The Crime of Father Amaro

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

  ‘But what did I tell you yesterday, woman?’

  ‘What could I do, sir? The child died. See for yourself.’

  She had quietly pushed open the door, without a trace of anger or fear. By the fire, Amaro glimpsed a cradle covered in a scarlet petticoat.

  Without a word, he turned and hurriedly mounted his horse. But Carlota, suddenly talkative, said that she had just gone into the village to order a decent coffin . . . The child was obviously from a good family, and she hadn’t wanted to bury him wrapped only in a cloth. But, since the gentleman was there, it seemed reasonable that he should give her some money for the extra expense. A couple of mil réis would do.

  Amaro looked at her for a moment, filled with a violent desire to throttle her; in the end, though, he put the money in her hand. And just as he was setting off at a trot down the road, he heard someone running after him, saying ‘Pst! Pst!’ Carlota wanted to return the cloak he had lent her the previous night: it had been just the job and had kept the child as warm as toast. Alas . . .

  Amaro was no longer listening to her; he dug his spur hard into his horse’s flank.

  Back in Leiria, having left the horse at the door of the inn, he did not at first go back to his house. He went instead straight to the bishop’s palace. He had only one idea now, which was to leave that wretched town, never to see the faces of those fanatical devotees again, nor that hateful Cathedral façade.

  It was only as he was going up the broad stone steps of the bishop’s palace that he remembered with disquiet what Libaninho had said the previous evening concerning the vicar general’s angry remarks about certain dark insinuations. However, his mind was set at rest by the friendly greeting he received from Father Saldanha, the palace confidant, who immediately showed him into the library. The vicar general was kindness itself. He was alarmed by Amaro’s pale, troubled face.

  ‘I’ve had some bad news, Vicar General. My sister in Lisbon is dying, and I’ve come to ask your permission to go and spend a few days there.’

  The vicar general was all compassionate consternation.

  ‘Why, of course. We are all of us unwilling passengers on Charon’s bark.

  Ipse ratem conto subigit, velisque ministrat

  Et ferruginea subvectat corpora cymba.

  No one escapes him. But I am truly sorry. I will not forget to commend her in my prayers . . .’

  And very methodically, he made a pencilled note.

  When Amaro left the palace, he went straight to the Cathedral. He shut himself in the sacristy, which was deserted at that hour, and after thinking for a long time, head in hands, he wrote to Canon Dias:

  Dear Master,

  My hand trembles to write these lines. The unfortunate girl is dead. As you will understand, I have to go away, because, if I stayed, my heart would break. Your excellent sister will doubtless take care of the funeral arrangements. I, of course, cannot do so myself. Thank you for everything. Perhaps we will meet again, if God so wishes. As for me, I intend to go far away, to some poor parish of shepherds, to end my days in tears, meditation and penitence. Console her mother’s grief as best you can. I will never forget the debt I owe you as long as there is breath in my body. Farewell, now. I am almost at my wits’ end.

  Your devoted friend,

  Amaro Vieira.

  PS The child is also dead and has been buried.

  He closed the letter with a black seal, and having sorted out his papers, he went over and opened the great iron-studded door in order to look out for a moment at the courtyard, the shed and the sexton’s house. The mist and the first rains lent that corner of the Cathedral buildings a lugubrious, wintry air. He walked slowly forward beneath the grim silence of the high buttresses and peered through the window into the kitchen: the sexton was there, sitting by the fire, pipe in mouth, occasionally spitting sadly into the ashes. Amaro tapped lightly on the glass, and when the sexton opened the door, that familiar interior, which he took in at a glance – the curtain concealing what had been Totó’s bedroom, the stairs up to the sexton’s room – filled Amaro with so many troubling memories and with such sudden longing that, for a moment, he could not speak, choked with tears.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Esguelhas,’ he murmured at last. ‘I’m going to Lisbon. My sister’s dying.’

  And he added, his lips trembling with repressed sobs.

  ‘Misfortunes never come singly. You may not know, but Miss Amélia died suddenly last night.’

  The sexton stood in stunned silence.

  ‘Goodbye, Esguelhas. Give me your hand. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Father, goodbye,’ said the old man, his eyes full of tears.

