The following morning, as soon as he had opened his post, Amaro hurriedly sent for Dionísia. The good lady, however, was at the market and did not arrive until later, when he had returned from mass and was finishing his breakfast.
Amaro wanted to know ‘at once and for certain’ when ‘things’ would happen.
‘The young lady’s happy event? In about two or three weeks’ time. Why, is something wrong?’
There was. Amaro read to her in confidence a letter he had beside him.
It was from the Canon, who wrote from Vieira saying ‘that São Joaneira had had her thirty sea baths and wanted to come back! I (he added) miss three or four baths a week just to eke out the time, because she knows that I won’t leave here without my fifty baths. I’m up to forty now, so you can see my problem. Besides, it’s starting to get really cold here now. A lot of people have left already. Let me know by return of post how things are with you.’ And in a postscript, he said: ‘Have you thought yet what to do with the “fruit of the union”?’
‘It will be in three weeks’ time, more or less,’ Dionísia reiterated.
And Amaro wrote a reply to the Canon there and then, which Dionísia was to take to the post: ‘Things could be ready in three weeks. Whatever you do, don’t let her mother come back. Tell her that her daughter can’t write or come and join her because your good sister is still ill.’
Crossing his legs, he said:
‘And now, Dionísia, what, as our Canon puts it, are we to do with “the fruit of the union”?’
Dionísia opened her eyes wide in surprise.
‘I thought you had arranged all that, Father. I thought you were going to give the child to someone outside Leiria to bring up . . .’
‘Of course, of course,’ Amaro broke in impatiently. ‘If the child is born alive, obviously we’ll have it adopted, somewhere outside the region . . . But that’s just it. Which wetnurse to choose? That is what I want you to arrange. It’s high time we did . . .’
Dionísia looked extremely embarrassed. She had never liked recommending wetnurses. She knew a good, strong woman with plenty of milk, someone you could trust, but unfortunately, she had just been admitted to hospital. She knew another one too, she had even had dealings with her. She was Joana Carreira. But that wouldn’t be very convenient because she lived in Poiais itself, right near Ricoça.
‘What do you mean, it wouldn’t be convenient!’ exclaimed Amaro. ‘What does it matter if she lives nearby? Once the girl has recovered, they’ll all come back to Leiria and no one will ever mention Ricoça again.’
But Dionísia was still pondering, slowly stroking her chin. She knew of another woman too, who lived near Barrosa, a good distance away. She brought up other people’s children at home, it was her job . . . but he wouldn’t want to use her . . .
‘Why? Is she weak or diseased or something?’
Dionísia went over to Amaro and lowering her voice said:
‘I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but it’s a well-known fact that she’s a “weaver of angels”.’
‘A what?’
‘A weaver of angels!’
‘What’s that? What does that mean?’ asked Amaro.
Dionísia stammered out an explanation. It was a woman who took in other people’s babies. Without exception, the babies all died. One woman who had been notorious for this had also worked as a weaver, and since all the babies she took in went straight to Heaven, that is where the name came from.
‘So the children always die?’
‘Always.’
Amaro was walking slowly about the room, rolling a cigarette.
‘Tell me, Dionísia. Do the women kill them?’
Dionísia said again that she did not want to accuse anyone. She had never actually seen anything. She did not know what went on in other people’s houses. But the children all died . . .
‘Who would hand over a child to a woman like that?’
Dionísia smiled pityingly at the man’s innocence.
‘Oh, they hand them over in their dozens!’
There was a silence. Amaro continued his pacing between the washbasin and the window, his head down.
‘But what does the woman get out of it if the children die?’ he asked suddenly. ‘She would lose her wages.’
‘They pay a year in advance, Father. That’s ten tostões a month, or less, depending on what they can afford . . .’
Leaning against the window, Amaro was drumming slowly on the glass.
‘But what do the authorities do about it, Dionísia?’
Dionísia shrugged and said nothing.
Amaro sat down, yawning and stretching out his legs. Then he said:
‘Well, obviously the only thing to do is to talk to that wetnurse who lives near Ricoça, Joana Carreira. I’ll make the necessary arrangements . . .’
Dionísia told him about the items for the layette that she had bought on his instructions and about a very cheap, second-hand cradle that she had seen in the carpenter’s shop; then, as she was about to take the letter to the post, Amaro stood up, laughing:
‘That business about the “weaver of angels” is just a story, isn’t it?’
Dionísia was offended. He knew very well that she was not a woman to gossip. She had known the woman for more than four years, both to talk to and from seeing her nearly every week in town. Only last Saturday she had seen her coming out of a tavern. Had Amaro ever been to Barrosa?
She waited for his reply and then continued:
‘Well, you know the entrance to the parish. There’s the remains of a wall, then a path leading downhill. At the bottom of that narrow path you’ll find a blocked-off well. Ahead, set back a bit, is a small house with a porch. That’s where she lives. Her name’s Carlota . . . Just to prove to you that I really do know her.’
Amaro spent the whole day at home, pacing about his room, scattering the floor with cigarette ends. He had before him the dreadful task which, up until then, had seemed only a distant worry: getting rid of the child.
It was a serious matter handing it over just like that to an unknown wetnurse in the village. The mother would, naturally, want to go and see the child all the time, the wetnurse might tell the neighbours. The child would come to be known in the parish as ‘the priest’s child’. Some envious person, who coveted the parish, could denounce him to the vicar general. Scandal, a sermon and an inquiry would follow, and if he were not suspended, he might, like poor Father Brito, be sent off into the mountains with the shepherds again. Ah, if only the child could be born dead! That would be a natural and permanent solution. And a blessing for the child too really. What fate could it expect in this harsh world? It would be an orphan, the ‘priest’s child’. Both he and the mother were poor. The child would grow up in poverty, an uncultivated, bleary-eyed vagrant, mucking out barns. Living from hand to mouth, it would come to know every aspect of the human inferno: days without bread, freezing cold nights, the brutality of taverns and, finally, prison. A pallet bed in life, a communal grave in death. But if it died, it would at once become a little angel welcomed by God into Paradise.
