Amaro Vieira was born in Lisbon in the house of the Marquesa de Alegros. His father was the Marquis’ servant; his mother was the personal maid and almost a friend of the Marchioness. Amaro still owned a book, Child of the Jungle, complete with crude, coloured illustrations, on the first blank page of which was written: ‘To my esteemed maid and ever-faithful friend, Joana Vieira – from the Marquesa de Alegros.’ He also owned a daguerrotype of his mother: a stout woman with thick eyebrows, a large mouth with sensually parted lips and a high colour. Amaro’s father had died of apoplexy, and his mother, who had always been so healthy, succumbed a year later to an inflammation of the larynx. Amaro was six years old at the time. He had an older sister who had lived with their grandmother in Coimbra since she was small, and an uncle, a wealthy grocer in the Estrela district of Lisbon. However, the Marchioness had grown fond of Amaro; she kept him at home with her, in a kind of tacit adoption, and she began, with great scrupulousness, to watch over his upbringing.
The Marquesa de Alegros was widowed when she was forty-three and spent most of the year living quietly on her estate in Carcavelos. She was by nature a passive, languidly benevolent person; she had her own chapel, was devoted to the priests at São Luís, and always had the interests of the Church at heart. Her two daughters, having been brought up both to fear Heaven and to care deeply about Fashion, were at once excessively devout and terribly chic, speaking with equal fervour about Christian humility and the latest clothes from Brussels. A journalist of the time said of them: ‘Every day they worry about what dress they should wear when it comes to their turn to enter Paradise.’
Adrift in Carcavelos, on that estate criss-crossed by aristocratic avenues full of the cries of peacocks, the two girls grew bored. They plunged into the occupations afforded them by Religion and Charity: they made clothes for the parish poor and embroidered antependia for the church altars. From May to October they were entirely absorbed in the work of ‘saving their souls’; they read benign devotional literature. With no theatre, no visitors and no dress shops, they welcomed the priests’ visits and gossiped about the virtues of the various saints. God was their summer extravagance.
The Marchioness had decided from the very beginning that Amaro should enter the ecclesiastical life. His thinness and his pallor seemed to cry out for a life of seclusion; he was already fond of the chapel, but what he liked most was to be amongst women, snuggled up in the warmth of their skirts, listening to them talk about saints. The Marchioness did not want to send him to school because she feared the impiety of the times and that he might get into bad company. Her own chaplain taught him Latin, and her eldest daughter, Dona Luisa, who had a hooked nose and read Chateaubriand, gave him lessons in French and geography.
Amaro was, as the servants put it, a ‘bit of a namby-pamby’. He never played games and never ran about in the sun. When he accompanied the Marchioness on an afternoon stroll along the avenues of the estate, and she took the arm of Father Liset or of Freitas, her respectful administrator, he would walk by her side, silent and shy, fiddling clammily with the linings of his trouser pockets and feeling slightly afraid of the thick groves of trees and the lush, tall grasses.
He became increasingly fearful. He could only sleep with a nightlight burning and with his bed drawn up near that of an old nursemaid. The maids feminized him; they thought him pretty and would encourage him to nestle amongst them; they would tickle him and smother him in kisses, and he would roll in their skirts, brushing against their bodies, uttering little contented shrieks. Sometimes, when the Marchioness went out, they would dress him up as a woman, all the while hooting with laughter; and he, with his languid manner and voluptuous eyes, would abandon himself to them, half-naked, his face flushed. The maids also made use of him in their intrigues with each other: Amaro became their bearer of tales. He became a tittletattler and a liar.
By the time he was eleven, he was helping with Mass, and on Saturdays, he would clean the chapel. That was his favourite day; he would shut himself up inside, place the saints on a table in the sunlight and kiss each one of them in turn with a mixture of devout tenderness and greedy delight; and he would work away all morning, humming the Santíssimo, getting rid of any moths in the Virgins’ dresses and polishing the Martyrs’ haloes.
Meanwhile, he was growing up; his pale, diminutive appearance remained unchanged; he never laughed out loud and he always had his hands in his pockets. He was constantly in and out of the maids’ rooms, rummaging about in drawers; he would finger their dirty petticoats and sniff the padding they wore in their clothes. He was also extremely lazy, and in the mornings, it was hard to wrench him from the unhealthy, lethargic somnolence in which he lay, swathed in blankets and with his arms around the pillow. He was already slightly hunched, and the servants used to call him ‘the little Father’.
One Sunday before Ash Wednesday, as she walked out onto the terrace after morning mass, the Marchioness suddenly dropped dead of an apoplexy. In her will, she left a legacy that would pay for Amaro, the son of her maidservant Joana, to enter the seminary at fifteen and become ordained. Father Liset was charged with carrying out this pious duty. Amaro was, by then, thirteen.
The Marchioness’ daughters immediately left Carcavelos and went to live in Lisbon, in the house of their paternal aunt, Dona Bárbara de Noronha. Amaro was sent to his uncle’s house, also in Lisbon. His uncle, the grocer, was a very fat man, married to the daughter of an impoverished civil servant; she had only accepted his proposal in order to escape her father’s house, where the meals were frugal, where she had to make the beds and where she was never allowed to go to the theatre. But she loathed her husband, his hairy hands, the shop, the area they lived in, as well as her very commonplace married name, Senhora Gonçalves. Her husband, though, adored her as the delight of his life, his one luxury; he loaded her with jewels and called her ‘his duchess’.
