João Eduardo walked down the road, rolling a cigarette. He had been left weak and drained by his night of despair, by that morning spent in futile wanderings, and by his conversations with Dr Godinho and Dr Gouveia.
‘It’s over,’ he was thinking. ‘I can do nothing more. I’ll just have to accept it.’
His soul was exhausted by all that passion, hope and anger. He would like to go and lie down in some isolated place, far from lawyers, women and priests, and to sleep for months. But since it was already after three, he hurried to the office. He would probably be given a lecture for arriving so late. Ah, but his was a sad life!
He had turned the corner into the main square, when just outside Osório’s eating house, he bumped into a young man wearing a light-coloured jacket edged with black ribbon; the young man’s moustache was so dark that, against his extremely pale skin, it looked false.
‘Hello, João Eduardo! How are things?’
It was Gustavo, the typesetter from The District Voice, who had gone to Lisbon two months before. According to Agostinho, he was an intelligent lad and very learned, ‘but with some alarming ideas’. He would sometimes write articles on foreign affairs, full of resonant, poetic phrases, cursing Napoleon III, the Czar and all oppressors of the people, bemoaning the enslavement of Poland and the misery of the proletariat. The friendship between himself and João Eduardo had grown out of conversations they had had on religion, in which both gave vent to their hatred of the clergy and their admiration for Jesus Christ. Events in Spain had so inspired him that he had even had hopes of joining the International; and his desire to live amongst the workers, where there would be associations, speeches and fraternity, had taken him to Lisbon. He had found a good job there and good comrades. But since he had to care for his infirm old mother and it was cheaper if they lived together, he had returned to Leiria. Besides, with the elections looming, The District Voice was doing so well that the three typesetters were to be given a wage increase.
‘So here I am back with Agostinho.’
He had been just about to have lunch and he immediately invited João Eduardo to join him. For heaven’s sake, the world wouldn’t end if he missed one day at the office.
João Eduardo remembered then that he had not in fact eaten anything since the previous evening. Perhaps it was lack of food that had left him in this stupefied, easily discouraged state. He accepted at once, glad, after all the emotions and exhaustions of the morning, to sit down on a tavern bench with a full plate in front of him and with a friend who shared his antipathies. Besides, the buffetings he had suffered had created in him a real craving for sympathy, and so he said warmly:
‘It’s good to see you, man. I couldn’t have met you at a better moment. The world’s such a terrible place that if it wasn’t for the times spent with your friends, life wouldn’t be worth living.’
Gustavo was taken aback by these unprecedented words from the normally reticent João Eduardo.
‘Why, what’s wrong? Aren’t things going well? Not getting on with that beast Nunes, eh?’ he asked.
‘No, just suffering from a bit of spleen.’
‘Spleen’s an English phenomenon! Oh, but you should have seen Taborda in A London Love! Anyway, forget about spleen! What you need is a bit of ballast inside you and plenty of wine to wash it down with!’
He took João Eduardo’s arm and guided him into the tavern.
‘Hello there, Osório! Fraternal greetings!’
Osório, the owner of the tavern, was leaning on the bar; he was a plump, contented personage, with a fat, mischievous face and with his shirtsleeves rolled up almost to his shoulders to reveal very white, bare arms; he immediately expressed his pleasure at seeing Gustavo back in Leiria. He thought he looked thinner. It must be the bad water in Lisbon and the additives in the wines . . . Now what could he do for the two gentlemen?
Gustavo planted himself before the bar, his hat pushed back on his head, and prepared to make the joke that had so amused him in Lisbon:
‘Osório, bring us a king’s liver and some priest’s kidneys, grilled!’
Quick as a flash, as he wiped down the zinc counter with a rag, Osório said:
‘I’m afraid we don’t have that here, Senhor Gustavo, that’s a Lisbon delicacy.’
‘Well, I must say you’re very backward! I had that for breakfast every day in Lisbon. Never mind, just bring us some liver – well done – and some potatoes!’
‘You will be served like friends of the house.’
They sat down at the ‘table for the timid’, between two pine partitions closed off by a cotton curtain. Osório, who thought Gustavo ‘a clever, serious-minded lad’, brought them a bottle of red wine and a dish of olives and, as he polished the glasses on his filthy apron, he said:
‘So what news from the capital, Senhor Gustavo? How are things there?’
Gustavo immediately grew grave, smoothed his hair with his hand and uttered a few enigmatic phrases:
‘Very unstable . . . A lot of charlatans in politics . . . The working classes are beginning to organise . . . A lack of unity at the moment . . . They’re just waiting to see how things turn out in Spain . . . It could all turn very nasty . . . Everything depends on Spain . . .’
But Osório, who had saved a bit of money and bought a small farm, had a horror of upheavals. What the country needed was peace. He was particularly against anything that depended on the Spanish. Surely they knew the saying: from Spain expect neither a good wind nor a good wedding.
‘We are all brothers!’ exclaimed Gustavo. ‘When it comes to bringing down Bourbons and emperors, political cliques and the nobility, there are no Spanish or Portuguese, we are all brothers! Fraternity, Osório!’
‘Well, you’d better drink its health, then, and drink heartily, because that’s what makes the world go round,’ said Osório placidly, heaving his great bulk out of the cubicle.
‘Elephant!’ snorted Gustavo, shocked at Osório’s indifference to the Brotherhood of the People. But what could you expect from a landowner and an election agent?
He hummed a bit of the Marseillaise, filled their glasses with wine, pouring it from on high, and asked what João Eduardo had been up to. Didn’t he go to The District Voice any more? According to Agostinho, there was no dragging him away now from Rua da Misericórdia.
‘So when’s this wedding, then?’
João Eduardo blushed and said vaguely:
‘We haven’t quite decided yet . . . There have been a few problems . . .’ And he added with a wry smile: ‘We’ve had a couple of spats.’
‘Over nothing, I suppose,’ said Gustavo, with a shrug expressive of his revolutionary scorn for such sentimental frivolities.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said João Eduardo. ‘I just know that it’s most upsetting. They bring a man very low, Gustavo.’
He fell silent, biting his lip, to emphasise the emotions shaking him.
But Gustavo found anything to do with women ridiculous. It wasn’t the time for love . . . The man of the people, the working man who clung on to some woman’s skirts, was of no use to anyone. He was a traitor! This was no time to be thinking about love affairs, but about restoring freedom to the people, taking work out of the claws of the wealthy, putting an end to monopolies and working towards a republic! It wasn’t self-pity that was needed, but action, strength! And he emphasised the final word, brandishing his scrawny, tubercular wrists over the large plate of fried liver that the waiter had just brought.
Listening to him, João Eduardo remembered the days when Gustavo had been madly in love with Júlia from the bakery and would turn up at work with eyes as red as coals and fill the place with terrible, thunderous sighs. Every sigh would be greeted by his colleagues with a mocking clearing of the throat. One day, Gustavo and Medeiros even came to blows in the courtyard.
‘Look who’s talking,’ João Eduardo said at last. ‘You’re just like everyone else. You’re full of talk, but when it’s your turn, you’re just the same as all of us.’
Gustavo was shocked – ever since he had started frequenting the Alcântara Democratic Club in Lisbon and helped to draw up a manifesto for their brothers on strike at the cigarette factory, he considered himself to be devoted exclusively to the service of the Proletariat and the Republic. Him? Like all the others? Waste his time on women?
‘I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken,’ he said and retreated into a shocked silence, furiously cutting up the fried liver on his plate.
