All that time Sister Ana had not stood idle. She was confident that she had found the answer to the riddle but wanted to keep it to herself. Ending the truce in her war against everyone, she dismissed Sister Teresa brusquely: ‘Enough music for now. I have a serious matter to attend to.’ When she was alone, she took another look at the bloodied bed sheet and could not believe that the truth which now seemed so obvious had not come to her earlier. She put the sheet away and went to the Mother Superior’s room; she entered without knocking. Sister Beatriz and the child were not there. She looked for them in the refectory, the kitchen and the chapel but could not find them. She walked in the rain without an umbrella looking for the young nun until finally, when the bell rang for prayer, she caught a glimpse of Sister Beatriz going to her room with the child in her arms. Soaked by the rain, Sister Ana followed her from a distance. A moment later she was pushing open the door and the truth which she had guessed a little earlier was now confirmed: seated by the window and dressed only in her undergarment, Sister Beatriz was breastfeeding her child.
Despite her successful conjectures, which she had no doubt were the result of Divine Inspiration, Sister Ana never, in fact, managed to guess the whole truth. Its origins went back almost three years, when Bishop Estrada had decided to become confessor to the nuns of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, not knowing that the Devil was setting him a trap. No one denied that he had a deep-seated faith in God and a great skill in diplomacy, which he had studied so carefully in his youth, but it was wrong of him to feel so confident of his own ability to fend off sin. In the event, evil did not ask him whether he truly believed in God or invite him to complex negotiations for his soul, but instead it struck him a single decisive blow when he least expected it.
The time he had spent with the deserter sentenced to death had shaken his belief in the natural kindness of the world and had set him off on a search for sanctuary. To counter his recurrent sleeplessness, he took to carrying in a secret pocket inside his cassock a silver snuffbox filled with pills that made him shut his eyes the moment his head touched the pillow and sleep without interruption and without dreams. The problem was that he could only take them at night because they caused him to oversleep. And so his siestas remained an ordeal he had to endure awake every afternoon, when he undressed and lay in bed for a brief rest before returning to his desk. His bedroom was in a corner on the top floor of his palace. Both his official residence and the administrative seat of the diocese, the palace had windows that overlooked the river and the distant tiled roofs of the Orphanage of San Rafael the Healer, his proudest achievement. At its opening he had been asked to cut the ribbon in acknowledgement of his efforts, without which the orphanage would not have been built. Then he had delivered a passionate speech about the need for society not to turn its back on the innocent victims of its own recklessness, but to look after them with compassion and generosity. He had said: ‘When people stop playing dice with human lives, there will no longer be a need for places like this. I pray that I am wrong, but fear that the moment will not come either in our or, alas, in God’s lifetime.’
In the middle of the room was a big rococo bed made of Brazilian mahogany that still smelled of the jungle. It was the bed in which he was conceived, in which he was born and in which his parents had died quietly a few years apart of old age. Motivated less by sentimentality than the desperate hope of curing the torment of his siestas, Bishop Estrada had it brought over from his ancestral home and lay under its velvet canopy embroidered with the coat of arms of a family line that was bound to end with him. But the happy memories of his childhood preserved under the layers of varnish did not cure him. Without the sleeping pills to save him, he tossed and turned in the magnificent bed all afternoon and rose even more tired than when he had lain down. Unknown to everyone, he had begun to visit a hypnotist in the capital who tried to hypnotise him with a pendulum, but even though Bishop Estrada believed in modern science the treatment failed.
So when he started to go to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, he was glad of the chance to leave the city of his afternoon ordeal and breathe the pure air of the mountains, but did not expect that in fact his Sundays there would turn out to be the answer to his prayers. Soon, to his great surprise, he discovered that his sleep became more peaceful, he rested well and his dreams were no longer the plaything of demons but had an innocence and optimism he had not felt in years. He was no longer miserable; he stopped taking the sleeping pills and looked forward to his monthly visits to the convent which had become his fountain of youth. He would arrive in his Model T Ford, one of the first to be shipped from America, and find the Mother Superior and the nuns waiting on the steps, alerted to his coming by the scared birds flying ahead of the explosions of the car exhaust. The women would wait with a jug of iced water, of which he would have several glassfuls before giving them his ring to kiss and entering the convent.
