“They say when the wound’s serious people feel very little.”
“And my wound will be the most serious of all.”
“Yes.”
“Clara will feel the pain longer than me. I wish it could be the other way round.”
They were still arguing in the outer room when Doctor Plarr returned. Aquino was saying, “But what does he know of the situation? He is safe in Cordoba or…” He checked himself and looked up at Doctor Plarr.
“Don’t worry,” Doctor Plarr said, “I am not likely to survive you. Unless you give up this insane idea. You still have time to escape.”
“And I admit failure,” Aquino said, “to all the world.”
“You used to be a poet. Were you afraid to admit it when a poem failed?”
“My poems were never published,” Aquino said. “No one knew when I failed. My poems were never read out on the radio. There were 110 questions asked about them in the British Parliament.”
“It’s your damn machismo again, isn’t it? Who invented machismo? A gang of ruffians like Pizarro and Cortes. Can’t any of you for a moment escape your bloody history? You haven’t learned a thing, have you, from Cervantes? He had his fill of machismo at Lepanto.”
Father Rivas said, “Aquino is right. We cannot afford to fail. Once before our people released a man rather than kill him-he was a Paraguayan Consul, the General cared no more about his life than Fortnum’s, and when it came to the point we were not prepared to kill. If we are weak again like that, no threat of death will be of any use on this continent. Until more ruthless men than we are begin to kill a great many more. I do not want to be responsible for the deaths which will follow our failure.”
“You have a complicated conscience,” Doctor Plarr said. “Will you pity God for those murders too?”
“You have no idea, have you, what I meant?”
“No. I was never taught anything about pitying God by the Jesuits in Asuncion. Not that I remember.”
“Perhaps you would have more faith now if you had remembered a little more.”
“Mine’s a busy life, Leon, trying to cure the sick. I can’t leave that to God.”
“Oh, you may be right. I have always had far too much time. Two Masses on a Sunday. A few feast days. Confessions twice a week. It was mostly the old women who came-and of course the children. The children were forced to come. They were beaten if they did not come, and anyway I gave them sweets. Not as a reward. The bad child received just as many sweets as the good one. I only wanted to make them feel happy while they knelt in that stuffy box. And when.1 gave them a penance I tried to make it a game we played together, a reward not a punishment. And they sucked their sweets while they said a Hail Mary. I could be happy too, for as long as I was with them. I was never happy with then-fathers-or their mothers. I don’t know why. Perhaps if I had had a child myself…”
“It’s a long journey you’ve made, Leon, since you left Asunción.”
“It was not. such an innocent life there as you think. Once a child of eight told me he had drowned his baby sister in the Paraná. People thought she had slipped off the cliff. He told me she used to eat too much and there was less for him. Less mandioca!”
“Did you give him a sweet?”
“Yes. And three Hail Mary’s for a penance.”
Pablo went out on guard in his turn, taking Miguel’s place. Marta served the Guaraní with stew and cleaned the other plates. She said, “Father, tomorrow is Sunday. Surely you could say a Mass for us on that day?”
“It is more than three years since I last said a Mass. I doubt if I can even remember the words.”
“I have a missal, Father.”
“Read the Mass to yourself then, Marta. It will serve just as well.”
“You heard what they said on the radio. The soldiers are searching for us now. It may be the last Mass we shall ever hear. And there is Diego-you must say a Mass for him.”
“I have no right to say a Mass. When I married you, Marta, I excommunicated myself.”
“No one knows you married me.”
“I know.”
“Father Pedro used to sleep with women. Everyone in Asunción knew that. And he said Mass every Sunday.”
“He did not marry, Marta. He could go to confession and sin again and go to confession. I am not responsible for his conscience.”
“You seem to suffer from an odd lot of scruples, Leon,” Doctor Plarr said, “for a man who plans to murder.”
“Yes. Perhaps they are not scruples-only superstitions. You see if I took the Host I would still half believe I was taking His body. Anyway it’s a useless argument. There is no wine.”
“Oh but there is, Father,” Marta said. “I found an empty medicine bottle in the rubbish dump and when I was in the town I filled it at a cantina.”
“You think of everything,” Father Rivas said sadly.
“Father, you know I have wanted all these years to hear you say Mass again and to see the people praying with you. Of course it will not be the same without the beautiful vestments. If only you had kept them with you.”
“They did not belong to me, Marta. Anyway vestments are not the Mass. Do you think the Apostles wore vestments? How I hated wearing them when the people in front of me were all in rags. I was glad to turn my back on them and forget them and see only the altar and the candles-but the money for the candles would have fed half the people there.”
“You are wrong, Father. We were all glad to see you in those vestments. They were so beautiful, all the scarlet and the gold embroidery.”
“Yes. I suppose they helped you escape from everything for a little while, but to me they were the clothes of a convict.”
“But, Father, you won’t listen to the Archbishop’s rules? You will say a Mass for us tomorrow?”
“Suppose what they say is true and I am damning myself?”
“The good God would never damn a man like you, Father. But poor Diego, Jose’s wife… all of us… we need you to speak to God for us.”
Father Rivas said, “All right. I will say Mass. For your sake, Marta. I have done very little for you in these years. You have given me love and all I have given you has been a great deal of danger and a dirt floor to lie on. I will say Mass as soon as it is light if the soldiers give us enough time. Have we any bread left?”
“Yes, Father.”
A sense of some obscure grievance moved Doctor Plarr. He said, “You don’t believe yourself in all this mumbo-jumbo, Leon. You are fooling them like you fooled that child who killed his sister. You want to hand them sweets at Communion to comfort them before you murder Charley Fortnum. I’ve seen with my own eyes things just as bad as any you’ve listened to in the confessional, but I can’t be pacified with sweets. I have seen a child born without hands and feet. I would have killed it if I had been left alone with it, but the parents watched me too closely-they wanted to keep that bloody broken torso alive. The Jesuits used to tell us it was our duty to love God. A duty to love a God who produces that abortion? It’s like the duty of a German to love Hitler. Isn’t it better not to believe in that horror up there sitting in the clouds of heaven than pretend to love him?”
“It may be better not to breathe, but all the same I cannot help breathing. Some men, I think, are condemned to belief by a judge just as they are condemned to prison. They have no choice. No escape. They have been put behind the bars for life.”
“I see my father only through the bars,” Aquino quoted with a sort of glum self-satisfaction.
“So here I sit on the floor of my prison cell,” Father Rivas said, “and I try to make some sense of things. I am no theologian, I was bottom in most of my classes, but I have always wanted to understand what you call the horror and why I cannot stop loving it. Just like the parents who loved that poor bloody torso. Oh, He seems ugly enough I grant you, but then I am ugly too and yet Marta loves me. In my first prison-I mean in the seminary-there were lots of books in which I could read all about the love of God, but they were of no help to me. Not one of the Fathers was of any use to me. Because they never touched on the horror-you are quite right to call it that. They saw no problem. They just sat comfortably down in the presence of the horror like the old Archbishop at the General’s table and they talked about man’s responsibility and Free Will. Free Will was the excuse for everything. It was God’s alibi. They had never read Freud. Evil was made by man or Satan. It was simple that way. But I could never believe in Satan. It was much easier to believe that God was evil.”