THE middle-aged woman sat on the veranda darning socks: she wore pince-nez and she had kicked off her shoes for comfort. Mr. Lehr, her brother, read a New York magazine—it was three weeks old, but that didn't really matter. the whole scene was like peace.
"Just help yourself to water," Miss Lehr said, "when you want it."
A huge earthenware jar stood in a cool corner with a ladle and a tumbler. "Don't you have to boil the water?" the priest asked.
"Oh, no, our water's fresh and clean," Miss Lehr said primly, as if she couldn't answer for anybody else's.
"Best water in the state," her brother said. The shiny magazine leaves crackled as they turned, covered with photographs of big clean-shaven mastiff jowls—Senators and Congressmen. Pasture stretched away beyond the garden fence, undulating gently towards the next mountain range, and a tulipan tree blossomed and faded daily at the gate.
"You certainly are looking better, father," Miss Lehr said. They both spoke rather guttural English with slight American accents—Mr. Lehr had left Germany when he was a boy to escape military service: he had a shrewd lined idealistic face. You needed to be shrewd in this country if you were going to retain any ideals at all: he was cunning in the defence of the good life.
"Oh," Mr. Lehr said. "He only needed to rest up a few days." He was quite incurious about this man whom his foreman had brought in on a mule in a state of collapse three days before. All he knew the priest had told him: that was another thing this country taught you—never to ask questions or to look ahead.
"Soon I can go on," the priest said.
[154] "You don't have to hurry," Miss Lehr said, turning over her brother's sock, looking for holes.
"It's so quiet here."
"Oh," Mr. Lehr said, "we've had our troubles." He turned a page and said: "That Senator Huey Long—they ought to control him. It doesn't do any good insulting other countries."
"Haven't they tried to take your land away?"
The idealistic face turned his way: it wore a look of innocent craft. "Oh, I gave them as much as they asked for—five hundred acres of barren land. I saved a lot on taxes. I never could get anything to grow there." He nodded towards the veranda posts. "That was the last real trouble. See the bullet-holes. Villas men."
The priest got up again and drank more water: he wasn't very thirsty: he was satisfying a sense of luxury. He asked: "How long will it take me to get to Las Casas?"
"You could do it in four days," Mr. Lehr said.
"Not in his condition," Miss Lehr said. "Six"
"It will seem so strange," the priest said. "A city with churches, a university ..."
"Of course," Mr. Lehr said, "my sister and I are Lutherans. We don't hold with your church, father. Too much luxury, it seems to me, while the people starve."
Miss Lehr said: "Now, dear, it isn't the father's fault."
"Luxury?" the priest said: he stood by the earthenware jar, glass in hand, trying to collect his thoughts, staring out over the long and peaceful grassy slopes. "You mean ...?" Perhaps Mr. Lehr was right: he had lived very easily once, and here he was, already settling down to idleness again.
"All the gold leaf in the churches."
"It's often just paint, you know," the priest murmured conciliatingly. He thought: Yes, three days and I've done nothing. Nothing, and he looked down at his feet elegantly shod in a pair of Mr. Lehr's shoes, his legs in Mr. Lehr's spare trousers. Mr. Lehr said: "He won't mind my speaking my mind. We're all Christians here."
"Of course. I like to hear ..."
"It seems to me you people make a lot of fuss about inessentials."
"Yes? You mean ..."
[155] "Fasting ... fish on Friday ..."
Yes, he remembered like something in his childhood that there had been a time when he had observed these rules. He said: "After all, Mr. Lehr, you're a German. A great military nation."
"I was never a soldier. I disapprove ..."
"Yes, of course, but still you understand—discipline is necessary. Drills may be no good in battle, but they form the character. Otherwise you get—well, people like me." He looked down with sudden hatred at the shoes—they were like the badge of a deserter. "People like me," he repeated with fury.
There was a good deal of embarrassment: Miss Lehr began to say something: "Why, father ..." but Mr. Lehr forestalled her, laying down the magazine and its load of well—shaved politicians. He said in his German-American voice, with its guttural precision: "Well, I guess it's time for a bath now. Will you be coming, father?" and the priest obediently followed him into their common bedroom. He took off Mr. Lehr's clothes and put on Mr. Lehr's mackintosh and followed Mr. Lehr barefoot across the veranda and the field beyond. The day before he had asked apprehensively: "Are there no snakes?" and Mr. Lehr had grunted contemptuously that if there were any snakes they'd pretty soon get out of the way. Mr. Lehr and his sister had combined to drive out savagery by simply ignoring anything that conflicted with an ordinary German-American homestead. It was, in its way, an admirable way of life.
At the bottom of the field there was a little shallow stream running over brown pebbles. Mr. Lehr took off his dressing-gown and lay down flat on his back: there was something upright and idealistic even in the thin elderly legs with their scrawny muscles. Tiny fishes played over his chest and made little tugs at his nipples undisturbed: this was the skeleton of the youth who had disapproved of militarism to the point of flight: presently he sat up and began carefully to soap his lean thighs. The priest afterwards took the soap and followed suit. He felt it was expected of him, though he couldn't help thinking it was a waste of time. Sweat cleaned you as effectively as water. But this was the race which had invented the proverb that cleanliness was next to godliness—cleanliness, not purity.
[156] All the same, one did feel an enormous luxury lying there in the little cold stream while the sun flattened. ... He thought of the prison cell with the old man and the pious woman, the half-caste lying across the hut door, the dead child and the abandoned station. He thought with shame of his daughter left to her knowledge and her ignorance by the rubbish-dump. He had no right to such luxury.
Mr. Lehr said: "Would you mind—the soap?"
He had heaved over on his face, and now he set to work on his back.
The priest said: "I think perhaps I should tell you—tomorrow I am saying Mass in the village. Would you prefer me to leave your house? I do not wish to make trouble for you."
Mr. Lehr splashed seriously, cleaning himself. He said: "Oh, they won't bother me. But you had better be careful. You know, of course, that it's against the law."
"Yes," the priest said. "I know that."
"A priest I knew was fined four hundred pesos. He couldn't pay and they sent him to prison for a week. What are you smiling at?"
"Only because it seems so—peaceful—here. Prison for a week."
"Well, I've always heard you people get your own back when it comes to collections. Would you like the soap?"
"No, thank you. I have finished."
'We'd better be drying ourselves then. Miss Lehr likes to have her bath before sunset."
As they came back to the bungalow in single file they met Miss Lehr, very bulky under her dressing-gown. She asked mechanically, like a clock with a very gentle chime: "Is the water nice today?" and her brother answered, as he must have answered a thousand times: "Pleasantly cool, dear," and she slopped down across the grass in bedroom slippers, stooping slightly with short sight.
"If you wouldn't mind," Mr. Lehr said, shutting the bedroom door, "staying in here till Miss Lehr comes back. One can see the stream—you understand—from the front of the house. He began to dress, tall and bony and a little stiff. Two brass bedsteads, a single chair and a wardrobe, the room was monastic, [157] except that there was no cross—no "inessentials" as Mr. Lehr would have put it. But there was a Bible. It lay on the floor beside one of the beds in a black oilskin cover. When the priest had finished dressing he opened it.
On the fly-leaf there was a label which stated that the book was furnished by the Gideons. It went on: "A Bible in Every Hotel Guest Room. Winning Commercial Men for Christ. Good News." There was then a list of texts. The priest read with some astonishment:
If you are in trouble read Psalm 34.
If trade is poor Psalm 37.
If very prosperous I Corinthians, x, xii.
If overcome and backsliding James I. Hosea xiv: 4-9.
If tired of sin Psalm 51. Luke xviii: 9-14.
If you desire peace, power, and plenty John xiv.
If you are lonesome and discouraged Psalms 23 and 27.
If you are losing confidence in men I Corinthians, xiii.
If you desire peaceful slumbers Psalm 121.
He couldn't help wondering how it had got here—with its ugly type and its over-simple explanations—into a hacienda in Southern Mexico. Mr. Lehr turned away from his mirror with a big coarse hairbrush in his hand and explained carefully: "My sister ran a hotel once. For drummers. She sold it to join me when my wife died, and she brought one of those from the hotel. You wouldn't understand that, father. You don't like people to read the Bible." He was on the defensive all the time about his faith, as if he was perpetually conscious of some friction, like that of an ill-fitting shoe.
The priest said: "Is your wife buried here?"
"In the paddock," Mr. Lehr said bluntly. He stood listening, brush in hand, to the gentle footsteps outside. "That's Miss Lehr," he said, "come up from her bath. We can go out now."
[158] The priest got off Mr. Lehr's old horse when he reached the church and threw the rein over a bush. This was his first visit to the village since the night he collapsed beside the wall. The village ran down below him in the dusk: tin-roofed bungalows and mud huts faced each other over a single wide grass—grown street. A few lamps had been lit and fire was being carried round among the poorest huts. He walked slowly, conscious of peace and safety. The first man he saw took off his hat and knelt and kissed the priest's hand.