One Sunday morning, soon after he had appointed himself confessor to the nuns of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, he set out from the city at the same time as always and in a good mood, looking forward to his visit. The car left behind the last vestiges of civilisation and began to climb the road used mostly by lumbermen who had transported wood from the forests since the age of the caravels. Wearing his coat, his airman’s helmet and leather gloves, Bishop Estrada passed the monotony of the journey humming the songs of the zarzuelas by Amadeo Vives, Pablo Luna and Jacinto Guerrero, which were popular at that time all over the country and which one could not escape even in one’s sleep. The cold wind beat against his face, the wheels bumped along the rough surface of the track and he was happy.
Some time later, as the Ford was coming out of a sharp bend, the engine puttered and gave out. Thinking that the car had just stalled on the uphill bend, he jumped out and gave the crank a turn. The engine did not start. He had tried the crank several times before he noticed, panting, that the radiator was leaking and when he looked inside he discovered that there were only a few drops of water left. Angry at himself for not having checked the car before setting out, he looked at his watch and guessed that he was closer to the convent than the city, although still a long way away.
The mishap had changed his mood and he no longer hummed as he walked in the direction of the convent. He was still far off when he saw someone on a donkey coming the other way. The animal was walking cautiously along the edge of the track while the rider, sitting side-saddle, was tapping it gently on with a switch. Sister Beatriz had seen him first and he had reminded her of a tireless and determined missionary plodding across some wilderness. She greeted him.
‘At least Our Lord has answered my prayer in part,’ the Bishop said. ‘I had asked Him for a car mechanic.’
The nun got off the donkey and kissed his ring. ‘We were very worried about you,’ she said and fetched her canteen from the saddle. While taking a few dignified sips of water, the Bishop looked in the direction he had come from. ‘Perhaps the radiator would not have rusted if I filled it with holy water,’ he said. ‘Are we far from the convent?’
Sister Beatriz nodded. ‘Do not worry, Your Excellency. You will ride.’
The Bishop glanced at the old donkey. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But only half the journey, Sister. Then promise me that we will swap.’
He gathered up his coat and cassock, sat on the donkey and looked at his feet with amusement: they almost reached the ground. He patted the animal’s head, and the donkey swung its tail a couple of times like a greeting. ‘What is its name?’
‘Midas.’
‘Of course,’ the Bishop said. ‘He bears an obvious resemblance.’
They set out, Bishop Estrada holding onto the pommel and Sister Beatriz walking a few steps ahead of him. It was almost midday in early spring, already warm in the lowlands, where he had begun his journey that morning but still cold in the mountains, where life was only beginning to awake from a deep winter. There was a little snow on the highest peaks of the sierra but none on its forested slope
s, which resonated with birdsong. A short while later, as they rounded another bend and the landscape opened up, there was a view of the interminable plain very far away, gleaming in the sunlight, a patchwork of green and brown fields. The Bishop stood mesmerised by its immensity until the track changed direction again, and animal and humans continued their ascent with their backs to the plain. It had been impossible to notice any of this on his previous journeys behind the clouds of dust, the noise and the smell of petrol. Shivering a little inside his coat, Bishop Estrada observed the young woman. He said: ‘Remind me of your name, Sister.’
‘Beatriz, Your Excellency.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Far from here.’
‘Everywhere is far from here,’ the Bishop said light-heartedly. ‘Is it colder than this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you must come from the North Pole.’
