Some days later, Father Amaro and Canon Dias had gone to lunch with the local priest in Cortegaça. He was a jolly, charitable old man who had lived in that parish for thirty years and was said to be the best cook in the diocese. All the neighbouring clergy knew about his famous game stew. It was his birthday and other guests were there too – Father Natário and Father Brito. The former was a brusque, irascible fellow, with deep-set, malicious eyes and pockmarked skin. He was known as the Ferret. He was bright and argumentative; he had a reputation as a great Latin scholar and was alleged to possess an iron logic; people said of him: ‘He’s a viper!’ He lived with two orphaned nieces to whom he claimed to be devoted; he was constantly praising their virtue and referred to them as ‘my two little roses’. Father Brito was the strongest and most stupid priest in the diocese; he had the appearance, manners and rude health of a sturdy peasant from the Beira who handles a crook well, drinks a skin of wine, happily ploughs his fields or plies the trowel when there’s any building to be done and, during hot June siestas, has his brutal way with the girls on the maize ricks. The precentor – always so apt in his mythological comparisons – used to call him ‘the Nemean Lion’.
He had an enormous head covered in woolly hair that came down as far as his eyebrows; his tanned skin had a bluish tinge to it from daily contact with the cut-throat razor; and when he gave one of his bestial laughs, he revealed very small teeth kept very white by a diet of corn bread.
When they were just about to sit down at the table, Libaninho arrived in a state of great agitation, arms flapping, beads of sweat standing out on his bald head, and exclaiming in shrill tones:
‘Oh, my dears, you must forgive me, I got held up. I dropped in at the Church of Our Lady of the Hermitage where Father Nunes was saying a votive mass. It was just what I needed and I feel so much better for it!’
Gertrudes, the priest’s tough old housekeeper, came in at that point bearing a vast tureen of chicken soup, and Libaninho skipped around her and began his usual jokes.
‘You know, Gertrudes, I know who could make you happy!’
The old woman gave a ponderous, kindly laugh that made her bosom quake.
‘Well, you’ve left it a bit late in the day . . .’
‘Ah, women are like pears – best when they’re big and ripe. That’s when they’re good and juicy!’
The priests cackled with laughter and happily settled down to eat.
The entire lunch had been cooked by the priest, and as soon as they began their soup, the compliments began to fly.
‘Wonderful. Absolute heaven. Gorgeous.’
The excellent man was scarlet with pleasure. He was, as the precentor used to say, ‘a divine artist’. He had read every cookbook and knew innumerable recipes, and he was very inventive. As he himself said, tapping his skull, a lot of his best ideas had come out of his own head! He was so absorbed in his ‘art’ that, sometimes, in his Sunday sermons, he would give to the faithful kneeling before him not God’s word but advice on ways of cooking salt cod or what spices to use in stews. And he was perfectly contented there with his vegetable patch and with old Gertrudes – who also had superb taste in food – and he had but one ambition in life: to have the bishop to lunch one day.
‘Now, Father Amaro, please, have a bit more stew! Dip a bit of bread in the sauce. That’s it! What do you think, eh?’ Then, modestly: ‘I know I shouldn’t say so, but the stew has turned out really well today.’
As Canon Dias remarked, it was good enough to tempt St Anthony in the desert! They had all removed their capes and were sitting in their cassocks, collars loosened, eating slowly, barely talking. The following day was the festival of Our Lady of Joy, so the bells in the neighbouring chapel were ringing out; and the good midday sun glittered brightly on the china, on the fat blue jugs brimming with Bairrada wine, on the saucers full of red peppers, on the cool bowls of black olives, while the good priest himself, eyes wide, bit his lip as he carefully carved white slices from the breast of the stuffed capon.
The windows opened onto the garden outside. Two large red camellia bushes grew by the window, and above the tops of the apple trees was a bright patch of intensely blue sky. A water wheel creaked in the distance, and washerwomen could be heard pounding clothes.
