The power and the glory (12 page)

Then they took him away: now that they had caught him they treated him in a friendly way, poking fun at his attempt to escape-except the Red Shirt whose shot he had spoiled. He couldn't find any answer to their jokes: self-preservation lay across his brain like a horrifying obsession. When would they discover who he really was? When would he meet the half-caste, or the lieutenant who had interrogated him already? They moved in a bunch slowly up the hill to the plaza. A rifle-butt grounded outside the station as they came in: a small lamp fumed against the dirty whitewashed wall: in the courtyard hammocks swung, bunched around sleeping bodies like the nets in which poultry is tied. "You can sit down," one of the men said, and pushed him in a comradely way towards a bench. Everything now seemed irrevocable: the sentry passed back and forth outside the door, and in the courtyard among the hammocks the ceaseless murmur of sleep went on.
Somebody had spoken to him: he gaped helplessly up. "What?" There seemed to be an argument in progress between the police and the Red Shirt-as to whether somebody should be disturbed. "But it's his duty," the Red Shirt kept on repeating: he had rabbity front teeth. He said: "I'll report it to the Governor."
A policeman said: "You plead guilty, don't you?"
"Yes," the priest said.
"There. What more do you want? It's a fine of five pesos. Why disturb anybody?"
"And who gets the five pesos, eh?"
"That's none of your business."
The priest said suddenly: "No one gets them."
"No one?"
"I have only twenty-five centavos in the world."
The door of an inner room opened and the lieutenant came out. He said: "What in God's name is all the noise...?" The police came raggedly and unwillingly to attention.
"I've caught a man carrying spirits," the Red Shirt said. The priest sat with his eyes on the ground... "because it has crucified... crucified... crucified..." Contrition stuck hopelessly over the formal words. He felt no emotion but fear.
"Well," the lieutenant said. "What is it to do with you? We catch dozens."
"Shall we bring him in?" one of the men asked.
The lieutenant took a look at the bowed servile figure on the bench. "Get up," he said. The priest rose. Now, he thought, now... he raised his eyes. The lieutenant looked away, out of the door where the sentry slouched to and fro. His dark pinched face looked rattled, harassed. …
"He has no money," one of the policemen said.
"Mother of God," the lieutenant said, "can I never teach you...?" He took two steps towards the sentry and turned. "Search him. If he has no money, put him in a cell. Give him some work. …" He went outside and suddenly raising his open hand he struck the sentry on the ear. He said: "You're asleep. March as if you had some pride... pride," he repeated again, while the small acetylene lamp fumed up the whitewashed wall and the smell of urine came up out of the yard and the men lay in their hammocks netted and secured.
"Shall we take his name?" a sergeant said.
"Yes, of course," the lieutenant said, not looking at him, walking briskly and nervously back past the lamp into the courtyard: he stood there unsheltered, looking round while the rain fell on his dapper uniform. He looked like a man with something on his mind: it was as if he were under the influence of some secret passion which had broken up the routine of his life. Back he came. He couldn't keep still.
The sergeant pushed the priest ahead into the inner room: a bright commercial calendar hung on the flaking white-wash-a dark-skinned mestizo girl in a bathing-dress advertised some gaseous water: somebody had pencilled in a neat pedagogic hand a facile and over-confident statement about man having nothing to lose but his chains.
"Name?" the sergeant said. Before the priest could check himself he had replied: "Montez."
"Home?"
He named a random village: he was absorbed in his own portrait. There he sat among the white-starched dresses of the first communicants. Somebody had put a ring round his face-to pick it out. There was another picture on the wall too-the gringo from San Antonio, Texas, wanted for murder and bank robbery.
"I suppose," the sergeant said cautiously, "that you bought the drink from a stranger …"
"Yes."
"Whom you can't identify?"
"No."
"That's the way," the sergeant said approvingly: it was obvious he didn't want to start anything. He took the priest quite confidingly by the arm and led him out and across the courtyard: he carried a large key like the ones used in morality plays or fairy-stories as a symbol. A few men moved in the hammocks-a large unshaven jaw hung over the side like something left over on a butcher's counter: a big torn ear: a naked black-haired thigh. He wondered when the mestizo's face would appear, elated with recognition.
The sergeant unlocked a small grated door and let out with his boot at something straddled across the entrance. He said: "They are all good fellows, all good fellows here," kicking his way in. An appalling smell lay on the air and somebody in the absolute darkness wept.