"What is your name?" the priest asked.
"Pedro, father."
"Good night, Pedro."
"Is there to be Mass in the morning, father?"
"Yes. There is to be Mass."
He passed the rural school. The schoolmaster sat on the step: a plump young man with dark brown eyes and horn-rimmed glasses. When he saw the priest coming he looked ostentatiously away. He was the law-abiding element: he wouldn't recognize criminals. He began to talk pedantically and priggishly to someone behind him—something about the infant class. A woman kissed the priest's hand: it was odd to be wanted again: not to feel himself the carrier of death. She said: "Father, will you hear our confessions?"
He said: "Yes. Yes. In Se?or Lehr's barn. Before the Mass. I will be there at five. As soon as it is light."
"There are so many of us, father ..."
"Well, tonight too then. ... At eight."
"And, father, there are many children to be baptized. There has not been a priest for three years."
"I am going to be here for two more days."
"What will you charge, father?"
"Well—two pesos is the usual charge." He thought: I must hire two mules and a guide. It will cost me fifty pesos to reach Las Casas. Five pesos for the Mass—that left forty-five.
"We are very poor here, father," she haggled gently. "I have four children myself. Eight pesos is a lot of money."
"Four children are a lot of children—if the priest was here only three years ago."
He could hear authority, the old parish intonation coming back into his voice—as if the last years had been a dream and [159] he had never really been away from the guilds, the Children of Mary, and the daily Mass. He said sharply: "How many children are there here—unbaptized?"
"Perhaps a hundred, father."
He made calculations: there was no need to arrive in Las Casas then as a beggar: he could buy a decent suit of clothes, find a respectable lodging, settle down. ... He said: "You must pay one peso fifty a head."
"One peso, father. We are very poor."
"One peso fifty." A voice from years back said firmly into his ear: they don't value what they don't pay for. It was the old priest he had succeeded at Concepcion. He had explained to him: they will always tell you they are poor, starving, but they will always have a little store of money buried somewhere, in a pot. The priest said: "You must bring the money—and the children—to Se?or Lehr's barn tomorrow, at two in the afternoon."
She said: "Yes, father." She seemed quite satisfied: she had brought him down by fifty centavos a head. The priest went on. Say a hundred children, he was thinking, that means a hundred and sixty pesos with tomorrow's Mass. Perhaps I can get the mules and the guide for forty pesos. Se?or Lehr will give me food for six days. I shall have a hundred and twenty pesos left. After all these years, it was like wealth. He felt respect all the way up the street: men took off their hats as he passed: it was as if he had got back to the days before the persecution. He could feel the old life hardening round him like a habit, a stony case which held his head high and dictated the way he walked, and even formed his words. A voice from the cantina said: "Father."
The man was very fat, with three commercial chins: he wore a waistcoat in spite of the great heat, and a watch-chain. "Yes?" the priest said. Behind the man's head stood bottles of mineral water, beer, spirits. ... The priest came in out of the dusty street to the heat of the lamp. He said: "What is it?" with his new-old manner of authority and impatience.
"I thought, father, you might be in need of a little sacramental wine."
"Perhaps ... but you will have to give me credit."
"A priest's credit, father, is always good enough for me. I [160] am a religious man myself. This is a religious place. No doubt you will be holding a baptism." He leant avidly forward with a respectful and impertinent manner, as if they were two people with the same ideas, educated men.
"Perhaps ..."
He smiled understandingly. Between people like ourselves, he seemed to indicate, there is no need of anything explicit: we understand each other's thoughts. He said: "In the old days, when the church was open, I was treasurer to the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament. Oh, I am a good Catholic, father. The people, of course, are very ignorant." He said: "Would you perhaps honour me by taking a glass of brandy?" He was in his way quite sincere.
The priest said doubtfully: "It is kind ..." The two glasses were already filled: he remembered the last drink he had had, sitting on the bed in the dark, listening to the Chief of Police, and seeing, as the light went on, the last wine drain away. ... The memory was like a hand, pulling away the case, exposing him. The smell of brandy dried his mouth. He thought: What a play-actor I am. I have no business here, among good people. He turned the glass in his hand, and all the other glasses turned too: he remembered the dentist talking of his children, and Maria unearthing the bottle of spirits she had kept for him—the whisky priest.
He took a reluctant drink. "It's good brandy, father," the man said.
"Yes. Good brandy."
"I could let you have a dozen bottles for sixty pesos."
"Where would I find sixty pesos?" He thought: in some ways it was better over there, across the border. Fear and death were not the worst things. It was sometimes a mistake for life to go on.
"I wouldn't make a profit out of you, father. Fifty pesos."
"Fifty, sixty. It's all the same to me."
"Go on. Have another glass, father. It's good brandy." The man leant engagingly forward across the counter and said: "Why not half a dozen, father, for twenty-four pesos?" He said slyly: "After all, father—there are the baptisms."
It was appalling how easily one forgot and went back: he could still hear his own voice speaking in the street with the [161] Concepcion accent—unchanged by mortal sin and unrepentance and desertion. The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency: it seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved: salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.
"Las Casas is a fine town, father. They say you can hear Mass every day."
This was another pious person. There were a lot of them about in the world. He was pouring a little more brandy, but going carefully—not too much. He said: "When you get there, father, look up a compadre of mine in Guadalupe street. He has the cantina nearest the church—a good man. Treasurer of the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament—just like I was in this place in the good days. He'll see you get what you want cheap. Now, what about some bottles for the journey?"
The priest drank. There was no point in not drinking. He had the habit now—like piety and the parish voice. He said: "Three bottles. For eleven pesos. Keep them for me here." He finished what was left and went back into the street: the lamps were lit in windows and the wide street stretched like a prairie in between. He stumbled in a hole and felt a hand upon his sleeve. "Ah, Pedro. That was the name, wasn't it? Thank you, Pedro."
"At your service, father."
The church stood in the darkness like a block of ice: it was melting away in the heat. The roof had fallen in in one place, a coign above the doorway had crumbled. The priest took a quick sideways look at Pedro, holding his breath in case it smelt of brandy, but he could see only the outlines of the face. He said—with a feeling of cunning as though he were cheating a greedy prompter inside his own heart: "Tell the people, Pedro, that I only want one peso for the baptisms. …" There would still be enough for the brandy then, even if he arrived in Las Casa like a beggar. There was silence for as long as two [162] seconds and then the wily village voice began to answer him: "We are poor, father. One peso is a lot of money. I—for example—I have three children. Say seventy-five centavos, father."
Miss Lehr stretched out her feet in their easy slippers and the beetles came up over the veranda from the dark outside. She said: "In Pittsburgh once ..." Her brother was asleep with an ancient newspaper across his knee: the mail had come in. The priest gave a little sympathetic giggle as in the old days; it was a try-out which didn't come off. Miss Lehr stopped and sniffed. "Funny. I thought I smelt—spirits."
The priest held his breath, leaning back in the rocking-chair. He thought: How quiet it is, how safe. He remembered townspeople who couldn't sleep in country places because of the silence: silence can be like noise, dinning against the ear-drums.
"What was I saying, father?"
"In Pittsburgh once ..."
"Of course. In Pittsburgh ... I was waiting for the train. You see I had nothing to read: books are so expensive. So I thought I'd buy a paper—any paper: the news is just the same. But when I opened it—it was called something like Police News. I never knew such dreadful things were printed. Of course, I didn't read more than a few lines. I think it was the most dreadful thing that's ever happened to me. It ... well, it opened my eyes."
"Yes."
"I've never told Mr. Lehr. He wouldn't think the same of me, I do believe, if he knew."
"But there was nothing wrong ..."
"It's knowing, isn't it ...?"
Somewhere a long way off a bird of some kind called: the lamp on the table began to smoke, and Miss Lehr leant over and turned down the wick: it was as if the only light for miles around was lowered. The brandy returned on his palate: it was like the smell of ether that reminds a man of a recent operation before he's used to life: it tied him to another state of being. He didn't yet belong to this deep tranquillity: he told himself—in time it will be all right, I shall pull up, I only ordered three bottles this time. They will be the last I'll ever [163] drink, I won't need drink there—he knew he lied. Mr. Lehr woke suddenly and said: "As I was saying ..."
"You were saying nothing, dear. You were asleep."
"Oh, no, we were talking about that scoundrel Hoover."
"I don't think so, dear. Not for a long while."
"Well," Mr. Lehr said, "it's been a long day. The father will be tired too ... after all that confessing," he added with slight distaste.
