“Why, it’s you, the priest.”
“You are Laura, isn’t that right? Please, don’t raise your voice. Don’t get your mother into trouble.”
“Father Elzevir.”
The priest clasped Laura’s hands. “How can you remember? You were just a child.”
There was no need to ask him what he was doing hidden away there. “Please, don’t raise your voice. Don’t get your mother into trouble.” He said she didn’t have to ask him anything. He would tell her he didn’t get very far with what he’d stolen. He was a coward. He admitted it. When the police were about to catch him, he thought it would be better to submit to the pity of the Church, for Don Porfirio’s police had none.
“I asked forgiveness, and it was granted to me. I confessed and was absolved. I repented and again entered the community of my Church. But I felt it was all too easy. It was true and profound, but easy. I had to pay for the evil I’d committed, my temptation. My illusion. God our master did me the favor of sending me this punishment, Calles’ religious persecution.”
He looked at Laura with the eyes of a conquered Indian. “Now I feel guiltier than ever. I have nightmares. I’m sure God punished me for my sacrilege by causing this persecution to fall on His Church. I believe I am responsible, because of my individual act, for a collective evil. I believe it profoundly.”
“Father, you have no reason to confess to me.”
“Oh, but I do.” Elzevir squeezed Laura’s hands, which he’d never stopped holding. “Oh, but I do. You were a child. But who better than a child can I ask for forgiveness for the tumult of my soul? Will you forgive me?”
“Yes, Father, I never made charges against you, but my mother-”
“Your mother and your aunts have understood. They have forgiven me. That’s why I’m here. Without them, I would have been shot.”
“I’m saying you did me no harm. Excuse me, but I’d forgotten all about you.”
“But that was the harm. Don’t you see? Being forgotten is the harm. I sowed scandal in my parish, and if my parish forgets it, the reason is that the scandal penetrated so deeply that it was forgotten and forgiven.”
“My mother has forgiven you,” Laura interrupted, somewhat confused by the priest’s logic.
“No, she keeps me alive here, puts a roof over my head, and feeds me, all so I can know the mercy I did not bestow on my flock. Your mother is a living reproach for which I am thankful. I don’t want any one to forgive me.”
“Father, my sons have not had their first communion. The fact is that my husband… would be outraged… if I even asked his permission. Wouldn’t you like to-?”
“Why are you really asking me for this?”
“I want to be part of an exceptional rite, Father. Routine is killing me.” Laura turned away, wailing. It was somewhere between raving and weeping.
In truth, she felt a deep satisfaction in participating in a ceremony missing from her married life, knowing she was going against her husband’s implicit wishes. Juan Francisco neither went to Mass nor spoke of religion. Neither did Laura or the boys. Only María de la O kept some religious pictures stuck in her mirror, which Juan Francisco, without saying so, considered the relics of a hypocritical old woman.
“I don’t oppose it, but still, I have to ask why,” Leticia wondered.
“The world becomes too flat without ceremonies to mark the passage of time.”
“Are you so afraid of losing track of the years?”
“Yes, Mutti. I fear time without hours. That’s what death must be like.”
Leticia, her three sisters, and Laura gathered together in the priest’s bedroom with Santiago and Danton.
“This is my body, this is my blood,” Elzevir intoned, and put pieces of bread in the mouths of the boys, now seven and six, amused because they’d been brought to a dark bedroom to eat bits of roll and hear words in Latin. They preferred running through the gardens of Xalapa, Los Berros and Juárez Park, watched over as always by their dark-skinned aunt; they felt they owned this tranquil city, a space without danger, a territory that gave them the freedom forbidden them in Mexico City, with its streets filled with trucks and wise guys and toughs from whose challenges Santiago had to protect his younger brother.
“Why are you looking so hard at the roof of that house, Mama?”
“No reason, Santiago. I lived there when I was young with your grandparents.”
“I’d like to have a birdcage like that at home. I’d be the owner of the castle and defend you against the bad guys, Mama.”
“Santiago, do you remember the maid I hired back in Mexico City before leaving for Xalapa? Now, when you go back, I want you to treat Carmela with respect.”
“Carmela. Sure, Mama.”
Laura had a premonition. She asked María de la O to stay a few more days in Xalapa with the boys while she went back to Mexico City to straighten up the house. “It must be a mess, with Juan Francisco all alone there and he so busy with politics. As soon as I have things in hand, I’ll send for you.”
“Laura.”
“Yes, Mutti.”
“Look what you forgot when you got married.”
It was the Chinese doll Li Po. True. She hadn’t thought of the doll since she’d gone.
“Oh, Mama, how sad it makes me that I forgot her.” She hid her real sadness with a false laugh. “I think it’s because I turned into my husband’s Li Po.”
“Do you want to take her with you?”
“No, Mutti. It’s better for her to stay here in her place until I come hack.”
“Do you really think you’ll be coming back, dear?”
Neither Carmela nor Juan Francisco was in the little house on Avenida Sonora when Laura arrived around midday from the Buenavista station after the usual delay on the trains.
She felt a difference in the house. A silence. An absence. Naturally: the boys and her cherished aunt were the noise, the joy of the place. She picked up the newspaper jammed under the garage door. She planned a solitary day. Would she go to the Cine Royal? Let’s just see what’s going on.
She opened El Universal and found the photograph of “Carmela.” Gloria Soriano, a Carmelite nun, had been arrested as a conspirator in the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón. She had been discovered in a home near the Bosque de Chapultepec. When she tried to escape, the police shot her in the back. The nun had died instantly.
Laura spent the remaining hours of the day in the dining room staring fixedly at this photo of the very white woman with the deep shadows under her very black eyes. Sunset came, and even though she could no longer see the photo, she did not turn on the light. She knew the face by heart. It was the face of a moral ransom. If Juan Francisco had reproached her all those years for not having visited the Catalan anarchist in the attic, how could he reproach her now for having given sanctuary to a nun being hunted down? Of course he wouldn’t, they would both finally share a combative humanity, Laura told herself, repeating the word “combative.”
Juan Francisco returned at 11 p.m. The house was in darkness. The big dark man tossed his hat on the sofa, sighed, and turned on the light. He was visibly startled when he saw Laura sitting there with the newspaper open in front of her.
“Oh, you’re hack.”
Laura nodded.
“Did you see that item about the nun Soriano?” asked López Greene.
“No. I saw the item about the anarchist Aznar.”
“I don’t follow.”
“When you came to Xalapa to unveil the plaque in the attic, you praised my father for having protected Armon a Aznar. That’s when I really met you and fell in love.”
“Of course. She was a heroine of the working class.”
“You aren’t going to praise me for giving sanctuary to a heroine of the religious persecution?”