The Crime of Father Amaro

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

  Amaro agreed fulsomely:

  ‘The Canon’s absolutely right. Out of a saintly mouth come only saintly words. Your health, Master!’

  ‘And yours!’

  And they clinked glasses, their eyes bright, entirely reconciled after their argument.

  But Amélia was worried.

  ‘Oh dear, whatever can be wrong with Mama?’

  ‘A bout of laziness most likely,’ said Father Amaro, laughing.

  ‘Now don’t distress yourself, child,’ said Dona Josefa. ‘I’ll go with you, we all will.’

  ‘We’ll carry her on a dais like a holy image,’ muttered the Canon, peeling a pear.

  Then he suddenly put down his knife, looked wildly around him and, running his hand over his stomach, said:

  ‘I’m not feeling very well either as it happens . . .’

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Just a bit of a pain. It’s gone now. It was nothing.’

  Much alarmed, Dona Josefa tried to stop him eating the pear. The last time this had happened it had been brought on by eating fruit.

  But he obstinately bit into the pear.

  ‘The pain’s gone now,’ he grumbled.

  ‘It was in sympathy with your Mama,’ said Amaro quietly to Amélia.

  Then the Canon abruptly pushed back his chair and slumped to one side:

  ‘I’m not at all well, not at all! Oh, dear God! Oh, my Lord. Oh, I’m dying!’

  Everyone rushed to his side. Dona Josefa took his arm and helped him to his room, calling to the maid to fetch the doctor. Amélia ran into the kitchen to heat up a towel to place on his stomach. But there was no towel. A terrified Gertrudes was bumping into chairs, looking for a shawl to put on.

  ‘Go without it, you fool,’ Amélia shouted.

  The girl left. In his bedroom the Canon was howling with pain.

  Amaro, genuinely concerned now, went into the room. Dona Josefa was on her knees by the dressing table saying mournful prayers to a large lithograph of Our Lady of Sorrows, and the poor Canon was lying face down on the bed, biting the pillow.

  ‘Senhora,’ said Amaro severely, ‘this is no time for praying. We must do something. What do you usually do?’

  ‘Ah, Father, there’s nothing we can do,’ said Dona Josefa tearfully. ‘The pain comes and goes so quickly. There’s no time to do anything. Sometimes some limeflower tea helps, but I haven’t any in the house. Oh, dear Lord!’

  Amaro ran to his house to fetch some tea, and returned, panting, shortly afterwards, along with Dionísia, who had come to offer her energy and her experience.

  But, fortunately, the Canon had suddenly felt much better!

  ‘Thank you so much, Father!’ Dona Josefa said. ‘Such excellent tea! You’re most kind. He’ll go to sleep now. That’s what always happens after one of his attacks. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and sit with him . . . This was the worst attack yet. It’s those wretched . . .’ But she stopped herself, terrified. ‘It’s the Dear Lord’s fruit that does it. It’s His divine will . . . Will you excuse me?’

  Amélia and Amaro were left alone in the room. Their eyes shone with the desire to touch each other, to kiss, but all the doors were open, and they could hear the old woman’s slippers in the next room. Father Amaro said loudly:

  ‘The poor Canon! The pain must be terrible.’

  ‘He gets it about every three months,’ said Amélia. ‘Mama had a feeling it would happen now. She said so only the day before yesterday: “I’m worried,” she said, “the Canon’s due for another one of his attacks” . . .’

  Amaro sighed and said softly:

  ‘I don’t have anyone to worry about me like that . . .’

  Amélia rested her lovely, tender eyes on him:

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  Their hands were about to meet passionately across the table, but Dona Josefa appeared, wrapped in her shawl. Her brother had gone to sleep, and she could barely stand for exhaustion. These upsets were ruining her health. She had lit two candles to St Joachim and made a promise to Our Lady of Good Health. It was the second time this year. And Our Lady had not failed her . . .

  ‘She never fails those who pray to her with faith, Senhora,’ said Father Amaro piously.

  The hollow chimes of the tall grandfather clock struck eight. Amélia again said how worried she was about her mother. It was getting later and later.

  ‘And when I went out it was starting to rain,’ said Amaro.