There had been a continuous stream of penitents from eight to ten—two hours of the worst evil a small place like this could produce after three years. It hadn't amounted to very much—a city would have made a better show—or would it? There isn't much a man can do. Drunkenness, adultery, uncleanness: he sat there tasting the brandy all the while, sitting on a rocking-chair in a horse-box, not looking at the face of the one who knelt at his side. The others had waited, kneeling in an empty stall—Mr. Lehr's stable had been depopulated these last few years. He had only one old horse left, which blew windily in the dark as the sins came whispering out.
"How many times?"
"Twelve, father. Perhaps more," and the horse blew. It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin—only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it. These people went out of the stable clean: he was the only one left who hadn't repented, confessed, and been absolved. He wanted to say to this man: "Love is not wrong, but love should be happy and open—it is only wrong when it is secret, unhappy ... it can be more unhappy than anything but the loss of God. It is the loss of God. You don't need a penance, my child, you have suffered quite enough," and to this other: "Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed." But the habit of the confessional reasserted itself: it was as if he was back in the little stuffy wooden boxlike coffin in which men bury their uncleanness with their priest. He said: "Mortal sin ... danger ... self-control," as if those words meant anything at all. He said: "Say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys."
He said wearily: "Drink is only the beginning …" He [164] found he had no lesson he could draw against even that common vice except himself smelling of brandy in the stable. He gave out the penance quickly, harshly, mechanically. The man would go away, saying: "A bad priest," feeling no encouragement, no interest. …
He said: "Those laws were made for man. The Church doesn't expect ... if you can't fast, you must eat, that's all." The old woman prattled on and on, while the penitents stirred restlessly in the next stall and the horse whinnied, prattled of abstinence days broken, of evening prayers curtailed. Suddenly, without warning, with an odd sense of homesickness, he thought of the hostages in the prison yard, waiting at the water-tap, not looking at him—the suffering and the endurance which went on everywhere the other side of the mountains. He interrupted the woman savagely: "Why don't you confess properly to me? I'm not interested in your fish supply or in how sleepy you are at night ... remember your real sins."
"But I'm a good woman, father," she squeaked at him with astonishment.
"Then what are you doing here, keeping away the bad people?" He said: "Have you any love for anyone but yourself?"
"I love God, father," she said haughtily. He took a quick look at her in the light of the candle burning on the floor—the hard old raisin eyes under the black shawl—another of the pious—like himself.
"How do you know? Loving God isn't any different from loving a man—or a child. It's wanting to be with Him, to be near Him." He made a hopeless gesture with his hands. "It's wanting to protect Him from yourself."
When the last penitent had gone away he walked back across the yard to the bungalow: he could see the lamp burning, and Miss Lehr knitting, and he could smell the grass in the paddock, wet with the first rains. It ought to be possible for a man to be happy here, if he were not so tied to fear and suffering—unhappiness too can become a habit like piety. Perhaps it was his duty to break it, his duty to discover peace. He felt an immense envy of all those people who had confessed to him and been absolved. In six days, he told himself, in Las Casas, I too ... but he couldn't believe that anyone anywhere would rid [165] him of his heavy heart. Even when he drank he felt bound to his sin by love. It was easier to get rid of hate.
Miss Lehr said: "Sit down, father. You must be tired. I've never held, of course, with confession. Nor has Mr. Lehr."
"No?"
"I don't know how you can stand sitting there, listening to all the horrible things. ... I remember in Pittsburgh once ..."
The two mules had been brought in overnight, so that he could start early immediately after Mass—the second that he had said in Mr. Lehr's barn. His guide was sleeping somewhere, probably with the mules, a thin nervous creature, who had never been to Las Casas: he simply knew the route by hearsay. Miss Lehr had insisted the night before that she must call him, although he woke of his own accord before it was light. He lay in bed and heard the alarm go off in another room—dinning like a telephone; and presently he heard the slop—slop of Miss Lehr's s bedroom slippers in the passage outside and a knock-knock on the door. Mr. Lehr slept on undisturbed upon his back with the thin rectitude of a bishop upon a tomb.
The priest had lain down in his clothes and he opened the door before Miss Lehr had time to get away: she gave a small squeal of dismay, a bunchy figure in a hairnet.
"Excuse me."
"Oh, it's quite all right. How long will Mass take, father?"
"There will be a great many communicants. Perhaps three-quarters of an hour."
"I will have some coffee ready for you—and sandwiches."
"You must not bother."
"Oh, we can't send you away hungry."
She followed him to the door, standing a little behind him, so as not to be seen by anything or anybody in the wide empty early world. The grey light uncurled across the pastures: at the gate the tulipan tree bloomed for yet another day: very far off, beyond the little stream where he had bathed, the people were walking up from the village on the way to Mr. Lehr's barn; they were too small at that distance to be human. He had a sense of expectant happiness all round him, waiting for him to take part, like an audience of children at a cinema or a [166] rodeo: he was aware of how happy he might have been if he had left nothing behind him across the range except a few bad memories. A man should always prefer peace to violence, and he was going towards peace.
"You have been very good to me, Miss Lehr."
How odd it had seemed at first to be treated as a guest, not as a criminal or a bad priest. These were heretics—it never occurred to them that he was not a good man: they hadn't the prying insight of fellow Catholics.
"We've enjoyed having you, father. But you'll be glad to be away. Las Casas is a fine city. A very moral place, as Mr. Lehr always says. If you meet Father Quintana you must remember us to him—he was here three years ago."
A bell began to ring: they had brought the church bell down from the tower and hung it outside Mr. Lehr's s barn: it sounded like any Sunday anywhere.
"I've sometimes wished," Miss Lehr said, "that I could go to church."
"Why not?"
"Mr. Lehr wouldn't like it. He's very strict. But it happens so seldom nowadays—I don't suppose there'll be another service now for another three years."
"I will come back before then."
"Oh, no," Miss Lehr said. "You won't do that. It's a hard journey and Las Casas is a fine city. They have electric light in the streets: there are two hotels. Father Quintana promised to come back—but there are Christians everywhere, aren't there? Why should he come back here? It isn't even as if we were really badly off."
A little group of Indians passed the gate: gnarled tiny creatures of the Stone Age: the men in short smocks walked with long poles, and the women with black plaits and knocked-about faces carried their babies on their backs. "The Indians have heard you are here," Miss Lehr said. "They've walked fifty miles—I shouldn't be surprised."
They stopped at the gate and watched him: when he looked at them they went down on their knees and crossed themselves—the strange elaborate mosaic touching the nose and ears and chin. "My brother gets so angry," Miss Lehr said, "if he sees [167] somebody go on his knees to a priest—but I don't see that it does any harm."
Round the corner of the house the mules were stamping—the guide must have brought them out to give them their maize: they were slow feeders, you had to give them a long start. It was time to begin Mass and be gone. He could smell the early morning—the world was still fresh and green, and in the village below the pastures a few dogs barked. The alarm clock tick-tocked in Miss Lehr's hand. He said: "I must be going now." He felt an odd reluctance to leave Miss Lehr and the house and the brother sleeping in the inside room. He was aware of a mixture of tenderness and dependence. When a man wakes after a dangerous operation he puts a special value upon the first face he sees as the anaesthetic wears away.
He had no vestments, but the Masses in this village were nearer to the old parish days than any he had known in the last eight years—there was no fear of interruption: no hurried taking of the sacraments as the police approached. There was even an altar stone brought from the locked church. But because it was so peaceful he was all the more aware of his own sin as he prepared to take the Elements—"Let not the participation of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I, though unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my judgment and condemnation." A virtuous man can almost cease to believe in Hell: but he carried Hell about with him. Sometimes at night he dreamed of it. Domine, non sum dignus ... domine, non sum dignus. ... Evil ran like malaria in his veins. He remembered a dream he had of a big grassy arena lined with the statues of saints—but the saints were alive, they turned their eyes this way and that, waiting for something. He waited, too, with an awful expectancy: bearded Peters and Pauls, with Bibles pressed to their breasts, watched some entrance behind his back he couldn't see—it had the menace of a beast. Then a marimba began to play, tinkly and repetitive, a firework exploded, and Christ danced into the arena—danced and postured with a bleeding painted face, up and down, up and down, grimacing like a prostitute, smiling and suggestive. He woke with the sense of complete despair that a man might feel finding the only money he possessed was counterfeit.
[168] ... and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Mass was over.
In three days, he told himself, I shall be in Las Casas: I shall have confessed and been absolved—and the thought of the child on the rubbish-heap came automatically back to him with painful love. What was the good of confession when you loved the result of your crime?
The people knelt as he made his way down the barn: he saw the little group of Indians: women whose children he had baptized: Pedro: the man from the cantina was there too, kneeling with his face buried in his plump hands, a chain of beads falling between the fingers. He looked a good man: perhaps he was a good man: perhaps, the priest thought, I have lost the faculty of judging—perhaps that woman in prison was the best person there. A horse cried in the early morning, tethered to a tree, and all the freshness of the morning came in through the open door.
