As he walked down Amélia’s street, his heart was beating so fast he had to stop, scarcely able to breathe; and the hooting of the owls roosting on the poorhouse wall, which he had not heard for weeks, sounded to him like sweet music.
And the expressions of surprise when he entered the dining room!
‘How good to see you! We thought you’d died! A miracle! . . .’
Dona Maria da Assunção was there, as were the Gansoso sisters. They enthusiastically pushed back their chairs to make room for him and to admire him.
‘So what have you been up to? You’re looking thinner, you know.’
Libaninho was standing in the middle of the room imitating rockets shooting up into the sky. Artur Couceiro improvised a fado on the guitar:
The parish priest has come back home
To partake of São Joaneira’s tea,
Let joy, let joy be unconfined,
And let’s talk him to his knees!
There was applause, and São Joaneira, rocking with laughter, said:
‘It was pure ingratitude on his part.’
‘Ingratitude, you say,’ snorted the Canon. ‘Stubbornness more like.’
Amélia said nothing, her cheeks burning, her startled, shining eyes fixed on Father Amaro, to whom they had given the Canon’s armchair, in which he leaned back, tumescent with pleasure, making the ladies laugh with his jokes about Vicência’s ineptitude.
Alone in a corner, João Eduardo sat leafing through an old scrapbook.
IX
Thus Amaro resumed his close relations with Rua da Misericórdia. He dined early, read his breviary and, barely had the church clock struck seven than he would wrap his cloak about him, cross the main square and go past the pharmacy, where the regulars were standing around airing their usual views, their plump hands resting on the handles of their umbrellas. As soon as Amaro saw the light on in the dining-room window, all his desire would rise up in him again, but at the shrill sound of the door bell, he still sometimes felt a vague fear that he might encounter a distrustful São Joaneira or a cold Amélia. Out of superstition he always entered the house with his right foot.
He would find the Gansoso sisters already there, along with Dona Josefa Dias and the Canon; the latter often dined at São Joaneira’s now and, at that hour, he would be slumped in his armchair, and, waking from his nap, would say with a yawn:
‘Ah, there’s my boy!’
Amaro would go and sit next to Amélia, who was sewing at the table; the penetrating look they exchanged each night was like a mutual, silent oath to each other that their love had grown since the previous evening, and sometimes, beneath the table, they would even passionately rub knees. Then the evening chatter would begin. Always the same topics, problems at the poorhouse, what the precentor had said, how Canon Campos had dismissed his maid, the latest gossip about Novais’ wife . . .
‘Remember, love thy neighbour!’ the Canon would mutter, stirring briefly in his armchair before belching and once more closing his eyes.
Then João Eduardo’s boots would creak on the stairs, and Amélia would immediately open up the table for a game of cards; the players were Dona Joaquina Gansoso, Dona Josefa and Father Amaro; since Amaro played badly, Amélia, his ‘teacher’, would sit behind him to ‘guide’ him. Arguments would break out as soon as the first cards were dealt. Then Amaro would turn to Amélia, their faces so close that their breath mingled.
‘This one?’ he would ask, indicating the card with a languid eye.
‘No, no! Wait, let me see,’ she would say, her face bright red.
Her arm would brush against Amaro’s shoulder, and Amaro could smell the eau-de-cologne in which she always doused herself.
Opposite them, next to Joaquina Gansoso, sat João Eduardo, chewing his moustache and gazing at her passionately. In order to free herself from those two languorous eyes fixed on her, Amélia had finally told him that it was positively indecent to stare at her all night in full view of the parish priest, with whom you had to be on your best behaviour.
Sometimes she would even say to him, laughing:
‘João Eduardo, go and talk to my mother, otherwise she might fall asleep.’
And João Eduardo would go and sit next to São Joaneira, who would be drowsily knitting, her spectacles perched on the end of her nose.
After tea, Amélia would sit down at the piano. An old Mexican song, ‘La Chiquita’, was all the rage in Leiria at the time. Amaro thought it ‘delicious’ and smiled with pleasure, showing his white teeth, as soon as Amélia began to sing in languorous, tropical tones:
When I sailed forth from Old Havana . . .