  Amélia ran anxiously to the window. The paving stones outside, under the street lamp, gleamed wetly. The sky was dark.

  ‘It looks set in for the night.’

  Dona Josefa was most upset about this unforeseen difficulty, but, as Amélia could see, she couldn’t possibly leave the house; Gertrudes had gone for the doctor, but, of course, had not found him and would doubtless be going from house to house looking for him, who knows when he would turn up . . .

  Amaro then suggested that Dionísia (who had come with him and was waiting in the kitchen) could accompany Miss Amélia to her house. It was only a few steps away, and there was no one about in the streets. He would go with them as far as the corner of the square. But they should hurry before the rain got too bad.

  Dona Josefa went and found an umbrella for Amélia. She asked her to be sure to tell her mother what had happened, but that she wasn’t to worry, because her brother was better now.

  ‘Oh, and tell her,’ she shouted from the top of the stairs, ‘tell her that we did all we could, but that the pain was over in a flash!’

  ‘I’ll tell her. Goodnight.’

  When they opened the street door, the rain was falling heavily. Amélia thought they should wait, but Amaro tugged impatiently at her arm.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’

  They walked down the deserted street, huddled beneath the umbrella, with Dionísia beside them, saying nothing, her shawl over her head. All the windows in the houses were dark, and in the silence they could hear the water filling the gutters.

  ‘Goodness, what a night!’ said Amélia. ‘My dress will be ruined.’

  They had reached Rua das Sousas.

  ‘Now it’s really coming down,’ said Amaro. ‘I think it would be best if we just stopped at my house for a moment and waited . . .’

  ‘No! No!’ cried Amélia.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘You’re going to ruin your dress. It’s only for a moment, it’s just a shower. Look, it’s clearing up over there. It’ll be over soon. Don’t be silly. Your mother would be furious with you if she saw you out in this downpour, and quite right too!’

  ‘No! No!’

  But Amaro had already stopped, rapidly opened the door and was gently pushing Amélia inside:

  ‘Just for a moment, it’ll soon pass, go in . . .’

  And there they stayed, in silence, in the dark hallway, watching the threads of rain glistening in the light of the street lamp opposite. Amélia felt utterly bewildered. Both the blackness of the hallway and the silence frightened her, but it also seemed to her delicious to be standing next to him in the darkness, unbeknown to anyone else. Involuntarily drawn to him, she rubbed against his shoulder, only to draw back immediately, startled to hear his agitated breathing, to feel him pressed up against her skirts. She could sense behind her the stairs that led up to his room, and she felt an intense desire to go upstairs and see what his room was like . . . She felt embarrassed by the presence of Dionísia, who was hunched silently by the door; she kept glancing across at her, wishing she would go away, wishing she would vanish into the darkness of the hallway or the night.

  Then Amaro started stamping his feet on the floor, rubbing his hands and shivering.

  ‘We’ll catch our deaths standing here,’ he said. ‘The flagstones are icy cold. It would be much better if we waited upstairs in the dining room.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said.

  ‘Nonsense! Your mother would be angry if we didn’t. Go on, Dion�
�sia, light a lamp upstairs.’

  Dionísia immediately ran up the stairs.

  He took Amélia’s arm and in a low voice said:

  ‘Come on, why not? What do you think? Don’t be silly now. Just until the rain stops. What do you say?’

  She said nothing, but was breathing hard. Amaro placed his hand on her shoulder, on her breast, holding her close, stroking the silk of her dress. A shudder ran through her. And she followed him then up the stairs, as if in a daze, her ears burning, stumbling with each step on the hem of her dress.

  ‘Go in there, into my room,’ he whispered.

  He ran to the kitchen. Dionísia was lighting a candle.

  ‘Dionísia . . . I’m going to hear Miss Amélia’s confession. It’s an urgent matter. Come back in half an hour. Here you are.’

  And he placed three coins in her hand.

  Dionísia took off her shoes, tiptoed downstairs and shut herself in the coal cellar.

  He went back into the room carrying the candle. Amélia was there, utterly still and pale. Amaro closed the door and went silently towards her, teeth clenched, almost snorting like a bull.

