The Crime of Father Amaro

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

‘We are the children of liberty and we will not renounce our mother!’

  ‘But Dr Godinho, who is behind the newspaper, is a member of the opposition,’ remarked Natário. ‘If you protect the newspaper, you are implicitly protecting his manoeuvrings . . .’

  The secretary-general smiled.

  ‘My dear Father, I’m afraid you don’t quite understand how politics works. There is no real enmity between Dr Godinho and the district government, there is merely a slight difference of opinion . . . Dr Godinho is a very intelligent man. He is coming to the realisation that his Maia Group is achieving nothing. Dr Godinho appreciates the district government’s policy and the district government appreciates Dr Godinho.’

  Then, wrapping himself in the full mystery of the State, he added:

  ‘I’m talking high politics here, Father.’

  Natário stood up.

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘Impossibilis est’ said the secretary-general. ‘Believe me, Father, as an individual, I find the article wholly repugnant, but as a representative of the authorities, I must respect the author’s right to express his ideas . . . I can assure you – and please tell this to all the diocesan clergy – that the Catholic Church has no more fervent son than Gouveia Ledesma. However, I want a liberal religion, in keeping with progress and science . . . That is how I have always felt, and I have said as much in public, in the press, to the university and to the guilds. Indeed, I think there is no greater poetry than the poetry of Christianity! And I admire Pius IX: a great man. My only regret is that he does not wave the banner of civilisation!’ And Bibi, pleased with the phrase, repeated it: ‘Yes, my only regret is that he does not wave the banner of civilisation. The Syllabus is an impossibility in this century of electricity, Father. And we cannot sue a newspaper because it publishes a few humorous comments about the priesthood, nor, for political reasons, does it suit us to upset Dr Godinho. Those are my final thoughts on the matter.’

  ‘Secretary-general . . .’ said Natário, bowing.

  ‘Your servant. I’m so sorry you won’t have a cup of tea . . . And how is the precentor?’

  ‘I believe that recently he has suffered a recurrence of the dizzy spells.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Another intelligent man, and a great Latinist too. Mind the step as you go out.’

  Natário raced back to the Cathedral, in a state of high excitement, muttering angrily out loud to himself. Amaro was pacing slowly up and down outside the Cathedral, his hands behind his back; he looked very drawn and had dark shadows under his eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ he said, hurrying towards Natário.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Amaro bit his lip, and while Natário was excitedly recounting his conversation with the secretary-general and how he had argued with him and how ‘the man had talked on and on’, a shadow of sadness settled over Amaro’s face, as, with the point of his umbrella, he kept angrily rooting out the bits of grass growing in the cracks of the paving stones.

  ‘He’s a pedantic fool,’ Natário said, making a sweeping gesture. ‘We won’t get anywhere with the authorities. It’s pointless. Now the matter is between me and the “Liberal”. And I’m going to find out who he is, Father Amaro. And I will be the one to crush him, Father Amaro, me!’

  João Eduardo, meanwhile, had been radiantly happy since Sunday. The article had caused an uproar; they had sold eighty copies of the newspaper, and Agostinho assured him that in the pharmacy in the main square, the view was that ‘the “Liberal” knew the priesthood inside out and that he was absolutely right!’

  ‘You’re a genius, lad!’ said Agostinho. ‘Write me another one!’

  João Eduardo was thrilled by ‘the gossip going round the town’.

  He re-read his article with paternal delight; had he not been afraid of upsetting São Joaneira, he would have liked to go round the shops declaring: ‘I wrote that!’ And he was already pondering another, even more terrifying article to be entitled: ‘The priesthood of Leiria face-to-face with the nineteenth century!’

  Dr Godinho had deigned to stop him in the main square to say:

  ‘Your article has made quite a splash. You’re a sly one. I especially liked that comment about Father Brito. I had no idea. And they say the administrator’s wife is very pretty too . . .’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, but goodness I enjoyed it. Yes, you’re certainly a sly one. I told Agostinho to publish it as a personal statement. You understand, I’m sure . . . I don’t really want to have too many quarrels with the clergy . . . And there’s my wife, of course, she’s very devout. Well, she’s a woman, and it’s good for women to believe in something . . . But I had a good laugh to myself about it. Especially about Brito. That wretch caused me so many problems in the last election . . . Oh, and another thing, I’ve sorted out that little business you asked about. You’ll have your post in the district government office within the month.’