And he continued pacing sadly up and down his room. It was a very appropriate name really, ‘weaver of angels’. For any woman who prepares a child for life with the milk from her breast is also preparing it for travails and for tears. Better to wring its neck and send it straight to blissful eternity. Look at him! What kind of a life had he had these past thirty years! A melancholy childhood with that old bore, the Marquesa de Alegros; then the house in Estrela with his fool of an uncle, the grocer; and then the years shut up in the seminary, the snowy winter in Feirão, and all the problems and sorrows he had experienced since moving to Leiria. If they had smashed his skull when he was born, he would now have two white wings and be singing in the eternal choirs.
But there was no point in philosophising; he had to go to Poiais and talk to the wetnurse, to Joana Carreira.
He went out and walked unhurriedly towards the road. By the bridge, however, he was suddenly seized by an idea, by the desire to go to Barrosa and see this ‘weaver of angels’. He would not speak to her; he would merely examine the house, see what the woman looked like and study the sinister aspect of the place. Besides, as a parish priest, as an ecclesiastical authority, he ought to know about this sinful trade that went on, lucrative and unpunished, just off the main road. He could even report it to the vicar general or to the secretary of the district government.
He still had time, it was only four o’clock. On that warm, splendid afternoon, a ride would do him good. He did not hesitate; he went and rented a mare from the Cruz inn, and shortly afterwards, with a spur on his left foot, he was galloping off along the road to Barrosa.
When he reached the narrow lane that Dionísia had described, he dismounted and continued on foot, leading the mare by the halter. It was a beautiful afternoon; high up in the blue sky, a large bird was tracing slow semicircles.
At last, next to two chestnut trees in which the birds were still singing, he found the blocked-off well; ahead, on a flat plot of land, completely isolated, was the house with the porch; the setting sun was shining on the only window on that side of the house, touching it with fiery, golden light; and from the chimney a pale, thin plume of smoke rose up into the still air.
A great sense of peace lay round about; on the hillside, dark with low pinetrees, he could see the gay, whitewashed walls of the little chapel of Barrosa.
Amaro was trying to imagine what the ‘weaver of angels’ would look like; for some reason, he thought she would be very tall, with a tanned face and glittering, witch-like eyes.
He tethered the mare to the gate and looked through the open door; it gave onto a kitchen with a large fireplace, and there was another door that opened onto the courtyard strewn with grass amongst which two piglets were foraging. White china glinted on the plate-rack above the chimney. Beside it hung large shiny copper pans that would not have looked out of place in a more opulent house. White sheets were piled up in an old cupboard, the door of which stood half-open, and a kind of light seemed to emanate from all that cleanliness, tidiness and good order.
Amaro clapped loudly. A startled pigeon fluttered inside a wicker cage hanging from the wall. Then he called out:
‘Senhora Carlota!’
A woman immediately appeared from one side of the courtyard, carrying a sieve in her hand. And to his surprise, Amaro saw a pleasant-looking woman of about forty, wearing a pair of exquisite earrings; she had an ample bosom, broad shoulders, a very white neck, and dark eyes that reminded him of Amélia’s eyes, or, rather, of São Joaneira’s much calmer gaze.
Taken aback, he stammered:
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I think I’ve made a mistake. Is this Senhora Carlota’s house?’
He was not mistaken, it was her; but convinced that the dreadful woman ‘who wove angels’ must be somewhere, crouched in some gloomy corner of the house, he asked again:
‘Do you live here alone?’
The woman looked at him mistrustfully.
‘No, sir,’ she said at last. ‘I live here with my husband.’
At precisely that moment, her husband emerged from the courtyard, and he was indeed a fearful sight: a dwarfish figure whose head, wrapped in a scarf, was sunk between his shoulders, and whose face was a shiny, waxen yellow; he had a sparse, curly black beard and glowering, bloodshot eyes set deep in eyebrowless sockets, eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and drink.
‘Can we help you at all, sir?’ the man said, staying close to his wife’s skirts.
Amaro went into the kitchen with them and told a garbled story which he hurriedly concocted as he talked. A relative of his was expecting a baby. The husband could not come in person to speak to them because he was ill. They needed a wetnurse to go to the house, and he had been told . . .
‘No, we don’t work outside the house, only here,’ said the dwarf, who still did not leave his wife’s skirts, looking warily at Amaro with his ghastly, bloodshot eyes.
Ah, he had been misinformed, then. He was sorry, but what his relative needed was a wetnurse to live in.
He went slowly over to his mare, then stopped and, buttoning up his overcoat, said:
‘But you do take in babies?’
‘Once we’ve come to an agreement,’ said the dwarf, who was following him.
Amaro put his spur on his foot, gave a tug at the bridle and, still playing for time, walked round the horse.
‘The child would have to be brought here, I suppose.’
The dwarf looked back and exchanged a look with the woman, who was still standing at the kitchen door.
‘We can come and get it if necessary,’ he said.
Amaro patted the mare’s neck.
‘But if it was at night, with this cold, it would kill the child.’
Then both of them, speaking at once, agreed that it would not do any harm. As long as the child was cared for and well wrapped up.
Amaro got nimbly onto his horse, said goodbye and trotted back up the path.
Amélia was beginning to feel afraid now. Day and night, all she thought of was the approaching time when she would feel the first birth pangs. She suffered more than in the first months; she felt dizzy and had strange cravings, all of which Dr Gouveia observed with some concern. Her nights were particularly bad, full of troubling nightmares. She no longer had religious hallucinations, which had ceased with that sudden appeasement of devout terror; she could not have felt less afraid of God than if she had been a canonised saint. Her fears were different now, she had dreams in which the birth was depicted in monstrous terms: now it was a terrifying creature that leaped from her womb, half-woman, half-goat; now it was an endless cobra that crawled out of her like a league-long tape measure, coiling round and round the room until it reached the ceiling; she would wake from these dreams in a state of nervous prostration.
But she longed to have the child. She trembled at the idea of her mother suddenly appearing in Ricoça. Her mother had written to her, complaining about the Canon, who would not let her leave Vieira, about the storms they were having, about the increasingly solitary beach. Dona Maria da Assunção had returned to Leiria already, but, fortunately, a providentially chilly night had left her with bronchitis and she would, according to Dr Gouveia, be confined to her bed for weeks. Libaninho had visited Ricoça, but had departed regretting that he had been unable to see Amélia ‘who had a migraine’.
