Good Offices

III

“Those cats are playing tricks on us; there are six of them, all from the same family; they used to keep to themselves, but lately they’ve started bothering us, sneaky, mischievous, obstinate, villainous creatures; there’s one, especially, who pees where he shouldn’t, shreds the pillows, he’s the very devil.”

The three Lilias were talking about cats while showing Mata-moros around the kitchen: apart from the wedge-shaped pantry and the two refrigerators, there were four insufficient electric cookers, which had to be backed up by a stout, ancient coal stove in one corner: its wrought-iron doors concealed a cavernous oven; its vortex radiated a flickering red atmosphere that was violent rather than warm, a dangerous, menacing fire. Next to this stove the long, rustic table was set under a little window that looked onto the courtyard. In the reddish glow, on the sideboard where pots and pans were hung, in tucked-away nooks, the cats lay curled, grave and furry, watchful, while the Lilias and Matamoros stared at them.

“You can’t tell which is the papa and which is the son, but one of them has turned treacherous, and we’ve found him out. It’s that one.”

The Lilias were pointing at the same undaunted cat, identical to the rest.

“Are you sure?”

“You can see it in his eyes,” they said. The three of them advanced judgementally on the cat. “But this cat’s not going to bother us today, are you?” they asked it, wagging threatening fingers, making all sorts of gestures, apparently affectionate, in fact deadly warnings. Then they seemed to forget the cat. Now they were pointing to the table, on which sat a jug of freesias. “Look, Father, for you, a bit of foolishness.”

Like strategists directing a battle over unfolded maps, the three Lilias described the dishes, the sweet and the sour, each subtlety and surprise; it was their methodical way of making sense of them: “Follow that with the little bits of orange, Father, to cleanse the palate; munch a slice of apple between cheeses; do try the fish patties, the croissants, the heart-shaped pastries, or that salad with beef and ham in it; look what lovely sausages, the sauce is done to a turn, to a turn, and what’s that little rabbit doing there? Waiting for you, Father, and for you, Tancredito; come closer because a meal starts with the eyes; whatever takes your fancy is right here, you just have to reach out a hand and put it in your mouth; let us thank God.”

They sat down. “Thank you,” the three Lilias said. “Thank you,” Tancredo and the priest replied. As if those words had a magical effect, one of the six cats disappeared from its nook, but the Lilias did not take their eyes off it. “We can see you,” they said, “we’re watching you.” The cat, moving in the direction of the table, halted in the Lilias’ glare, seemed to change its mind and set off for a better destination: the darkness. Because the light in the kitchen did not reach everywhere. One side of every face consisted of shadows, possibilities. The cat vanished into the blackness, and that worried the Lilias. “We see you,” they said, “we’re watching you.”

But they did not see it, and that tormented them.

“He’s the thief,” they said, “he likes artichokes, would you believe? He’s driving us to despair, he’s asking for trouble, as they say; he gives cats a bad name. One day he swallowed the stuffed eggs we’d made for Father Almida, another day the dressed pork medallions. If we’re keeping track, we have to count that whole cheese from the coast that he ate all by himself, a month’s worth of bacon last March, as well as the fact that he makes our lives a misery, pees on the laundry, hides things, God knows this never happened to us with a cat before, and we’ve had lots and lots of cats. Benedicto, Calixto, Honorio were the first; they died, then came Aniceto and Seferino; then Simplicio, who lived alone, died, and was replaced by Inocencio, Tera, Bonifacio, and León, Santo, Beato, Félix, Agapito, Justo, Melquíades, Cayo, and Fabiano. Santo was poisoned, Beato and Agapito got run over by a car in the pouring rain, Hilario took their place, then Lucio and Evaristo, Clemente and Sisinio; we’ve really had lots of cats, Pío, Flamíneo, Triunfo, and Celedonio and a whole lot more names that miaowed, but we never keep female cats, or very few, two or three, they’re like some women and only bring suffering, yowling and blood.”

“You’re very well versed in the names of the Popes,” Matamoros said.

“Yes, Father. A way to show our love for the saints and Apostles and God’s holy representatives on earth is to give their names to our pets, those we most cherish, with whom we live, eat and wake up; we laugh and cry with them, because they listen, Father, and feel our suffering, they share it; that’s why there’s nothing sweeter than a little cat called Jesús, for instance, or Simón or Santiago or Pedro, there’s nothing like having the Apostles close by, even if they’re in the bodies and hearts of cats, but they’re God’s creatures when all’s said and done, are they not? Yet you have to suffer their feline ingratitude from time to time; the one we said is the devil worries us sick, leaves our souls in tatters.”

The Lilias scoured the darkness. The cat had very definitely disappeared. They wanted so much to go on talking, but the cat, its absent presence, was upsetting them. And they wanted to talk; how long was it since they had talked? And with a priest, a cantor, so respectful toward them, so attentive.

“Don’t worry too much,” the Father said. His eyes didn’t savor the innumerable treats that brightened the table; rather, they relished the bottles of red wine that accompanied them. Tancredo placed the bottle of brandy at one end of the sideboard, and the Father’s eyes followed every move, every detail. He seemed undecided between wine and brandy.

“And that ungrateful cat,” he asked, just to say something, so it wouldn’t be too obvious that his eyes were pursuing the brandy, “what’s he called?”

The three Lilias remained silent. At last, the youngest, flourishing a large piece of bread topped with avocado and prawns, dared to reply: “Almida, Father.”

And the others, completely serious, utterly sure of themselves, said: “Yes, Father. He’s called Almida. Like Reverend Juan Pablo Almida.”

Tancredo’s brief, spontaneous guffaw rang out. Neither the Father nor the Lilias took any notice.

“Who would believe it?” Reverend San José Matamoros said. “Almida, the most badly behaved cat of them all.”