  ‘Dr Godinho . . . sir . . .’

  ‘No, don’t thank me. You deserve it.’

  João Eduardo returned to the office, tremulous with joy. Senhor Nunes had gone out; João Eduardo slowly sharpened his quill and began drawing up a copy of a letter of attorney, then, suddenly, he grabbed his hat and ran to Rua da Misericórdia.

  São Joaneira was sitting at the window alone, sewing; Amélia had gone to Morenal. João Eduardo announced from the door:

  ‘Dona Augusta, I’ve just seen Dr Godinho and he said that I’ll have that post I wanted within the month!’

  São Joaneira took off her spectacles, let her hands fall into her lap and said:

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, it’s true . . .’

  And João Eduardo rubbed his hands together, giggling nervously with joy.

  ‘What luck, eh?’ he exclaimed. ‘So, if Amélia’s agreeable . . .’

  ‘Oh, João Eduardo,’ said São Joaneira with a heavy sigh, ‘that would take such a weight off my mind. I’ve been so . . . well, I’ve hardly slept.’

  João Eduardo sensed that she was about to mention the article. He put his hat down on a chair in the corner and, returning to the window, his hands in his pocket, asked:

  ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘It’s that shameless article in The District Voice. What do you think? Such calumnies! It’s aged me overnight.’

  João Eduardo had written the article in a fit of jealousy, in order to ‘do for’ Father Amaro; he had not foreseen the distress it might cause the two ladies, and seeing São Joaneira’s eyes filling with tears, he felt almost sorry. He said ambiguously:

  ‘Yes, I read it, it is pretty bad . . .’

  Then deciding to take advantage of São Joaneira’s emotional state in order to advance his own romantic interests, he brought another chair over, sat down beside her and said:

  ‘I never liked to say anything before, Dona Augusta, but . . . Well, Amélia has always been rather over-familiar with Father Amaro . . . And people might have got to know about it through the Gansoso sisters or Libaninho, quite unintentionally, of course, and rumours may have started . . . I know she saw no wrong in it, but . . . you know what Leiria is like, how people talk.’

  São Joaneira declared a desire to speak to him frankly as to a son: the reason she had found the article so upsetting was because of him. After all, he might believe the gossip and want to withdraw his proposal of marriage! She could tell him, as a decent woman and as a mother, that there was absolutely nothing between Amélia and Father Amaro, nothing, absolutely nothing. Amélia was a natural chatterbox, and Father Amaro was always so kind, why, he was delicacy itself . . . She had always said that Father Amaro had a way with him that could touch people’s hearts . . .

  ‘Hm,’ said João Eduardo, chewing one end of his moustache, his head bowed.

  São Joaneira placed her hand lightly on João Eduardo’s knee and looked into his eyes:

  ‘It may not be my place to say so, but the girl really does love you, João Edua
rdo.’

  His heart leaped with emotion.

  ‘And I love her!’ he said. ‘You know how passionately I care about her. It doesn’t matter what that article said.’

  Then São Joaneira dried her tears on her white apron. She was so happy. She had always said that there was no more decent young man in the whole of Leiria!

  ‘I love you like a son, you know.’

  João Eduardo was touched.

  ‘Well, let’s sort things out, then, and silence those tongues once and for all . . .’

  He stood up and with comic solemnity said:

  ‘Dona Augusta, I have the honour of asking for your hand . . .’

  She laughed, and in his happiness, João Eduardo planted a filial kiss on her head.

  ‘Talk to Amélia tonight,’ he said as he left. ‘I’ll come and see her tomorrow, and you’ll see how happy we’ll be . . .’

  ‘The Lord be praised,’ said São Joaneira, taking up her sewing again, with a great sigh of relief.