On the sideboard, amongst various books, a figure of Christ, with yellow skin and scarlet wounds, stood sadly on a pedestal against the wall; and beside him, cheerful saints beneath glass domes recalled the gentler side of religion: the kindly giant St Christopher crossing the river with, on his shoulder, the divine child, smiling and bouncing the world in his hand like a ball; the gentle shepherd St John dressed in the fleece of a sheep and wielding not a crook but a cross; the good gatekeeper St Peter, carrying in his clay hand the two holy keys that open the locks to Heaven! On the walls, in garish lithographs, the patriarch St Joseph was leaning on a crook from which white lilies bloomed; St George’s rearing horse trampled the belly of a startled dragon; and good St Anthony was standing by the side of a stream, smiling and talking to a shark. The clink of glasses and the clatter of knives filled the room and its smoke-blackened oak ceiling with unaccustomed jollity. And Libaninho, as he demolished his food, joked:
‘Gertrudes, my flower, pass me the green beans, will you? And don’t look at me like that, you minx, you make my heart pound.’
‘You old devil!’ said Gertrudes. ‘Mind what you’re saying. You should have spoken up thirty years ago, you rascal . . .’
‘Oh, Gertrudes,’ Libaninho exclaimed, rolling his eyes, ‘don’t say things like that, you send shivers down my spine!’
The priests were all choking with laughter. They had drunk two jugs of wine already, and Father Brito had unbuttoned his cassock, revealing a thick woollen vest on which the maker’s label, in blue stitching, was a cross superimposed on a heart.
A poor man came to the door mournfully repeating the pater noster, and while Gertrudes was placing half a loaf of corn bread in his bag, the priests discussed the bands of beggars currently roaming the parishes.
‘There’s such a lot of poverty!’ said the good priest. ‘Canon Dias, do have a bit of wing!’
‘A lot of poverty and a good deal of idleness too,’ said Father Natário harshly. He knew a lot of farms that were short of labourers, and yet you get these great hulks, strong as oaks, bleating out their pater nosters at people’s doors. ‘They’re nothing but a bunch of scroungers!’
‘Now, now, Father Natário,’ said the priest. ‘There is genuine poverty out there. There are families around here, a man, his wife and their five children, who sleep on the ground like pigs and eat nothing but weeds.’
‘Well, what do you expect them to eat?’ exclaimed Canon Dias, licking his fingers after having gnawed all the flesh off the capon wing. ‘Do you expect them to eat turkey? To each his own.’
The good priest settled back in his chair, smoothed his napkin over his stomach and said unctuously:
‘Poverty is, of course, pleasing to Our Lord.’
‘Exactly,’ put in Libaninho in simpering tones, ‘if there were only poor people in the world, this would be the Kingdom of Heaven right here.’
Father Amaro commented gravely:
‘And it’s a good thing that the rich have something to leave their money to, for building chapels, for example . . .’
‘Property should be in the hands of the Church,’ broke in Natário authoritatively.
Canon Dias belched loudly and added:
‘For the glory of religious worship and the propagation of the faith.’
The main cause of poverty, Natário declared pedantically, was immorality.
‘Now, don’t let’s get into that,’ said the priest, pulling a face. ‘At this very moment, in this parish alone, there are more than twelve single women all pregnant. And, gentlemen, if I speak to them, if I reprehend them, they just laugh in my face.’
‘Where I come from,’ said Father Brito, ‘around the time of the olive harvest, there was always a shortage of workers, and so migrant workers would be called in. And the shameless behaviour that went on . . .’ He told them about the migrant workers, men and women, who travelled around offering their services at various farms, about their promiscuous lives and wretched deaths. ‘You had to rule them with a rod of iron!’
‘Oh, dear, oh dear,’ said Libaninho to no one in particular, but clutching his head in his hands. ‘It is such a sinful world. It’s enough to make your hair stand on end.’
But the parish of Santa Catarina was the worst. The married women there had lost all morals.
‘They were like bitches on heat,’ said Father Natário, loosening his belt buckle.
And Father Brito told them about a case in the parish of Amor: girls of sixteen or eighteen who used to meet together in a hayloft – Silvério’s hayloft – and spend the night there with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.
Then Father Natário, whose eyes were already glinting, his tongue sharpened, leaned back in his chair and, speaking very clearly, said:
‘Well, I don’t know what goes on in your parish, Brito, but it’s the person at the top who sets the tone . . . And I’ve heard tell that you and the adminstrator’s wife . . .’
