The power and the glory (18 page)

... and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Mass was over.
In three days, he told himself, I shall be in Las Casas: I shall have confessed and been absolved-and the thought of the child on the rubbish-heap came automatically back to him with painful love. What was the good of confession when you loved the result of your crime?
The people knelt as he made his way down the barn: he saw the little group of Indians: women whose children he had baptized: Pedro: the man from the cantina was there too, kneeling with his face buried in his plump hands, a chain of beads falling between the fingers. He looked a good man: perhaps he was a good man: perhaps, the priest thought, I have lost the faculty of judging-perhaps that woman in prison was the best person there. A horse cried in the early morning, tethered to a tree, and all the freshness of the morning came in through the open door.
Two men waited beside the mules: the guide was adjusting a stirrup and beside him, scratching under the armpit, awaiting his coming with a doubtful and defensive smile, stood the half-caste. He was like the small pain that reminds a man of his sickness, or perhaps like the unexpected memory which proves that love after all isn't dead. "Well," the priest said, "I didn't expect you here."
"No, father, of course not." He scratched and smiled.
"Have you brought the soldiers with you?"
"What things you do say, father," he protested with a callow giggle. Behind him, across the yard and through an open door, the priest could see Miss Lehr putting up his sandwiches: she had dressed, but she still wore her hairnet. She was wrapping the sandwiches carefully in grease-proof paper, and her sedate movements had a curious effect of unreality. It was the half-caste who was real. He said: "What trick are you playing now?" Had he perhaps bribed his guide to lead him back across the border? He could believe almost anything of that man.
"You shouldn't say things like that, father."
Miss Lehr passed out of sight, with the soundlessness of a dream.
"No?"
"I'm here, father," the man seemed to take a long breath for his surprising stilted statement, "on an errand of mercy." The guide finished with one mule and began on the next, shortening the already short Mexican stirrup; the priest giggled nervously. "An errand of mercy?"
"Well, father, you're the only priest this side of Las Casas, and the man's dying …"
"What man?"
"The Yankee."
"What are you talking about?"
"The one the police wanted. He robbed a bank. You know the one I mean."
"He wouldn't need me," the priest said impatiently, remembering the photograph on the peeling wall, watching the first communion party.
"Oh, he's a good Catholic, father." Scratching under his armpit, he didn't look at the priest. "He's dying, and you and I wouldn't like to have on our conscience what that man..."
"We shall be lucky if we haven't worse."
"What do you mean, father?"
The priest said: "He's only killed and robbed. He hasn't betrayed his friends."
"Holy Mother of God. I've never..."
"We both have," the priest said. He turned to the guide. "Are the mules ready?"
"Yes, father."
"We'll start then." He had forgotten Miss Lehr completely: the other world had stretched a hand across the border, and he was again in the atmosphere of flight.
"Where are you going?" the half-caste said.
"To Las Casas." He climbed stiffly onto his mule. The half-caste held onto his stirrup-leather, and he was reminded of their first meeting: there was the same mixture of complaint, appeal, abuse. "You're a fine priest," he wailed up at him. "Your bishop ought to hear of this. A man's dying, wants to confess, and just because you want to get to the city..."
"Why do you think me such a fool?" the priest said. "I know why you've come. You're the only one they've got who can recognize me, and they can't follow me into this state. Now if I ask you where this American is, you'll tell me-I know-you don't have to speak-that he's just the other side."
"Oh, no, father, you're wrong there. He's just this side."
"A mile or two makes no difference. Nobody here's likely to bring an action..."
"It's an awful thing, father," the half-caste said, "never to be believed. just because once-well, I admit it-"
The priest kicked his mule into motion: they passed out of Mr. Lehr's yard and turned south: the half-caste trotted at his stirrup.
"I remember," the priest said, "that you said you'd never forget my face."
"And I haven't," the man put in triumphantly, "or I wouldn't be here, would I? Listen, father, I'll admit a lot. You don't know how a reward will tempt a poor man like me. And when you wouldn't trust me, I thought, well, if that's how he feels-I'll show him. But I'm a good Catholic, father, and when a dying man wants a priest..."
They climbed the long slope of Mr. Lehr's pastures which led to the next range of hills. The air was still fresh, at six in the morning, at three thousand feet; up there tonight it would be very cold-they had another six thousand feet to climb. The priest said uneasily: "Why should I put my head into your noose?" It was too absurd.
