Good Offices

“They killed our husbands on the same day in the village. No one knows who did it. One lot said it was the others, the others said it was the first lot. Anyway, they killed all the men. And there were a lot of them. Only we women were left, because they took the children too. We went to ask for them, we looked for them. Imagine, a hoard of mothers asking after a hoard of children. Who knew about them, who had them? One lot said the others, the others said the first lot. Dead or alive, who knows? Thanks to the Lord’s infinite mercy we met Father Almida, who had just taken on the church at Ricaurte. We were spared from crying all over the place. We followed the Father from village to village, from city to city. Why would we ever go home again? Our houses were empty, the village would die empty, they weren’t there, and they weren’t coming back. Without them we were alone, no maize to grind, no homes to keep. But God is great, God is God; Reverend Father Juan Pablo Almida appeared, and for that, God bless Father Almida, although. .”

“God bless him,” Matamoros said, adding: “I’m not going to drink a toast alone.”

They smiled with another murmur. The Father lost patience.

“Go, go and find your glasses and sit with me, and toast with me, before we say our goodbyes. I don’t want any food, just a moment with you, to take our minds off the bad weather, and then I’ll go. The rain’s stopped; God knows when to give and when to take away. I won’t need a taxi.”

“Don’t say that, Father, don’t talk of leaving without trying dishes made by no one but us. For the first time in years we cooked because we wanted to, because we really felt like it, and that makes us happy. We’re glad to serve you, but it’s difficult to sit and have a drink with you. We’re not used to that. We just cook, Father, and await the sleep of the just.”

As they said this, they moved closer to the priest. The murmuring grew quieter, almost inaudible. The confession.

“But you can’t imagine how tired we are of all this, Father.”

“That’s why I’m telling you to sit down.”

“No, Father, don’t trouble yourself,” one said.

“After all, we’re used to being on our feet,” another said.

“We suffer from varicose veins, but what can we do?” The third raised her leg with difficulty and unhesitatingly hitched up her skirt to show the Father her calf and most of her thigh, both swollen up like bladders, the branching blue veins, thick and strangling, veins Tancredo already knew about.

“It’s tiring work,” another said. “Especially the Community Meals. If it were just meals for everyone who lives in the presbytery, fair enough. But the Community Meals are torture. No one shows us any pity, Father. We have to rush from here to there; there are chairs in the kitchen, but we have to walk back and forth constantly, keeping an eye on things. Setting out plates and filling them while the oil bubbles, and careful, the potatoes are burning, while the soup boils, and careful, the potatoes are turning to mush, we have to fly about the whole time, and that’s cooking nothing but potatoes, occasionally a bit of pork, who knows what would happen if we were frying cassava and plantain, and the whole time, not a day, not one Sunday set aside by God, not a single morning’s rest, because God’s children eat every day and we have to prepare their food, it’s that simple; if we don’t cook, they die. Who knows how many miles we run in a single day?”

The youngest of the Lilias picked up the thread.

“And it’s not just varicose veins,” she said. “Doing battle with the coal stove, its plates old like us, they get messed up, they come loose, plates that stick out like barbs, sometimes we get burned.” And she showed her wrinkled arm, scarred across by a red blister.

It was the night of lamentations, Tancredo thought. A night he too had experienced, in his room, when the three Lilias had come in silently, each with a chair, sat themselves down opposite him and started to describe their tiredness, to show him their burns — couldn’t Tancredito speak to the Father and let him know they were ailing, in need of two or three strong girls to help out in the kitchen? They could not do everything on their own.