“The journey to the village is not so bad, Don Pedro,” Father Martínez says lightly. “I make it quite often, as you must know.”
“You are not old, Father.”
Father Martínez looks at me as if I have insulted him. “True,” he says, reluctantly giving in to the distance between himself and the grace of age. He takes a deep breath. “Well, it was only a suggestion.”
“One that I appreciate, Father,” I tell him.
Father Martínez’s face brightens: “I’m told that you are a friend of the Archbishop.”
“You are misinformed, I’m afraid.”
Father Martínez’s smile collapses. “Really? Misinformed? I’m sorry. I had heard that you and His Eminence were quite close.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Father,” I tell him. “There are many false stories about me in El Caliz.”
Father Martínez watches me curiously, trying to determine which of the many stories he must have heard about me are true. “Well,” he says, “since you are the only European in El Caliz, I suppose that …”
“Yes. That must explain the stories, Father.”
Father Martínez smiles weakly. “I’m sure it does, Don Pedro.”
“I’ll send Juan with my offering tomorrow, Father,” I tell him.
“The children will be most grateful, Don Pedro,” Father Martínez says. “Perhaps we could give you something as an act of appreciation.”
“That is unnecessary, Father.”
“But only as a gesture, Don Pedro.”
“Let them run and play, Father. Let them be healthy. That will be their gift to me.”
“But perhaps I could have them make something for you,” Father Martínez insists.
If they made something for me, then he would be required to bring it to me. This is what he wants. “No, Father,” I tell him firmly, “I will not accept any gifts from the children.”
“Then from me, Don Pedro?”
“No.”
He looks at me as if I have slipped a blade between his ribs. “As you wish, Don Pedro,” he says softly, lowering his eyes. He is a master of the aggrieved gesture.
“If you require anything else, Father, please let me know.”
Father Martínez raises his eyes. “Thank you, Don Pedro.” He pauses, watching me. “And if you ever require anything from me — any of my services — I hope that you will also let me know.”
I smile. “I will, Father.”
Father Martínez glances at the ridges in the distance. “The sun will be setting soon.”
“Yes.”
“I’d better get back to the village before dark.”
“I understand.”
Father Martínez rises from his chair. “The night is comforting, don’t you think?”
“No.”
Father Martínez looks at me with a mildly fearful expression, as if I were some relic from a torture chamber. “But at least there’s sleep,” he says.
I rise and offer my hand. “Let me know if I can be of any assistance to you, Father. As you can see, I have much to share.”
“Thank you, Don Pedro,” Father Martínez says. He turns toward the stairs.
“I hope you have a safe journey,” I tell him.
Father Martínez glances over his shoulder quickly, as if a threat is hidden in my remark. “Safe? Oh, yes. Well, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Good evening, Father.”
“Good evening, Don Pedro.”
He makes his way down the stairs, stooping slightly over his cane, assuming the bent attitude of the holy old man. At the bottom of the stairs he turns toward me. “Thank you so very much, Don Pedro,” he says.
“De nada.”
He offers me a telling look that he hopes will somehow sear my soul, somehow raise it to life again.
“It will be evening soon, Father,” I tell him. “Your children are waiting for you.”
The pointed look recoils into his face and something like muted resentment takes its place. “Yes, I must go,” he says. “Give my best to Dr. Ludtz.”
“I will, Father.”
He turns quickly and walks away, a small wind slightly lifting the hem of his skirt.
There was a time when I was tempted to make my way down to the little mud cathedral over which Father Martínez now presides. I was tempted, so very tempted, to lay prone before the altar, my arms outstretched in an attitude of crucifixion. There was a time when it would have been so very easy to split myself open and bathe my soul in the healing light of faith. But what would have come from so self-serving a conversation? Only the acceptance of an illusion that went no farther than myself, that animated nothing, bestowed nothing, taught nothing but the endless repetition of itself. I would have become no more than the vessel of a catechismal chant, a disembodied voice calling some great, imagined tongue down to lick my wounds. But I have come to know that mine are not the wounds that matter, and that even if they were, they are long past mending by priestly ministration delivered in a sacerdotal haze. For in the acceptance of that delusional comfort I would find my soul’s repose, and in such repose the seed of yet another crime.
AT THE END of day here in the Republic, the sun drops slowly through a cloud of heat like a ruby through a tube of oil. Across the river, the wind begins its ghost waltz with the trees, pressing against them like a proud but subtle lover. There is never snow here, except, they say, in the northern provinces, where it comes only at the most telling moment, when lovers part or old men die by the window. At such times, it is said to come in huge flakes, drifting as languorously as goose down and remaining, unmeltable, until the symbol has run its course. But in El Caliz, heat is the only metaphor we have.
Juan passes below me, stooped, weary. For him, all metaphorical embellishment is reduced to the thick, dark humus of his impregnable superstitiousness. He lives utterly without benefit of subtlety, responding only to gods and demons who are wholly visible to him. They drown the fields, bake the stream beds, humiliate the orchids. They dispense blessings or maliciously withhold them. Walking through the jungle toward his home, Juan seems to merge with the engulfing brush, a perfect natural man, Rousseau’s boyish dream, a simple, humble peasant who could only be accused of crime in some distant, dreamed-of world where men are expected to despise all manner of delusion.
In the Special Section, they taught us to sink all of our petty, personal illusions in the smudgy, boiling cauldron of a great one.
“Allow me to extend my personal congratulations,” Dr. Trottman said. He smiled heartily. “A very distinguished record, Herr Langhof. But wait. I suppose I must address you as Dr. Langhof from now on.”
The distinguished graduate allowed himself a moment of harmless banter. “That would be appropriate, I think,” he said with mock haughtiness.
Dr. Trottman seized Langhof’s hand and shook it vigorously. “You will bring great credit to yourself, Doctor,” he said, his speech still retaining the arch formality of the professorial classes.
“That is my hope, Dr. Trottman,” our hero said.
And so Peter Langhof became a doctor. Langhof, the little boy who watched impassively as the blood trickled from his father’s temple, who could not stand his mother’s strudel, who spoke harshly to the butcher who later became his stepfather. Langhof, who found Anna and then lost her, who stood in the park and felt the first blessing of the stars, who wished to clean himself in the study of hygiene, who loved science and distinguished himself in gymnasium, university, and medical school. Our hero Langhof, who came to manhood in the Special Section, who was given an appointment at the Institute of Hygiene and then later reassigned to a place he calls the Camp. He, the catastrophic I, who later escaped as the cannons neared, who found his way to Switzerland and then to the southern provinces of the Republic by way of boat and burro and a battered little box of diamonds. He, Langhof, our beneficent Don Pedro, who sits white-haired in the sunset of El Caliz and who speaks with admirable detachment of the unspeakable.