Father Amaro returned home, terrified.
‘Now what? Now what?’ he kept saying as he leaned, with shrinking heart, at the window.
He would have to leave São Joaneira’s house at once. He could not continue there in that state of easy familiarity, not now that he had behaved so boldly with Amélia.
She had not seemed particularly outraged, merely stunned; she had perhaps felt constrained by respect for the clergy, by politeness towards a guest, by consideration for Canon Dias’ friend. But she might tell her mother or the clerk . . . And the scandal that would ensue! He could already see the precentor crossing his legs and looking at him hard – the pose he always adopted when he was about to reprimand someone – then telling him gravely: ‘It is precisely this kind of irregularity that brings dishonour on the priesthood. I would expect no less from a satyr on Mount Olympus!’ They might exile him once more to the mountains. What would the Condesa de Ribamar say?
And if he did continue living in the same house as her, the constant presence of those dark eyes, of the warm smile that dimpled her chin, the curve of her breasts . . . then his secretly growing passion, constantly provoked, driven deep inside him, would send him mad, and he might ‘do something foolish’.
He decided then to speak to Canon Dias: his naturally weak character always required the sustenance of someone else’s reasoning and experience, and the ecclesiastical discipline was so ingrained in him that he usually consulted the Canon, judging him more intelligent simply because he was his superior in the hierarchy, for Amaro still had the dependent nature of a seminarian. Besides, if he wanted to live somewhere alone, he would need Canon Dias’ help to find a house and a maid, for the Canon knew Leiria as well as if he had built it himself.
He found the Canon in his dining room. The wick in the oil lamp glowed a dull red. In the brazier, the embers too glowed red amongst the ashes. The Canon sat dozing in an armchair, lulled by the heat of the fire, his cape over his shoulders, his feet wrapped in a blanket, his breviary on his knees. His dog Trigueira was dozing too, stretched out on one of the folds of the blanket.
When the Canon heard Amaro approaching, he very slowly opened his eyes and grunted:
‘Hm, must have dropped off!’
‘It’s still early,’ said Father Amaro. ‘They haven’t even sounded the retreat. Why so tired?’
‘Ah, it’s you,’ said the Canon, giving an enormous yawn. ‘I got back late from the priest’s house, had a cup of tea, and tiredness got the better of me . . . So, has anything happened?’
‘No, I was just passing.’
‘Well, the priest at Cortegaça certainly did us proud. That stew was superb! I think I may have overindulged,’ said the Canon, drumming his fingers on the cover of his breviary.
Amaro, sitting near him, was slowly stirring the embers.
‘You know, Father,’ he said suddenly. He was about to add: ‘Something odd has happened,’ but he stopped himself and muttered: ‘I’m in a funny mood today; I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts lately . . .’
‘Yes, your colour’s not good,’ said the Canon, looking at him. ‘You need a good purgative.’
Amaro said nothing for a moment, staring at the fire.
‘I’ve been considering changing my lodgings.’
The Canon looked up, opening wide his sleepy eyes.
‘But why?’
Father Amaro moved his chair closer and said in a low voice:
‘You see . . . I’ve been thinking, it is a bit odd being in a house with two women, with a young girl . . .’
‘Oh, that’s just gossip! As I see it, you’re the lodger, and that’s that. Don’t worry, man. It’s just like staying at an inn.’
‘No, Father, you don’t quite understand . . .’
And he sighed; he wished the Canon would question him and make it easier for him to confide his problem.
‘Is this something you’ve just thought of today, Amaro?’
‘Yes, I have been thinking about it today. I have my reasons.’ And he was about to say: ‘I did something foolish,’ but he lost his nerve.
The Canon looked at him for a moment:
‘Be honest with me, man!’
‘I am being honest.’
‘Is it that it’s too expensive?’
‘Of course not!’ said Amaro, shaking his head impatiently.
‘So it must be something else then . . .’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ And in a jovial tone which he thought would please the Canon. ‘After all, we priests like the good things of life too.’
‘I see, I see,’ said the Canon smiling, ‘I understand. What with me being a friend of the family and all, you’re trying to tell me in the nicest way possible that you can’t stand living there!’
‘No, no, that’s not it at all!’ said Amaro, getting to his feet, irritated by the Canon’s obtuseness.
