Good Offices

II

For as long as Tancredo can remember, that was the night that shed light on all of his nights, a different and devastating night, the beginning or the end of his life, agony or resurrection, God alone knows which. A solemn night, its strangeness and passion surpassed even the first night he and Sabina had at last lain entwined in a shadowy corner of the courtyard after years of innocent play, and sinned hour upon hour until dawn, as if making up for a century of distance.

The bottle of liqueur was still on the table when Almida and Machado ran out to the courtyard, into the rain, to get into the Volkswagen. The three Lilias escorted them, each armed with an umbrella. The parish’s two highest representatives seemed to be running away, their heads bent beneath the umbrellas’ protective hollows, their bodies mackintoshed and dark, fleeing toward their unfathomable destiny.

Father Matamoros, Almida’s unexpected replacement, stood waiting in the office; as soon as he saw Tancredo returning from the altar, he collapsed into the nearest chair. “This pious throat still has five minutes,” he said. “Give me some of that” — pointing to the bottle. “What is it?” he asked. “Ah, hazelnut liqueur. Very sweet.” To the amazement of Sabina, who had just come back in, he drank the rest of the bottle — 25 per cent proof, according to Almida’s prudent words — from one of the recently used coffee cups: his roguish eyes, deep and black, lit up for a moment. “It’s good against the cold,” he said, rubbing his wet hands together.

Of indefinable age, Father Matamoros — Reverend Father San José Matamoros del Palacio — was indeed a rare bird in the parish church, gray and featherless, come from heavens knows where. He wore dark clothes and a gray turtleneck sweater instead of a dog collar; his jacket looked borrowed, it was too big for him; his round-toed school shoes, almost black, were scuffed and the soles were gone, the laces white; he wore square glasses, one lens cracked down the middle, one arm mended with a dirty strip of sticking plaster.

The liqueur finished, he ran with Tancredo to the sacristy (the rain was getting worse and pooling in the garden gutters, overflowing across the stone passage), where, out of breath, he inspected his surroundings, especially the pious hangings that adorned the walls. He crossed himself before a Botticelli Virgin and seemed to pray with his eyes, awestruck; Tancredo took advantage of the moment to find a towel and dry the priest’s face and hair, his dripping hands, his birdlike neck. Matamoros let him do this without taking his eyes off the merciful Madonna of the Magnificat. Then he sighed and took another look around him, nodding. He noted, with a certain irony, an ancient black telephone on a little table. He was surprised by this tucked-away telephone corner, where he also glimpsed a plain, empty chair surrounded by a throng of plaster angels, dismayed virgins and saints, a sort of vanquished army with broken noses, missing arms, half their wings gone or stained, white-eyed, their faces scratched, hands broken and fingers cracked, a strange crowd waiting, no doubt, to be taken off to a resuscitating craftsman, or taken away by the dustman. Matamoros smiled to himself. “A phone for calling God,” he said. He took a small yellow comb from his pocket and tamed his mass of wayward hair, using as a mirror the enormous gold ciborium which Almida never wanted to use during his Masses, only God knew why. From the same pocket Matamoros drew a bottle of mouthwash, and — to the hunchback’s embarrassment — took two or three slugs, which he spat unceremoniously into that same ciborium. “This’ll have to be washed,” he said, and only then looked at Tancredo, staring like a bird of prey. “You’re my acolyte, right?” he asked, giving the other man’s hump the inevitable once-over. He smiled without malice. “Put this,” he ordered, “on the altar.” As he spoke, he handed Tancredo a glittering, beautifully cut glass cruet filled with water. “I mix the wine with this,” he said, and then, his eyes on a bronze crucifix, as if offering an explanation to the Almighty: “During Masses I prefer to drink water I’ve brought myself.” Then he allowed himself to be helped into the sacred vestments without taking his blazing eyes from the attentive hunchback, from his looming hump, which Matamoros examined frankly. “Another cathedral,” he said, pointing to it.

At the crucial moment of entering the sanctuary, he turned to Tancredo as if he had forgotten something: “I won’t be reading the Gospel,” he whispered. “You’ll be doing that. I assume you know what day we’re on.” Then he proceeded calmly toward the whiteness of the altar, which seemed to be floating in a mist; he moved wreathed in the candles’ perfume, surrounded by the respectful noise of parishioners getting to their feet. He kissed the center of the altar for a long time, down on one knee, his arms spread like wings, his back glowing under the great embroidered gold cross on his chasuble, then straightened up majestically, passing his eyes over the other, beseeching eyes, and began his Mass. A peculiar beginning, Tancredo thought, shuddering, because — after crossing himself and greeting the congregation in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and before beginning the Act of Penitence — Matamoros called them not Dear, but Beloved, brethren.

The hunchback paid little attention to the rest of the greeting: just before positioning himself at the side of the altar, he sensed Sabina observing him from the sacristy. She would be waiting for him until Mass ended, and would carry on waiting until Matamoros left. Then she would launch herself at him and have what she wanted unless Tancredo surrounded himself with the pitiful shield of the Lilias.

Father San José’s Mass was no ordinary Mass.