“The one that does us the most harm.”

Again, Tancredo could not contain his laughter.

“What is it, Tancredito?” A Lilia confronted him. “Are we telling jokes?”

Matamoros poured wine into all the glasses.

“There’s wine for everyone,” he said. And raised his glass to propose a toast. “To Almida,” he said. “Not the cat — Reverend Juan Pablo Almida. It is thanks to him that this table is laid.”

He blessed the glasses and the three Lilias drank immediately, then came back for more.

It’s late, they’ve been held up — Tancredo was thinking about Almida and the sacristan. Nine o’clock and still not back. Sabina would be beneath the altar, he thought, until God found her, as she said, or as Matamoros said, and as soon as he heard the Volkswagen’s horn he would have to run and warn her, come out, Sabina, Machado’s back. Or possibly, disappointed in him, Sabina had gone to bed, plotting for tomorrow, her own accomplice. Anything was possible with Sabina. She might even appear again, utterly exasperated by Matamoros’s presence, and not just insult him but might even throw any one of the dishes in his face, or the bottles, or the cookers. After all, it was his stubborn presence that was frustrating her plans: San José Matamoros, the magnificent little Father who was serving more wine to left and right and revelling under the spell of the dishes the Lilias were recommending.

“What do you call that pudding over there?”

“It has no name, Father; everyone calls it something different.”

“And that little wing? It looks like a sparrow’s.”

“Almost, Father. They’re from tender little chicks; the meat falls off the bone, try them.”

“Is that pineapple?”

“Sugared oranges.”

“What a treat, these little strips of crackling on the rice.”

“We couldn’t fail to include a suckling pig.”

“And the wine, saintly women, the wine, by God.”

They drank again and Tancredo decided to join in. Although he had not eaten a thing, none of the Lilias thought of encouraging him to do so, as all their attention was focused on the Father, and on the cat too, the vanished cat, who, in a split second, like a lightning flash with phosphorescent eyes, appeared and disappeared, carrying off a drumstick. The three Lilias leapt up from their seats at the same time, with the same shriek.

“There he goes, I saw him, I saw him,” they said. “Oh, diabolical Almida! Why didn’t you catch him? You were nearest.”

They talked among themselves as if weeping and fluttered about out of sight, in despair, at the far end of the kitchen.

“This time he took a drumstick.”

“The sly devil.”

“And from right under the Father’s nose! The shame of it.”

“Don’t worry about the cat,” Matamoros said. “He’ll be amusing himself with his chicken.”

“How can we not worry? We’re just not quick enough,” they wailed. “We’re not as nimble as we used to be. It’s impossible to catch a cat at our age, and Almida, the rascal, is the worst of the lot: he only lets us touch him to stroke him.”

“Forget about him.”

“And he stole a piece of chicken.”

“Don’t worry about the chicken.”

The three Lilias returned to the table, out of breath. They seized their respective glasses, which Matamoros had topped up again.

“Almida will go on stealing,” they said, “and not out of hunger, but to provoke us; after the drumstick, it’ll be the wings, and then the rabbit. Father, you’d better hurry or Almida will beat you to it, and goodbye little rabbit, the only one there is, Father, the icing on the cake, that worthy little rabbit.”

“I’d rather we talked about the cat, not Reverend Almida.” Matamoros’s voice was solemn.

“At this hour, one forgets oneself,” they said. They licked their lips, stained red by wine. “So much wine in such a short time.” They were amazed. “Like holy water. But we should change the thief’s name. What shall we call him?”

“Nobody,” Matamoros said. “Nobody is the very origin of names.” And for the first time, he burst out laughing, at his ease, while the Lilias drank.

“They’re drunk,” Tancredo said to himself, unable to believe it, “drunk.” During the time he spent imagining Sabina beneath the altar, the three Lilias had drunk enough to become inebriated. He really did hear double meanings in their allusions to the cat and to Father Almida. Reverend San José, on the other hand, seemed extremely lucid now and urged them on, comforted them, but it was useless, because the thieving cat was troubling the Lilias, smashing their little happiness to bits, causing them to withdraw, sorrowfully watchful.

“If it weren’t for that cat, we’d be happy,” one of them said.

It sounded as if she had cried out that they would be happy without Almida.

A sickly smile of unearthly pleasure, of the joy known only to drunkards, lit up Matamoros’s face. He began to speak to the Lilias, to fill their ears with secrets, to question them, to reply himself, to persuade and let himself be persuaded, tasting an occasional mouthful, praising it to the skies. His conversation amazed the Lilias, exalted them utterly, and there was no shortage of toasts, clashing glasses now, sprinkling wine over the fruit.

And then it went dark. The light went out. But they were slow to realize, not so much because the coal stove was still casting its reddish glow as because of the Father’s unexpected singing: the song and the darkness both were unexpected. Not even Tancredo paid attention to the absence of light. For some time he had been absorbed in Matamoros’s words, above all the most recent ones, when he was explaining that he had always wanted to sing, to be a singer from dawn to dawn, from dusk to dusk, from east to west and north to south, so he said, to set out with his song over his shoulder until the day he died. “I used to sing other songs,” he had just finished saying, and that was when the light cut out, just as the song appeared, ringing round the tomb of darkness and reverberating in their hearts. Reverend San José Matamoros del Palacio crooned a bolero, sang it halfway through, then a tango, also, whimsically, half of it, and a folk song and a cumbia dance tune and a ballad, and went back to another bolero about when the rain falls all around, “and in a far-off village I will stop my wandering and there I will die,” he was singing, the closed-in darkness serving as a background to his voice, repeating it, a strange echo of echoes.