‘If this goes on for another two weeks, everyone will find out,’ she would say to Amaro, weeping.
‘Be patient, my dear. You can’t force nature.’
‘The suffering you’ve put me through,’ she would sigh.
He would say nothing, resigned; he was very kind to her now, very tender. He came to see her nearly every morning because he did not want to meet Father Ferrão, who came in the afternoons.
He had reassured her regarding the wetnurse, saying that he had spoken to the woman in Ricoça recommended by Dionísia. Joana Carreira was an excellent choice. She was as strong as an oak tree, with plenty of milk and teeth like ivory.
‘It’s a long way for me to come and see the baby later on,’ she sighed.
For the first time, she was looking forward to motherhood. She was in despair that she would not be able to make the rest of the baby’s clothes herself. She wanted the boy – because it was bound to be a boy – to be called Carlos. She imagined him already a man, an officer in the cavalry. She was touched by the thought of seeing the baby crawling . . .
‘Oh, if it wasn’t for the shame of it, I would like to bring him up myself!’
‘It’ll be fine where it’s going,’ said Amaro.
But what tormented her and made her weep every day was the thought of her child being an orphan.
One day, she went to Father Ferrão with an extraordinary plan ‘inspired by Our Lady herself’: she would marry João Eduardo now, but he would have to sign a document adopting Carlos! She would marry a navvy if it would save her child from being an orphan! And she grasped Father Ferrão’s hands, pleading and pleading with him. He must convince João to give Carlos a Papa! She tried to kneel before Father Ferrão, who was her father and her protector.
‘Calm down, my dear, calm down. That is what I want too, and we will arrange it all, but later,’ said the good old man, troubled by her highly emotional state.
A few days later, she was excited about something else; she had suddenly realised, one morning, that she must not betray Amaro, ‘because he, after all, was Carlos’ real Papa’. And she said this to Father Ferrão, causing the old priest to blush as she chattered blithely on about her wifely duties to Amaro.
Father Ferrão, who knew nothing of Father Amaro’s morning visits, was astonished.
‘What are you saying, my dear? What are you saying? Get a grip on yourself. Have you no shame! I thought you had got over that madness.’
‘But he is the father of my child,’ she insisted, looking at him very seriously.
Then for a whole week, she went on and on at Amaro, with childish sentimentality, reminding him every half hour that he was ‘her little Carlos’ Papa’.
‘I know, my dear, I know,’ he would say impatiently. ‘Thank you very much, but it’s hardly something I want to boast about . . .’
She would sit huddled on the sofa then, weeping, and it would take a whole complicated series of caresses to calm her. She would make him sit on a bench next to her, and she would keep him there like a doll, looking at him, slowly stroking his tonsure; she wanted him to take a photograph of Carlos so that they could both carry it in a medallion around their necks; and if she should die, he was to take Carlos to her grave, have him kneel down, put his two little hands together and make him pray for his Mama. She would hurl herself down on a pillow then, covering her face with her hands.
‘Oh, pity me, my dear child, pity me!’
‘Be quiet, there are people coming!’ Amaro would say angrily.
Ah, those mornings at Ricoça! To him they were like an unfair punishment. When he got there, he would have to go and listen to Dona Josefa’s complaints. Then he would spend an hour with Amélia, who lay stretched out on the sofa, as big as a barrel now, her face swollen, her eyes puffy, tormenting him with all kinds of hysterical, sentimental demands.
On one such morning, Amélia, who was complaining of cramp, wanted to take a walk about the room, leaning on Amaro; as she was dragging herself along, huge in her old dressing gown, they heard on the road down below the sound of horses’ hooves; they went over to the window, but Amaro immediately drew back, leaving Amélia staring out, her face pressed against the glass. On the road, elegantly mounted on a bay mare, was João Eduardo in a white jacket and a tall hat; beside him trotted the Morgado’s two small children, one on a pony, the other strapped onto a donkey; and a short distance behind them, following at a respectful, courtly pace, came a liveried servant, wearing high boots and enormous spurs, a very loose jacket that hung in grotesque folds at his sides and a scarlet rosette on his hat. Amélia stood there, astonished, watching them, until the lackey’s back was lost to view around the corner of the house. She said not a word, but went and sat down on the sofa. Amaro, who was still pacing the room, laughed sarcastically and said:
‘What an idiot, with a lackey bringing up the rear!’
She blushed scarlet and said nothing. And scandalised, Amaro left, slamming the door, and went into Dona Josefa’s room to tell her about the cavalcade and to fulminate against the Morgado.
‘An excommunicant with a liveried servant!’ exclaimed the good lady, clutching her head with her hands. ‘How shaming, Father, how shaming for this country’s aristocracy!’
From that day on, Amélia no longer cried if Father Amaro failed to visit her in the morning. The person she waited impatiently for now was Father Ferrão. She monopolised him, she would have him sit on a chair by the sofa, and then, after circling around like a bird above its prey, she would fall upon the subject that really mattered – had he seen João Eduardo?
She wanted to know what he had said, if he had spoken about her, if he had seen her at the window. She tormented Father Ferrão with her inquisitive questions about the Morgado’s house, about how the living room was furnished, about how many servants he had and how many horses, whether the liveried servant also served at table.
And Father Ferrão would patiently respond, glad to see that she had forgotten about Amaro and was interested in João Eduardo; he was convinced now that the marriage would go ahead; she, on the other hand, avoided all mention of Amaro’s name, indeed, once, when Father Ferrão asked her if Amaro had returned to Ricoça, she even said:
‘Oh, he comes in the morning to see my godmother. But I don’t see him, I’m not even decently dressed by then.’
She would spend as long as she could now standing at the window, immaculately dressed from the waist up, which is all that could be seen from the road, and all grubby petticoats from the waist down. She was waiting for João Eduardo, the Morgado’s children and the lackey; and every now and then she had the pleasure of seeing them go trotting past, as they were borne along by the easy pace of their expensive mounts; and, as it passed the house, João Eduardo’s bay mare would always perform a sidestep, with João Eduardo holding his whip out in front and using his legs according to the Marqués de Marialva’s rules for riding, exactly as the Morgado had taught him. But it was the liveried lackey she found most enchanting, and, with her nose pressed against the window pane, she would watch him greedily until, at the turn in the road, she would see the poor old man disappear, with his bent back, his shaky legs, and the collar of his uniform turned up.
