As soon as I saw our dependent disappear down the corridor, I left my hiding place, and ran to the verandah at the back of the house. It was not the tears nor what made my mother shed them that concerned me. They were probably brought on by her ecclesiastical projects; I should explain them, for even then it was an old story—sixteen years old.
The projects dated from the time I was conceived. My mother’s first child, a boy, had been born dead, and so she begged God that the second should live, and promised that, if it were male, she would destine him for the Church. Maybe she was hoping for a girl. She said nothing to my father, neither before nor after I was born; she intended to do it when I first went to school, but she was widowed before then. When she became a widow, she was terrified of being separated from me; but so devout was she, so God fearing, that she sought out witnesses to this obligation, and confided her promise to relatives and members of the family. Only, so that we should not be separated any sooner than necessary, she had me taught my first letters, Latin and doctrine, at home, with Father Cabral, an old friend of Uncle Cosme’s who came round in the evening to play backgammon.
It is easy to promise things in the long term: the imagination stretches time out to infinity. My mother waited for the years to go by until the moment came. In the meantime, she tried to develop in me a liking for the idea of the Church; children’s toys, books of devotion, images of saints, conversations at home, everything gravitated towards the altar. When we went to mass, she always told me that it was to learn to be a priest, that I should notice the priest, that I should keep my eyes on the priest. At home, I played at mass—somewhat in secret, because my mother said that mass was not a game. We set up an altar, Capitu and I. She acted the sacristan, and we changed the ritual so as to divide the host between us: the host was always a sweet. When we used to play in this way, it was very common to hear my neighbor say: “Is there mass today?” I knew what this meant, replied in the affirmative, and went to ask for the host by another name. I came back with it, we set up the altar, mumbled the Latin and hurried through the ceremonies. Dominus, non sum dignus … These words, which I should have said three times, I think I only said once, such was the greed of the priest and the sacristan. We drank neither wine nor water: the first because we had none, and the second so as not to spoil the taste of the sacrifice.
Lately, no one had mentioned the seminary, so that I thought the project had been dropped. At the age of fifteen, with no vocation, it would seem that the seminary of the world is what is required, not that of São José. My mother would often sit gazing at me, like a lost soul, or would take my hand in hers for no particular reason, just to squeeze it.