Two men waited beside the mules: the guide was adjusting a stirrup and beside him, scratching under the armpit, awaiting his coming with a doubtful and defensive smile, stood the half-caste. He was like the small pain that reminds a man of his sickness, or perhaps like the unexpected memory which proves that love after all isn't dead. "Well," the priest said, "I didn't expect you here."
"No, father, of course not." He scratched and smiled.
"Have you brought the soldiers with you?"
"What things you do say, father," he protested with a callow giggle. Behind him, across the yard and through an open door, the priest could see Miss Lehr putting up his sandwiches: she had dressed, but she still wore her hairnet. She was wrapping the sandwiches carefully in grease-proof paper, and her sedate movements had a curious effect of unreality. It was the half-caste who was real. He said: "What trick are you playing now?" Had he perhaps bribed his guide to lead him back across the border? He could believe almost anything of that man.
"You shouldn't say things like that, father."
Miss Lehr passed out of sight, with the soundlessness of a dream.
"No?"
[169] "I'm here, father," the man seemed to take a long breath for his surprising stilted statement, "on an errand of mercy." The guide finished with one mule and began on the next, shortening the already short Mexican stirrup; the priest giggled nervously. "An errand of mercy?"
"Well, father, you're the only priest this side of Las Casas, and the man's dying …"
"What man?"
"The Yankee."
"What are you talking about?"
"The one the police wanted. He robbed a bank. You know the one I mean."
"He wouldn't need me," the priest said impatiently, remembering the photograph on the peeling wall, watching the first communion party.
"Oh, he's a good Catholic, father." Scratching under his armpit, he didn't look at the priest. "He's dying, and you and I wouldn't like to have on our conscience what that man ..."
"We shall be lucky if we haven't worse."
"What do you mean, father?"
The priest said: "He's only killed and robbed. He hasn't betrayed his friends."
"Holy Mother of God. I've never ..."
"We both have," the priest said. He turned to the guide. "Are the mules ready?"
"Yes, father."
"We'll start then." He had forgotten Miss Lehr completely: the other world had stretched a hand across the border, and he was again in the atmosphere of flight.
"Where are you going?" the half-caste said.
"To Las Casas." He climbed stiffly onto his mule. The half-caste held onto his stirrup-leather, and he was reminded of their first meeting: there was the same mixture of complaint, appeal, abuse. "You're a fine priest," he wailed up at him. "Your bishop ought to hear of this. A man's dying, wants to confess, and just because you want to get to the city ..."
"Why do you think me such a fool?" the priest said. "I know why you've come. You're the only one they've got who can recognize me, and they can't follow me into this state. Now [170] if I ask you where this American is, you'll tell me—I know—you don't have to speak—that he's just the other side."
"Oh, no, father, you're wrong there. He's just this side."
"A mile or two makes no difference. Nobody here's likely to bring an action ..."
"It's an awful thing, father," the half-caste said, "never to be believed. just because once—well, I admit it—"
The priest kicked his mule into motion: they passed out of Mr. Lehr's yard and turned south: the half-caste trotted at his stirrup.
"I remember," the priest said, "that you said you'd never forget my face."
"And I haven't," the man put in triumphantly, "or I wouldn't be here, would I? Listen, father, I'll admit a lot. You don't know how a reward will tempt a poor man like me. And when you wouldn't trust me, I thought, well, if that's how he feels—I'll show him. But I'm a good Catholic, father, and when a dying man wants a priest ..."
They climbed the long slope of Mr. Lehr's pastures which led to the next range of hills. The air was still fresh, at six in the morning, at three thousand feet; up there tonight it would be very cold—they had another six thousand feet to climb. The priest said uneasily: "Why should I put my head into your noose?" It was too absurd.
"Look, father." The half-caste was holding up a scrap of paper: the familiar writing caught the priest's attention—the large deliberate handwriting of a child. The paper had been used to wrap up food: it was smeared and greasy: he read: "The Prince of Denmark is wondering whether he should kill himself or not, whether it is better to go on suffering all the doubts about his father, or by one blow ..."
"Not that, father, on the other side. That's nothing."
The priest turned the paper and read a single phrase written in English in blunt pencil: "For Christ's sake, father ..." The mule, unbeaten, lapsed into a slow heavy walk: the priest made no attempt to urge it on: this piece of paper left no doubt whatever: he felt the trap close again, irrevocably.
He asked: "How did this come to you?"
"It was this way, father. I was with the police when they shot him. It was in a village the other side. He picked up a [171] child to act as a screen, but, of course, the soldiers didn't pay any attention. It was only an Indian. They were both shot, but he escaped."
"Then how ... ?"
"It was this way, father." He positively prattled. It appeared that he was afraid of the lieutenant—who resented the fact that the priest had escaped, and so he planned to slip across the border, out of reach. He got his chance at night, and on the way—it was probably on this side of the state line, but who knew where one state began or another ended?—he came on the American. He had been shot in the stomach. …"
"How could he have escaped then?"
"Oh, father, he is a man of superhuman strength." He was dying, he wanted a priest ..."
"How did he tell you that?"
"It only needed two words, father." Then, to prove the story, the man had found enough strength to write this note, and so … the story had as many holes in it as a sieve. But what remained was this note, like a memorial stone you couldn't overlook.
The half-caste bridled angrily again. "You don't trust me, father."
"Oh, no," the priest said. "I don't trust you."
"You think I'm lying."
"Most of it is lies."
He pulled the mule up and sat thinking, facing south. He was quite certain that this was a trap—probably the half-caste had suggested it: he was after the reward. But it was a fact that the American was there, dying. He thought of the deserted banana station where something had happened and the Indian child lay dead on the maize: there was no question at all that he was needed. A man with all that on his soul ... The oddest thing of all was that he felt quite cheerful: he had never really believed in this peace. He had dreamed of it so often on the other side that now it meant no more to him than a dream. He began to whistle a tune—something he had heard somewhere once. "I found a rose in my field": it was time he woke up. It wouldn't really have been a good dream—that confession in Las Casas when he had to admit, as well as everything else, that he had refused confession to a man dying in mortal sin.
[172] He said: "Will the man still be alive?"
"I think so, father," the half-caste caught him eagerly up.
"How far is it?"
"Four—five hours, father."
"You can take it in turns to ride the other mule."
The priest turned his mule back and called out to the guide. The man dismounted and stood inertly there, while he explained. The only remark he made was to the half-caste, motioning him into the saddle: "Be careful of that saddle-bag. The father's brandy's there."
They rode slowly back: Miss Lehr was at her gate. She said: "You forgot the sandwiches, father."
"Oh, yes. Thank you." He stole a quick look round—it didn't mean a thing to him. He said: "Is Mr. Lehr still asleep?"
"Shall I wake him?"
"No, no. But you will thank him for his hospitality?"
"Yes. And perhaps, father, in a few years we shall see you again? As you said." She looked curiously at the half-caste, and he stared back through his yellow insulting eyes.
The priest said: "It's possible," glancing away with a sly secretive smile.
"Well, good-bye, father. You'd better be off, hadn't you? The sun's getting high."
"Good-bye, my dear Miss Lehr." The mestizo slashed impatiently at his mule and stirred it into action.
"Not that way, my man," Miss Lehr called.
"I have to pay a visit first," the priest explained, and breaking into an uncomfortable trot he bobbled down behind the mestizo's mule towards the village. They passed the whitewashed church—that too belonged to a dream. Life didn't contain churches. The long untidy village street opened ahead of them. The schoolmaster was at his door and waved an ironic greeting, malicious and horn-rimmed. "Well, father, off with your spoils?"
The priest stopped his mule. He said to the half-caste: "Really ... I had forgotten ..."
"You did well out of the baptisms," the schoolmaster said. "It pays to wait a few years, doesn't it?"
"Come on, father," the half-caste said. "Don't listen to him." He spat. "He's a bad man."
[173] The priest said: "You know the people here better than anyone. If I leave a gift, will you spend it on things that do no harm—I mean food, blankets—not books?"
"They need food more than books."
"I have forty-five pesos here ..."
The mestizo wailed: "Father, what are you doing...?"
"Conscience money?" the schoolmaster said.
"Yes."
"All the same, of course, I thank you. It's good to see a priest with a conscience. It's a stage in evolution," he said, his glasses flashing in the sunlight, a plump embittered figure in front of his tin-roofed shack, an exile.
They passed the last houses, the cemetery, and began to climb. "Why, father, why?" the half-caste protested.
"He's not a bad man, he does his best, and I shan't need money again, shall I?" the priest asked, and for quite a while they rode without speaking, while the sun came blindingly out, and the mules' shoulders strained on the steep rocky paths, and the priest began to whistle again—"I have a rose"—the only tune he knew. Once the half-caste started a complaint about something: "The trouble with you, father, is ..." but it petered out before it was defined, because there wasn't really anything to complain about as they rode steadily north towards the border.
"Hungry?" the priest asked at last.