"Look, father." The half-caste was holding up a scrap of paper: the familiar writing caught the priest's attention-the large deliberate handwriting of a child. The paper had been used to wrap up food: it was smeared and greasy: he read: "The Prince of Denmark is wondering whether he should kill himself or not, whether it is better to go on suffering all the doubts about his father, or by one blow..."
"Not that, father, on the other side. That's nothing."
The priest turned the paper and read a single phrase written in English in blunt pencil: "For Christ's sake, father..." The mule, unbeaten, lapsed into a slow heavy walk: the priest made no attempt to urge it on: this piece of paper left no doubt whatever: he felt the trap close again, irrevocably.
He asked: "How did this come to you?"
"It was this way, father. I was with the police when they shot him. It was in a village the other side. He picked up a child to act as a screen, but, of course, the soldiers didn't pay any attention. It was only an Indian. They were both shot, but he escaped."
"Then how... ?"
"It was this way, father." He positively prattled. It appeared that he was afraid of the lieutenant-who resented the fact that the priest had escaped, and so he planned to slip across the border, out of reach. He got his chance at night, and on the way-it was probably on this side of the state line, but who knew where one state began or another ended?-he came on the American. He had been shot in the stomach. …"
"How could he have escaped then?"
"Oh, father, he is a man of superhuman strength." He was dying, he wanted a priest..."
"How did he tell you that?"
"It only needed two words, father." Then, to prove the story, the man had found enough strength to write this note, and so … the story had as many holes in it as a sieve. But what remained was this note, like a memorial stone you couldn't overlook.
The half-caste bridled angrily again. "You don't trust me, father."
"Oh, no," the priest said. "I don't trust you."
"You think I'm lying."
"Most of it is lies."
He pulled the mule up and sat thinking, facing south. He was quite certain that this was a trap-probably the half-caste had suggested it: he was after the reward. But it was a fact that the American was there, dying. He thought of the deserted banana station where something had happened and the Indian child lay dead on the maize: there was no question at all that he was needed. A man with all that on his soul... The oddest thing of all was that he felt quite cheerful: he had never really believed in this peace. He had dreamed of it so often on the other side that now it meant no more to him than a dream. He began to whistle a tune-something he had heard somewhere once. "I found a rose in my field": it was time he woke up. It wouldn't really have been a good dream-that confession in Las Casas when he had to admit, as well as everything else, that he had refused confession to a man dying in mortal sin.
He said: "Will the man still be alive?"
"I think so, father," the half-caste caught him eagerly up.
"How far is it?"
"Four-five hours, father."
"You can take it in turns to ride the other mule."
The priest turned his mule back and called out to the guide. The man dismounted and stood inertly there, while he explained. The only remark he made was to the half-caste, motioning him into the saddle: "Be careful of that saddle-bag. The father's brandy's there."
They rode slowly back: Miss Lehr was at her gate. She said: "You forgot the sandwiches, father."
"Oh, yes. Thank you." He stole a quick look round-it didn't mean a thing to him. He said: "Is Mr. Lehr still asleep?"
"Shall I wake him?"
"No, no. But you will thank him for his hospitality?"
"Yes. And perhaps, father, in a few years we shall see you again? As you said." She looked curiously at the half-caste, and he stared back through his yellow insulting eyes.
The priest said: "It's possible," glancing away with a sly secretive smile.
"Well, good-bye, father. You'd better be off, hadn't you? The sun's getting high."
"Good-bye, my dear Miss Lehr." The mestizo slashed impatiently at his mule and stirred it into action.
"Not that way, my man," Miss Lehr called.
"I have to pay a visit first," the priest explained, and breaking into an uncomfortable trot he bobbled down behind the mestizo's mule towards the village. They passed the whitewashed church-that too belonged to a dream. Life didn't contain churches. The long untidy village street opened ahead of them. The schoolmaster was at his door and waved an ironic greeting, malicious and horn-rimmed. "Well, father, off with your spoils?"
The priest stopped his mule. He said to the half-caste: "Really... I had forgotten..."
"You did well out of the baptisms," the schoolmaster said. "It pays to wait a few years, doesn't it?"
