The Vila, as the San Martin residence was known to the rest of the neighbourhood, was protected from prying eyes by high walls covered in moss. The walls were grey and the moss was dry, making for a dull effect only slightly enlivened by the occasional flower. At night it was easy to think the place derelict, abandoned to unhappy memories, past tragedies and private grief. The truth was quite the opposite: behind the walls was a hive of activity. The San Martins led busy lives and managed an array of business interests, though the Vila’s grounds spoke of the family’s indulgent past and subsequent changes in fortune. The city’s residential neighbourhoods had been transformed by the emergence of the nouveau riche, with former symbols of tradition becoming the playthings of the newly wealthy. The upstarts had been quick to profit from the financial woes of the old guard, snapping up entire estates, or the lion’s share of them, along with, they hoped, the class and status they conferred. But the Vila had survived these difficult times, primarily due to the shrewdness of the family’s younger generation, more attuned to reality and the transitory nature of fortune than their predecessors. The current occupants of the Vila had made a number of compromises to save the property, the only part of their inheritance they considered worth defending, and branched out into new areas of economic activity. These included tourism and hospitality, now the cornerstones of the San Martin family business. The word in certain sectors of society was that they’d sold out, saved their wealth by sacrificing their values, but in other circles they were hailed as visionaries.
Genoveva, the youngest member of the clan, was fourteen years old, spoiled and rebellious. As befitted her age, she drew innocent pleasure from dishonouring the family name, while her mother and grandmother worked hard to uphold it, hosting sophisticated tea parties for sophisticated ladies with their own good names to uphold. While the neighbourhood had undergone great change, it remained a bastion of privilege and high-minded principles. Every last weekend of the month was set aside for charitable acts, ‘more out of superiority than solidarity,’ in the words of those who felt humiliated at having to accept the condescending donations or upset at not being counted among the do-gooders.
‘Social work is always welcome and to be encouraged, never mind the motive,’ said the priest. ‘Anyone who isn’t comfortable receiving should try giving instead, because it is only by being bold and unorthodox that we can create riches and move mountains, or at least stones.’
The priest was addressing various old bats who’d come to complain to him that certain female members of the congregation were using God’s house to flaunt their wealth and vanity.
‘What is money if not a weapon that might turn against its owner?’ said the priest, not entirely convinced of his own argument but practised in the gymnastics he had to perform to meet the needs of the parish and safeguard his own necessities, which had grown quite refined.
‘But rising up against the rich would be a sin,’he continued. ‘Trying to conceal what you really are in order to pass yourself off as something else is pride, or worse, disobedience, a refusal to accept God’s divine will, for remember this: God created the poor to show the powerful here on earth that one day He will reign and He will do so among the poor.’
‘Fools!’ said a woman at the door. She appeared from time to time but had never been known to enter the church, causing the faithful to suspect she was in league with the devil. ‘The poor were created for the powerful to get rich on, sin against and use to mock ideals of equality and seek their own salvation.’
The mysterious woman taunted the rich but also the poor, ridiculing the way they walked the streets with bowed heads and outstretched arms instead of devising ways to break free from the hypocritical charity of others. The presence of the unhinged woman was therefore disconcerting to everyone. Indeed the mere thought of her prompted stabs of self-loathing in many and caused them to hate the priest for his pathetic promises of happiness in the afterlife.
‘We must be generous and pray for the rich,’ said the priest, ignoring the woman. ‘We pity them, for the threat of banishment hangs forever over their heads; they are the true poor in this world of paradoxes!’ He turned to a passage in the bible, an old favourite for consoling the poor and wretched: ‘Lest we forget: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”’
The priest privately hailed the great mind that had come up with that little gem. Where would he be without his allegories? How could he have sustained his faith and self-sacrifice? Truth be told, as one of many mouths to feed in a large family, there hadn’t been much to sacrifice. He would be eternally grateful to the old priest who’d introduced him to the church and saved him from want, perhaps even death, or some terrible sickness like the one that had befallen Casca de Ovo, his best friend.
He’d been a boy wandering the streets, skinny and needy, when the old priest had passed by, handed him a coin and told him to drop into the church some time. The invitation went in one ear and out the other, but one day he chanced upon the church and saw the old man dressed in his black cassock. He went in and the old man asked him if he would like to become a priest, if he felt the calling. He didn’t know what the calling was, but a voice whispered in his ear that he would never go hungry again, and in a moment of blind revelation and dazzling glory, he said he would like that very much. He’d found his vocation, and though he sometimes felt short-changed by life, he was generally satisfied with his lot and felt he’d made a decent enough fist of the profession. And it was true, he’d never gone hungry again. It was a trade-off, like everything else in life, and although Casca de Ovo said he’d sold his soul, he didn’t think he had. His body, yes, but not his soul.
