Good Offices

“They will be having their coffee here,” the old woman responded, “with you, before they go.” She gathered up the gold-rimmed glasses, left almost untouched after having been topped up. “It seems you didn’t like the hazelnut liqueur,” she said, turning to them with a smile. “Such a waste. The cats aren’t tempted by hazelnut liqueur. We’ll have to keep it for the Meal on Monday. They like it.”

“Those women?” Sabina asked indignantly, scandalized. “The Father does not allow alcohol to be served at the Meals.”

“But this is licor de santos,” replied the old woman, as if excusing herself. “It wouldn’t harm a child. Of course, it’s as sweet as poison, but it’s always better to share than to waste.”

It was a secret to no one that all their leftovers were destined for the Community Meals, including those at which the presbytery cats turned up their noses, the six fat, contented cats. Sabina waited for the old woman to leave the office, but in vain, because there she remained, smiling at them, holding the tray like a shield. Sabina knotted and unknotted her fingers in desperation.

“Tonight,” the old woman announced, “this very night, for the first time in all the years I’ve lived with him, Reverend Father Juan Pablo Almida will not say Mass.”

“We know that already,” Sabina said.

Almida had never failed in his duty to the Church. Even when he was ill, he would celebrate the Holy Eucharist, keeping to a strict schedule. Tancredo turned to Sabina Cruz, wanting to quiz her about what was going on. But Sabina seemed not to understand anything. Her mind was focused only on her plea, her invitation to him to visit her room that night as on so many others. Sabina was focusing all her powers of reason, Tancredo thought, on that alone. Her understanding, he thought, was like her body: carnal. Then they heard the voices of the Father and the sacristan in the garden passage; coming from the sacristy, they stopped a moment to finalize details best not resolved in the office with witnesses present. Sabina’s eyes showed her anguish, but her words were cold, categorical. She wanted to speak at once, lest her godfather’s imminent arrival prevent her from saying anything. Though she did not care about the proximity of the old woman, she nevertheless did not say exactly what she meant: “Tancredo, if you don’t come up to collect the leaflets tonight, I shall come down to give them to you myself, in your room.”

A dreadful slip, thought the hunchback, to say this in the old woman’s presence. And to say it in such a way, like an impassioned threat. Revealing that it was possible that he might go upstairs in the night merely to collect some leaflets, or that she might come down to give them to him — in his room, at night — when such tasks should only be carried out in the Father’s office, or maybe in the library, and during the day, for God’s sake, during the day. Sabina Cruz had gone mad.

“I will collect the leaflets,” Tancredo said, “here, in the office.”

Sabina blushed, belatedly repentant. She bit her lips until they bled, but the voices of the Father and the sacristan kept her from reacting to the Lilia’s intrusion: she pretended to busy herself with her work, indifferent to the old woman, who went on watching them and smiling, even nodding suspiciously. The voices of the sacristan and the Father came closer, but then stopped again a few steps from the door. The two men did not see the others. Night had completely taken over the garden. The cold slid in. As the old woman was finally leaving, slipping out like a shadow among shadows, Tancredo heard the Father mention Don Justiniano several times. “Don Justiniano,” he said, “Don Justiniano will believe us.” And then: “Justiniano, Justiniano.” Then the sacristan: “Whom are you talking about, Father?” And the Father: “Don Justiniano.” And the sacristan: “Ah, an upright man.” And the Father: “True. We need not worry.” The sacristan’s deafness obliged people to raise their voices when speaking to him, so Almida, while supposing he was speaking in confidence, was in fact shouting. “All this will soon be cleared up,” he said. “God is everywhere every day.” And, as if he had invoked it, rain began to fall. The parish’s two highest representatives came into the office at once, and stared at Sabina and Tancredo as if they didn’t recognize them.

“You’re here,” the Father said. “Well, sit down; let’s have our coffee. It is time for coffee, the hallowed moment, praise be to God.”