To the surprise and delight of the congregation that evening, it turned out to be a sung Mass. Who could have imagined that Father Matamoros, besides bringing his own water to the altar, would turn out to be a perfect cantor? Beneath the cold vaulted reaches, his voice seemed to come from heaven. He repeated his invitation to repent, singing: Beloved brethren, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins. It was as if the organ were sounding. Tancredo lifted his gaze to the marble dome as if escaping and saw the host of painted angels flying among the clouds; he saw them return his gaze and still did not know whether to feel terrified or moved. How long it had been, he thought, since Mass had been sung. The purity of the voice was the air they breathed. Nobody understood anything, but the voice sang on. Of course, none of the congregation dared sing their responses, and so, timidly, like lambs, they said the I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do, and they beat their chests, whispering in unison through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, and, after the beating of chests, which resounded like an unearthly drum, and marvelling at it in themselves, exultant, as though finally understanding that their own bodies could sound and sing, they carried on asking blessed Mary ever Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God … There was an infinite silence. Father Matamoros concluded by singing Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life, and then, for the first time as a communion, everyone dared respond with a sung Amen.

In the front row — because they attended, without fail, every early and evening Mass — were the three Lilias, so different yet so similar, yoked together by the same name since they had entered Father Almida’s service, old, dressed in black, their Sunday best, the three of them with neat little trimmed hats, veils and Missals, patent leather shoes, their hands redolent of onions, their breath smelling of various dishes, in their eyes the flames still lingered, the fatigue from mincing meat and garlic, from squeezing lemons, from cooking until all appetite is lost. That night, however, their eyes watered not from onion juice or bruised radishes but from something like a sacred liquor that flooded their ears and touched their souls and in the end made them cry silently. They smiled like a single Lilia. They formed an island among the faithful, who recognized them by their smell and preferred to give up a whole pew just for them, no neighbors beside or behind them, a privilege or a loneliness which the Lilias, in their almost inordinate innocence, understood as deference on the part of the worshippers toward the women who took care of Father Almida, his breakfast, his immaculate soul and his clean shirt.

Sabina too, hidden in the sacristy, threw herself into the unexpected singing for all she was worth. For a few moments of grace, that apparition of a priest made her forget that she and Tancredo would end up alone in the presbytery, without Almida or Machado; she saw Tancredo’s burly back, his tapering hump, his raised head, but in the end she did not see him, he did not matter, she simply listened, intoxicated, to Father San José inviting the parishioners to repent. The priest’s canticle, which initially almost made them laugh with panic, now made them weep for joy. When they came to the Kyrie, the congregation burst out singing to the Lord that he might have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, and felt themselves rising with the Gloria up to God in heaven. Machado repeated it, singing alone, and in Latin. They listened to him, rapt: Glória in excélsis Deo et in terra pax homínibus bonae voluntátis. Laudámus te, benedícimus te, adorámus te, glorificámus te. . and at the prayer’s end, as one, they all sang a fervent Amen that caressed the walls, quivering everywhere, from the altar out to the street.

Several passers-by had stopped in their tracks on overhearing this improbable seven o’clock Mass, surely imagining that there must be some venerable mortal remains by the altar, the commemoration of a bishop, at the very least: but there was no corpse in sight, and the Mass was sung. Even without a corpse, the circumstantial parishioners from the street huddled, captivated, in the doorway. Besides, it was raining, and a sung Mass was a good excuse to take shelter.

Tancredo looked up at the church ceiling again, as if seeking to escape. Father San José’s Mass, he thought, was a hybrid, a vivisection; he used passages from outdated Masses containing abandoned conventions, splicing them together with others from the contemporary Mass, which he nevertheless dared to sing in Latin. Immediately after the Offertory, before the Sanctus, something occurred that Tancredo thought would appal Father Almida, a priest with forty years of experience: Matamoros, standing, his arms outstretched, leaned his head on the altar and immersed himself in the Secret, not, to everyone’s surprise, the customary brief prayer, but a good five minutes’ worth, which made Tancredo think, astonished, that Father Matamoros might well be dozing.

He was more amazed — this amazement might have extended to the street children and the blind who frequented the Meals, to the elderly and the prostitutes, to the Pope far away — he was dumbfounded, when helping the Father with the sacred vessels and holding out the cruet for him to mix the water with the wine, unstopping the cruet and offering it — snatched away by anxious, demanding, skeletal hands — it turned him to stone in that corner, the most sacred corner of the church, the altar — it made his hair stand on end, it enraged him, to smell, amid the incense, sharp, bitter aniseed, more cutting than cloves or cinnamon, the scent of the countryside, he thought — aguardiente, he realized. Yet he saw Matamoros pour more than half of the liquid into the sacred chalice and drink thirstily. This was the Transubstantiation, and Tancredo could not and did not want to believe that aguardiente would be used in the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. For the first time in his life, the acolyte, the hunchback, was scandalized. San José Matamoros, he thought, was not only a priest-cantor but one of those they call a mass-and-mealtime priest, a proper little drunk. Then, after the genuflection, he saw Matamoros do something dreadful: he wiped his mouth on the stole. But Tancredo recovered himself. He had known other priestly lapses, either seen them for himself or heard about them. Even priests, he thought, as Almida taught him to think so often, were flesh and blood exposed to sin, men after all, who could tell all their bones, ordinary men who did the impossible: pronounce the word of God, the ancient word.