‘That’s a lie!’ shouted Brito, turning scarlet.
‘Oh, Brito!’ everyone said, in gentle admonishment.
‘It’s a lie!’ he yelled.
‘And just between ourselves, my friends,’ said Canon Dias, lowering his voice, a mischievous, confiding light in his beady eyes, ‘she’s quite a woman too.’
‘It’s a lie!’ boomed Brito. Then, in a torrent of words: ‘I know who’s been spreading this around, it’s the owner of the Cumeada estate, and all because his administrator didn’t vote for him in the election. But sure as I’m standing here, I’ll break every bone in his body!’ His eyes were bloodshot and he was shaking his fist: ‘Every bone!’
‘It’s really not that important,’ said Natário.
‘I’ll break every bone, every one!’
‘Calm down, old chap!’ said Libaninho tenderly. ‘Get a grip on yourself.’
But reminded of the influence wielded by the estate owner, who was, at the time, the opposition candidate and had won two hundred votes, talk turned to elections. Everyone there, apart from Father Amaro, knew, as Natário put it, how ‘to stitch up votes for a deputy’. The anecdotes flowed; each of them had some triumph to recount.
At the last election, Father Natário had bought eighty votes.
‘Good heavens!’ they all said.
‘And do you know how? By a miracle!’
‘A miracle?’ they repeated, shocked.
‘Yes, gentlemen.’
He had come to an arrangement with a missionary, and on the eve of the election, people in the parish had received letters from Heaven, all signed by the Virgin Mary, in which they were asked, with promises of salvation and threats of eternal damnation, to vote for the government candidate. Clever, eh?
‘Brilliant!’ they all said.
Only Amaro seemed surprised.
‘Well,’ said their host ingenuously, ‘I wish I’d thought of that. I have to slog round from door to door.’ Then he smiled sweetly and added. ‘It’s always worth telling them that you’ll let them off the tithe, of course.’
‘And then there’s the confessional,’ said Father Natário. ‘It all goes through the women, but you can rely on them. You can get a lot of votes in the confessional.’
Father Amaro, who had been silent until then, said gravely:
‘But confession is a very serious act, and using it like that in an election . . .’
Father Natário, who, by then, had two scarlet roses in his cheeks, and whose gestures were grower ever wilder, said rather rashly:
‘You don’t mean you take confession seriously, do you?’
There was general amazement.
‘Take confession seriously?’ shouted Father Amaro, pushing back his chair, his eyes staring.
‘Now really Natário!’ they all exclaimed.
‘Listen, dear creatures! I don’t mean that confession is to be taken lightly. I’m no freemason, you know that. All I’m saying is that it’s a means of persuasion, of finding out what’s going on, of directing the flock this way or that . . . And when it’s used in the service of God, it’s a real weapon, yes, that’s what it is – absolution is a weapon!’
‘A weapon!’ they all exclaimed.
Their host protested, saying:
‘Natário, really, that’s going too far!’
Libaninho had crossed himself and was saying that his legs were positively trembling with fear.
Natário got annoyed.
‘Are you telling me,’ he thundered, ‘that each of us, just because we’re priests and because the bishop placed his hands on us three times and said the Accipe, that we each have a direct mission from God – that, when it comes to absolution, we are God!’
‘Of course!’ they all cried. ‘Of course!’
And Canon Dias, brandishing a forkful of beans said:
‘Quorum remiseris peccata, remittuntur eis. That’s the formula, and the formula is everything, my boy . . .’
‘Confession is the very essence of the priesthood,’ said Father Amaro in scholarly fashion, fixing Natário with his gaze. ‘Read St Ignatius! Read St Thomas!’
‘Leave him to me,’ yelled Libaninho, leaping from his chair, in support of Amaro. ‘Leave him to me, my friend. Just let me at the impious swine!’
‘Gentlemen,’ bawled Natário, enraged at the opposition he had aroused, ‘just answer me this.’ And turning to Amaro, he said: ‘You, sir, for example, when you’ve had your breakfast, eaten your toast, drunk your coffee and smoked your cigarette, you then go into the confessional, perhaps worrying about some family business or lack of money or suffering from a headache or a stomach ache, do you really think that you are there, like a God, to absolve people of their sins?’