Amaro did not find in his uncle’s house the affectionate, feminine atmosphere in which he had been so warmly wrapped in Carcavelos. His aunt barely noticed him; dressed in silks, her face heavily powdered, her hair in ringlets, she spent all day reading novels and newspaper reviews of plays, waiting for the moment when Cardoso, the Teatro da Trindade’s leading man, would pass by beneath her windows, tugging at his shirt cuffs. The grocer, however, seized on Amaro as an unexpected extra pair of hands and set him to work in the shop. He made Amaro get up at five o’clock every morning, and the boy would sit at one corner of the kitchen table, trembling in his blue cloth jacket, hurriedly dipping his bread in his coffee. Both aunt and uncle hated him; his aunt called him ‘the slowcoach’ and his uncle called him ‘the donkey’. They begrudged him even the sliver of beef that he ate for his supper. Amaro grew even thinner and cried himself to sleep every night.
He knew that when he was fifteen, he would enter the seminary. His uncle reminded him of this every day:
‘Don’t think you’re going to spend the rest of your life here, idling your time away! As soon as you’re fifteen, it’s off to the seminary with you. I’m under no obligation to support you, you know. I don’t believe in keeping a dog and barking myself.’
And the boy began to think of the seminary as a liberation.
No one ever consulted him about his inclinations or his vocation. They simply thrust a surplice on him; his passive, easily-led nature accepted it, as he would a uniform. Indeed, he did not dislike the idea of becoming a priest. Since leaving the perpetual prayers of Carcavelos, he had retained his fear of Hell, but had lost his fervour for the saints; however, he remembered the priests who used to visit the Marchioness’ house, sleek men with very white skin, who dined with the nobility and took snuff from golden snuff boxes; and he liked the idea of a profession in which one spoke softly to women – living amongst them, gossiping, conscious of their penetrating warmth – and received gifts from them on silver trays. He remembered Father Liset and the ruby ring he wore on his little finger; and Monsignor Savedra with his fine gold-rimmed spectacles, sipping his glass of Madeira. The Marchioness’ daughters used to embroider slippers for them. One day, he had seen a bishop, a jovial, well-travelled man, who had been a priest in Bahia and had visited Rome; and there in the living room, surrounded by adoring women, all smiling beatifically, with his priestly hands that smelled of eau-de-cologne resting on the gold handle of his walking stick, he had sung for them in his beautiful voice:
Mulatto girl from Bahia
Born in Capujá . . .
A year before entering the seminary, his uncle sent him to a teacher to give him a better grounding in Latin, and thus excused him from serving behind the counter. For the first time in his life, Amaro was free. He went to school alone and wandered the streets. He saw the city, watched the infantry performing military drill, peered in at the doors of cafés, read posters advertising plays at the theatres. Above all, he began to notice women – and everything he saw filled him with deep melancholy. The saddest time was at dusk, on his way back from school, or on Sundays after he had been for a walk in the Jardim da Estrela with his uncle’s assistant. He had been given a garret room, with a tiny window looking out over the rooftops. He would lean there watching as points of light gradually lit up the city below: rising up from there, he seemed to hear a dull murmur: it was the sound of the life he did not know and which he decided must be wonderful, with cafés ablaze with light and women in silk dresses rustling along the colonnades outside the theatres; he lost himself in vague imaginings, and fragmented female forms would suddenly loom out of the black depths of night: a foot shod in a serge ankle boot and a leg encased in a very white stocking, or a plump arm with the sleeve pushed up to the shoulder . . . Down below, in the kitchen, the maid would begin singing as she washed the dishes: she was a fat girl with a lot of freckles; and then he felt like going downstairs and brushing past her, or sitting in a corner and watching her plunge the dishes into the scalding water; he remembered other women he had seen in the narrow streets, bareheaded, wearing noisy, starched skirts and down-at-heel shoes: and a kind of languor rose up from the depths of his being, a desire to embrace someone, a desire not to feel alone. He judged himself to be most unfortunate and even considered killing himself. But then his uncle would call up to him from downstairs:
‘I hope you’re studying, you good-for-nothing.’
And sitting there rubbing his knees together, feeling utterly wretched, his head dropping with sleep as he sat hunched over Titus Livius, Amaro would grind away at the dictionary.
It was around that time that he began to feel a certain dislike for the life of a priest, because he would not be able to marry. The friends he had made at school had already introduced certain curiosities and corruptions to his feminized nature. He smoked cigarettes on the sly and grew still thinner and paler.
He entered the seminary. During the first few days, the long, rather damp stone corridors, the dim oil-lamps, the narrow rooms with their barred windows, the black cassocks, the regimented silence, the tolling of the bells, all filled him with a gloomy, terrified sadness. But he soon made friends; his pretty face found favour. The other boys began to address him as tu, to include him, during break times and on Sunday walks, in their conversations full of tales about the teachers, calumnies about the rector and endless complaints about the melancholy nature of the cloistered life; for almost everyone spoke with longing of the freedom they had left behind: the boys from villages could not forget the bright, sunlit threshing floor, the maize harvests when people sang and embraced, the lines of oxen heading homewards as the fields filled up with mist; those who came from small towns missed the quiet, winding streets where you could flirt with girls, the bustling market days, the great adventures they had instead of studying Latin. The paved courtyard set aside for recreation, with its spindly trees, high, somnolent walls and monotonous ball games, was simply not enough: they felt oppressed by the narrowness of the corridors, by the room dedicated to St Ignatius where they had their morning meditations and where they studied at night; and they envied all those whose future, however humble, at least belonged to them – the muleteer whom they saw leading his animals down the street, the carter singing tunelessly to the shrill squeaking of wheels, and even the wandering beggars, leaning on a stick, a dark saddlebag slung over one shoulder.