In any case, Reverend San José redeemed himself. It was unfair to regard him as a simple little priest. There was his sermon, for example. While Tancredo read the Gospel, San José sat and listened from the marble throne with its elaborate gold armrests, to one side of the altar, lolling against the broad, cushioned back, supporting his head with one hand, eyes closed, exactly as if he were asleep. Indeed, after Tancredo finished his reading, three or four endless minutes passed before Matamoros came back to life and approached the pulpit to begin the sermon. A sermon which had little or nothing to do with the Gospel — which Gospel? Matthew, Luke, Mark, John? His reading rent the heavens, but how could it not, Tancredo said to himself, as it was a sung sermon, a Mass risen out of those who had died. An unusual sermon, besides, in its brevity, full of grace, that struck Tancredo more as a sung poem than as a proper sermon, but a prayer after all, he thought, a prayer to brotherly love that pays no heed to race or creed, the only way — still scorned — of entering heaven, proposed by Christ to humankind as if reaching out a helping hand. It was a Mass of Transparency. When they finished saying the Lord’s Prayer, the congregation waited expectantly for Matamoros to repeat it, sung, as he had the Gloria and the Credo, and so it was, for the grace of all: exquisitely sung in Latin, the Our Father, qui es in caelis: sanctifecétur nomen tuum; advéniat regnum tuum; fiat volúntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra. . raised them up to heaven. They came down to earth with a bump during Communion, however. Father San José approached the line of the waiting faithful and, with the gesture of a worried, flesh-and-blood man, called for the acolyte’s help in supporting the golden ciborium containing the radiant Body of Christ. The communicants were alarmed by his trembling hands; more than once, they feared the hosts would slip from his fingers. They chose to attribute the trembling to the same emotion overpowering them: the plenitude of the singing that had made the Mass an apotheosis of peace. They were on the edge of their seats as they waited for him to finish singing the Prayer after Communion, and when the time finally came to respond and take their leave, all sang Amen as one. Their hearts were audible.

Exhausted — to an extent Tancredo had never witnessed in a celebrant finishing Mass — Reverend San José Matamoros bestowed his shaky blessing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and repaired to the sacristy, almost dragging himself along, he seemed so worn out. In despair, Tancredo followed him. Now Mass really had finished: now the angels round the vaulted ceiling were merely painted, and their eyes were Sabina’s eyes, summoning him: an angel with Sabina’s eyes regarded him from every cloud. It was the earthly caress of the flesh that awaited him — hot, moist. From now on the night belonged to Sabina, he thought, but also to him, with his fears, the desolation of the Meals, the identical days he could already see in front of him.

Mass had finished, but the old ladies of the Neighborhood Civic Association remained rigid in their seats, pillars of the Church, absorbed in mute song, the silence of centuries.

It was as if no one wanted to leave.

The three Lilias were the first to react by running after Matamoros, whom they found already divested of the sacred garments, breathing heavily, seated in the sacristy’s only chair next to the telephone, surrounded by angels and saints, mopping his forehead with a towel. They approached him as if they feared he might not be real, as if they did not believe he existed, and gathered around him, cautiously, as they might around an apparition.

In the silence only the rain could be heard, constant, like an affliction, and the hunchback’s toings and froings, as he carefully folded the priestly vestments and arranged them one on top of another inside a great wooden chest. The light from a single bulb was insufficient, and night swallowed up the corners of the room; the three Lilias’ bodies could not be discerned: vague shapes, they disappeared into the blackness; only their faces hovered, yellow, wrinkled and whiskery, shining as if witnessing wonders.

“God bless you, Father,” one of them said finally. “We had not sung in ages.”

The words melted into the silence; the rain fell harder.

“One must sing,” the Father said. “One must sing.”

With difficulty he turned to look at them. Though he was hoarse, he smiled and said, “Well. Singing is tiring. Sometimes singing is tiring.”

“It must be, Father, because it shows. Your face shows it, your voice suffered.”

It was not clear which of the Lilias had spoken.

“We would like to offer you some refreshment, Father.”

And another, correcting her: “Not us, Father. The parish, the joyful hearts who listened to your Mass.”

San José Matamoros snorted and shook his head. No one knew what he meant by this. Did the flattery displease him perhaps? He went very still, surrounded by plaster angels: one angel more.

One of the Lilias insisted: “Father, the word of God sings out. But we haven’t heard it sung the way you sing it since we were girls.”

And another: “Stay with us. Rest. Of course, if you want to sing some more, we’ll go on praying. .”

And the third: “Until God calls us to Him.”

The Father seemed finally to have understood who they were and smiled broadly.

“Please,” he said, “what I need now is a glass of wine, just a glass of wine, please.”

And, sincerely: “It’s freezing.”

One of the Lilias dared to make a suggestion: “Wouldn’t a little glass of brandy be better?”

And another: “Brandy warms you up more, Father. And helps more with the singing.”

San José’s face lit up.

The three Lilias seemed about to go and get a glass of brandy, all at the same time. Hesitating, they looked at one another. “Who’s going?” one of them asked. In the end they all went, assiduously, as one.

“We don’t want to keep you too long, Father. You need to rest.” Neither Tancredo nor the priest knew where Sabina had appeared from. Maybe she had sprung, gloomy and sharp like her voice, from among the statues of angels and saints that inhabited that corner of the sacristy. She had taken off the blue headscarf; her disordered ash-blonde hair hid her face. They went on listening to her, not daring to interrupt. “If you want to, you can go. We’ll call you a taxi, you won’t get wet. We’re not going to delay you; nobody wants to put you out.”

Sabina’s mouth clapped shut. She appeared to regret her words. Outside, in the world, the rain was easing off.

Tancredo finished putting the vestments away. He wanted to be gone from there, but did not know how to take his leave, escape to his room and stretch out on his bed as if he had just died. On the one hand, he knew Matamoros was drunk, or more than drunk: stunned. He might fall over unconscious at any moment, and Tancredo would have to take charge. On the other hand, the proximity of Sabina was causing him to suffer his terrible fears of being an animal, but a free animal, revelling in the flesh. That fear, the most dreadful of his fears, was now far more dreadful than it was during the Meals, when he did battle with the old people pretending to be dead or, worse still, with the ones who actually were.

“In the kitchen,” Tancredo said, coming to a decision. “We’ll have something to eat in the kitchen, Father. It’s warm in there. It won’t take long.”

