Afterwards Bishop Estrada waited for her at the door of the chapel. Sister María Inés kissed his ring and welcomed him to their convent. She said: ‘If we knew you were coming, Your Excellency, we would have waited for you to lead the service.’
The Bishop gave her an ambiguous smile. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My intention was to surprise you, Sister, but you surprised me instead.’
She understood. ‘I admit my breaking the rules, Your Excellency, but you left us no choice.’
‘You are right to be annoyed. I do not mind you having said Mass under the circumstances. As a matter of fact, you did it very well. But consecrating the host was wrong.’
‘I promise you it will not happen again,’ the woman said. ‘But you ought to give us your word too that you will appoint a priest to our convent.’
The Bishop said what had been in his mind since his stroll around the convent: ‘I have, Sister. Here is your priest.’
‘You, Your Excellency?’
‘I can only do one Sunday a month, I am afraid. Take it or leave it.’
‘Will we be able to celebrate Mass the rest of the Sundays ourselves?’
The Bishop thought for a moment. ‘I should not condone it,’ he said. ‘But promise me not to consecrate the Host again and we are agreed.’
And so he began to visit the convent. He looked forward to the last Sunday of the month, which he set aside for that purpose, despite having to leave the city early in the morning and the arduous drive on the unpaved road that climbed steeply up the hills and brought him, an hour and many twists and turns through the dense pine forest later, to his destination. As soon as Sister María Inés heard the engine of the Ford, she came to the door of the convent to wait for him and exchange the obligatory greetings. Then she showed him to his room, where he washed himself with the attention of one performing his ablutions, lay on the bed in his cassock and shut his eyes for a moment. Ten minutes was enough time for him to recover his strength and clerical authority. When the bell rang, he changed into his liturgical vestments, which he kept in a small suitcase of genuine cordovan leather, and made his way to the chapel, where the women were waiting.
Before the service he listened to confessions. Every time he sat in the cubicle, which had been made in medieval times, when people were much smaller, he felt a morbid sensation, for its size and smell of oak reminded him of a coffin. He continued to use it with bravery, saying nothing to anybody out of shame, since those who have true faith in God have no reason to fear death. After all, the use of the confessional was not symbolic: he could not tell with certainty who was on the other side of the lattice from the sound of their voice.
Although the nuns’ sins were harmless, he often wondered whether the world had become more evil with time, which was how it seemed to him. Perhaps it was only the fact that his ability to tolerate cruelty had diminished with age. A few years earlier, at the time of the Moroccan war, an army lieutenant had come to see him with an unusual request: a soldier of the Spanish Legion had deserted and returned home but had then been arrested and sentenced to death. His last wish was to confess not to any priest but to the Bishop himself.
‘Of course, you don’t have to come if it inconveniences you in any way, Your Excellency,’ the officer said. ‘But granting a condemned man’s wish is a tradition that is good to uphold. It makes the army seem a little more merciful–even towards those who don’t deserve its mercy.’
‘Is the man religious?’
‘I doubt it, Your Excellency. Can a man who’s betrayed his country be a good Christian?’
‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,’ the Bishop said. ‘One does not preclude the other.’
‘Perhaps he had a change of heart,’ the officer conceded. ‘Someone with his prospects would be wise to do so.’
The man was held in a neighbouring town which Bishop Estrada had visited many times in the past, but it was his first time inside the barracks. Arranged around a cobbled courtyard, the buildings dated from the previous century and reminded the Bishop of a monastery: the same neatness, the same austerity, the same silence, the presence of men dressed alike. The only thing out of place was the tall perimeter wall with corbelled turrets where armed soldiers stood guard. The lieutenant greeted the Bishop and showed him to the prison. The smell of damp, the darkness, the same fear of enclosed spaces the Bishop would later suffer in the confessional of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy made him feel faint. Finally the officer stopped in front of a cell door and put the key in the lock, but did not turn it. He said: ‘You can stay as long as you like, Your Excellency. Or we could go back right away and let him burn in Hell.’
The Bishop, ashamed and ashen-faced by his claustrophobia, replied in a hoarse voice: ‘That is not for us to decide. Unlock the door.’
The interior of the cell was only lit by a shaft of sunlight coming through the barred window. A man lying on a bed that was too small for him spoke up: ‘So you came.’
The Bishop took an uncertain step into the cell. The door swung shut behind him and the rasp of the lock made him uneasy. He asked: ‘How are you, my son?’
The man chuckled: ‘Oh, capital.’
There was another bed in the cell, and the Bishop sat down on it. He asked: ‘Why did you ask expressly for me?’
‘Parish priests are unable to carry on a conversation. They just recite bits from the Bible. If Rome ever ran out of priests it would start to train parrots.’