‘Well,’ said the Canon, opening his arms, ‘if you want to move, you must have your reasons. It seems to me that it would be better . . .’
‘I know, I know,’ Amaro said, striding about the room, ‘but I’ve decided. Can you see if you can find me a cheap house with a bit of furniture . . . You know more about that kind of thing than I do . . .’
The Canon said nothing, sunk in his armchair, slowly scratching his chin.
‘Hm, a cheap house,’ he muttered at last. ‘I’ll have a think . . . possibly . . .’
‘You understand, don’t you?’ said Amaro urgently, approaching the Canon. ‘São Joaneira’s house . . .’
But at that point, the door creaked open, and Dona Josefa Dias came in. Having discussed the lunch, Dona Maria da Assunção’s cold, the liver disease that was eating away at dear Canon Sanches, Amaro left, almost glad now that he had not unburdened himself to the Canon.
The Canon remained by the fire, pondering. Amaro’s decision to leave São Joaneira’s house was actually most welcome; when he had brought him as a guest to Rua da Misericórdia, he had agreed with São Joaneira to reduce the allowance he had been giving her for years now on the 30th of every month. But he had regretted it immediately; when São Joaneira had no lodgers, she would sleep alone on the first floor; the Canon could then enjoy the affections of his lady freely, and Amélia, in her bedroom upstairs, was completely unaware of this cosy arrangement. When Father Amaro arrived, São Joaneira had given up her room and now slept in an iron bedstead next to her daughter; and the Canon realised then, as he himself mournfully admitted, that ‘this had ruined everything’. In order to savour fully the joys of the siesta with his São Joaneira, they had to ensure that Amélia was having lunch somewhere else, that Ruça had gone to the well, and to make various other troublesome arrangements; and he, a Cathedral canon, in selfish old age, when he most needed to take good care of his health, found himself forced to wait and watch, having to take his regular, necessary pleasures when he could, as if he were a schoolboy in love with his teacher. Now if Amaro left, São Joaneira would go back to her bedroom on the first floor, and there would be a return to the old comforts, to those tranquil siestas. He would, it is true, have to increase her allowance again . . . But, yes, that’s what he would do!
‘Why not! The important thing is that a man should feel comfortable,’ he said to himself.
‘What are you mumbling to yourself about?’ asked his sister, Dona Josefa, waking from the slumber into which she had fallen in her chair next to the fire.
‘I was just racking my brains as to how best to mortify my flesh during Lent . . .’ said the Canon with a crude laugh.
Ruça always called Father Amaro for tea at the same time, and that day he went slowly up the stairs with quavering heart, fearing that he would find an angry São Joaneira, already informed of the insult to her daughter. Instead he found only Amélia – who, when she heard his footsteps on the stair had snatched up her sewing and, with head bowed low, was stitching furiously away, her face as red as the handkerchief she was busily hemming for the Canon.
‘Good evening, Miss Amélia.’
‘Good evening, Father.’
Amélia usually greeted him with an amiable ‘Hello!’ or ‘So there you are!’; her formality terrified him, and he immediately blurted out:
‘Miss Amélia, please forgive me . . . It was wrong of me . . . I didn’t know what I was doing, but please, believe me . . . I’ve decided to leave. I’ve even asked Canon Dias to find somewhere else for me live . . .’
He did not look up as he spoke and so did not see Amélia raise her eyes to him, surprised and utterly disconsolate.
Just then, São Joaneira came in and, standing in the doorway, opened her arms wide and said:
‘There he is! Now, I’ve already heard from Father Natário what a wonderful lunch it was, so tell us all about it!’
Amaro had to describe the different courses, Libaninho’s jokes, the theological discussion, and then they talked about the farm; and Amaro went back downstairs without having dared tell São Joaneira that he was going to leave, which to her, poor woman, meant a loss of six tostões a day!
The following morning, before going to prayers, the Canon went to Rua da Misericórdia. Amaro was standing at his window, shaving.
‘Hello, Master! Any news?’
‘I think I’ve found a new home for you. It happened by chance this morning. There’s a little house near where I live, which is a real find. Major Nunes has been living there, but he’s moving to number 5.’
The suddenness of this displeased Amaro; he continued glumly shaving and asked:
‘Is it furnished?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s got furniture, china, bed linen, everything.’
