The Crime of Father Amaro

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

  ‘They are baptised just as we are,’ remarked Dona Joaquina Gansoso.

  ‘Yes, my dear, but it’s a laughable affair really, it’s not like our baptism, and doesn’t really count.’

  The Canon, who enjoyed tormenting her, said gravely that Dona Maria had just uttered a blasphemy. It was determined in Canon 4, Session 7 of the Holy Council of Trent that ‘anyone who declared that the baptism given to heretics, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, was not a true baptism would be excommunicated’. According to the Holy Council, Dona Maria was thenceforth excommunicated!

  The excellent lady had an attack of hysterics. The following day she threw herself at the feet of Father Amaro, who, as a penance for the offence committed under Canon 4, Session 7 of the Holy Council of Trent, ordered her to pay for three hundred masses for the benefit of the souls in Purgatory, for which Dona Maria paid five tostões each.

  He was thus sometimes able to enter the sexton’s house with an air of mysterious satisfaction and with a small package in his hand. It would be some present for Amélia, a silk handkerchief, a coloured scarf, a pair of gloves. She would go into raptures over these proofs of Amaro’s affection for her, and while the darkened room filled with the delirium of love, below them, tuberculosis was busily wielding its scythe above Totó.

  XIX

  ‘Is the Canon in? I need to talk to him urgently.’

  The maid showed Father Amaro into the office and ran upstairs to tell Dona Josefa that the parish priest had come to see the Canon and that he looked so upset that something terrible must surely have happened.

  Amaro flung open the door of the office, then slamming it shut again without even a ‘Good morning’, exclaimed:

  ‘The girl’s pregnant!’

  The Canon, who had been at his desk writing, fell back in his chair, shocked rigid.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s pregnant!’

  And in the ensuing silence the floorboards creaked beneath the priest’s furious pacings between window and bookshelf.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ the Canon asked, horrified.

  ‘Absolutely. She’s been worrying about it for days. She’s done nothing but cry. But there’s no doubt now. Women know these things, they don’t make mistakes. All the signs are there. What should I do, Father?’

  ‘What a dreadful nuisance!’ muttered the Canon, stunned.

  ‘Can you imagine the scandal? Her mother, the whole neighbourhood . . . And what if they suspect me? I’m ruined. I just don’t want to know. I’ll run away!’

  The Canon was dazedly scratching his head, his mouth hanging open. He could already imagine the screams in the house on the night of the birth, São Joaneira ever after bathed in tears, his tranquil life dead and buried . . .

  ‘Say something!’ yelled Amaro desperately. ‘What do you think? Try and come up with something. I’m just too stunned to think, I don’t know, I’m lost.’

  ‘These are the consequences of your actions, my dear colleague.’

  ‘Oh, go to Hell! This is nothing to do with morality. It was stupid of me, fine, but it’s done now.’

  ‘What do you want, then?’ asked the Canon. ‘You don’t want someone to give the girl some drug to finish her off, do you?’

  Amaro shrugged, impatient with such a ridiculous idea. The Canon was obviously raving . . .

  ‘Well, what do you want?’ asked the Canon again in a cavernous voice, dragging the words up from the depths of his chest.

  ‘What do I want? I want there to be no scandal. What else would I want?’

  ‘How many months gone is she?’

  ‘How many? Well, just over a month . . .’

  ‘Then we should marry her off!’ Canon Dias declared. ‘We must marry her off to the clerk!’

  Father Amaro started in admiration and surprise.

  ‘Devil take it, you’re right! That’s a masterly idea!’

  The Canon agreed, nodding gravely, that it was indeed a masterly idea.

  ‘Marry her off now, while there’s still time. Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant . . . Whoever is the husband is the father.’

  The door opened at this point and Dona Josefa’s blue-tinted spectacles and black bonnet appeared. Gripped by a real frenzy of curiosity, she had been unable to wait any longer upstairs in the kitchen; she had tiptoed downstairs and pressed her ear to the keyhole of the office door; but the thick baize portière had been drawn inside, and the rumble of firewood being unloaded in the street had further muffled the voices of Amaro and the Canon. The good lady had decided then to go in and say ‘Good morning’ to the parish priest.