  Amaro fled home along the streets, doing his best not to burst into loud sobbing. He told Escolástica that he was leaving for Lisbon that night. She should have a horse sent over from the Cruz inn so that he could go to Chão de Maçãs to catch the train.

  ‘I only have enough money for the journey, but you can keep all the sheets and towels.’

  Weeping at the thought of losing him, Escolástica tried to kiss his hand in gratitude for such generosity and offered to pack his bags for him.

  ‘No, I’ll do it, Escolástica, don’t you bother.’

  He shut himself in his room. Still weeping, Escolástica went immediately to examine the small amount of linen in the cupboards, but, only a moment later, Amaro called to her. Outside in the street, two men, on harp and violin, were tunelessly playing ‘The Waltz of Two Worlds’.

  ‘Give the men some money,’ said Amaro angrily, ‘and tell them to go to Hell. There are people in here who are ill!’

  Escolástica did not hear another sound from his room then until five o’clock.

  When the lad from the inn arrived with the horse, she assumed Amaro must have fallen asleep and, still weeping over his imminent departure, she knocked lightly on his door. He opened it at once. He had a cloak over his shoulders, and in the middle of the room, packed and buckled, was the canvas bag that was to be stowed behind the saddle. He gave her a bundle of letters to be delivered that night to Dona Maria da Assunção, Father Silvério and Father Natário, and he was just about to leave, accompanied by Escolástica’s sobbing, when he heard a familiar sound on the stairs, and the sexton appeared, looking terribly upset:

  ‘Come in, Esguelhas, come in.’

  The sexton closed the door and after a moment’s hesitation, said:

  ‘You must forgive me, Father, but I’ve been so forgetful lately, what with all my troubles . . . I found this in the room some time ago and I thought . . .’

  He placed a gold earring in Amaro’s hand. Amaro recognised it at once. It was Amélia’s. She had spent ages vainly searching for it; it had doubtless come off during one of those mornings of love on the sexton’s mattress. Overcome, Amaro embraced Esguelhas.

  ‘Goodbye! Goodbye, Escolástica! Remember me. And give my regards to Matías, Esguelhas.’

  The boy buckled the bag onto the saddle and Amaro set off, leaving Escolástica and Esguelhas both weeping at the door.

  But once he was past the weir, at the corner of the street, he had to stop to adjust his stirrups, and just as he was about to remount, around the corner came Dr Godinho, the secretary-general and the administrator of the municipal council, who were all firm friends now and were returning to town after a walk. They stopped to speak to Amaro, surprised to see him there, with his bag on the saddle, as if set for a journey.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m off to Lisbon!’

  The erstwhile Bibi and the administrator both sighed, envying him his luck. But when Amaro mentioned his dying sister, they were politely distressed on his behalf, and the administrator said:

  ‘How very upsetting for you . . . And then there’s that other misfortune at your friend’s house. Poor little Amélia, dying so suddenly . . .’

  Bibi exclaimed:

  ‘What? Amélia, that pretty girl who lived in Rua da Misericórdia? Dead?’

  Dr Godinho had not hea
rd the news either and appeared shocked.

  The administrator had learned about it from his maid, who had heard it from Dionísia. Apparently, she had died of an aneurism.

  ‘Well, forgive me, Father, if I offend your honoured beliefs, which, naturally, I share, but God has committed a real crime . . . carrying off the prettiest girl in the town! What eyes, gentlemen! Eyes made all the more piquant, of course, by her evident virtue!’

  Then, in mournful tones, each added his regrets at what must have been a devastating blow to Amaro.

  He said very quietly:

  ‘Yes, it has upset me greatly. I knew her well, and with her excellent qualities, she would, I feel sure, have made a model wife. Yes, indeed, it has upset me greatly.’

  He silently clasped everyone’s hands, and while the gentlemen returned to the town, Amaro continued along the road in the growing darkness to the station at Chão de Maçãs.

