Good Offices

“The light’s gone out,” came the frightened voice of one of the Lilias at last. Straightaway, they heard her move along one side of the table, carefully, without stumbling, and, illuminated, saw the candle flame painting her wrinkled, shining face red. Lighting another candle, she returned to the table. She sat down, fearful like the other Lilias, looking around her: not a cat in sight. All three of them sighed.

“Sing, Father,” they pleaded, like girls in a game. “Sing, whether there’s light or not.”

The priest’s voice had already intoxicated Tancredo. He dreamt along with the words of each song, the miseries and joys they related. He drank as if sleeping, but was actually swept along in a whirl of his own unfamiliar emotions. He was worried about the absence of light, which always frightened Sabina; if she was still beneath the altar, without the glow from the sacristy, it was possible that she would be terrified; she would scream, her screams might coincide with the arrival of Almida and the sacristan. Sabina had been scared of the dark since she was a little girl. Should he go and look for her? Sometimes power outages lasted all night. It was a joke: the electricity came back on with the light of dawn. Or perhaps he was looking for the perfect excuse to run into Sabina’s open arms? No, he told himself, he would not go on with Sabina, and found himself petrified: yes, he desired her; he always had, no two ways about it, protected and hallowed by love — love? Ah, he fantasized, if she were still waiting for him beneath the altar, yes, on the altar or underneath it, under and on all the altars in the world, Sabina, a rare vision in his life, since he’d been a boy, a distant little girl with whom he never held even a minute’s conversation in peace, always in despair at the possibility of being surprised by Almida or, even worse, the sacristan, the wicked godfather, with such a shadow hanging over them it was impossible to relax; always in hiding, they greeted each other only in passing, when chance brought them together in one of the church’s tucked-away corners, and they touched in the courtyard, in their leafy nests, of late in Sabina’s room, with terror for their blanket, like that time at the altar, that other time, when they were children at play, the altar to which they went, terrified to touch each other, even though no one ever thought to spy on them there. He desired Sabina because she intimidated him, unlike other earthier, less celestial women, the whores at the Meals; he had got used to the sight of them, eventually, to the point of ignoring them. Tancredo was surprised to find he was crossing himself, hidden in the half-light. He heard the voices of the Lilias, of Matamoros, and strained to understand them.

“There’s no happier pair than a boy and a dog,” he heard Matamoros say.

And, much later, pulling him out of his reverie, he heard the voice of a Lilia: “This cat acts like it’s out on the streets: open your mouth out there, and they’ll snatch your tongue.”

As she was saying this, the thieving cat had just appeared and disappeared, now carrying off a great strip of crackling. The Lilias watched the speedy getaway, but this time they did not move from their places. Instead of leaping up, they shook their heads and poured themselves more wine; they might even have smiled.

“One remembers forgotten songs,” Father Matamoros said. “I’m remembering one for absent friends. I learned it years ago from the poet Fernando Linero, who played the piano as if he were strumming the clouds.”