No? the priest said.
A bit of pain. What do you expect? It has to come.
All the same, the priest said, I am afraid.
Toothache is worse.
We can't all be brave men.
The voice said with contempt: You believers are all the same. Christianity makes you cowards.
Yes. Perhaps you are right. You see I am a bad priest and a bad man. To die in a state of mortal sin -he gave an uneasy chuckle- it makes you think.
There. It's as I say. Believing in God makes cowards. The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.
So then? the priest said.
Better not to believe-and be a brave man.
I see-yes. And, of course, if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then.
That's just foolishness.
But when we found that the prison was a prison, and the Governor up there in the square undoubtedly existed, well, it wouldn't much matter if we'd been brave for an hour or two.
[119] Nobody could say that this prison was not a prison.
No? You don't think so? I can see you don't listen to the politicians. His feet were giving him great pain: he had cramp in the soles, but he could bring no pressure on the muscles to relieve them. It was not yet midnight: the hours of darkness stretched ahead interminably.
The woman said suddenly: Think. We have a martyr here ...
The priest giggled: he couldn't stop himself. He said: I don't think martyrs are like this. He became suddenly serious, remembering Maria's words-it wouldn't be a good thing to bring mockery on the Church. He said: Martyrs are holy men. It is wrong to think that just because one dies ... no. I tell you I am in a state of mortal sin. I have done things I couldn't talk to you about: I could only whisper them in the confessional. Everybody, when he spoke, listened attentively to him as if he were addressing them in church: he wondered where the inevitable Judas was sitting now, but he wasn't aware of Judas as he had been in the forest hut. He was moved by an enormous and irrational affection for the inhabitants of this prison. A phrase came to him: God so loved the world ... He said: My children, you must never think the holy martyrs are like me. You have a name for me. Oh, I've heard you use it before now. I am a whisky priest. I am in here now because they found a bottle of brandy in my pocket. He tried to move his feet from under him: the cramp had passed: now they were lifeless: all feeling gone. Oh, well, let them stay. He wouldn't have to use them often again.
The old man was muttering, and the priest's thoughts went back to Brigida. The knowledge of the world lay in her like the dark explicable spot in an X-ray photograph: he longed-with a breathless feeling in the breast-to save her, but he knew the surgeon's decision-the ill was incurable.
The woman's voice said pleadingly: A little drink, father ... it's not so important. He wondered why she was here-probably for having a holy picture in her house. She had the tiresome intent note of a pious woman. They were extraordinarily foolish over pictures. Why not burn them? One didn't need a picture. … He said sternly: Oh, I am not only a drunkard. He had always been worried by the fate of pious [120] women: as much as politicians, they fed on illusion: he was frightened for them. They came to death so often in a state of invincible complacency, full of uncharity. It was one's duty, if one could, to rob them of their sentimental notions of what was good ... He said in hard accents: I have a child.
What a worthy woman she was! her voice pleaded in the darkness: he couldn't catch what she said, but it was something about the Good Thief. He said: My child, the thief repented. I haven't repented. He remembered her coming into the hut, the dark malicious knowing look with the sunlight at her back. He said: I don't know how to repent. That was true: he had lost the faculty. He couldn't say to himself that he wished his sin had never existed, because the sin seemed to him now so unimportant- and he loved the fruit of it. He needed a confessor to draw his mind slowly down the drab passages which led to horror, grief, and repentance.
The woman was silent now: he wondered whether after all he had been too harsh with her. If it helped her faith to believe that he was a martyr ... but he rejected the idea: one was pledged to truth. He shifted an inch or two on his hams and said: What time does it get light?
Four ... five ... a man replied. How can we tell, father? We haven't clocks.
Have you been here long?
Three weeks.
Are you kept here all day?
Oh, no. They let us out to clean the yard.
He thought: That is when I shall be discovered-unless it's earlier: for surely one of these people will betray me first. A long train of thought began, which led him to announce after a while: They are offering a reward for me. Five hundred, six hundred pesos, I'm not sure. Then he was silent again. He couldn't urge any man to inform against him-that would be tempting him to sin-but at the same time if there was an informer here, there was no reason why the wretched creature should be bilked of his reward. To commit so ugly a sin-it must count as murder-and to have no compensation in this world ... He thought simply: it wouldn't be fair.
Nobody here, a voice said, wants their blood money. Again he was touched by an extraordinary affection. He was [121] just one criminal among a herd of criminals ... he had a sense of companionship which he had never received in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.
The pious woman's voice leapt hysterically out at him: It is so stupid to tell them that. You don't know the sort of wretches who are here, father. Thieves, murderers …
Well, an angry voice said, why are you here?
I had good books in my house, she announced, with unbearable pride. He had done nothing to shake her complacency. He said: They are everywhere. It's no different here.
Good books?
He giggled. No, no. Thieves, murderers ... Oh, well, my child, if you had more experience you would know there are worse things to be. The old man seemed to be uneasily asleep: his head lay sideways against the priest's shoulder, and he muttered angrily. God knows, it had never been easy to move in this place, but the difficulty seemed to increase as the night wore on and limbs stiffened. He couldn't twitch his shoulder now without waking the old man to another night of suffering. Well, he thought, it was my kind who robbed him: it's only fair to be made a little uncomfortable. … He sat silent and rigid against the damp wall, with his dead feet like leprosy under his haunches. The mosquitoes droned on: it was no good defending yourself by striking at the air: they pervaded the whole place like an element. Somebody as well as the old man had somewhere fallen asleep and was snoring, a curious note of satisfaction, as though he had eaten and drunk well at a good dinner and was now taking a snooze. … The priest tried to calculate the hour: how much time had passed since he had met the beggar in the plaza? It was probably not long after midnight: there would be hours more of this.
It was, of course, the end, but at the same time you had to be prepared for everything, even escape. If God intended him to escape he could snatch him away from in front of a firing squad. But God was mercifuclass="underline" there was only one reason, surely, which would make Him refuse His peace-if there was any peace-that he could still be of use in saving a soul, his own or another's. But what good could he do now? They had him on the run: he dared not enter a village in case somebody else should pay with his life: perhaps a man who was in mortal [122] sin and unrepentant: it was impossible to say what souls might not be lost simply because he was obstinate and proud and wouldn't admit defeat. He couldn't even say Mass any longer -he had no wine. It had all gone down the dry gullet of the Chief of Police. It was-appallingly-complicated. He was still afraid of death; he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.