They said nothing else until they arrived at the convent late in the afternoon. The nuns received him with great shows of joy, kissing his ring and asking what had happened to him, offering him glasses of water, plates of fruit, handkerchieves sprinkled with eau de cologne to hold under his nose, cold compresses to place on his forehead in case he had suffered a heatstroke, despite it being a cold April day. Tired from the journey, Bishop Estrada said: ‘Enough, Sisters, please. I think you mistake me for the Messiah because I came on the donkey.’ Then he remembered that he had not switched places with Sister Beatriz during the ride. ‘Thank you for your deceit, Sister,’ he told her. ‘But if we make any agreement again, promise me to honour it.’
His room had been prepared but he did not wish to rest and went straight to the chapel to hear confessions while there was still light. He had suggested that the women should always draw lots to decide the order in which they would come to confession. The system he had devised meant that he did not know who was speaking to him from the other side of the lattice and the nuns would feel freer to speak without qualms, without fear and without shame. The only voice he thought he recognised was the Mother Superior’s.
Later, at the altar, he felt a nervousness he had not felt since the early days of his priesthood, when he occasionally celebrated Mass while still a student of ecclesiastical diplomacy. He now did his duty without difficulty but could not stop wondering why he felt this way. He could only attribute it to his tiredness after the biblical journey on the donkey. Whenever he turned away from the altar to face his small congregation, his eyes sought, as if of their own volition, the young woman who had come to his rescue earlier that day.
It was almost evening when the Mass ended and it was too cold to eat outside. The Mother Superior invited the Bishop to have dinner in the refectory. The food had long gone cold but he insisted that he did not wish it warmed up. He ate without appetite, keeping his eyes fixed on his plate while repeating his regular jokes, which, no matter how many times he said them, never seemed to lose their ability to entertain. He finished his food before everyone else and declined the repeated offers of a second helping. Sister María Inés escorted him to her room for their customary discussion about the affairs of the convent and his last cup of coffee before leaving for the city. It was almost dark when she opened the ledger where all the business matters of the convent were recorded. ‘I am afraid you will have to stay the night, Your Excellency,’ she said. ‘It is impossible to take you to your car in the dark.’
The Bishop, grateful for her hospitality, accepted. He sipped at his coffee, paying no attention to the ledger. ‘That sister of yours,’ he said, after a while.
The Mother Superior raised her eyes from the book.
‘The one who came in search of me with the donkey earlier today,’ the Bishop continued. ‘She was extremely kind to let me ride all the way.’
‘She has not been here very long. Beatriz came shortly before we lost our old confessor. So far I am very pleased with her. She is very capable. She could well become my successor.’
The Bishop asked no more questions but leaned over the ledger and pretended to listen while the Mother Superior went through the accounts line by line. When she finished, more than an hour later, he asked for a lamp to light his way to the guesthouse and said goodnight, promising the Mother Superior to say Mass again the following morning before returning to the city. Although he was very tired, he slept very little. He lay in bed watching the moon through the windows, listening to an owl hidden in the roof and thinking of the young nun. He regretted no longer carrying the snuffbox with the sleeping pills. A little before dawn he finally drifted off and dreamed of the young nun coming to his room. She wore a loose nightdress, which she unbuttoned standing in the middle of the room and let it drop like a feather to the floor before joining him under the covers. Not long afterwards the first shafts of sunlight woke him up with a sudden jolt. Full of remorse for his impure dream, he knelt and prayed with his eyes shut, hoping that his having yielded to temptation in his sleep would be the end of it. But in his most secret and true thoughts he already knew that it was merely the beginning.