‘Well, I am not a parrot,’ Bishop Estrada said. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
He stayed longer than he had expected, discussing religion with the condemned man, who had a very good knowledge of matters of faith. When the time came to leave, he was sorry to break off their conversation and promised to return. He visited the legionnaire every afternoon, sacrificing his siesta to debate, under the shadow of death and with a passion he had not felt since his student days: doctrinal issues, the sanctity of human life, Galileo’s trial, Darwin’s theory and other matters that divided the Church. Bishop Estrada marvelled at his opponent’s intelligence. He could tell that the legionnaire was an educated man but only managed to make him admit this after he threatened not to come back. The man relented: ‘I was once a priest, Your Excellency.’
Then Bishop Estrada saw him for what he really was, not simply the worthy opponent of their afternoon debates or the nameless soldier who had abandoned his post in a colonial war, but as a young man full of life who was about to die. From then on the Bishop tried everything to reverse the legionnaire’s sentence and save him from death. He contacted everyone he knew and spoke with lawyers and the judges of the court martial, but they could not help. He travelled to the capital and asked for an audience with King Alfonso, who a few years later would flee the country and live the rest of his life in a hotel in Rome, but was turned down despite his family connections. In his desperation he wrote to the Holy Father, and some time later received a handwritten reply worthy of a Caesar, which sealed the condemned man’s fate: My dear Ezequiel, you are embarrassing us with a sentimentality that does not befit a senior member of our Church.
On the day before the execution, Bishop Estrada came to the prison in the afternoon, as always, and saw the legionnaire for the last time. When the man asked him what they should discuss that day, the Bishop, astonished by the condemned man’s composure, waved his hand: ‘No, nothing today.’ At dawn, when the black cockerel of the regiment began to crow, the Bishop returned to give the prisoner absolution and the viaticum with a trembling hand. He insisted that he was present at the execution despite the lieutenant’s repeated attempts to dissuade him, and he walked at the side of the man reciting the Apostles’ Creed until the officer put his hand on his shoulder. Bishop Estrada stopped and shot him an irritated glance: ‘What do you want?’
‘You can’t go any further, Your Excellency. You would be in the line of fire.’
They had reached the place of execution. Standing aside, with horror in his eyes,
Bishop Estrada continued to recite until the discharge of the firing squad. He never administered the last rites to a condemned man again. He did not discuss his feelings with anyone nor did he let his bitterness poison his respect for the Vatican. He maintained his pretence of authority, tried to regain his good humour for which he was known across the diocese and some time afterwards resumed his siestas. But his afternoons in bed were no longer peaceful. Everything bothered him: the ticking of the alarm clock on his bedside table, the springs of the mattress, the heat if the windows were shut, the draught if they were open. From time to time he thought that he saw ghosts in the room but kept their presence secret from everyone, telling himself that it was merely the curtains flapping. Still, he continued to live with the hope of finding sanctuary from the cruelty of the world, and then, years later, he happened to visit the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, where he believed that he had found the peace he was searching for.
The killing of the dogs plunged the convent into gloom. Even Sister Teresa, who did not like animals and considered them responsible for the spread of all kinds of disease, was stunned by the cruel act and feared for the future. She had no doubt that there would be repercussions but could not guess what they might be. When the nuns had walked out of the chapel, they had seen the dogs lying in the courtyard and had realised to their horror that they were dying and there was nothing that they could do. They had simply stood there, horrified, listening to the dogs yowling until Sister Carlota, always the last out of the door because of her old age, had come up behind them. Then the other women had emerged from their trance but had had no courage to tell her. They stood aside and let her pass without a word, and she, still unaware of the tragedy, thanked them for their good manners, lifted her habit a little, so as not to trip, and climbed down the steps to the courtyard. At the bottom of the steps her weak eyes finally alerted her to the fact that something strange was happening. When she understood what it was, she let out a loud cry and dropped to the ground. The sisters carried her to her room, put her in bed and stayed with her for the rest of the day, not leaving her even to go to the chapel but praying in the room instead.
In the morning the yowling stopped and the nuns knew that the dogs were finally dead. They used a wheelbarrow to carry them, a few at a time, to a clearing in the woods far from any stream, so as not to contaminate the water, and took turns digging a pit several feet deep where they threw them in and covered them with quicklime. Back in the convent they poured water over the dusty courtyard, which was stained with vomit and blood, and swept away the remains of the abominable act which the sun had not yet dried.
All that time Sister María Inés watched them from her room. She had done her duty, but it did not stop her from feeling sorry for Sister Carlota. She wanted to see her and explain the reasons for her action, but put it off for several days, afraid her visit might upset the woman even more. She gave the nuns a bottle of valerian pills with the instruction to give Carlota one every few hours, and enquired after her health every morning and afternoon until the old woman began to recover. Only then did she go to see her.
Dressed in her habit, Sister Carlota was lying in bed. Her eyes were fixed on the wall, her hands were holding the rosary and she was so still that for a moment Sister María Inés feared with a pang of guilt that the old woman was dead. Finally, Sister Carlota turned her head and gave her a glance that calmed the Mother Superior’s fears but also made her regret having come. ‘Ah, Carlota,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
The nun stared at her.
‘I am glad you are feeling better, Carlota. I was worried about you. Did the valerian help?’