  But from behind the smoked lenses, her beady eyes scoured in vain her brother’s fat, inscrutable face and Amaro’s pale countenance. The two priests were as impenetrable as two shuttered windows. Amaro even spoke lightly of the precentor’s rheumatism, of the rumours going round about the secretary-general’s marriage . . . Then, after a pause, he got up, saying that he was having an excellent pork stew for supper that night – and much to Dona Josefa’s chagrin, he rushed off, calling back to the Canon from behind the curtain:

  ‘I’ll see you tonight at São Joaneira’s house, Master.’

  ‘Yes, see you there!’

  And the Canon continued writing earnestly. Dona Josefa could contain herself no longer and, having shuffled around her brother’s desk in her slippers for a moment, she asked:

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ he said, shaking his quill. ‘Dom João VI is dead!’

  ‘Insolent creature!’ she bellowed, turning on her heels, cruelly pursued by her brother’s mocking laughter.

  That night, in São Joaneira’s downstairs parlour, while upstairs, Amélia, with death in her soul, was hammering out ‘The Waltz of Two Worlds’, the two priests, cigarettes clenched between their teeth, sat hatching their plan in whispers, huddled on the sofa beneath the gloomy painting in which the vague hand of the anchorite hung poised like a claw above the skull: first, they had to find João Eduardo, who had disappeared from Leiria; Dionísia, who had a nose for these things, was searching every corner of the town in order to find the hole in which the beast was hiding; then, because time was pressing, Amélia would write to him . . . Just a few simple words: that she knew he had been the victim of an intrigue; that she had never ceased being his friend; that she owed him an apology; that he should come and see her . . . If the lad hesitated, which was unlikely (the Canon was quite sure of this), they could dangle before him the prospect of a job at the district government office, easy enough to obtain through Godinho, who was entirely ruled by his wife, who was, in turn, enslaved to Father Silvério . . .

  ‘But what about Natário?’ said Amaro. ‘Natário hates the clerk. What will he have to say about this revolution?’

  ‘Ah!’ cried the Canon, slapping his thigh, ‘I forgot to tell you! Haven’t you heard what happened to poor Natário?’

  Amaro had not.

  ‘He’s broken his leg! He fell off his horse!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning. I only found out about it this evening. I was always telling him that animal would do for him one day. And it has, and done a proper job of it too. He’ll be out of circulation for a long time. I’d completely forgotten about it. The ladies upstairs don’t know anything about it either!’

  There was great sadness when they found out upstairs. Amélia closed the piano lid. They all thought of various remedies they could send him, there was a positive cackle of offerings: ligatures, threads, an unguent made by the nuns in Alcobaça, half a bottle of liqueur made by a group of anchorites who live near Córdoba . . . It was important too to ensure Heaven’s intervention, and each lady volunteered to use her influence with her particular saints: Dona Maria da Assunção promised to pray to St Eleutherius, whom she had been trying out recently; Dona Josefa Dias undertook to interest Our Lady of the Visitation; Dona Joaquina Gansoso swore by St Joachim . . .

  ‘And what about you,
Amélia?’ asked the Canon.

  ‘Me?’

  And she turned pale, suddenly overwhelmed by all the sadness in her soul, thinking that she, with her sins and her passions, had lost the valuable friendship of Our Lady of Sorrows. And being unable to add her influence in Heaven in order to mend Natário’s leg was a cause of great sorrow to her, perhaps the worst punishment she had experienced since she had first begun to love Father Amaro.

  It was a few days later, in the sexton’s house, that Amaro shared the Canon’s plan with Amélia. He prepared her first, telling her that the Canon knew everything . . .

  ‘It’s all under the seal of the confessional,’ he added to comfort her. ‘Besides, he and your mother have their own guilty secrets. It’s all in the family.’

  Then he took her hand and, looking at her tenderly, as if pitying her already for the bitter tears she would weep, he said:

  ‘Now listen, my love. Don’t get too upset about what I am about to say to you, because it’s necessary for our salvation . . .’

  At the first mention of marriage to the clerk, however, Amélia protested loudly:

  ‘Never, I would rather die.’