João Eduardo feared that he might have offended him.
‘Come on, Gustavo, be reasonable. A man can have his principles and work for a cause, but also get married, enjoy a bit of comfort and have a family.’
‘Never!’ exclaimed Gustavo passionately. ‘A man who marries is lost. From then on all he cares about is earning his daily bread, staying in his burrow, getting up in the night to tend to his screaming, teething babies, without a moment to spare for his friends . . . Useless! A traitor! Women understand nothing about politics. They’re afraid of their man getting caught up in riots or having problems with the police. He’s a patriot bound hand and foot. And when he has some secret to keep . . . well, a married man can’t keep a secret. Sometimes a whole revolution has been compromised because of that. To hell with the family! Osório, more olives!’
Osório’s belly appeared between the partition walls.
‘What are you two gentlemen arguing about? You sound like the Maia Group disrupting a municipal council meeting.’
Gustavo leaned back on his bench, his legs outstretched, and asked him loftily.
‘Osório, you can decide this. Tell my friend here. Would you be prepared to change your political opinions to please your wife?’
Osório rubbed the back of his neck and said in a playful tone:
‘I’ll tell you this much, Gustavo. Women are far more intelligent than we are. When it comes to politics and business, if you do what they say, you won’t go far wrong. I always consult my wife, and, if you must know, I’ve been doing so for twenty years and it’s worked so far.’
Gustavo leaped up from the bench:
‘Traitor!’ he yelled.
Osório, who was used to that favourite expression of Gustavo’s, was not in the least put out; with his love of sharp ripostes, he even joked:
‘I don’t know about traitor, but trader certainly. Just you wait until you get married, Senhor Gustavo, and then we’ll talk again.’
‘Come the revolution, we’ll march in here with rifles on our shoulders and haul you up before a court martial, you capitalist!’
‘But meanwhile the best thing to do is to drink up,’ said Osório making a slow retreat.
‘Hippopotamus!’ grumbled Gustavo.
And since he loved arguments, he started up again, maintaining that any man infatuated with a woman could not be relied on to stand firm on his political beliefs . . .
João Eduardo was smiling sadly, in mute disagreement, thinking to himself that, despite his passion for Amélia, he had not been to confession for the last two years.
‘I’ve got proof,’ bawled Gustavo.
He cited a freethinker of his acquaintance who, in order to keep the peace at home, fasted on Fridays and raked the path to the chapel every Sunday . . .
‘And that’s what will happen to you! You have pretty sound ideas about religion, but one day I’ll see you in a red habit and carrying a candle in the Easter procession. Philosophy and atheism are cheap when you’re talking over billiards with the boys, but putting it into practice in the family, when you’ve got a pretty wife who’s religious too, that’s very difficult indeed. And that’s what will happen to you, if it isn’t happening already. You’ll throw your liberal convictions in the ash can and doff your hat to the confessor.’
João Eduardo turned scarlet with indignation. Even in the days of his happiness, when he was sure that Amélia was his, that accusation (which Gustavo only made in order to provoke an argument) would have scandalised him. But now when he had lost Amélia for having declared out loud, in a newspaper, his horror of priests! Now, with his heart broken, bereft of joy, precisely because of his liberal opinions!
‘It’s ironic that you should say that to me of all people,’ he said sombrely and bitterly.
Gustavo guffawed:
‘Why, I didn’t know you’d become a martyr to freedom!’
‘Don’t make fun of me, Gustavo, please,’ João Eduardo said, very shocked. ‘You don’t know what’s been happening. If you did, you wouldn’t say that . . .’
He then told him the story of the article in The District Voice, not mentioning that he had written it while aflame with jealousy, but presenting it instead as a pure affirmation of principles. And he pointed out to him that, at the time, he had been about to marry a very devout young woman from a household that saw more priests than the Cathedral sacristy.
‘And did you sign it?’ asked Gustavo, aghast at the revelation.
‘Dr Godinho didn’t want me to,’ João Eduardo said, blushing slightly.
‘And you tore them off a strip, did you?’
‘Oh, yes, I really went for them.’
In his enthusiasm, Gustavo yelled for ‘another bottle of red!’
He joyfully filled their glasses and drank a toast to João Eduardo.
‘I’d love to read it! Can I send it to the boys in Lisbon? What effect did it have?’
‘It caused an almighty scandal.’
‘They were furious!’
‘But how did they find out it was you?’
João Eduardo shrugged. Agostinho hadn’t told anyone. He suspected Godinho’s wife, who had found out from her husband and then passed it on to Father Silvério, her confessor, the one who lives in Rua das Teresas . . .
‘A big fat chap, looks as if he had dropsy?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘The brute!’ roared Gustavo furiously.
He now regarded João Eduardo with new respect, the João Eduardo who had been so unexpectedly revealed to him as a champion of free thought.
‘Drink, my friend, drink!’ he said, affectionately filling his glass, as if João Eduardo’s heroic effort on behalf of liberalism still required a great deal of encouragement, even several days after the event.
And what had happened? What had the inhabitants of Rua da Misericórdia had to say about it?
Touched by such intense interest, João Eduardo blurted out his secret. He even showed him Amélia’s letter which, poor thing, she had doubtless been driven to write in mortal terror of Hell, under pressure from the furious priests . . .
‘And here I am, Gustavo, a victim of events!’
He was indeed, and Gustavo regarded him with growing admiration. He was no longer shy little João Eduardo, Nunes’ clerk, the importunate suitor of Rua da Misericórdia, he was the victim of religious persecution. He was the first such victim Gustavo had seen, and he found João Eduardo suddenly interesting, even though he did not appear in the traditional poses of propaganda posters, tied to a post in the middle of a bonfire or fleeing with his terrified family, pursued by soldiers galloping out from the surrounding shadows. He secretly envied him that social honour. The boys in Alcântara would certainly be impressed. It was pretty clever too to be a victim of reactionary forces without being obliged to give up the pleasure of eating Osório’s fried liver and having your wages paid promptly each Saturday. But it was the priests’ behaviour that angered him most. In order to revenge themselves on a liberal, they had intrigued against him and taken his fiancée from him. What scoundrels! And forgetting his recent sarcastic remarks about Marriage and the Family, he fulminated against the clergy who always strive to ruin that perfect social institution of divine origins.
‘This calls for a truly fiercesome revenge! They must be crushed!’
Vengeance was precisely what João Eduardo thirsted after. But what form should it take?
‘Why, you should reveal everything in another forthright article in The District Voice!’
João Eduardo told him what Dr Godinho had said: from thenceforth The District Voice was closed to all freethinkers.
‘The ass!’ roared Gustavo.
But he had an idea, damn it! They would publish a pamphlet, a pamphlet of twenty pages, what in Brazil was called a ‘smear sheet’, written in an ornate style (he would take care of that) and which would fall upon the clergy like an avalanche of mortal truths.
João Eduardo warmed to the idea. Encouraged by Gustavo’s active sympathy for his plight, seeing in him a brother, he shared with him his last, most painful secrets. What lay at the bottom of the intrigue was Father Amaro’s passion for Amélia, and it was in order to get her that he had driven João Eduardo out . . . The enemy, the villain, the bully – was the priest.
Gustavo clutched his head; such a case (which, in the places where he worked, was pretty small beer) happening to a friend of his and to a fellow democrat who was sitting there before him drinking, seemed to him monstrous, on a par with the senile madness of Tiberius, who, in perfumed baths, violated the delicate flesh of patrician young men.