“The light’s gone out,” came the frightened voice of one of the Lilias at last. Straightaway, they heard her move along one side of the table, carefully, without stumbling, and, illuminated, saw the candle flame painting her wrinkled, shining face red. Lighting another candle, she returned to the table. She sat down, fearful like the other Lilias, looking around her: not a cat in sight. All three of them sighed.

“Sing, Father,” they pleaded, like girls in a game. “Sing, whether there’s light or not.”

The priest’s voice had already intoxicated Tancredo. He dreamt along with the words of each song, the miseries and joys they related. He drank as if sleeping, but was actually swept along in a whirl of his own unfamiliar emotions. He was worried about the absence of light, which always frightened Sabina; if she was still beneath the altar, without the glow from the sacristy, it was possible that she would be terrified; she would scream, her screams might coincide with the arrival of Almida and the sacristan. Sabina had been scared of the dark since she was a little girl. Should he go and look for her? Sometimes power outages lasted all night. It was a joke: the electricity came back on with the light of dawn. Or perhaps he was looking for the perfect excuse to run into Sabina’s open arms? No, he told himself, he would not go on with Sabina, and found himself petrified: yes, he desired her; he always had, no two ways about it, protected and hallowed by love — love? Ah, he fantasized, if she were still waiting for him beneath the altar, yes, on the altar or underneath it, under and on all the altars in the world, Sabina, a rare vision in his life, since he’d been a boy, a distant little girl with whom he never held even a minute’s conversation in peace, always in despair at the possibility of being surprised by Almida or, even worse, the sacristan, the wicked godfather, with such a shadow hanging over them it was impossible to relax; always in hiding, they greeted each other only in passing, when chance brought them together in one of the church’s tucked-away corners, and they touched in the courtyard, in their leafy nests, of late in Sabina’s room, with terror for their blanket, like that time at the altar, that other time, when they were children at play, the altar to which they went, terrified to touch each other, even though no one ever thought to spy on them there. He desired Sabina because she intimidated him, unlike other earthier, less celestial women, the whores at the Meals; he had got used to the sight of them, eventually, to the point of ignoring them. Tancredo was surprised to find he was crossing himself, hidden in the half-light. He heard the voices of the Lilias, of Matamoros, and strained to understand them.

“There’s no happier pair than a boy and a dog,” he heard Matamoros say.

And, much later, pulling him out of his reverie, he heard the voice of a Lilia: “This cat acts like it’s out on the streets: open your mouth out there, and they’ll snatch your tongue.”

As she was saying this, the thieving cat had just appeared and disappeared, now carrying off a great strip of crackling. The Lilias watched the speedy getaway, but this time they did not move from their places. Instead of leaping up, they shook their heads and poured themselves more wine; they might even have smiled.

“One remembers forgotten songs,” Father Matamoros said. “I’m remembering one for absent friends. I learned it years ago from the poet Fernando Linero, who played the piano as if he were strumming the clouds.”

First he cleared his throat with a good swig; it was the end of the bottle, which one of the Lilias replaced as if by magic, as though not wanting to miss a moment of the song; setting the bottle at the priest’s right, she waited as San José burst into song like one more lonely traveler with no place to go, just him and the road, and as he sang his eyes roamed over Tancredo and the Lilias in the candles’ flickering gloom. What’s that cat doing on the table, so sure of itself? Tancredo fretted for a second — washing its whiskers, listening attentively to Matamoros’s song. Now other cats are sauntering across the table, there’s one, the epitome of elasticity, wisely settling on the rabbit, unhurriedly finishing off the golden throat, savoring it, spitting out little bones, and no one seems to notice, no one looks at it, the song goes on, the candles crackle as if in response, now the cats even stop eating, seek their lairs with astonishingly calm expressions, set out, reach a corner of the table and leap off one at a time, settle themselves back in their niches, watchful, their eyes fixed on Matamoros’s voice, “Dancing,” Tancredo said to himself, suddenly noticing the Lilias, “they’re dancing” — and so they were. Driven by a lilting waltz Matamoros was whispering, the adoring Lilias were weaving about the kitchen in a silent dance, sunk in a vertigo of the spirits, suspended in the air as if beneath a waterfall, their eyes half-closed, arms raised. Tancredo did not know how much time went by, but suddenly saw that the cats were emerging from their niches again, leaping one by one onto the edge of the table and from there into the darkness; they jumped inordinately slowly, springing lazily into the air, seeming to hang motionless aloft for two or three seconds before disappearing, and at the same time he saw the Lilias were no longer there, it was extraordinary, not a single Lilia seated or dancing around the table. He discovered that Matamoros had stopped singing, but could only shake off the spell of the last song by reaching up and linking his hands behind his head as if stretching. So he was alone with Matamoros; since when? The two of them in the most profound silence; no, Father Matamoros was talking about dreams, telling a dream, or was he singing it? What was Father Matamoros’s dream about? How long had he been talking about dreams? Seated at the table, they regarded one another attentively, each on the verge of a word; whose turn was it to speak? Without knowing how, Tancredo resumed the conversation, as if he really had been holding that non-existent conversation with the Father, or did it exist? Whatever the case, he said or carried on saying, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that he had dreamt, Father, that he had an Indian slave-girl, tied up with a chain like an animal, and that he took her for a walk through a sunlit meadow, the sun, the smell of the sunshine, “everything full of the most terrible lustfulness, Father, hanging over our heads, it was impossible not to take her in my arms, the soft moss offered itself, the leafy oak gave its shade, she stretched out wearily on the grass, it wrapped itself around her like a sheet, offering her rest, and, with the same chain I used for leading her about, she drew me toward her, as if I were the animal and not her, and she spread her legs and all her Hell burned me, Father.”

In the silence, one of the candles was dying. Here Matamoros interrupted.

“Why Hell?” he asked.

“Because of the heat.”

“The heat, yes, but why Hell?”