The priest lingered on the threshold trying to see; the lumpy blackness seemed to shift and stir. He said: "I am so dry. Could I have water?" The stench poured up his nostrils and he retched.
"In the morning," the sergeant said, "you're drunk enough now," and laying a large considerate hand upon the priest's back, he pushed him in, then slammed the door to. He trod on a hand, an arm, and pressing his face against the grille, protested in feeble horror: "There's no room. I can't see. Who are these people?" Outside among the hammocks the sergeant began to laugh. "Hombre," he said, "hombre, have you never been in jail before?"

Chapter Three

A VOICE near his foot said: "Got a cigarette?" He drew quickly back and trod on an arm. A voice said imperatively: "Water, quick," as if whoever it was thought he could take a stranger unawares, and make him fork out.
"Got a cigarette?"
"No." He said weakly: "I have nothing at all," and imagined he could feel enmity fuming up all round him like smoke. He moved again. Somebody said: "Look out for the bucket." That was where the stench came from. He stood perfectly still and waited for his sight to return. Outside the rain began to stop: it dropped haphazardly and the thunder moved away. You could count forty now between the lightning flash and the roll. Forty miles, superstition said. Half-way to the sea, or half-way to the mountains. He felt around with his foot, trying to find enough space to sit down-but there seemed to be no room at all. When the lightning went on he could see the hammocks at the edge of the courtyard.
"Got something to eat?" a voice said, and when he didn't answer, "Got something to eat?"
"No."
"Got any money?" another voice said.
"No."
Suddenly, from about five feet away, there came a tiny scream-a woman's. A tired voice said: "Can't you be quiet?" Among the furtive movements came again the muffled painless cries. He realized with horror that pleasure was going on even in this crowded darkness. Again he put out his foot and began to edge his way inch by inch away from the grille. Behind the human voices another noise went permanently on: it was like a small machine, an electric belt set at a certain tempo. It filled any silences that there were, louder than human breath. It was the mosquitoes.
He had moved perhaps six feet from the grille, and his eyes began to distinguish heads-perhaps the sky was clearing: they hung around him like gourds. A voice said: "Who are you?" He made no reply, feeling panic, edging in: suddenly he found himself against the back wall: the stone was wet against his hand-the cell could not have been more than twelve feet deep. He found he could just sit down if he kept his feet drawn up under him. An old man lay slumped against his shoulder: he told his age from the feather-weight lightness of the bones, the feeble uneven flutter of the breath. He was either somebody close to birth or death-and he could hardly be a child in this place. He said suddenly: "Is that you, Catarina?" and his breath went out in a long patient sigh, as if he had been waiting for a long while and could afford to wait a lot longer.
The priest said: "No. Not Catarina." When he spoke everybody became suddenly silent, listening, as if what he said had importance: then the voices and movements began again. But the sound of his own voice, the sense of communication with a neighbour, calmed him.
"You wouldn't be," the old man said. "I didn't really think you were. She'll never come."
"Is she your wife?"
"What's that you're saying? I haven't got a wife."
"Catarina."
"She's my daughter." Everybody was listening again: except the two invisible people who were concerned only in their hooded and cramped pleasure.
"Perhaps they won't allow her here."
"She'll never try," the old hopeless voice pronounced with absolute conviction. The priest's feet began to ache, drawn up under his haunches. He said: "If she loves you..." Somewhere across the huddle of dark shapes the woman cried again-that finished cry of protest and abandonment and pleasure.
"It's the priests who've done it," the old man said.
"The priests?"
"The priests."
"Why the priests?"
"The priests."
A low voice near his knees said: "The old man's crazy. What's the use of asking him questions?"
"Is that you, Catarina?" He added: "I don't really believe it, you know. It's just a question."
"Now I've got something to complain about," the voice went on. "A mans got to defend his honour. You'll admit that, won't you?"
"I don't know anything about honour."
"I was in the cantina and the man I'm telling you about came up to me and said: 'Your mother's a whore.' Well, I couldn't do anything about it: he'd got his gun on him. All I could do was wait. He drank too much beer-I knew he would-and when he was staggering I followed him out. I had a bottle and I smashed it against a wall. You see, I hadn't got my gun. His family's got influence with the jefe or I'd never be here."
"It's a terrible thing to kill a man."
"You talk like a priest."
"It was the priests who did it," the old man said. "You're right, there."