‘So . . .’
‘So you just have to move in and start your new life. And between ourselves, Amaro, I believe you’re right. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s best if you live alone. So hurry up and get dressed, and we’ll go off and see the house.’
Amaro, dumbstruck, was still desolately shaving.
The house was in Rua das Sousas, a very old, one-storey building with worm-eaten timbers; the furniture, as the Canon admitted, ‘had seen better days’; a few faded lithographs hung gloomily from large black nails; and the disgusting Major Nunes had left behind him broken windows, gobs of spit on the floor, the walls covered with marks where he had struck his matches, and, on a window sill, there was even a pair of faded black socks.
Amaro took the house. And that same morning, the Canon arranged a maid for him, Maria Vicência, a very devout person, tall and thin as a pine tree, and previously cook to Dr Godinho. And (as Canon Dias remarked) she was sister to the famous Dionísia.
Dionísia had once been Leiria’s equivalent of La Dame aux Camélias, of Ninon de Lenclos or Manon; she had enjoyed the honour of being the mistress of two district governors and of the terrifying owner of the Sertejeira estate; and the frenzied passions she had aroused had been a cause of tears and fainting fits in nearly every wife and mother in Leiria. Now she took in other people’s ironing and starching, acted as an intermediary with pawnbrokers and knew pretty much all there was to know about childbirth; she facilitated ‘the odd little adultery’, to use the words of old Dom Luís da Barrosa, known as ‘Wicked Dom Luís’, she procured young female farmhands for gentlemen civil servants, and knew everything about the love life of everyone in the district. Dionísia was always to be seen out and about, wearing a check shawl fastened over her immense bosom, which trembled beneath the grubby blouse she ordinarily wore, and she trotted discreetly along, with, as before, a smile for everybody except that now her two front teeth were missing.
The Canon told São Joaneira of Amaro’s decision that very afternoon. It was a great shock to the excellent lady. She complained bitterly of Amaro’s ingratitude.
The Canon coughed significantly and said:
‘Well, actually, I was the one who arranged it. And I’ll tell you why; it’s because this business of you sleeping upstairs is ruining my health.’
He gave other reasons of prudence and hygiene and added, tenderly stroking her neck:
‘And don’t you worry about losing any income! I’ll make my usual contribution, and since the harvest was good this year, I’ll chip in a bit more to pay for any of Amélia’s little fancies. Now give me a big kiss, Augustinha, you naughty thing. You know, I think I’ll dine here tonight.’
Amaro, meanwhile, was downstairs packing his clothes. But he kept stopping and sighing sadly, looking round the room at the soft bed, the clean white cloth on the table, the big upholstered chair where he would sit reading his breviary while he listened to Amélia singing to herself upstairs.
‘Never more!’ he thought. ‘Never more!’
Farewell to those sweet mornings spent at her side, watching her sew. Farewell to those after-supper gatherings by the light of the oil lamp! Farewell to the cups of tea round the stove, when the wind howled outside and the rain dripped from the cold eaves. All that was over.
São Joaneira and the Canon appeared at the door of his room. The Canon looked radiant, but São Joaneira said in wounded tones:
‘I know all about it, you ungrateful boy!’
‘Yes, it’s true, Senhora,’ said Amaro with a sad shrug. ‘But there are good reasons . . . I’m so sorry . . .’
‘Look, Father,’ said São Joaneira, ‘please don’t be offended by what I’m about to say, but, you see, I’d come to love you like a son . . .’ And she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.
‘What nonsense!’ exclaimed the Canon. ‘Surely he can still visit, come and have a chat in the evenings, drink his coffee here. The man isn’t going to Brazil!’
‘I know, I know,’ said the poor woman tearfully, ‘but it’s not the same thing as having him here with us.’
But she knew that people were better off in their own homes . . . She recommended a good washerwoman and told him that he only had to ask if he needed china or sheets . . .
‘You just have to ask, Father!’
‘Thank you, Senhora, thank you.’
And as he finished packing his clothes, Amaro bitterly regretted the decision he had taken. Amélia had clearly said nothing. Why then leave that cheap, comfortable, friendly house? He hated the Canon for his hasty zeal.
