved by a gentle devilry, surrounded by all the pious and middle-aged and respectable people of Concepcion, wearing their guild ribbons and badges. He had drunk just a little too much: in those days he wasn't used to liquor. It came back to him now suddenly who was on his right hand-it was Montez, the father of the man they had shot.