  As soon as Amélia returned from Morenal, São Joaneira, who was laying the table, said to her:

  ‘João Eduardo was here.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘He came round to have a chat, poor thing . . .’

  Amélia said nothing as she folded up her woollen shawl.

  ‘He was upset . . .’ her mother went on.

  ‘What about?’ Amélia asked, her face red.

  ‘What do you think? Everyone talking about that article in The District Voice and asking who it meant by “young daughters who have no experience of the world” and the answer was, of course, “Who else? São Joaneira’s daughter Amélia, in Rua da Misericórdia!” Poor João says he’s been so worried, and he was too considerate to actually come and talk to you directly. And, well . . .’

  ‘But what should I do, Mama?’ exclaimed Amélia, her eyes suddenly full of tears at those words which fell on her torments like drops of vinegar on open wounds.

  ‘I’m just telling you this for your own good. You do what you like, my dear. I know it’s all lies. But you know how people talk. All I can tell you is that the boy didn’t believe what the article said. That was what I was worried about. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. But, no, he says he doesn’t care about the article, that he loves you just the same, and that he can’t wait to get married. If it was me, I would get married at once and put a stop to all the talk. I know you’re not madly in love with him, but that will come with time. João’s a good lad, and now he’s got that new job . . .’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the other thing he came to talk to me about. He’s spoken to Dr Godinho and apparently he starts the new job within the month. So you do what you think best. But I’m not getting any younger, my dear, I could go at any moment . . .’

  Amélia did not reply, staring out at the sparrows fluttering about on the rooftop opposite – far less troubled than were her own thoughts at that moment.

  Since Sunday, Amélia had been living in a kind of daze. She knew that the ‘pure young daughter’ mentioned in the article was her, and the shame of having her love published in the newspaper like that was a torment to her. And, of course (she thought to herself, biting her lip in mute rage, her eyes full of tears), it would spoil everything. In the main square, in the arcade, people would smile mischievously and say: ‘So São Joaneira’s little Amélia has got herself involved with the parish priest, has she?’ The precentor, who was very strict about anything to do with women, would reprimand Father Amaro. Her reputation would have been ruined as would their love, and all because they had exchanged a few glances and squeezed each other’s hand.

  On Monday, when she went to Morenal, she imagined that people were laughing at her behind her back, making fun of her; she sensed a rebuke in the curt wave that the respectable pharmacist Carlos gave her from his shop doorway; Marques from the ironmonger’s had failed to take his hat off to her as she walked home, and as she entered the house, she felt that she had lost all credibility, forgetting that Marques was so short-sighted that, when he worked in the shop, he had to wear two pairs of spectacles, one on top of the other.

  ‘What should I do? What should I do?’ she muttered to herself from time to time, clutching her head. Her devout mind came up with only devout solutions – to go on a retreat, to make a promise to Our Lady of Sorrows ‘to extricate herself from that situation’, to go and make her confession to Father Silvério . . . And she would end up by taking her sewing and going and sitting resignedly by her mother’s side, feeling very sorry for herself and thinking how unfortunate she had been all her life, ever since she was a child.

  Her mother mentioned the article in only the vaguest, most ambiguous of terms:

  ‘The person who wrote it has no shame . . . We should treat it with the disdain it deserves . . . As long as your conscience is clear, the rest is just gossip . . .’

  But Amélia could see how upset she was – in her worn face, in her sad silences, in the sudden sighs she gave as she sat knitting by the window, her spectacles perched on the end of her nose; then Amélia was even more convinced that ‘everyone’ was talking about it, that her mother, poor thing, had been told about it by the Gansoso sisters and by Dona Josefa Dias, whose mouth produced tittle-tattle as naturally as it did saliva. The shame of it!

  In that gathering of skirts and cassocks in Rua da Misericórdia, she had, up until then, thought that her love for Amaro was perfectly natural, but just as the colours of a portrait painted by the light of an oil lamp – and which, in that light, seemed true – look false and ugly when seen in the sunlight, so that same love seemed monstrous to her now, frowned upon as it was by people whom she had respected ever since she was a child – the Guedes, the Marqueses and the Vazes. And she almost wished that Father Amaro had not come back to Rua da Misericórdia.