He could not believe it. João Eduardo provided him with more proof. And then Gustavo, whose lunch of fried liver had been drowned in vast amounts of red wine, raised two clenched fists and, with scarlet face and through gritted teeth, he roared out:
From the other side of the partition wall a mocking voice croaked a response:
‘Long live Pius IX!’
Gustavo got to his feet in order to punch the interloper, but João Eduardo restrained him. Gustavo meekly resumed his seat and drank down the last drop of wine in his glass.
Then, elbows on the table, face to face, the bottle between them, they discussed in low voices their plan for the pamphlet. Nothing could be easier; they would write it together. João Eduardo wanted to write it in the form of a novel with a dark plot, giving the parish priest all the vices and perversions of Caligula and Heliogabalus. Gustavo, however, preferred to take a philosophical angle as regards style and principles, which would demolish absolute Papal authority once and for all! He would take responsibility for printing it, in the evenings, and for free, of course. Then they foresaw a sudden problem.
‘Paper, how will we get the paper?’
It meant an expenditure of nine or ten mil réis, which neither of them had, nor did they have a friend who shared their principles and would advance them the amount.
‘Ask Nunes for an advance on your salary!’ Gustavo suggested brightly.
João Eduardo scratched his head disconsolately. He was imagining Nunes’ devout fury – as a member of the parish council and a friend of the precentor – when he read the pamphlet. And if he ever found out that his clerk had written it, using the office quills and the best office paper . . . He could see him now, apoplectic with rage, raising his vast body up onto the tips of his white shoes, and declaring shrilly: ‘Get out of here, you freemason, get out!’
‘Then I really would be in a mess,’ said João Eduardo, ‘no fiancée and no bread.’
This reminded Gustavo too of the certain anger of Dr Godinho, the owner of the printing press. For Dr Godinho, after his reconciliation with the personnel of Rua da Misericórdia, had publicly resumed his considerable position as pillar of the Church and protector of the Faith . . .
‘Damn it, it could cost us very dear,’ he said.
‘It’s impossible!’ said João Eduardo.
Then they both cursed roundly. Fancy losing an opportunity like that to expose the clergy for what they were!
Just as a fallen column seems larger than when erect, so their plan for a pamphlet, now that it was not to be, seemed to them of colossal size and importance. It was no longer a matter of demolishing one bad parish priest, it would have been the ruin, far and wide, of the clergy, of the Jesuits, of temporal power and of other terrible things. Damnation! If it wasn’t for Nunes, if it wasn’t for Godinho, if it wasn’t for the nine mil réis’ worth of paper . . .
Those perpetual obstacles to the poor, lack of money and dependence on an employer, which even prevented them from publishing a pamphlet, made them turn on society.
‘There has to be a revolution!’ declared Gustavo. ‘Everything must be torn down, everything!’ And his grand sweeping gesture over the table indicated, in one formidable act of social levelling, the destruction of churches, palaces, banks, barracks and buildings owned by the likes of Godinho. ‘Another bottle of red, Osório!’
But Osório did not appear. Gustavo hammered as hard as he could with his knife handle on the table. Furious, he was finally forced to go out to the bar ‘to puncture the belly of that traitor who dared keep a citizen waiting like that’.
He found Osório with his hat off, smiling radiantly and chatting to the Barão de Via-Clara, who, as the elections drew near, had descended on the local taverns to shake hands with his friends. And the Baron looked magnificent in his gold-rimmed spectacles and his patent leather shoes, as he stood there on the tavern’s dirt floor, choking slightly at the acrid smell of boiled oil and sedimented wine.
When he saw him, Gustavo withdrew discreetly into the cubicle.
Finding João Eduardo in despair, his head in his hands, Gustavo called on him not to weaken. What did it matter? He had, after all, escaped marriage to a religious zealot . . .
‘But I want revenge on that villain!’ burst out João Eduardo, pushing his plate away from him.
‘Don’t you worry,’ promised Gustavo solemnly, ‘revenge cannot be far off!’
In a low voice he told him of ‘things being planned in Lisbon’. He had been told of the existence of a republican club whose membership included some very important people – that was in itself, he felt, a guarantee of triumph. The workers were also taking action . . . He himself – and he was so close to João Eduardo, who was now sprawled on the table, that his breath almost touched his face – had been chosen to join a section of the International that a Spaniard in Madrid was organizing; he had never actually seen the Spaniard, who went about in disguise because of the police, and the thing had failed because of a lack of funds . . . But there was a man who owned a butcher’s shop who had promised them a hundred mil réis . . . The army was in on it too: a chap with a big belly had been seen at a meeting and he’d been told on good authority that the man was a Major, and he certainly looked the part . . . All in all, taking all these elements into account, Gustavo was of the opinion that, within a matter of months, the government, the king, the aristocracy, the capitalists, the bishops and all those other monsters would be blown sky high!
‘And then we will be like little kings, my lad! Godinho, Nunes, the whole pack of them will be clapped in jail. I’ll throw Godinho in there myself. We’ll beat the priests into submission. And the people will at last be able to breathe freely!’
‘Yes, but until that happens . . .’ sighed João Eduardo, who was thinking bitterly that by the time the revolution arrived it would be too late to get Amélia back . . .
Osório came into the cubicle with a bottle of wine.
‘And about time too, my noble sir!’ said Gustavo sarcastically.
‘I may not belong to the same class, but at least they treat me with respect,’ Osório retorted, and his satisfaction seemed to make his belly swell.
‘What, for half a dozen votes?’
‘Eighteen in the parish and with hopes for nineteen. Can I get you gentlemen anything else? No? Well, never mind. Drink up!’
And he drew the curtain, leaving the two friends sitting before a full bottle of wine, dreaming of a revolution that would allow one of them to see Miss Amélia again and the other to give Dr Godinho a good drubbing.
It was nearly five o’clock when they finally left the cubicle. Osório, who took an interest in them because they were educated fellows, noticed at once, from the corner of the bar where he was poring over his newspaper, that they were both a bit tipsy, especially João Eduardo, with his hat pulled down and a scowl on his face: a man who couldn’t hold his drink, thought Osório, who did not know him well. But Gustavo, after his three litres of wine, was his usual jubilant self. A great lad! He was the one who was paying the bill and so he swayed over to the bar and clapped his two coins down on the bar.
‘Stick that in your coffers, Fatso!’
‘What a pity there are only two of them, Senhor Gustavo.’
‘Ah, you rascal! Do you imagine that the sweat of the people and their hard-earned cash is intended to fill the bellies of Philistines? Make sure you don’t lose them. For come the great settling of accounts, the man who will have the honour of piercing that great stomach of yours is Bibi here . . . Yes, I am Bibi . . . I am Bibi! Tell them, Joao, tell them who Bibi is . . .’
But João Eduardo wasn’t listening; with an angry frown on his face, he was mistrustfully eyeing a drunk seated before an empty litre bottle of wine at a table at the rear; with his chin resting on the palm of one hand and his pipe between his teeth, he was staring at the two friends open-mouthed.
Gustavo dragged João over to the bar.
‘Tell Osório here who Bibi is. Who is Bibi? Take a good look at this lad, Osório. The boy’s got talent and he’s one of the best. I’ll tell you something. He could put a stop to absolute Papal authority with just two strokes of his quill. He’s one of us! And we’re friends for life, we are! Stop working out the bill, my fat friend, and listen to what I’m saying. He’s one of the best. And if he should ever come back here and want two litres of wine on credit, be sure to give it to him . . . Bibi here will take care of everything.’