“Whatever you wish,” Matamoros replied, his manner conciliatory. He was about to say something decisive, but regarded each of them in turn, his hawklike eyes investigating them, disinterring one by one the days of their lives, their memories, exposing them. Sabina could not withstand that stare; she averted her eyes. Now she looked like a little girl who’d been caught out, blushing. To Tancredo she seemed naked, blushing as though they had surprised her naked, just as he had surprised her once, years before, in the shower, stepping in behind her while Reverend Juan Pablo Almida celebrated Mass with Celeste Machado.

Just then, the three Lilias returned, one of them carrying a tray daintily covered with a little cloth, on the tray a gold-rimmed glass, snacks, and a bottle of brandy.

Matamoros, who had been on the point of saying something, stopped himself, all aglow, and opened his arms.

“Please,” he said, “I’m not going to drink alone.”

The five residents of the presbytery looked at one another, shocked.

“That’s right,” one of the Lilias said, obligingly. “We’ll all have a drink. It’s cold.”

“I don’t drink,” another Lilia said, smiling. With her smile, she seemed to be waiting for them to beg her to drink, to have a drink, to beg her just once, no need to insist.

The third Lilia shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Then, by shrugging her shoulders, seemed to say: “Not for me, but you go ahead.”

“Me neither,” Tancredo said. “No matter, Father. We’ll keep you company.”

“Father,” Sabina said, “we’re not allowed to drink. And even if we were, none us who live in the presbytery would want to, not now, not ever. Father Almida very occasionally has a drink from the bottle they’ve brought you. .”

“It’s not the same bottle, señorita,” one of the Lilias interrupted sweetly, as if explaining the best way to make bread. And she started laughing, softly, generously. “There are lots of these bottles, lots and lots, all the same. Before bed, señorita, Father Almida and your godfather, Sacristan Celeste Machado, always drink a big glass of warm milk with an even bigger glass of brandy. They tell us it helps them to sleep. We believe them.”

Sabina flushed.

“Really?” she asked the Lilias, as if threatening them. “Do you also put yourselves to sleep with brandy?”

“Sometimes,” replied the Lilia who had previously said, “I don’t know.” Then she added, thoughtfully: “Although mint tea is better.”

Biting her lip, Sabina confronted her. “Reverend Almida will hear about this, you can be sure. We’ll see what he makes of it.”

Matamoros stood up; he seemed about to take his leave. He buttoned his overly large jacket with its big pockets, where he already had his empty cruet tucked away, and rubbed his hands together. “Its cold,” he said and smiled. But smiled to himself, or to no one, as if he were elsewhere, a million light years away, joining a chorus of angels, reminding himself of happy times long ago that concerned him alone; as if he had never been with them, all that time, since arriving at the church in the downpour and celebrating Mass and singing; as if he had heard nothing of the caustic exchange between Sabina and the old women. Straightening his jacket, he turned the collar up over his turtleneck. Now they saw that he was skinny and old and sad, like one of those people who never want to say goodbye yet say it. Sabina sighed: a weight was lifting from her; at last the priest would leave. But Father Matamoros turned calmly toward the Lilia holding the tray and, bowing to her, picked up the glass and bottle, and walked off.

In the doorway he stopped.

“Well,” he said, “if I’m going to drink alone, it won’t be sitting by myself in that solitary chair, surrounded by saints and archangels, while you stand and watch. Let’s go to the table.”

And he abandoned the sacristy, heading, it seemed, for the office. As soon as they were alone, the presbytery’s five residents recovered themselves.

“This is unacceptable,” Sabina said. “Father Almida will be angry, and he will have every right. Who asked you for. . refreshments? Is this how we obey the Father the first night he trusts us to be alone, in charge of his church? We should all go to bed. Tomorrow is the Family Meal. .”

“Sleep?” one of the Lilias asked maliciously, regarding Sabina out of the corner of her eye. The other two cocked their heads attentively, as though listening to Mass. Sabina stepped back, as if someone were pushing her. Tancredo stepped back too, instinctively, and opened his mouth as though preparing to speak. The Lilias know everything, he realized; they’ve found us out. And then: they found us out, who knows how long ago? Maybe ever since the first day. For a split second, he was terrified, imagining himself without Father Almida’s protection, without the presbytery roof over his head, submerged in the perpetual night that is Bogotá. He regretted his nights with Sabina. Yes. It was possible Almida knew too, even the sacristan. That was why they did not trust him, denying him his university education, restricting him to the drudgery of the Meals. “That’s it,” he repeated to himself. And he scrutinized the three old women one by one, as if seeing them for the first time. None of them took his examination personally; rather, they seemed to feel a certain pity for him, as though he were only a child, a toy, and not to blame for how he was being played.

“We heard a Mass that deserves our gratitude,” one of the Lilias said, or they all said at once, because the voice sounded like a vibrant, sung reproach, drowning out the rain. “It wasn’t just any old Mass.”

No one knew who was the eldest. Although all three were small, two of them were taller than the third and resembled one another; the third looked like their doll. Over the years, they had acquired the same habits and gestures; it was as though they acted as one, without planning to do so, and as though what one of them said had been thought by the other two, so that what the first began was almost completed by the second, who, unconsciously, as if sharing bread, left time for the third to finish. Machado had once said that the Lilias were going to die on the same day, and of the same complaint, and that it was also possible that they would come back to life at the same time. Almida did not appreciate the joke: he said that on the day of the Resurrection there could be neither first nor last. He said the joy of Resurrection would occur simultaneously, so diverting the conversation away from the Lilias. He never allowed them to be made fun of. He respected them for some reason, Tancredo thought, and not just for their cooking. Or was he afraid of them? Sometimes it was as if Almida fled from them, in the grip of an inexpressible panic, a presentiment.