“The terrible lustfulness.”

“Love, the absence of love.”

“Love?”

“Like Joseph in Egypt, I too interpret dreams.”

Then Tancredo was not ashamed any more to hear himself telling the Father of his eternal animal fear. I’m telling him of my fear, I should ask him to hear my confession, he thought. “Father, let this be a confession,” he said. “God bless you, my child, of what do you accuse yourself?” “Of wanting to kill myself.” “In order not to kill someone else?” “In order not to kill someone else, Father.” “Speak freely. There exists the secrecy of the confessional, of sinners heard in confession; but in the end God and the dead hear us, see us, they are listening to us.” “I don’t care if the dead are listening,” Tancredo shrugged, his head spinning, “or God.” “God doesn’t care about that either,” Matamoros replied. He seemed to Tancredo to be dozing off; his eyes were closed; he was nodding. Then Tancredo saw him shudder and take a hurried drink. He was reborn.

“What is there to fear?” the priest asked. “There’s no sin in wishing to die in order not to kill. These are wearying times, human times. There are good times and bad, and at wearying times the best thing to do is rest.”

At last Tancredo was able to make his confession.

“No one can rest here,” he said. “We’re worked to death.”

To tell you the truth, he thought quickly, everyone here wants to kill Almida and his sacristan.

They were talking in whispers, taking frequent drinks, their heads bowed, resting on one hand, their other hands holding the glasses of brandy, while the Lilias remained out of sight. “I’m tired of all this, Father, not because I don’t want to do it, but because I can’t do it, my head’s bursting,” something like that. Tancredo shook his head. Was he drunk too? Most likely, because finally he talked about Sabina, his entire life with Sabina, and not just his life, he even revealed where she was at that time of night. “What time is it, Father?” “The time of the heart, my son.” Matamoros drank, attentive now. “Where is that furious girl,” he asked, “where’s she waiting for you?” “You’re not going to believe me, Father.” “Where, my son?” “At the altar, Father, or, more precisely, beneath the altar; it’s her way of telling me she wants me to go away with her; she says if I don’t go she’ll stay there until Almida comes and finds her.”

“Is she capable of that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me about her.”

“It’s Sabina’s eyes, her tongue wetting her lips when she speaks to me. She convinces me of her schemes, her plotting. It’s painful not to give in to what emanates from Sabina’s body, her face, all of her, so hopeful of our escape.”

Far off but palpable, like vibrations, they heard the voices of the three Lilias, their footsteps in the courtyard. What were they doing out there lost to the world, in the darkness of the immense courtyard, where the Father’s Volkswagen would soon be arriving? Tancredo had to hurry; he resumed his confession.

Quite simply, Sabina wanted to be with him, Father, and give free rein to pleasure. Pleasure he was incapable of ignoring; not long ago, while Sabina had been talking to him, he had imagined her naked, and Sabina seemed to discover the desire in his gaze, Father, almost to smell it, because for a few seconds she had stopped talking and even parted her legs slightly, as if making herself comfortable, and smiled imperceptibly, blushing all the more, in anticipation. To roll in each other’s arms, oblivious to the world, that was what drove Sabina. To get down to it, and not just beneath the altar, but all over the place, on every altar, wherever, it made no difference, Father. It was her tempestuous spirit locked inside her fragile blonde body, her reddened lips, those teeth that bit them until they bled; it was a different passion, not like resentment or bitterness, that made her suffer and hurt, it was desire, Father, and it all caused him pain, because he desired her too. One day she took him to the little room where Almida and the sacristan keep the money, on the first floor, Father, where no stranger would ever appear, and he allowed her to take his hands in hers and encourage him to follow her. In the library, behind a little door discreetly disguised by three unframed tapestries, they peeked at the boxes of money. There were six rectangular wooden chests, without padlocks, lined up across the secret little room. Around them, stacks of Missals, which the Church printed to give as gifts at First Communions, lined the walls right up to the ceiling. In a corner, piled any which way, lay seven or ten Bibles, dusty and disintegrating, huge, black and forgotten. The six boxes, in contrast, were clean and apparently polished. “Sabina knelt in front of them, Father. She lifted one of the lids: neat bundles of notes filled it up to the top. And she turned to look at me, her hands open on the bundles, messing them up. She ended up sitting on top of the boxes, her chest heaving, her tongue flicking over her lips, moistening them. I didn’t recognize her. She crossed her legs and leaned back on her hands. She was looking at me defiantly. ‘Let’s run away,’ she said. ‘Any one of these boxes would give us enough to live on. Just one box. I’m not talking about all of them. We’ve worked our whole lives for these people.’ She told me they were mean, that when she’d been a girl they’d never given her a toy, a birthday cake, a decent coat or a scarf, never mind an education, a profession, so that she could be independent. ‘What do they want to condemn us to?’ she asked, and then supplied the answer: ‘To grow old in their service.’ She told me her bastard of a godfather, that’s how she put it, had taken advantage of her when she was little, not once, but a hundred times. And she struggled not to cry. ‘Almida does the same to the factory girls who come to the Community Meals,’ she said. That provoked a blind rage in me, Father. The truth is I couldn’t refute Sabina’s assertions. That has always been my great torment: knowing that she tells the truth. Hearing what she said made me furious, and I wanted to reach out a hand, just my right hand, and wrap my fingers round Sabina’s delicate neck, squeeze until it snapped and never hear her again. Why, Father, why that desire of mine to take her life? It was a plan like a cold shudder I didn’t know I had in me, but I recognized it the next moment, was amazed by it for an instant, but just an instant, because then I was terrified, Father. Sabina was crying. In any case, with or without tears, it was easy to envisage where she was heading with her words, what her body was hinting at, stretched out beseechingly on top of the boxes, as if pleading that we play an unexpected game. ‘Just one box,’ she said again, ‘and we’ll run away.’” As desperate as she was lascivious, she had reached toward him, seized his hands, she was pulling him, her wet lips moving as if in silent prayer. And he saw her naked, suddenly he saw her naked, Father, on top of bundles and bundles of money. Money that didn’t belong to her. Money that had begun to pile up at an excessive rate, ever since Don Justiniano had shown up in the parish. And he had preferred not to wonder, never to wonder again, about where that money came from or why it accumulated in boxes, not being deposited in a bank, not being spent, at the very least, on the parish’s basic requirements. Well, it was no secret, Father, that the Community Meals were put together at minimum cost, that potato soup and rice with potatoes were the sole insipid ingredients, army mush reserved for the blind, the street children, the prostitutes. With difficulty he pulled away from the hands that were entrapping him, with difficulty, Father, he managed to escape the spell of the body snaking toward him, the burning face on the point of conquering him. And he heard her cry out behind him, Father. “Oh, you great brute,” she cried, “coward, a thousand times over,” and, in her frustration, Sabina launched herself at the Missals. With a blow she demolished a stack. She tripped over the pile of dusty Bibles. She kicked them. A cloud of dust flew up, sullying the air. “Swine,” she cried, “all of you are pigs here.”

