A roofing contractor from Hermosillo showed up one morning with a truck and crew and began to repair the dome. He said not to worry about the charges; those had been taken care of by a benefactor who wished to remain anonymous. The roofer must have come at Bonham’s behest, but Riordan did not press him for any further information. Later, another contractor arrived, also from Hermosillo, and inspected the church’s plumbing and electrical systems. Both needed work, he reported. Riordan had known about the plumbing problems, but the wiring, too? Yes, answered the contractor. It was very old and frayed, and if it wasn’t fixed, there could be short circuits and a fire. He, too, said not to worry about the bill. As he had done with the roofer, Riordan showed his gratitude by not asking who had arranged and paid for his services. He found himself curiously incurious.
For the next couple of weeks, tradesmen crawled over the roof, scuttled through the interior of the church and the rectory, making a racket with their power tools.
* * *
Toward the end of January, every pastor in the Archdiocese of Hermosillo received a letter from the bishop, Arturo Peralta. It called their attention to a forthcoming visit by one Father Calixto Banderas, a prominent exorcist from Mexico City. Violence in Sonora—indeed, throughout the country—had become so perverse, so extreme, so hideous, wrote His Excellency, that he now questioned the political and sociological explanations for it. The ghastly crime recently committed in San Patricio, with which “you are all by now familiar,” was the most recent example. Such violations of all human norms, and the utter failure of state institutions—the government, the military, the police, the courts—to contain them, much less to stop them, strongly suggested a diabolical influence. After conferring at length with his fellow prelates, the bishop had concluded that the country was suffering from an infestation of demons. These evil spirits might be punishment for the proliferation of pagan cults like the cult of La Santa Muerte; they might be a demonstration of what happens when people abandon their faith. Whatever the reason for the plague, Bishop Peralta had called for exorcisms in the parishes under his jurisdiction.
Riordan lay the letter on his desk and watched dust motes swirl in the winter sunlight piercing the rectory office window. Disbelief, fascination, and curiosity spilled into his mental blender, which pureed them so that he experienced them all at once. More than a dozen years into the twenty-first century, he thought, and things have come to the point that we are turning to a rite wreathed in the obscurant mists of the Middle Ages. In all his years in the priesthood, he’d never witnessed an exorcism except in a movie theater, watching Linda Blair vomit pea soup. Many priests his age regarded the ritual as an embarrassment; yet he had to admit that he was eager to see one performed. The bishop’s word choice had caught his eye: an “infestation.” He pictured the circuit-riding Father Banderas as a kind of spiritual Orkin man, traveling from parish to parish to exterminate demonic termites.
That evening, after dinner, he showed the letter to Father Hugo and the Old Priest. The dimly lit room, with its heavy antique table and sideboard, lent an atmosphere appropriate to the subject.
“Have either of you been to an exorcism?”
Father Hugo shook his head; the Old Priest nodded.
“Once, many years ago,” he said. “It was very frightening. A young man was possessed. I remember him screaming obscenities when the exorcist commanded the wicked spirit to leave him. He had superhuman strength. It took three of us to hold him down. He raved like one gone mad, but the demon was driven from him. It howled when it left.” The Old Priest squinted at Riordan through his thick reading glasses. “Do I observe skepticism on your face?”
Riordan answered with a noncommittal shrug. In his new role as a snitch, he thought, he might be more effective at ejecting demons than thousand-year-old incantations. But so far, he’d heard nothing worth reporting, only dreary recitations of quotidian sins. I missed Mass twice without a serious reason … I masturbated five times since my last confession … I was unfaithful to my wife, Father … I took the Lord’s name in vain many times. Sometimes he felt terrible, deceiving his parishioners into believing they were confessing to a true priest; sometimes he trembled, knowing that every time he said Mass he was compounding his sin. But whenever his resolve began to falter, all he had to do was call on Delores Quiroga to offer what little comfort he could; all he had to do was walk into the parish office and look at the desk where Domingo used to sit, and feel the aching presence of his absence.
Father Hugo bowed his head over the letter. “It says this is to be an Exorcismo Magno—”
“I looked that up. It’s rarely done,” Riordan said. “It means a ‘Great Exorcism’—”
“I know what the words mean,” Father Hugo said peevishly. “But what is it?”
“An exorcism of a place or an area, not of a person,” Riordan replied as he thought, I do not believe that we are seriously talking about this.
“I see. Maybe when this Father Calixto is finished here, he can go north of the border. Plenty of demons there, Padre Tim. A treasury of demons.”
“What are you getting at, Padre Hugo?”
“The savages who did what they did to our poor Domingo, how did they get to be so powerful? Selling their poison north of the border.” Father Hugo’s voice swelled as he went on: “There is something wrong with a country where everybody cannot get through a week or a day without sticking needles in their arms or smoking their crack pipes.”
“If you’re looking for an argument, you’ll get none from me on that point,” Riordan said. “Except that it’s not everybody.”
“Flan! I have flan left over,” announced Maria, barreling in from the kitchen. “Who wants flan for dessert?”
“Why is it always flan? Flan, flan, flan every night?” Father Hugo, apparently frustrated by Riordan’s dodge, needed someone to fight with. “Can you make nothing but flan?”
Maria assumed an injured look. “Pardon me, Padre. I beg your pardon for asking your wishes.”
“Oh, very well. Since there is only flan, I will have flan.”
“Flan all around, María,” said Riordan.
She bustled out and back in and slapped the custard on the table and bustled out again.
“You never answered my question,” the Old Priest said.
“What question?”
“Was that skepticism on your face?”
“All right. Yes.”
The Old Priest paused to dip his spoon into the flan. “I know what I saw and heard that day.”
“I’m not doubting you, but—”
“I heard you say—I think it was in this very room—I heard you say yourself that what is happening now in Mexico is the work of the devil.”
“It was a figure of speech. Una metáfora.”
“Ah! Ah! Típico! Usted es un típico norteamericano, a slave to rationalism. Satan is not a metaphor. He is real, and he has sent his lieutenants here to infest us. Because Mexico has been faithful, he has singled her out to destroy her faith. Where there is no faith, there is only darkness.”
“I am skeptical,” Riordan said, “that an exorcism is going to spare us from the next massacre.”