It was a sad supper. Amélia, doubtless to explain her pallor, complained of a headache. Over coffee, the Canon demanded his ‘ration of music’, and Amélia, either out of habit or intentionally, sang their favourite song:
Ah, farewell, farewell!
Gone now are the days
When I lived happy by your side!
The fateful moment now draws nigh
When we must go our separate ways!
The tearful melody transfused with the sadness of separation so moved Amaro that, afterwards, he had to get up, go over to the window and rest his face against the glass to conceal the tears running unstoppably down his cheeks. Amélia’s fingers fumbled so over the keys that even São Joaneira said:
‘Amélia, please, play something else.’
But the Canon got wearily to his feet and said:
‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time we were going. Come along, Amaro. I’ll walk with you to Rua das Sousas . . .’
Amaro asked to say goodbye to São Joaneira’s idiot sister, but she was very weak after a bad attack of coughing and was asleep.
‘Leave her be then,’ said Amaro. And squeezing São Joaneira’s hand, he said: ‘Thank you for everything, Senhora, and please believe . . .’
He stopped, a lump in his throat.
São Joaneira was dabbing at her eyes with one corner of her white apron.
‘Come on, now,’ said the Canon, laughing, ‘as I said before, the man isn’t setting sail for the Indies!’
‘It’s just that one gets so fond of people . . .’ whimpered São Joaneira.
Amaro tried to make a joke. Amélia, deathly pale, was biting her lip.
Then Amaro went downstairs; and the same João Ruço who, very drunk and singing the Benedictus, had carried his trunk to Rua da Misericórdia when he first arrived in Leiria, now took him off to Rua das Sousas, equally drunk, but this time singing ‘The King has come . . .’
That night, when Amaro found himself alone in that gloomy house, he was filled with such intense melancholy, such black despair that, in his weakness, he felt like crawling into a corner to die.
He stood in the middle of the room and looked around him at the narrow iron bedstead with its hard mattress and red bedspread, at the tarnished mirror gleaming on the table; there was no washstand, but on the window ledge stood a small basin and jug, with a tiny bit of soap; everything in the room smelled musty, and outside, in the black street, the sad rain fell ceaselessly. What a life! And that was how it would always be!
With clenched fists, he raged against Amélia: he blamed her for the comforts he had lost, for the lack of furniture, for the expense to which he would be put, for that icy solitude! Any woman with a heart would have come to his room and said: ‘Why are you leaving, Father Amaro? I’m not angry with you.’ She, after all, was the one who had provoked his desire with her flirtatious ways and her tender glances. But no, she had allowed him to pack his bags and go down the stairs, without so much as a friendly word, instead wildly pounding out that waltz entitled ‘The Kiss!’
He swore then never to go back to São Joaneira’s house. He strode up and down the room thinking of ways in which he could humiliate Amélia. What, for example? He could spurn her like a dog! He could become an influential figure amongst Leiria’s devout society, a close colleague of the precentor; he could lure the Canon and the Gansoso sisters away from Rua da Misericórdia; he could conspire with the ladies in the best circles to snub her at the high altar during Sunday Mass; he could let it be known that her mother was a prostitute . . . He would discredit her, spatter her with mud! And as he left the Cathedral after Mass, he would relish the sight of her slinking by in her black cape, scorned by everyone, while he stood chatting to the wife of the district governor and being gallant to the Baronesa de Via-Clara! Then, at Lent, he would preach a brilliant sermon, and in the main square and in the shops, she would hear people say: He’s a great man that Father Amaro!’ He would become an ambitious intriguer and, protected by the Condesa de Ribamar, he would climb the ecclesiastical ranks: what would she think when one day he became Bishop of Leiria and, looking pale and interesting in his golden mitre, he walked down the Cathedral nave past a kneeling, penitent congregation, followed by the censer-bearers and accompanied by the strident music of the organ? What would have become of her by then? She would be a scrawny, wizened figure wrapped in a cheap shawl. And what of João Eduardo, her chosen one, her husband? He would sit hunched over his papers, a poorly paid clerk with nicotine-stained fingers and wearing a threadbare jacket, a barely perceptible figure always quick to flatter, but inwardly envious. And he, as Bishop, on the vast hierarchical stairway that reaches up into Heaven, would be far above mere men by then, in the zone of light cast by the face of the Lord our God! He would be a member of the Upper Chamber and the priests in his diocese would tremble when he frowned.
