The Discreet Hero

X

“This certainly is a surprise,” Father O’Donovan exclaimed when he saw Rigoberto come into the sacristy where the priest had just removed the chasuble he’d worn to celebrate eight o’clock Mass. “Fancy seeing you here, Ears. What a long time it’s been. I can’t believe it.”

He was tall and stout, a jovial bald man with kind eyes that sparkled behind tortoiseshell glasses. He seemed to take up all the space in the small room with its shabby, faded walls and chipped floor; daylight came in through a Theatine window hung with cobwebs.

They embraced with their old affection; they hadn’t seen each other for months, perhaps a year. In the Academy of La Recoleta, where they’d both been students from the first year of primary school to the fifth year of secondary school, they had been very good friends and for one year had even shared the same desk. Then, when both matriculated at the Universidad Católica to study law, they continued to see a good deal of each other. They joined Acción Católica, took the same courses, studied together. Until one fine day Pepín O’Donovan gave his friend Rigoberto the surprise of his life.

“Don’t tell me that your showing up here is because you’ve converted and have come to make your confession, Ears,” Father O’Donovan said mockingly, leading him by the arm to his small office in the church. He offered him a seat. There were bookcases, books, pamphlets, a crucifix, a photograph of the pope, and another of Pepín’s parents. A piece of the ceiling had fallen, revealing the mix of ditch reeds and clay with which it had been constructed. Was this church a colonial relic? It was in ruins and could collapse at any moment.

“I’ve come to see you because I need your help, it’s that simple.” Rigoberto dropped into the chair that creaked under his weight and exhaled, overwhelmed. Pepín was the only person who still called him by his school nickname: Ears. In his adolescence, it had made him self-conscious. Not now.

That morning in the cafeteria at the Universidad Católica, at the beginning of the second year of law school, when Pepín O’Donovan suddenly announced — as casually as if he were discussing a class in civil law and principles, or the last Clásico match between Alianza and the U — that they wouldn’t see each other for a while because he was leaving that night for Santiago de Chile to begin his novitiate, Rigoberto thought his friend was joking. “Do you mean you’re going to become a priest? Don’t kid around, man.” True, both had joined Acción Católica, but Pepín had never even hinted to Ears that he’d heard the call. What he was telling him now was no joke but a deeply considered decision made in solitude and silence, over many years. Rigoberto learned afterward that Pepín had faced many problems with his parents, that his family tried everything to dissuade him from entering the seminary.

“Yes, man, of course,” said Father O’Donovan. “If I can give you a hand, I’d be happy to, Rigoberto, that goes without saying.”

Pepín had never been one of those overly pious boys who took communion at every Mass at school, the ones the priests flattered and tried to convince that they had a vocation, that God had chosen them for the priesthood. He was the most normal boy in the world, athletic, fond of parties, mischievous, and for a time he’d even had a girlfriend, Julieta Mayer, a freckled volleyball player who studied at the Academy of Santa Úrsula. He fulfilled his obligations by going to Mass, like all the students at La Recoleta, and he’d been a fairly diligent member of Acción Católica, but as far as Rigoberto could recall, no more devout than the others and not especially interested in the talks dedicated to religious vocations. He didn’t even attend the retreats the priests organized from time to time at a country house they had in Chosica. No, it wasn’t a joke but an irreversible decision. He’d felt the call from the time he was a boy and had thought it over carefully, not telling anyone before deciding to take the big step. Now there was no going back. That same night he left for Chile. The next time they saw each other, it was many years later: Pepín was already Father O’Donovan, dressed as a priest, wearing eyeglasses, prematurely bald, and beginning his career as a die-hard cyclist. He was still a simple, amiable person, so that every time they saw each other it had become a kind of running joke for Rigoberto to tell him: “Good to know you haven’t changed, Pepín, just as well that even though you are one, you don’t seem like a priest.” To which Pepín always responded by teasing Rigoberto with the nickname of his youth: “And those donkey’s accessories of yours are still growing, Ears. Why is that, I wonder?”