But it was the next verse that he loved best, when Amélia, leaning back, slightly rolling her eyes and gently moving her head, would voluptuously pronounce each syllable, as her fingers lightly brushed the keys:
If a little dove comes to your window
Treat him with love because that dove is me.
And how delightful, how Mexican she sounded as she trilled:
Ay chiquita que sí,
Ay chiquita que no-o-o-o!
But the old ladies would demand that he continue the game and so he would sit down again, humming the last notes of the song, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his eyes shining with happiness.
Friday was the big night. Dona Maria da Assunção would always wear her beautiful black silk dress, and because she was rich and had aristocratic connections, everyone deferred to her and gave her the best place at the table, where she would sit down, affectedly swaying her hips and with much rustling of silk. Before tea was served, São Joaneira would always take her into her bedroom where she kept a bottle of fortified wine, and there the two friends would sit on low chairs and chat. Then Artur Couceiro, who looked gaunter and more tubercular with each day that passed, would sing the latest fado he had composed, called the ‘Confession Fado’, which he had written specially to please that pious gathering of skirts and cassocks:
In the chapel of love,
At the back of the church,
I opened my heart
To Father Cupid . . .
This was followed by a confession of tender little sins, an act of loving contrition and an equally loving penance:
Six kisses in the morning,
A single embrace before bed
And to calm the tender flames of love
Breakfast on unleavened bread.
That composition, which was at once gallant and devout, was much appreciated by Leiria’s ecclesiastical society. The precentor had requested a copy and had enquired as to the name of the composer, saying:
‘And who is this witty Anacreon?’
When told that it was none other than the clerk in the municipal council offices, he spoke of him in such glowing terms to the wife of the district governor that Artur finally received the eight thousand mil réis increase for which he had been begging for years.
Libaninho was another constant presence at those gatherings. His latest prank was to steal kisses from Dona Maria da Assunção; the old lady would protest loudly and then, fanning herself furiously, shoot him greedy glances. Then Libaninho would disappear for a moment only to return wearing one of Amélia’s petticoats and one of São Joaneira’s bonnets; he would then feign a burning, lubricious passion for João Eduardo, who would retreat, red-faced, to loud shrieks of laughter from the old ladies. Brito and Natário sometimes came as well, and then they would all play lotto. Amaro and Amélia always sat next to each other, and they would spend all night, their knees pressed together, both of them scarlet-cheeked, as if somehow numbed by the same urgent desire.
Each night, Amaro left São Joaneira’s house more in love with Amélia than ever. He would walk slowly down the street, pleasurably pondering the delicious feelings which that love provoked – certain looks she gave him, the passionate rise and fall of her breast, the lascivious way she touched his knee or squeezed his hand. At home, he would undress quickly because he liked to think about he
r as he lay snuggled up beneath the blankets in the dark; and then, like someone smelling one flower after another, he would go over in his mind, one by one, the many proofs she had given him of her love, until he was intoxicated by pride. She was the prettiest girl in the town! And she had chosen him, the priest, the man eternally excluded from feminine dreams, the neutral, melancholy creature who prowls the shores of sentiment like a suspicious intruder. Then his own passion would become mingled with concern for her, and, eyes closed, he would murmur:
‘Bless her, poor love, bless her!’
But his passion was sometimes full of impatience too. Having spent three hours with her eyes upon him, three hours absorbing the voluptuousness that her every movement exuded, he would feel so heavy with desire that he would have to keep a tight rein on himself in order not to commit some folly, right there in the room, in front of her mother. Then later, at home, he would desperately twine his arms about himself: he wanted her there at that very moment, offering herself up to his desires; he would think up various schemes – he would write to her, they would find a little house where they could share their love, they would plan a walk to some farm. But all these ideas struck him as both flawed and dangerous when he recalled Dona Josefa’s prying eyes and the gossipy Gansoso sisters. Confronted by these difficulties, which rose before him like the encircling walls of a citadel, the old complaints returned: Not being free! Not being able to walk straight into that house and say that he wanted to marry her and to enjoy her without sin, at his leisure! Why had they made a priest of him? It was all the fault of that silly old woman, the Marquesa de Alegros! He had not voluntarily given up his man’s heart. They had driven him into the priesthood the way they might drive an ox into a corral.