The church bell next door slowly struck ten o’clock.
What would she be doing at that hour, he wondered. She would probably be sitting in the dining room sewing; the clerk would be there; they would be playing cards and laughing; in the dark beneath the table, she might perhaps touch his foot with hers! He remembered her foot, the little flash of stocking he had seen when she jumped over the puddles at the farm; and his inflamed curiosity climbed all the way up the curve of her leg to her breasts, past beauties he could but imagine . . . God, how he loved the wretched girl! But he could not have her! And yet any other ugly, stupid fellow could go to Rua da Misericórdia and ask for her hand in marriage, could walk into the Cathedral and say to him: ‘Father, marry us’, and then, protected by Church and State, could kiss those arms and those breasts. But he could not! He was a priest! It was all the fault of that ghastly woman the Marquesa de Alegros!
He detested the whole secular world for having stripped him for ever of all his privileges, and since the priesthood excluded him from participation in human and social pleasures, he took refuge, instead, in the idea of the spiritual superiority his status gave him over other men. That miserable clerk might be able to marry and possess Amélia, but what was he in comparison with a priest on whom God had conferred the supreme power of deciding who should go to Heaven and who to Hell? And he gloated over this idea, gorging his spirit on priestly pride. However, a troubling thought soon surfaced: his dominion was valid only in the abstract region of souls; he would never be able to put his power into triumphant action in society. He was a God inside the Cathedral, but he had only to go out into the square and he was a mere obscure plebeian. An irreligious world had reduced the sphere of influence of all priestly action to the souls of a few overly devout ladies . . . And that was what he regretted, the social diminution of the Church, the mutilation of ecclesiastical power, which was limited now to the spiritual, with no rights over men’s bodies, lives and wealth. He did not have the authority a priest had in the days when the Church was the nation, and the parish priest was temporal master of his flock. What did it matter to him that he had the right to open or close the doors of Heaven? What he wanted was the ancient right to open or close the doors of dungeons! He wanted clerks and Amélias to tremble at the mere shadow cast by his cassock. He would have liked to have been a priest in the old Church, when he would have enjoyed the advantages brought by the power of denunciation and by the kind of terror that an executioner inspires, and there, in that town, under the jurisdiction of his Cathedral, he would have made all those who aspired to the joys that were forbidden to him tremble at the thought of excruciating punishments, and, thinking of João Eduardo and Amélia, he regretted not being able to bring back the bonfires of the Inquisition! In the grip of a fury provoked by thwarted passion, this inoffensive young man spent hours nursing grandiose ambitions of Catholic tyranny, for there is always a moment when even the most stupid priest is filled by the spirit of the Church in one of its two phases, that of mystical renunciation or that of world domination; every subdeacon at one time or another believes himself capable of being either a saint or a Pope; there is not a single seminarian who has not, albeit for an instant, aspired longingly to that cave in the desert in which St Jerome, looking up at the starry sky, felt Grace flow into his heart like an abundant river of milk; and even the potbellied parish priest who, at close of day, sits on his balcony probing the hole in his tooth with a toothpick or, with a paternal air, slowly sips his cup of coffee, even he carries within him the barely perceptible remnants of a Grand Inquisitor.
Amaro’s life grew monotonous. March was coming to a damp, chilly end; and after the service in the Cathedral, Amaro would go home, take off his muddy boots and sit in his slippers feeling bored. He ate at three o’clock, and he never lifted the cracked lid of the tureen without remembering, with a feeling of intense nostalgia, the meals he had had in Rua da Misericórdia, when Amélia, wearing the whitest of collars, would pass him his bowl of chick pea soup, smiling and affectionate. Vicência, vast and erect, like a soldier in skirts, stood beside him to serve; she always seemed to be suffering from a heavy cold and would keep turning her head away to blow her nose noisily on her apron. She was not fussy about cleanliness either; all the knife handles were sticky with grease from the dirty washing-up water. Sad and indifferent, Amaro did not complain; he ate badly and in haste; he would ask for a cup of coffee and spend hour upon hour sitting at the table, plunged in silent tedium, now and then tipping the ash from his cigarette into the saucer, feeling his feet and his knees growing cold in the wind that blew in through the cracks of that bleak room.