And what a delight they were to João Eduardo those rides on the bay mare with the little Morgados. He always made a point of going into town; the sound of the horseshoes on the flagstones made his heart beat faster; he would ride past the pharmacist’s wife, Amparo, past the office where Nunes had his desk by the window, past the arcade, past the administrator, who would be there on the balcony with his binoculars still trained on Teles’ house, and his one disappointment was that he could not ride with the mare, the Morgado’s children and the lackey past Dr Godinho’s office, which was, alas, at the rear of the house.
It was on one of these triumphal outings, at about two o’clock, on his way back from Barrosa, just as they were reaching Poço das Bentas and setting off along the cart track, that he suddenly saw Father Amaro come riding towards him mounted on a cob. João Eduardo immediately made his own horse wheel about. The track was so narrow, that even though they both kept close to the hedges, their knees almost brushed, and from the height of his expensive mare, João Eduardo was able then to wield his whip in a threatening manner and stare scornfully down at Father Amaro, who shrank back, looking pale, unshaven and sallow-cheeked, furiously spurring on his sluggish mount. At the top of the road, João Eduardo stopped and turned round in his saddle and saw the priest dismounting at the door of a small isolated house where, only moments before, as they passed, the children had laughed at ‘the dwarf.’
‘Who lives there?’João Eduardo asked the lackey.
‘A woman called Carlota. Bad people, Senhor João Eduardo.’
When they passed Ricoça, João Eduardo, as usual, reined the horse in to a trot. But behind the panes he did not see the usual pale face beneath the scarlet scarf. The shutters were half-closed and, at the door, stood Dr Gouveia’s cabriolet with the horses unhitched and the shafts dragging on the ground.
The day had at last arrived! That morning, a boy from the farm had arrived from Ricoça bearing an almost unintelligible note from Amélia – Dionísia quick, it’s come! It also contained instructions to send for Dr Gouveia. Amaro himself went to tell Dionísia.
Days before, he had told her that Dona Josefa, Dona Josefa herself, had recommended a wetnurse to him, and that he had been to see her, a big woman, strong as a tree. And now they made rapid arrangements for Amaro to be posted at the orchard door that night, and for Dionísia to come and give him the baby well wrapped up.
‘At nine o’clock tonight, Dionísia. And don’t keep us waiting!’ Amaro said, seeing Dionísia go rushing off, all flustered.
Then he went back home and shut himself in his room, face to face with the problem which seemed to him like a living creature that fixed him with its gaze and asked: What shall we do with the child? He still had time to go to Poiais and arrange things with the other wetnurse, the good wetnurse whom Dionísia knew; or else he could get on his horse and go to Barrosa and talk to Carlota . . . And there he was, before those two roads, in an agony of doubt. He wanted to look at things coolly, to discuss the matter as if it were a point of theology, weighing up the pros and cons, but what hung dangerously before him were not two arguments but two images: the child growing up and living in Poiais, and the child suffocated by Carlota in a house on the Barrosa road. And as he was pacing up and down in his room, sweating with anxiety, he heard the unexpected voice of Libaninho call out to him from the landing:
‘Open up, Father, I know you’re there!’
He had to open the door to Libaninho, shake his hand and offer him a chair. Fortunately, Libaninho could not stay long. He had just happened to be passing and had come up to see if his friend had any news of the good ladies at Ricoça.
‘They’re fine, fine,’ said Amaro, forcing himself to smile and be pleasant.
‘I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to get over there myself! I’m on duty at the barracks. Now, don’t laugh, Father, because I’m doing excellent work there. I get together with the soldiers and I tell them all about Christ’s wounds and . . .’
‘So you’re converting the whole regiment,’ said Amaro, shuffling papers on his desk, then striding about, as restless as a caged animal.
‘I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to! But, look, I’m just taking these scapulars to a sergeant there. They’ve been blessed by Father Saldanha and are positively oozing with healing powers. I gave some exactly like this yesterday to a lance-corporal, a lovely lad, so sweet . . . I put them on him myself underneath his vest. A lovely lad!’
‘You should let the colonel take care of the regiment,’ said Amaro, opening the window, doing his best to hide his impatience.
‘That infidel? He’d have the whole regiment un-baptised if they’d let him. Anyway, I’ll be off now, Father. You know, you don’t look well, my dear. What you need is a good purgative.’
As he was about to leave, he paused at the door:
‘By the way, Father, have you heard the latest news?’
‘About what?’
‘It was Father Saldanha who told me. According to him, the precentor said (and these are Saldanha’s very words) that he has evidence of some scandal in the town involving a priest. But he didn’t say who or what . . . Saldanha tried to probe further, but the precentor said that the information he had been given was very vague, no names . . . I’ve been thinking about it. Who could it possibly be?’
‘It’s just Saldanha showing off.’
‘Well, I hope it is. It’s precisely the kind of thing that unbelievers pounce on. Anyway, next time you’re in Ricoça give my regards to the good ladies.’
And he skipped down the stairs to bear ‘virtue’ to the battalion.
Amaro was terrified. Obviously secret allegations had brought word of him and his affair with Amélia to the vicar general. And now there would be the child, which would be brought up only half a league from Leiria, as living proof! It seemed to him extraordinary, almost supernatural, that Libaninho, who, in two years, had hardly ever visited him at home, should have come to him with that terrible news precisely at the moment when he was battling with his conscience. It was as if Providence, in the grotesque form of Libaninho, had come to warn him, whispering: ‘Don’t allow the very person who can bring you scandal to live! People already have their suspicions!’
It was clearly God taking pity on the child, not wanting one more wretched orphan on the earth, it was clearly God demanding his angel!
Amaro did not hesitate: he went to the Cruz inn and then rode to Carlota’s house.
He remained there until four o’clock.
When he got back home, he threw his hat down on the bed and felt a great sense of relief flood through his whole being. It was over. He had spoken to Carlota and the dwarf; he had paid her for a whole year in advance; now he just had to wait for night to come.
