The two men returned. “They must have taken a picture of every path and hut in the barrio.”
“More than the city council ever did,” the Negro said. “Perhaps after this they will realize we need more water taps.”
Father Rivas called Marta in from the yard and whispered instructions to her. Doctor Plarr tried to hear what he was saying, but he could hear nothing until the voices rose.
“No,” Marta said, “no, I will not leave you, Father.”
“Those are my orders.”
“Did you tell me I was your wife or your woman?”
“Of course you are my wife.”
“Oh yes, you say that, it’s easy to say that, yet you treat me like your woman. You say ‘Go away’ because you have finished with me. I know very well now I am only your woman. No priest would marry us. They all refused you. Even your friend, Father Antonio.”
“I have explained a dozen times to you a priest is not necessary for a marriage. A priest is only a witness. People marry each other. Our vow is all that counts. Our intention.”
“How can I tell what your intention was? Perhaps you just wanted a woman to sleep with. Perhaps I am your whore. You treat me like a whore when you tell me to go away and leave you.”
Father Rivas raised his hand as though he wanted to strike her and then he turned away.
“If I am not your sin, Father, why is it you will not say Mass for us? We are all in danger of death, Father. We need a Mass. And that poor woman in the barrio who died… Even the gringo in there… He needs your prayers too.”
The old schoolboy desire to mock at Leon came back to Doctor Plarr. “It’s a pity you ever left the Church,” he said. “You see-they are losing confidence in you.”
Father Rivas looked up at him with the inflamed eyes of a dog who defends a bone. “I never told you I had left the Church. How can I leave the Church? The Church is the world. The Church is this barrio, this room. There is only one way any of us can leave the Church and that is to die.” He made the gesture of a man who is tired of useless discussion. “Not even then, if what we sometimes believe is true.”
“She only asked you to pray. Have you forgotten how to pray? I certainly have. I can never get further than Hail Mary, and then I mix the words up with an English nursery rhyme, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary.’ “
Father Rivas said, “I never knew how to pray.”
“What are you saying, Father? He does not know what he is saying,” Marta told them, as though she were defending a child who had used some foul expression, picked up in the street.
“A prayer for the sick. A prayer for rain. Do you want those? Oh, I know all those by heart, but those are not prayers. Call them petitions if you want to give that mumbo-jumbo a name. You might just as well write them down in a letter and get your neighbours to sign it too and stick it in a post box addressed to the Lord Almighty. Nobody will ever deliver your letter. Nobody will ever read it. Oh, of course, now and then there may be a coincidence. For once a doctor will give the right medicine and a child recovers. Or a storm comes when you want it. Or the wind changes.”
“All the same,” Aquino told them from the doorway of the other room, “I used to pray in the police station. I prayed I would have a girl in bed with me again. You are not going to tell me that was not a real prayer. And it worked too. The first day I was out I had a girl. It was in a field while you were off buying food in a village. My prayer was answered, Father. Even if it was in a field and not in a bed.”
Like me, Doctor Plarr thought, he is a picador. He pricks the bull’s hide to make the beast more active before he dies. The repetitions of the word “Father” were like darts inserted to pierce the skin. Why do we so want to destroy him-or are we hoping to destroy ourselves?—it’s a cruel sport.
“What are you doing out here, Aquino? I told you to stay and watch the prisoner.”
“The helicopter has gone. What can he do? He is only writing a letter to his woman.”
“You gave him a pen? I took away his pen myself when he was brought in.”
“What harm can a letter do?”
“They were my orders. If you all start disobeying orders there is no safety for any of us. Diego, Pablo, get outside again. If El Tigre were here…”
“But he is not here, Father,” Aquino said. “He is somewhere in safety eating well and drinking well. He was not at the police station either when you rescued me. Is he never going to risk his own life like he risks ours?”
Father Rivas pushed him to one side and went on into the inner room. Doctor Plarr found it hard to recognize the boy who had explained the Trinity to him. In the innumerable lines of premature age which crisscrossed the face he thought he could detect a tangle of agonies, like a tangle of fighting snakes.
Charley Fortnum was propped on his left elbow. His bandaged leg stuck out over the side of the coffin, and he wrote slowly, painfully; he didn’t look up. Father Rivas said, “Whom are you writing to?”
“My wife.”
“It must be difficult to write like that.”
“It’s taken me a quarter of an hour to do two sentences. I asked your man Aquino to write for me. But he refused. He’s been angry with me ever since he shot me. He won’t talk to me any more. Why? You would think I’d done him an injury.”
“Perhaps you have.”
“What injury?”
“Perhaps he feels betrayed. He did not believe you had the courage to trick him.”
“Courage? Me? I haven’t the courage of a mouse, Father. I wanted to see my wife again, that’s all.”
“Who is going to give her this letter?”
“Doctor Plarr, perhaps. If you let him go after I am dead. He can read it aloud to her. She doesn’t read very well and my handwriting is bad at the best of times.”
“If you like I will write the letter for you.”
“Thank you a lot. I’d be grateful if you would. I’d rather it was you than anyone else. A letter like this is a sort of secret. Like a confession. And after all you are a priest.”
Father Rivas took the letter and sat down on the floor beside the coffin.
“I’ve forgotten what I wrote last.”
Father Rivas read, ” ‘Do not worry, my darling, about being alone with a child. It is better for him to be alone with a mother than with a father. I know that well. I was left alone with my father and it was never any fun. Always horses, horses…’ That is all. You have written nothing after ‘horses.’ “
“In the situation I’m in,” Charley Fortnum said, “I suppose you think I ought to find some way to forgive. Even my father. Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad chap after all. Children hate too easily. Better leave out that stuff about the horses, Father.”
Father Rivas drew a line through the words.
“Put instead-but what? I’m damned unused to writing anything personal, that’s the trouble. Give me a drop of whisky, Father. It may help the brain to tick, what there is left of it-my brain, I mean.”
Father Rivas poured him out a drink.
“I prefer Long John,” Charley Fortnum said, “but this stuff you’ve brought me is not all that bad. If I stay here long enough I’ll get quite a taste for Argentinian whisky, but it’s more tricky than real Scotch to know the right measure. You wouldn’t understand what I mean, Father, but every drink has its right measure-not water, of course. Water’s not meant for drinking. It rusts the inside or gives you typhoid. It’s not good for man or beast except those bloody horses. Is it any good asking you to have a small one with me?”
“No. I am, as you would say, on duty. Do you want to go on with your letter?”
“Yes, of course. I was just waiting a while to let the whisky work. You’ve cut out that bit about the horses, haven’t you? What ought I to say next? You see I want to talk to her quite simply, as if we were alone together, on the verandah, at the camp, but words never come easily to me-not on paper, I mean. I expect you understand. After all you are married too in a way, Father.”