Sometimes, the coadjutor, who had never once visited him in Rua da Misericórdia, would drop in after supper and sit a long way from the table, not saying a word, his umbrella between his knees. Then, in an attempt to please Amaro, he would invariably say:
‘You’re much better off here, you know; it’s always best to have your own place.’
‘Hm,’ Amaro would grunt.
At first, to soothe his own hurt and anger, Amaro would speak slightingly of São Joaneira, attempting to provoke the coadjutor, who was a native of Leiria, into retailing the scandals of Rua da Misericórdia. The coadjutor, out of pure servility, would merely smile perfidiously and say nothing.
‘There’s something fishy going on there, don’t you think?’ Amaro would begin.
The coadjutor would shrug, holding his hands up, palms spread, with a mischievous look on his face, but he did not utter a sound, fearing that his words, if repeated, might offend the Canon. So they would sit on glumly, occasionally exchanging the odd, inconsequential remark: a baptism that had taken place; what Canon Campos had said; an altar cloth that needed washing. These conversations bored Amaro; he felt very little like a priest and very remote from the ecclesiastical clique: he was not interested in the canons’ intrigues, the precentor’s much-commented-upon favouritism, the thefts from the poorhouse, the diocesan tribunal’s wranglings with the district government, and he felt indifferent to and ill-informed about the ecclesiastical gossip in which the priests took such feminine pleasure and which was as puerile as a child’s tantrum and as convoluted as a conspiracy.
‘Is the wind still blowing from the south?’ he would ask at last, yawning.
‘It is,’ the coadjutor would reply.
Amaro would light the lamp; the coadjutor would get to his feet, shake his umbrella and leave, with a sideways glance at Vicência.
That was the worst time, at night, when he was left alone. He tried to read, but books bored him; grown unused to reading, he kept losing the thread. He would go over to the window and look out; the night was dark and the streets gleamed dully. When would this life be over? He would light a cigarette and begin pacing up and down, his hands behind his back, from the basin to the window. Sometimes he went to bed without praying, and he had no scruples about it; he felt that having renounced Amélia was enough of a penance in itself, and there was no need for him to wear himself out reading prayers; he had made his ‘sacrifice’ and he felt more or less even with Heaven.
And so he continued to live alone: Canon Dias never came to see him in Rua das Sousas because, he said, just going into the house made his stomach churn. And Amaro, growing more sullen by the day, did not go back to São Joaneira’s house. He was very shocked that she had not sent him an invitation to the Friday gatherings; he attributed that ‘snub’ to Amélia’s hostility towards him, and in order not to see her, he swapped with Father Silveira, and so instead of saying the midday mass to which she used to come, he said the nine o’clock mass instead, furious at having to make yet another sacrifice.
Every night, when she heard the door bell ring, Amélia’s heart beat so fast that, for a moment, she could barely breathe. Then she would hear João Eduardo’s boots come creaking up the stairs or would recognise the soft tread of the Gansoso sisters’ galoshes, and she would lean back in her chair, closing her eyes, as if wearied by an oft-repeated despair. She was waiting for Father Amaro, and sometimes, around ten o’clock, when she knew he would not come, her melancholy became so painful that her throat would grow tight with repressed sobs, and she would have to set aside her sewing and say:
‘I’m going to lie down, I’ve got a really splitting headache!’
She would he prone on the bed, desperately murmuring over and over:
‘Dear Lady of Sorrows, my protectress, why does he not come, why does he not come?’
During the first few days, immediately after his departure, the whole house had seemed deserted and gloomy. When she had gone into his bedroom and seen the hooks empty of his clothes and the sideboard empty of his books, she had burst into tears. She went over and kissed the pillow on which he had slept, and clutched wildly to her breast the last towel on which he had dried his hands! His face was always there before her, he appeared in all her dreams. With separation, her love only burned more strongly, like a solitary bonfire, the flames growing ever higher.
One afternoon, she had gone to see a cousin of hers who worked as a nurse in the hospital, and when she reached the bridge, she saw a lot of people standing gawping at a young woman wearing a short, scarlet jacket and with her obviously false hair all dishevelled; she was shaking her fist and hoarsely cursing a soldier, a big country lad with a round, coarse, still beardless face; he had his back turned to her, and was shrugging his shoulders, his hands in his pockets, muttering:
‘I didn’t do anything to her, honest . . .’