Silence followed the confession.

“Let’s drink,” San José said at last, alight. “God has granted us that pleasure.”

He got to his feet, coming back to life, and drained his glass. Then he raised one hand as if blessing Tancredo.

“Nothing that has been said here has been proven,” he said. “We won’t lodge a complaint. Almida and Machado are without stain until God shows us they are not. God is Peace. His Peace proceeds from his presence. In the end, justice will be done, just as He predestines. We have faith in His designs, at least for now.”

“For now?” Tancredo said to himself. “What does he mean by ‘for now’?”

Complete silence surrounded them. There was no sign of the Lilias in the night. Sabina would still be beneath the altar.

“I’ll go to her.” The Father heaved a sigh. “To Sabina. I’ll take her a glass of wine.”

In fact, he already had a glass of wine in his hand. He seized the only burning candle in the other.

Tancredo remained frozen in his seat. He wanted to say something, to warn the Father, but it was impossible. He felt nauseous and, simultaneously, had the urge to laugh.

“I’ll go to her,” the Father repeated. “No one else must find her beneath the altar; what would her godfather, Celeste Machado, do? He’s a bad-tempered man, I know him all too well.” He rubbed his exhausted face. “What I’ll say to her, I do not know. I’ll sing her that poem by Saint Teresa of Avila.” Here Matamoros put his lips close to the hunchback’s ear and recited: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee, all things are passing, God never changeth, patient endurance attaineth to all things, who God possesseth in nothing is wanting, alone God sufficeth.”

When he finished reciting the poem, he began to sing it softly, like a faint peal of laughter, and so left the kitchen, a procession of one, carrying away the light.

Tancredo didn’t want to follow the Father, he could not or it did not occur to him; nothing disturbed him, nothing affrighted him, and he drank, God never changed, and he drank again, God alone sufficed. He imagined Sabina confronting Father Matamoros, oh Lord, she would throw the statue of Saint Gertrude in his face, at the very least she would scream, or cry, and he smiled, but what time was it? Midnight? Time, time, time is beyond belief, and Almida not back, where do the cats live, where were the Lilias, where was the world, here, there? In the darkness he scoured the kitchen, feeling his way from memory over every corner, every cooker, every chair; there were no cats, no Lilias, in what other universe would they settle their differences, their mutual vigilance? He remembered them spying on each other: the Lilias on the cats and the cats on the Lilias, a truly unusual enmity, he thought, how had I not noticed it? With that, as if he had invoked it, he heard a distant miaow, like an answer, a miaow that was not characteristic of idleness, of pleasure, but a chilling, blood-curdling miaow. The cats, he thought, the cats are alone, and he went out into the courtyard: the darkness stretched in every direction, the silence, the cold. Then, greeting him, a nascent moon slid from between the storm clouds and colored the corners gray. He heard a splash, the subtle shuddering of water, and in the distance he made out, as though being reborn in the darkness, the three Lilias around the laundry sink, leaning over it, their outstretched arms submerged, but still.

Each was drowning a cat in the freezing water.

From time to time the waters stirred, shuddering, appropriate for death; in the silence little waves rose up, multiplying like storms, because the arms emerged, each pair with their cat, a shadow with paws, panic-stricken, still struggling. The arms plunged them in again, time after time, so slowly, the shadows dripped, defeated, and again the arms and shadows emerged, the shadows not expressing their terror, the arms paralyzed by fatigue, the cats floppy, as if asleep, more dead than alive, but alive, because one of them shook its head, so they submerged them again, until finally hauling them out, stiff as hieroglyphs. “My dear departed,” one of the Lilias said, looking around. In the moonlight the other milk-white faces of the Lilias were seeking — what were they seeking? What were they questioning in every corner, in every otherworldly gesture moving things aside, in the wide courtyard gates that opened onto the street, in the garage, in the walls topped by broken bottles, the sharp glass cemented in to cut the hands of thieves, what were they seeking? Their arms let the shadows fall onto the stone surrounding the sink. Their gazes returned to the inner wall separating the courtyard from the garden, the oldest wall, the one made of adobe.

“How are you, Tancredito?” they asked.

They always knew where he was, and when, and why, without needing to see him.

Tancredo’s eyes held the most perfect curiosity, but also age-old mistrust; he had endured his own version of the ceremony at the immense stone sink, where once upon a time the Lilias had bathed him and Sabina, naked, as children.

“Why drown them?” he managed to ask, approaching the Lilias.