The argument took them by surprise.
Canon Dias, put down his knife and fork, raised both arms, and with comic solemnity exclaimed:
‘Hereticus est! You’re a heretic!’
‘Hereticus est indeed!’ grumbled Father Amaro.
But Gertrudes came in at that point with a large dish of rice pudding.
‘Let’s talk no more about these things,’ said their host sagely. ‘Let’s just eat our rice pudding. Gertrudes, get the bottle of port out!’
Natário, leaning on the table, was still hurling arguments at Amaro.
‘To absolve is to exercise grace. Grace is an attribute of God alone: no writer speaks of grace as being transmissible. Therefore . . .’
‘I have two objections,’ cried Amaro, in polemical pose, wagging a finger.
‘My dears,’ said their good host, greatly upset. ‘Stop arguing, you won’t enjoy your pudding.’
He poured out the port in order to calm them down, filling the glasses slowly and carefully.
‘1815!’ he said. ‘It’s not every day you drink a port like this!’
In order to savour it, having first held it up to the light, they all leaned back in their leather chairs, and the toasts began. The first was to their host, who murmured: ‘My pleasure, my pleasure . . .’ his eyes full of tears of satisfaction.
‘To His Holiness Pius IX!’ cried Libaninho, raising his glass. ‘To the martyr!’
Much moved, they all drank. Libaninho then intoned Pius IX’s hymn in a falsetto voice. The priest prudently told him to stop because the gardener was outside trimming the box hedge.
They lingered over dessert, savouring every mouthful. Natário had grown sentimental and spoke of his two nieces, his two little roses, and quoted from Virgil, meanwhile dipping chestnuts in his port wine. Amaro, slumped in his chair, his hands in his pockets, was staring mechanically out at the trees in the garden, thinking vaguely about Amélia, about her body: he even sighed with desire for her as Father Brito, red-faced, was talking about beating some sense into the Republicans.
‘Long live Father Brito’s walking stick!’ shouted Libaninho enthusiastically.
But Natário had started discussing ecclesiastical history with the Canon and, back in argumentative mode, returned to his vague theories about the doctrine of Grace: he said that a murderer or a patricide could be canonized if God’s grace had been revealed to them. He rambled on, stumbling over his words, mouthing phrases learned at school. He cited saints who had led scandalous lives, others who, through their work, must have known, practised and loved vice. Hands on hips, he declared:
‘St Ignatius was a soldier.’
‘A soldier!?’ bawled Libaninho. Getting up, he ran over to him and put one arm about his neck in a gesture of childish, drunken affection. ‘A soldier, eh? And what rank did he hold? What rank did he hold, my dear St Ignatius?’
Natário pushed him away.
‘Get off me, man! He was a sergeant in the infantry.’
Everyone roared with laughter.
Libaninho was ecstatic.
‘Ooh, a sergeant in the infantry!’ he said, raising his hands beatifically. ‘My dear St Ignatius! Blessed and honoured be he for all eternity!’
Then the priest proposed taking their coffee under the vine trellis outside.
It was three o’clock. Everyone got up, slightly unsteady on their feet, emitting thunderous belches and laughing drunkenly; only Amaro had kept a clear head and steady legs, but he was nevertheless in a rather maudlin mood.
‘Right then, gentlemen,’ said their host, finishing his last sip of coffee, ‘what we need now is a walk to the farm.’
‘To help digest our lunch,’ grunted the Canon, getting to his feet with some difficulty. ‘Off we go to the farm, then.’
They took the short cut from Barroca, a narrow cart track. The sky was still very blue and the sun warm. There were ditches on either side of the path, which was thick with brambles; beyond, the flat fields were still full of stubble; here and there the slender leaves of the olive trees stood out in silhouette; the round hills on the horizon were covered with dark green pines; there was utter silence, broken only occasionally by a cart creaking down some distant lane. In the midst of the light and of that serene landscape, the priests walked along slowly, stumbling slightly, their eyes shining, their bellies full, joking with each other and feeling that life was good.
Canon Dias and the country priest were strolling arm in arm, arguing. Brito, next to Amaro, was vowing to drink the blood of the owner of the Cumeada estate.