From the window in one corridor, one could see a bend in the road: at dusk, amidst much cracking of whips, a luggage-laden carriage drawn by three mares used to pass by, throwing up a cloud of dust; the happy passengers, with rugs over their knees, would blow out smoke from their cigars. How many eyes followed them! How many desires journeyed with them to lively towns and cities, through cool dawns and beneath bright stars!
And in the refectory, sitting before the meagre bowl of vegetable broth, while the gruff-voiced regent of studies would launch into a dreary reading of letters from some missionary in China or the bishop’s pastorals, how they longed for suppers at home with their families! A good slice of fish! The freshly slaughtered pig! Hot crackling sizzling on the plate! The delicious smell of stewed pork!
Amaro had nothing very dear to miss; he had left behind him only his brutal uncle and his aunt’s bored, powdered face, and yet, gradually, he began to long for his Sunday walks, for the bright light from the gas lamps and the return from school, with his books bound together with a leather strap, when he would press his nose to the windows of shops in order to study the nakedness of mannequins. Slowly, though, like an indolent sheep, his dull nature fell in with the rules of the seminary. He dutifully learned what was in the textbooks; he was prudent and exact in his ecclesiastical duties; and, as a silent, hunched, figure, bowing low to the teachers, he even managed to get good marks.
He never understood those who seemed blissfully happy with life in the seminary and who bruised their knees as they meditated, with bowed heads, upon extracts from the Imitation of Christ or from St Ignatius; in the chapel, they would grow pale and their eyes would roll back in ecstasy; even at break time or on walks, they could be found reading some slender volume entitled In Praise of Our Lady; and they took delight in obeying the slightest of rules – even going up stairs only one step at a time as St Bonaventura recommends. For these boys, the seminary was a foretaste of Heaven; for him, it merely combined the humiliations of prison with the tedium of school.
He could not understand the ambitious students either: those who wanted to be the bishop’s trainbearers, or, in the high-ceilinged rooms of a bishop’s palace, to be the ones to draw aside the old damask portières; or those who wanted to live in a great city once they were ordained, to serve in some aristocratic church and sing in a sonorous voice before the wealthy devotees who, with a rustle of silk, would gather on the carpet before the high altar. Others even dreamed of careers outside the Church: they hoped to become soldiers and to walk the paved streets with sword clinking, or else take up the good life of the farmer, out and about by dawn, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and mounted on a good horse, trotting along the roads, giving orders to those working on threshing-floors piled high with grain, or dismounting at the door of wine cellars. And apart from a few very devout students, every one of them, whether aspiring to the priesthood or to some secular career, wanted to escape the narrowness of the seminary in order to eat well, earn some money and meet women.
Amaro did not want anything.
‘I’m not sure really . . .’ he would say dully.
Meanwhile, he would listen politely to those for whom studying at the seminary was the equivalent of being a galley slave, and was much troubled by their conversations which were full of an impatient longing to live life freely. Sometimes boys would talk about running away. They would make plans, calculate the height of windows, the adventures that might befall them in the black night on the black roads; they anticipated the bars of inns where one could drink, the billiard halls, the warm bedrooms of women. Amaro would become very agitated; in his bed, late at night, he would toss and turn, unable to sleep, and in his deepest imaginings and dreams, he would burn with desire for Woman, like a silent, red-hot coal.
In his cell there was an image of the Virgin crowned with stars and standing on a sphere, gazing up at the immortal light, while trampling a serpent underfoot. Amaro would turn to her, as if to a refuge, and would say a Hail Mary; but when he lay looking at the lithograph, he would forget all about the holiness of the Virgin and would see before him merely a pretty blonde girl; he would sigh adoringly; he would cast lubricious glances at her as he undressed; in his curiosity he would even imagine himself lifting the chaste folds of the image’s blue tunic to reveal shapely forms, white flesh . . . Then it seemed to him that he could see the eyes of the Tempter glinting in the darkness of the room, and he would carefully sprinkle his bed with holy water, but he never dared reveal these ecstasies in the confessional on Sundays.
How often had he heard the teacher of Moral Theology preaching in his nasal voice on the subject of Sin, comparing it to the serpent, and exhorting the seminarians, with unctuous words and large gestures, and with the slow, mellifluous pomp of his sentences, to follow the Virgin’s example and trample the ‘vile serpent’ under foot! And then there was the teacher of Mystical Theology who, after taking a pinch of snuff, would speak to them of their duty to ‘conquer Nature’! And quoting from St John Chrysostom and St Chrysologus, St Cyprian and St Jerome, he would explain the saints’ curses against Woman, whom he called, in the language of the Church, Serpent, Sting, Daughter of Lies, Gateway to Hell, Fount of Crime, Scorpion . . .
‘And as our father St Jerome called her,’ and at this point, he would always loudly blow his nose, ‘the Path to Iniquity, iniquitas via!’
Even his textbooks were obsessed with Woman! What kind of creature was this, then, who, in theology, was either placed on the altar as the Queen of Grace or had barbarous curses heaped upon her? What power did she have, that this legion of saints should one minute rush to meet her, passionate and ecstatic, unanimously handing over to her the Kingdom of Heaven, and at the next, uttering terrified sobs and cries of loathing, flee from her as if she were the Universal Enemy, hiding themselves in wildernesses and in cloisters so as not to see her and to die there from the disease of having loved her? Unable precisely to define these troubling feelings, he nevertheless experienced them. They would constantly resurface, demoralizing him, so that before he had even made his vows, he was already longing to break them.
