The Crime of Father Amaro

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

  But at that moment, a voice at the door called out:

  ‘Hello, everybody! What’s all this then?’

  The voice belonged to an extremely tall, sallow youth with sunken cheeks, a brush of tangled hair and a Quixotic moustache; when he laughed, he looked as if he had a shadow in his mouth because he had lost nearly all his front teeth; and there was a lingering look of sentimentality in his sunken eyes, which were surrounded by dark circles. He was carrying a guitar.

  ‘So how are you?’ everyone asked.

  ‘Pretty bad,’ he said glumly, sitting down. ‘I’ve still got pains in my chest and a slight cough.’

  ‘The cod liver oil didn’t help then?’

  ‘No,’ he said disconsolately.

  ‘A trip to Madeira, that’s what you need,’ said Dona Joaquina Gansoso authoritatively.

  He laughed with sudden hilarity.

  ‘A trip to Madeira? That’s a good one! You’re a real card, Dona Joaquina! A poor clerk earning eighteen vinténs a day, with a wife and four children to keep, going on a trip to Madeira!’

  ‘And how is Joanita?’

  ‘Not too bad, poor thing. She’s got her health, thank God! She’s nice and plump and always has a good appetite. It’s my two youngest who are ill, and to make matters worse, the maid just took to her bed too. All one can do is have patience!’ He shrugged.

  Then turning to São Joaneira and patting her knee, he said:

  ‘And how’s our Mother Abbess today?’

  Everyone laughed, and Dona Joaquina Gansoso explained to Amaro that the young man, Artur Couceiro, was most amusing and had a beautiful singing voice. He was the best singer of popular songs in Leiria.

  At that point, Ruça came in with the tea, and São Joaneira, holding the teapot high above the cups to pour, was saying:

  ‘Come along, ladies, come along. This is really excellent tea. I bought it in Sousa’s shop . . .’

  And Artur offered around the sugar with his usual joke:

  ‘Salt anyone?’

  The old ladies took small sips from their saucers, carefully selected a slice of buttered toast and sat down, chewing thoughtfully; and because of the risk of staining from dripping butter and tea, they prudently placed their handkerchiefs on their laps.

  ‘Would you like a cake, Father?’ asked Amélia, holding out the plate to him. ‘They’re fresh today from Encarnação.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Have a piece of angel cake.’

  ‘Well, if it’s angel cake, I will,’ he said, beaming. And as he picked up the slice with the tips of his fingers, he looked up at her.

  Artur usually sang for them after tea. On the piano, a candle illuminated the sheet music, and as soon as Ruça had cleared away the tea things, Amélia sat down and ran her fingers over the yellow keys.

  ‘So what is it to be today?’ asked Artur.

  Everyone shouted out their requests:

  “The Warrior”, “The Wedding at the Graveside”, “The Unbeliever”, “Never more”!

  From his corner, Canon Dias said dully:

  ‘Couceiro, give us “Naughty Uncle Cosme”!

  The women all cried out reprovingly:

  ‘Honestly! Really, Canon! What an idea!’

  And Dona Joaquina Gansoso declared:

  ‘Certainly not! Give us something with real feeling so that Father Amaro can get an idea of your singing.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ they all cried, ‘something with real feeling, Artur!’

  Artur cleared his throat, adopted a look of great sorrow and sang dolefully:

  Farewell, my angel, I leave without you!

  It was ‘The Farewell’, a song from the romantic days of 1851. It spoke of a final goodbye, in a wood, on a pale autumn afternoon; then, the solitary reprobate, who had inspired a fateful love, wandered, with windswept hair, by the sea; there was a forgotten grave in a distant valley, over which pale virgins wept in the moonlight.

  ‘Lovely, absolutely lovely,’ they all murmured.

  Artur was singing tenderly, his gaze abstracted; however, in the intervals, while the piano played on, he would smile at those around him and in his shadowy mouth one could see the remains of rotten teeth. Carried away by that morbid, sentimental melody, Father Amaro was standing by the window, smoking and studying Amélia: the light traced a luminous line around her delicate profile; he could see the harmonious curve of her breast; and he watched the gentle rise and fall of her long-lashed lids as her eyes went back and forth from the music to the keyboard. João Eduardo, standing beside her, was turning the pages for her.

