“I just want one of my heads,” the priest begged desperately, a dog howling at the moon.
The image of the woman, though faint, never faded away completely from the sea of cloned heads and circles. It was then, perhaps because of all this boisterous movement, that she started to gently rise and fall, like a fish in an aquarium. She was stylized, translucent. A continuous stream of bubbles came out of her mouth to join the heads and circles, bouncing off them or bursting in the air when they met no resistance. The man threw the net as far away as he could and stood still, watching. He had never loved a woman, or even seen the feminine form, in his life, but now both were happening, both the love and the body, and he couldn’t escape it, not even if he closed his eyes. The pearly glow of the creature shone through his eyelids, growing even more lovely when filtered through his skin, like a landscape seen through water. God, make my eyelids as strong as the walls of Jericho, don’t let the trumpets tear them down. No, not yet, let them fall… Finally, she came closer, damp with the sweat of their midnight dance. She didn’t make a sound, not a floorboard creaked; she was a snake slithering over carpet. She hadn’t said a word, and didn’t now, though he had no trouble understanding her. For him, however, speech was the only option.
“I am chaste, madam, chaste and a virgin. The two things don’t always coincide in a single body. They do in mine, for the glory of God, so I can’t. Also, I don’t want to…”
But this was something else that she seemed to understand: the potential of those who say they can’t and the desire of those who say they won’t. Suddenly, she pushed him back onto his cot, as though he had fainted, and started to squeeze him with her arms. Arms that were now very different from the ones he had seen during the dance of the circles. Now they burned like the desert sand. He was ashamed at how easily he had slipped into the embrace, his poor bones wilting before her strength. She also seemed to understand his sense of physical inferiority and stroked his ego with unsaid words: “This is the way God made things, it’s the best kindling. Bones clean the air as they burn. Fat sizzles, it dirties the flames.”
“But I can’t,” the man repeated stubbornly, as though she were asking permission. “Even if I wanted to, I would still need to be capable of it, and I’m not, I’m not!”
It was then that two terrible things happened: he was suddenly able (the gentle waves that had been lapping against his heart were rising up the beach) and the woman evaporated into thin air, horrible air that smelled like the room of a solitary priest, lacking entirely in heads, circles, or anything else of interest. The world without her… A gust of this different atmosphere flooded his nostrils and plunged into his still-dreaming blood, dragging him sweatily back to the surface of the morning. He heard a cock crowing in the distance. Maybe, he thought, the being that had created these dull old archetypes was about to rewrite the ancient order.
“He’ll have the last word,” he murmured, sitting up. “He always does.”
He found his deacon in the church, praying loudly in front of an icon. Following each of the pleas that formed the leitmotif of his prayer, the man pounded hard on his chest; his frail frame seemed incapable of withstanding such punishment. Apparently he had become an armored automaton without bones to break or organs to damage.
“What’s wrong, man? Why this self-abuse?” the priest asked with what little strength he possessed after his long night. “Come on, get up, we need to see to the bells, the candles, the wine. Sundays aren’t to be wasted. Especially not today, I see that you’ve heard about this supposed woman too.”
He remembered her stepping out of the shadows like a white stamen from a black flower, stroking his skin, leaving behind a delicious trail of sleep dust.
“I hate her, Father,” said the deacon, standing up. His bare chest appeared unharmed by the self-flagellation.
“I heard you joined the hunt yesterday.”
“I went out to look for her in the countryside, but I might as well have been chasing the devil himself. He must be the father, or son, of that naked beast. God believe me; please believe me as I must believe myself. I hate her! I hate her!”
“Do not hate so much, my son, not so much. Come on, today will be a long, strange day. As long as the dream of life itself. Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit, sit nomen Domini benedictum.”
And he turned around to get something from his shoddy little room.
“Hatred,” he murmured, sniffing hard, as though he were trying to inhale a specific particle of dust. “That will be today’s theme. That is what they want from me, even if they won’t admit it. So we shall have hatred. My little man has never failed me before; I can always read the mood of the village in his entrails.”
Just then, the bells began to ring. Heavens, what a crazy sound, he thought. The shrunken little creature to whom they had been entrusted since the church was built must be dangling from the rope like a hanged man trying to escape the devil. He was on his way to help him when he realized that this volume, well suited to a public calamity, was what everyone was expecting. The village’s collective anxiety was being expressed as pure noise.
Having peered out at his flock in the morning light and sniffed the air, as he always did during moments of local turmoil, he saw immediately that this would be a very unusual Sunday. It’s as if the village changed its skin or was breathing a new air, he thought as he went to the confessional. Inside the little wooden box, the confessions grew strange, strayed from their customary paths.
“Father, I can find no words to describe my sin,” said the first woman to appear on the other side of the screen. “I wish I were the way I used to be. I wish I could say what I’ve done and wait for you to give me penitence, like we usually do. But I’m not myself and it’s useless, I can’t.”
“Don’t fret, my child. Tell me all about it,” came the reply, which was reassuring, if slightly tinged with anxiety. “You won’t be the only one sharing your troubles this morning. Ever since dawn, I’ve sensed something strange going on. It’s like I’m in a different village. You’re the same people, but different too. It’s as plain as the noses on your faces. But don’t be afraid, unburden your troubles onto me and find relief. You won’t be punished.”
“No, Father,” said the little woman in a tired voice. “Other women might know what to say because it’s something they can talk about. My problem is different, I’m sure of that. God forgive me for my silence, but I don’t know how I’d go about saying, describing things that have never happened before…”
A thin blast of warm air hit the priest’s face. It smelled different too. Usually their breath smelled of warm milk, even if they hadn’t drunk any.
“Well, it’s not a question of how well you explain it. It’s about feeling sinful, being aware that you have strayed from the sacred commandments, and regretting your actions deeply and unreservedly. That is the true act of contrition, although describing it here is also an obligation. Be at peace for now. This time I shall go further than I should,” he said more to himself than the woman. “I shall offer absolution for an indescribable sin. Go,” he commanded, his voice now back to normal. “Find what you can in prayer, which is just another form of confession.”
“And after that?”
“Then go back to your children, your fields, and your everyday duties…”
“Everyday duties. What does that mean now? My God!”
“The duties of a humble life, my child. No more, no less. Sometimes, so I’ve been told by several women in this very booth, just sewing a button is enough to put one’s mind at rest. The satisfaction of your husband upon seeing the button back where it should be on his shirt will help to put you at ease, even if he doesn’t bother to say thank you. Words, arrows straight from God, have the divine quality of working on both great and small scales. The truly valuable ones are the most basic, the ones that serve the need to describe things. Bread and wine, for instance.”