"Come on, father," the half-caste said. "Don't listen to him." He spat. "He's a bad man."
The priest said: "You know the people here better than anyone. If I leave a gift, will you spend it on things that do no harm-I mean food, blankets-not books?"
"They need food more than books."
"I have forty-five pesos here..."
The mestizo wailed: "Father, what are you doing...?"
"Conscience money?" the schoolmaster said.
"Yes."
"All the same, of course, I thank you. It's good to see a priest with a conscience. It's a stage in evolution," he said, his glasses flashing in the sunlight, a plump embittered figure in front of his tin-roofed shack, an exile.
They passed the last houses, the cemetery, and began to climb. "Why, father, why?" the half-caste protested.
"He's not a bad man, he does his best, and I shan't need money again, shall I?" the priest asked, and for quite a while they rode without speaking, while the sun came blindingly out, and the mules' shoulders strained on the steep rocky paths, and the priest began to whistle again-"I have a rose"-the only tune he knew. Once the half-caste started a complaint about something: "The trouble with you, father, is..." but it petered out before it was defined, because there wasn't really anything to complain about as they rode steadily north towards the border.
"Hungry?" the priest asked at last.
The half-caste muttered something that sounded angry or derisive.
"Take a sandwich," the priest said, opening Miss Lehr's packet.

Chapter Two

"THERE," the half-caste said, with a sort of whinny of triumph, as though he had lain innocently all these seven hours under the suspicion of lying. He pointed across the barranca to a group of Indian huts on a peninsula of rock jutting out across the chasm. They were perhaps two hundred yards away, but it would take another hour at least to reach them, winding down a thousand feet and up another thousand.
The priest sat on his mule watching intently: he could see no movement anywhere. Even the look-out, the little platform of twigs built on a mound above the huts, was empty. He said: "There doesn't seem to be anybody about." He was back in the atmosphere of desertion.
"Well," the half-caste said, "you didn't expect anybody, did you? Except him. He's there. You'll soon find that." "Where are the Indians?"
"There you go again," the man complained. "Suspicion. Always suspicion. How should I know where the Indians are? I told you he was quite alone, didn't I?"
The priest dismounted. "What are you doing now?" the half-caste cried despairingly.
"We shan't need the mules any more. They can be taken back."
"Not need them? How are you going to get away from here?"
"Oh," the priest said. "I won't have to think about that, will I?" He counted out forty pesos and said to the muleteer: "I hired you for Las Casas. Well, this is your good luck. Six days' pay."
"You don't want me any more, father?"
"No, I think you'd better get away from here quickly. Leave you-know-what behind."
The half-caste said excitedly: "We can't walk all that way, father. Why, the man's dying."
"We can go just as quickly on our own hoofs. Now, friend, be off." The mestizo watched the mules pick their way along the narrow stony path with a look of wistful greed: they disappeared round a shoulder of rock-crack, crack, crack, the sound of their hoofs contracted into silence.
"Now," the priest said briskly, "we won't delay any more," and he started down the path, with a small sack slung over his shoulder. He could hear the half-caste panting after him: his wind was bad: they had probably let him have far too much beer in the capital, and the priest thought, with an odd touch of contemptuous affection, of how much had happened to them both since that first encounter in a village of which he didn't even know the name: the half-caste lying there in the hot noonday rocking his hammock with one naked yellow toe. If he had been asleep at that moment, this wouldn't have happened. It was really shocking bad luck for the poor devil that he was to be burdened with a sin of such magnitude. The priest took a quick look back and saw the big toes protruding like slugs out of the dirty gym shoes: the man picked his way down, muttering all the time-his perpetual grievance didn't help his wind. Poor man, the priest thought, he isn't really bad enough....
And he wasn't strong enough either for this journey. By the time the priest had reached the bottom of the barranca he was fifty yards behind. The priest sat down on a boulder and mopped his forehead, and the half-caste began to complain long before he was down to his level: "There isn't so much hurry as all that." It was almost as though the nearer he got to his treachery the greater the grievance against his victim became. "Didn't you say he was dying?" the priest asked.
"Oh, yes, dying, of course. But that can take a long time."
"The longer the better for all of us," the priest said, "Perhaps you are right. I'll take a rest here."
But now, like a contrary child, the half-caste wanted to start again. He said: "You do nothing in moderation. Either you run or you sit."