“How could we not drown them?” they replied, pointing to the six defeated shadows on the edge of the sink. “We warned them ages ago. One of you is asking for it, we told them; you don’t let us cook, you drive us to despair with your stealing, we fill your stomachs and you steal, we take away the food and you steal more, what are we to do, cats? Cats like you had never happened to us before, especially you, Almida.”

And they pointed at one of the shadows on the stone.

To Tancredo they seemed like strangers. Other women: three demented old ladies from five hundred years ago, alive, but reconstituted from scraps, cobwebs: talking corpses.

“Help us, Tancredito,” one of them pleaded with great solemnity. “Help us bury them. They were asking for it. Imagine, one of them ate Father San José’s little rabbit, the little rabbit no less. And what time was that, when we didn’t notice? At what time did he gobble up that little rabbit that was so good and that we spent so much time over and put so much love and patience into, because we knew it was meant for a saint?”

Another interrupted, whispering: “If he’d only eaten some crackling, big chickens and little ones, every now and again, like he’d been doing before, that would have been fine. But he dared to go for the rabbit, and that was too much. He behaved badly toward us, see. May God forgive us this execution, which is for the good of the parish.”

Agile for their years, the three Lilias chose a faraway corner next to the wall, armed themselves with shovels and began to dig. Fascinated, Tancredo observed their work, their desperation, their increasing slowness, their clumsy legs, the desolation in their words: “How they’ve made us suffer,” they said, and went back to the task in hand, until they weakened, hands on hips, gray heads directed toward the cats, “How shameful that business with the priest,” they said to them, “aren’t you sorry? We’ll never forgive ourselves that the little rabbit for him and him alone ended up in one of your stomachs, but which one? The innocent often pay for the guilty, oh wicked devils. Almida, it must have been Almida,” they said, “it’s this one, he looks alive, it’s this one, this one, he laughs, he’s laughing.”

They suddenly seemed afraid. And, between complaints, dedicated themselves to pummelling the shadowy Almida with their fists. The Lilias’ complaints were his own suffering made flesh, Tancredo thought: just like him, a whole lifetime of service with nothing on the horizon but a whole lifetime of service.

“Father Matamoros is waiting for you,” he said.

“No, not yet. We must finish with our hearts what began in our souls. We already made a start, you saw for yourself. You’d better go, Tancredito, and entertain him. Talk to him about you and Sabina, for example. Why not? His advice will be illuminating. The two of you can’t go on as you are, don’t you see? One of these days the world will come to an end, and what will we have suffered for?”

That they should call on him to reveal his relationship with Sabina felt like a threat. Tancredo did not know how to reply. Those women knew everything, even from before he was born. He tried to ascertain from the Lilias’ faces whether there was mockery or compassion in their words. He discovered nothing there. Unconcerned, they carried on talking as though running through a list, each going in different directions, stopping from time to time at the open grave, staring hard at the cats with wide-open eyes, as if memorizing them, then withdrawing again in one direction or the other, crossing themselves. It was obvious that Tancredo was disturbing them. They were moving impatiently round the courtyard, and now their impatience was not so much to do with burying the cats as with Tancredo leaving the courtyard. Why do I disturb them so? he wondered. Maybe they didn’t want to bury their cats, as they should, with him there. Then why ask for his help? Was it possible, he thought, that once he had left the courtyard the Lilias would slither up the walls like giant snakes, roaring with laughter? Would they take to the air, congratulating themselves on their crime? He gave up. Who was he to defend the cats? He went out through the little gate in silence.

Once in the middle of the garden he hesitated. Where to go? He did not want to go near the church or return to the courtyard with the Lilias. A painful fit of laughter doubled him over, choking him. “My God,” he said to himself, “how was it they decided to drown the cats? How did they manage to catch them when they all seemed drunk? How were they able they do it?”

He decided to return to the courtyard, groping his way. Taking a deep breath, he leaned over the gate; he could see two of the Lilias dripping in the moonlight: they passed through the night in front of him. The other Lilia, in the depths of the darkness, stomped again and again on the earth bordering the grave. She had still not disposed of her shovel. The others were returning to the sink. “There was a place in the world to bury them after all,” one of them said, just as she was passing Tancredo. She stopped suddenly, lit by the moon, stopped in profile, bony, her gray hair falling over her face, her eyes wide, discovering him.

“Tancredito.” She raised her voice and smiled as though smiling at a child. “You’re not needed here now. Off you go.”

And she carried on toward the sink, where the other Lilia was already washing her hands.

Then Tancredo caught sight of the ladies. He caught sight of them just as he turned and left the courtyard. He caught sight of the old ladies of the Neighborhood Civic Association flattened like bats against the walls surrounding the big stone sink. Pale but calm, too serene. How had he not seen them before? They were all there, every one, the same seven or nine devout parishioners, feeble, confused grandmothers who not long ago had said goodnight in the drizzle, at the doors of the church. Seven or nine ladies? At this hour? Celestial grandmothers, housewives, helping to kill cats in the parish church. The whole time Tancredo was in the courtyard they had been hiding, not moving — why? So as not to be seen taking part in such a crime against cats? Surely it went against their dignity. Now, thinking him far away, they came alive again, their sullen expressions came back to life, their murmuring voices revived, they said goodbye furtively, by the light of the moon, and still they carried their umbrellas, in case of rain. They said goodbye to the Lilias, clustered around them. They were whispering. Making suggestions. And they went through the wide courtyard gates in single file, silent as thieves, back to their houses.

As the last one left, Tancredo sought out the Lilias.

“What were the ladies of the Association doing here?” he asked.

The smallest Lilia approached Tancredo and confronted him, eye to eye. Her yellow face was frightening, cold. She shook her head.

“You ask things that you shouldn’t,” she said.