‘Be sensible, Brito, be sensible,’ Amaro said, taking a puff of his cigarette.
And Brito, striding along beside him, snarled:
‘I’ll eat his liver!’
Libaninho, behind them, on his own, was singing in a high voice:
Little brown bird
Come out here . . .
Ahead of them all went Father Natário: he was carrying his cape over one arm, dragging it in the dust; his cassock was unbuttoned behind to reveal the filthy lining of his waistcoat; and his bony legs, in their laddered black woollen socks, unable to keep a straight line, kept sending him bumbling into the brambles.
And meanwhile, Brito, his breath stinking of wine, was growling:
‘I’d just like to get hold of a stick and beat the living daylights out of them. All of them!’ He made a sweeping gesture embracing the world.
His wings are broken
So he won’t appear . . .
Libaninho droned on in the background.
They suddenly stopped: ahead of them Natário was saying furiously:
‘You fool, watch where you’re going! You idiot!’
He had reached a bend in the road. He had collided with an old man leading a sheep; he had fallen over and, in his vinous rage, was shaking his fist at him.
‘God forgive me, Father,’ the man was saying humbly.
‘You idiot!’ bawled Natário, eyes flashing. ‘I’ll have you for this!’
The man was stammering and had removed his hat, revealing his white hair; he looked like a former farmhand who had grown old in the job; he was possibly someone’s grandfather, and bowed, scarlet with shame, he shrank back into the hedge to allow the priests – all jolly and flushed with wine – to pass him on the narrow cart track.
Amaro decided not to go with them to the farm. At the edge of the village, at the crossroads, he took the Sobros path back to Leiria.
‘It’s a whole league back into town,’ said the priest. ‘I’ll have them saddle up the mare for you, Father.’
‘Certainly not. I’ve got strong legs!’ And throwing his cape over his shoulder, Amaro set off, singing ‘The Farewell!’
Just by Cortegaça, the Sobros path broadens out and runs alongside an estate surrounded by a mossy wall the top of which bristles with glinting glass. When he reached the low red gate, he found a large spotted cow blocking the way; amused, he prodded it with his umbrella, and as the cow trotted off, udders swaying, Amaro turned to find Amélia standing at the door. She greeted him, smiling:
‘Are you frightening away my cows, Father?’
‘Oh, it’s you! What miracle is this?’
She blushed slightly.
‘I came to visit Dona Maria da Assunção’s estate. I just came to have a look at the farm.’
Beside Amélia, a girl was arranging cabbages in a basket.
‘So this is Dona Maria’s estate.’
And Amaro stepped inside the door.
A broad driveway, lined with old cork oaks providing delicious shade, led up to the house which could be seen at the far end, gleaming white in the sunlight.
‘That’s right. Our farm is on the other side, but you can reach it through here as well. Come on, Joana, hurry up!’
The girl put the basket on her head, said goodbye and set off towards Sobros, swaying her hips.
‘It certainly looks like a very fine property,’ commented Amaro.
‘Come and see our farm,’ Amélia said. ‘It’s only a little plot of land, but just to get an idea. We can go this way . . . Look, let’s go and see Dona Maria, would you like to?’
‘Yes, I would.’
They walked up the tree-lined path in silence. The ground was covered with dry leaves and, between the widely spaced trunks, the flowers on the clumps of hydrangeas hung their heads, grown yellow in the rain; at the end of the drive squatted the old, one-storey house. Along the wall huge pumpkins were ripening in the sun, and doves fluttered on the roof blackened by the winter rains. Behind it the orange trees formed a mass of dark green foliage, and a water wheel creaked monotonously.
A little boy passed them, carrying a bucket.
‘Where did your mistress go, João?’ asked Amélia.
‘To the olive grove,’ said the boy in a soft, drawling voice.
The olive grove was some way off, at the far end of the estate; the ground was muddy and a person would have to wear clogs to get there.
‘We’ll get too dirty,’ said Amélia. ‘Let’s forget about Dona Maria, shall we? Let’s go and see the garden instead . . . This way, Father . . .’