  Half an hour later, Dionísia coughed discreetly on the stairway. Amélia came down at once, well wrapped up in her cape: as they opened the street door, two drunks were passing, talking loudly. Amélia withdrew quickly into the dark. A little while later, Dionísia peered out and, seeing that the street was empty, said:

  ‘The coast’s clear now, my dear.’

  Amélia covered her face and they hurried back to Rua da Misericórdia. The rain had stopped, the stars had come out, and a dry coldness announced the coming of the north wind and the good weather.

  XVI

  The following morning, when Amaro saw that, according to the clock by his bed, it was nearly time for mass, he leaped joyfully out of bed. And as he pulled on the old overcoat that served him as a dressing gown, he was thinking about the morning in Feirão when he had woken up terrified because, the night before, for the first time since he had become a priest, he had sinned grossly with Joana Vaqueira on the straw in the barn. And he had not dared to say mass with that sin on his soul, for it weighed on him like a heavy stone. According to all the holy fathers and the sublime Council of Trent, he was contaminated, filthy, ripe for Hell. Three times he went up to the church door and three times he drew back in fear. He was convinced that if he were to touch the Eucharist with the same hands that had lifted Joana Vaqueira’s petticoats, the chapel would fall in on him or he would stand paralysed as he watched, rising up before the shrine, sword in hand, the glittering figure of St Michael the Avenger! He had got on his horse and ridden for two hours, past the claypits to Gralheira, to confess to good Father Sequeira. Those were the days of his innocence, the days of exaggerated piety and novice terrors! Now his eyes had been opened to the human reality around him. Parish priests, canons, cardinals and monsignors did not sin on the straw of barn floors, no, they did so in comfortable bedrooms, with their supper to hand. And the churches did not fall in on them, and St Michael the Avenger did not leave the comforts of Heaven for such trivial matters.

  That was not what was worrying him, what was worrying him was Dionísia, whom he could hear moving around in the kitchen, clearing her throat; he did not even dare ask her for water so that he could shave. He disliked knowing that she had become a party to his secret. He did not doubt her discretion, that, after all, was her profession, and a few coins would ensure her loyalty. But it was repugnant to his priestly modesty to know that this old woman, who had been the concubine of both civil and military authorities, whose fat body had wallowed in the town’s murkiest secular goings-on, knew his weaknesses, knew of the physical desire that raged beneath his priest’s cassock. He would have preferred it if Silvério or Natário had been the ones to see him last night aflame with lust; that at least would have been between priests! What made him most uncomfortable was the idea of those little cynical eyes observing him, as unimpressed by the austerity of the cassock as by the respectability of uniforms, because they knew that underneath both lay the same wretched bestiality of the flesh.

  ‘That’s it,’ he thought, ‘I’ll give her a libra and send her away.’

  There was a discreet knocking on the bedroom door.

  ‘Come in!’ said Amaro, sitting down at his desk, as if absorbed in some paperwork.

  Dionísia came in, placed the jug of water on the stand, coughed and, addressing Amaro’s back, said:

  ‘Sir, things can’t go on like this. Yesterday someone nearly saw the girl leaving. That’s very bad. For everyone’s sake, secrecy is essential.’

  No, he couldn’t dismiss her. The woman was forcing herself into his confidences. Those words, whispered in case the walls might hear, revealed the prudence of a professional and showed him the advantages of having such an experienced accomplice.

  Red-faced, he turned round.

  ‘Someone saw, did they?’

  ‘Yes, it was only two drunks, but it could easily have been two gentlemen.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And given your position, Father, and the girl’s position . . . Everything must be done with the utmost secrecy. Not even the furniture in the room should know. In any affairs that come under my protection, I demand as much care as if we were dealing with a death!’

  Amaro made a sudden decision to accept Dionísia’s protection.

  He felt around in the drawer and placed half a libra in her hand.

  ‘May God bless you and keep you, my dear,’ she murmured.

  ‘So what do you think we should do next, Dionísia?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair, awaiting her expert advice.

  She said quite naturally and without mystery or malice:

  ‘I think the best place to meet the young lady would be at the sexton’s house.’

  ‘The sexton’s house?’