And with that, still some way off, but coming closer, the sound of the Volkswagen’s motor approaching the courtyard gates electrified the Lilias and Tancredo.

“Almida,” the women said.

“They’re coming,” Tancredo said.

He did not run to open up. He could not. He felt thrown into a panic. The world, that night, was too out of kilter. And he admitted to himself, on top of everything, in his heart of hearts, that he had hoped Almida and the sacristan would never come back, that they had disappeared forever, like so many in that country, that the Volkswagen, with no one inside, would end up on some out-of-town rubbish dump, and that Friday’s journalists would greet the day with the news: PARISH PRIEST AND SACRISTAN DISAPPEAR.

“Tancredito, you go to the office,” the Lilias told him. “You should find San José in there. We saw him leave the kitchen. Take care to explain things to him. Pretend the telephone has just rung and you’re going to answer it. It’s not unusual for us to get up to attend Father Almida, but it’s extremely unusual that you and Sabina should be kissing on the altar, isn’t it? Off you go now, don’t let them see you.”

At that moment the courtyard gates opened. The sacristan himself was pushing them, bent and stealthy, in order to let the Volkswagen through, its headlights illuminating strips of shadow.

“The Lilias know everything,” Tancredo repeated to himself. The Lilias had spied on them all that time, their whole lives. He and Sabina were never alone. And he fled to the office, as if the telephone really had just rung.

Picking up the receiver, utterly convinced of the telephone’s ringing, he heard no voice. Just a continuous buzz that diminished and slipped away into silence. He hung up. If Reverend Almida had come in at that moment, he would have said the telephone had rung. He would have had an excuse for being up, in the office. He would have said that he had been worried by the absence of the Father and the sacristan. He would have concealed the presence of the singing priest there in the church, with Sabina, at the altar. That was the worst, the most inexplicable thing, to explain the presence of Matamoros, drunk, at that hour. But no one came into the office. Tancredo lit a candle on top of the typewriter. He waited a good while, seated near the black writing-desk, contemplating the telephone attentively. How much time had passed? He did not hear Almida’s and the sacristan’s voices, or their footsteps going up the stairs. Maybe they had already gone up? It was as if two transparent ghosts had arrived instead of the flesh-and-blood Machado and Almida. Without noticing, Tancredo picked up the receiver again and went on studying it attentively. The candle burned low.

“Who was it, Tancredito?” he heard one of the Lilias ask. Who was it, who could it have been, if the telephone had not rung?

Surprised, he noticed one of the old women standing there, the smallest of the Lilias, a shovel still in her hand, sleeves rolled up, arms dirty.

“Nobody,” he managed to say.

“And Father San José, Tancredito? I don’t see him here. Did he go to the bathroom? Look after him, I beg you. We won’t be long. Maybe he left, we’d never forgive ourselves; what would a decent soul be doing out on the streets of Bogotá at this hour?”

“He’s in the church,” Tancredo said.

“In the church!”

“At the altar.”

“Praying, no doubt. What a tremendous priest!”

The Lilia made the sign of the cross.

“Tell him we won’t be long. But don’t, for God’s sake, tell him where we are or what we’re doing, for the love of God.”

“And Almida?”

“Forget Almida and Machado. They arrived back from Don Justiniano’s house with stomach aches. What did they eat? Who knows? What did they give them, what did they stuff them with? Who knows? Perhaps they poisoned them. We’ve already taken them some mint tea, so they’ll sleep like angels.” She went out, but came back in immediately and corrected herself: “So they’ll sleep, that’s all, so they’ll sleep like what they are.”

The smallest of the Lilias said nothing about the ladies of the Neighborhood Civic Association. She didn’t mention them, as if taking for granted that Tancredo had never caught sight of them. But what private talks took place between them, what secrets brought them together in the night, identical in age, in their rapture at San José and his sung Mass? Or were they perhaps a vision? Tancredo shrugged: it was not what mattered to him now.

It was possible that the sound of the Volkswagen, of Almida’s and the sacristan’s footsteps, had alerted Sabina. How was Sabina? Grabbing another candle, Tancredo made for the sacristy. Going through the church in the gloom, he could not make out the candle San José had taken. Perhaps it had gone out. Besides, he heard no voices. Tancredo raised his own candle to shed a wider light. No one at the altar. Sabina was not there. Then, he thought incredulously, Sabina was vanquished, asleep in her room, or had she gone off to hide somewhere else? In Tancredo’s room? And Matamoros? Nowhere to be seen. Tancredo still expected to find Sabina in a far-flung corner of the church, barely reached by the candlelight. It seemed impossible that she was not there. Maybe I want to find her? he thought. Suddenly, the arrival of Almida and the sacristan didn’t matter, just Sabina and her body, he thought — Sabina’s body and, through her flesh, a sort of freedom.

“Sabina?” he asked the church. His voice bounced back, multiplied, unanswered.

He went up to the altar, to make absolutely sure. He put his candle in a candlestick. Beneath the marble triangle, in the same spot where he had left Sabina, Reverend San José Matamoros was fast asleep. Tancredo lowered the candlelight over the sleeping man: the half-open mouth, a white string of spittle.

“Father,” he said.

He saw, beside Matamoros on the marble floor, the priest’s glasses, one lens cracked, one arm mended with sticking plaster. His trousers were frayed. One shoe was half off, the sock full of holes.

“Father,” he said again, but the priest did not wake up.

“Let him sleep, Tancredito.” Once more, the voice of a Lilia chilled him. There they were, their beatific faces leaning over the Father, their hands, this time, empty of cats, shovels, earth, their hands smelling of soap, clasped and held before them as though in prayer.

“Poor thing,” they said. “He’s fallen asleep. Look at the place he chose. The altar. Where nobody bothers anyone.”

Tancredo put the priest’s glasses back on his face, passed a hand through his rumpled hair.