“As far as the refreshments are concerned,” another of them said, “it’s not our decision. Before he left, Juan Pablo Almida himself suggested we feed the Father when he finished Mass.”

“So feed him and get it over with,” Sabina said. “We mustn’t waste any more time.”

Tancredo looked fleetingly at the door. He was increasingly annoyed by Sabina’s every word, by her imprudence. If the Lilias knew everything, it was unwise to bait them. As a matter of fact, one of them answered back: “Waste time, señorita. Time for what?”

Cornered, Sabina exploded.

“Oh, that’s enough,” she said. “I won’t put up with your whispering and your rudeness any longer. It’s terrible listening to your intrigues, your inventions, your lies, but it’s more terrible listening to you, just your voices, and even worse to know you’re out there, behind our backs, spying. If you want to say something to me, say it now; stop beating about the bush.”

“What are you talking about, señorita? I don’t understand,” a Lilia replied, her tone conciliatory. “What do you want us to say? What do you want to hear?”

And another: “You’re not the little Sabinita we once knew. For the past few years you’ve been an ill-mannered little madam. You don’t seem like the sacristan’s goddaughter any more. It’s as if you’ve never read the Bible. You make the three of us sad, we who watched you grow from a girl, who were your mothers and grandmothers and friends, your servants.”

Sabina tensed up, began stamping her foot, fists clenched, lips pursed. In the light of the single bulb, she was more than golden, suffused with the flames of her hair, with the fiery moon of her troubled face. She could not speak for rage. Tancredo rushed to intervene.

“Prepare the meal,” he said again. “I should shut up the church.”

“The church.” The Lilias were startled. “God’s church open, by God. How did you forget the doors of the church, Tancredito? A thief could come in at any moment and. .”

“And steal God?” Father Matamoros’s voice was heard to ask. They saw him leaning in through the doorway. “Are you going to leave me all alone?” he asked. “They might steal me too. Let’s chat for a few minutes in peace; then I’ll go. The rain is letting up. You. . Tancredito. . go and shut those doors. We’ll wait for you.”

The three Lilias immediately moved toward the Father.

“The food is ready,” they explained. “It just needs heating up.”

“Come with me,” Matamoros replied, allowing them to surround him. Sabina approached them; she wanted to say something, she had to say something, to have the last word. But she didn’t know what it was.

Tancredo hurried back to the church. Crossing the empty interior, he made sure there was no one in the naves. He even peeked into the chapel of Saint Gertrude; its blue image, with eyes that seemed to be slipping away as if on a river, held his gaze, and he crossed himself, wanted to say a prayer, but was unsure of which one to say. Still preoccupied, remembering the pungent smell of the aguardiente at the altar, he still couldn’t believe it; seeming to pray silently, he was thinking of the Inquisition: for that one act alone they might have burned San José Matamoros alive. He imagined the priest on a pyre, in this very church, and smiled: before the fire, the priest would request another aguardiente, please. Tancredo smiled more broadly as he checked the confessionals, one by one, in case some thief had taken refuge there. This was not unusual. Thefts from the church were on the rise. Not just valuable objects were stolen, such as the chalice or the linens, but also simple plaster statues, tapers and candlesticks, votive candles, sticks of palosanto, censers, collection boxes — one day a prie-dieu, another day a pew, a strip of carpet, even the stone jars in which the holy water was kept, the shabby noticeboard from the entrance, the rubbish bin and, to top it all, the first two steps of the narrow staircase, polished and carved, which in their long ascent spiralling up to the domed ceiling illustrated the Stations of the Cross. However much Reverend Almida publicly exhorted the thief to render unto God the things that are God’s, explaining that the staircase had been a present from a Florentine religious society and had, besides, been blessed by Pope Paul VI, the two steps were not returned; worse still, a third and a fourth disappeared, in just three Sundays, and it no longer seemed the work of a thief, but that of a prankster or a fanatic seeking the Pope’s blessing. A collector. Bogotá, in any case. Father Almida ordered the rest of the steps to be stored away and replaced with ordinary stairs, made of poor-quality timber, now being eaten away by woodworm.

Tancredo was about to shut the doors when he noticed that the last pew in the church, in the main nave, was completely occupied by motionless women, seven or nine worshippers from the parish, most of them feeble, confused grandmothers, members of the Neighborhood Civic Association. They had been watching him all that time, ever since he had begun to check the confessionals, seek out lurking presences, realign pews, and straighten up the prie-dieux.

“You take a lot of trouble,” one of the women said.

Tancredo pretended not to be surprised.

“I have to shut the doors now,” he said.

“Doors that ought to remain open,” the same woman replied. “But what can we do, Tancredito, if not even God is respected in this country?”

They got to their feet as one and moved toward Tancredo.

“It was a lovely Mass,” they said. “For a moment we thought it wasn’t an earthly one. The Reverend who celebrated it must be. . a special person. Thanks to him, we’re singing once more. We sing with him and weep for joy. If Doña Cecilia were alive she would have been happy.”

And they all made the sign of the cross.

“May she rest in peace,” they said in unison. They seemed to go on singing. And moved behind Tancredo to the doors, as if in procession. The rain had eased, but a persistent, stinging drizzle made it even worse out in the street.

“The rain doesn’t matter,” one of the women said. “It wasn’t a waste of a Mass, thank God.”

The rest agreed sorrowfully: “Because some are, some are.”

They were waiting for Tancredo to say something, but he remained silent.

“We wanted to speak to the Father,” they said, letting him off the hook.