"What does he mean?"
"What does it matter what an old man like that means? I'd like to tell you about something else. …"
A woman's voice said: "They took the child away from him."
"Why?"
"It was a bastard. They acted quite correctly."
At the word bastard his heart moved painfully: it was as when a man in love hears a stranger name a flower which is also the name of a woman. Bastard: the word filled him with miserable happiness. It brought his own child nearer: he could see her under the tree by the rubbish-dump, unguarded. He repeated "Bastard?" as he might have repeated her name-with tenderness disguised as indifference.
"They said he was no fit father. But, of course, when the priests fled, she had to go to him. Where else could she go?" It was like a happy ending until she said: "Of course she hated him. They'd taught her about things." He could imagine the small set mouth of an educated woman. What was she doing here?
"Why is he in prison?"
"He had a crucifix."
The stench from the pail got worse all the time: the night stood round them like a wall, without ventilation, and he could hear somebody making water, drumming on the tin sides. He said: "They had no business..."
"They were doing what was right, of course. It was a mortal sin."
"No right to make her hate him."
"They know what's right."
He said: "They were bad priests to do a thing like that. The sin was over. It was their duty to teach-well, love."
"You don't know what's right. The priests know."
He said after a moment's hesitation, very distinctly: "I am a priest."
It was like the end: there was no need to hope any longer. The ten years' hunt was over at last. There was silence all round him. This place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love: it stank to heaven; but he realized that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short.
"A priest?" the woman said at last.
"Yes."
"Do they know?"
"Not yet."
He could feel a hand fumbling at his sleeve. A voice said: "You shouldn't have told us. Father, there are all sorts here. Murderers..."
The voice which had described the crime to him said: "You've no cause to abuse me. Because I kill a man it doesn't mean..." Whispering started everywhere. The voice said bitterly: "I'm not an informer just because when a man says: 'Your mother's a whore...' "
The priest said: "There's no need for anyone to inform on me. That would be a sin. When it's daylight they'll discover for themselves."
"They'll shoot you, father," the woman's voice said.
"Yes."
"Are you afraid?"
"Yes. Of course."
A new voice spoke, in the corner from which the sounds of pleasure had come. It said roughly and obstinately: "A man isn't afraid of a thing like that."
"No?" the priest said.
"A bit of pain. What do you expect? It has to come."
"All the same," the priest said, "I am afraid."
"Toothache is worse."
"We can't all be brave men."
The voice said with contempt: "You believers are all the same. Christianity makes you cowards."
"Yes. Perhaps you are right. You see I am a bad priest and a bad man. To die in a state of mortal sin"-he gave an uneasy chuckle-"it makes you think."
"There. It's as I say. Believing in God makes cowards." The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.
"So then?" the priest said.
"Better not to believe-and be a brave man."
"I see-yes. And, of course, if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then."
"That's just foolishness."
"But when we found that the prison was a prison, and the Governor up there in the square undoubtedly existed, well, it wouldn't much matter if we'd been brave for an hour or two."
"Nobody could say that this prison was not a prison."
"No? You don't think so? I can see you don't listen to the politicians." His feet were giving him great pain: he had cramp in the soles, but he could bring no pressure on the muscles to relieve them. It was not yet midnight: the hours of darkness stretched ahead interminably.
The woman said suddenly: "Think. We have a martyr here..."
The priest giggled: he couldn't stop himself. He said: "I don't think martyrs are like this." He became suddenly serious, remembering Maria's words-it wouldn't be a good thing to bring mockery on the Church. He said: "Martyrs are holy men. It is wrong to think that just because one dies... no. I tell you I am in a state of mortal sin. I have done things I couldn't talk to you about: I could only whisper them in the confessional." Everybody, when he spoke, listened attentively to him as if he were addressing them in church: he wondered where the inevitable Judas was sitting now, but he wasn't aware of Judas as he had been in the forest hut. He was moved by an enormous and irrational affection for the inhabitants of this prison. A phrase came to him: "God so loved the world... " He said: "My children, you must never think the holy martyrs are like me. You have a name for me. Oh, I've heard you use it before now. I am a whisky priest. I am in here now because they found a bottle of brandy in my pocket." He tried to move his feet from under him: the cramp had passed: now they were lifeless: all feeling gone. Oh, well, let them stay. He wouldn't have to use them often again.