  He had got her into that state and now he just wanted to pass her on to someone else! Was she just a rag that one uses and then throws to a pauper? Having driven the man from her house, was she then supposed to humiliate herself, write to him and fall into his arms? No! She had her pride too! Slaves were exchanged and sold, but that was in Brazil!

  She grew tearful then. He didn’t love her any more, he was tired of her. Oh, she was a poor, poor wretch! She flung herself face down on the bed and broke into strident sobs.

  ‘Be quiet, woman, they can hear you out in the street!’ said Amaro desperately, shaking her by the arm.

  ‘I don’t care! Let them hear! I’ll go into the street and shout out that I’m in this state thanks to Father Amaro who now wants to leave me!’

  Amaro went white with rage and felt a furious desire to hit her. He controlled himself, however, and with a tremulous voice that belied his apparent serenity:

  ‘You’re not yourself, my love. Anyway, how can I marry you? I can’t. So what do you want me to do? If people see that you’re pregnant, if you have the child at home, you can imagine the scandal! You’ll be ruined for ever. And what will happen to me? I’ll be ruined too, suspended, perhaps put on trial. How do you expect me to live? Do you want me to die of hunger?’

  He himself was moved to tears by the idea of the privations and miseries suffered by the interdicted priest. She was the one who did not love him; he had been so affectionate and kind to her, and now she wanted to repay him with scandal and disgrace . . .

  ‘No, no!’ cried Amélia, sobbing and throwing her arms around his neck.

  And they remained locked in an embrace, trembling with the same emotion – she making his shoulder moist with her tears, he biting his lip, his eyes shining and wet.

  At last, he slowly pulled away and, drying his tears, said:

  ‘No, my dear, this is a great misfortune for us, but it has to be. If you will suffer, imagine how I will suffer too. Seeing you married and living with another man . . . Let’s not even talk about it. It’s fate, it’s God’s ordinance.’

  She sat, utterly overcome, on the edge of the bed, still shaken by great sobs. The punishment had arrived, Our Lady’s revenge, which she had felt building in the depths of Heaven for some time, like a complicated storm. There it was now, worse than all the fires of Purgatory. She had to leave Amaro whom she imagined she loved even more now, and had to go and live with that other man, with the excommunicate. How could she ever again enter into God’s grace once she had slept and lived with a man whom canon law, the Pope and the whole of Earth and Heaven considered to be damned. And he would be her husband, possibly the father of other children. Ah, Our Lady was taking vengeance too far.

  ‘But how can I marry him, Amaro, if the man has been excommunicated?’

  Amaro then hastened to reassure her, coming up with all kinds of arguments. They must not exaggerate. The lad hadn’t really be excommunicated . . . Natário and the Canon had misinterpreted church law and the papal bulls . . . According to certain authors, striking a priest when he was not in his vestments was not ipso facto a reason for excommunication . . . He himself shared that view . . . Eventually the excommunication could be lifted.

  ‘You understand, don’t you? As the Holy Council of Trent says, and as you know yourself, “we tie and we untie”. The lad was excommunicated . . . but we can lift the excommunication order. He will be as clean as he was before. Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘But what will we live on if he’s lost his job?’

  ‘You didn’t let me finish. A job will be found for him. The Canon will find him a job. It’s all been arranged, my dear.’

  She said nothing, exhausted and deeply sad, two tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Your mother doesn’t suspect anything, does she?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ she said with a great sigh.

  They sat in silence: she wiping away her tears, trying to calm herself before going out into the street again; he, head down, gloomily pacing the floor, thinking of the happy mornings they used to enjoy there, when there were only kisses and smothered laughter; everything had changed now, even the weather had turned cloudy, a late summer day, threatening rain.

  ‘Is it obvious I’ve been crying?’ she asked, smoothing her hair at the mirror.

  ‘No. Are you leaving?’

  ‘Yes, Mama’s expecting me.’

  They exchanged a sad kiss, and she left.