‘You are not welcome here,’ the old nun said.
‘You should start coming to prayer again. It will do you good to leave your room.’
‘I won’t join one who worships the Devil.’
‘Be careful, Carlota. Do not let your feelings for those dogs cloud your reason.’
‘Sister Ana was right. You are possessed. Only God can help us now.’
The Mother Superior went crimson. She said: ‘I tolerated your love of animals because it seemed harmless to me. But I was proved wrong.’
The nun’s mouth set in a sneer and she turned her back to Sister María Inés. Facing the wall, she said: ‘All these years I served you with love and obedience. But what you did was horrible. May God have mercy on you.’
Sister María Inés checked her anger. ‘You may rest another day. Then I expect you in the chapel.’
In the days that followed Sister María Inés avoided the nuns. She led the daily prayers in the chapel but did not speak to them unless it was to give them instructions for their duties. She did not greet them when she came across them or acknowledge their presence even with a glance. In the refectory, she ate quickly and then returned to her room, where she spent most of her time, caring for the child and reading the books she fetched from the library. A few times she was seen in the shed working on the Ford. She began to mistrust everyone and became suspicious of the slightest sound: the rats in the corners of the room, the owls in the roof, the footsteps outside her door, the clanking of the pans in the kitchen. It was not an unreasonable fear. Sister Beatriz had told her that Sister Ana had been to the city and spoken to the Bishop.
At least Sister Beatriz was still her ally and helped her with the child, despite being as shocked by her actions as the other nuns. Sister Beatriz knocked on her door, in fact, more often than ever, making Sister María Inés suspect that it was because she no longer trusted her with the child. To prove the young woman wrong, Sister María Inés was even more attentive to him. She still allowed Sister Beatriz to prepare his milk but mostly fed him herself. Having long forgotten the songs of her childhood, which in itself had become an implausible memory at her age, she had to invent her own lullabies and nursery rhymes for the child. She sang them only if she was certain that there was no one within earshot, not so much because she knew that she was contradicting herself when she had reprimanded Sister Teresa for her singing (she no longer cared whether or not the sisters respected her decisions so long as they obeyed them), but because she was aware of the limitations of her own voice. In one of the abandoned buildings of the convent, she found, under thick cobwebs, the sewing machine a seamstress had used to make the habits of the new arrivals in the former days of glory, when the convent was home to tens of nuns. Sister María Inés asked Sister Beatriz to help her carry it to her room and fix it so that she could sew clothes for the child, which she then dyed in bright colours and embroidered with figures of cherubs, birds and flowers in gold.
One day, taking a break from her sewing, she wrapped the child in a blanket and went for a walk. She came across nobody on her way out. Outside the convent she stood on the steps and tried to recall the day they had found the child a few weeks earlier. It had still been warm then, while now, even though it was a bright day, she was shivering inside her habit. She carefully climbed down the slippery steps; there was still some morning dew on the stone. There was no wind at all, the pine trees did not move and the only sounds that she could hear were the chirping of the birds and her hobnailed boots on the stones. She followed the road for some time before entering the wood at a place where the tree growth was not dense, and walked sure-footed on the rough ground carpeted with pine needles and twigs that snapped pleasantly under her feet. Very few rays of sun passed through the canopy of the trees. She stopped and listened. When she had first joined the convent, silence used to make her ill at ease, for she had grown up in a house dominated by the din of human voices, the music from the Edison phonograph and the songs of caged birds, but over time she had come to terms with silence.
She knew her way around the woods and walked deeper in, not forgetting that soon it would be time for the midday prayer–she could return quickly if she had to. The child in her arms was awake. She now knew that she was sincere when she had promised to defend him with her life: she had kept her word. There was little doubt in her mind that
the attack by the dog had been a deliberate test of her dedication. She said softly: ‘Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.’ She was a mother at last even if she had not given birth herself–only God could make such a miracle.
She thought she heard something–something that sounded out of place. She spent a lot of time in the woods and her ears were able to pick out the slightest sound that did not belong to nature. She stopped and listened but it was gone. She took a few cautious steps and there the sound was again. It would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but Sister María Inés had no doubt that it was the sound of footsteps on the dry needles: someone or something was following her. After so much talk about the Devil, his image flashed through her mind and she shuddered: the cloven hooves, the twisted horns, the bat-like wings. She squeezed the child in her arms and began a short prayer. When she came to a very old tree, she hid behind its trunk and waited, cradling the child in her arms to keep him silent.
Her stalker was coming. He was taking a few slow steps, then stopping, then moving cautiously again. Sister María Inés continued to pray silently: Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo…The footsteps came closer. Whoever it was, he was now only a few trees away. Sister María Inés looked at the child. He was falling asleep from her rocking. A moment later a shadow went past only a few feet away. The Mother Superior studied it from behind and then asked in a stern voice: ‘What exactly are you doing here?’
Sister Beatriz let out a shriek and turned round. ‘You gave me the fright of my life, Reverend Mother. I thought perhaps you wanted company.’
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