Then, pacing excitedly up and down his room, he would take his accusations further and fulminate against Celibacy and against the Church: why did the Church forbid its priests, who were, after all, men living amongst men, that most natural of satisfactions, one that even the animals enjoy? Do they imagine that as soon as an old bishop says to a strong, young man ‘Thou shalt be chaste’ that his blood suddenly grows cold? And that a single Latin word – accedo – tremulously spoken by a frightened seminarian will be enough to contain for ever his formidably rebellious body? And who had come up with the idea in the first place? A council of decrepit bishops, withered as parchments, useless as eunuchs, emerging from the depths of their cloisters, from the peace of their colleges. What did they know about Nature and its temptations? Let them spend two or three hours next to Amélia and even they would see desire rise up beneath their cloak of sanctity. We can avoid and dodge everything except love. And if that is so, why then did they stop priests from feeling it and experiencing it with purity and dignity? Or is it better to seek it out in vile alleyways? Because the flesh is weak.
The flesh! He would ponder the three enemies of the soul – THE WORLD, THE DEVIL AND THE FLESH. And they appeared in his imagination as three very real figures: an extremely beautiful woman; a black creature with fiery eyes and cloven hooves; and the world, a vague, marvellous thing (wealth, horses, mansions) whose most perfect personification seemed to him to be the Conde de Ribamar. But what harm had they done to his soul? He had never seen the Devil; the beautiful woman loved him and was his only consolation; and from the world, the Count, he had received only protection, kindness and warm handclasps . . . And how could he avoid the influences of the Flesh and the World? Only by fleeing, as saints once used to do, to the sands of the desert and the company of wild beasts. Had his teachers in the seminary not told him, though, that he belonged to a militant Church? Asceticism was therefore wrong, since it was a dereliction of saintly duty. He did not understand, he simply did not understand!
Then he tried to justify his love with examples from divine literature. The Bible was full of weddings. Amorous queens advance in their jewel-encrusted robes; the bridegroom, leading a white lamb, comes to meet them, a turban of pure linen about his head; the Levites bang silver cymbals and call out God’s name; the iron doors of the city swing open to admit the caravan that has come to carry off the bridal pair; and the sandalwood chests containing the treasures of the dowry creak as they are bound with purple cords onto the backs of camels. Beneath the lions’ hot breath and to the acclaim of the plebeian crowd, the martyrs in the arena marry with a kiss. Even Jesus himself did not always maintain his inhuman saintliness; in the streets of Jerusalem and in the market places of the City of David, he was cold and absorbed, but he had a place of sweet ease in Bethany, beneath the sycamores of the Garden of Lazarus; there, while his lean Nazarene friends are drinking milk and plotting, he is gazing out at the golden roofs of the temple, at the Roman soldiers throwing the discus near the Golden Gate, at the loving couples walking beneath the trees in Gethsemane, and he places one hand on the golden hair of Martha, who loves him and sits at his feet, engrossed in her spinning.
His love, therefore, was an infraction of canon law, but not a sin of the soul; it might displease the precentor, but not God; it would be perfectly legitimate in a priesthood with more human rules. He thought of becoming a Protestant, but where, how? This seemed even more of an impossibility than transporting the Cathedral up to the Castle on the hill.
He would shrug then, scornful of all these muddled inner arguments. Mere philosophy and prattle! He was mad about Amélia – that much was clear. He wanted her love, her kisses, her soul . . . And if the bishop were not so old, he would want the same, as would the Pope!
Sometimes he was still pacing his room, talking to himself, at three o’clock in the morning.