They were standing opposite an old wall overgrown with clematis. Amélia opened a green door and they went down three crumbling stone steps into an area shaded by a broad vine trellis. Near the wall roses grew all year round; on the other side, amongst the stone pillars supporting the trellis and the twisted feet of the vines, one could see a large field of grass, yellow in the sun; the low, thatched roofs of the cattle sheds stood out darkly in the distance, and from there a thread of white smoke vanished up into the intensely blue air.
Amélia kept stopping to explain what was planted where. Barley was going to be sown there; and he must see the onions, they were so pretty . . .
‘Dona Maria takes great care of everything!’
Casting sideways glances at her, his head bowed, Amaro listened to her talking; in the silence of the fields, her voice seemed sweeter and more mellifluous; the fresh air brought a more piquant colour to her cheeks, and her eyes shone. She hitched up her dress to avoid a puddle, and the glimpse that he had of her white stocking troubled him as much as if it were a foretaste of her naked skin.
At the far end of the vine trellis, they walked alongside a stream, and across a field. Amélia laughed at Amaro because he was afraid of toads, and he then pretended to be even more afraid. There aren’t any snakes, are there, Miss Amélia? And he brushed against her, recoiling from the tall grasses.
‘Do you see that ditch? Well, on the other side is our farm. You can get in through that gate, do you see? But you look tired. You’re obviously not much of a walker. Look out, a toad!’
Amaro gave a start and bumped against her shoulder. She gave him a gentle push and said with a playful laugh:
‘You really are scared!’
She was so happy, so alive. She spoke of ‘her farm’ with the satisfied pride of one who knows about farm work and about being a landowner.
‘It looks like the gate is shut,’ said Amaro.
‘It’s not, is it?’ she said. She gathered up her skirts and ran over. It was indeed closed. What a shame. And she impatiently rattled the narrow bars of the gate which were set in two strong stone posts flanked by thick brambles.
‘The tenant must have taken the key!’
She crouched down and called across the field, lengthening out the vowels as she did so:
‘Antó-o-nio-o-o! Antó-o-nio-o-o!’
No one replied.
‘He must be somewhere in the back,’ she said. ‘What a bore! But if you like, there’s a place up ahead where we could climb over. There’s an opening in the hedge that we call the goat-leap. We can jump down onto the other side.’
And contentedly walking along by the brambles, splashing through the mud, she went on:
‘When I was a little girl, I never used the gate, I always jumped through there. I used to land with quite a thump when the ground was slippery! You might not think it, but I was a real tomboy! You’d never know it, would you, Father? Now, of course, I’m getting old!’ And turning to him with a smile that showed her white teeth, she said: ‘Don’t you think so, Father, don’t you think I’m getting old?’
He smiled. He found it hard to speak. The sun beating down on his back, after all the wine he had drunk at lunch, had a softening effect on him; the sight of her, of her shoulders, and the way he and she occasionally brushed against each other filled him with intense, unremitting desire.
‘Here it is,’ said Amélia, stopping.
There was a narrow opening in the hedge; the field on the other side was lower down and very muddy. From there São Joaneira’s farm could be seen: the flat field extended as far as an olive grove, and the fine grass was starred with tiny white daisies; a black spotted cow was munching the grass and, beyond, you could see the pointed roofs of cottages and flocks of sparrows fluttering about them.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Amaro.
‘We jump,’ she said, laughing.
‘Here goes!’ he shouted.
He wrapped his cape about him and jumped, but he slipped on the damp grass, and Amélia leaned towards him, laughing helplessly and waving her hands.
‘Goodbye, then, Father, I’m off to find Dona Maria. You’re a prisoner in the farm now. You can’t jump over and you can’t get through the gate! You’re a prisoner . . .’
‘But Miss Amélia, please!’
She sang mockingly:
Here I sit all alone
Now my lover is in prison!
Her flirtatious manner excited Amaro, and with arms outstretched, he said pleadingly:
‘Jump! Jump!’
She said in a childish voice:
‘I’m afraid, I’m afraid!’
‘Jump, Miss Amélia!’
‘Here I come!’ she called.
She jumped and fell against his chest with a little shriek. Amaro slipped, then steadied himself. Feeling her body in his arms, he embraced her hard and kissed her passionately on the neck.