Senhor Vasques, who ran a clothier’s in the main square, had stopped to look, disapproving of such a ‘lack of public order’.
‘Has something happened?’ Amélia asked him.
‘Oh, hello, Miss Amélia! It’s just some soldier’s prank. He threw a dead rat in her face, and the woman is kicking up a terrible fuss. Slut!’
Then the woman in the red jacket turned round, and Amélia was horrified to see Joaninha Gomes, her friend from school, who had gone on to become Father Abílio’s mistress. The priest had been suspended and had abandoned her; she had left for Pombal, then for Oporto, sinking ever lower, until she finally returned to Leiria, where she lived in an alley near the barracks, growing thinner and thinner, used by a whole regiment. Dear God, what an example!
And she too loved a priest! Just as Joaninha once had, she too wept over her sewing when Father Amaro did not arrive.
Where was that passion leading her? To Joaninha’s fate? To being the parish priest’s mistress? And she could already imagine herself being pointed at in the street, in the square, then later abandoned by him, with his child inside her, without so much as a crust of bread to eat! And like a gust of wind that instantly clears the sky of clouds, the sharp horror of that encounter with Joaninha swept from her mind the morbid, amorous mists in which she was losing her way. She decided to take advantage of their separation and to forget about Amaro; she even considered hastening her marriage to João Eduardo in order to take refuge in a more pressing duty; for some days, she tried hard to feel interested in him; she even began embroidering a pair of slippers for him . . .
But gradually the ‘bad idea’ which, when attacked, had shrunk away and played dead, began slowly to uncoil, to rise up and invade her again. Day and night, whether she was sewing or praying, the idea of Father Amaro, his eyes and his voice, would appear to her like stubborn, ever more alluring temptations. What was he doing? Why did he not come to see her? Did he like someone else? She suffered from vague, fierce, searing jealousies. And that passion wrapped about her like an atmosphere from which she could not escape, which followed her if she attempted to flee, and which gave her life! In the fire running through her, all her honest resolutions shrivelled and died like feeble flowers. Whenever the memory of Joaninha resurfaced, she would push it irritably away and would hastily go over all the nonsensical reasons she could think of for loving Father Amaro. She had only one idea now: to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him, oh, yes, kiss him! And then, if necessary, die.
She began to grow impatient with João Eduardo’s love. She found it ‘stupid’.
‘Oh, no!’ she would think when she heard his step on the stairs at night.
She could not stand him with his eyes always fixed on her, she could not stand his black jacket, his boring conversations about the district government.
And she idealised Amaro. Her nights were shaken by lewd dreams and, during the day, she lived in a state of jealous agitation and suffered from fits of black melancholy which, as her mother said, ‘made you feel like shaking her’.
She grew sullen.
‘Good heavens, girl, whatever’s wrong with you?’ her mother would exclaim.
‘I don’t feel well. I think I might be sickening for something.’
She did, in fact, look very pale and had lost her appetite. And one morning, she was confined to bed with a fever. Her frightened mother called in Dr Gouveia. After seeing Amélia, the old practitioner came back into the dining room, contentedly taking a pinch of snuff.
‘What do you think, Doctor?’ São Joaneira asked.
‘Marry the girl off, São Joaneira, marry her off now. I’ve told you so before.’
‘But, Doctor . . .’
‘Get her married off now, São Joaneira, now!’ he kept saying as he went down the stairs, slightly dragging his rheumaticky right leg.
Amélia eventually got better, to the great joy of João Eduardo, who was in torment as long as she was ill, regretting not being able to nurse her himself and occasionally shedding a sad tear on the documents drawn up by his dour employer, Nunes Ferral.
The following Sunday, at the nine o’clock mass, as Amaro went up to the altar, he noticed Amélia amongst the distant congregation; she was sitting next to her mother and wearing her black silk dress with all the ruffles. He closed his eyes for a moment, barely able to hold the chalice steady in his trembling hands.