The half-caste muttered something that sounded angry or derisive.
"Take a sandwich," the priest said, opening Miss Lehr's packet.
"Just help yourself to water," Miss Lehr said, "when you want it."
A huge earthenware jar stood in a cool corner with a ladle and a tumbler. "Don't you have to boil the water?" the priest asked.
"Oh, no, our water's fresh and clean," Miss Lehr said primly, as if she couldn't answer for anybody else's.
"Best water in the state," her brother said. The shiny magazine leaves crackled as they turned, covered with photographs of big clean-shaven mastiff jowls—Senators and Congressmen. Pasture stretched away beyond the garden fence, undulating gently towards the next mountain range, and a tulipan tree blossomed and faded daily at the gate.
"You certainly are looking better, father," Miss Lehr said. They both spoke rather guttural English with slight American accents—Mr. Lehr had left Germany when he was a boy to escape military service: he had a shrewd lined idealistic face. You needed to be shrewd in this country if you were going to retain any ideals at all: he was cunning in the defence of the good life.
"Oh," Mr. Lehr said. "He only needed to rest up a few days." He was quite incurious about this man whom his foreman had brought in on a mule in a state of collapse three days before. All he knew the priest had told him: that was another thing this country taught you—never to ask questions or to look ahead.
"Soon I can go on," the priest said.
[154] "You don't have to hurry," Miss Lehr said, turning over her brother's sock, looking for holes.
"It's so quiet here."
"Oh," Mr. Lehr said, "we've had our troubles." He turned a page and said: "That Senator Huey Long—they ought to control him. It doesn't do any good insulting other countries."
"Haven't they tried to take your land away?"
The idealistic face turned his way: it wore a look of innocent craft. "Oh, I gave them as much as they asked for—five hundred acres of barren land. I saved a lot on taxes. I never could get anything to grow there." He nodded towards the veranda posts. "That was the last real trouble. See the bullet-holes. Villas men."
The priest got up again and drank more water: he wasn't very thirsty: he was satisfying a sense of luxury. He asked: "How long will it take me to get to Las Casas?"
"You could do it in four days," Mr. Lehr said.
"Not in his condition," Miss Lehr said. "Six"
"It will seem so strange," the priest said. "A city with churches, a university ..."
"Of course," Mr. Lehr said, "my sister and I are Lutherans. We don't hold with your church, father. Too much luxury, it seems to me, while the people starve."
Miss Lehr said: "Now, dear, it isn't the father's fault."
"Luxury?" the priest said: he stood by the earthenware jar, glass in hand, trying to collect his thoughts, staring out over the long and peaceful grassy slopes. "You mean ...?" Perhaps Mr. Lehr was right: he had lived very easily once, and here he was, already settling down to idleness again.
"All the gold leaf in the churches."
"It's often just paint, you know," the priest murmured conciliatingly. He thought: Yes, three days and I've done nothing. Nothing, and he looked down at his feet elegantly shod in a pair of Mr. Lehr's shoes, his legs in Mr. Lehr's spare trousers. Mr. Lehr said: "He won't mind my speaking my mind. We're all Christians here."
"Of course. I like to hear ..."
"It seems to me you people make a lot of fuss about inessentials."
"Yes? You mean ..."
[155] "Fasting ... fish on Friday ..."
Yes, he remembered like something in his childhood that there had been a time when he had observed these rules. He said: "After all, Mr. Lehr, you're a German. A great military nation."
"I was never a soldier. I disapprove ..."
"Yes, of course, but still you understand—discipline is necessary. Drills may be no good in battle, but they form the character. Otherwise you get—well, people like me." He looked down with sudden hatred at the shoes—they were like the badge of a deserter. "People like me," he repeated with fury.
There was a good deal of embarrassment: Miss Lehr began to say something: "Why, father ..." but Mr. Lehr forestalled her, laying down the magazine and its load of well—shaved politicians. He said in his German-American voice, with its guttural precision: "Well, I guess it's time for a bath now. Will you be coming, father?" and the priest obediently followed him into their common bedroom. He took off Mr. Lehr's clothes and put on Mr. Lehr's mackintosh and followed Mr. Lehr barefoot across the veranda and the field beyond. The day before he had asked apprehensively: "Are there no snakes?" and Mr. Lehr had grunted contemptuously that if there were any snakes they'd pretty soon get out of the way. Mr. Lehr and his sister had combined to drive out savagery by simply ignoring anything that conflicted with an ordinary German-American homestead. It was, in its way, an admirable way of life.
At the bottom of the field there was a little shallow stream running over brown pebbles. Mr. Lehr took off his dressing-gown and lay down flat on his back: there was something upright and idealistic even in the thin elderly legs with their scrawny muscles. Tiny fishes played over his chest and made little tugs at his nipples undisturbed: this was the skeleton of the youth who had disapproved of militarism to the point of flight: presently he sat up and began carefully to soap his lean thighs. The priest afterwards took the soap and followed suit. He felt it was expected of him, though he couldn't help thinking it was a waste of time. Sweat cleaned you as effectively as water. But this was the race which had invented the proverb that cleanliness was next to godliness—cleanliness, not purity.
[156] All the same, one did feel an enormous luxury lying there in the little cold stream while the sun flattened. ... He thought of the prison cell with the old man and the pious woman, the half-caste lying across the hut door, the dead child and the abandoned station. He thought with shame of his daughter left to her knowledge and her ignorance by the rubbish-dump. He had no right to such luxury.
Mr. Lehr said: "Would you mind—the soap?"
He had heaved over on his face, and now he set to work on his back.
The priest said: "I think perhaps I should tell you—tomorrow I am saying Mass in the village. Would you prefer me to leave your house? I do not wish to make trouble for you."
Mr. Lehr splashed seriously, cleaning himself. He said: "Oh, they won't bother me. But you had better be careful. You know, of course, that it's against the law."
"Yes," the priest said. "I know that."
"A priest I knew was fined four hundred pesos. He couldn't pay and they sent him to prison for a week. What are you smiling at?"
"Only because it seems so—peaceful—here. Prison for a week."
"Well, I've always heard you people get your own back when it comes to collections. Would you like the soap?"
"No, thank you. I have finished."
'We'd better be drying ourselves then. Miss Lehr likes to have her bath before sunset."
As they came back to the bungalow in single file they met Miss Lehr, very bulky under her dressing-gown. She asked mechanically, like a clock with a very gentle chime: "Is the water nice today?" and her brother answered, as he must have answered a thousand times: "Pleasantly cool, dear," and she slopped down across the grass in bedroom slippers, stooping slightly with short sight.
"If you wouldn't mind," Mr. Lehr said, shutting the bedroom door, "staying in here till Miss Lehr comes back. One can see the stream—you understand—from the front of the house. He began to dress, tall and bony and a little stiff. Two brass bedsteads, a single chair and a wardrobe, the room was monastic, [157] except that there was no cross—no "inessentials" as Mr. Lehr would have put it. But there was a Bible. It lay on the floor beside one of the beds in a black oilskin cover. When the priest had finished dressing he opened it.
On the fly-leaf there was a label which stated that the book was furnished by the Gideons. It went on: "A Bible in Every Hotel Guest Room. Winning Commercial Men for Christ. Good News." There was then a list of texts. The priest read with some astonishment:
If you are in trouble read Psalm 34.
If trade is poor Psalm 37.
If very prosperous I Corinthians, x, xii.
If overcome and backsliding James I. Hosea xiv: 4-9.
If tired of sin Psalm 51. Luke xviii: 9-14.
If you desire peace, power, and plenty John xiv.
If you are lonesome and discouraged Psalms 23 and 27.
If you are losing confidence in men I Corinthians, xiii.
If you desire peaceful slumbers Psalm 121.
He couldn't help wondering how it had got here—with its ugly type and its over-simple explanations—into a hacienda in Southern Mexico. Mr. Lehr turned away from his mirror with a big coarse hairbrush in his hand and explained carefully: "My sister ran a hotel once. For drummers. She sold it to join me when my wife died, and she brought one of those from the hotel. You wouldn't understand that, father. You don't like people to read the Bible." He was on the defensive all the time about his faith, as if he was perpetually conscious of some friction, like that of an ill-fitting shoe.
The priest said: "Is your wife buried here?"
"In the paddock," Mr. Lehr said bluntly. He stood listening, brush in hand, to the gentle footsteps outside. "That's Miss Lehr," he said, "come up from her bath. We can go out now."
[158] The priest got off Mr. Lehr's old horse when he reached the church and threw the rein over a bush. This was his first visit to the village since the night he collapsed beside the wall. The village ran down below him in the dusk: tin-roofed bungalows and mud huts faced each other over a single wide grass—grown street. A few lamps had been lit and fire was being carried round among the poorest huts. He walked slowly, conscious of peace and safety. The first man he saw took off his hat and knelt and kissed the priest's hand.
