Good Offices

Of indefinable age, Father Matamoros — Reverend Father San José Matamoros del Palacio — was indeed a rare bird in the parish church, gray and featherless, come from heavens knows where. He wore dark clothes and a gray turtleneck sweater instead of a dog collar; his jacket looked borrowed, it was too big for him; his round-toed school shoes, almost black, were scuffed and the soles were gone, the laces white; he wore square glasses, one lens cracked down the middle, one arm mended with a dirty strip of sticking plaster.

The liqueur finished, he ran with Tancredo to the sacristy (the rain was getting worse and pooling in the garden gutters, overflowing across the stone passage), where, out of breath, he inspected his surroundings, especially the pious hangings that adorned the walls. He crossed himself before a Botticelli Virgin and seemed to pray with his eyes, awestruck; Tancredo took advantage of the moment to find a towel and dry the priest’s face and hair, his dripping hands, his birdlike neck. Matamoros let him do this without taking his eyes off the merciful Madonna of the Magnificat. Then he sighed and took another look around him, nodding. He noted, with a certain irony, an ancient black telephone on a little table. He was surprised by this tucked-away telephone corner, where he also glimpsed a plain, empty chair surrounded by a throng of plaster angels, dismayed virgins and saints, a sort of vanquished army with broken noses, missing arms, half their wings gone or stained, white-eyed, their faces scratched, hands broken and fingers cracked, a strange crowd waiting, no doubt, to be taken off to a resuscitating craftsman, or taken away by the dustman. Matamoros smiled to himself. “A phone for calling God,” he said. He took a small yellow comb from his pocket and tamed his mass of wayward hair, using as a mirror the enormous gold ciborium which Almida never wanted to use during his Masses, only God knew why. From the same pocket Matamoros drew a bottle of mouthwash, and — to the hunchback’s embarrassment — took two or three slugs, which he spat unceremoniously into that same ciborium. “This’ll have to be washed,” he said, and only then looked at Tancredo, staring like a bird of prey. “You’re my acolyte, right?” he asked, giving the other man’s hump the inevitable once-over. He smiled without malice. “Put this,” he ordered, “on the altar.” As he spoke, he handed Tancredo a glittering, beautifully cut glass cruet filled with water. “I mix the wine with this,” he said, and then, his eyes on a bronze crucifix, as if offering an explanation to the Almighty: “During Masses I prefer to drink water I’ve brought myself.” Then he allowed himself to be helped into the sacred vestments without taking his blazing eyes from the attentive hunchback, from his looming hump, which Matamoros examined frankly. “Another cathedral,” he said, pointing to it.

At the crucial moment of entering the sanctuary, he turned to Tancredo as if he had forgotten something: “I won’t be reading the Gospel,” he whispered. “You’ll be doing that. I assume you know what day we’re on.” Then he proceeded calmly toward the whiteness of the altar, which seemed to be floating in a mist; he moved wreathed in the candles’ perfume, surrounded by the respectful noise of parishioners getting to their feet. He kissed the center of the altar for a long time, down on one knee, his arms spread like wings, his back glowing under the great embroidered gold cross on his chasuble, then straightened up majestically, passing his eyes over the other, beseeching eyes, and began his Mass. A peculiar beginning, Tancredo thought, shuddering, because — after crossing himself and greeting the congregation in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and before beginning the Act of Penitence — Matamoros called them not Dear, but Beloved, brethren.

The hunchback paid little attention to the rest of the greeting: just before positioning himself at the side of the altar, he sensed Sabina observing him from the sacristy. She would be waiting for him until Mass ended, and would carry on waiting until Matamoros left. Then she would launch herself at him and have what she wanted unless Tancredo surrounded himself with the pitiful shield of the Lilias.

Father San José’s Mass was no ordinary Mass.