‘Right,’ began Osório, ‘so it was two fried livers, two salads . . .’
But the drunk had managed to heave himself up from his bench, and, pipe in mouth, belching loudly, he came and stood unsteadily in front of Gustavo and held out his hand.
Gustavo looked down at him with some distaste.
‘What do you want? I bet it was you who shouted out: “Long live Pius IX” a while ago. You traitor . . . Remove your hand!’
Finding himself rejected, the drunk merely grunted, and bumping into João Eduardo, offered him his outstretched hand instead.
‘Go away, you brute!’ said João Eduardo roughly.
‘Just wanna be friends . . .’ mumbled the drunk.
And he did not go away, but stood there still proffering his five fingers and filling the air with his foul breath.
Furious, João Eduardo pushed him hard against the bar.
‘Now, I’ll have no fist-fights in here!’ exclaimed Osório sternly. ‘I want no violence.’
‘Well, he should leave me alone, then,’ growled João Eduardo. ‘I’ll do the same to you if you don’t watch it . . .’
‘Anyone who doesn’t behave himself will be thrown out,’ said Osório very gravely.
‘Who’s going to be thrown out?’ João Eduardo roared, drawing himself up and shaking his fist. ‘Go on, tell me, who? Who do you think you’re talking to?’
Osório did not reply; he was leaning on the bar, revealing the two enormous arms which ensured that his tavern remained a peaceful place.
Gustavo took charge and placed himself between them, declaring that they should both behave like gentlemen. This was no time for arguments and harsh words. It was all right to make fun and to joke with your friends, but always in a gentlemanly fashion. And, after all, they were all of them gentlemen.
He dragged a grumbling, resentful João Eduardo off into a corner.
‘Come on, João!’ he said, gesticulating wildly, ‘that’s no way for an educated man to behave!’
Manners must be maintained! Impulsive, drunken behaviour meant an end to jollity, society and fraternity.
He turned to Osório, speaking to him nervously over his shoulder:
‘I’ll answer for him, Osório. He’s a gentleman, but he’s had a few upsets lately and he’s not used to drinking, that’s all it is! But he’s one of the best . . . really. Please accept my apologies on his behalf.’
He led João Eduardo back to the bar and persuaded him to shake Osório’s hand. Osório declared warmly that he had not wanted to insult him. They shook hands vehemently. To consolidate their reconciliation, Gustavo ordered three white rums. João Eduardo, in a generous mood, ordered a round of brandies too. And with the drinks lined up on the bar, they exchanged friendly words and addressed each other as ‘gentleman’. Meanwhile, forgotten in his corner, sprawled on the table, head on his fists, nose pressed against the wine bottle, the drunk was quietly dribbling, his pipe still clenched between his teeth.
‘That’s what I like to see!’ said Gustavo, whom the brandy had made maudlin. ‘Harmony! I just love harmony. Harmony amongst friends and amongst all humanity. I’d like to see the whole human race sit down to a banquet, with no guns, but with plenty of jokes, and make decisions together on all the important social questions. And that day is not far off, Osório. They’re preparing for it right now in Lisbon. And Osório will supply the wine! A nice little deal, eh? You have to admit I’m a good friend.’
‘Thank you, Senhor Gustavo, thank you . . .’
‘That’s just between you and me, eh, gentlemen’s agreement and all that. And as for him,’ he embraced João Eduardo, ‘he’s like a brother to me! Friends for life, we are! Enough of being sad, boy. We’ve got that pamphlet to write. Godinho and Nunes . . .’
‘That Nunes, just let me at him!’ yelled João Eduardo who, after drinking the rum toasts, seemed in a more sombre mood.
Two soldiers came in, and Gustavo judged that it was time he was getting back to the printing press. Otherwise, they’d be there all day, for the rest of their lives! But work is duty, work is virtue.
After shaking hands once more with Osório, they finally left. At the door, Gustavo again swore his brotherly loyalty to João Eduardo, made a gift to him of his tobacco pouch, then, hat pushed back on his head, he disappeared round the corner, singing ‘The Hymn to Work’.
Left alone, João Eduardo immediately set off to Rua da Misericórdia. When he reached São Joaneira’s door, he carefully stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe, then tugged fiercely at the rope on the door bell.
Ruça came running down.
‘Where’s Amélia? I want to talk to her.’
‘The ladies have gone out,’ said Ruça, alarmed by Senhor João’s manner.
‘You’re lying, you hussy!’
Terrified, the girl slammed the door shut.
João Eduardo went and leaned against the wall opposite, arms folded, watching the house; the windows were closed, as were the curtains; two of the Canon’s snuff handkerchiefs were drying on the balcony.
He returned to the front door and knocked gently this time. Then he again rang the bell furiously. No one came, and so he stalked off to the Cathedral.
As he emerged into the square in front of the church, he stopped and looked around him, frowning; but the square seemed empty; a small boy sitting on the front step outside Carlos’ pharmacy was holding the bridle of a mule laden with grass; chickens wandered about here and there pecking voraciously at the ground; the door of the church was closed, and all one could hear was the sound of hammering from a nearby house undergoing renovations.
João Eduardo was just about to walk on down to the Alameda when, from the sacristy side of the church appeared Father Silvério and Father Amaro, engaged in quiet conversation.
The clock struck the quarter hour, and Father Silvério paused to check his watch. Then the two priests both looked knowingly up at the administrator’s open window, where, in the shadows, they could make out the figure of the administrator with his binoculars trained on the house of Teles the tailor. They went down the Cathedral steps, shoulder to shoulder, laughing, amused by that passion which was the talk of Leiria.
Just then Father Amaro saw João Eduardo standing in the middle of the square. He turned, doubtless intending to go back into the Cathedral in order to avoid the encounter, but seeing that the door was shut, he decided to continue on, eyes lowered, beside Father Silvério, who was calmly taking out his box of snuff. Without a word, João Eduardo leaped forward and dealt Father Amaro a forceful blow on the shoulder.
Stunned, Father Amaro feebly brandished his umbrella.
‘Help!’ shouted Father Silvério, stepping back, his arms in the air. ‘Help!’
A man came running over from the municipal council offices and grabbed João Eduardo’s collar.
‘I’ve got him!’ he roared. ‘I’ve got him!’
‘Help! Help!’ shouted Father Silvério from a safe distance.
Windows round the square were flung open. A startled Amparo wearing a white petticoat appeared on the balcony above the pharmacy; Carlos, still in his slippers, rushed out from his laboratory; and the administrator gesticulated from his window, binoculars in hand.
Then Domingos, the notary, emerged from the municipal council building, looking very sombre, still with his oversleeves on, and he and a policeman led a pale, unresisting João Eduardo back into the office.
Carlos was quick to usher Father Amaro into the pharmacy; he made a great fuss about mixing up some orange flower and ether, shouted up to his wife to prepare a bed . . . He wanted to examine Father Amaro’s shoulder, was there any swelling?
‘Thank you, it’s nothing,’ said Amaro, who was very white. ‘It’s nothing, just a scratch. A drink of water will be fine . . .’
Amparo, however, thought a glass of port would do him more good, and she ran upstairs to fetch it, saying repeatedly ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’, tripping over the children who were clinging to her skirts, and explaining on the stairs to the maid that someone had tried to kill the parish priest!