"Can I do nothing right?" the priest teased him, and then he put in sharply and shrewdly: "They will let me see him, I suppose?"
"Of course," the half-caste said and immediately caught himself up. "They, they. Who are you talking about now? First you complain that the place is empty, and then you talk of they." He said with tears in his voice: "You may be a good man. You may be a saint for all I know, but why won't you talk plainly, so that a man can understand you? It's enough to make a man a bad Catholic."
The priest said: "You see this sack here. We don't want to carry that any farther. It's heavy. I think a little drink will do both good. We both need courage, don't we?"
"Drink, father?" the half-caste said with excitement, and watched the priest unpack a bottle. He never took his eyes away while the priest drank. His two fangs stuck greedily out, quivering slightly on the lower lip. Then he too fastened on the mouth. "It's illegal, I suppose," the priest said with a giggle, "on this side of the border-if we are this side." He had another draw himself and handed it back: it was soon exhausted-he took the bottle and threw it at a rock and it exploded like shrapnel. The half-caste started. He said: "Be careful. People might think you'd got a gun."
"As for the rest," the priest said, "we wont need that."
"You mean there's more of it?"
"Two more bottles-but we can't drink any more in this heat. We'd better leave it here."
"Why didn't you say it was heavy, father? I'll carry it for you. You've only to ask me to do a thing. I'm willing. Only you just won't ask."
They set off again, up-hill, the bottles clinking gently: the sun shone vertically down on the pair of them. It took them the best part of an hour to reach the top of the barranca. Then the watch tower gaped over their path like an upper jaw and the tops of the huts appeared over the rocks above them. Indians do not build their settlements on a mule path: they prefer to stand aside and see who comes. The priest wondered how soon the police would appear: they were keeping very carefully hidden.
"This way, father." The half-caste took the lead, scrambling away from the path up the rocks to the little plateau. He looked anxious, almost as if he had expected something to happen before this. There were about a dozen huts: they stood quiet, like tombs against the heavy sky. A storm was coming up.
The priest felt a nervous impatience: he had walked into this trap, the least they could do was to close it quickly, finish everything off. He wondered whether they would suddenly shoot him down from one of the huts. He had come to the very edge of time: soon there would be no tomorrow and no yesterday, just existence going on for ever; he began to wish he had taken a little more brandy. His voice broke uncertainly when he said: "Well, we are here. Where is this Yankee?"
"Oh, yes, the Yankee," the half-caste said, jumping a little. It was as if for a moment he had forgotten the pretext. He stood there, gaping at the huts, wondering too. He said: "He was over there when I left him."
"Well, he couldn't have moved, could he?"
If it hadn't been for that letter he would have doubted the very existence of the American-and if he hadn't seen the dead child too, of course. He began to walk across the little silent clearing towards the hut: would they shoot him before he got to the entrance? It was like walking a plank blindfold: you didn't know at what point you would step off into space for ever. He hiccupped once and knotted his hands behind his back to stop their trembling. He had been glad in a way to turn away from Miss Lehr's gate-he had never really believed that he would ever get back to parish work and the daily Mass and the careful appearance of piety; but all the same you needed to be a little drunk to die. He got to the door-not a sound anywhere; then a voice said: "Father."
He looked round. The mestizo stood in the clearing with his face contorted: the two fangs jumped and jumped: he looked frightened.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Nothing, father."
"Why did you call me?"
"I said nothing," he lied. The priest turned and went in.
The American was there all right. Whether he was alive was another matter. He lay on a straw mat with his eyes closed and his mouth open and his hands on his belly, like a child with stomach-ache. Pain alters a face-or else successful crime has its own falsity like politics or piety. He was hardly recognizable from the news picture on the police-station wall: that was tougher, arrogant, a man who had made good. This was just a tramp's face. Pain had exposed the nerves and given the face a kind of spurious intelligence.
The priest knelt down and put his face near the man's mouth, trying to hear the breathing. A heavy smell came up to him-a mixture of vomit and cigar smoke and stale drink: it would take more than a few lilies to hide this corruption. A very faint voice close to his ear said in English: "Beat it, father." Outside the door, in the heavy stormy sunlight, the mestizo stood, staring towards the hut, a little loose about the knees.