It had been a constant struggle to make his body behave. He drank teas of rue and bitter infusions of roots pulled from the soil of his garden. If that didn’t work he flogged himself, the part of him that grew and ignored his calling, using a stick or a belt. Occasionally he succumbed and gave it a fond look or a quick caress, but only in moments of extreme weakness, when his entire being seemed to be reduced to that small part of him, its disregard for his commitments and oaths and its accusation that he’d sacrificed everything for an easy life.
Afterwards, wallowing in regret and remorse, he would tell himself that he might have joined the church as a boy in order to enjoy certain comforts, but as a man he’d come to appreciate working for God and helping the needy, and the not-so needy. He started to feel better about himself and see that his tormented side was not necessarily his most important side.
Still, it would have been nice if the church could have changed its rules and allowed him a woman with whom to share his desires, passions and insecurities. Yes, a woman, just the one. It didn’t seem too much to ask, but having discussed the matter with colleagues, he knew the chances were next to none. He would have to continue to give his body only to God, the Almighty, and to himself, the humble sinner.
The priest’s thoughts returned to his flock and to the allegories, invaluable when dealing with pious old bats who spent all day with their rosary beads in their hands and the affairs of others on their lips. These bitter old ladies disturbed him at the most inopportune moments, such as when he was tending his vegetable patch, feeding his ducks and chickens, pruning his flowers or working on the translations that took up so much of his time. It was for these reasons, and one or two others, that he’d switched the morning mass from seven o’clock to eleven o’clock: he had better things to do with the coolest hours of the day than give idle women something to do.
Nevertheless, he was grateful to his regular ladies who filled the church on Sunday with their greenery and floral dresses, making mass a social occasion on the very day he felt the absence of his own family most keenly. This was reason enough for him to pray for every single one of them, even if during the week he resented being exposed to their hatred and envy.
‘Why were the least idle women also the prettiest, most interesting and generous?’ he asked his icons, his eternal friends, as he thought of the minor sins the more occupied women would confess to him. He didn’t, of course, mean those women who were forever occupied by petty day-to-day concerns. He tried to keep as much distance from them as he could get away with. No, he meant the women whose heads were busy with plans and ideas, who had dreams and the will to pursue them, who didn’t mind failing because failures were forgotten in their enthusiasm for the next project. If only he could tell them how much they brightened his days!
He looked at the righteous old dears before him. The line about the rich not being admitted to the kingdom of heaven had evidently satisfied them; he could tell they were picturing themselves at God’s side, defiant and compensated, dripping with gold and fanning themselves with their silver wings, looking over their shoulders as the San Martins of the world dragged their filthy, fettered feet off to hell.
Indeed they looked so content he felt obliged to ask God to forgive them and to remember it wasn’t easy being poor. ‘With all due respect, Lord, surely it would be no bad thing if every once in a while one of these old dears was rewarded with something, like that time - remember, Lord? - when the woman from Rua Cinco won the purple dress at the Santo Amaro festival? No one cursed or blasphemed for a week! It’s that easy to make them happy, for God’s sake! Sorry, Lord, I didn’t mean… it’s just that even in raffles or lotteries with the tiniest pot it’s always the rich who win. Isn’t that bad for them? If the rich missed out on such bagatelles the poor might be more understanding, because the poor are superficial, take it from me, Lord, they’re petty-minded and blighted by short-term thinking. The odd little bonus now and again would soften their hearts and make my life a lot easier. I’m not saying give them banks and factories to own or let them become successful businessmen; I’m not saying they should have nice teeth, cease to reek or learn how to speak properly; I’m not even asking for them to stop spitting on the floor or talking with their mouths full. I’m no demagogue, Lord, I’m just suggesting they might win a goat or a pair of shoes in a prize draw, a bit of pocket money in the lottery, that’s all! Almighty Lord, I’d be ever so grateful if you could lend a hand, because I can’t go on repeating, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I’ve even resorted to saying it in Latin, just for variation, and out of fear, because the way they look at me, I know they’re going to make me eat my words one day, and let’s face it, they’d be right to. I’ve been parroting the same thing for years and yet not a single rich person, not one, has ever been even mildly inconvenienced. And I can no longer rely on the play we used to put on at Easter and then started to do at Christmas too, with its scenes of the rich being lashed and burned, because I was forced to cancel the show last year when the powers that be failed to understand my intentions and mistook artistic representation for incitement, claiming I was encouraging class rebellion, and then they cut off our subsidies when, at the end of one of the performances, some madwoman, no doubt a communist, led a march of the hungry through the streets, armed with stones and shouting war cries, all the way to the residence of someone who, unfortunately, happened to be the richest man in town. I’d never seen the woman before, Lord, and she vanished the moment the police arrived and rounded up the protesters. Some of the parishioners say they’ve seen her around town, but no one knows where she lives because she never stays in one place for long, and when she does it’s to mobilise the disenfranchised. Of course, the poor like to create a bit of mystery around her in order to justify their relationship with her, but one thing they’re all agreed on is that she has very dark eyes and appears and disappears seemingly at will, or as and when required…’ The priest’s voice trailed off at this point, becoming so quiet that God would have had a hard job hearing him.