And he felt similar rebellions of nature all around him: the studying, the fasting, the penances might cow the body, give it mechanical habits, but, inside, desire stirred silently, like a nest of impassive snakes. Those of sanguine temperament suffered most, as painfully constrained by the Rule as their thick, plebeian wrists were by their shirt cuffs. As soon as they were alone, their true temperament would erupt: they would fight, squabble, provoke arguments. Amongst the more phlegmatic, nature, constrained, produced great sadnesses and languid silences; they would find an outlet then in minor vices: gambling with an old pack of cards, reading a novel, or, after much intrigue, getting hold of a packet of cigarettes – ah, the charms of sin!
In the end, Amaro almost envied the studious ones; at least they were happy, perpetually studying, scribbling notes in the silence of the high-ceilinged library, they were respected, they wore glasses, they took snuff. He himself even had sudden ambitions in that direction, but confronted by those vast tomes, he would be overcome by unbearable tedium. He was, however, devout: he would pray, he had limitless faith in certain saints and a terrible fear of God. But he hated the cloistered life of the seminary. The chapel, the weeping willows in the courtyard, the monotonous meals in the long, flagstoned refectory, the smells in the corridors, all this made him feel sad and irritable: it seemed to him that he could only be a good, pure believer if he were allowed to enjoy the freedom of the street or the peace of a garden, away from those black walls. He lost weight, he broke out in sweats, and in his last year, after the prolonged Holy Week services, when the weather began to grow hot, he was admitted to the infirmary with a nervous fever.
He was finally ordained around the Ember Days prior to St Matthew’s feast day, and shortly afterwards, while he was still at the seminary, he received this letter from Father Liset:
‘My dear child and new colleague,
Now that you have been ordained, I feel it is my duty to give you a full account of the state of your financial affairs, for I wish to carry out to the end the responsibility placed upon my weak shoulders by our much-lamented Marchioness, who bestowed on me the honour of administering the legacy she left to you. For, although worldly goods should matter little to a soul devoted to the priesthood, good accounts always make for good friends. I must tell you, my dear child, that the legacy left to you by our dear Marchioness – to whom you should lift up your soul in eternal gratitude – has now been entirely used up. I also take this opportunity to tell you that, after your uncle’s death, your aunt, having sold the shop, plunged into a life on which I would prefer not to venture an opinion: she fell victim to the passions and, having formed an illegitimate union, lost her money along with her virtue and now runs a boarding house in 53 Rua dos Calafates. The only reason I mention this sordid business, a matter from which a tender young priest like yourself should be shielded, is in order to give you a true account of your respected family. Your sister, as you doubtless know, married a wealthy man in Coimbra, and although money should not be a primary consideration in a marriage, it is nevertheless important for your future circumstances that you should be in possession of this fact. Regarding our dear rector’s plans to send you to the parish of Feirão in Gralheira, I will speak with a few important people who are kind enough to heed a poor priest who asks only for God’s mercy. I hope I will prove successful. My dear child, persevere in the paths of virtue, of which I am sure your good soul is full, and be assured that you will find happiness in this our holy ministry when you come to understand the many balms and consolations that are poured upon your heart merely by serving God! Farewell, my dear child and colleague. You can be sure that my thoughts will be with you, the ward of our late, lamented Marchioness, who is doubtless in Heaven, to which her many virtues will have taken her, praying all the while to the Virgin, whom she so loved and served, for the happiness of her dear ward.
Liset.
PS The name of your sister’s husband is Trigoso.
Two months later, Amaro was appointed parish priest to Feirão, in Gralheira, in the mountain region of Beira Alta. He remained there from October until the snows melted.
Feirão is a poor parish of shepherds and, at that time of year, almost entirely uninhabited. Amaro spent most of his time in idleness, pondering his own boredom by the fireside, listening to the winter howling in the mountains. In spring, several well-populated parishes fell vacant in the districts of Santarém and Leiria, parishes with good livings. Amaro wrote at once to his sister, telling her of his wretched life in Feirão. Urging him to be frugal, she sent him twelve moedas so that he could travel to Lisbon and find another parish. Amaro left at once. The clean, sharp mountain air had strengthened his blood, and he was now a strong, upright, pleasant young man, with a healthy glow to his dark skin.
As soon as he arrived in Lisbon, he went straight to his aunt’s house in Rua dos Calafates: he found her greatly aged, overly powdered and wearing a large false chignon adorned with bright red ribbons. She had grown very devout, and it was with pious joy that she opened her skinny arms to Amaro.
‘But you’re so handsome! Just look at you! Who would have thought it! Goodness, what a change!’
She admired his cassock and his tonsure, and, pouring out to him her many misfortunes, exclaiming all the while about the salvation of her soul and the various food shortages, she led him up to a room on the third floor overlooking a narrow courtyard.
‘You can live as well as an abbot here, and it’s very cheap,’ she said. ‘I would love to let you stay for free, but . . . Oh, I’ve been so unhappy, Joãozinho . . . I mean, Amaro. I just can’t seem to get Joãozinho out of my head . . .’
The next day, Amaro went to São Luís in search of Father Liset. He had gone to France. Then he remembered the Marchioness’ youngest daughter, Dona Joana, who was married to the Conde de Ribamar, a Councillor of State, a man of influence and a loyal member of the Regeneration party since 1851, who had twice been a minister.