People had gathered round the pharmacy door to gawp; one of the carpenters who was working nearby said that it had definitely been a knife attack; and an old lady at the back was pushing and shoving and craning her neck in order to see the blood. Finally, at the request of Father Amaro, who feared a scandal, Carlos went over to the door and said majestically that he did not want a riot outside his premises. Father Amaro was feeling better. It had merely been a punch, a scratch . . . He would take care of him.
And when the mule outside began to bray, Carlos turned indignantly to the small boy looking after it and said:
‘Aren’t you ashamed after a distressing incident like this – distressing for the whole town – to be sitting there with a creature that does nothing but bray? Go away, you insolent boy, go away!’
He advised the two priests to go upstairs to the sitting room, away from ‘the prying eyes of the populace’. And Amparo soon appeared with two glasses of port, one for Father Amaro, the other for Father Silvério, who flopped down on one end of the sofa, still terrified and emotionally exhausted.
‘I’m fifty-five years old,’ he said, having drained the last drop of port from his glass, ‘and this is the first time I have ever been involved in a fracas.’
Father Amaro, who was feeling calmer now, put on a brave front and said jokingly to Father Silvério:
‘Oh, it wasn’t such a tragedy, my friend . . . And I don’t know about it being your first time either . . . Everyone knows that once you came to blows with Father Natário.’
‘Ah, yes,’ exclaimed Silvério, ‘but that was between priests, my friend!’
Amparo, who was still shaking, refilled Father Amaro’s glass and wanted to know ‘the details, all the details’.
‘There are no details, Senhora, I was walking along with my colleague, chatting, and the man came over to me, caught me unawares, and punched me on the shoulder.’
‘But why? Why?’ exclaimed Amparo, clasping her hands in amazement.
Then Carlos gave his opinion. Only a matter of days ago, he had said, in the presence of Amparo and Dona Josefa, the excellent Canon Dias’ sister, that all these materialistic, atheistic ideas were leading young people to dangerous extremes . . . Little had he known then how prophetic his words would prove to be!
‘Look at this young man, for example! He begins by forgetting all Christian duty (so Dona Josefa told us), he associates with ne’er-do-wells, he sits in bars and makes fun of dogma, he publishes abject attacks on religion in the newspapers . . . Finally, in an atheistic rage, at the very doors of the Cathedral, he hurls himself upon an exemplary priest (and I’m not just saying that because you’re here, Father) and tries to murder him! Now what, I ask, lies at the bottom of all this? Hatred, pure hatred for the religion of our fathers!’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s the truth of the matter,’ sighed Father Silvério.
But Amparo, who was indifferent to the philosophical causes of the crime, was burning with curiosity to know what would be going on at the municipal council buildings, what João Eduardo would say, whether they would have put him in irons . . . Carlos immediately offered to go and find out.
Besides, he said, it was his duty as a man of science to explain to the magistrate the possible consequences of a blow to the delicate clavicle area (although, God be praised, there appeared to have been no fracture or swelling), and he wanted, above all, to assure the authorities, so that they could take appropriate action, that the attempted beating was not an act of personal revenge. What could Father Amaro possibly have done to Nunes’ clerk? It was the result of a vast conspiracy of atheists and republicans against the priesthood of Christ!
‘Seconded! Seconded!’ said the two priests gravely.
‘And that is what I intend to prove to the administrator.’
In his zeal as indignant conservative, he was about to set off in the slippers and jacket he wore in the laboratory, but Amparo caught up with him in the corridor.
‘At least put your frock coat on; you know how formal the administrator is!’
She herself helped him on with it, while Carlos, his imagination working furiously (that wretched imagination of his which, as he himself said, often gave him headaches), prepared his statement, which would cause an enormous stir in the town. He would stand up to speak. The room in the municipal council building would be crammed with the paraphernalia of justice; the administrator would be sitting gravely at his desk, the personification of Order; around him would be the amanuenses busy with official papers; and the prisoner would be standing opposite them in the traditional attitude of all political prisoners, arms folded, head held high, defying death. Then he, Carlos, would enter and say to the administrator: ‘I have come here spontaneously to place myself at the service of social justice!’
‘I will prove to them, with an iron logic, that it is all the result of a rationalist conspiracy. You may depend upon it, Amparo, that it is all a rationalist conspiracy,’ he said, with a little groan, as he pulled on his high boots.
‘And see if he says anything about Amélia or São Joaneira . . .’
‘I’ll take notes. But this has nothing to do with São Joaneira. This is a purely political trial.’
He strode majestically across the square, convinced that all the neighbours would be at their doors, murmuring: ‘There goes Carlos to make his statement.’ Yes, he was going to make a statement, but not about the blow to Father Amaro’s shoulder. What did that matter? What mattered was what lay behind the blow – a conspiracy against Order, the Church, the Constitution and Property! That is what he would prove to the administrator. That blow, sir, is the first violent expression of a great social revolution!
And pushing open the baize door that led into the council offices, he stood for a moment grasping the handle, filling the doorway with the magnificence of his person. Alas, there was none of the paraphernalia of justice he had imagined. There was the prisoner, poor João Eduardo, but he was sitting on the edge of a bench, staring stupidly at the floor, his ears bright red. Artur Couceiro, in order not to look at João Eduardo, had his nose in a vast register of official letters on which he had spread out yesterday’s evening paper, deeply embarrassed by the presence on the prisoner’s bench of that fellow frequenter of evenings at São Joaneira’s house. The amanuensis, Pires, eyebrows anxiously raised, was absorbed in sharpening his quill pen with his fingernail. The notary Domingos, on the other hand, positively buzzed with activity. He was scribbling furiously; the trial was obviously moving on apace. It was time for Carlos to introduce his idea . . . He stepped forward.
‘Gentlemen, is the administrator available?’
At precisely that moment, the administrator called from inside his office.
‘Senhor Domingos!’
The notary stood to attention, placing his spectacles on top of his head.
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Have you got any matches?’
Domingos searched frantically in his pocket, in the drawer, amongst his papers . . .
‘Have any of you gentlemen got any matches?’
Various hands scrabbled over desks. No, there were no matches.
‘Senhor Carlos, have you got any matches?’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t, Senhor Domingos.’
Then the administrator himself appeared, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses.
‘So no one has any matches, eh? Why are there never any matches here? An office like this and no matches . . . What do you do with them? Go out and buy half a dozen boxes.’
The employees exchanged concerned glances at this flagrant lack of essential office apparatus. And Carlos, taking advantage of the administrator’s presence and attention, said:
‘Sir, I have come here . . . I have come here spontaneously, out of a genuine concern you might say . . .’
‘Tell me something, Senhor Carlos,’ the administrator said, interrupting him. ‘Are the two priests still in your shop?’
‘Father Amaro and Father Silvério remained with my wife in order to recover from the distressing . . .’
‘Would you be kind enough to tell them that they are needed here.’
‘I am, of course, at the disposal of the law.’
‘Tell them to come as soon as possible. It’s half past five, and we want to go home. It’s been like this all day, just one thing after another! We’re supposed to close at three!’
And with that, he turned on his heel and went out onto the balcony in his office – the same balcony on which, every day, between eleven and three, he defiled Teles’ wife with his gaze, all the while twirling his blond moustaches and smoothing his blue cravat.
Carlos was already opening the baize door when a ‘Pst’ from Domingos stopped him.
‘Oh, Carlos,’ he said, and there was something touchingly supplicatory about the little smile he gave, ‘forgive me, but would you mind bringing back a box of matches too?’
At that moment, Father Amaro appeared at the door, and behind him came the enormous bulk of Father Silvério.
‘I wish to speak to the administrator in private,’ said Amaro.