"What is your name?" the priest asked.
"Pedro, father."
"Good night, Pedro."
"Is there to be Mass in the morning, father?"
"Yes. There is to be Mass."
He passed the rural school. The schoolmaster sat on the step: a plump young man with dark brown eyes and horn-rimmed glasses. When he saw the priest coming he looked ostentatiously away. He was the law-abiding element: he wouldn't recognize criminals. He began to talk pedantically and priggishly to someone behind him—something about the infant class. A woman kissed the priest's hand: it was odd to be wanted again: not to feel himself the carrier of death. She said: "Father, will you hear our confessions?"
He said: "Yes. Yes. In Se?or Lehr's barn. Before the Mass. I will be there at five. As soon as it is light."
"There are so many of us, father ..."
"Well, tonight too then. ... At eight."
"And, father, there are many children to be baptized. There has not been a priest for three years."
"I am going to be here for two more days."
"What will you charge, father?"
"Well—two pesos is the usual charge." He thought: I must hire two mules and a guide. It will cost me fifty pesos to reach Las Casas. Five pesos for the Mass—that left forty-five.
"We are very poor here, father," she haggled gently. "I have four children myself. Eight pesos is a lot of money."
"Four children are a lot of children—if the priest was here only three years ago."
He could hear authority, the old parish intonation coming back into his voice—as if the last years had been a dream and [159] he had never really been away from the guilds, the Children of Mary, and the daily Mass. He said sharply: "How many children are there here—unbaptized?"
"Perhaps a hundred, father."
He made calculations: there was no need to arrive in Las Casas then as a beggar: he could buy a decent suit of clothes, find a respectable lodging, settle down. ... He said: "You must pay one peso fifty a head."
"One peso, father. We are very poor."
"One peso fifty." A voice from years back said firmly into his ear: they don't value what they don't pay for. It was the old priest he had succeeded at Concepcion. He had explained to him: they will always tell you they are poor, starving, but they will always have a little store of money buried somewhere, in a pot. The priest said: "You must bring the money—and the children—to Se?or Lehr's barn tomorrow, at two in the afternoon."
She said: "Yes, father." She seemed quite satisfied: she had brought him down by fifty centavos a head. The priest went on. Say a hundred children, he was thinking, that means a hundred and sixty pesos with tomorrow's Mass. Perhaps I can get the mules and the guide for forty pesos. Se?or Lehr will give me food for six days. I shall have a hundred and twenty pesos left. After all these years, it was like wealth. He felt respect all the way up the street: men took off their hats as he passed: it was as if he had got back to the days before the persecution. He could feel the old life hardening round him like a habit, a stony case which held his head high and dictated the way he walked, and even formed his words. A voice from the cantina said: "Father."
The man was very fat, with three commercial chins: he wore a waistcoat in spite of the great heat, and a watch-chain. "Yes?" the priest said. Behind the man's head stood bottles of mineral water, beer, spirits. ... The priest came in out of the dusty street to the heat of the lamp. He said: "What is it?" with his new-old manner of authority and impatience.
"I thought, father, you might be in need of a little sacramental wine."
"Perhaps ... but you will have to give me credit."
"A priest's credit, father, is always good enough for me. I [160] am a religious man myself. This is a religious place. No doubt you will be holding a baptism." He leant avidly forward with a respectful and impertinent manner, as if they were two people with the same ideas, educated men.
"Perhaps ..."
He smiled understandingly. Between people like ourselves, he seemed to indicate, there is no need of anything explicit: we understand each other's thoughts. He said: "In the old days, when the church was open, I was treasurer to the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament. Oh, I am a good Catholic, father. The people, of course, are very ignorant." He said: "Would you perhaps honour me by taking a glass of brandy?" He was in his way quite sincere.
The priest said doubtfully: "It is kind ..." The two glasses were already filled: he remembered the last drink he had had, sitting on the bed in the dark, listening to the Chief of Police, and seeing, as the light went on, the last wine drain away. ... The memory was like a hand, pulling away the case, exposing him. The smell of brandy dried his mouth. He thought: What a play-actor I am. I have no business here, among good people. He turned the glass in his hand, and all the other glasses turned too: he remembered the dentist talking of his children, and Maria unearthing the bottle of spirits she had kept for him—the whisky priest.
He took a reluctant drink. "It's good brandy, father," the man said.
"Yes. Good brandy."
"I could let you have a dozen bottles for sixty pesos."
"Where would I find sixty pesos?" He thought: in some ways it was better over there, across the border. Fear and death were not the worst things. It was sometimes a mistake for life to go on.
"I wouldn't make a profit out of you, father. Fifty pesos."
"Fifty, sixty. It's all the same to me."
"Go on. Have another glass, father. It's good brandy." The man leant engagingly forward across the counter and said: "Why not half a dozen, father, for twenty-four pesos?" He said slyly: "After all, father—there are the baptisms."
It was appalling how easily one forgot and went back: he could still hear his own voice speaking in the street with the [161] Concepcion accent—unchanged by mortal sin and unrepentance and desertion. The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency: it seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved: salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.
"Las Casas is a fine town, father. They say you can hear Mass every day."
This was another pious person. There were a lot of them about in the world. He was pouring a little more brandy, but going carefully—not too much. He said: "When you get there, father, look up a compadre of mine in Guadalupe street. He has the cantina nearest the church—a good man. Treasurer of the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament—just like I was in this place in the good days. He'll see you get what you want cheap. Now, what about some bottles for the journey?"
The priest drank. There was no point in not drinking. He had the habit now—like piety and the parish voice. He said: "Three bottles. For eleven pesos. Keep them for me here." He finished what was left and went back into the street: the lamps were lit in windows and the wide street stretched like a prairie in between. He stumbled in a hole and felt a hand upon his sleeve. "Ah, Pedro. That was the name, wasn't it? Thank you, Pedro."
"At your service, father."
The church stood in the darkness like a block of ice: it was melting away in the heat. The roof had fallen in in one place, a coign above the doorway had crumbled. The priest took a quick sideways look at Pedro, holding his breath in case it smelt of brandy, but he could see only the outlines of the face. He said—with a feeling of cunning as though he were cheating a greedy prompter inside his own heart: "Tell the people, Pedro, that I only want one peso for the baptisms. …" There would still be enough for the brandy then, even if he arrived in Las Casa like a beggar. There was silence for as long as two [162] seconds and then the wily village voice began to answer him: "We are poor, father. One peso is a lot of money. I—for example—I have three children. Say seventy-five centavos, father."
Miss Lehr stretched out her feet in their easy slippers and the beetles came up over the veranda from the dark outside. She said: "In Pittsburgh once ..." Her brother was asleep with an ancient newspaper across his knee: the mail had come in. The priest gave a little sympathetic giggle as in the old days; it was a try-out which didn't come off. Miss Lehr stopped and sniffed. "Funny. I thought I smelt—spirits."
The priest held his breath, leaning back in the rocking-chair. He thought: How quiet it is, how safe. He remembered townspeople who couldn't sleep in country places because of the silence: silence can be like noise, dinning against the ear-drums.
"What was I saying, father?"
"In Pittsburgh once ..."
"Of course. In Pittsburgh ... I was waiting for the train. You see I had nothing to read: books are so expensive. So I thought I'd buy a paper—any paper: the news is just the same. But when I opened it—it was called something like Police News. I never knew such dreadful things were printed. Of course, I didn't read more than a few lines. I think it was the most dreadful thing that's ever happened to me. It ... well, it opened my eyes."
"Yes."
"I've never told Mr. Lehr. He wouldn't think the same of me, I do believe, if he knew."
"But there was nothing wrong ..."
"It's knowing, isn't it ...?"
Somewhere a long way off a bird of some kind called: the lamp on the table began to smoke, and Miss Lehr leant over and turned down the wick: it was as if the only light for miles around was lowered. The brandy returned on his palate: it was like the smell of ether that reminds a man of a recent operation before he's used to life: it tied him to another state of being. He didn't yet belong to this deep tranquillity: he told himself—in time it will be all right, I shall pull up, I only ordered three bottles this time. They will be the last I'll ever [163] drink, I won't need drink there—he knew he lied. Mr. Lehr woke suddenly and said: "As I was saying ..."
"You were saying nothing, dear. You were asleep."
"Oh, no, we were talking about that scoundrel Hoover."
"I don't think so, dear. Not for a long while."
"Well," Mr. Lehr said, "it's been a long day. The father will be tired too ... after all that confessing," he added with slight distaste.
There had been a continuous stream of penitents from eight to ten—two hours of the worst evil a small place like this could produce after three years. It hadn't amounted to very much—a city would have made a better show—or would it? There isn't much a man can do. Drunkenness, adultery, uncleanness: he sat there tasting the brandy all the while, sitting on a rocking-chair in a horse-box, not looking at the face of the one who knelt at his side. The others had waited, kneeling in an empty stall—Mr. Lehr's stable had been depopulated these last few years. He had only one old horse left, which blew windily in the dark as the sins came whispering out.