As soon as he had put in his request for a new parish, Amaro, acting on his aunt’s advice, went one morning to the house of the Condessa de Ribamar, in Rua Buenos Aires. A coupé was waiting at the door.
‘The Countess is just about to go out,’ said a servant in a white tie and light alpaca jacket, who was lolling, cigarette in mouth, in the doorway that led into the courtyard.
At that moment, a lady in a pale dress emerged from a baize-lined door and came down the stone steps at the far end of the paved courtyard. She was tall, thin and blonde, with a mass of tiny curls over her forehead, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on her long, sharp nose, and, on her chin, a small mole from which sprouted a few fair hairs.
‘Don’t you recognise me, Countess?’ said Amaro, stepping forward and bowing, his hat in his hand. ‘It’s me, Amaro.’
‘Amaro?’ she said, as if she did not know the name. ‘Good heavens, it’s you! It can’t be! Why, you’re a grown man! Who’d have thought it!’
Amaro smiled.
‘Well, I would certainly never have expected it!’ she went on, still astonished. ‘And are you living in Lisbon now?’
Amaro explained about his appointment to the parish of Feirão and how poor the parish was . . .
‘So I’ve come to ask for your help in finding another appointment, Countess.’
She listened to him with her hands resting on a tall, pale silk parasol, and Amaro was aware of the smell of face powder and fresh cotton chambray emanating from her.
‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about it. My husband will have a word. I’ll make sure of that. Look, come and visit.’ And with one finger on her lips, she said: ‘Now wait, tomorrow I’m going to Sintra. Sunday’s impossible. The best thing would be if you came back in a fortnight. In a fortnight’s time, in the morning, I’ll be here.’ And laughing, showing her long, healthy teeth. ‘I can just see you now translating Chateaubriand with my sister Luísa! How time passes!’
‘And how is your sister?’ asked Amaro.
‘Very well. She lives on an estate in Santarém.’
She offered him a suede-gloved hand, and when he shook it, her gold bracelets tinkled; then, slim and lithe, she jumped into the coupé, with a movement that revealed a flash of white petticoat.
Amaro began to wait and hope. It was July, the hottest time of the year. He said morning mass at São Domingos, and spent the day, in slippers and cotton jacket, idling at home. Sometimes he would go and chat to his aunt in the dining room; the windows would be closed, and in the half-darkness, one could hear the monotonous buzz of flies; his aunt sat crocheting at one end of an old wickerwork sofa, her spectacles poised on the end of her nose; Amaro, yawning, leafed through an old copy of some edifying magazine.
When evening fell, he would go out and take a few turns around the Rossio square. The still, heavy air was suffocating: from every corner came the repetitive cry of ‘Water! Cool water!’ On the benches, beneath the trees, tramps in patched clothes lay dozing; empty carriages for hire trotted slowly round and round the square; the lights in the café windows glowed; and overheated people drifted about, yawning, dragging their idleness with them along the pavements.
Amaro would then withdraw to his room, leaving the window open to the heat of the night, and in his shirtsleeves, with his boots off, he would stretch out on his bed and ponder his hopes for the future. He kept remembering, with a little rush of pleasure, what the Countess had said: ‘Don’t worry about it. My husband will have a word.’ And he could already picture himself, tranquil and important, in a parish in some pretty town, in a house with a garden full of cabbages and lettuces, receiving trays of sweetmeats from devout, wealthy ladies.
His spirit was at rest. The exalted moods provoked by the imposed continence of the seminary had been soothed by the satisfactions given him by a sturdy shepherdess, whom he used to watch as she rang the bell for mass on Sundays, her woollen skirt swaying and her cheeks flushed as she pulled on the bell rope. In his present serene mood, he punctually gave Heaven the prayers demanded by ritual, his flesh was contented and quiet, and he was doing his best to get himself well set up.
At the end of the fortnight, he went back to the Countess’ house.
‘She’s not in,’ the stable boy told him.
The next day, he returned, somewhat worried. The green baize doors stood open, and Amaro went slowly and timidly up the broad, red carpet, fixed in place by metal stair rods. A soft light came in through the skylight; at the top of the stairs, on the landing, seated on a scarlet morocco leather bench, a servant was dozing, leaning back against the glossy white wall, head drooping, mouth open. It was terribly hot and that profound, aristocratic silence frightened Amaro; he stood there hesitantly for a moment, his parasol dangling on his little finger; he discreetly cleared his throat to wake the servant, who seemed terrifying to him with his fine black sideboards and his thick gold watch-chain; and he was just about to go back down the stairs when, from behind a portière, he heard a man’s loud laughter. He wiped the whitish dust off his shoes with his handkerchief, straightened his cuffs, and, face ablaze, entered a large room with walls lined with yellow damask; the sunlight was pouring in through the open balcony doors, and he could see groves of trees in the garden. In the middle of the room three men stood talking. Amaro stepped forward and stammered:
‘F-forgive me for intruding . . .’
A tall man, with a grizzled moustache and gold-rimmed spectacles, turned round, surprised, a cigar in one corner of his mouth and his hands in his pockets. It was the Count.
‘I’m Amaro . . .’
‘Ah,’ said the Count, ‘Father Amaro! I’ve heard all about you! Please, come in . . . My wife spoke to me about you. Please . . .’
And addressing a short, stout, almost bald man wearing white trousers that were too short for him, he said:
‘This is the gentleman I was telling you about.’ He turned to Amaro. ‘This is the minister.’