“Whenever you like,” Tancredo replied. “You can make an appointment, as always.”

“You don’t understand, Tancredito. We want to speak to the bird who sang before us today. Would that be possible?”

Tancredo had already guessed this.

“Father San José is taking some refreshment,” he said.

“So, his name is San José.” They were astonished.

“It would have to be, for someone who sings like that.”

And then, discussing it among themselves: “Don’t disturb him. We’ll meet him one day. We need a priest like him so much, don’t we?”

“Indeed we do,” another replied. “Because, begging God’s pardon, if this priest were in charge of our parish, we’d all be livelier.” Having said this, she blushed immediately; none of her companions wanted to, or could, contradict her.

“The Lilias,” they said, “our friends the Lilias, the loyal and devoted Lilias, will be able to tell us about Father San José and his whereabouts, with all the details. Don’t worry, Tancredito, we’ll speak to them.”

Satisfied, they began to leave the church, split into groups, arm in arm. They each opened an umbrella; they were like old black birds spreading their wings by the light of the street lamps, in the infinite sparkling refractions of the rain.

“It may only be drizzle, but it’s still rain,” they said.

Tancredo placed the heavy wooden bars across the door and closed the enormous padlocks. Then, quickly, he crossed back through the church and snuffed out the altar candles, the first thing he ought to have done at the end of Mass; how had he forgotten? He answered his own question: Matamoros, his song, his water. The very presence of that Father in the presbytery was still a latent, unpredictable event. What would happen? Heading for a corner near the altar, Tancredo found — behind an enormous tapestry representing Adam and Eve fleeing the Garden of Eden — the switch that turned off the rest of the electric lights. The darkness swallowed him up completely in the cold of the sanctuary, still redolent of incense, but also of the faint, irritating whiff of aguardiente, which caused him to revisit the Mass and hear the priest singing and see him stagger feebly when it came time for Communion. Only the far-off rectangular opening of the sacristy door was dimly illuminated. A slight echo of who knew what voices from who knew where rolled slowly down from the cupola; it was a sound of forsaken souls, a distant sound, but present, as if even at night the church was not empty and other communicants waited, sitting, standing, ailing and healthy, asleep and awake. They were the echoes of the night in the empty church, the nocturnal Mass, Tancredo thought in his distress, when night caught him alone in the church.

Then he felt Sabina’s hands in his, hands like startled birds that flew up to his neck and hung on, the cold, swift kiss she pressed on him in desperation. All that time she had been following him.

“Sabina,” he said, pulling his face away, “this is the altar.”

“The altar,” she said, “the altar of my love for you.” She seemed maddened from so much love. Speechless, he stumbled, overcome by the strength of the small body, skinny but stubborn, hanging from his neck and, unlike the kiss, burning, shoving him to the marble edge of that same altar, the long, ice-cold table that gleamed upon a base like an upside-down triangle. There they fell, her on top of him, slowly and silently, as Tancredo devoted himself to breaking their fall, and she, voraciously, to kissing him. Suddenly, she took her lips away, exhaled damp breath across the hunchback’s face like another well-aimed caress and said: “Don’t go or I’ll stay under the altar and Father Almida will have to come to get me out and he’ll ask me why I’m here and I’ll tell him it’s because of you, only you.” She seemed to be crying as the hunchback lifted her into the air and put her down again to one side, like a wisp; there they sat beneath the marble triangle that Tancredo imagined to be the eye of God, upside down, regarding them. The eye of God, upside down, he thought again, and smiled in spite of himself, adding: What’s happening to me? I’m laughing. He remembered smiling recently in church; several times he had smiled right there in the sanctuary; what’s happening to me, he wondered again, and tried to see his hands, bewildered, as if they might be wet with blood. At that moment he was not thinking about Sabina at all, only about his hands — they seemed criminal to him — and the eye of God, upside down, spying on them, and then he smiled even more.

“You laugh, you’re laughing,” Sabina said, and launched herself at him again, trustingly. “This church is like a marketplace,” she said. “Those abusive Lilias are taking advantage of Almida’s absence. They flounce about like mistresses of the parish, puffed up like turkeys, but lie down like doormats for that little priest to walk all over.”

For a moment, Tancredo was overcome by a sort of sympathy and tenderness. There was Sabina, her tempestuous spirit locked inside her fragile blonde body, her reddened lips, pressed together, those teeth that bit them until they bled.

“Let’s run away, Tancredo,” he heard her say, stunned. “Right now, today, without saying goodbye to anyone. They owe us money, I’ve got it all planned, I know where to go, where we can live for ever. They won’t come after us; why should they? We’ve worked our whole lives for them. It’s only fair we’d get tired of it one day.”

He imagined himself running away with Sabina. He could not help smiling again.

She trusted him when he laughed. This time would be no different. She huffed, a flame consuming itself, the only candle still lit. Tancredo sensed her removing her blouse all at once, guessed at the movement in the shadows, the raised arms, the falling garment, utterly overwhelming. As if lit by a black flame, the church grew warm, the air caught fire, smelling of Sabina’s pale body, the shiver of her just-uncovered breasts, the sweat in her armpits, and the fear and joy of her ready, daring flesh.

They had been there years before, just once, in the same hollow beneath the altar, children playing with the pleasure of fear, the same fear of being discovered in the church’s most sacred corner, the danger of the sacristan appearing, or Father Almida, or the Lilias, the same danger as today, tonight. Tancredo thought: We haven’t changed at all, it’s the same fear. He smiled again, and once more Sabina was burning above him; it seemed to him that she was exuding smoke, that her flesh must be made of smoldering sticks, of the sweet and bitter smells that enveloped him. But he responded to her kiss — for one instant — more out of pity than desire, then plucked her off him again, like a feather, and said, jumping to his feet: “Cover yourself up,” and then, more plea than order: “Come to the office. The Lilias are waiting.”