"How many times?"
"Twelve, father. Perhaps more," and the horse blew. It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin—only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it. These people went out of the stable clean: he was the only one left who hadn't repented, confessed, and been absolved. He wanted to say to this man: "Love is not wrong, but love should be happy and open—it is only wrong when it is secret, unhappy ... it can be more unhappy than anything but the loss of God. It is the loss of God. You don't need a penance, my child, you have suffered quite enough," and to this other: "Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed." But the habit of the confessional reasserted itself: it was as if he was back in the little stuffy wooden boxlike coffin in which men bury their uncleanness with their priest. He said: "Mortal sin ... danger ... self-control," as if those words meant anything at all. He said: "Say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys."
He said wearily: "Drink is only the beginning …" He [164] found he had no lesson he could draw against even that common vice except himself smelling of brandy in the stable. He gave out the penance quickly, harshly, mechanically. The man would go away, saying: "A bad priest," feeling no encouragement, no interest. …
He said: "Those laws were made for man. The Church doesn't expect ... if you can't fast, you must eat, that's all." The old woman prattled on and on, while the penitents stirred restlessly in the next stall and the horse whinnied, prattled of abstinence days broken, of evening prayers curtailed. Suddenly, without warning, with an odd sense of homesickness, he thought of the hostages in the prison yard, waiting at the water-tap, not looking at him—the suffering and the endurance which went on everywhere the other side of the mountains. He interrupted the woman savagely: "Why don't you confess properly to me? I'm not interested in your fish supply or in how sleepy you are at night ... remember your real sins."
"But I'm a good woman, father," she squeaked at him with astonishment.
"Then what are you doing here, keeping away the bad people?" He said: "Have you any love for anyone but yourself?"
"I love God, father," she said haughtily. He took a quick look at her in the light of the candle burning on the floor—the hard old raisin eyes under the black shawl—another of the pious—like himself.
"How do you know? Loving God isn't any different from loving a man—or a child. It's wanting to be with Him, to be near Him." He made a hopeless gesture with his hands. "It's wanting to protect Him from yourself."
When the last penitent had gone away he walked back across the yard to the bungalow: he could see the lamp burning, and Miss Lehr knitting, and he could smell the grass in the paddock, wet with the first rains. It ought to be possible for a man to be happy here, if he were not so tied to fear and suffering—unhappiness too can become a habit like piety. Perhaps it was his duty to break it, his duty to discover peace. He felt an immense envy of all those people who had confessed to him and been absolved. In six days, he told himself, in Las Casas, I too ... but he couldn't believe that anyone anywhere would rid [165] him of his heavy heart. Even when he drank he felt bound to his sin by love. It was easier to get rid of hate.
Miss Lehr said: "Sit down, father. You must be tired. I've never held, of course, with confession. Nor has Mr. Lehr."
"No?"
"I don't know how you can stand sitting there, listening to all the horrible things. ... I remember in Pittsburgh once ..."
The two mules had been brought in overnight, so that he could start early immediately after Mass—the second that he had said in Mr. Lehr's barn. His guide was sleeping somewhere, probably with the mules, a thin nervous creature, who had never been to Las Casas: he simply knew the route by hearsay. Miss Lehr had insisted the night before that she must call him, although he woke of his own accord before it was light. He lay in bed and heard the alarm go off in another room—dinning like a telephone; and presently he heard the slop—slop of Miss Lehr's s bedroom slippers in the passage outside and a knock-knock on the door. Mr. Lehr slept on undisturbed upon his back with the thin rectitude of a bishop upon a tomb.
The priest had lain down in his clothes and he opened the door before Miss Lehr had time to get away: she gave a small squeal of dismay, a bunchy figure in a hairnet.
"Excuse me."
"Oh, it's quite all right. How long will Mass take, father?"
"There will be a great many communicants. Perhaps three-quarters of an hour."
"I will have some coffee ready for you—and sandwiches."
"You must not bother."
"Oh, we can't send you away hungry."
She followed him to the door, standing a little behind him, so as not to be seen by anything or anybody in the wide empty early world. The grey light uncurled across the pastures: at the gate the tulipan tree bloomed for yet another day: very far off, beyond the little stream where he had bathed, the people were walking up from the village on the way to Mr. Lehr's barn; they were too small at that distance to be human. He had a sense of expectant happiness all round him, waiting for him to take part, like an audience of children at a cinema or a [166] rodeo: he was aware of how happy he might have been if he had left nothing behind him across the range except a few bad memories. A man should always prefer peace to violence, and he was going towards peace.
"You have been very good to me, Miss Lehr."
How odd it had seemed at first to be treated as a guest, not as a criminal or a bad priest. These were heretics—it never occurred to them that he was not a good man: they hadn't the prying insight of fellow Catholics.
"We've enjoyed having you, father. But you'll be glad to be away. Las Casas is a fine city. A very moral place, as Mr. Lehr always says. If you meet Father Quintana you must remember us to him—he was here three years ago."
A bell began to ring: they had brought the church bell down from the tower and hung it outside Mr. Lehr's s barn: it sounded like any Sunday anywhere.
"I've sometimes wished," Miss Lehr said, "that I could go to church."
"Why not?"
"Mr. Lehr wouldn't like it. He's very strict. But it happens so seldom nowadays—I don't suppose there'll be another service now for another three years."
"I will come back before then."
"Oh, no," Miss Lehr said. "You won't do that. It's a hard journey and Las Casas is a fine city. They have electric light in the streets: there are two hotels. Father Quintana promised to come back—but there are Christians everywhere, aren't there? Why should he come back here? It isn't even as if we were really badly off."
A little group of Indians passed the gate: gnarled tiny creatures of the Stone Age: the men in short smocks walked with long poles, and the women with black plaits and knocked-about faces carried their babies on their backs. "The Indians have heard you are here," Miss Lehr said. "They've walked fifty miles—I shouldn't be surprised."
They stopped at the gate and watched him: when he looked at them they went down on their knees and crossed themselves—the strange elaborate mosaic touching the nose and ears and chin. "My brother gets so angry," Miss Lehr said, "if he sees [167] somebody go on his knees to a priest—but I don't see that it does any harm."
Round the corner of the house the mules were stamping—the guide must have brought them out to give them their maize: they were slow feeders, you had to give them a long start. It was time to begin Mass and be gone. He could smell the early morning—the world was still fresh and green, and in the village below the pastures a few dogs barked. The alarm clock tick-tocked in Miss Lehr's hand. He said: "I must be going now." He felt an odd reluctance to leave Miss Lehr and the house and the brother sleeping in the inside room. He was aware of a mixture of tenderness and dependence. When a man wakes after a dangerous operation he puts a special value upon the first face he sees as the anaesthetic wears away.
He had no vestments, but the Masses in this village were nearer to the old parish days than any he had known in the last eight years—there was no fear of interruption: no hurried taking of the sacraments as the police approached. There was even an altar stone brought from the locked church. But because it was so peaceful he was all the more aware of his own sin as he prepared to take the Elements—"Let not the participation of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I, though unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my judgment and condemnation." A virtuous man can almost cease to believe in Hell: but he carried Hell about with him. Sometimes at night he dreamed of it. Domine, non sum dignus ... domine, non sum dignus. ... Evil ran like malaria in his veins. He remembered a dream he had of a big grassy arena lined with the statues of saints—but the saints were alive, they turned their eyes this way and that, waiting for something. He waited, too, with an awful expectancy: bearded Peters and Pauls, with Bibles pressed to their breasts, watched some entrance behind his back he couldn't see—it had the menace of a beast. Then a marimba began to play, tinkly and repetitive, a firework exploded, and Christ danced into the arena—danced and postured with a bleeding painted face, up and down, up and down, grimacing like a prostitute, smiling and suggestive. He woke with the sense of complete despair that a man might feel finding the only money he possessed was counterfeit.
[168] ... and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Mass was over.
In three days, he told himself, I shall be in Las Casas: I shall have confessed and been absolved—and the thought of the child on the rubbish-heap came automatically back to him with painful love. What was the good of confession when you loved the result of your crime?
The people knelt as he made his way down the barn: he saw the little group of Indians: women whose children he had baptized: Pedro: the man from the cantina was there too, kneeling with his face buried in his plump hands, a chain of beads falling between the fingers. He looked a good man: perhaps he was a good man: perhaps, the priest thought, I have lost the faculty of judging—perhaps that woman in prison was the best person there. A horse cried in the early morning, tethered to a tree, and all the freshness of the morning came in through the open door.
Two men waited beside the mules: the guide was adjusting a stirrup and beside him, scratching under the armpit, awaiting his coming with a doubtful and defensive smile, stood the half-caste. He was like the small pain that reminds a man of his sickness, or perhaps like the unexpected memory which proves that love after all isn't dead. "Well," the priest said, "I didn't expect you here."
