“What’d she say?” Ben whispers.
“She said that the man who lived in the house died a long time ago and his family — I didn’t understand her exact words, but her gesture was pretty clear — his family left, went away, abandoned the village, something like that. People leave and they never come back.” He turns to Dona Amélia again. “E seu irmão?” he adds. And his brother?
“O seu irmão?” Dona Amélia suddenly seems more interested. “O seu irmão Rafael Miguel era o pai do anjo na igreja. O papá! O papá!” she emphasizes. His brother is the father of the angel in the church. The daddy! The daddy!
The angel in the church? Peter hasn’t a notion what she’s talking about, but at the moment he’s interested only in the family connection. He takes the photo album from Odo and opens it, prepared to throw away his anonymity.
“Batista Santos Castro — sim?” he says, pointing at a man in the first photo in the album, the group shot.
Dona Amélia seems astounded that he should have a photo of Batista in his possession. “Sim!” she says, her eyes opening wide. She grabs the album and devours the photo with her eyes. “Rafael!” she exclaims, pointing at another man. She points again. “E sua esposa, Maria.” Then her breath is cut short. “É ele! A criança dourada! Outra foto dele!” she cries. It’s him! The Golden Child! Another photo of him! She is pointing at a small child, a mottled speck of sepia peeking from behind his mother. Peter has never seen Dona Amélia so excited.
“Batista — meu…avô,” he confesses. He points to Ben, but he doesn’t know the Portuguese word for “great-grandfather”.
“A criança dourada!” Dona Amélia practically shouts. She couldn’t care less that Batista was his grandfather and his son’s great-grandfather. She takes hold of his sleeve and drags him along. They head for the church. The angel in the church, she said. As they go, her excitement is contagious. Other villagers, mainly women, join them. They arrive at the church as a gaggle, in a flurry of rapid Portuguese. Odo seems pleased with the commotion, adds to it by hooting happily.
“What’s happening?” Ben asks.
“I’m not sure,” replies Peter.
They enter and take a left down the aisle, away from the altar. Dona Amélia stops them at the shrine set up at the back of the church, on the north wall. In front of the shelf bookended by its vases of flowers stands a long three-tiered flower box filled with sand. The sand is studded with thin candles, some burning, most burned out. Any neatness in the arrangement is disturbed by the dozens and dozens of bits of paper that cover the shelf and the floor, some rolled up into scrolls, others neatly folded into squares. Peter never came close enough on his previous visits to see this scattered litter. A framed photo is fixed to the wall just above the middle of the shelf, a black-and-white head shot of a little boy. A handsome little boy. Staring straight out with a serious expression. His eyes are unusual, of such a pallor that, amidst the chiaroscuro of the photo, they match the white wall that is the background. The photo looks very old. A young child from a long time ago.
Dona Amélia opens the photo album. “É ele! É ele!” she repeats. She points to the child on the wall and to the child in the album. Peter looks and examines, tallying eyes with eyes, chin with chin, expression with expression. Yes, she’s right; they are one and the same. “Sim,” he says, nodding, bemused. Mutters of amazement come from the crowd. The album is taken from his hands and is passed around, everyone seeking personal confirmation. Dona Amélia is aglow with rapture — while keeping a sharp eye on the photo album.
After a few minutes she takes firm hold of it again. “Pronto, já chega! Tenho que ir buscar o Padre Eloi.” Okay, that’s enough. I must get Father Eloi. She rushes off.
Peter squeezes between people to get closer to the photo on the wall. The Golden Child. Again his memory is stirred. Some story his parents told. He searches his mind, but it is like the last leaves of autumn, blown away, dispersed. There is nothing he can seize, only the vague memory of a lost memory.
He suddenly wonders: Where’s Odo? He sees his son on the edge of the group of villagers and the ape at the other end of the church. He extricates himself and he and his son make their way over to Odo. Odo is looking up and grunting. Peter follows with his eyes. Odo is staring at the wooden crucifix looming above and behind the altar. He appears to want to climb onto the altar, exactly the sort of scene Peter has feared would happen in the church. Mercifully, at that moment, Dona Amélia bustles back in with Father Eloi and hurries towards them. Her excitement distracts Odo.
The priest invites them to adjourn to the vestry. He places a thick folder on a round table and indicates that they should sit. Peter has had only cordial relations with the man, without ever feeling that the priest was trying to draw him into the flock. He takes a seat, as does Ben. Odo sets himself on a window ledge, watching them. He is silhouetted by daylight and Peter cannot read his expression.
Father Eloi opens the folder and spreads quantities of papers across the table — documents handwritten and typed, and a great number of letters. “Bragança, Lisboa, Roma,” the priest says, pointing to some of the letterheads. The explanations come patiently, as Peter’s consultations of the dictionary are frequent. Dona Amélia at times gets emotional, with tears brimming in her eyes, then she smiles and laughs. The priest is more steady in his intensity. Ben stays as still and silent as a statue.
When they leave the church, they go straight to the café.
“Gosh, and I thought Portuguese village life would be dull,” Ben says, nursing his espresso. “What was that all about?”
Peter is unsettled. “Well, for starters, we’ve found the family home.”
“You’re kidding? Where is it?”
“It happens to be the house I’m already living in.”
“Really?”
“They had to put me in an empty one, and the house has been empty since our family left. They never sold it.”
“Still, there are other empty houses. What an amazing coincidence.”
“But listen — Father Eloi and Dona Amélia also told me a story.”
“Something about a little boy a long time ago, I got that.”
“Yes, it happened in 1904. The boy was five years old and he was Grandpa Batista’s nephew, your great-grandfather’s nephew. He was away from the village with his father — my great-uncle Rafael — who was helping out on a friend’s farm. And then the next moment the boy was miles away, by the side of a road, dead. The villagers say his injuries matched exactly the injuries of Christ on the Cross: broken wrists, broken ankles, a deep gash in his side, bruises and lacerations. The story spread that an angel had plucked him from the field to bring him up to God, but the angel dropped him by accident, which explains his injuries.”
“You say he was found by the side of a road?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds to me like he was run over.”
“As a matter of fact, two days later a car appeared in Tuizelo, the first ever in the whole region.”
“There you go.”
“Some villagers right away believed there was a link between the car and the boy’s death. It quickly became such a story in the region that it was all documented. But there was no proof. And how did the boy, who was next to his father one moment, end up in front of a car miles away the next?”
“There must be some explanation.”
“Well, they took it as an act of God. Whether it was by God’s direct hand or by means of this strange new transportation device, God was behind it. And there’s more to the story. O que é dourado deve ser substituído pelo que é dourado.”