When, after mumbling his way through the Gospel, Amaro made the sign of the cross over the missal, then crossed himself and turned back to the congregation saying Dominus vobiscum, the wife of Carlos the pharmacist said to Amélia ‘the priest looks so pale you’d think he was in pain’. Amélia did not reply, bent over her prayer book, her face scarlet. And during mass, sitting back on her heels, absorbed in thought, her face passionate and ecstatic, she drank in his presence, his thin hands holding up the host, his handsome head bowed in ritual adoration; her skin prickled with sweet excitement whenever he uttered some rapid Latin phrase out loud; and when Amaro, his left hand on his breast and his right hand outstretched, pronounced to the congregation the Benedicat vos, she, her eyes wide open, projected her whole soul towards the altar, as if he were the God beneath whose blessing heads bowed along the whole length of the Cathedral, right to the very back where the villagers with their heavy walking sticks stood gazing in astonishment at the golden monstrance.
As they were leaving, it started to rain, and Amélia and her mother were standing at the door with the other ladies, waiting for the rain to let up.
‘Hello! Fancy seeing you here!’ Amaro cried, coming over to them, his face stark white.
‘We’re waiting for the rain to stop, Father,’ said São Joaneira, turning round, and adding reproachfully: ‘And why have you not been to see us, Father? Was it something we did? It’s enough to make people talk . . .’
‘I-I’ve been very busy,’ stammered Amaro.
‘But you could have come over for a while in the evening. You know, it’s quite upset me. And everyone has noticed. It’s most ungrateful of you, Father!’
Blushing, Amaro said:
‘Well, enough is enough. I’ll come round tonight and may all be forgiven . . .’
Amélia, who was equally red-faced, was trying to conceal her agitation by gazing up at the heavy sky, as if frightened by the storm.
Amaro then offered them his umbrella. And while São Joaneira was opening it, carefully gathering up her silk dress, Amélia said to Amaro:
‘Until tonight, then.’ And in a quieter voice, looking fearfully around her: ‘Please come. I’ve been so miserable! I’ve been quite mad. Please come, for my sake!’
On his way home, Amaro had to keep himself from running along the streets in his cassock. He went into his room, sat down at the foot of the bed, and stayed there saturated with happiness, like a plump sparrow in a warm shaft of sunlight: he remembered Amélia’s face, the curve of her shoulders, the sweetness of their meetings, the words she had spoken: ‘I’ve been quite mad.’ The certainty that the girl loved him blew through his soul like a powerful gust of wind and whispered in every corner of his being with the melodious murmur of unconfined joy. And he strode about the room, arms outstretched, wanting to possess her body that very instant; he felt prodigiously proud; he stood in front of the mirror puffing out his chest, as if the world were a pedestal built for him alone. He could scarcely eat. How he longed for the night. The weather cleared up in the evening, and he kept checking his silver fob watch and looking irritably out of the window at the bright day still lingering on the horizon. He polished his shoes himself and pomaded his hair. And before leaving, he carefully said his prayers because, in the presence of that newly acquired love, he was suddenly superstitiously afraid that God or the scandalised saints might spoil it for him, and he did not want to give them reason for complaint by neglecting his devotions.
As he walked down Amélia’s street, his heart was beating so fast he had to stop, scarcely able to breathe; and the hooting of the owls roosting on the poorhouse wall, which he had not heard for weeks, sounded to him like sweet music.
And the expressions of surprise when he entered the dining room!
‘How good to see you! We thought you’d died! A miracle! . . .’
Dona Maria da Assunção was there, as were the Gansoso sisters. They enthusiastically pushed back their chairs to make room for him and to admire him.
‘So what have you been up to? You’re looking thinner, you know.’
Libaninho was standing in the middle of the room imitating rockets shooting up into the sky. Artur Couceiro improvised a fado on the guitar:
The parish priest has come back home
To partake of São Joaneira’s tea,
Let joy, let joy be unconfined,
And let’s talk him to his knees!
There was applause, and São Joaneira, rocking with laughter, said:
‘It was pure ingratitude on his part.’
‘Ingratitude, you say,’ snorted the Canon. ‘Stubbornness more like.’
Amélia said nothing, her cheeks burning, her startled, shining eyes fixed on Father Amaro, to whom they had given the Canon’s armchair, in which he leaned back, tumescent with pleasure, making the ladies laugh with his jokes about Vicência’s ineptitude.
Alone in a corner, João Eduardo sat leafing through an old scrapbook.