“It’s not about me,” Rigoberto explained, “it’s Fonchito. Lucrecia and I don’t know what to do with the boy, Pepín. He’s turning our hair gray, honestly.”

They’d continued to see each other with some frequency. Father O’Donovan married Rigoberto and Eloísa, his first wife, Fonchito’s late mother, and after he was widowed, Father O’Donovan also married him and Lucrecia in a small ceremony with only a handful of friends attending. He’d baptized Fonchito and occasionally visited the Barranco apartment, where he was received with great affection, to have lunch and listen to music. Rigoberto had helped him a few times with donations (his own and from the insurance company) for charitable work in the parish. When they saw each other, they tended to speak for the most part about music, which Pepín O’Donovan had always liked a great deal. From time to time Rigoberto and Lucrecia invited him to the concerts sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Lima in the Santa Úrsula auditorium.

“Don’t worry, man, it’s probably nothing,” said Father O’Donovan. “At the age of fifteen, all the young people in the world have and make problems. And if they don’t, they’re fools. It’s normal.”

“The normal thing would be for him to get drunk, go out with easy girls, smoke some marijuana, do all the stupid things you and I did when we were teenagers,” said Rigoberto, in distress. “No, old man, that isn’t the route Fonchito’s taken. Instead, well, I know you’re going to laugh, but for some time now he’s gotten it into his head that he sees the devil.”

Father O’Donovan tried to control himself but couldn’t and burst into resounding laughter.

“I’m not laughing at Fonchito but at you,” he explained between gales of laughter. “At you, Ears, talking about the devil. That word sounds very strange in your mouth. It sounds dissonant.”

“I don’t know if he’s the devil, I never told you he is, I never used that word, I don’t know why you do, Papa,” Fonchito protested in a voice so faint that his father, in order not to miss a word he was saying, had to bend forward and bring his head close to the boy’s.

“All right, forgive me, son,” he apologized. “Just tell me one thing. I’m speaking to you very seriously, Fonchito. Do you feel cold each time Edilberto Torres appears? As if he’d brought an icy gust?”

“What silly things you’re saying, Papa.” Fonchito opened his eyes very wide, not sure whether to laugh or remain serious. “Are you kidding me or what?”

“Does he appear to him as the devil appeared to the famous Father Urraca, in the shape of a naked woman?” Father O’Donovan started to laugh again. “I suppose you’ve read that story by Ricardo Palma, Ears, it’s one of his most amusing.”

“Okay, it’s okay,” Rigoberto apologized again. “You’re right, you never told me this Edilberto Torres was the devil. I beg your pardon, I know I shouldn’t joke about this. The thing about the cold comes from a novel by Thomas Mann, where the devil appears to the main character, a composer. Forget my question. It’s just that I don’t know what to call this person, son. Someone who appears to you and disappears, who materializes in the most unexpected places, can’t be flesh and blood like you and me. Isn’t that so? I swear I’m not making fun of you. I’m speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. If he isn’t the devil, then he must be an angel.”

“Of course you’re making fun of me, Papa, don’t you see?” Fonchito protested. “I didn’t say he’s the devil or an angel either. I think he’s a person like you and me, flesh and blood, of course, and very normal. If you like, we can end this conversation now and never talk again about Señor Edilberto Torres.”

“It’s not a game, it doesn’t seem to be one,” said Rigoberto very seriously. Father O’Donovan had stopped laughing and now was listening attentively. “The boy, though he doesn’t say so, is completely changed by this. He’s another person, Pepín. He always had a healthy appetite, he was never a fussy eater, and now he barely takes a mouthful. He’s stopped playing sports, his friends come by for him and he invents excuses. Lucrecia and I have to push him to go outside. He’s become taciturn, introverted, reticent, and he was always so sociable and talkative. He’s constantly withdrawn, as if a great worry were eating him up inside. I no longer recognize my son. We took him to a psychologist who did all kinds of tests. And the diagnosis was that nothing’s wrong, that he’s the most normal child in the world. I swear to you we don’t know what else to do, Pepín.”