Amaro bowed humbly.
‘Father Amaro,’ the Count went on, ‘grew up in my mother-in-law’s house. Indeed, I believe he was born there . . .’
‘That is so, Count,’ said Amaro, who remained at a distance, his parasol in his hand.
‘My mother-in-law, who was very devout and a great lady – of a sort one simply doesn’t find nowadays – made a priest of him. There was even a legacy, I believe . . . Anyway, here he is a parish priest . . . Where exactly, Father Amaro?’
‘In Feirão, sir.’
‘Feirão?!’ said the minister, to whom the name was unfamiliar.
‘In the Gralheira mountains,’ the man beside him explained. He was a thin man, squeezed into a blue frock coat, and he had very white skin, superb, ink-black sideboards and an admirable head of lustrous, pomaded hair immaculately parted.
‘In a word,’ concluded the Count, ‘ghastly! Up in the mountains, with only the poorest of parishioners, no distractions, terrible weather . . .’
‘I’ve already put in a request for a different parish, sir,’ said Amaro timidly.
‘Fine, fine,’ said the minister. ‘We’ll sort something out.’ And he chewed on his cigar.
‘It’s only fair,’ said the Count, ‘indeed, necessary. Young, active men should be assigned to the difficult parishes in the cities. It’s obvious. But that’s not what happens; for example, near my estate in Alcobaça, there’s a gout-ridden old priest, a former seminary teacher, who’s a complete imbecile! That’s how the people come to lose their faith.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said the minister, ‘but being placed in a decent parish should, of course, be a reward for good service. There has to be some incentive . . .’
‘Absolutely,’ replied the Count, ‘but professional service to the Church, not service to the government.’
The man with the superb black sideboards seemed about to object.
‘Don’t you agree?’ the Count asked him.
‘I have the greatest respect for your opinion, of course, but if I may . . . I believe that the priests in the city are of great service to us in electoral crises. Of great service!’
‘Well, yes, but . . .’
‘Look, sir,’ the man went on, the bit between his teeth now. ‘You just have to look at Tomar. Why did we lose there? Purely and simply because of the attitude of the priests.’
The Count responded:
‘Forgive me, but it shouldn’t be like that. Religion and the clergy are not electoral agents.’
‘Forgive me . . .’ the other man began.
The Count stopped him with a firm gesture; then speaking slowly and gravely, using words imbued with an authority backed up by vast knowledge, he said:
‘Religion can and should help established governments, operating, shall we say, as a brake . . .’
‘Exactly, exactly,’ drawled the minister, spitting out bits of chewed cigar end.
‘But to descend into intrigue,’ continued the Count in measured tones, ‘into imbroglios . . . Forgive me, my dear friend, but that is not the act of a Christian.’
‘But I’m a Christian, Count!’ exclaimed the man with the superb sideboards. ‘A real Christian, but I am also a liberal. And, as I understand it, the representative government . . . yes . . . given the most solid guarantees of . . .’
‘Ah,’ broke in the Count, ‘but do you know the effect of that? It discredits the clergy and it discredits politics.’
‘But surely the majority vote is a sacred principle,’ bellowed the man with the sideboards, his face scarlet, emphasising the word ‘sacred’.
‘It’s a perfectly respectable one.’
‘Now really, sir, really!
Father Amaro was listening, frozen to the spot.
‘My wife probably wants to see you,’ said the Count. And going over to a portière, which he lifted, he said: ‘Please, go in. Joana, it’s Father Amaro!’
Amaro went into another room, this time lined with satiny white paper, with furniture upholstered in a pale fabric. In the window bays, between long, milk-white damask curtains, caught back almost at floor-level by silk ties, stood white pots containing slender bushes with delicate, flowerless foliage. The cool, subdued lighting lent a cloud-like tone to all these various whites. A parrot was perched on one black foot on the back of a chair, its body contorted as, with the other foot, it scratched its green head in leisurely fashion. Embarrassed, Amaro bowed in the direction of the sofa where he could make out the blonde froth of curls crowning the Countess’ head and the glint of her gold-rimmed spectacles. A plump young man with chubby cheeks was sitting before her on a low chair, resting his elbows on his spread knees, and absorbed in swinging a tortoise-shell pince-nez back and forth like a pendulum. The Countess had a small dog on her lap and was smoothing the dog’s cotton-white coat with one thin, fine, veined hand.
‘How are you, Father Amaro?’ The dog growled. ‘Stop it, Jewel . . . As you see, I’ve already spoken on your behalf. Stop it, Jewel . . . The minister is next door.’
‘Yes, Senhora,’ said Amaro, still standing.
‘Sit down here, Father Amaro.’
Amaro sat on the edge of an armchair, his parasol still in his hand, and only then did he notice a tall woman standing by the piano, talking to a blond young man.
‘And what have you been up to, Father Amaro?’ asked the Countess. ‘Tell me, how is your sister?’
‘She lives in Coimbra now; she’s married.’
‘Ah, married!’ said the Countess, fiddling with the rings on her fingers.
There was a silence. Amaro, eyes downcast, feeling awkward and nervous, kept stroking his lips with his fingers.
‘Has Father Liset gone abroad?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he’s in Nantes. His sister is dying,’ said the Countess. ‘But he’s the same as always, so kind and gentle, the very soul of virtue!’
‘I prefer Father Félix,’ said the fat young man, stretching his legs.