  She calmly reminded him how convenient the place was. As he himself knew, one of the rooms next to the sacristy gave onto a courtyard where a large shed had been built while the renovation work was being carried out. Well, the sexton’s house backed on to that. Senhor Esguelhas’s kitchen door opened onto the courtyard; it was just a matter of coming out of the sacristy, across the courtyard and there he would be in his lovenest!

  ‘And what about her?’

  ‘She can come in through the sexton’s front door, through the street door that opens onto the churchyard. No one ever goes by there, it’s a desert. And if someone did see her, she could say that she was taking a message to the sexton. That’s a very rough plan, but we can sort it out properly later.’

  ‘Yes, I see, so it’s more of a sketch,’ said Amaro, who was walking up and down the room, thinking.

  ‘I know the place well, Father, and, believe me, there’s not a better place for an ecclesiastical gentleman in your situation.’

  Amaro stopped in front of her and said, laughing:

  ‘Tell me frankly, Dionísia, this isn’t the first time you’ve recommended the sexton’s house, is it?’

  She stoutly denied this. She did not even know Senhor Esguelhas. But the idea had come to her in the night, when she was tossing and turning in bed. First thing in the morning, she had gone to look at the place and realised that it was ideal.

  She cleared her throat, padded noiselessly over to the door, then turned to offer one last piece of advice:

  ‘All this depends, of course, on your coming to an arrangement with the sexton.’

  This was exactly what was worrying Father Amaro now.

  Amongst the servers and sacristans at the Cathedral, Esguelhas was thought of as ‘a miseryguts’. He had had one leg amputated and used a crutch to get around on. And certain priests, who wanted the job for one of their favourites, even said that, according to the Rule, this defect rendered him unfit to serve the Church. However, the former parish priest, José Miguéis, in obedience to the Bishop, had kept him on at the Cathedral, arguing that the disastrous fall that had occasioned the
amputation had occurred in the belltower on the occasion of a religious festival and, thus, while Esguelhas was taking part in the ritual: ergo Our Lord had clearly indicated his intention not to get rid of Esguelhas. And when Amaro had taken over the parish, Esguelhas had used the influence of São Joaneira and Amélia to keep hold of the bell rope, as he put it. Apart from that (and this had been the view in Rua da Misericórdia), it was a charitable deed. Esguelhas was a widower and had a fifteen-year-old daughter who had been paralysed in the legs since she was a child. ‘The Devil certainly had it in for my family’s legs,’ Esguelhas used to say. It was doubtless this misfortune that made him seem so sad and withdrawn. It was said that the girl (whose name was Antónia, but whom her father called Totó) tormented him with her moods, her bad temper and her appalling stubbornness. Dr Gouveia declared her an ‘hysteric’, but all people of good principles were sure that Totó was possessed by the Devil. There had even been a plan to have her exorcised: the vicar general, however, always concerned about what the press might say, had hesitated to give his permission for the ritual to take place, and they had merely sprinkled her with some holy water, without any result. Otherwise, it was not known what form the girl’s ‘possession’ took: Dona Maria da Assunção had heard that she howled like a wolf; in another version, Dona Joaquina Gansoso assured everyone that the poor unfortunate tore her own flesh with her nails. Esguelhas, on the other hand, when asked about the girl, said only:

  ‘Well, she’s still here.’

  Any hours not taken up with his work for the church were spent with his daughter in his little house. He only crossed the square to go to the pharmacy for some medicine or to buy cakes at Teresa’s shop. All day, that part of the Cathedral, the courtyard, the shed, the high wall beside it overgrown with nettles, the house at the rear, with its black-shuttered window set in a leprous wall, was sunk in silence, in dank shadow; and the choirboys, who sometimes risked tiptoeing across the courtyard to spy on Esguelhas, invariably found him bent over the fire, his pipe in his hand, spitting sadly into the ashes.

  He respectfully heard mass every day with Father Amaro. And, on that particular morning, as Amaro was putting on his vestments and listening for the sound of Esguelhas’ crutch on the flagstones outside, he was already pondering the story he would tell Esguelhas, because he could not simply ask to use his room without explaining, somehow, that he required it for some religious purpose. And what other purpose could that be but to prepare, in secret and far from worldly distractions, some tender soul for the convent and for a life of holiness?