“If I were to tell you the number of people who believe they see visions, Rigoberto, you’d be flabbergasted,” said Father O’Donovan, attempting to reassure him. “Generally they’re old women. It’s more unusual among children. They have bad thoughts more than anything else.”

“Couldn’t you talk to him, old man?” Rigoberto was in no mood for jokes. “Counsel him? I mean, I don’t know. It was Lucrecia’s idea, not mine. She thinks maybe with you he could be more open than he is with us.”

“The last time was at the Larcomar Cineplex, Papa.” Fonchito had lowered his eyes and hesitated when he spoke. “Friday night, when Chato Pezzuolo and I went to see the new James Bond. I was caught up in the movie, having a terrific time, and suddenly, suddenly…”

“Suddenly what?” urged Don Rigoberto.

“Suddenly I saw him, sitting next to me,” said Fonchito, his head lowered and breathing deeply. “It was him, no doubt about it. I swear, Papa, there he was. Señor Edilberto Torres. His eyes were shining, and then I saw tears running down his cheeks. It couldn’t have been the movie, Papa, nothing sad was on the screen, everything was fighting, kissing, adventures. I mean, he was crying over something else. And then, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it occurred to me that he was so sad because of me. I mean, that he was crying because of me.”

“Because of you?” Rigoberto spoke with difficulty. “Why would that man cry for you, Fonchito? What in you could he feel sorry about?”

“I don’t know, Papa, I’m just guessing. But otherwise, why do you think he’d cry, sitting there beside me?”

“And when the movie was over and the lights went on, was Edilberto Torres still in the seat next to yours?” Rigoberto asked, knowing perfectly well what the answer would be.

“No, Papa. He was gone. I don’t know exactly when he got up and left. I didn’t see.”

“All right, fine, of course,” said Father O’Donovan. “I’ll talk to him as long as Fonchito wants to talk to me. But don’t try to force him. Don’t even think about obliging him to come here. Nothing like that. Let him come willingly, if he feels like it. So the two of us can talk like a couple of friends, present it to him like that. Don’t take this too seriously, Rigoberto. I’ll bet it’s just some kid’s nonsense.”

“I didn’t, at first,” Rigoberto said. “Lucrecia and I thought that since he’s a boy with a lot of imagination, he was inventing the story to make himself important, to keep us hanging on his words.”

“But does this Edilberto Torres exist or is he an invention?” asked Father O’Donovan.

“That’s what I’d like to know, Pepín, that’s why I’ve come to see you. So far I haven’t been able to find out. One day I think he does exist and the next day I think he doesn’t. Sometimes I think the boy’s telling me the truth, and other times I think he’s playing with us, fooling us.”

Rigoberto had never understood why Father O’Donovan, instead of pursuing teaching and an intellectual career as a scholar and theologian within the Church — he was erudite and sensitive, loved ideas and the arts, and read a great deal — had stubbornly confined himself to pastoral work in a very modest parish in Bajo el Puente, where the residents were uneducated as a rule, a world in which his talent seemed wasted. Once he had dared to ask him about it. “Why didn’t you write or give lectures, Pepín? Why didn’t you teach at the university, for example?” If there was anyone among his acquaintances who seemed to have a clear intellectual vocation, a passion for ideas, it was Pepín.

“Because I’m needed more in my parish in Bajo el Puente.” Pepín O’Donovan only shrugged. “Pastors are needed; there are more than enough intellectuals, Ears. You’re mistaken if you think it’s difficult for me to do what I do. Parish work interests me a great deal, it plunges me headfirst into real life. In libraries, one sometimes becomes too isolated from the everyday world, from ordinary people. I don’t believe in your spaces of civilization that set you apart from others and turn you into an anchorite, but we’ve already discussed this.”

He didn’t seem like a priest because he never touched on religious subjects with his old schoolmate; he knew that Rigoberto had stopped believing when he was in the university, but being friends with an agnostic didn’t seem to discomfit him in the least. On the few occasions he had lunch in the house in Barranco, after getting up from the table, he and Rigoberto would usually go into the study and play a CD, generally something by Bach, whose organ music Pepín O’Donovan loved.

“I was convinced he was making up all those appearances,” Rigoberto explained. “But this psychologist who saw Fonchito, Dr. Augusta Delmira Céspedes, you’ve heard of her, haven’t you? It seems she’s very well known. She made me doubt again. She told me and Lucrecia in no uncertain terms that Fonchito wasn’t lying, that he was telling the truth. That Edilberto Torres exists. She left us very confused, as you can imagine.”

Rigoberto told Father O’Donovan that after going back and forth about it for a long time, he and Lucrecia had decided to find a specialized agency (“One of those agencies that jealous husbands hire to spy on their erring spouses?” the priest asked mockingly, and Rigoberto nodded: “Exactly”). A detective would follow Fonchito whenever he left the house, alone or with friends. The report from the agency—“which, by the way, cost me a fortune”—had been eloquent and contradictory: At no time had the boy had the slightest contact anywhere with older men, not at the movies, or at the Argüelles family’s party, or when he went to school or came home, or even in his fleeting visit to a discotheque in San Isidro with his friend Pezzuolo. And yet, in that discotheque, when Fonchito went to the bathroom to pee, he’d had an unexpected encounter: There was the aforementioned gentleman, washing his hands (of course there was nothing about this in the report from the agency).

“Hello, Fonchito,” said Edilberto Torres.

“At the discotheque?” asked Rigoberto.

“In the bathroom at the discotheque, Papa,” Fonchito specified. He spoke with confidence, but it seemed as if his tongue were heavy and each word required enormous effort.

“Are you having a good time here with your friend Pezzuolo?” The gentleman seemed disconsolate. He’d washed his hands and now was drying them with a paper towel he’d just pulled from the small box on the wall. He wore his usual purple sweater but his suit was blue, not gray.

“Why are you crying, señor?” Fonchito dared to ask him.

“Edilberto Torres was crying there too, in the bathroom of a discotheque?” Rigoberto gave a start. “Like on the day you saw him sitting beside you at the Larcomar Cineplex?”

“At the movies I saw him in the dark and I might have been wrong,” Fonchito responded with no hesitation. “Not in the bathroom at the discotheque. There was enough light. He was crying. Tears came out of his eyes and ran down his face. It was … it was … I don’t know how to say it, Papa, it was sad, really sad, I swear. Seeing him cry in silence, not saying anything, looking at me with so much sorrow. He seemed to be suffering so much and it made me feel bad.”

“Excuse me, but I have to go, señor,” Fonchito stammered. “My friend Chato Pezzuolo is waiting for me outside. I don’t know how to tell you how it makes me feel to see you like this, señor.”

“In other words, as you can see, Pepín, this isn’t a joke,” Rigoberto concluded. “Is he telling us the whole story? Is he delirious? Is he hallucinating? Except for this, the boy seems very normal when he talks about other things. This month his grades in school have been just as good as usual. Lucrecia and I don’t know what to think anymore. Is he losing his mind? Is this an adolescent crisis of nerves, something that will pass? Does he just want to frighten us and have us worry about him? That’s why I’ve come, old man, that’s why we thought of you. I’d be so grateful if you could help us. It was Lucrecia’s idea, as I said: ‘Father O’Donovan might be the solution.’ She’s a believer, as you know.”

“Yes, naturally, of course I will, Rigoberto,” his friend reassured him again. “As long as he agrees to talk to me. That’s my only condition. I can see him at your house, or he can come here to the church. Or I can meet him somewhere else. Any day this week. I realize now that this is very important to both of you. I promise to do everything I can. The only thing, really, is that you not force him. Suggest it to him and let him decide whether he wants to talk to me.”

“If you get me out of this, I’ll even convert, Pepín.”

“Not on your life,” said Father O’Donovan, making the sign of vade retro. “We don’t want sinners as refined as you in the Church, Ears.”

They didn’t know how to bring up the subject with Fonchito. It was Lucrecia who had the courage to speak to him. The boy was somewhat unnerved at first and took it as a joke. “But what do you mean, Stepmother, isn’t my papa an agnostic? Was it his idea for me to talk to a priest? Does he want me to confess?” She explained that Father O’Donovan was a very experienced man and a very wise person whether he was a clergyman or not. “And if he persuades me to enter a seminary and become a priest, what will you and my papa say then?” the boy continued to joke.

“Absolutely not, Fonchito, don’t say that even to be funny. You, a priest? God save us!”

The boy agreed, as he’d agreed to see Dr. Delmira Céspedes, and said he preferred to go to the church in Bajo el Puente. Rigoberto drove him in his car. He dropped him off and went to pick him up a couple of hours later.

“He’s a very nice guy, your friend,” was all Fonchito would say.

“In other words, the conversation was worthwhile?” Rigoberto explored the terrain.

“It was very good, Papa. That was a great idea. I learned a lot of things talking to Father O’Donovan. He doesn’t seem like a priest, he doesn’t give advice, he listens. You were right.”

But he refused to say any more either to him or to his stepmother in spite of their requests. He limited himself to generalities, like the smell of cat urine that filled the church (“Didn’t you notice, Papa?”) even though the priest assured him he didn’t have and had never had a cat and, in fact, saw mice in the sacristy from time to time.

Rigoberto soon deduced that something strange, perhaps something serious, had occurred during the couple of hours that Pepín and Fonchito talked. Otherwise, why had Father O’Donovan been avoiding him for the past four days, making up all kinds of excuses, as if he were afraid to meet with him and tell him about his conversation with the boy?

“Are you looking for reasons not to tell me how your conversation with Fonchito went?” He confronted him on the fifth day, when the priest deigned to answer the telephone.

There was a silence of several seconds on the phone, and finally Rigoberto heard the priest say something that left him stupefied.

“Yes, Rigoberto. The truth is, I am. I’ve been avoiding you. What I have to tell you is something you’re not expecting,” Father O’Donovan said mysteriously. “But since it can’t be helped, let’s talk about it. I’ll come to your house for lunch on Saturday or Sunday. Which day is better for you?”

“Saturday, Fonchito usually has lunch that day at his friend Pezzuolo’s house,” said Rigoberto. “What you’ve said will keep me awake until Saturday, Pepín. And it’ll be even worse for Lucrecia.”

“That’s how I’ve been since you had the bright idea of having me talk to your son,” the priest said drily. “Until Saturday then, Ears.”

Father O’Donovan must have been the only cleric who traveled through greater Lima not by bus or jitney but on a bicycle. He said it was his only exercise, but he did it so regularly that it kept him in excellent physical condition. Besides, he liked to pedal. He would think as he rode, preparing his sermons, composing letters, scheduling the day’s tasks. True, he had to be constantly on the alert, especially at intersections and at the traffic lights that no one in this city respected, and where motorists drove as if trying to knock down pedestrians and cyclists instead of bringing their vehicle safely home. Even so, he’d been lucky: In the more than twenty years that he’d been traveling all over the city on two wheels, he’d been hit only once, with no serious consequences, and only one bicycle had been stolen. An excellent record!

On Saturday, at about midday, Rigoberto and Lucrecia, who were watching the street from the terrace of the penthouse where they lived, saw Father O’Donovan pedaling furiously along the Paul Harris Seawalk in Barranco. They felt great relief. It had seemed so strange that the cleric put off telling them about his conversation with Fonchito for so long that they had even worried he’d invent a last-minute excuse to avoid coming. What could have been said in the conversation to make him so reluctant to tell them about it?

Justiniana went downstairs to tell the porter to allow Father O’Donovan to bring his bicycle into the building to keep it safe from thieves, and rode up with him in the elevator. Pepín embraced Rigoberto, kissed Lucrecia on the cheek, and asked permission to go to the bathroom to wash his hands and face because he was sweaty.

“How long did it take you to cycle from Bajo el Puente?” asked Lucrecia.

“Just under half an hour,” he said. “With the traffic jams we have now in Lima, it’s faster to go on a bicycle than in a car.”

He asked for fruit juice as an aperitif and looked at both of them slowly, smiling.

“I know you must have been saying terrible things about me for not telling you what happened,” he said.

“Yes, Pepín, exactly, terrible, awful, dreadful things. You know how upset we are about this. You’re a sadist.”

“How was it?” Doña Lucrecia asked anxiously. “Did he talk to you honestly? Did he tell you everything? What’s your opinion?”

Father O’Donovan, very serious now, took a deep breath. He murmured that the half hour of pedaling had tired him more than he cared to admit. And he was silent for a long time.

“Shall I tell you something?” He looked at them with an expression that was partly distressed, partly defiant. “The truth is I’m not at all comfortable about the conversation we’re about to have.”

“Neither am I, Father,” said Fonchito. “There’s no reason to have it. I know very well that my papa’s nerves are on edge because of me. If you like, you do whatever you have to do and give me a magazine to read, even if it’s a religious one. Then we’ll tell my papa and stepmother that we talked and you can make up something to reassure them. And that’ll be that.”

“Well, well,” said Father O’Donovan. “The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, Fonchito. Do you know that at your age, in La Recoleta, your father was a great bamboozler?”

“Did you get to talk to him about that man?” asked Rigoberto, not hiding his anxiety. “Did he open up to you?”

“The truth is, I don’t know,” said Father O’Donovan. “This boy is like quicksilver, he always seemed to be slipping away from me. But don’t worry. I’m sure of one thing at least. He’s not crazy, he’s not delirious, and he’s not kidding you. I thought he was the healthiest, most centered child in the world. The psychologist who saw him told you the absolute truth: He has no mental problems at all, as far as I can judge. Of course, I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist—”

“But then this man’s appearances,” Lucrecia interrupted. “Did you find out anything certain? Does Edilberto Torres exist or not?”

“Though it might not be entirely accurate to say he’s normal.” Father O’Donovan corrected himself, avoiding the question. “Because the boy has something exceptional, something that differentiates him from the rest. I’m not referring only to his being intelligent. He’s that, certainly. I’m not exaggerating one bit, Rigoberto, and I’m not saying this just to please you. But besides that, the boy has in his mind, his spirit, something that draws one’s attention. A very special, very personal kind of sensibility we ordinary mortals don’t possess. Literally. As for the rest, I don’t know if this is a reason to be glad or frightened. And I don’t discount the possibility that he wanted to give me that impression and succeeded, as a consummate actor would. I really wasn’t sure whether I should come and tell you this. But I thought it was better if I did.”

“Can we get to the point, Pepín?” Don Rigoberto had become impatient. “Stop beating around the damn bush. I’ll speak frankly: Cut the bullshit, and let’s get to the meat of the problem. Speak clearly and please stop trying to save your own ass.”

“What awful language, Rigoberto,” said Lucrecia in reproof. “It’s just that we’re so terribly worried, Pepín. Forgive him. I think this is the first time I’ve heard your friend Ears swearing like a truck driver.”

“All right, I’m sorry, Pepín, but tell me once and for all, old man,” Rigoberto insisted. “Does the ubiquitous Edilberto Torres exist? Does he appear to him in movie theaters, in discotheque bathrooms, on school bleachers? Can all this nonsense be true?”

Father O’Donovan had begun to perspire again, copiously, and now it was not due to the bicycle, thought Rigoberto, but the stress of having to render a verdict on this subject. What in hell was it? What was going on?

“Let’s put it this way, Rigoberto,” said the priest, handling his words with extreme caution, as if they had thorns. “Fonchito believes he sees and talks to him. I think that’s incontrovertible. Well, I believe he believes it absolutely, so that he believes he isn’t lying to you when he says he’s seen and talked to him. Even though these appearances and disappearances seem, and are, absurd. Do you understand what I’m trying to say to you?”

