Good Offices

In his corner of the sacristy, lying in total darkness, he expected to encounter Sabina, or that she would appear at his side, stretched out on the mattress with which they were already familiar. Naked beneath the blanket, he believed he was reading the silence, or that the silence was making itself decipherable because it foretold something. He remained alert, peering through the gloom, surrounded by plaster saints and angels, under the little table on which the telephone rested. Was the telephone going to ring, was that the omen? At last he knew that she was present and cried out to himself, “Sabina is finally here.” He had a premonition of her, but could not imagine becoming aware of her presence in such a way: she was singing, faintly, but singing, in the church, and she sang as though smiling; her song whimsically crossed the passage that joined the church to the sacristy, it established itself in the gloom, making everything shiver, knocking at the closed church doors, touching the altar, taking flight in the sacred echo of the great painted dome. “Not there, Sabina,” Tancredo whispered. The anguish in her voice turned into a laugh in the church, brief but multiplied a hundred times by the echo. “Come and stop me,” he heard her say, and the song, like a threat, grew louder. She was singing as though it were a game, a girlish game, but without abandoning the threat, parodying Christmas carols: “Oh come or I shall scream oh come now child divine oh come do not delay.” Tancredo sat up, but stayed where he was, hesitant in his nakedness. “Not there,” he repeated, “here.” Another laugh, bitter, biting, answered him. Then silence. “You come,” the voice resumed, urgently, not singing this time. And burst into song again, mockingly: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee, all things are passing, God never changeth” — and the voice soared — “patient endurance attaineth to all things.” The voice soared, the laughter soared — “Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting” — the voice soared transfigured by the laugh, a laugh that might be colossal, might wake the world — “alone God sufficeth.” Tancredo walked in fear and fascination. And went to her, to the place where she said only God could find her. There the heat, the terrifying closeness of the heat of nakedness, the desperation of the kisses he called forth, rushed at him, pulling him out of himself. “God,” he cried to himself, and knelt before her, and was thankful for the darkness, because he did not want to see her, or himself.

But he heard her.

“That blessed Father touched my bum,” she said, and repeated it in a murmur as if she were singing, happily.

IV

“Señorita, cover your nakedness. Look, it’s already morning and you’ve woken up where you shouldn’t have done. Aren’t you cold? Of course not, you’re a little bonfire unto yourself, but what a fire, a wild dog is wet behind the ears compared to you, look at yourself in the mirror: flesh and flesh and flesh.”

Sabina came to with a sob and wrapped herself in the blanket. Tancredo barely stirred. The Lilias leaned over them.

“And you, young Tancredo, all the goods out on display? Aren’t you embarrassed? We’re warning you that in less than twenty minutes Father San José will be celebrating early Friday Mass. Listen, listen, don’t you hear footsteps and voices? It’s the church waiting to hear the Reverend; the packed church wants to hear him sing, and how’s the priest going to sing if he has to come through this sacristy and there are two sinners stretched out beneath the angels? Adam and Eve in the flesh. Ah, God was right to curse them and cast them out of Paradise, because you’re just like them, without a single fig leaf, but what are you afraid of? Why the blanket, Sabinita? After all, we know you as God sent you into the world, we used to dress you when you were little, remember? Are you still angry? What were you accusing us of yesterday? Disrespect toward Almida and his church? Ah, God bless them. You’d best go to your rooms and let us tidy up your mess.”

“And Almida?” Tancredo managed to ask, still half asleep, rapidly remembering where on earth he was. Slowly, Sabina started to make her escape, wrapped in the blanket, still hating the mocking Lilias, who crossed themselves while watching her, as if they didn’t want to forget her.

“Thank the Lord you’re not still beneath the altar,” they said, crossing themselves, proving that they had spied on the couple the night before. “We’ve already cleaned and scrubbed,” they added, caustically, “and burned all the womanly sweat, all the dirty women’s clothing we found beneath the altar, the holy, holy altar.”

Stricken, Sabina gave another wail and fled the sacristy.

“What about Machado and Father Almida?” Tancredo insisted. “Aren’t they celebrating Mass?”