Amélia pulled away and stood before him, breathing hard, her face ablaze, tremulously adjusting the folds of her woollen shawl around her head and neck. Amaro said:
‘Amélia!’
But she suddenly snatched up her dress and ran the whole length of the hedge. A dazed Amaro strode after her. When he reached the gate, Amélia was talking to the tenant, who had appeared with the key.
They crossed the field beside the stream and then the courtyard covered by the vine trellis. Amélia went ahead, chatting to the tenant, and behind came Amaro, deep in thought, his head bowed. By the house, Amélia stopped, and blushing, still drawing her shawl around her neck, said:
‘António, show Father Amaro the way out, will you? Good afternoon, Father.’
And then she ran across the damp earth to the far end of the estate, to the olive grove.
Dona Maria da Assunção was still there, sitting on a stone, chattering away to old Patrício; a band of women, wielding large sticks, were beating the branches of the olive trees.
‘What’s this, you silly girl? Why all this running? Foolish creature!’
‘I ran all the way,’ Amélia said, panting, her face scarlet.
She sat down next to the old woman and remained there, motionless, still breathing hard, her hands in her lap, her mouth half-open, her eyes staring into space. Her whole being was absorbed by but one thought:
‘He loves me! He loves me!’
She had been in love with Father Amaro for a long time, and sometimes, alone in her room, she had despaired to think that he did not see the love in her eyes. From the very first, as soon as she heard him call up from downstairs for his breakfast, she felt her whole being fill up with joy for no reason, and she would start singing as volubly as a bird. Then she noticed that he seemed sad. Why? She knew nothing of his past, but, remembering the friar from Évora, she wondered if perhaps he had become a priest because of some disappointment in love. She would idealise him then; she imagined he must have a very tender nature, and it seemed to her that his pale, elegant person exuded some special fascination. She wanted to have him as her confessor; how good it would be to kneel at his feet in the confessional, to be close to his dark eyes and to hear him talking in his low voice about Paradise. She loved his soft mouth; she turned pale at the idea of being able to embrace him in his long black cassock! When Amaro went out, she would go into his bedroom where she would kiss the pillowcase and take away with her the hairs in his comb. Her cheeks flamed with colour when she heard him ring the bell.
If Amaro was to dine with Canon Dias, she would be in a bad mood all day, she would quarrel with Ruça, and even speak ill of him, say that he was stubborn and far too young to inspire respect. Whenever he mentioned some new young female confessant, she would sulk, filled with childish jealousy. Her old religious devotion was reborn, full of sentimental fervour; she felt an almost physical love for the Church; she would have liked to embrace and to plant lingering little kisses on the altar, the organ, the missal, the saints, on Heaven itself, because she made no real distinction between them and Amaro; they seemed to her mere appendages of his being. She read her missal, all the time thinking of him as if he were her personal God. And Amaro had no idea that when he was pacing agitatedly back and forth in his room, she was upstairs listening, fitting her heartbeats to his steps, hugging her pillow to her, weak with desire, blowing kisses into the air, where she imagined his lips to be.
It was growing dark as Dona Maria and Amélia returned to the town. Amélia walked ahead in silence, urging her donkey onwards, while Dona Maria da Assunção chatted to the boy labourer who had hold of the donkey’s halter. As they passed the Cathedral, the Angelus was rung, and Amélia, as she prayed, could not take her eyes off the great stone walls of the Cathedral that had clearly been built solely so that he would celebrate mass there. She remembered the Sundays when, as the bells were tolling, she had seen him give the blessing from the steps of the high altar; and everyone bowed, even the ladies from the Carreiro estate, even the Baronesa de Via-Clara and the district governor’s haughty wife with her prominent nose. They had bowed beneath his raised hands and they too probably thought what lovely dark eyes he had! And he had held her in his arms by the hedge! She could still feel on her neck the warm pressure of his lips: passion ran like a flame through her whole being; she let go of the donkey’s halter, pressed her hands to her breast and, closing her eyes, put her whole soul into this one prayer:
‘Our Lady of Sorrows, my protectress, please make him love me!’
Some of the canons were sauntering about outside the Cathedral, talking. The lamps were already lit in the pharmacy opposite, and behind the scales could be seen the majestic figure of Carlos the pharmacist, in his beaded cap.