  The next day, at eleven o’clock, Amélia’s funeral procession left Ricoça. It was a raw morning: the sky and the fields were drowned in a greyish mist, and a very fine, icy rain was falling. It was a long way from the house to the chapel in Poiais. The choirboy bearing the cross strode on ahead, splashing through the mud; Father Ferrão, wearing a black stole, murmured the Exultabunt Domino as he huddled beneath the umbrella held by the sacristan who was walking beside him, bearing the aspergillum; four of the farmworkers, heads lowered against the slanting rain, were carrying the box containing the lead coffin on a kind of stretcher; and beneath the tenant farmer’s vast umbrella, Gertrudes, a veil over her head, was telling her beads. Dropping away from the road on either side lay the sad valley of Poiais, all grey in the mist and immersed in a great silence; and the vicar general’s booming voice braying out the Miserere rolled over the damp, undulating fields through which ran swollen, gurgling streams.

  But when they reached the first house in the village, the lads carrying the coffin stopped, exhausted; and a man who had been waiting beneath the trees with his umbrella silently joined the procession. It was João Eduardo in black gloves and heavy mourning, with dark circles under his eyes and great tears running down his cheeks. Two liveried servants, bearing candles, and with their trouser bottoms carefully rolled, immediately fell in behind him – two lackeys sent by the Morgado to honour one of the ladies of Ricoça, friends of Father Ferrão.

  When he saw these two servants, who had come to lend nobility to the procession, the choirboy raised his cross still higher and set off again; the four young men, feeling rested now, took up the poles of the stretcher, and the sacristan roared out the Requiem. The funeral proceeded through the mud up the steep road to the village, while the women stood at their doors making the sign of the cross, watching as the white surplices and the coffin decorated with golden rosettes moved off, followed by the cluster of umbrellas open beneath the sad rain.

  The chapel was on a hill, on a square surrounded by oak trees; the bell was tolling, and the funeral procession disappeared into the dark interior of the church to the strains of Subvenite sancti, which the sacristan growled out. But the two liveried servants did not go in because the Morgado had forbidden them to do so.

  They stood in the doorway, beneath their umbrella, listening and stamping their frozen feet. Inside, the plainsong continued, then there was a whisper of prayers that gradually died away, followed by a burst of lugubrious Latin spoken in the vicar general’s low, grave voice.

  Bored, the two men left the square and wandered into Serafim’s tavern. Two herdsmen from the Morgado’s farm, who were sitting silently drinking their beer, got up as soon as the two liveried servants appeared.

  ‘At ease, lads, sit down and finish your drinks,’ said the shorter, older man, who normally accompanied João Eduardo on his rides. ‘We’re up at the chapel for that wretched funeral. Good afternoon to you, Senhor Serafim.’

  They shook hands with Serafim, who poured out two measures of brandy for them and asked if the dead girl had been Senhor João’s fiancée. He had been told that it was a burst artery that had done for her. The older man laughed.

  ‘Burst artery indeed! What did for her was the baby boy she was carrying . . .’

  ‘Senhor João’s doing?’ asked Serafim, opening wide, mischievous eyes.

  ‘I don’t believe so,’ said the other authoritatively. ‘Senhor João was in Lisbon at the time. It was some other gentleman from town. Do you know who I suspect, Senhor Serafim?’

  But at that point, a breathless Gertrudes burst into the tavern announcing loudly that the cortège was nearly at the cemetery and that ‘those gentlemen’ were the only people missing. The two lackeys rushed off and caught up with the cortège as it was passing through the little cemetery gate and as the last verse of the Miserere was being sung.

  João Eduardo was now carrying a candle and following so closely behind Amélia’s coffin that he was almost touching it, his tear-filled eyes fixed on the black velvet cloth. The chapel bell tolled desolately on and on. The rain was falling harder. No one broke the sad, grey, cemetery silence, their footsteps muffled by the wet ground, all heading towards the corner of the wall where Amélia’s grave had been freshly dug, deep and dark amongst the damp grass. The choirboy thrust the staff of the silver cross into the earth, and Father Ferrão, going over to the edge of the black hole, murmured the Deus miseratione . . . Then João Eduardo, deathly pale, suddenly swayed on his feet, and the umbrella fell from his hands; the two liveried servants rushed forward and grasped him round the waist; they tried to lead him away, to remove him from the graveside, but he resisted and stood there, teeth clenched, clinging desperately to one of the servant’s sleeves, watching the gravedigger and the two farmhands tying the ropes around the coffin and lowering it slowly down into the crumbling earth with a creak of hastily nailed together planks.