Rigoberto and Lucrecia looked at each other and then at Father O’Donovan in silence. The priest now seemed as confused as they were. He’d become sad and clearly wasn’t happy with his answer either. But it was evident he had no other and couldn’t give a better explanation. He didn’t know how.

“I understand, of course I do, but what you’re telling me doesn’t mean anything, Pepín,” Rigoberto complained. “That Fonchito isn’t trying to deceive us was one of the hypotheses, naturally. That he might be deceiving himself through autosuggestion: Is that what you believe?”

“I know that what I’m telling you is a disappointment, that you were both hoping for something more definitive, more categorical,” Father O’Donovan continued. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be more concrete, Ears. I can’t. This is all I could make of it. That the boy isn’t lying. He believes he sees the man and perhaps … perhaps it’s possible he does. That he’s the only one who sees him and nobody else does is something I can’t get past. It’s simple conjecture. I repeat: I don’t exclude the possibility that your son is stringing me along. In other words, that he’s more astute and skilled than I am. Maybe he takes after you, Ears. Do you remember at La Recoleta when Father Lagnier called you a mythomaniac?”

“But, then, what you’ve learned is not at all clear but very obscure, Pepín,” Rigoberto murmured.

“Is it a question of visions? Or hallucinations?” Lucrecia attempted to make things more explicit.

“You can call it that, but not if you associate those words with mental unbalance or disease,” the priest declared. “My impression is that Fonchito has total control of his mind and emotions. He’s a well-balanced boy and distinguishes clearly between the real and the imaginary. I can definitely assure you of that, I’d bet my life on his sanity. In other words, this isn’t something that can be resolved by a psychiatrist.”

“I assume you’re not talking about miracles,” said Rigoberto, irritated and mocking. “Because if Fonchito is the only person who sees Edilberto Torres and speaks to him, you’re talking about miraculous powers. Have we fallen so low, Pepín?”

“Of course I’m not talking about miracles, Ears, and neither is Fonchito,” said the priest, now irritated as well. “I’m simply talking about something I don’t know what to call. The child is having a very special experience. I won’t say a religious experience because you don’t know and don’t want to know what that is, but let’s compromise and use the word ‘spiritual.’ Something to do with sensitivity, with extreme emotion. Something that only very indirectly has to do with the material, rational world we move through. For him, Edilberto Torres symbolizes all human suffering. I know you don’t understand me. That’s why I was so afraid to come and tell you about my talk with Fonchito.”

“A spiritual experience?” Doña Lucrecia repeated. “What does that mean exactly? Can you explain, Pepín?”

“It means that the devil appears to him, that his name is Edilberto Torres, and that as it turns out, he’s Peruvian,” summarized a sarcastic and angry Rigoberto. “Basically that’s what you’re telling us, Pepín, in the inane prattle of a miracle-faking priest.”

“Lunch is served,” said Justiniana, just in time, from the doorway. “You can come to the table whenever you like.”

“At first it didn’t bother me, it only surprised me,” said Fonchito. “But now it does. Though ‘bother’ isn’t the right word, Father. It disturbs me, rather, makes me feel bad, makes me sad. Ever since I saw him cry, you know? The first few times he didn’t cry, he only wanted to talk. And though he doesn’t tell me why he’s crying, I think he’s crying for all the bad things that happen. And for me, too. That’s what hurts me the most.”

There was a long silence, and finally Father O’Donovan said the prawns were delicious and he could tell they came from the Majes River. Should he congratulate Lucrecia or Justiniana for this delicacy?

“Neither one, but the cook,” replied Lucrecia. “Her name’s Navidad and she’s from Arequipa, of course.”

“When was the last time you saw this gentleman?” asked the priest, who’d lost the confident, secure air he’d had until now and seemed somewhat nervous. He asked the question with great diffidence.