‘So please, Lord, leave the rich alone for once and give the poor a chance,’ the priest concluded, before returning to his tasks. He had to make his own lunch because the maid had failed to show up for work, without any explanation. ‘The wheels are coming off this place, I’m telling you Lord!’
Genoveva had always understood that the reason she had no brothers and sisters was a miscarriage that had prevented her mother from having more children. She learned otherwise when she overheard her father saying how much he regretted his daughter not being a man and lamented his wife’s failure to provide him with a son to continue the family name. Genoveva’s mother, fed up of a lifetime of being wronged, shouted back that if he hadn’t got involved with some floozy who’d given him an STD and turned him sterile he could have had a whole house full of little boys to take on the family mantle. Then she added for good measure that as luck would have it, the only people of any worth in the family were female: the San Martin mothers, daughters, wives and sisters, even the housemaids, who were worth their weight in gold in comparison to the men.
Her father never spoke of his desire for a male heir again. He decided to train up his daughter instead, so she could continue the family business, while cursing the young hussy who’d given him the disease. He’d been naïve, stupid and ignorant: not for a moment had he suspected she might infect him with such a vulgar disease, so he hadn’t taken precautions, and by the time he’d gone to the doctor and discovered he was allergic to antibiotics and then been prevented from flying abroad for treatment by the weather, it was too late. Afterwards he’d tried to sue the mist that had grounded all flights, but he didn’t get very far. It had already disappeared for a start, gone to linger over the neighbouring continent, according to some.
The family had kept his illness secret for years until the row when Joana San Martin referred to it loud and clear. The maid heard and told the chauffeur, who told his wife, who mentioned it in passing at the grocer’s, and soon it had spread all over town. By the time the priest spoke of the Christian need to forgive one’s fellow man for his weaknesses, there wasn’t a member of the congregation who didn’t know about Pedro San Martin’s humiliating illness.
Genoveva had been unaware of her father’s indiscretions, but if she had known about them, she likely wouldn’t have cared. She was far too busy being young and having fun. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for being serious and boring when we’re grown-ups,’ she and her friends liked to say.
Roberto, a friend of one of her cousins, had fallen in love with her. He was a renowned sportsman and attracted the girls for all the wrong reasons, or at least not the reasons families such as the San Martins approved of. Bowled over, Genoveva swore he was the love of her life and frantically calculated how many years they would have to wait before they could marry. Her mother, on the other hand, dismissed him as poor, ignorant and black.
‘Gen’s just trying to provoke us,’ Joana told her friend, Paula, while they worked out a plan to end the relationship.
Meanwhile, on a deserted beach, the girl with the plaits and the boy with the athletic body sealed their love and dreamed up plans of their own.
Two months later, Genoveva was due to travel to a youth festival in a neighbouring town to take part in a regional costume parade. She was bubbling with excitement and her mother hoped this meant she’d lost interest in her boyfriend; why else would she be so happy about spending time away from him? Unless this Roberto was going on the trip too? Joana decided to go to the airport and find out for herself. She’d refuse her daughter permission to travel if Roberto was part of the group.
‘I don’t care if they need her for the performance,’ she told Paula, ‘if he’s going, she’s not.’
The two friends arrived at the airport a little late, but just in time to see the youngsters boarding the plane. They were already in costume and everyone had the same hairstyle and outfit, but all the mothers swore they could recognise their own child at any distance, for a mother’s heart is never mistaken. They waved and shouted their goodbyes, stirred by how beautiful their children looked climbing the stairs to the plane in the late afternoon light.