‘Don’t say such things, cousin! Heavens! And Father Liset is so worthy of respect. Besides there are other, kinder ways of putting these things. And he’s so tender-hearted . . .’
‘Yes, but Father Félix . . .’
‘Now, stop it! Father Félix is a man of great virtue, granted, but Father Liset’s sense of religion is somehow . . . ,’ with a delicate gesture she sought the right word, ‘finer, more distinguished. And he mixes with very different people.’ Then, smiling at Amaro: ‘Don’t you agree?’
Amaro did not know Father Félix and could not remember Father Liset.
‘Father Liset must be getting on a bit now,’ he said in order to say something.
‘Do you think so?’ asked the Countess. ‘But he’s so well-preserved. And such vivacity and enthusiasm! He’s really quite special.’ And turning to the woman standing by the piano, she said: ‘Don’t you think so, Teresa?’
‘Just a moment,’ replied Teresa, absorbed in what she was doing.
Amaro looked at her properly for the first time. She seemed to him like a queen or a goddess, so tall and strong, with magnificent shoulders and bosom; her slightly wavy, dark hair was in stark contrast to her pale, aquiline face, reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s imposing profile; her black, short-sleeved dress with its square neckline, and the long train decorated with black lace broke up the monotonous whiteness of the room; her neck and arms were covered by black gauze through which one could glimpse the whiteness of her flesh; her figure had the firmness of ancient marble statues, but was alive with the warmth of rich blood.
She was smiling and talking softly in a harsh-sounding language that Amaro could not understand, all the time opening and closing her black fan, and the handsome, blond young man wearing a monocle was listening to her, twirling one end of his slender moustache.
‘Were your parishioners terribly devout, Father Amaro?’ the Countess asked.
‘Oh, yes, excellent people.’
‘Of course, nowadays, it’s only in the villages that one finds real faith,’ she said piously. She complained about having to live in the city, a slave to luxury; she wished she could spend all her time on her estate in Carcavelos, praying in the old chapel and chatting to the good people of the village. Her voice grew tender.
The chubby young man laughed:
‘Oh, come off it, cousin!’ If he was obliged to hear mass in a little village chapel, he would probably lose his faith altogether. He simply couldn’t understand the point of religion without music. Was it possible to have a religious celebration without someone with a really good contralto voice?
‘Well, it’s certainly more enjoyable,’ said Amaro.
‘Of course it is. It’s entirely different. It has cachet! Cousin, do you remember that tenor . . . what was his name? Vidalti. Do you remember Vidalti on Maunday Thursday, in the chapel at the English College, singing the Tantum ergo?’
‘I preferred him in The Masked Ball,’ said the Countess.
‘Oh, really, cousin!’
The blond young man came over and shook the Countess’ hand, speaking in a low voice and smiling. Amaro admired his noble mien and his gentle blue eyes; he noticed that he had dropped a glove and humbly picked it up for him. When the young man left, Teresa, having first walked unhurriedly over to the window to gaze out at the street, sat down on a love seat with an abandon that only emphasised the magnificent sculptural forms of her body; then, turning languidly to the plump young man, she said:
‘Shall we go, João?’
The Countess said:
‘Father Amaro was brought up with me in Benfica, you know.’
Amaro blushed; he felt Teresa turn on him her beautiful, dark, glittering eyes, like black satin covered with water.
‘And are you living outside Lisbon now?’ she asked, yawning slightly.
‘Yes, Senhora, I arrived a few days ago.’
‘In a village?’ she asked, slowly opening and closing her fan.
Amaro saw precious stones glinting on her slender fingers; stroking the handle of his parasol, he said:
‘In the mountains, Senhora.’
‘Can you imagine anything more dreadful,’ said the Countess. ‘Constant snow, no roof on the church apparently, with only shepherds as parishioners. Awful! I’ve asked the minister if we can get him moved. You ask him too . . .’
‘Ask him what?’ said Teresa.
The Countess explained that Amaro had applied for a better parish. She spoke about her mother and how fond she had been of Amaro . . .
‘She just adored him. Now what was it she used to call you . . . can you remember?’
‘I don’t know, Senhora.’
‘Brother Malaria! Isn’t that funny? Because Senhor Amaro was always so pale and spent all his time in the chapel . . .’
But Teresa, addressing the Countess, said:
‘Do you know who this gentleman looks like?’
The Countess studied him; the plump young man held the pince-nez to his eyes.
‘Doesn’t he look like that pianist we saw last year?’ Teresa went on. ‘I can’t quite remember his name . . .’
‘Oh, I know, Jalette,’ said the Countess. ‘Yes, he does slightly. Not his hair though.’
‘Of course not his hair, the pianist didn’t have a tonsure!’
Amaro blushed scarlet. Teresa got to her feet and, dragging her magnificent train behind her, went over and sat down at the piano.
‘Do you read music?’ she asked, turning to Amaro.
‘We learn music in the seminary, Senhora.’
She ran her hand over the low notes and then played the phrase from Rigoletto, reminiscent of a Mozart minuet, sung by Francis I, who is saying goodbye to Madame de Crécy after the party in the first act, and whose desolate rhythms express the limitless sadness of dying love and of arms disentwining in a final, supreme farewell.