  ‘Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine!’

  ‘Et lux perpetua luceat ei,’ said the sacristan mournfully.

  The coffin hit the bottom of the grave with a dull thud; Father Ferrão scattered a little of the earth on top in the form of a cross and, slowly shaking the aspergillum over the velvet cloth, the earth and the surrounding grass, he said:

  ‘Requiescat in pace.’

  ‘Amen,’ came the deep voice of the sacristan and the shrill voice of the choirboy.

  ‘Amen,’ said the others in a sighing murmur that was lost amongst the cypresses, the grass, the graves and the cold mists of that sad December day.

  XXV

  Towards the end of May 1871, there was a tremendous uproar in the Casa Havanesa in the Chiado in Lisbon. People arrived, breathless, and fought their way through the crowd blocking the doorway, then stood on tiptoe and craned their necks in order to see the noticeboard hung on the grille above the counter on which were pinned the telegrams from the Havas Agency; men walked away with looks of horror and despair on their faces, exclaiming to some more placid friend who had waited for them outside:

  ‘Lost. Gone up in flames.’

  Inside, amongst the multitude of prattlers squeezed against the counter, heated discussions ensued; and on that already hot day in early summer, everywhere – the pavements outside, the Largo do Loreto opposite, the Chiado all the way up to Magalhães – was filled by a gabble of shocked voices in which the vehemently uttered words: Communists! Versailles! Terrorists! Thiers! Crime! The International! constantly came and went amidst the rumble of passing carriages and the cries of newspaper boys advertising the latest bulletins.

  Indeed telegrams kept arriving which described the unfolding events in the battle being waged in the streets of Paris: terrified telegrams sent from Versailles listing the burning palaces and the streets reduced to rubble; the mass shootings in barrack squares and amongst mausoleums in cemeteries; the revenge that would seek satisfaction even in the dark depths of sewers; the fatal madness that was gripping both government troops and insurgents; and the resistance that combined the frenzy of a death agony with scientific method, shaking up the old society by
means of petrol, dynamite and nitroglycerine. A convulsion, an end of the world, which twenty or thirty words suddenly lit up as if in the glow of a bonfire.

  The whole Chiado spoke with angry regret of the ruination of Paris. They named out loud the buildings that had been burned, the Hôtel de Ville, ‘so lovely’, the Rue Royale, ‘exquisite’. Some were as enraged by the burning down of the Tuileries Palace as if it had belonged to them; those who had spent a few months in Paris expressed their outrage, taking a Parisian pride in the beauty of the city, scandalised by an insurrection that showed so little respect for buildings on which they themselves had gazed.

  ‘Honestly,’ exclaimed one obese gentleman, ‘they’ve destroyed the Palace of the Legion of Honour! Why, I was there with my wife only a month ago! It’s absolutely disgraceful! Pure vandalism!’

  The rumour spread that the Ministry had received another even more depressing telegram saying that the whole boulevard from Bastille to the Madeleine was in flames, and even the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées as far as the Arc de Triomphe. That insane rebellion had thus laid waste to a whole network of restaurants, cafés, dance halls, gambling dens and houses of prostitution. An angry shudder ran from Largo do Loreto to Magalhães. The flames had destroyed that cosy centre of revelry. It was outrageous! What was the world coming to? Where were all the best restaurants? Where could one find the most experienced women? Where would one ever see the like of that prodigious procession around the Bois on crisp, dry winter days, when ladies of easy virtue ensconced in splendid victorias vied with stockbrokers in their phaetons? It was an abomination. They forgot about the libraries and the museums, but felt sincere regret at the destruction of the cafés and the burning of the brothels. It was the end of Paris and the end of France!

  In a group near the Casa Havanesa the talk had turned to politics; amongst the names mentioned was that of Proudhon, who, around that time in Lisbon, was beginning to be talked of as a bloodthirsty monster; insults were consequently heaped on Proudhon. Most thought him personally responsible for the fires. But the esteemed poet of Flowers and Sighs said that ‘if one disregarded the nonsense Proudhon spouted, he was, nevertheless, a rather fine stylist’. The gambler França burst out: