The comadre had run all over the city and nowhere had she found Leonardo. While she was wearing herself out in the search, he was calm and relaxed gazing into the eyes of Vidinha, contentedly listening to modinhas, as the readers well know, completely heedless of what was going on in the world.
The poor woman, after wearying herself to the bone, took refuge in Dona Maria’s house. It was by then deep into the night.
As she was entering, the prayer master was leaving, having given his lesson to the household slave-children. For some time now the comadre had been suspicious of the prayer master; adding up the talk about the confidence in which he was held and certain things that she had had occasion to witness, she had all but concluded that he was José Manuel’s emissary to the court of Dona Maria. The meeting, then, was not one to her liking, and it bothered her deeply to see him leaving at that time of day, since lessons ordinarily did not go so late. To try to get a rise out of him, she said, “The lesson ran late today, my pious one … the girls seem to like gossip more than they like prayer.”
“No,” the old man answered in his nasal voice, “they’re not doing badly. They get stuck in some places but they keep making progress. And you know that I always bring the blessed cure-all with me.” And he caressed the handle of the ferule with which he was always armed.
“Ah! Then you must’ve been deep in conversation. You do like to wag your tongue …”
“I’m not opposed to it, no. But at the same time I say only what I know—that is, what I hear. Other people spend their time both seeing and hearing; I, since I can only hear, take up in talking what others use in seeing. I talk; I talk a lot. But then I have time aplenty for it. And what’s more, you know it’s not tiring work. My parents were Algarvian, and I don’t want to let my ancestry down.”
“Then I’m sure that the dead have been disinterred and the living buried this day. Well, I can’t match that, because you find me as irritated as can be with my life. If, my pious friend, being a man who gets about the city very widely, you should hear anything of my godson Leonardo, please come let me know. He left home today on account of some sort of nonsense, and I haven’t been able to find hide nor hair of him.”
“Now just you leave that to me; nothing easier than to find out where he is.”
And with that the conversation, which had taken place at the street door, came to a close, the comadre feeling quite displeased with its upshot. Dona Maria, who had heard it all, came out to meet her and, before the latter had time to take off her mantilla, said to her, “Then the boy’s not at home any more? Senhora, that’s nature; he was born with it and he’ll go to the grave with it. I’ve been told what he was like, and despite that smart air he has about him, I’ve never thought very well of him.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re casting the blame on someone who doesn’t deserve it; this time the boy is completely in the right—”
“Now, now, stuff and nonsense. You just say that because you love him like a mother. But mark my words: Young men today go around with their heads too high in the air. Our dearly departed compadre—may God rest his soul—was the one to blame for all of this, what with those pretensions about Coimbra that he stuffed the boy’s head with—”
“But, my dear senhora, his brute of a father actually went after him sword in hand—”
“And what do you suppose the boy did first? And what of it anyhow? His father wasn’t going to cut him up in pieces. Oh, I know about his temper all right; it was anger, and it’ll pass. The child should have given in—he is his father, after all.”
“By the Holy Virgin! But it was over nothing at all! A lace cushion! Does that sound reasonable? … And now where’s the poor child to go?”
“He’s probably around here in some gypsy fado or other. Don’t you remember what he did when his godfather was still alive?”
“Oh, stuff of childhood. Why bring that up?”
This dialogue was going on interminably in the same vein when Dona Maria, abruptly changing the subject, said to the comadre, “Oh, that’s right! Sit down right here, for we have a score to settle.”
“A score?”
“And a very great one, I’ll begin by saying,” added Dona Maria, who did not seem to be in a very good humor on this occasion. “I’ll begin by telling you right to your face that when you go to confession this year you must try to atone for a great sin that you have committed.”
“And I who have no small number of them! But what are you speaking of?”
“A bit of slander, senhora, of great slander that you raised against someone who did not merit it.”
The comadre needed to hear no more to realize where all this was headed: She knew through and through what the most recent bit of slander was of which her conscience accused her. She started to see it all, clear as day: She saw José Manuel completely exonerated in Dona Maria’s eyes with regard to the abduction at the Stone Oratory, and she saw as well the blind prayer master as the mediator of that exoneration. She was, then, visibly discomfited; she shifted back and forth as though the bench on which she was seated was covered with thorns, and she had a violent coughing spell when Dona Maria finished speaking those last words.
“Everything you told me about José Manuel in relation to the story of the girl,” Dona Maria went on, turning red, which in her was a bad sign, “was untrue—and very untrue. I know this from a very reliable source—”
The comadre was overcome by a new coughing spell.
“Now, look here,” Dona Maria continued. “I took your story on trust, so much so that I broke off relations with the poor man. I won’t make that mistake again; that one time taught me a lesson.”
The comadre saw that the wind was switching quarters; she realized that Dona Maria was very well informed and that it would be useless even to attempt to insist upon the truth of all that she had said. It would serve only to make her position worse. She thus, there and then, forged a new plan, saying, “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, senhora. I know it all too well: In this matter, that man is like Pilate in the Creed.”
“But recall now, you told me you saw it with your own eyes.”
“Ah, senhora, it must’ve been the very devil in his place. I never saw anything like it, so similar were they. I found out the truth the other day, and I am repentant.”
“For that reason I sent for the poor man,” Dona Maria went on, “who was so offended by the way I had treated him that it was hard for him to come back. I had a heart-to-heart talk with him. And I’ll tell you one thing: You don’t come out well in the whole business. He confided in me about some things … that I didn’t want to believe.”
“Then you told him that it was I who …”
“I wasn’t the one who told him. He already knew, and I wasn’t going to deny it. That’s when he started to open my eyes on other points—”
The comadre, who could see all the soup spilled in those “other points,” tried to change the topic of conversation, pretending that she had not heard the last words. “But then,” she asked, “who told him about how the business got started? I want to see if that goes together with what I know.”
“The person who got me to see the light left just a short time ago.”
“Ah,” said the comadre. And she bit her lips in a gesture that said “I had that one right!”
Dona Maria went on to tell the comadre that, when she talked to the prayer master about the affair, he had rejected everything she had said to her about José Manuel. She had argued with the old man a long time trying to get him to say what he knew about it and what he based his rejection on. Finally, after great resistance, he had just the day before brought the girl’s father to her house, and he had confessed everything, even giving the name of the man his daughter had run off with, whom he already knew and with whom he had made his peace.
“That’s exactly what I found out,” said the comadre at the close of the narrative. “It was just like that. Look, senhora, at what can happen to a person in this life: Even bearing false witness against others.”
Let us now inform the reader that everything that had just taken place had indeed been the work of the prayer master. By bits and pieces he had learned about what was going on in Dona Maria’s household with regard to his client José Manuel. He had succeeded in discovering who had plotted the intrigue. He had also inquired into goings-on in Leonardo-Pataca’s house, and, as there was a lot of talking out loud in that house about Leonardo’s intentions, putting two and two together he came to the correct conclusion about what had in fact happened.
Dona Maria seemed to accept the comadre’s repentance and that began to placate the rather unfriendly humor she was in. They returned to the matter of Leonardo’s leaving home, and this time Dona Maria did not show herself so inflexible toward the youth. Still the comadre could not get out of her head Dona Maria’s words “he opened my eyes on other points,” and, when she saw her more pacified, she endeavored to bring the conversation around to that juncture again and try to ferret out explanations. She could foresee the meaning of the words, which without any doubt whatsoever referred to her designs, or those of her godson, upon Luisinha. But she still wanted to know the colors in which the business had been painted for Dona Maria by José Manuel.
This, however, proved fatal to her, for she found out (which was not at all to her liking) that the business was at a complete stop as far as her godson was concerned and, by contrast, well advanced in favor of his adversary. Dona Maria—after declaring that José Manuel had registered a complaint against the comadre in which he attributed to her everything that had taken place, which amounted to nothing more than a plot cooked up to get him out of this house because suspicions had fallen upon him (which he confessed were well founded)—added finally that José Manuel, completely exonerated thanks to the prayer master’s intervention, had ended up by giving her to understand something with regard to Luisinha that she, Dona Maria, confessed she had not received with total displeasure. For after all, she alleged, José Manuel was a man of good sense and of judgment, had seen a goodly part of the world, and was no wet-behind-the-ears boy (those words wounded the comadre) unable to treat a young woman properly. The comadre lost heart completely at these last statements. What, however, could she do under the circumstances? She herself had confessed just a short while ago about the risk one runs at every moment of being unjust with one’s fellow man and she could not without risk venture something against José Manuel, at least not on this occasion—all the more given how badly her first plot had turned out. She thus contented herself with repeating an observation that Dona Maria herself had made to her a short time ago, and she said, referring to Luisinha, “Well, the child is near the age for it! …”
“Yes,” Dona Maria replied, “she is still a bit green, but that’s not a big problem.”
The comadre let her breath back out, for she saw that there was still time to emerge victorious.