“Yesterday, crossing the Puente de los Suspiros, in Barranco, Father,” Fonchito answered immediately. “I was walking across the bridge and there were maybe three other people. And suddenly there he was, sitting on the railing.”

“Crying, as usual?” asked Father O’Donovan.

“I don’t know, I saw him for just a moment as I walked past. I didn’t stop, I kept walking, walking faster,” the boy explained, and now he seemed frightened. “I don’t know if he was crying. But his face looked really sad. I don’t know how to say it, Father. I swear to you I’ve never seen anyone as sad as Señor Torres. It’s contagious, I’m upset for a long time afterward, full of sorrow, and I don’t know what to do. I’d like to know why he’s crying. I’d like to know what he wants me to do. Sometimes I tell myself he’s crying for all the people who suffer. For the sick, the blind, for those who beg in the streets. Well, I don’t know, lots of things go through my head when I see him. But I don’t know how to explain them, Father.”

“You explain them very well, Fonchito,” Father O’Donovan said. “Don’t worry about that.”

“But then, what should we do?” asked Lucrecia.

“Advise us, Pepín,” Rigoberto added. “I’m completely paralyzed. If it’s as you say, then the boy has a kind of gift, a hypersensibility, and sees what no one else sees. It’s that, isn’t it? Should I talk to him about it? Should I say nothing? It worries me, it frightens me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Love him and leave him in peace,” said Father O’Donovan. “What’s certain is that this individual, whether or not he exists, is no pervert and doesn’t wish to hurt your son in the slightest. Whether or not he exists, he has more to do with Fonchito’s soul, well, with his spirit, if you prefer, than with his body.”

“Something mystical?” Lucrecia interjected. “Could that be it? But Fonchito was never very religious. Just the opposite, I’d say.”

“I’d like to be more precise, but I can’t,” Father O’Donovan confessed again; he looked defeated. “Something’s happening to the boy that has no rational explanation. We don’t know everything that’s in us, Ears. Human beings, each of us, are chasms filled with shadows. Some men, some women, are more intensely sensitive than others, they feel and perceive things that the rest of us don’t. Could this be purely a product of his imagination? Yes, perhaps. But it could also be something else I don’t dare give a name to, Rigoberto. Your son is experiencing this so powerfully, so authentically, that I resist thinking it’s purely imaginary. And I don’t want to and won’t say more than that.”

He fell silent and sat looking at the plate of corvina and rice with a kind of hybrid feeling that was both stupefaction and tenderness. Lucrecia and Rigoberto had not tasted a mouthful.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been much help to you,” the priest added sadly. “Instead of helping you out of this tangled situation, I’ve become entangled in it too.”

He was silent for a long time and looked at them both with concern.

“I’m not exaggerating if I tell you that this is the first time in my life I’ve confronted something I wasn’t prepared for,” he murmured very seriously. “Something that, for me, has no rational explanation. I already told you I don’t discount the possibility that the boy is exceptionally good at deception and has made me swallow a huge fabrication. It’s not impossible. I’ve thought about that a great deal. But no, I don’t believe it. I think he’s very sincere.”

“You’re not going to leave us very reassured knowing my son has daily communication with the beyond,” said Rigoberto with a shrug, “and that Fonchito is a bit like the little shepherdess of Lourdes. She was a shepherdess, wasn’t she?”

“You’re going to laugh, the two of you are going to laugh,” said Father O’Donovan, toying with his fork and not touching the corvina. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about the boy for a moment. Of all the people I’ve known in my life, and there are many, I believe that Fonchito is closest to what we believers call a pure being. And not only because of how beautiful he is.”

“Now the priest is showing, Pepín.” Rigoberto was indignant. “Are you suggesting my son might be an angel?”

“An angel without wings in any case,” Lucrecia said with a laugh, openly happy now, her eyes burning with mischief.

“I’ll say it and repeat it even though it makes you both laugh,” declared Father O’Donovan, laughing as well. “Yes, Ears, yes, Lucrecia, I mean it literally. And even though it amuses you. A little angel, why not?”