  But Artur, one hand on his chest, the other raised in the air, in a gesture of utter desolation, was singing the final verse:

  And from this wretched life I will one day

  Find rest in the darkness of the grave!

  ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ they all exclaimed.

  And Canon Dias said quietly to Amaro:

  ‘No one can touch him when it comes to love songs.’ Then he yawned loudly. ‘You know, that squid we had for lunch has been repeating on me all evening.’

  But it was time for a game of lotto. Everyone chose their usual cards, and Dona Josefa Dias, her greedy eyes glinting, was already rattling the big bag of numbers.

  ‘Sit down here, Father,’ said Amélia.

  It was a seat next to her. He hesitated, but the others had all moved up to make room, and so he sat down, blushing slightly and shyly adjusting his clerical collar.

  A heavy silence fell; then, in a calm voice, the Canon began drawing the numbers. Dona Ana Gansoso was dozing in her corner, snoring quietly.

  The light from the lamp fell directly on the table, so that all their heads were in darkness; and the bright light falling on the dark cloth emphasised the cards blackened with use and the bony, claw-like hands of the old ladies, fiddling with their glass counters. On the open piano the candle was burning down with a tall, straight flame.

  The Canon growled out the numbers, using the venerable, traditional calls:

  ‘Number one, all alone, thirty-three, all the threes . . .’

  ‘I need twenty-one,’ said a voice.

  ‘I’ve got thirty-three,’ gloated someone else.

  And the Canon’s sister said urgently:

  ‘Mix the numbers up, brother, go on!’

  ‘And bring me that forty-seven, even if you have to drag it out of there,’ said Artur Couceiro, his head resting on his hands.

  In the end, the Canon won. And Amélia, looking round the room, said:

  ‘Aren’t you playing, João Eduardo? Where are you?’

  João Eduardo emerged from behind the curtain at the window.

  ‘Have a card, go on, play.’

  ‘And you might as well collect everyone’s money while you’re on your feet,’ said São Joaneira. ‘You can be the banker!’

  João Eduardo went round with a saucer. There were ten réis missing when he had finished.

  ‘I’ve put my money in!’ everyone exclaimed excitedly.

  It turned out to be the Canon’s sister who had not touched her little pile of coins. Bowing, João Eduardo said:

  ‘I don’t believe Dona Josefa has put her money in yet.’

  ‘Me?’ she shouted, furious. ‘Well, really! I was the first. Honestly! I put in two five-réis coins. The cheek of the man!’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Oh, well, it must have been me then. There we are.’ And he muttered to himself: ‘Hypocritical old thief!’

  And the Canon’s sister was meanwhile whispering to Dona Maria da Assunção:

  ‘He wanted to see if he could get away with it, the rascal. No fear of God, that’s his problem.’

  ‘The only person who isn’t happy is Father Amaro,’ they observed.

  Amaro smiled. He was tired and distracted; sometimes he even forgot to mark his card, and Amélia would say to him, touching his elbow:

  ‘You haven’t marked your card, Father.’

  They had both had a three, and she had
beaten him; now they both needed a thirty-six in order to win.

  Everyone in the group noticed.

  ‘Now let’s see if they both win together,’ said Dona Maria da Assunção, gazing at them adoringly.

  But thirty-six was not called; other people had other blanks to fill; Amélia was afraid that the winner would be Dona Joaquina Gansoso, who kept fidgeting on her chair, demanding a forty-eight. Amaro was laughing, drawn in despite himself.

  The Canon drew out the numbers with mischievous slowness.

  ‘Oh come on, Canon, faster!’ they kept telling him.

  Amélia, leaning over her card, her eyes shining, murmured:

  ‘I’d give anything for the thirty-six to be called.’

  ‘Really? Well, there it is . . . number thirty-six!’ said the Canon.

  ‘We won!’ she cried triumphantly, and picking up Amaro’s card and hers, she showed them to the others, proud and very flushed, so that they could check the cards.