But alone in his room, he was assailed by all kinds of morbid imaginings; he saw Carlota suffocating the tiny, red-skinned child; he saw the police disinterring the corpse later, and Domingos in the municipal council offices filling out the declaration of corpus delicti which he rested on his knee, while he, Amaro, still in his cassock, was dragged off to prison in irons, along with the dwarf. He was tempted to ride back to Barrosa and cancel the arrangement. But inertia stopped him. After all, there was no reason why he had to deliver the child to Carlota. He could carry it, instead, well wrapped up, to Joana Carreira, the good wetnurse in Poiais.
To escape from these ideas raging above his head like a storm, he went to see Natário, who was out of bed now, and who called to him from the depths of his armchair:
‘Did you see him, Amaro? Did you see that idiot, with a lackey bringing up the rear?’
João Eduardo had passed by in the street below on his bay mare, with the Morgado’s children; and Natário had ever since then been roaring with impatience at being stuck in that chair and unable to resume his campaign and get him expelled by cooking up some intrigue at the Morgado’s house that would strip him of both mare and lackey.
‘But I’ll get him, as soon as God gives me back the use of my legs . . .’
‘Oh, forget it, Natário,’ said Amaro.
‘Forget it?’
Forget it? When he had a brilliant idea to provide the Morgado with documentary proof that João Eduardo was, in fact, a devout Catholic! What did his friend Amaro think of that?
It was, of course, an amusing idea. The man doubtless deserved it just for the way he looked down on decent people from atop his mare . . . And Amaro flushed red, still angry at their encounter that morning on the Barrosa road.
‘Of course he deserves it!’ exclaimed Natário. ‘Why else are we priests of Christ? In order to exalt the humble and destroy the proud.’
From there Amaro went to see Dona Maria da Assunção, who was also now out of bed and who regaled him with the story of her bronchitis and listed her latest sins, the worst of which was this: in order to distract herself a little during her convalescence, she had been sitting by the window, and a carpenter who lived opposite had ogled her; under the influence of the Evil One, she had lacked the willpower to withdraw, and bad thoughts had come to her . . .
‘You’re not listening, Father.’
‘Of course I am, Senhora!’
And he hastened to pacify her scruples, because the salvation of that idiotic old soul gave him a much better living than the parish did.
It was getting dark when he got home. Escolástica complained that the food had got burned because he was late. Amaro took only a glass of wine and a forkful of rice, which he ate standing up at the window, watching, horrified, the impassive fall of night.
He was just going into his room to see if the oil lamps were already lit, when the coadjutor arrived. He had come to discuss the baptism of Guedes’ son, which was due to take place the following day at nine o’clock.
‘Do you need a light?’ called the maid on hearing a visitor’s voice.
‘No!’ shouted back Amaro.
He was afraid that the coadjutor might notice his changed face or that he might settle in for the rest of the night.
‘Apparently there was a very interesting article in The Nation the day before yesterday.’
‘Really,’ said Amaro.
He was pacing up and down, following his usual track, from the washbasin to the window; he occasionally stopped to drum with his fingers on the glass; the lamps outside had been lit.
Then the coadjutor, shocked by the darkness in the room and by that constant pacing, got to his feet and, with great dignity, said:
‘But perhaps I’m bothering you . . .’
‘No, no!’
Satisfied, the coadjutor sat down again, his umbrella between his knees.
‘The nights are drawing in,’ he said.
‘They are . . .’
Eventually, in desperation, Amaro told him that he had an appalling migraine and that he was going to bed; the coadjutor departed, reminding him once more about the baptism of his friend Guedes’ child.
Amaro left at once for Ricoça. Fortunately, it was a warm, dark night, presaging rain. He was now seized by a hope that made his heart beat faster, that the child would be born dead! And it was quite possible. As a young woman, São Joaneira had had two still births; Amélia’s state of anxiety had probably disturbed the child’s gestation. And what if she died too? At that idea, which had never before occurred to him, he was suddenly filled with pity and tenderness for the kind girl who loved him so much and who now, because of him, would be screaming out in agony. And yet, if both died, both she and the child, that would mean that his sin and his error would fall for ever into the dark abyss of eternity. He would be, as he had been before he came to Leiria, a tranquil man, concerned only with the Church, and with a life as clean and white as a blank page.
He stopped at the ruined hut by the roadside where he was to meet the person from Barrosa who would come for the child; it had not been decided whether it would be the man or Carlota. Amaro dreaded handing over his son to that dwarf with the evil, bloodshot eyes. He called into the dark interior of the hut.
‘Hello!’
It was a relief when Carlota’s clear voice said from the blackness.
‘Is it here yet?’
‘No, we have to wait, Senhora Carlota.’
He felt pleased. It seemed to him that he had nothing to fear if his child was to be cradled against the robust breast of that fecund forty-year-old, so fresh and clean.
He prowled round the house, which was utterly dark and silent, as if, on that black December night, it were just a thickening of the surrounding shadows. Not a chink of light emerged from the windows of Amélia’s room. In the heavy air, not a leaf stirred. And no Dionísia appeared.
The waiting was a torment to him. People might come by and see him prowling about outside, but he could not bring himself to go and hide in the ruined hut with Carlota. He walked the length of the orchard wall and back, and then he saw a glow of light appear at the French windows that opened onto the terrace.
He ran to the green door in the orchard wall, which opened almost immediately, and, without a word, Dionísia placed a bundle in his arms.
‘Is it dead?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s alive! A big strong boy!’
And she slowly closed the door just as the dogs, alert for any noise, began to bark.
Feeling his son against his chest swept all Amaro’s ideas away like a great wind. What? Give him to that woman, to that ‘weaver of angels’, who would throw him into some ditch along the road or into the latrine at home. No, this was his son!
But what should he do then? He did not have time to run to Poiais and wake up the other wetnurse. Dionísia had no milk. He couldn’t take it back into town. How he longed to knock on the front door, to rush up to Amélia’s room and place the little one in her bed, all wrapped up, and have the three of them stay there together as if in some cosy, heavenly nest. But how could he? He was a priest. Cursed be that religion that so destroyed him!
A little murmur emerged from inside the bundle. He ran to the ruined shack and almost collided with Carlota who took the child from him.
