Who are you?
Don't you remember me? Of course, it's years now ... don't you remember the conference at the cathedral? …
Oh, God, Padre José said.
They are looking for me. I thought perhaps just for tonight you could perhaps ...
Go away, Padre José said, go away.
They don't know who I am. They think I'm a smuggler-but up at the police station they'll know.
Don't talk so loud. My wife ...
Just show me some corner, he whispered. He was beginning to feel fear again. Perhaps the effect of the brandy was wearing off (it was impossible in this hot damp climate to stay drunk for long: alcohol came out again under the armpits: it dripped from the forehead) or perhaps it was only that the desire of life, which moves in cycles, was returning-any sort of life.
In the lamplight Padre José's face wore an expression of hatred. He said: Why come to me? Why should you think ? I'll call the police if you don't go. You know what sort of a man I am.
He pleaded gently: You're a good man, José. I've always known that.
I'll shout if you don't go.
He tried to remember some cause of hatred. There were voices in the street-arguments, a knocking-were they searching the houses? He said: If I ever offended you, José, forgive [111] me. I was conceited, proud, overbearing-a bad priest. I always knew in my heart you were the better man.
Go, José screeched at him, go! I don't want martyrs here. I don't belong any more. Leave me alone. I'm all right as I am. He tried to gather up his venom into spittle and shot it feebly at the others face: it didn't even reach, fell impotently through the air. He said: Go and die quickly. That's your job, and slammed the door to. The door of the patio came suddenly open and the police were there. He caught a glimpse of Padre José peering through a window and then an enormous shape in a white nightshirt engulfed him and drew him away-whisked him off, like a guardian spirit, from the disastrous human struggle. A voice said: That's him. It was the young Red Shirt. He let his fist open and dropped by Padre José's wall a little ball of paper: it was like the final surrender of a whole past.
He knew it was the beginning of the end-after all these years. He began to say silently an act of contrition, while they picked the brandy bottle out of his pocket, but he couldn't give his mind to it. That was the fallacy of the deathbed repentance-penitence was the fruit of long training and discipline: fear wasn't enough. He tried to think of his child with shame, but he could only think of her with a kind of famished love-what would become of her? And the sin itself was so old that like an ancient picture the deformity had faded and left a kind of grace. The Red Shirt smashed the bottle on the stone paving and the smell of spirit rose all round them-not very strongly: there hadn't really been much left.
Then they took him away: now that they had caught him they treated him in a friendly way, poking fun at his attempt to escape-except the Red Shirt whose shot he had spoiled. He couldn't find any answer to their jokes: self-preservation lay across his brain like a horrifying obsession. When would they discover who he really was? When would he meet the half-caste, or the lieutenant who had interrogated him already? They moved in a bunch slowly up the hill to the plaza. A rifle-butt grounded outside the station as they came in: a small lamp fumed against the dirty whitewashed walclass="underline" in the courtyard hammocks swung, bunched around sleeping bodies like the nets [112] in which poultry is tied. You can sit down, one of the men said, and pushed him in a comradely way towards a bench. Everything now seemed irrevocable: the sentry passed back and forth outside the door, and in the courtyard among the hammocks the ceaseless murmur of sleep went on.
Somebody had spoken to him: he gaped helplessly up. What? There seemed to be an argument in progress between the police and the Red Shirt-as to whether somebody should be disturbed. But it's his duty, the Red Shirt kept on repeating: he had rabbity front teeth. He said: I'll report it to the Governor.
A policeman said: You plead guilty, don't you?
Yes, the priest said.
There. What more do you want? It's a fine of five pesos. Why disturb anybody?
And who gets the five pesos, eh?
That's none of your business.
The priest said suddenly: No one gets them.
No one?
I have only twenty-five centavos in the world.
The door of an inner room opened and the lieutenant came out. He said: What in God's name is all the noise ...? The police came raggedly and unwillingly to attention.
I've caught a man carrying spirits, the Red Shirt said. The priest sat with his eyes on the ground ... because it has crucified ... crucified ... crucified ... Contrition stuck hopelessly over the formal words. He felt no emotion but fear.
Well, the lieutenant said. What is it to do with you? We catch dozens.
Shall we bring him in? one of the men asked.
The lieutenant took a look at the bowed servile figure on the bench. Get up, he said. The priest rose. Now, he thought, now ... he raised his eyes. The lieutenant looked away, out of the door where the sentry slouched to and fro. His dark pinched face looked rattled, harassed. …
He has no money, one of the policemen said.
Mother of God, the lieutenant said, can I never teach you ...? He took two steps towards the sentry and turned. Search him. If he has no money, put him in a cell. Give him some work. … He went outside and suddenly raising his [113] open hand he struck the sentry on the ear. He said: You're asleep. March as if you had some pride ... pride, he repeated again, while the small acetylene lamp fumed up the whitewashed wall and the smell of urine came up out of the yard and the men lay in their hammocks netted and secured.
Shall we take his name? a sergeant said.
Yes, of course, the lieutenant said, not looking at him, walking briskly and nervously back past the lamp into the courtyard: he stood there unsheltered, looking round while the rain fell on his dapper uniform. He looked like a man with something on his mind: it was as if he were under the influence of some secret passion which had broken up the routine of his life. Back he came. He couldn't keep still.
The sergeant pushed the priest ahead into the inner room: a bright commercial calendar hung on the flaking white-wash-a dark-skinned mestizo girl in a bathing-dress advertised some gaseous water: somebody had pencilled in a neat pedagogic hand a facile and over-confident statement about man having nothing to lose but his chains.
Name? the sergeant said. Before the priest could check himself he had replied: Montez.
Home?
He named a random village: he was absorbed in his own portrait. There he sat among the white-starched dresses of the first communicants. Somebody had put a ring round his face-to pick it out. There was another picture on the wall too-the gringo from San Antonio, Texas, wanted for murder and bank robbery.
I suppose, the sergeant said cautiously, that you bought the drink from a stranger …
Yes.
Whom you can't identify?
No.
That's the way, the sergeant said approvingly: it was obvious he didn't want to start anything. He took the priest quite confidingly by the arm and led him out and across the courtyard: he carried a large key like the ones used in morality plays or fairy-stories as a symbol. A few men moved in the hammocks-a large unshaven jaw hung over the side like something left over on a butcher's counter: a big torn ear: a [114] naked black-haired thigh. He wondered when the mestizo's face would appear, elated with recognition.
The sergeant unlocked a small grated door and let out with his boot at something straddled across the entrance. He said: They are all good fellows, all good fellows here, kicking his way in. An appalling smell lay on the air and somebody in the absolute darkness wept.