  Meanwhile, Dionísia was sniffing about the town on João Eduardo’s trail. She had intensified her search as soon as she found out that the rich Canon Dias was also involved. And every day at dusk, she would slip through Father Amaro’s front door to give him the latest news: she knew that the clerk had gone first to Alcobaça to stay with a cousin who was a pharmacist, and then on to Lisbon; there, with a letter of recommendation from Dr Gouveia, he had found work in a procurator’s office; however, only days later, as ill luck would have it, the procurator had died of apoplexy; since then, João Eduardo had vanished into the confusion and chaos of the capital. There was one person who should know his whereabouts, and that was the typographer, Gustavo. Unfortunately, Gustavo had had a quarrel with Agostinho, had left The District Voice and he too had disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, and, alas, his mother could not help either because she had died.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said the Canon, when Father Amaro brought him these snippets of information. ‘This seems to be a tale in which everyone dies. A veritable hecatomb!’

  ‘You may laugh, Father, but it’s serious. Looking for a man in Lisbon is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s hopeless.’

  Then, growing increasingly anxious as the days passed, he wrote to his aunt, asking her to scour Lisbon for a certain João Eduardo Barbosa. He received a scrawled three-page letter in which she complained about her Joãozinho, who had made her life a hell, getting so drunk on gin that he had frightened away all her lodgers. She was slightly less worried now, though, because a few days ago, poor Joãozinho had sworn on his mother’s life to drink nothing thenceforth but lemonade. As for that João Eduardo fellow, she had asked in the neighbourhood and asked Senhor Palma of the Ministry of Public Works, who knew everyone, but had gleaned nothing. There was a Joaquim Eduardo who owned a shop locally selling knicknacks and if he was the man he was looking for, he was on to a good thing, because he was a very decent fellow . . .

  ‘Pure gossip!’ said the Canon impatiently.

  He then resolved to write a letter himself. And urged on by Father Amaro (who was constantly emphasising to the Canon how he and São Joaneira would suffer if the scandal broke), the Canon eventually authorised his friend in Lisbon to pay out the necessary money to employ the police. The response was some time in coming, but when it did, it was both promising and magnificent. The wily policeman Mendes
had found João Eduardo! Except that he did not know his address yet, having only seen him in a café; but in two or three days’ time Mendes promised to have more precise information.

  Imagine then the despair of the two priests when, a few days later, the Canon’s friend wrote to say that the man whom the wily Mendes had taken for João Eduardo in a café in central Lisbon, basing himself on an incomplete description, was, in fact, a young man from Santo Tirso who was in town to apply for a job as a civil servant . . . The expenses so far amounted to three libras and seventeen tostões.

  ‘Seventeen tostões, damn it!’ roared Canon Dias, turning furiously to Amaro. ‘You were the one who had all the pleasure and fun, and here I am ruining my health with all these toings-and-froings, not to mention spending money like water!’

  Amaro, who was entirely dependent on the Canon, bowed before these insults.

  But all was not lost, thank God. Dionísia was on the trail!

  Amélia received all this news disconsolately. After her initial tears, the inevitability of the solution had imposed itself on her. What else could she do? Given her regrettably slender waist and hips, in two or three months’ time she would be unable to conceal her state. And what would she do then? Run away from home, go to Lisbon like Mr Stork’s daughter, to get beaten up by English sailors in the Bairro Alto, or, like Joaninha Gomes, who had been Father Abílio’s mistress, to have rats thrown in her face by soldiers. No. She would have to marry . . .

  Then she would give birth after only seven months (it happened often enough!), legitimised by the sacrament, by the law and by Our Lord God . . . And her child would have a father, would receive an education and would not be an orphan . . .

  Ever since Father Amaro had sworn to her that the clerk was not really excommunicated and that a few prayers would suffice to remove that excommunication, her devout scruples had faded like dying embers. After all, the only motivating forces behind the clerk’s errors were jealousy and love: it was as a scorned lover that he had written the article in The District Voice and in a fury of betrayed passion that he had struck Father Amaro. She could never forgive him for that brutal act, but how he had been punished! With no job, no home, no wife, and so lost in the anonymous misery of Lisbon that not even the police could find him! And all for her sake. Poor boy! And after all, he wasn’t bad-looking . . . People talked about his lack of piety, but he had always seemed attentive at mass and, every night, he used to say a special prayer to St John that she had presented to him on an embroidered card.