João Eduardo, walking along Rua das Sousas late at night, had often seen a dim light burning in Father Amaro’s window. For like all those thwarted in love, João Eduardo had recently got into the sad habit of wandering the streets into the early hours.
The clerk had noticed Amélia’s liking for the parish priest right from the start. But knowing her upbringing and the devout habits of the house, he had attributed her almost humble attitude towards Amaro to her respect for him as a priest, for his status as confessor.
Instinctively, though, he began to hate Amaro. He had always detested priests. He thought them ‘a danger to civilisation and to freedom’; he believed them to be intriguers with lustful habits, constantly conspiring to bring back the dark days of the Middle Ages; he loathed confession, which he judged to be a terrible weapon against domestic peace; and he had vague religious beliefs that rejected ritual, prayer and fasting, but admired the poetical, revolutionary Jesus, the friend of the poor, and ‘the sublime spirit of God that fills the whole Universe’! He had been going to mass regularly since he had been in love with Amélia, but only in order to please São Joaneira.
And he wanted to get married quickly in order to remove Amélia from that world of religious fanatics and priests, afraid that he might later have a wife who was terrified of Hell, who spent hours praying the Stations of the Cross in the Cathedral and confessing to priests who ‘drag from confessants the secrets of the bedroom’.
When Amaro had started visiting Rua da Misericórdia again, João Eduardo had been greatly annoyed. ‘So the rascal’s come back,’ he thought. But annoyance had turned to distress when he saw that now Amélia treated Amaro with an even more tender familiarity, that in his presence she became unusually animated, that there seemed to be some kind of flirtation going on. She blushed scarlet whenever Amaro entered the room! She listened to him with ardent admiration. She always made sure to sit next to him when they played lotto.
One morning, he went to Rua da Misericórdia in a state of some agitation, and while São Joaneira was chatting in the kitchen, he said sharply to Amélia:
‘Miss Amélia, I really don’t like the way you behave with Father Amaro.’
She looked up, shocked:
‘Whatever do you mean? How do you expect me to treat him? He’s a friend of the family, he used to be a lodger here . . .’
‘I know, I know . . .’
&nb
sp; ‘But don’t worry, if it annoys you, I won’t go near the man again.’
Reassured, João Eduardo reasoned that ‘there was nothing going on’. He put her behaviour down to an excess of religious devotion, to her enthusiasm for the priesthood.
Amélia decided then to disguise what she felt in her heart; she had always considered the clerk to be rather obtuse, but if he had noticed, how could the all-seeing Gansoso sisters possibly fail to notice, or the Canon’s sister with her long training in malice. That is why, from then on, whenever she heard Amaro coming up the stairs, she would adopt a distracted, artificial air; but, alas, as soon as he spoke to her in his soft voice or turned on her those dark eyes that set her nerves trembling, then, like a thin layer of snow melting beneath a strong sun, her coldness would vanish and her whole person became one continuous expression of love. Sometimes, she was so absorbed in her private ecstasy that she even forgot João Eduardo was there, and was surprised when she heard his melancholy voice in some other corner of the room.
She felt too that her mother’s friends treated her ‘inclination’ for the priest with silent, friendly approval. He was, as the Canon said, a very pretty boy; and the old ladies’ flirtatious manners and glances exuded an admiration for him that created a favourable climate in which Amélia’s passion could grow. Dona Maria da Assunção occasionally whispered in her ear:
‘Just look at him! He inspires real fervour. He’s the pride of the clergy. There’s no one else quite like him!’
And they all thought João Eduardo to be ‘a ne-er-do-well’! Amélia no longer concealed her indifference towards him; the slippers she had begun embroidering for him had long since vanished into her work basket, and she no longer waited at the window to watch for him on his way to work.
Certainty had taken root in João Eduardo’s soul, a soul, as he put it, which was now blacker than the night.
‘She’s in love with the priest,’ he had concluded. And to the pain of his ruined happiness was added concern for her threatened honour.
The Crime of Father Amaro Page 15