‘Here he is,’ he said. ‘But listen, I’m serious now. Things have changed. I don’t want him to die. I want you to look after him. What we talked about means nothing. I want you to take care of him. I want him to live. You have his fate in your hands. Look after him!’
‘Of course, of course,’ said the woman hastily.
‘Listen . . . The child isn’t warm enough. Put my cloak around him.’
‘He’s fine, sir, fine.’
‘No, damn it, he’s not! He’s my son and he must have the cloak around him. I don’t want him to die of cold.’
He threw it around her shoulders and over her chest, covering the child, and the woman, who was beginning to get annoyed, hastened away.
Amaro stood in the middle of the road, watching her disappear into the darkness. Then, after that initial shock, all his nerves succumbed to a womanly weakness, and he burst out crying.
For a long time, he prowled around the house. But it remained sunk in the same terrifying darkness and silence. Then, feeling sad and weary, he walked back into town as the Cathedral clock was striking ten.
At that hour, in the dining room at Ricoça, Dr Gouveia was calmly eating the roast chicken that Gertrudes had prepared for his supper after the toils of the day. Father Ferrão was sitting with him, watching him eat; he had brought the sacraments with him in case of danger. But the doctor was pleased; the girl had been very brave during the eight hours of labour; the birth had gone well and the result was a healthy boy who would do great honour to his father.
In his modesty as a priest, Father Ferrão chastely lowered his eyes when the doctor mentioned these details.
‘And now,’ said the doctor, biting into a chicken’s wing, ‘now that I have brought the child into the world, you gentlemen (by which I mean the Church) will get hold of him and won’t let go of him until he dies. On the other hand, albeit less enthusiastically, the State will keep its eye on him too . . . And so the poor wretch begins his journey from cradle to grave, flanked by a priest and a police officer!’
Father Ferrão bowed and took a loud pinch of snuff in preparation for the debate.
‘The Church,’ continued the doctor serenely, ‘begins imposing religion on a child when the child barely knows he’s alive . . .’
Father Ferrão interrupted, half serious, half joking:
‘Doctor, purely out of charitable concern for your soul, I feel I should warn you that Canon 13 of the Holy Council of Trent imposes the punishment of excommunication on anyone who declares baptism to be meaningless, the punishment to be imposed with no right to appeal.’
‘Noted, Father. I am accustomed to the kindnesses extended to myself and other colleagues by the Council of Trent.’
‘It was a very important assembly!’ said Father Ferrão, scandalised.
‘Oh, sublime, Father, a sublime assembly. The Council of Trent and the French National Convention were the two most remarkable assemblies of men that the world has seen . . .’
Father Ferrão made a grimace of disgust at this irreverent comparison between the holy authors of doctrine and the murderers of good King Louis XVI.
But the doctor went on:
‘Then the Church leaves the child in peace for a time while he does his teething and has his first attack of worms . . .’
‘Go on, doctor, go on!’ murmured the priest, listening to him patiently, his eyes closed, as if to say: ‘Go on, bury your soul deep in the abyss of fire and pitch!’
‘But when the first signs of reason appear in the child, when, in order to distinguish him from the animals, it becomes necessary for him to have some understanding of himself and of the universe, in walks the Church and explains everything! Everything! And so completely that a boy of six who doesn’t even know his alphabet has a vaster and more certain knowledge than all the royal academies of London, Berlin and Paris combined! The rascal does not hesitate for a moment when it comes to explaining how the universe and its planetary systems were made, how the creation of the earth came about, how the different races arose, how the geological revolutions around the world occurred, how languages developed, how writing was invented . . . He knows everything: he possesses the rules, complete and immutable, for directing all his actions and forming all his opinions; he even has answers to all the great mysteries; he might be as myopic as a mole, but he can nevertheless see what happens in the depths of sky and earth; he knows, as if he had seen it with his own eyes, what will happen to him after death . . . He has a solution to every problem . . . And when the Church has made of this great lad a marvel of knowledge, then they teach him how to read . . . Why? I ask myself.’
Father Ferrão was dumb with indignation.
‘Tell me, Father, why do you have them learn to read? The whole of universal knowledge, the res scibilis, lies in the Catechism: he only has to memorise it and the boy has immediate knowledge and awareness of everything . . . He knows as much as God. In fact, he is God.’
Father Ferrão started.
‘This is not argument,’ he exclaimed. ‘These comments are mere Voltairean jibes! Such matters should be treated with more respect . . .’
‘Jibes, Father? Take just one example: the development of languages. How did they come about? It was God, who, unhappy with what was going on in the Tower of Babel . . .’
At this point, the door opened and Dionísia appeared. Shortly before, in Amélia’s room, he had told her off in no uncertain terms, and now she addressed him in terrified tones.
‘Doctor,’ she said, in the ensuing silence, ‘Miss Amélia has woken up and wants to see the baby.’
‘So? The child has been taken away, hasn’t it?’
‘It has,’ replied Dionísia.
‘Then there’s no more to be said.’
Dionísia was about to close the door, but the doctor called her back.
‘Listen, tell her she can see the child tomorrow . . . tell her that they’ll bring her the child tomorrow without fail. Lie to her. Lie like a dog. Father Ferrão here gives you permission. Tell her to go to sleep, tell her not to worry.’
Dionísia withdrew. But they did not resume their argument; confronted by the thought of that mother who had awoken after the exhaustion of labour and was demanding to see her son, the son who had been taken far away and for ever, the two men forgot all about the Tower of Babel and the development of languages. Father Ferrão seemed particularly moved. The pitiless doctor, however, was soon reminding him that these were the consequences of the priest’s position in society . . .
Father Ferrão looked down, busy with his snuff, and did not reply, as if unaware that a priest was involved in this whole unhappy story.
Taking up his own idea, the doctor discoursed on the preparation and education of clerics.
‘There you have an education based on an absurdity: resisting the perfectly fair demands of nature and resisting the most lofty demands of reason. Preparing a priest is like creating a monster who will spend his whole wretched life waging a desperate battle against the two irresistible facts of the universe – the force of Matter and the force of Reason!’
‘What are you saying?’ exclaimed the priest, astonished.