  ‘God bless you both,’ said the Canon jovially, emptying out the saucerful of coins in front of them.

  ‘It’s like a miracle,’ said Dona Maria da Assunção piously.

  But it had struck eleven o’clock, and after that final triumph, the old ladies began putting on their shawls again. Amélia sat down at the piano, quietly playing a polka. João Eduardo went over to her and said in a low voice:

  ‘Well, congratulations on winning at lotto with the parish priest. Such excitement!’ And before she could reply, he said an abrupt ‘goodnight’, haughtily wrapping his cloak around him.

  Ruça lit the way. The old ladies, well wrapped up, went down the stairs, bleating out their ‘goodnights’. Artur was strumming his guitar and softly singing ‘The Unbeliever’.

  Amaro went to his room and began reading his breviary, but he grew distracted, thinking about the old ladies, Artur’s rotten teeth and, above all, Amélia’s profile. As he sat on the edge of the bed, his breviary open, staring at the lamp, he could see her hair, her small hands with their rather dark fingers bearing the marks of needle-pricks, the charming down on her upper lip . . .

  His head felt heavy after lunch at the Canon’s and after the monotonous game of lotto, and he felt thirsty too after the squid they had eaten and the port they had drunk. He wanted some water, but there was none in his room. He remembered then that in the dining room there was a jug containing good, cool water from the Morenal spring. He put on his slippers, picked up the candlestick and went slowly up the stairs. There was a light on in the room, but the door curtain was drawn: he lifted it, but immediately stepped back with a sharp intake of breath. He had caught a glimpse of Amélia in a white petticoat, unfastening her corset; she was standing by the lamp, and the short sleeves and low neckline of her blouse revealed her white arms and her delicious bosom. She uttered a cry and ran into her room.

  Amaro stood stock still, beads of sweat on his forehead. They might think he had done this on purpose. Indignant words would doubtless emerge from behind the curtain, which was still swaying angrily.

  But Amélia’s voice asked calmly from within:

  ‘What did you want, Father?’

  ‘I just came up to get some water . . .’ he stammered.

  ‘That Ruça, honestly! She’s so forgetful. I’m sorry, Father, really I am. There’s a water jug just by the table. Have you found it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I have.’

  He went back down the stairs carrying a full glass of water; his hand was shaking and water overflowed onto his fingers.

  He went to bed without praying. Later that night, Amélia could hear nervous footsteps walking back and forth: it was Amaro, still in his slippers and with his cape around his shoulders, smoking and pacing excitedly up and down the room.

  V

  Upstairs, she could not sleep either. On the chest of drawers, in a bowl, the night light was burning down, giving off the foul smell of scorched oil; the whiteness of her discarded petticoats stood out starkly on the floor; and the eyes of the cat, who was equally restless, glinted phosphorescent and green in the darkness of the room.

  In the house next door, a child was crying. Amélia could hear the mother rocking the cradle, singing softly:

  Go to sleep, go to sleep, my little man,

  Your mother has gone to the fountain.

  It was poor Catarina, who took in ironing, and whom Lieutenant Sousa had left with a babe in arms and pregnant with another in order to go off to Estremoz and get married to someone else. She used to be so pretty, so blonde, and now she was all shrivelled up, nothing but skin and bone.

  Go to sleep, go to sleep, my little man,

  Your mother has gone to the fountain.

  Amélia knew that lullaby. When she was seven years old, her mother used to sing it on long winter nights to her little brother, who had died.

  She remembered it well. They were living in a different house then, near the Lisbon road; there was a lemon tree outside her window and her mother used to spread little João’s nappies on its glossy leaves to dry in the sun. Amélia had never known her father. He had been a soldier and had died young, and her mother still sighed when she spoke of the handsome figure he used to cut in his cavalry uniform. When she was eight years old, she was sent to a teacher. She remembered her so clearly. Her teacher was a plump, white-skinned old lady who had been a cook for the nuns in the Santa Joana convent in Aveiro; she would put on her round glasses and sit by the window sewing, and she was full of stories about convent life: the bad-tempered scribe who was always poking around in her rotten teeth; the lazy, easy-going nun with the strong Minho accent, who was in charge of taking in foundlings; the teacher of plainsong who was a great admirer of the irreverent poet Bocage and who claimed to be descended from the rebellious Távoras; and a nun who had died of love, and whose ghost, on certain nights, would walk the corridors moaning plaintively and calling out: Augusto! Augusto!

