Luz Delcano finished her confession. The priest remained silent for several minutes before he spoke. “Señora,” he told her gently, “that would not have been your fault. What happened was not your sin; it was your grandfather’s.”
She, too, was quiet before responding. Then she told him, “It’s no use, Padre. Nothing will change. Besides, what’s the difference. It’s all in the past.”
Luz fell into a deep silence while the distant sounds of barking dogs penetrated the walls of the shelter during a lull in the fighting. When the explosions started again, the howling stopped. The sudden blasts startled Father Hugh and his head jerked involuntarily, causing a sharp pain in his neck. He allowed his thoughts to wander vaguely, without direction.
Voices from the neighborhood where he grew up echoed faintly in his head, blocking out the reverberation of rifle and machine gun fire. Hugh was hearing distant sounds. They were so faint that his body tensed in an attempt to distinguish them. Suddenly his ear caught the lilting sounds of a boy’s voice, that of a soprano singing in the parish choir. He recognized his voice. The Latin words sharpened, transporting the priest to Sunday Benediction.
“Tantum ergo Sacramentum Veneremur cernui…”
He then saw the image of the small house where he and his brothers and sister had grown up. He saw the stark, impoverished kitchen where his mother listlessly hunched over a rusty sink while his father, seated at the table, stared blankly at her.
The apparition seemed to cast a bright light in the shelter’s darkness. The street where he ran and played ball with other boys and girls took shape in Father Hugh’s head. Things were so vivid that he reached out, expecting to touch something in front of him.
“¿Qué pasa, Padre? Do you want something?”
“No, Señora. I’m trying to pray. Trate de dormir.”
Father Hugh hoped the woman would do as he asked and try to sleep. He now wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, to give in to the exhaustions of the day’s events. He was fatigued by the dreary plane trip and by the shock of finding San Salvador gripped in a battle that was bloodier and larger than he had imagined. Above all, he had not expected to be hustled into that bleak shelter filled with strangers, without knowing when it would be safe for him to leave.
The priest had left his university without the benefit of a leave of absence, so desperate was his need to escape the sleepless nights during which he was tormented by voices and faces from his past. Father Hugh had told himself that those disturbances were caused by his mind, which was tired and playing tricks on him. He was convinced that the stress of recent events in his life was taking its toll on his nerves, and he had been certain that if he gave himself a fresh start, his agitation would disappear.
The voices were again surfacing, however. It was as if his memories had sniffed out his trail, tracking and finding him among the terrified refugees in the shelter. Father Hugh, too weary to resist, surrendered to his gloomy thoughts, and the images out of his past glided in his direction, turning as he slumped against the concrete wall. There was Señor Costa, the neighborhood baker. His hands and arms were powdered white with flour. The dead man nodded, smiling his toothy smile at Hugh as he handed him one of his fruit turnovers. The priest noticed the sarcasm and mockery stamped on the dead man’s face.
As the baker’s image melted into the wall and disappeared from sight, Hugh thought he saw his mother walking toward him, gingerly stepping over the refugees’ bodies. Her face was tired and drained of color, as it had been during her entire lifetime. Wordlessly, she stretched her thin arm toward Hugh, tenderly caressing his cheek and forehead. He felt the callouses on her palm and fingers.
“Say something, Ma. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t talk. Tell me why you let Pa work you into your grave?”
Immediately, his mother vanished into the air.
Father Hugh rubbed his eyes knowing that they were playing tricks on him, making him believe that he was dreaming while he was still awake. But the apparitions would not disappear. His sister Fiona, her long, red hair shining as it did when they played in the sun, approached Hugh and teased him with names that he knew were filled with the special affection she had for him, just because he was the youngest.
“Hey, Screwy Hughie! What’s up Paddy Waddy?”
Why did she always call him Paddy Waddy? He wasn’t even named Patrick. Hugh told himself that he would ask Fiona why she used that name. Then he remembered that his sister was dead. She had died several years before, giving birth to twins. He suddenly felt the full regret of never again asking Fiona anything or telling her that he had loved her almost as much as he loved his mother.
When Hugh looked again he sensed that the figure looking down at him was not his sister after all. It was Sister Philomena, his seventh grade teacher. Her wimple was very white and it glowed in the darkness of the shelter as if it were a saint’s aura. Hugh remembered that she too was dead. Why were they all dead, he wondered. As if reading his thoughts, she sternly shook her head, as she had often done when he was a boy in her classroom.
“Mr. Joyce, stop staring at me as if I were a soul out of Purgatory. Now, you just get down to your lessons, and stop your day dreaming.”
The round, soft vowels of her Irish brogue were ringing in Hugh’s memory when suddenly they blurred with Father Cyprian’s baritone voice.
“Hugh, we must all remember that in the end we’ll be judged by how much we’ve loved during our lifetime. Love will be the only measure, not how successful we’ve been, and much less how powerful we become. Learn this well now that you’re a novice.”
Father Hugh looked up, convinced that he was seeing his novice master wagging his long index finger at him. He noticed that the old priest was not wearing trousers; he was clad only in his shorts. Even in death, Father Cyprian had forgotten to put on his pants, as had happened when his memory withered during his last years. Hugh wished that he could forget Father Cyprian’s words as easily as the old man forgot his pants, but the image would not go away.
“Hugh, I see that you still think that being a good priest is a matter of following rules, up front where others can see. Well, you’re wrong, you know. It is what’s in here that counts.”
Father Cyprian turned his long finger, pointing to his heart.
Hugh rubbed his eyes and shook his head hoping to get rid of the image. He regretted having asked Luz to keep quiet.
“¡Señora, despierte, por favor! Tell me more about yourself!”
Luz would not respond, so he was forced to go back to his memories. Father Cyprian was still standing in front of him, his stiff finger pointing at him accusingly, provoking a fresh surge of guilt in Hugh. He fought the feeling, reminding himself that he had always been a good priest; that he had always tried to be good.
Hugh began to see that an arm was looped around Father Cyprian’s shoulders, and even though the gloom made it difficult to see him clearly, Hugh knew who it was. It was Father Virgil Canetti, and he was having difficulty keeping his arm around Father Cyprian’s shoulders. Father Virgil had been a small man.
Hugh was not surprised at what he was experiencing because Cyprian and Virgil had recently made daily practice of interrupting his sleep. The visits had started to happen right after Father Virgil’s death a few months back. The two priests always appeared in Hugh’s dreams just before dawn, when the night dipped to its blackest pitch and, when together, they asked the same carping questions, pointing incriminating fingers that made Hugh break out with sweat.
The two black pools of Father Virgil’s eyes persisted in looking at Hugh, forcing him to hunch over and bury his head between his bent knees. He remained in that position for several minutes.
“Hey, Pal, what’s with the head stuck in the old crotch?”
Hearing Augie’s voice, Hugh looked up. Father Cyprian and Father Virgil had vanished, and in their place stood Hugh’s boyhood friend. He stared mockingly at Hugh, his smile cocky and self-confident as it had been when he was alive. The apparition held a half-smoked cigar in his right hand, while the other one tugged at his left leg, the artificial one.
A sudden blast of helicopter fire frightened everyone in the shelter. Father Hugh tried to focus his eyes in an effort to make out faces among those in the shelter, but it was useless. They were all faceless silhouettes. Hugh turned to look at Luz. He saw that she was awake, but lost in thought. The din had not disturbed her. When he returned to his own memories, he realized that Augie’s shadow had evaporated into the thin, stale air.