All the employees stood up, as did João Eduardo, whose face was as white as the whitewashed wall. Father Amaro crossed the office with subtle, ecclesiastical steps, followed by Silvério, who, as he passed the prisoner, made an oblique, cautious, semicircular gesture, as if fearfully warding him off; the administrator came out to greet the priests, and his office door closed discreetly behind them.
‘There’s some compromise afoot,’ muttered the worldly-wise Domingos, winking at his colleagues.
Carlos sat down glumly. He had gone there to enlighten the authorities on the social dangers threatening Leiria, the Province and Society as a whole in order to play his part in that trial which he believed to be a political trial, and yet there he was silent, forgotten, sitting next to the prisoner on the bench. They had not even offered him a chair. It would be absolutely intolerable if the parish priest and the administrator reached some agreement without consulting him! For he was the only one who had seen in that blow to the priest’s shoulder not the clerk’s fist, but the hand of rationalism. This disdain for his perceptions seemed to him a grave error on the part of the municipal council. The administrator clearly lacked the ability to save Leiria from the dangers of revolution! The gossip in the arcade was quite right – the man was a nincumpoop!
The door opened a crack to reveal the administrator’s glittering glasses.
‘Senhor Domingos, would you mind coming in?’ he said.
The notary bustled importantly over, and the door was once more discreetly closed. Ah, how that door, as it closed in his face, leaving him outside, how it angered Carlos! There he sat with Pires, with Artur, amongst those subaltern intellects, he who had promised his Amparozinho that he would speak plainly to the administrator. And who had the administrator’s ear, who was called? Domingos, an utter dimwit, who spelled ‘satisfaction’ with a ‘ph’ in the middle. And what could one expect of a man who spent his mornings, binoculars in hand, dishonouring a family? Poor Teles, his neighbour and friend. Yes, he really ought to speak to Teles.
But his indignation only grew the more when he saw Artur Couceiro, an office employee, in the absence of his boss, get up from his desk and walk familiarly over to the prisoner and say to him sadly:
‘Oh, João, what were you thinking of? But don’t worry, things will work out, you’ll see.’
João Eduardo gloomily shrugged his shoulders. He had been there for half an hour, sitting on the edge of that bench, not moving, not taking his eyes off the floor, feeling as empty of ideas as if his entire brain had been removed. All the wine, which, in Osório’s tavern and in the Cathedral square, had lit flames of anger in his soul and filled his pulses with a desire for violence, seemed to have been suddenly eliminated from his organism. He felt now as harmless as when he sat carefully sharpening his quill in the office. He was overwhelmed by a great weariness, and there he waited on the bench, physically and mentally inert, thinking dully that he would be sent to a prison cell in São Francisco, sleep in a straw cape, eat at the poorhouse . . . He would never again walk by the river nor ever see Amélia . . . The little house he lived in would be rented out to someone else . . . And who would take care of his canary? Poor thing, it would probably die of hunger. Unless Eugénia, his neighbour, took it in . . .
Suddenly, Domingos emerged from the administrator’s office and, rapidly closing the door behind him, declared triumphantly:
‘What did I say? A compromise! Everything’s been sorted out.’
And to João Eduardo:
‘You lucky so-and-so! Congratulations!’
Carlos thought that this was the greatest administrative scandal since the days of the Cabrals! And he was just about to retire in high dudgeon (like the Stoic, in the classical painting, leaving a patrician orgy), when the administrator opened the door of his office. Everyone stood up.
His Excellency stepped out into the office and, very gravely, weighing every word, his glasses fixed on the prisoner, said:
‘Father Amaro, who is the kindest and most charitable of priests, came to tell me . . . that is, he came to ask me to take this matter no further. He, understandably, does not wish his name to be dragged through the courts. Besides, as Father Amaro so rightly said, his religion, of which, I may say, he is a most honourable example, preaches the forgiveness of all wrongs . . . He recognises that, although brutal, the attack came to nothing. It seems too that you were drunk.’
All eyes fixed on João Eduardo, who blushed scarlet. This, it seemed to him, was infinitely worse than prison.
‘Anyway,’ the administrator went on, ‘having considered the matter carefully, I hereby release you. Make sure you behave yourself now. We’ll have our eye on you. Off you go.’
And the administrator withdrew into his office. João Eduardo seemed too stunned to move.
‘C-can I go, then?’ he stammered.
‘You can go to China, wherever you want! Liberus, libera, liberum!’ exclaimed Domingos, who hated priests and was delighted with the outcome.
João Eduardo looked around at the other employees, at the frowning Carlos; his eyes brimmed with tears, then he picked up his hat and left.
‘Well, that saves a lot of work!’ said Domingos, gleefully rubbing his hands.
The necessary paperwork was hastily patched together. After all, it was late. Pires took off his oversleeves and put away his aircushion. Artur rolled up his sheet music. Standing sulkily at the window, Carlos stared sombrely out at the square.
At last, the two priests left, accompanied to the door by the administrator, who, now that his public duties were over, was once more the man of society. Why had friend Silvério not been to the Baronesa de Via-Clara’s house lately? They had had the most furious game of ombre! Peixoto lost twice. How the man cursed! Your servant, gentlemen. I’m so glad that everything has been sorted out. Mind the step, now.
However, when he was returning to his office, he deigned to pause by Domingos’ desk and, growing solemn again, said:
‘Things worked out well. It’s slightly irregular, but sensible. There are quite enough attacks on the clergy in the press without this kind of thing . . . It could have caused a great scandal. The lad could have said that he was jealous of Father Amaro, that he was trying to lead the girl astray, etc. It’s much better to hush things up. Especially since, as Father Amaro told me, the only influence he has had in Rua da Misericórdia or wherever has been in freeing the girl from marrying that lad, who, as we see, is a drunk and a bully!’
Carlos was in torment. All these explanations were addressed to Domingos. And to him, not a word! There he stood, forgotten by the window.
But no! The administrator was beckoning to him mysteriously from inside his office.
At last! He rushed radiantly in, suddenly reconciled with the administrator.
‘I was going to drop in at the pharmacy,’ the administrator said quietly and, with no further ado, handed him a folded piece of paper, ‘to get you to send this round to my house later today. It’s a prescription from Dr Gouveia. But since you’re here . . .’
‘I came in order to make a statement . . .’
‘Oh, that’s all over with!’ said the administrator briskly. ‘Don’t forget now, send that round to me before six. I have to take it tonight. Goodbye. And don’t forget.’
‘I won’t,’ said Carlos sharply.
As he walked into the pharmacy, he was ablaze with anger. He would send a furious letter to the newspaper, or his name wasn’t Carlos! But Amparo, who had spied his return from the balcony, ran down to him, full of questions.
‘So what happened? Did they let the lad go? What did he say? What was it like?’
Carlos looked at her with fire in his eyes.
‘Through no fault of mine, materialism triumphed. But they’ll pay for it!’
‘But what did you say?’
Seeing Amparo and his assistant wide-eyed and eager to devour every word of his statement, Carlos, needing to salvage his dignity as husband and his superiority as employer, said laconically:
‘I merely made my views clear.’
‘And what did the administrator say?’
It was then that Carlos remembered the crumpled prescription in his hand and read it. He was struck dumb with indignation; that piece of paper was all he had got from his great interview with the administrator!
‘What’s that?’ asked Amparo urgently.
What was it, indeed? In his rage, and throwing confidentiality and the good name of the administrator to the winds, he exclaimed:
‘It’s a prescription for a bottle of Gibert’s syrup for the administrator. There’s the prescription, Senhor Augusto!’
