Good Offices

She trusted him when he laughed. This time would be no different. She huffed, a flame consuming itself, the only candle still lit. Tancredo sensed her removing her blouse all at once, guessed at the movement in the shadows, the raised arms, the falling garment, utterly overwhelming. As if lit by a black flame, the church grew warm, the air caught fire, smelling of Sabina’s pale body, the shiver of her just-uncovered breasts, the sweat in her armpits, and the fear and joy of her ready, daring flesh.

They had been there years before, just once, in the same hollow beneath the altar, children playing with the pleasure of fear, the same fear of being discovered in the church’s most sacred corner, the danger of the sacristan appearing, or Father Almida, or the Lilias, the same danger as today, tonight. Tancredo thought: We haven’t changed at all, it’s the same fear. He smiled again, and once more Sabina was burning above him; it seemed to him that she was exuding smoke, that her flesh must be made of smoldering sticks, of the sweet and bitter smells that enveloped him. But he responded to her kiss — for one instant — more out of pity than desire, then plucked her off him again, like a feather, and said, jumping to his feet: “Cover yourself up,” and then, more plea than order: “Come to the office. The Lilias are waiting.”

“Never,” she replied, retreating and kneeling inside the marble niche. “I’m never going to leave if you don’t come here for me, it doesn’t matter what time, today or tomorrow or the day after, and I don’t care if Father Almida and my godfather or all the men in the world come instead of you, and line up in the church to see me and ask why I’m here, I swear I’ll answer them all that it’s ‘through your fault, through your most grievous fault, Amen,’ Tancredo, don’t you forget it, I’m never going to leave.” The threat came out mixed with sorrow and disappointment.

Tancredo hesitated. About to step through the door into the sacristy, he turned to look back at her, seeking her in the shadows of the altar; he could barely make her out, a quivering smudge; he heard her panting, glimpsed her eyes like blue flames — Tancredo thought he suffered them, two icy, blue hailstones that floated toward him and enveloped him, and felt a confusion of indignant compassion. “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said again, turning his back on her as if running away, and in reality he did run away, he ran from her, from her threat, a cry laid bare beneath the altar: “I’ll be waiting too, my love, I swear I will.”

Irritated, Tancredo thought the sacristy smelled of brandy as he passed through it and went out into the garden: he needed to think for a minute, to work things out. It had stopped raining. He tiptoed through the willows. The lit doorway to the office looked yellow. No voices could be heard. Raindrops pattered down from the leaves; they smacked against other big, fallen leaves, against scattered tins which no one ever found; there was the murmur of a drainpipe, gulping water; it was as if it were still raining, without rain. “They’re not talking,” Tancredo said to himself, “they’re not talking” — and he moved closer until he could see into the office. Yellow like the light, the three Lilias seemed to be asleep on their feet around Matamoros, who was seated at the head of the table. In spite of the silence, they were talking; their lips moved; their gestures enquired; their questioning heads responded. Tancredo inched closer. They were whispering. Their voices were like secrets, a confession. As he moved forward slowly, he could make them out.

“So, you’re not sisters,” Matamoros sighed. His face tilted toward theirs; his hand, meanwhile, went for the bottle at last. He filled his glass, but did not drink. “Not sisters,” he repeated. “But you look alike.”

“We’re from the same village, Father.”

“We were neighbors.”

The Lilias’ voices drifted into the night like stricken murmurings, identical, hurried. They all wanted to talk at once, to say the same things.

“We were cooks, we still are.”

“And family? Where are your families?”