[195] The lieutenant opened the cell door: it was very dark inside: he shut the door carefully behind him and locked it, keeping his hand on his gun. He said: He won't come.
A little bunched figure in the darkness was the priest. He crouched on the floor like a child playing. He said: You mean-not tonight?
I mean he won't come at all.
There was silence for some while, if you could talk of silence where there was always the drill-drill of mosquitoes and the little crackling explosion of beetles against the wall. At last the priest said: He was afraid, I suppose ...
His wife wouldn't let him come.
Poor man. He tried to giggle, but no sound could have been more miserable than the half-hearted attempt. His head drooped between his knees: he looked as if he had abandoned everything, and been abandoned.
The lieutenant said: You had better know everything. You've been tried and found guilty.
Couldn't I have been present at my own trial?
It wouldn't have made any difference.
No. He was silent preparing an attitude. Then he asked with a kind of false jauntiness: And when, if I may ask ...?
Tomorrow. The promptness and brevity of the reply called his bluff. His head went down again and he seemed, as far as it was possible to see in the dark, to be biting his nails.
The lieutenant said: It's bad being alone on a night like this. If you would like to be transferred to the common cell ...
No, no. I'd rather be alone. I've got plenty to do. His voice failed, as though he had a heavy cold. He wheezed: So much to think about.
I should like to do something for you, the lieutenant said: I've brought you some brandy.
Against the law?
Yes.
It's very good of you. He took the small flask. You wouldn't need this, I dare say. But I've always been afraid of pain.
We have to die some time, the lieutenant said. It doesn't seem to matter so much when.
[196] You're a good man. You've got nothing to be afraid of.
You have such odd ideas, the lieutenant complained. He said: Sometimes I feel you're just trying to talk me round.
Round to what?
Oh, to letting you escape perhaps-or to believing in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints ... how does that stuff go?
The forgiveness of sins.
You don't believe much in that, do you?
Oh, yes, I believe, the little man said obstinately.
Then what are you worried about?
I'm not ignorant, you see. I've always known what I've been doing. And I can't absolve myself.
Would Padre José coming here have made all that difference?
He had to wait a long while for his answer, and then he didn't understand it when it came: Another man ... it makes it easier ...
Is there nothing more I can do for you?
No. Nothing.
The lieutenant reopened the door, mechanically putting his hand again upon his revolver: he felt moody, as though now that the last priest was under lock and key there was nothing left to think about. The spring of action seemed to be broken. He looked back on the weeks of hunting as a happy time which was over now for ever. He felt without a purpose, as if life had drained out of the world. He said with bitter kindness (he couldn't summon up any hate of the small hollow man): Try to sleep.
He was closing the door when a scared voice spoke. Lieutenant.
Yes.
You've seen people shot. People like me.
Yes.
Does the pain go on-a long time?
No, no. A second, he said roughly, and closed the door, and picked his way back across the whitewashed yard. He went into the office: the pictures of the priest and the gunman were still pinned up on the walclass="underline" he tore them down-they would never be wanted again. Then he sat at the desk and put his [197] head upon his hands and fell asleep with utter weariness. He couldn't remember afterwards anything of his dreams except laughter, laughter all the time, and a long passage in which he could find no door.
The priest sat on the floor, holding the brandy flask. Presently he unscrewed the cap and put his mouth to it. The spirit didn't do a thing to him: it might have been water. He put it down again and began some kind of general confession, speaking in a whisper. He said: I have committed fornication. The formal phrase meant nothing at alclass="underline" it was like a sentence in a newspaper: you couldn't feel repentance over a thing like that. He started again: I have lain with a woman, and tried to imagine the other priests asking him: How many times? Was she married? No. Without thinking what he was doing, he took another drink of brandy.
As the liquid touched his tongue he remembered his child, coming in out of the glare: the sullen unhappy knowledgeable face. He said: O God, help her. Damn me, I deserve it, but let her live for ever. This was the love he should have felt for every soul in the world: all the fear and the wish to save concentrated unjustly on the one child. He began to weep: it was as if he had to watch her drown slowly from the shore because he had forgotten how to swim. He thought: This is what I should feel all the time for everyone, and he tried to turn his brain away towards the half-caste, the lieutenant, even a dentist he had once sat with for a few minutes, the child at the banana station, calling up a long succession of faces, pushing at his attention as if it were a heavy door which wouldn't budge. For those were all in danger too. He prayed: God help them, but in the moment of prayer he switched back to his child beside the rubbish-dump, and he knew it was only for her that he prayed. Another failure.
After a while he began again: I have been drunk-I don't know how many times; there isn't a duty I haven't neglected; I have been guilty of pride, lack of charity ... The words were becoming formal again, meaning nothing. He had no confessor to turn his mind away from the formula to the fact.
He took another drink of brandy, and getting up with pain because of his cramp, he moved to the door and looked through [198] the bars at the hot moony square. He could see the police asleep in their hammocks, and one man who couldn't sleep lazily rocking up and down, up and down. There was an odd silence everywhere, even in the other cells: it was as if the whole world had tactfully turned its back to avoid seeing him die. He felt his way back along the wall to the farthest corner and sat down with the flask between his knees. He thought: If I hadn't been so useless, useless. … The eight hard hopeless years seemed to him to be only a caricature of service: a few communions, a few confessions, and an endless bad example. He thought: If I had only one soul to offer, so that I could say: Look what I've done. … People had died for him: they had deserved a saint, and a tinge of bitterness spread across his mind for their sake that God hadn't thought fit to send them one. Padre José and me, he thought, Padre José and me, and he took a drink again from the brandy flask. He thought of the cold faces of the saints rejecting him.
This night was slower than the last he spent in prison because he was alone. Only the brandy, which he finished about two in the morning, gave him any sleep at all. He felt sick with fear, his stomach ached, and his mouth was dry with the drink. He began to talk aloud to himself because he couldn't stand the silence any more. He complained miserably: It's all very well ... for saints, and later: How does he know it only lasts a second? How long's a second? : then he began to cry, beating his head gently against the wall. They had given a chance to Padre José, but they had never given him a chance at all. Perhaps they had got it all wrong-just because he had escaped them for such a time. Perhaps they really thought he would refuse the conditions Padre José had accepted, that he would refuse to marry, that he was proud. Perhaps if he suggested it himself, he would escape yet. The hope calmed him for a while, and he fell asleep with his head against the wall.
He had a curious dream. He dreamed he was sitting at a café table in front of the high altar of the cathedral. About six dishes were spread before him, and he was eating hungrily. There was a smell of incense and an odd sense of elation. The dishes-like all food in dreams-did not taste of much, but he had a sense that when he had finished them, he would have the best dish of all. A priest passed to and fro before the altar [199] saying Mass, but he took no notice: the service no longer seemed to concern him. At last the six plates were empty; someone out of sight rang the sanctus bell, and the serving priest knelt before he raised the Host. But he sat on, just waiting, paying no attention to the God over the altar, as if that was a God for other people and not for him. Then the glass by his plate began to fill with wine, and looking up he saw that the child from the banana station was serving him. She said: I got it from my father's room.