The old man was muttering, and the priest's thoughts went back to Brigida. The knowledge of the world lay in her like the dark explicable spot in an X-ray photograph: he longed-with a breathless feeling in the breast-to save her, but he knew the surgeon's decision-the ill was incurable.
The woman's voice said pleadingly: "A little drink, father... it's not so important." He wondered why she was here-probably for having a holy picture in her house. She had the tiresome intent note of a pious woman. They were extraordinarily foolish over pictures. Why not burn them? One didn't need a picture. … He said sternly: "Oh, I am not only a drunkard." He had always been worried by the fate of pious women: as much as politicians, they fed on illusion: he was frightened for them. They came to death so often in a state of invincible complacency, full of uncharity. It was one's duty, if one could, to rob them of their sentimental notions of what was good... He said in hard accents: "I have a child."
What a worthy woman she was! her voice pleaded in the darkness: he couldn't catch what she said, but it was something about the Good Thief. He said: "My child, the thief repented. I haven't repented." He remembered her coming into the hut, the dark malicious knowing look with the sunlight at her back. He said: "I don't know how to repent." That was true: he had lost the faculty. He couldn't say to himself that he wished his sin had never existed, because the sin seemed to him now so unimportant- and he loved the fruit of it. He needed a confessor to draw his mind slowly down the drab passages which led to horror, grief, and repentance.
The woman was silent now: he wondered whether after all he had been too harsh with her. If it helped her faith to believe that he was a martyr... but he rejected the idea: one was pledged to truth. He shifted an inch or two on his hams and said: "What time does it get light?"
"Four... five..." a man replied. "How can we tell, father? We haven't clocks."
"Have you been here long?"
"Three weeks."
"Are you kept here all day?"
"Oh, no. They let us out to clean the yard."
He thought: That is when I shall be discovered-unless it's earlier: for surely one of these people will betray me first. A long train of thought began, which led him to announce after a while: "They are offering a reward for me. Five hundred, six hundred pesos, I'm not sure." Then he was silent again. He couldn't urge any man to inform against him-that would be tempting him to sin-but at the same time if there was an informer here, there was no reason why the wretched creature should be bilked of his reward. To commit so ugly a sin-it must count as murder-and to have no compensation in this world... He thought simply: it wouldn't be fair.
"Nobody here," a voice said, "wants their blood money." Again he was touched by an extraordinary affection. He was just one criminal among a herd of criminals... he had a sense of companionship which he had never received in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.
The pious woman's voice leapt hysterically out at him: "It is so stupid to tell them that. You don't know the sort of wretches who are here, father. Thieves, murderers …"
"Well," an angry voice said, "why are you here?"
"I had good books in my house," she announced, with unbearable pride. He had done nothing to shake her complacency. He said: "They are everywhere. It's no different here."
"Good books?"
He giggled. "No, no. Thieves, murderers... Oh, well, my child, if you had more experience you would know there are worse things to be." The old man seemed to be uneasily asleep: his head lay sideways against the priest's shoulder, and he muttered angrily. God knows, it had never been easy to move in this place, but the difficulty seemed to increase as the night wore on and limbs stiffened. He couldn't twitch his shoulder now without waking the old man to another night of suffering. Well, he thought, it was my kind who robbed him: it's only fair to be made a little uncomfortable. … He sat silent and rigid against the damp wall, with his dead feet like leprosy under his haunches. The mosquitoes droned on: it was no good defending yourself by striking at the air: they pervaded the whole place like an element. Somebody as well as the old man had somewhere fallen asleep and was snoring, a curious note of satisfaction, as though he had eaten and drunk well at a good dinner and was now taking a snooze. … The priest tried to calculate the hour: how much time had passed since he had met the beggar in the plaza? It was probably not long after midnight: there would be hours more of this.
It was, of course, the end, but at the same time you had to be prepared for everything, even escape. If God intended him to escape he could snatch him away from in front of a firing squad. But God was merciful: there was only one reason, surely, which would make Him refuse His peace-if there was any peace-that he could still be of use in saving a soul, his own or another's. But what good could he do now? They had him on the run: he dared not enter a village in case somebody else should pay with his life: perhaps a man who was in mortal sin and unrepentant: it was impossible to say what souls might not be lost simply because he was obstinate and proud and wouldn't admit defeat. He couldn't even say Mass any longer -he had no wine. It had all gone down the dry gullet of the Chief of Police. It was-appallingly-complicated. He was still afraid of death; he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.