“Never,” she replied, retreating and kneeling inside the marble niche. “I’m never going to leave if you don’t come here for me, it doesn’t matter what time, today or tomorrow or the day after, and I don’t care if Father Almida and my godfather or all the men in the world come instead of you, and line up in the church to see me and ask why I’m here, I swear I’ll answer them all that it’s ‘through your fault, through your most grievous fault, Amen,’ Tancredo, don’t you forget it, I’m never going to leave.” The threat came out mixed with sorrow and disappointment.

Tancredo hesitated. About to step through the door into the sacristy, he turned to look back at her, seeking her in the shadows of the altar; he could barely make her out, a quivering smudge; he heard her panting, glimpsed her eyes like blue flames — Tancredo thought he suffered them, two icy, blue hailstones that floated toward him and enveloped him, and felt a confusion of indignant compassion. “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said again, turning his back on her as if running away, and in reality he did run away, he ran from her, from her threat, a cry laid bare beneath the altar: “I’ll be waiting too, my love, I swear I will.”

Irritated, Tancredo thought the sacristy smelled of brandy as he passed through it and went out into the garden: he needed to think for a minute, to work things out. It had stopped raining. He tiptoed through the willows. The lit doorway to the office looked yellow. No voices could be heard. Raindrops pattered down from the leaves; they smacked against other big, fallen leaves, against scattered tins which no one ever found; there was the murmur of a drainpipe, gulping water; it was as if it were still raining, without rain. “They’re not talking,” Tancredo said to himself, “they’re not talking” — and he moved closer until he could see into the office. Yellow like the light, the three Lilias seemed to be asleep on their feet around Matamoros, who was seated at the head of the table. In spite of the silence, they were talking; their lips moved; their gestures enquired; their questioning heads responded. Tancredo inched closer. They were whispering. Their voices were like secrets, a confession. As he moved forward slowly, he could make them out.

“So, you’re not sisters,” Matamoros sighed. His face tilted toward theirs; his hand, meanwhile, went for the bottle at last. He filled his glass, but did not drink. “Not sisters,” he repeated. “But you look alike.”

“We’re from the same village, Father.”

“We were neighbors.”

The Lilias’ voices drifted into the night like stricken murmurings, identical, hurried. They all wanted to talk at once, to say the same things.

“We were cooks, we still are.”

“And family? Where are your families?”

“They killed our husbands on the same day in the village. No one knows who did it. One lot said it was the others, the others said it was the first lot. Anyway, they killed all the men. And there were a lot of them. Only we women were left, because they took the children too. We went to ask for them, we looked for them. Imagine, a hoard of mothers asking after a hoard of children. Who knew about them, who had them? One lot said the others, the others said the first lot. Dead or alive, who knows? Thanks to the Lord’s infinite mercy we met Father Almida, who had just taken on the church at Ricaurte. We were spared from crying all over the place. We followed the Father from village to village, from city to city. Why would we ever go home again? Our houses were empty, the village would die empty, they weren’t there, and they weren’t coming back. Without them we were alone, no maize to grind, no homes to keep. But God is great, God is God; Reverend Father Juan Pablo Almida appeared, and for that, God bless Father Almida, although. .”

“God bless him,” Matamoros said, adding: “I’m not going to drink a toast alone.”

They smiled with another murmur. The Father lost patience.

“Go, go and find your glasses and sit with me, and toast with me, before we say our goodbyes. I don’t want any food, just a moment with you, to take our minds off the bad weather, and then I’ll go. The rain’s stopped; God knows when to give and when to take away. I won’t need a taxi.”

“Don’t say that, Father, don’t talk of leaving without trying dishes made by no one but us. For the first time in years we cooked because we wanted to, because we really felt like it, and that makes us happy. We’re glad to serve you, but it’s difficult to sit and have a drink with you. We’re not used to that. We just cook, Father, and await the sleep of the just.”

As they said this, they moved closer to the priest. The murmuring grew quieter, almost inaudible. The confession.

“But you can’t imagine how tired we are of all this, Father.”

“That’s why I’m telling you to sit down.”

“No, Father, don’t trouble yourself,” one said.

“After all, we’re used to being on our feet,” another said.

“We suffer from varicose veins, but what can we do?” The third raised her leg with difficulty and unhesitatingly hitched up her skirt to show the Father her calf and most of her thigh, both swollen up like bladders, the branching blue veins, thick and strangling, veins Tancredo already knew about.

“It’s tiring work,” another said. “Especially the Community Meals. If it were just meals for everyone who lives in the presbytery, fair enough. But the Community Meals are torture. No one shows us any pity, Father. We have to rush from here to there; there are chairs in the kitchen, but we have to walk back and forth constantly, keeping an eye on things. Setting out plates and filling them while the oil bubbles, and careful, the potatoes are burning, while the soup boils, and careful, the potatoes are turning to mush, we have to fly about the whole time, and that’s cooking nothing but potatoes, occasionally a bit of pork, who knows what would happen if we were frying cassava and plantain, and the whole time, not a day, not one Sunday set aside by God, not a single morning’s rest, because God’s children eat every day and we have to prepare their food, it’s that simple; if we don’t cook, they die. Who knows how many miles we run in a single day?”

The youngest of the Lilias picked up the thread.

“And it’s not just varicose veins,” she said. “Doing battle with the coal stove, its plates old like us, they get messed up, they come loose, plates that stick out like barbs, sometimes we get burned.” And she showed her wrinkled arm, scarred across by a red blister.