Amparo, who had some experience in the pharmacy and knew what mercury was used for, turned as red as the gaudy ribbons adorning her false topknot.
All that evening, the town buzzed with talk of the ‘attempt on Father Amaro’s life’. Some people criticised the administrator for taking the matter no further, especially the gentlemen of the opposition, who saw in the weakness of that particular civil servant incontestable proof that the government, with its profligacy and its corruption, was leading the country into the abyss.
Father Amaro, though, was admired as a saint. What piety! What gentleness! The precentor sent for him at dusk and received him paternally with a ‘Greetings, my paschal lamb!’ And having heard the story of the attack and of his generous intervention . . .
‘My son,’ he exclaimed, ‘you combine the youth of Telemachus and the prudence of Mentor! Father Amaro, you would have been worthy to be a priest of Minerva in the city of Salento!’
When Amaro went to São Joaneira’s house that night, he did so as if he were a saint who had survived the wild beasts in the Roman circus or Diocletian’s plebs! Amélia made no attempt to disguise her joy and, trembling, she clutched his hands in hers for a long time, her eyes wet with tears. As in happy former days, they gave him the Canon’s green armchair to sit in. Dona Maria da Assunção even tried to give him a cushion to rest his bruised shoulder on. Then he had to give a detailed description of the scene, from the moment when, as he was chatting to Father Silvério (who had acquitted himself very well), he had seen the clerk in the middle of the square, brandishing his walking stick with the air of a bullyboy.
These details angered the ladies. The clerk seemed to them worse than Longinus or Pilate. The wretch! Father Amaro should have trampled him under foot! What a saint he was to have forgiven him!
‘I did as my heart bade me,’ he said, lowering his eyes. ‘I remembered the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He tells us that if someone smites us on our right cheek, we should turn to him the other also.’
The Canon coughed loudly and remarked:
‘I’ll tell you something, if someone smote me on my right cheek . . . But those are the orders of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and I would, of course, offer my left cheek. Orders from above! But after I’d done my duty as a priest, ladies, I’d thrash the rascal!’
‘Did it hurt very much, Father?’ a faint and unfamiliar voice asked from the corner.
An extraordinary event! Dona Ana Gansoso had spoken after ten long years of somnolent taciturnity! The torpor that had remained unshaken by parties or funerals was not, after all, devoid of human feeling and had been broken at last by sympathy for Father Amaro. All the women smiled at him gratefully, and Amaro, flattered, responded kindly:
‘Scarcely at all, Dona Ana, scarcely at all, Senhora. Not that he didn’t hit me hard, mind. But I’m made of sterner stuff than that.’
‘The monster!’ cried Dona Josefa Dias, enraged at the idea of the clerk’s fist unleashed against that saintly shoulder. ‘The monster! I would like to see him clapped in irons and set to building roads! I knew what he was like. I was never taken in by him. I always thought he had the face of a murderer!’
‘He was drunk, and you know what men are like when they’ve been drinking . . .’ observed São Joaneira timidly.
There was uproar at this. She must not find excuses for him. It was almost sacrilege to do so. The man was an animal, an animal!
And there was exultation when Artur Couceiro turned up and immediately gave them the latest news: Nunes had sent for João Eduardo and had said to him (and these were his exact words): ‘I won’t have thugs or criminals working in my office, so get out!’
São Joaneira was moved to sympathy.
‘The poor boy won’t have anything to eat . . .’
‘Well, let him drink, then, let him drink!’ shouted Dona Maria da Assunção.
Everyone laughed. Only Amélia, bent over her sewing, turned very pale, terrified at the thought that João Eduardo might starve.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t consider it a laughing matter!’ said São Joaneira. ‘I won’t be able to sleep for thinking about the boy having nothing to eat . . . Oh, no, it’s not right. Forgive me, Father Amaro, but . . .’
But Father Amaro did not wish poverty on the boy either. He wasn’t a man to bear a grudge. And if the clerk came to his door in need, he would give him some money (not much, because he wasn’t rich), but he would gladly give him something.
Such saintliness drove the women wild. What an angel! They gazed on him adoringly, their hands almost raised in prayer. His presence, like that of a St Vincent de Paul, exuding charity, gave the room a chapel-like sweetness, and Dona Maria da Assunção sighed with devout pleasure.
Then Natário appeared, looking radiant. He first vigorously shook everyone’s hand, then burst out in triumph:
‘You’ve heard then? The scoundrel and murderer has been driven away like a dog! Nunes has thrown him out, and Dr Godinho told me just now that he won’t let him set foot in the district government offices. So that’s him, dead and buried! It’s a relief to all decent people!’
‘And we owe it all to you, Father Natário!’ cried Dona Josefa Dias.
Everyone agreed. It had been his skill and cunning that had uncovered João Eduardo’s treachery and saved Amélia, Leiria and Society.
‘Whichever way the scoundrel turns, I’ll be there to block his path. I won’t let go of him as long as he’s in Leiria. What did I tell you, ladies? I said I would crush him and I have!’
His sallow face glowed. He leaned back in his armchair, taking a much-deserved rest after a difficult victory. Then turning to Amélia, he said:
‘Anyway, what’s done is done. All I can say is that you’ve rid yourself of an utter scoundrel!’
Then the congratulatory comments – which had been repeated over and over at length ever since she broke off her engagement to ‘the scoundrel’ – began with renewed enthusiasm.
‘It was the most virtuous thing you’ve done in your whole life!’
‘You were touched by the grace of God!’
‘You’re in a state of grace, child!’
‘Oh, so it’s St Amélia now, is it?’ said the Canon, getting up, bored with all this glorification. ‘I think we’ve talked about the scoundrel long enough. What about ordering the tea, eh?’
Amélia had said nothing, but was sewing rapidly, occasionally glancing anxiously up at Amaro; she was thinking about João Eduardo and about Natário’s threats; and she imagined João Eduardo gaunt with hunger, exiled, sleeping in doorways . . . And while the ladies were settling around the tea table, chatting, she managed to say quietly to Amaro:
‘I can’t bear the idea of him suffering. I know he’s acted wrongly, but . . . It’s like a thorn inside me. It makes me unhappy just to think of it.’
Father Amaro, revealing himself to be superior to the injury inflicted, said very kindly and in a lofty spirit of Christian charity:
‘My dear child, that’s nonsense. The man won’t die of hunger. No one dies of hunger in Portugal. He’s a healthy young man and not unintelligent; he’ll sort something out for himself. Don’t worry about it. That’s just bluster on Father Natário’s part. The man is sure to leave Leiria, and then we’ll hear no more about him. He’ll find a job somewhere. As for me, I’ve forgiven him and I’m sure God will bear that in mind.’
These generous words spoken in a low voice and accompanied by a loving look succeeded in reassuring her completely. Father Amaro’s clemency and charity seemed to her better than anything she had heard or read about in the lives of saints and pious monks.
After tea, over lotto, she sat next to him. She felt suffused by a sense of delicious happiness. Everything that had bothered and frightened her up until then: João Eduardo, marriage, duty, had finally disappeared from her life. João Eduardo would go away and find a job somewhere, and Father Amaro was there, entirely hers, utterly in love with her. Sometimes, beneath the table, their knees would tremulously touch; at one point, everyone protested loudly against Artur Couceiro, who had won for the third time running and was brandishing his winning card, and their hands met caressingly; their chests lifted with a slight simultaneous sigh, drowned out by the old ladies’ cackling; and they sat out the rest of the night, silently marking their cards, their faces ablaze, under the terrible pressure of a shared desire.
