Good Offices

“They got back in the early hours, remember, and now they’re asleep. This morning’s Mass will have to be conducted by San José, we think. They looked done in. Oh, Almida and Machado will soon wake up. But by God, it hasn’t escaped our notice: this is the very first time they haven’t celebrated early Mass. Something good might have happened to them, because we don’t want to think it could be something bad. They’re asleep. They looked so worn out they couldn’t even manage to walk straight. But they got here in the end. Father Almida wasn’t about to miss the Family Meal, was he? His favorite day, all those lovely working women who eat like lorry drivers, along with their daughters and granddaughters, all of them flattering Father Almida. What shall we do? Wait. Thank God we have the priest-cantor with us, bless him, whom God helps sing like a bird when it comes to the Mass. We’ve already served him a good meaty broth, which he diluted with a bottle of wine, more like wine broth, a reviving miracle, because he’s like a bee buzzing around a garden now. Come along, Tancredito, and have breakfast, because by the look of you, you didn’t sleep well either, you’ve got circles under your eyes like wells. Are there really no other women in the world for you? More beautiful, purer?”

They’re still drunk, Tancredo thought. And, looking at them, he remembered the cats. He found the absence of miaowing strange, had a premonition of the cats’ phosphorescent eyes wandering like lost souls all over the presbytery. It seemed like a bad dream that the Lilias had executed them in the laundry sink, encouraged and shielded by the other women, the unfading grandmothers of the Neighborhood Civic Association. They really were that tired of the cats, he thought, unable to suppress a nagging fear of the Lilias’ deferential faces. They carried on looking at him attentively. Naked, he still lay on the mattress, one hand raised as though he were physically protecting himself from their words. One of them had seized his clothes and held them under her arm, as if thinking of never returning them. Tancredo reached up, demanding them, and they all burst out laughing.

“Now he wants to get dressed,” they said. “About time too.”

In the end, the Lilia gave him back his clothes, and he had no option but to get dressed in front of them.

“If we overlook the hump,” they said, “your parents were inspired, Tancredito; you look to be well formed, you should thank God.”

And they cackled like lunatics while continuing to put the place in order. Only the ringing of the telephone brought them to a standstill.

“Who can that be?” they asked as one, and stared at the telephone, open-mouthed, hands outstretched. It was as if the instrument had Reverend Almida’s voice, turning up suddenly in the morning, greeting them all, asking what was going on, questioning them closely about their duties.

Tancredo answered, and, once again, as the night before, there was a continuous buzzing sound which tailed off and died. He hung up, and he and the Lilias stared at the instrument.

“Nobody,” he said.

“Nobody is the cat that died last night,” the smallest Lilia replied, a hint of menace in her voice. The others took advantage of the moment to finish hiding away the mattress, blanket, and pillow. Then they fled, literally, from the sacristy.

“I do hope San José manages to sing,” the youngest, the last to leave, was saying when the telephone rang again. Tancredo let it ring twice before answering it. No buzzing, no voice. He hung up. It rang. Tancredo was asking who it was, whom they needed, when at last he heard a voice that sounded like it was being strangled by the cold. A voice asking for Reverend Juan Pablo Almida.

“He cannot come to the phone,” Tancredo replied. “Who’s calling?” It was the first-ever telephone call to the church asking for Almida at that time of day, and just when Almida was sleeping.

The voice did not identify itself, only asked again for Almida. “He’s asleep. Father Almida is sleeping,” Tancredo said.

The voice hung up.

“And still asleep,” the smallest Lilia added, poking her gray head around the door for an instant, just her head, craning her wrinkled neck, her voice confiding. “Like the sacristan. Will they wake up one day? Who knows? Who can tell? We already gave them their mint tea. They deserved it.”

The Lilia’s head spoke calmly, in a way that was beyond serene — bored — and every word was perfectly audible; Tancredo even thought he saw her smiling when she asked herself if Almida and Machado would wake up.

The head disappeared abruptly, leaving Tancredo on his own.

Still alone in the sacristy, he observed the arrival of Reverend San José Matamoros with fascination. Wine bottle in hand, the priest’s eyes shone as though he were crying.

“I want to sing,” he said.