Amaro was captivated. That luxurious, cloud-white room, the passionate piano music, Teresa’s neck and throat which he could see beneath the black transparency of the gauze, the thick, goddess-like plaits of her hair, the peaceful groves of trees in the noble garden all vaguely suggested to him the kind of superior existence led by characters in novels, a life of exquisite carpets, upholstered carriages, operatic arias, tasteful melancholy and love affairs full of rare pleasures. Sinking back into the softness of the armchair, listening to the aristocratically plangent music, he thought of his aunt’s dining room and its pervasive smell of fried onions; and he felt like a beggar who, given some delicious soup, is too frightened to taste and enjoy it, thinking that soon he will have to return to his usual harsh diet of stale crusts of bread and the dust of the roads.
Meanwhile, Teresa, abruptly changing tunes, began singing that old English aria of Haydn’s that speaks so eloquently of the sadness of separation:
The village seems asleep or dead
Now Lubin is away! . . .
‘Bravo! Bravo!’ exclaimed the Minister of Justice, who appeared at the door, gently clapping his hands. ‘Excellent! Absolutely delightful!’
‘I have a favour to ask of you, Senhor Correia,’ said Teresa, standing up.
The Minister hurried gallantly to her side.
‘What is it, what is it?’
The Count and the man with the magnificent sideboards had also come into the room still arguing.
‘Joana and I have a favour to ask,’ said Teresa to the Minister.
‘I’ve already asked him, twice in fact!’ said the Countess.
‘But, my dear ladies,’ said the Minister, making himself comfortable in a chair, legs outstretched, a satisfied look on his face, ‘what is all this about? Is it some very serious matter? I promise most solemnly to . . .’
‘Good,’ said Teresa, tapping him on the arm with her fan. ‘Now where is there a good vacancy for a parish priest?’
‘Ah,’ said the Minister, realising what she meant and looking at Amaro, who bowed his shoulders and blushed.
The man with the sideboards, who was still standing up, gravely twirling the pendants on his watch chain, stepped forward, bursting with information.
‘The best current vacancy, Senhora, is in Leiria, district capital and bishop’s see.’
‘Leiria?’ said Teresa. ‘Oh, I know, aren’t there some ruins there?’
‘A castle, Senhora, built by Dom Dinis.’
‘Leiria would be excellent.’
‘Forgive me, Senhora,’ said the Minister, ‘but Leiria is a bishop’s see, a city . . . and Father Amaro is still a very young cleric . . .’
‘But you’re very young too, Senhor Correia,’ exclaimed Teresa.
The Minister smiled and bowed.
‘Say something,’ said the Countess to her husband, who was tenderly scratching the parrot’s head.
‘What’s the point, poor Correia has been routed! Cousin Teresa called him “young”.’
‘I say,’ said the Minister. ‘It’s not such an exaggeration, I’m not exactly ancient.’
‘You liar!’ cried the Count. ‘You were already plotting with the best of them in 1820!’
‘That was my father, you wretch!’
Everyone laughed
‘Right, Senhor Correia,’ said Teresa, ‘it’s all settled then. Father Amaro will go to Leiria.’
‘All right, all right, I give in,’ sighed the Minister wearily. ‘But this is an abuse of power.’
‘Thank you,’ said Teresa, holding out her hand to him.
‘You seem different today,’ said the Minister, looking at her hard.
‘I’m just happy,’ she replied. She looked at the floor for a moment, distracted, lightly tapping her silk dress, then she got suddenly to her feet, went over to the piano and began singing the same sweet English aria:
The village seems asleep or dead
Now Lubin is away . . .
Meanwhile, the Count had gone over to Amaro, who stood up.
‘That’s settled then,’ the Count said. ‘Correia will sort things out with the Bishop. You’ll receive your appointment as parish priest in a week’s time. So you needn’t worry about it any more.’
Amaro bowed and went humbly over to the Minister, who was standing by the piano.
‘Minister, I would just like to thank you . . .’
‘Oh don’t thank me, thank the Countess,’ said the Minister, smiling.
‘Senhora, thank you,’ he said to the Countess, bowing low.
‘Oh, it’s Teresa you should thank. She’s obviously trying to buy indulgences.’
‘Senhora . . .’ he started saying to Teresa.
‘Remember me in your prayers, Father Amaro,’ she said and continued singing in her mournful voice of how sad the village was when Lubin was away.
A week later, Amaro received confirmation of his nomination to the post. But he never forgot that morning in the house of the Condessa de Ribamar – the Minister with his too-short trousers, comfortably ensconced in the armchair, promising him the job; the bright, calm light of the garden glimpsed through the window; the tall, blond young man who kept saying ‘Yes’ . . . He could not get that sad aria from Rigoletto out of his head and he was pursued by the image of Teresa’s white arms beneath the black gauze. Instinctively he imagined those arms slowly, slowly encircling the blond man’s elegant neck; he hated him then, as well as the barbarous tongue he spoke and the heretical land he came from, and his temples throbbed with the idea that one day he might have to confess that divine woman and, in the dark intimacy of the confessional, feel her black silk dress brush against his old lustrine cassock.
One day, at dawn, after his aunt had repeatedly embraced him, he left for Santa Apolónia station, with a Galician porter to carry his trunk. Dawn was breaking. The city was silent, and the streetlamps were going out. Sometimes a cart would rattle by over the cobbles; the streets seemed to him interminable; villagers from outside Lisbon were beginning to arrive, muddy-booted legs joggling on either side of their donkey mounts; here and there shrill voices selling newspapers rang out; and the young lads employed by theatres were rushing around with their pots of glue, sticking up posters on street corners.
When he reached the station, the bright sun was tinging with orange the sky behind the mountains on the far side of the river; the river lay unmoving, veined with dull, steel-grey currents, and, on it, the occasional sailing barge drifted by, slow and white.