"So you're alive, are you?" the priest said briskly. "Better hurry. You haven't got long."
"Beat it, father."
"You wanted me, didn't you? You're a Catholic?"
"Beat it," the voice whispered again, as if those were the only words it could remember of a lesson it had learnt some while ago.
"Come now," the priest said. "How long is it since you went to confession?"
The eyelids rolled up and astonished eyes looked up at him. The man said in a puzzled voice: "Ten years, I guess. What are you doing here anyway?"
"You asked for a priest. Come now. Ten years is a long time."
"You got to beat it, father," the man said. He was remembering the lesson now-lying there flat on the mat with his hands folded on his stomach, any vitality that was left accumulated in the brain: he was like a reptile crushed at one end. He said in a strange voice: "That bastard..." The priest said furiously: "What sort of a confession is this? I make a five hours' journey... and all I get out of you is evil words." It seemed to him horribly unfair that his uselessness should return with his danger-he couldn't do anything for a man like this. "Listen father..." the man said,
"I am listening."
"You beat it out of here quick. I didn't know..."
"I haven't come all this way to talk about myself," the priest said. "The sooner your confession's done, the sooner I will be gone."
"You don't need to trouble about me. I'm through."
"You mean damned?" the priest said angrily.
"Sure. Damned," the man said, licking blood away from his lips.
"You listen to me," the priest said, leaning closer to the stale and nauseating smell, "I have come here to listen to your confession. Do you want to confess?"
"No."
"Did you when you wrote that note...?"
"Maybe."
"I know what you want to tell me. I know it, do you understand? Let that be. Remember you are dying. Don't depend too much on God's mercy. He has given you this chance: He may not give you another. What sort of a life have you led all these years? Does it seem so grand now? You've killed a lot of people-that's about all. Anybody can do that for a while, and then he is killed too. Just as you are killed. Nothing left except pain."
"Father."
"Yes?" The priest gave an impatient sigh, leaning closer. He hoped for a moment that at last he had got the man started on some meagre train of sorrow.
"You take my gun, father. See what I mean? Under my arm"
"I haven't any use for a gun."
"Oh, yes, you have." The man detached one hand from his stomach and began to move it slowly up his body. So much effort: it was unbearable to watch. The priest said sharply: "Lie still. It's not there." He could see the holster empty under the armpit: it was the first definite indication that they and the half-caste were not alone.
"Bastards," the man said, and his hand lay wearily where it had got to, over his heart; he imitated the prudish attitude of a female statue: one hand over the breast and one upon the stomach. It was very hot in the hut: the heavy light of the storm lay over them.
"Listen, father..." The priest sat hopelessly at the man's side: nothing now would shift that violent brain towards peace: once, hours ago perhaps, when he wrote the message-but the chance had come and gone. He was whispering now something about a knife. There was a legend believed by many criminals that dead eyes held the picture of what they had last seen-a Christian could believe that the soul did the same, held absolution and peace at the final moment, after a lifetime of the most hideous crime: or sometimes pious men died suddenly in brothels unabsolved and what had seemed a good life went out with the permanent stamp on it of impurity. He had heard men talk of the unfairness of a deathbed repentance-as if it was an easy thing to break the habit of a life whether to do good or evil. One suspected the good of the life that ended badly-or the viciousness that ended well. He made another desperate attempt. He said: "You believed once. Try and understand-his is your chance. At the last moment. Like the thief. You have murdered men-children perhaps," he added, remembering the little black heap under the cross. "But that need not be so important. It only belongs to this life, a few years-it's over already. You can drop it all here, in this hut, and go on for ever..." He felt sadness and longing at the vaguest idea of a life he couldn't lead himself... words like peace, glory, love.
"Father," the voice said urgently, "you let me be. You look after yourself. You take my knife..." The hand began its weary march again-this time towards the hip. The knees crooked up in an attempt to roll over, and then the whole body gave up the effort, the ghost, everything.
The priest hurriedly whispered the words of conditional absolution, in case, for one second before it crossed the border, the spirit had repented-but it was more likely that it had gone over still seeking its knife, bent on vicarious violence. He prayed: "O merciful God, after all he was thinking of me, it was for my sake..." but he prayed without conviction. At the best, it was only one criminal trying to aid the escape of another-whichever way you looked, there wasn't much merit in either of them.