  And yet, with what longing she waited each night for his ring at the doorbell. But he did not come, and that absence, which her reason judged prudent, filled her heart with the despair of betrayal. On Wednesday night, she could contain herself no longer and, blushing over her sewing, she remarked:

  ‘I wonder what’s happened to Father Amaro?’

  The Canon, who seemed to be dozing, shifted in his armchair, coughed loudly, and grunted:

  ‘Too much to do . . . Besides it’s much too early yet . . .’

  And Amélia, who had turned white as chalk, was immediately gripped by the certainty that Father Amaro had decided to get rid of her, feeling terrified of the scandal created by the newspaper article and following the advice of his fearful fellow priests concerned for ‘the good name of the clergy’. However, in front of her mother’s friends, she wisely concealed her despair; she even went and sat down at the piano and pounded out such a thunderous mazurka that the Canon, once more stirring in his armchair, snorted:

  ‘Less noise and more feeling, my girl!’

  She spent the night in an agony of doubt, but she did not cry. Her passion for the priest flared up more fiercely, and yet she hated him for his cowardice. One remark in a newspaper and he shivered with fear in his cassock, not even daring to visit her, never thinking that her reputation too had been damaged, and that her love remained unsatisfied. And he was the one who had tempted her with his sweet words and his coquetry. The scoundrel! She wanted both to clutch him violently to her heart and to slap him hard. She had the ridiculous idea of going round to Rua das Sousas the very next day and throwing herself into his arms, installing herself in his room, and causing a scandal that would force him to flee the diocese. Why not? They were young and strong, they could live somewhere far away, in another town, and her imagination began to take hysterical pleasure in the delicious prospect of such an existence, in which she imagined herself constantly kissing him! In her overwrought state, that plan seemed to her perfectly practicable and easy: they would run away to the Algarve, where he would let his hair grow (and be even more handsome!), and no one would know that he was a priest; he could teac
h Latin and she would take in sewing; and they would live together in a little house whose greatest attraction for her was the bed with its two pillows side by side. And the one difficulty in this whole brilliant plan was how to get the trunk containing her clothes out of the house without her mother noticing. But when she woke, these foolish resolutions dissolved like shadows in the clear light of day; it all seemed utterly impracticable, and he seemed as far away from her as if the highest, most inaccessible mountains in the land now separated Rua da Misericórdia from Rua das Sousas. He really had abandoned her! He did not want to lose the money he earned from his parish or the esteem of his superiors. Poor her! She felt then that she would never be happy again and never again take an interest in life. Yet she still nurtured an intense desire to have her revenge on Father Amaro.

  It occurred to her then, for the first time, that João Eduardo had not been to see her in Rua da Misericórdia since the publication of the article. So he too has turned his back on me, she thought bitterly. But what did it matter! In the midst of the distress caused by Father Amaro’s abandonment of her, the loss of João Eduardo’s dull, sentimental love, which was neither useful to her nor a source of pleasure, was a barely perceptible annoyance; this one misfortune had abruptly snatched all affections from her – both the one that filled her soul and the one that merely flattered her vanity; it annoyed her not to feel the clerk’s love clinging to her skirts with all the docility of a dog, but all her tears were for the priest who now wanted nothing more to do with her! She only regretted João Eduardo’s desertion because she thereby lost a ready means of enraging Father Amaro . . .

  That is why on that afternoon as she stood by the window, silently watching the sparrows fluttering about on the rooftop opposite – having just learned that João Eduardo, assured now of his new job, had finally come to speak to her mother – she was thinking with satisfaction of the priest’s despair when he saw her marriage banns published in the Cathedral. Moreover, São Joaneira’s very practical words were quietly working away in her soul: the job with the district government brought in 25$000 réis per month; by marrying, she would immediately regain her respectability as a lady and, if her mother died, she could live quite decently on her husband’s salary and the income from the farm at Morenal; they could even afford to go sea-bathing in the summer . . . And she could see herself in Vieira, much admired by all the gentlemen; she might even meet the wife of the district governor.