While the ladies were putting on their coats, Amélia went over to the piano and ran her fingers over the keys, and Amaro managed to murmur in her ear:
‘Oh, my dear, I love you so much . . . if only we could be alone together . . .’
She was about to reply when Natário, who was standing by the sideboard putting on his cloak, said in harsh, booming tones:
‘Why, I’m surprised you ladies allow such a book in the house!’
Surprised, everyone turned to look at the large bound volume that Natário was pointing at with the tip of his umbrella, as if at something truly abominable. Eyes glinting, Dona Maria da Assunção immediately came closer, imagining that it must be one of those novels she had heard about, describing immoral goings-on. Amélia joined her and, amazed at Natário’s reproving words, said:
‘But it’s a copy of Panorama, it’s an educational magazine . . .’
‘I can see that,’ said Natário sharply. ‘But I can see this too.’ And he opened the volume at the first blank page and read out loud: ‘“This book belongs to me, João Eduardo Barbosa, and helps to fill my leisure hours.” You don’t understand, do you? It’s quite simple really. You obviously don’t realise that ever since that man laid hands on a priest, he is ipso facto excommunicated, as are all the things that belong to him.’
The women instinctively drew back from the sideboard on which the fatal copy of Panorama lay open, huddling together with a shudder of fear at the idea of excommunication, which they imagined to be an unleashing of catastrophes, a shower of thunderbolts hurled from the hands of a vengeful God; and there they stood, dumbstruck, in a terrified semicircle around Natário, who, with his cloak over his shoulders and his arms folded, was enjoying the effect of his revelation.
Then São Joaneira, despite her fear, ventured to ask:
‘Are you serious, Father Natário?’
Natário grew indignant:
‘Am I serious? Please, São Joaneira! Would I joke about a case of excommunication, Senhora? Ask the Canon if I’m joking.’
All eyes turned on the Canon, that inexhaustible fount of all ecclesiastical knowledge.
Adopting the pedagogical air of his seminary days, which he always adopted when he spoke of doctrinal matters, he declared that Natário was absolutely right. Anyone who struck a priest, knowing that he was a priest, was ipso facto excommunicated. It is accepted doctrine. It is what is called automatic excommunication; it does not require a declaration from the Pope or from the bishop nor any ceremony for it to be considered valid and for all the faithful to consider the offender as excommunicated. They should, therefore, treat him as such, avoiding him and everything that belongs to him. Indeed, the Canon continued in sombre tones, this matter of laying sacrilegious hands on a priest was considered so special that the bull issued by Pope Martin V, which was intended to limit the number of cases of tacit excommunication, preserves it for anyone ill-treating a priest. He cited further papal bulls, the Constitutions of Innocence IX and of Alexander VII, the Apostolic Constitution, and other terrifying bits of legislation; he muttered Latin phrases that struck fear into the ladies’ hearts.
‘That is doctrine,’ he concluded, ‘but I think it might be best not to make too much of a fuss about it . . .’
Dona Josefa Dias said at once:
‘But we cannot put our souls at risk by coming across excommunicated objects on the tops of tables.’
‘We must destroy them!’ exclaimed Dona Maria da Assunção. ‘We must burn them, burn them!’
Dona Joaquina Gansoso dragged Amélia over to the window, asking if she had anything else belonging to the man. Amélia, confused, said that somewhere, though she couldn’t quite remember where, she did have a handkerchief, a single glove and a raffia cigarette case.
‘Onto the fire with them!’ shouted Dona Joaquina, greatly agitated.
The room echoed now with the shrill cries of the women, in the grip of a holy fury. Dona Josefa Dias and Dona Maria da Assunção, filled by an inquisitorial desire for an act of devout extermination, spoke eagerly about ‘the fire’, rolling the words around in their mouths. Amélia and Dona Joaquina were in Amélia’s bedroom hunting through drawers, through underwear, ribbons and bloomers for the ‘excommunicated items’. And São Joaneira was a frightened and astonished witness to this call for an auto-da-fé that had suddenly rung out in her own peaceful living room, and she clung to the Canon, who, after muttering something about ‘a private Inquisition’, had sunk back comfortably into his armchair.
‘I just want to make them aware that no one who shows disrespect for a priest goes unpunished,’ said Natário quietly to Amaro.
Amaro nodded silently, contented with that pious rage which was the noisy affirmation of the ladies’ love for him.
But Dona Josefa was growing impatient. She was holding the copy of Panorama with the corners of her shawl so as to avoid contagion, and she called into the bedroom, where the furious search through drawers was continuing:
‘Have you found them yet?’
‘Here they are!’
Dona Joaquina emerged triumphant, bearing the cigarette case, the old glove and the cotton handkerchief.
The clamouring women raced into the kitchen. Even São Joaneira followed them, as a good hostess, to watch over the bonfire.
Left alone, the three priests looked at each other and laughed.
‘Women are the very devil,’ said the Canon philosophically.
‘No, Father,’ said Natário, growing suddenly serious. ‘I’m laughing because although, seen from outside, it may look ridiculous, the sentiment behind it is good. It proves their true devotion to the priesthood, their horror of impiety. And that, after all, is an admirable sentiment.’
‘Oh, admirable,’ agreed Amaro, equally seriously.
The Canon got up.
‘And if they got hold of the man himself, they would be capable of burning him as well. I’m not joking; my sister has it in her to do that . . . She’s a veritable Grand Inquisitor in skirts that one.’
‘Yes, you’re right there,’ said Natário.
‘I can’t resist going to watch the execution,’ exclaimed the Canon. ‘I want to see it with my own eyes.’
And the three priests went to the kitchen door. There the ladies were, standing round the fire, still in their heavy outdoor clothes, caught in the violent light of the flames, in eerie silhouette. Ruça was on her knees, blowing feebly into the flames. They had used a large knife to slit the binding of the magazine, and the curled and blackened pages crackled and flew up the chimney, borne aloft on pale tongues of fire. Only the kid glove refused to burn. In vain they used tongs to push it into the hottest part of the fire: the flames merely charred it, reducing it to a shapeless, scorched lump, but it would not burn. Its resistance to the fire terrified the ladies.
‘It’s because it belonged to the very hand with which he committed the offence!’ declared Dona Maria da Assunção angrily.
‘Blow on it, girl, blow on it!’ advised the Canon from the doorway, vastly amused.
‘Please don’t make mock of serious things!’ cried Dona Josefa.
‘Sister, are you trying to give advice to a priest on burning a heretic? What arrogance! I’m telling you that you have to blow!’
Then, trusting in the Canon’s superior knowledge, Dona Joaquina and Dona Maria da Assunção crouched down and blew on the flames. The other women watched, silently smiling, their eyes shining and cruel, enjoying the sight of that extermination so pleasing in the eyes of the Lord. The fire, full of elegant energy, crackled and leapt, glorying in its old job as purifier of sins. Until at last, amongst the burning logs, nothing remained of the heretic’s copy of Panorama, the handkerchief or the glove.
At that same hour, the heretic, João Eduardo, was in his room, sitting at the foot of his bed, sobbing, his face bathed in tears, thinking about Amélia and the happy evenings spent in Rua da Misericórdia, about the city he was bound for, about the clothes he would have to pawn, and wondering vainly why they were doing this to him, when he had always been so hardworking, had never intended to harm anyone and so utterly adored Amélia.