It was the night of lamentations, Tancredo thought. A night he too had experienced, in his room, when the three Lilias had come in silently, each with a chair, sat themselves down opposite him and started to describe their tiredness, to show him their burns — couldn’t Tancredito speak to the Father and let him know they were ailing, in need of two or three strong girls to help out in the kitchen? They could not do everything on their own.

The wailing had worsened three years back, when the Community Meals had begun; penning the hunchback into any corner, they begged him to intercede with Almida on their behalf; they were dying, they said, sickening in the worst possible way, from fatigue and tedium both. With so many meals to prepare. Even if they were not special meals, just potato soup, creamed potatoes, fried potatoes, stuffed potatoes and mashed potatoes, potatoes in sauce, potatoes in a million and one guises, it was a lot of meals, a vast quantity, too many; they wished they were giants who could dole out potatoes to the whole world, but they were old women, small women, and running around every day is tiring; and besides, they had to take care of the Father’s exclusive meals, the sacristan’s, their own, also the cats’, and all at the same time, every day: either they really were old or from one minute to the next life had become tedious for them. That night Tancredo had paid no attention to their complaints, he’d barely heard them; he’d been astonished to see them seated on the three little chairs around his bed, the three of them wrapped in their black blankets, beneath the moonlight filtering through the window, their faces anxious, afraid, perhaps, of Tancredo himself. “We don’t want to believe,” they said, “that it’s Celeste Machado, God forgive us, who makes Father Almida forget about us.” “Why don’t you speak to him?” he asked. And they answered: “To the Reverend?” “Yes, to Father Almida.” “God bless us, we wouldn’t know how, that would be impossible. How could we complain to the person who provides our food and clothing? Maybe he should notice what’s wrong himself, but he has his duties too, he’s the spiritual leader of this parish, we know his work is unending, how could we ask him to take our needs into account? And yet, when he passes the kitchen and sees us and says hello, he should notice that we’ve been old for many years already, he should understand we’re no longer what we once were and realize that even one sturdy girl would be a help with the heaviest work, the washing-up, for example; we’re all arthritic, after the heat of the cookers we can’t put our hands into cold water, it hurts our fingers, look, we can hardly bend them; peeling potatoes is pure martyrdom, not because we’re lazy, but because we can’t stand the pain, it’s that simple.”

“I’m missing a finger,” one of the Lilias dared to say. She had said as much to Tancredo that night, and now repeated it to Matamoros. “It was my own fault. I was chopping onions and trying to remember a dream I’d had that morning. When I was having breakfast I could still remember it, and I felt happy because it was a happy dream, one of those ones that make you laugh to yourself like an idiot, and I wanted to laugh while I was chopping the onions, but I couldn’t remember the dream any more. . I just couldn’t; I think I’d dreamt someone had said two words inside my head, just two wise words I couldn’t remember, and trying to remember those two words made me cut off a finger all of a sudden, this one, Father.” And she held out one hand; the index finger was missing.

“Of course,” Matamoros said, “I cannot see it.”

“Don’t bother the Father about your finger,” another Lilia said.

“Yes,” the other said. “You already said it was your fault, so why go on about it?”

“My fault or the dream’s fault? I don’t know. I mentioned it so the Father understands that our invitation to eat is genuine. If we want to, it’s because we want to. For him, we’re not tired. For him, I wouldn’t mind losing another finger. I’m not just saying it. No one here wants him to leave.”

“Samaritan women, meditate on John, chapter 4, verses 7 to 30,” the priest said.

“That’s it, Father. You won’t regret it.”

The three Lilias made to leave the office. But all three, possessed and impelled by the same sense, paused unexpectedly in the doorway, putting their hands on their hips at the same time.

“Tancredito,” they said into the darkness, “keep the Father company. We’ll call you into the kitchen shortly.”

All that time they’d known the hunchback was there; all that time they’d guessed he was hidden in the courtyard.

With Tancredo in the office, Matamoros could raise the glass to his lips. Drinking without stopping, he served himself anew. He drank again, more steadily, then filled his glass once more. It seemed as if Tancredo was waiting for him to have a third drink, but Matamoros did not oblige.

“Nunc dimittis,” he said.

“Nihil obstat,” Tancredo responded.

There was a silence, then Sabina’s voice flooded in.

“You shouldn’t be a priest,” she said in disgust.

Advancing on Matamoros, she confronted him. There was a great curiosity, too, in her troubled face.

“Why not request dispensation?” she asked. And, eyeing the half-empty bottle, added: “You drink like a laborer. Have you forgotten where we are? Are you that drunk? Is this how you take advantage of Father Almida’s trust? I don’t mind you taking advantage of the Lilias. I just hope never to see you here again. I wouldn’t share a table with you. Tell the Lilias I won’t be eating, that I’ve gone where only God can find me. I’ll be waiting there until I die.”

“Or until God finds you,” Matamoros said, looking at neither of them.

Sabina left as she had arrived, elusive, blazing with rage. Not even glancing at Tancredo, she disappeared into the garden.

“No doubt she’s running off to the place where only God can find her,” Father Matamoros said. He stood up with the glass in his hand, and, as he drank, leaned out into the night.

“I’d better go,” he said.

“Never, Father.” The three Lilias had returned.

They took him delicately by the arm. It looked as though they were going to carry him.

“You’re coming to the kitchen,” they said, “as God meant you to.”

And they took him away. Resigned, he let himself be taken.

“Tancredito, bring the bottle,” he managed to plead, without turning his head. “Do me that one favor.”