“Father.”

Matamoros did not wake.

“Let him rest, Tancredito. You’ll have to sleep in the sacristy tonight. You should, out of Christian charity, give the Reverend your bed. We’ll take him there ourselves.”

Sleeping in the sacristy did not alarm Tancredo. On various occasions, due to one of Almida’s sisters coming to visit, he’d spent the night there: they had installed a mat for the purpose, a sort of mattress, tucked away among the plaster angels, and, hidden in the mountain of priestly vestments, a pillow and a blanket. It did alarm Tancredo that the Lilias should insist on carrying San José’s sleeping body themselves.

“Not you, Tancredito. You already helped us enough,” they said. Because Tancredo was getting ready to lift Matamoros himself; in fact, he had managed to get his hands under the priest’s armpits and was beginning to move him when he felt the bony, vicelike fingers of the Lilias on his arms. There was a short, undeclared battle for the priest’s body. With silent force, they obliged Tancredo to lay Matamoros back down on the floor.

“Alright,” Tancredo relented. “Very well.”

The Lilias’ faces were sweating.

“We’ll take him there ourselves,” they said again. And carefully, with the most exaggerated delicacy, the three raised the priest’s body.

“You light the way,” they told Tancredo, sarcastically. It seemed like an order. “At least give us light. Do something, for God’s sake.

We do everything around here, all by ourselves, for the love of God.”

For a fleeting moment, the Lilias’ faces looked demented, unfamiliar. One of them was drooling; the drool dampened her neck, smearing it white, like the froth that spews from the mouths of rabid dogs. The other had popping eyes, and the third displayed a peculiar twisted smile of unhinged happiness on her wide-open mouth, as if about to burst into silent laughter. He did not pay any more attention to them because as he moved out into the garden, beside the Lilias gratefully bearing San José’s body, he thought he spotted Sabina. From behind a willow tree, her round, white face peeped out for a moment, or seemed to peep out; it was not her, but the moon, its light uncovered, cloudless; the stars were shimmering in the sky. In the courtyard, where not a single vestige of cats remained, not a shadow, Father Matamoros went on his way in the Lilias’ arms, as though he were floating. He was a feather. His face lolled placidly against a skirt; at no time did he stretch or seem as if he might wake up. So still he seemed dead, yet he was snoring, and suddenly snored more and more loudly, out in the air, freely: he was snoring a ludicrous song, another song. Tancredo opened the door to his room, raised the candlestick to light the way and saw how the Lilias lay Matamoros down on the bed, his bed, undressed him with expert care and pulled the covers over him.

“Now go away, Tancredito,” they said. “We’re going to pray at his side.”

“He’s asleep.”

“But he’s snoring, and that’s bad.”

Tancredo still wanted to find Sabina. It was possible she might be waiting for him in this very room; anything was possible with Sabina. Had they surprised her by arriving unexpectedly with Matamoros? Was she hiding under the bed? Like a children’s game, he thought, a shameful game.

“The Father’s still asleep,” Tancredo said. He hesitated, nothing occurring to him that would provide a pretext for looking for Sabina under the bed. “How can he pray in his sleep?”

“He’s snoring, and that’s bad. If we pray, he’ll stop snoring.”

Tancredo knelt and looked under the bed, pulling out slippers he didn’t need.

“She’s not here,” a Lilia said to him. The others were smiling triumphantly and shaking their heads.

“Look for her somewhere else,” they said. “Look for her where no one, only God, can find her. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Another tremendous snore from the Father demanded their attention. Harassed, they turned back to him.

“Like a saint.” They began to pray, crossing themselves.

“See you in the morning,” they said to Tancredo.

In his corner of the sacristy, lying in total darkness, he expected to encounter Sabina, or that she would appear at his side, stretched out on the mattress with which they were already familiar. Naked beneath the blanket, he believed he was reading the silence, or that the silence was making itself decipherable because it foretold something. He remained alert, peering through the gloom, surrounded by plaster saints and angels, under the little table on which the telephone rested. Was the telephone going to ring, was that the omen? At last he knew that she was present and cried out to himself, “Sabina is finally here.” He had a premonition of her, but could not imagine becoming aware of her presence in such a way: she was singing, faintly, but singing, in the church, and she sang as though smiling; her song whimsically crossed the passage that joined the church to the sacristy, it established itself in the gloom, making everything shiver, knocking at the closed church doors, touching the altar, taking flight in the sacred echo of the great painted dome. “Not there, Sabina,” Tancredo whispered. The anguish in her voice turned into a laugh in the church, brief but multiplied a hundred times by the echo. “Come and stop me,” he heard her say, and the song, like a threat, grew louder. She was singing as though it were a game, a girlish game, but without abandoning the threat, parodying Christmas carols: “Oh come or I shall scream oh come now child divine oh come do not delay.” Tancredo sat up, but stayed where he was, hesitant in his nakedness. “Not there,” he repeated, “here.” Another laugh, bitter, biting, answered him. Then silence. “You come,” the voice resumed, urgently, not singing this time. And burst into song again, mockingly: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee, all things are passing, God never changeth” — and the voice soared — “patient endurance attaineth to all things.” The voice soared, the laughter soared — “Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting” — the voice soared transfigured by the laugh, a laugh that might be colossal, might wake the world — “alone God sufficeth.” Tancredo walked in fear and fascination. And went to her, to the place where she said only God could find her. There the heat, the terrifying closeness of the heat of nakedness, the desperation of the kisses he called forth, rushed at him, pulling him out of himself. “God,” he cried to himself, and knelt before her, and was thankful for the darkness, because he did not want to see her, or himself.

But he heard her.

“That blessed Father touched my bum,” she said, and repeated it in a murmur as if she were singing, happily.