‘The plain truth! What does the education of a priest involve? Primo: preparing him for celibacy and virginity, that is, for the violent suppression of the most natural of feelings. Secundo: it trains him to avoid any knowledge and any ideas that might shake the Catholic faith, that is, the forced suppression of the spirit of investigation and examination and, therefore, of all real human knowledge . . .’
Father Ferrão had stood up, filled with pious indignation:
‘Do you deny that the Church has knowledge?’
‘Jesus, my dear Father,’ the doctor continued unperturbed, ‘Jesus, his first disciples and the illustrious St Paul all declared in parables and epistles, in that whole extraordinary verbal outpouring, that the products of the human spirit were useless, puerile and, worse, pernicious.’
Father Ferrão was pacing about the room, bumping into the furniture like a goaded ox, clutching his head in despair at such blasphemies. Unable to control himself any longer, he cried:
‘You don’t know what you’re saying! Forgive me, doctor, I humbly beg you to forgive me . . . You are driving me into mortal sin . . . But this is not argument . . . this is the stuff of journalism.’
He then launched into a heated dissertation on the wisdom of the Church, on its lofty studies of Greek and Latin, on an entire philosophy created by the holy fathers . . .
‘Read St Basil!’ he exclaimed. ‘There he says that studying the great secular authors is the best possible preparation for studying the sacred texts! Read The History of Monasteries in the Middle Ages! There you had science and philosophy . . .’
‘But what philosophy, Father, what science? By philosophy they meant half a dozen concepts of a mythological bent, in which mysticism replaces social instincts . . . And as for science . . . it was the science of commentators and grammarians. Times changed, though, and new sciences were born of which the ancients knew nothing and for which ecclesiastical education offered neither basis nor method, and there was an immediate antagonism between them and Catholic doctrine. Initially, the Church even tried to suppress them by persecution, imprisonment, fire! You can’t deny it, Father. Yes, fire and imprisonment. The Church can no longer do that and so it merely fulminates against them in bad Latin. And meanwhile, in seminaries and schools, it continues to teach the old science that predates these new sciences, ignoring them, despising them, taking refuge in scholasticism. There’s no use clutching your head . . . The Church is alien to the modern spirit, hostile in its principles and methods to the development of human knowledge . . . You can’t deny that! Just look at the Syllabus with its third rule excommunicating Reason . . . In Canon 13 . . .’
The door opened timidly; it was Dionísia again.
‘Miss Amélia is crying. She says she wants her baby.’
‘Oh, dear, that’s not good,’ said the doctor, adding after a moment: ‘How does she look? Is she flushed? Restless?’
‘No, sir, she’s fine. But she just keeps crying and talking about the baby. She says she has to see him now.’
‘Talk to her, distract her . . . See if you can get her to go to sleep.’
Dionísia withdrew, and Father Ferrão asked cautiously:
‘Do you think getting upset could harm her?’
‘Yes, it could, Father, it could,’ said the doctor rummaging around in his bag. ‘But I’m going to send her to sleep . . . But it’s true, you know, Father, the Church nowadays is an intruder.’
Father Ferrão again clutched his head.
‘You don’t have to go very far. Just look at the Church in Portugal. It’s really most gratifying to see its current state of decay.’
Then still standing, the bottle of medicine in his hand, the doctor painted in broad strokes a picture of this state of decay. The Church had once been the Nation; now it was a minority tolerated and protected by the State. It had dominated the law courts, the royal councils, the Treasury, the Navy, it had waged war and peace; nowadays a member of parliament with a good majority had more power than the whole of the clergy put together. It had been the one great source of knowledge in the country; now all it could do was mumble a bit of dog Latin. It had been rich, it had owned whole districts in the country and whole streets in the city; now it depended for its pathetic daily bread on the Ministry of Justice and had to beg for alms at the doors of chapels. Once it had recruited its members from amongst the nobility, from amongst the best in the land; and now, in order to get enough people, it found itself in the embarrassing position of having to go recruiting in orphanages. It had been the repository of national tradition, of the country’s collective ideal, and now, having lost its links with the national consciousness (if there is such a thing) it was a foreigner, a citizen of Rome, receiving both law and spirit from there . . .
‘Well, if the Church is in such a bad state, all the more reason to love it!’ said Father Ferrão, getting to his feet, red-faced.
But Dionísia had once again appeared at the door.
‘What is it now?’
‘Miss Amélia is complaining of a weight on her head. She says she can see flashing lights in front of her eyes . . .’
Dr Gouveia said nothing and immediately followed Dionísia out of the room. Left alone, Father Ferrão paced up and down, pondering a counter-argument bristling with quotations, with the formidable names of theologians, which he would bring crashing down on the doctor. But half an hour passed, the oil lamp was burning down, and the doctor did not return.
Then he began to feel worried by the silence filling the house, in which the only living sound was that of his own footsteps going back and forth. He opened the door very slowly and listened, but Amélia’s room was a long way off, at the far end of the house, near the terrace; neither sound nor light came from there. He resumed his solitary pacing, and a vague sadness began to invade his being. He too wanted to go and see the patient, but his own character and his priestly modesty would not even allow him near a woman in bed, in childbirth, unless she was in danger of dying and in need of the sacraments. Another long, even gloomier hour passed. Then, on tiptoe, blushing in the darkness at his own audacity, he ventured out into the corridor; he listened, terrified, to the sounds coming from Amélia’s room, a dull, confused sound as of scampering feet, as if there were a fight going on. But not a sigh or a cry. He went back into the dining room and, opening his breviary, he began to pray. He heard Gertrudes come running by. He heard a door in the distance slam. Then the noise of a brass bowl being dragged across the floor. Finally, the doctor appeared.
Father Ferrão turned pale when he saw him: the doctor had no tie on and his collar was in shreds; the buttons on his waistcoat had come off, and the cuffs of his rolled back shirtsleeves were all stained with blood.
‘What’s happened, Doctor?’
The doctor did not reply, looking rapidly around the room for his medical bag, his face flushed as if by the heat of battle. He was just about to go out again with his bag when he remembered Father Ferrão’s anxious question:
‘She’s having convulsions,’ he said.
Father Ferrão stopped him at the door and very gravely, with great dignity said:
‘Doctor, if there is any danger, I ask you to remember that a Christian soul is dying in there, and that I am here.’