  Amélia would listen to these stories, enraptured. She was so keen on church ceremonies and saints that her ambition at the time was to be ‘a pretty little nun with a very white veil’. Her mother was much visited by priests. The precentor Carvalhosa, a sturdy old man with a nasal voice, who wheezed asthmatically as he climbed the stairs, was a daily visitor, a friend of the family. Amélia referred to him as her godfather. When she returned from her teacher’s house, she would always find him there, chatting to her mother in the living room, with his cassock unbuttoned to reveal a long black velvet waistcoat embroidered with yellow flowers. The precentor would ask what she had learned and have her repeat her times table.

  There were social gatherings in the evening: Father Valente would come and Canon Cruz, and a little old man with a bald head, a bird-like profile and blue-tinted glasses, who had been a Franciscan friar and whom everyone called Brother André. Her mother’s female friends came too and brought their knitting; another visitor was Captain Couceiro, of the infantry, whose fingers were stained black with tobacco and who always brought his guitar with him. At the stroke of nine, however, she was sent to bed, but through a crack in the wall she could see the light and hear the voices; later, a silence would fall, and the Captain, strumming his guitar, would sing a lively Brazilian song, the ‘Lundum da Figueira.’

  Thus she grew up amongst priests. Some she did not like at all, for example, fat, sweaty Father Valente, with his soft, fleshy hands and small fingernails. He liked her to sit on his lap, where he would stroke her ear, and she could smell his breath which reeked of onions and cigarettes. Her great friend was Canon Cruz, very thin and white-haired, whose collar was always pristine white and whose buckles gleamed. He used to enter the room very slowly, press one hand to his chest and bow, and he spoke in a soft, sibilant voice. By then, she knew the catechism and the doctrine, and for the slightest misdemeanour her teacher would warn her of the punishments meted out by Heaven, so that she came to think of God as a being who dealt out only suffering and death and whom it was necessary to placate by praying and fasting and making novenas
and by ingratiating oneself with priests. That is why, if ever she went to bed without saying a Hail Mary, she would perform a penance the following day, fearful lest God should make her ill with a fever or cause her to fall down the stairs.

  But the best time of her life was when she began taking music lessons. Her mother had an old piano in one corner of the dining room, which was kept covered up with a green cloth and which was so out of tune that it served instead as a sideboard. Amélia liked to sing as she went about the house, and the precentor appreciated her light, clear voice, and her mother’s friends used to say to her:

  ‘You’ve got a piano, why don’t you have someone teach the girl to play? It’s always good to have a skill like that. It could prove very useful!’

  The precentor knew a good teacher, the former organist at Évora Cathedral, a most unfortunate man whose only daughter, a very pretty girl, had run away to Lisbon with a second lieutenant; two years later, Silvestre da Praça, who often went to Lisbon, had seen her walking down Rua do Norte, wearing a scarlet blouse and with her eyes all made up, arm in arm with an English sailor. The old man had fallen into a great melancholy and into equally great poverty; out of charity, he had been given a post in the archives of the diocesan tribunal. He looked like a sad figure out of some picaresque novel. He was a great beanpole of a man and let his fine, white hair grow down to his shoulders; he had weary, watery eyes, yet there was something very touching about his kindly, resigned smile, and about the skimpy, waist-length, wine-red cape with its astrakhan collar that he wore and in which he always looked so cold. People called him Mr Stork because he was so tall and thin and seemed so solitary. One day, Amélia had called him that to his face, but had immediately bitten her lip, embarrassed.

  The old man smiled.

  ‘Go on, call me Mr Stork if you like! What’s wrong with the name? After all, I do look like a stork!’