Bishop Estrada managed to resist the temptation long enough to admit to himself that sooner or later he would succumb to it. The irony of his situation did not escape him. Although he turned a blind eye to the cases where priests in his diocese shared their bed with a woman (as long as they always shared it with the same one, she was unmarried and both were discreet about it), he took pride in thinking that his armour was impenetrable to the pleasures of the flesh. When he returned to the city from the convent, he reread Saint Augustine, whom he had not read since adolescence and had been an inspiration to him, with the hope that he would help him out of his quandary. This time, in his middle age, he read him without the idealism of his youth, the absolute conviction, the yearning for the martyrdom of celibacy, but with the sad wisdom of an older man no longer capable of such heartless emotions. Consequently, he found nothing in Saint Augustine that was helpful. Unable to put the young woman out of his mind, he went for long walks in the gardens of his palace. The skirt of his cassock was constantly caught in the thorns of the rose bushes, leaving behind a trail of perfumed red petals which hours later his deacon had only to follow to find him seated on a stone bench, distant and thoughtful, as if he were praying.
All this time Sister Beatriz knew nothing about the Bishop’s suffering. Most of what had happened on their fateful encounter on the road to the convent had already faded from her memory when months later she entered the chapel. That Sunday the Mother Superior had invited the Bishop to have lunch before carrying out his pastoral duties. The meal under the vine had been a languid affair with battered fish, followed by plates of candied almonds for the nuns and glasses of red wine with lemonade and ice for him. It was late afternoon when the women began to come to confession. When Sister Beatriz’s turn came, it was almost evening and she had to light a candle to find her way to the confessional. She had finished her confession and stood up to go when the Bishop unexpectedly spoke to her through the lattice: ‘Is that you, Sister Beatriz?’
The nun paused with the candle in her hand. ‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
‘Ah, I thought so,’ the voice on the other side of the lattice said. ‘I recognised your voice.’
She stood uncomfortably in the narrow confessional as if she were listening to a stranger. The voice that moments earlier had said with gentleness and authority ‘Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis,’ now had a different tone. She opened the door of the cubicle but did not step out, getting the impression that she had not been given permission to go yet. A little cool air blew into the small space where she had knelt reciting her venial sins. She waited for the voice to speak again. Outside the sun set and the courtyard turned dark and quiet. The other nuns, having made their confessions before her, were in the refectory waiting for the Bishop to call them to evening Mass. One of Sister Carlota’s stray dogs, still alive back then, sensed the human presence in the chapel and stood at the door sniffing the air. The voice close to Sister Beatri
z said gently: ‘In fact I suspected it was you from the moment you came into the chapel. I recognised the sound of your feet but I was not completely certain. Are you the last sister to confession today?’
The woman said that she was. The dog went away. The Bishop spoke again through the lattice in a weary voice: ‘Let us talk a little.’
Sister Beatriz closed the door on her side of the confessional and knelt down on the cushion again–there was no proper seat in the cubicle, only the kneeler. The candle flickered in the draught and her shadow fell over the four wooden panels surrounding her before it settled behind her. The voice asked: ‘Do you know my name, Sister Beatriz?’
‘Estrada, Your Excellency.’
‘No, my Christian name.’
‘I don’t know it, Your Excellency.’
‘Ezequiel. Everyone knows who I am but very few know my Christian name.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘I am afraid I didn’t put enough lemonade in my wine today. I had too much to drink.’
The nun knelt in silence while on the other side of the lattice the voice continued: ‘Listen, Beatriz. For months I tried…Do you understand? I have been…’ It hesitated. ‘Oh God, forgive me.’
‘I should go back, Your Excellency.’
‘Put out your candle, please. My eyes hurt. Maybe it is the wine. Put it out.’
‘Someone might come,’ the woman said weakly and heard the door on the other side of the confessional open. Time passed and nothing happened while she waited, kneeling on the cushion and holding her breath, for the door on her side to open too. The Bishop spoke from outside: ‘Put out the candle, please.’ She made no reply, holding the candle tightly with both hands, but slowly she stopped being afraid and an almost motherly feeling came over her. There was a timid knock on the door and the voice said again: ‘Put out the candle. Spare me the…’ Then a great force of compassion free of fear or shame lifted her from the kneeler. For a moment her shadow fluttered over the vaulted ceiling of the chapel, and then she took a deep breath and blew out the candle.
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