‘Of course, of course.’
Father Ferrão was once more left alone, waiting. Everything in the house was asleep, Dona Josefa, the tenant farmers, the farm and the fields round about. In the dining room, a huge, sinister-looking grandfather clock that would have looked more at home in an ancient castle, and which had a large sun on its face and the carved figure of a pensive owl on top, struck first midnight, then one o’clock. Father Ferrão kept going out into the corridor from where he could hear either the same sound of scuffling feet or black silence. He returned then to his breviary. He thought about the poor girl who, there in her room, had perhaps reached the moment that would determine her eternity: she had beside her neither her mother nor her women friends; her terrified memory was doubtless filled with visions of sin; the sad face of an offended God would appear before her clouded eyes; her wretched body would be contorted by pain; and in the darkness into which she was plunging, she would feel already the burning breath of Satan as he approached. A dreadful end to both time and flesh! He prayed fervently for her.
He thought of the man who was the other half of her sin, and who was safe in his bed in Leiria, snoring peacefully. And he prayed for him too.
He had a small crucifix on his breviary. And he contemplated it lovingly, thinking tenderly of the certainty of its strength, against which all the doctor’s science and all the vanities of reason were as nothing! Philosophies, ideas, profane glories, generations and empires all pass; they are like the ephemeral sighs of human effort; only the cross remains and will remain – the hope of mankind, the comfort of the despairing, the shelter of the fragile, the refuge of the vanquished, the force majeure of humanity: crux triumphus adversus demonios, crux oppugnatorum murus . . .
At that point, the doctor returned to the room, his face still scarlet, still shaken by the tremendous battle he was waging against death; he had come for another bottle of medicine, but, without a word, he opened the window and took a deep breath of fresh air.
‘How is she?’ asked Father Ferrão.
‘Bad,’ said the doctor, going out again.
Father Ferrão knelt down and mumbled the prayer of St Fulgentius:
‘Father, give her first patience and then mercy . . .’
And there he stayed, his face in his hands, resting on the edge of the table.
At the sound of footsteps, he looked up. It was Dionísia, who sighed as she ransacked the sideboard drawers for napkins.
‘What’s happening, Dionísia?’ asked Father Ferrão.
‘I think we’ve lost her, Father. She had the most terrible convulsions and now she’s fallen into that sleep which is the sleep of the dead.’
Then looking around her as if to make sure they were alone, she said in agitated tones:
‘I didn’t want to say anything because the doctor has such a temper, but to bleed the girl in that state is tantamount to killing her. It’s true she didn’t lose much blood, but you never bleed someone when they’re in that state. Never!’
‘The doctor is a man of science . . .’
‘He may have all the science he likes . . . but I’m no fool either. I’ve had twenty years’ experience and no one ever died in my hands, Father. Bleed someone when they’re having convulsions? It’s disgusting.’
She was highly indignant. The doctor had tortured the poor creature. He had even wanted to give her chloroform . . .
But the doctor’s voice was bellowing for her from the far end of the corridor, and she rushed off with her bundle of napkins.
The fearsome clock, with its pensive owl, struck two, then three. Father Ferrão occasionally gave in now to an old man’s weariness and closed his eyes for a moment. But he would quickly open them again and go and breathe in the heavy night air and look out at the darkness covering the village; then he would go back and sit down, head bowed, his hands in prayer, to murmur over his breviary.
‘Lord, turn your merciful eyes on that bed of pain . . .’
It was then that Gertrudes came into the room, looking greatly upset. The doctor had sent her downstairs to wake up the boy and tell him to hitch the mare to the carriage.
‘The poor little thing, Father. She was doing so well and suddenly this . . . It was because they took the baby from her. I don’t know who the father is, but I know that there’s some sin, some crime behind all this.’
Father Ferrão did not reply, praying quietly for Father Amaro.
Then the doctor returned, carrying his bag.
‘You can go in if you like, Father,’ he said.
But Father Ferrão did not rush off, looking instead at the doctor, with a question hovering on his half-open lips, which he shyly refrained from asking; at last, he could keep it in no longer and he said fearfully:
‘Have you done everything you could, Doctor? Is there nothing more to be done?’
‘No.’
‘Doctor, it’s just that only in extreme circumstances are we supposed to go to a woman who has given birth to an illegitimate child . . .’
‘These are extreme circumstances, Father,’ said the doctor, putting on his overcoat.
Father Ferrão then picked up his breviary and the crucifix, but, before leaving the room, judging it to be his duty to place before the rationalist doctor the certain truth of the mystical eternity implicit in the moment of death, he murmured:
‘It is at this moment that one experiences the fear of God and the futility of human pride . . .’
The doctor said nothing, busy buckling up his bag.
The priest went out, but when he was only half-way down the corridor, he turned back and said in rather troubled tones:
‘Forgive me, Doctor . . . but sometimes, with the aid of religion, the dying do, by virtue of a special grace, come back to life . . . The presence of a doctor might then be useful.’
‘I’m not leaving just yet, don’t worry,’ said the doctor, smiling involuntarily to see the presence of Medicine invoked to help the efficacy of Grace.
He went downstairs to see if the carriage was ready.
When he went back to Amélia’s room, Dionísia and Gertrudes were both kneeling by the bed, praying. The bed and the whole room looked like a battlefield. The two candles had almost burned down. Amélia lay motionless, her arms stiff, her clenched fists a dark purple colour, and her face was the same colour, only darker.
Bent over her, crucifix in hand, Father Ferrão was saying in an urgent voice:
‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! Remember the grace of God! Have faith in divine mercy! Repent in the bosom of our Lord. Jesu, Jesu, Jesu!’
At last, realising that she was dead, he knelt down and murmured the Miserere. The doctor, who had been standing at the door, withdrew slowly, tiptoed down the corridor and went out into the street where the boy was holding the horse, now harnessed.
‘It looks like rain, Doctor,’ said the boy, yawning sleepily.
Dr Gouveia turned up his coat collar, placed his bag on the seat beside him and, a moment later, beneath the first heavy drops of rain, the cabriolet was rumbling down the road, the red glow of its two lanterns cutting through the darkness of the night.