"No, father, of course not." He scratched and smiled.
"Have you brought the soldiers with you?"
"What things you do say, father," he protested with a callow giggle. Behind him, across the yard and through an open door, the priest could see Miss Lehr putting up his sandwiches: she had dressed, but she still wore her hairnet. She was wrapping the sandwiches carefully in grease-proof paper, and her sedate movements had a curious effect of unreality. It was the half-caste who was real. He said: "What trick are you playing now?" Had he perhaps bribed his guide to lead him back across the border? He could believe almost anything of that man.
"You shouldn't say things like that, father."
Miss Lehr passed out of sight, with the soundlessness of a dream.
"No?"
[169] "I'm here, father," the man seemed to take a long breath for his surprising stilted statement, "on an errand of mercy." The guide finished with one mule and began on the next, shortening the already short Mexican stirrup; the priest giggled nervously. "An errand of mercy?"
"Well, father, you're the only priest this side of Las Casas, and the man's dying …"
"What man?"
"The Yankee."
"What are you talking about?"
"The one the police wanted. He robbed a bank. You know the one I mean."
"He wouldn't need me," the priest said impatiently, remembering the photograph on the peeling wall, watching the first communion party.
"Oh, he's a good Catholic, father." Scratching under his armpit, he didn't look at the priest. "He's dying, and you and I wouldn't like to have on our conscience what that man ..."
"We shall be lucky if we haven't worse."
"What do you mean, father?"
The priest said: "He's only killed and robbed. He hasn't betrayed his friends."
"Holy Mother of God. I've never ..."
"We both have," the priest said. He turned to the guide. "Are the mules ready?"
"Yes, father."
"We'll start then." He had forgotten Miss Lehr completely: the other world had stretched a hand across the border, and he was again in the atmosphere of flight.
"Where are you going?" the half-caste said.
"To Las Casas." He climbed stiffly onto his mule. The half-caste held onto his stirrup-leather, and he was reminded of their first meeting: there was the same mixture of complaint, appeal, abuse. "You're a fine priest," he wailed up at him. "Your bishop ought to hear of this. A man's dying, wants to confess, and just because you want to get to the city ..."
"Why do you think me such a fool?" the priest said. "I know why you've come. You're the only one they've got who can recognize me, and they can't follow me into this state. Now [170] if I ask you where this American is, you'll tell me—I know—you don't have to speak—that he's just the other side."
"Oh, no, father, you're wrong there. He's just this side."
"A mile or two makes no difference. Nobody here's likely to bring an action ..."
"It's an awful thing, father," the half-caste said, "never to be believed. just because once—well, I admit it—"
The priest kicked his mule into motion: they passed out of Mr. Lehr's yard and turned south: the half-caste trotted at his stirrup.
"I remember," the priest said, "that you said you'd never forget my face."
"And I haven't," the man put in triumphantly, "or I wouldn't be here, would I? Listen, father, I'll admit a lot. You don't know how a reward will tempt a poor man like me. And when you wouldn't trust me, I thought, well, if that's how he feels—I'll show him. But I'm a good Catholic, father, and when a dying man wants a priest ..."
They climbed the long slope of Mr. Lehr's pastures which led to the next range of hills. The air was still fresh, at six in the morning, at three thousand feet; up there tonight it would be very cold—they had another six thousand feet to climb. The priest said uneasily: "Why should I put my head into your noose?" It was too absurd.
"Look, father." The half-caste was holding up a scrap of paper: the familiar writing caught the priest's attention—the large deliberate handwriting of a child. The paper had been used to wrap up food: it was smeared and greasy: he read: "The Prince of Denmark is wondering whether he should kill himself or not, whether it is better to go on suffering all the doubts about his father, or by one blow ..."
"Not that, father, on the other side. That's nothing."
The priest turned the paper and read a single phrase written in English in blunt pencil: "For Christ's sake, father ..." The mule, unbeaten, lapsed into a slow heavy walk: the priest made no attempt to urge it on: this piece of paper left no doubt whatever: he felt the trap close again, irrevocably.
He asked: "How did this come to you?"
"It was this way, father. I was with the police when they shot him. It was in a village the other side. He picked up a [171] child to act as a screen, but, of course, the soldiers didn't pay any attention. It was only an Indian. They were both shot, but he escaped."
"Then how ... ?"
"It was this way, father." He positively prattled. It appeared that he was afraid of the lieutenant—who resented the fact that the priest had escaped, and so he planned to slip across the border, out of reach. He got his chance at night, and on the way—it was probably on this side of the state line, but who knew where one state began or another ended?—he came on the American. He had been shot in the stomach. …"
"How could he have escaped then?"
"Oh, father, he is a man of superhuman strength." He was dying, he wanted a priest ..."
"How did he tell you that?"
"It only needed two words, father." Then, to prove the story, the man had found enough strength to write this note, and so … the story had as many holes in it as a sieve. But what remained was this note, like a memorial stone you couldn't overlook.
The half-caste bridled angrily again. "You don't trust me, father."
"Oh, no," the priest said. "I don't trust you."
"You think I'm lying."
"Most of it is lies."
He pulled the mule up and sat thinking, facing south. He was quite certain that this was a trap—probably the half-caste had suggested it: he was after the reward. But it was a fact that the American was there, dying. He thought of the deserted banana station where something had happened and the Indian child lay dead on the maize: there was no question at all that he was needed. A man with all that on his soul ... The oddest thing of all was that he felt quite cheerful: he had never really believed in this peace. He had dreamed of it so often on the other side that now it meant no more to him than a dream. He began to whistle a tune—something he had heard somewhere once. "I found a rose in my field": it was time he woke up. It wouldn't really have been a good dream—that confession in Las Casas when he had to admit, as well as everything else, that he had refused confession to a man dying in mortal sin.
[172] He said: "Will the man still be alive?"
"I think so, father," the half-caste caught him eagerly up.
"How far is it?"
"Four—five hours, father."
"You can take it in turns to ride the other mule."
The priest turned his mule back and called out to the guide. The man dismounted and stood inertly there, while he explained. The only remark he made was to the half-caste, motioning him into the saddle: "Be careful of that saddle-bag. The father's brandy's there."
They rode slowly back: Miss Lehr was at her gate. She said: "You forgot the sandwiches, father."
"Oh, yes. Thank you." He stole a quick look round—it didn't mean a thing to him. He said: "Is Mr. Lehr still asleep?"
"Shall I wake him?"
"No, no. But you will thank him for his hospitality?"
"Yes. And perhaps, father, in a few years we shall see you again? As you said." She looked curiously at the half-caste, and he stared back through his yellow insulting eyes.
The priest said: "It's possible," glancing away with a sly secretive smile.
"Well, good-bye, father. You'd better be off, hadn't you? The sun's getting high."
"Good-bye, my dear Miss Lehr." The mestizo slashed impatiently at his mule and stirred it into action.
"Not that way, my man," Miss Lehr called.
"I have to pay a visit first," the priest explained, and breaking into an uncomfortable trot he bobbled down behind the mestizo's mule towards the village. They passed the whitewashed church—that too belonged to a dream. Life didn't contain churches. The long untidy village street opened ahead of them. The schoolmaster was at his door and waved an ironic greeting, malicious and horn-rimmed. "Well, father, off with your spoils?"
The priest stopped his mule. He said to the half-caste: "Really ... I had forgotten ..."
"You did well out of the baptisms," the schoolmaster said. "It pays to wait a few years, doesn't it?"
"Come on, father," the half-caste said. "Don't listen to him." He spat. "He's a bad man."
[173] The priest said: "You know the people here better than anyone. If I leave a gift, will you spend it on things that do no harm—I mean food, blankets—not books?"
"They need food more than books."
"I have forty-five pesos here ..."
The mestizo wailed: "Father, what are you doing...?"
"Conscience money?" the schoolmaster said.
"Yes."
"All the same, of course, I thank you. It's good to see a priest with a conscience. It's a stage in evolution," he said, his glasses flashing in the sunlight, a plump embittered figure in front of his tin-roofed shack, an exile.
They passed the last houses, the cemetery, and began to climb. "Why, father, why?" the half-caste protested.
"He's not a bad man, he does his best, and I shan't need money again, shall I?" the priest asked, and for quite a while they rode without speaking, while the sun came blindingly out, and the mules' shoulders strained on the steep rocky paths, and the priest began to whistle again—"I have a rose"—the only tune he knew. Once the half-caste started a complaint about something: "The trouble with you, father, is ..." but it petered out before it was defined, because there wasn't really anything to complain about as they rode steadily north towards the border.
"Hungry?" the priest asked at last.
The half-caste muttered something that sounded angry or derisive.
"Take a sandwich," the priest said, opening Miss Lehr's packet.
