The Priest (22 page)

“And you still go out every day to scan the
desert looking for her.” Guen smiled at her friend of so many years
with a tenderness that touched Mauricio deeply.

“And I still wait for her. Even though I
know she’ll never appear at the horizon, I go out every day looking
because doing so was the only thing that kept me sane when we first
arrived here. Back then, when the time passed slowly and it was
painfully obvious that she wasn’t coming, I still drew strength
from the act of waiting. I got used to it, and now it is part of my
daily routine. Love is a powerful tool. It can elevate your mind to
peaks you never before experienced. It can free your body from
pain. I needed that then, and I need that now more than ever.
Hoping, even foolishly, that one day I will see Rosie again keeps
me going when I am tired.” Mauricio wiped away Guen’s tears with
his fingers and kissed her head.

“I care for you. And it pains me to see you
alone,” Guen said, smiling at Mauricio.

“I care for you, too. Don’t be sad for me. I
didn’t choose whom to love, but I wouldn’t change it, either, if I
could have. Ultimately, Rosie is the reason why we're all here. If
she only knew what her love started…” Mauricio said and then
laughed softly. “But, don’t mind me. I don’t want to ruin your
night with my melancholy. On a night like this, when people poke me
around, I tend to grow nostalgic.”

“I think that on nights like this, you
finally say what’s in your heart.”

“Still, I have no right to dump on everyone
else’s mood.” Mauricio smiled at her and waved one hand in the air
to dismiss the topic.

“Since you have declared tomorrow free,
we’re going to have Leander’s family over for dinner. Would you
like to join us, or do you see enough of your god-daughters at
school that you don’t wish to see them outside of it as well?” Guen
knew that he couldn’t refuse such an invitation and grinned at her
friend in triumph.

“You were always good at guilt-tripping
people when it’s convenient for you,” Mauricio complained, but
nodded at the same time. “I’ll be late though.”

“I haven’t told you the time, yet!” Guen
laughed at his childish game of power.

“Regardless. I won’t subject myself to your
presence more than necessary,” he joked and Guen punched him in the
shoulder.

“Ouch! Is this the way to treat the Priest?”
Mauricio asked while massaging the injured limb.

“Don’t even get me started with that,
Your Holiness
.” It was their private joke when nobody was
listening.

“I feel that I never tell you enough, but,
thank you, again. I’ll be forever grateful for what you did back in
Tarin. You risked your life for me; you were good to me and Rosie;
you gave us precious moments together, and without your help, I
wouldn’t be here.” Mauricio repeated words that he had already said
many times. But tonight, it was different. The City of Men was at a
turning point. After so many years of being constantly on the brink
of extinction, it was finally facing the first big reprieve. It was
the right time to acknowledge true friendships.

“I felt that you deserved a few good days,
or at least as good as I could give you, given our circumstances.”
Guen shyly shrugged her shoulders.

“And to think that you despised Rosie so
much.” Mauricio almost laughed at remembering how Guen had acted
when in her presence.

“I couldn’t stand her and everything she
represented, but when I discovered the sentiments she harbored for
you, I understood that she was a different person altogether.” Guen
paused for a moment, and Mauricio had the impression that she was
lost in her own memories of Rosie. “I'm glad I met the true
Rosie—not the brat everybody thought her to be, not the spoiled
first daughter who hid herself under a shallow mask. Just her, a
selfless girl who helped you escape your fate. I liked that Rosie
very much, and we would have been the greatest friends in Ginecea.
I miss her too, you know?” she finished.

“Life would have been just perfect with her
by my side,” he said, looking at the young couple sneaking away
around the corner.

“Priest, how do you feel today?” Lucas was
looking worriedly at Mauricio’s wrinkled face.

“I admit that time hasn’t been kind to me,
but I am not one hundred, yet. Not even seventy. You shouldn’t be
so disrespectful to the Priest,” Mauricio joked.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Just teasing you.” Mauricio smiled at Lucas
and then added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to die today. I still
have several things to do before getting my well-deserved rest.” He
was cold, and he hadn’t slept at all, but Lucas’ affection was
enough to make him lie about his condition.

“It’s not funny. I keep telling you, but you
simply don’t listen.” Lucas threw his hands in the air to
communicate his despair, but only succeeded at being comedic. His
face was wrinkled prematurely by the merciless sun of the desert
and showed more than he wanted.

Mauricio laughed and his ribs ached. “When
you reach my age, you don’t care about listening so much anymore.”
Mauricio patted the couch and gestured for Lucas to join him
there.

“Tell me about your son. How is Randal? I
want to hear about
him
.” Mauricio’s voice wasn’t faint, but
he wasn’t sure he had fooled Lucas.

“Randal thinks he’s in love with a new boy
now. If I remember correctly, this is a record even for him. He
changes his heart once a month, but this new love replaced the
other after just a week. I hope he’ll settle one day for a good
person and be happy with whomever he chooses.” Lucas always
complained about his son.

“He’s a good boy. You worry too much. You’ll
see. When you’re a grandfather, everything your son did wrong will
magically disappear.” Mauricio smiled.

“Which reminds me, I brought you the latest
news from Ginecea.” Lucas smiled back and went to retrieve a bundle
of magazines he had put on the bookshelves at the entry of the
Priest’s apartment. “Here it is. There is something about your
granddaughter—” He leafed through the magazines until he found what
he was looking for. “—a new picture and a whole article about some
summer camp Pax is going to attend while her mother is preparing
her campaign.” He gave the Priest the magazine and pointed at the
picture of a slender girl with chestnut hair and big, hazel eyes.
“She really is beautiful,” Lucas commented proudly as if he were
talking about his daughter. He knew more about the Priest’s famous
granddaughter than he knew about his other friends’ kids.

“Yes, she is. And she is smart, too. You can
see how clever she is from the bright light in her eyes. She’ll do
great things.”

“It seems that your daughter has a very good
chance of winning the election.” Lucas had never lost the
propensity to ask all the questions nobody had the brass to ask the
Priest. But with age, he had learned how to temper his impulsive
character. He had been dancing around the question for days, since
he had known that Maurice was running for President of Ginecea. Now
the unasked question was hanging between them, threatening to ruin
their perfectly-oiled, morning routine.

“Go ahead. Ask what you want to ask.”
Mauricio had decided long ago that it was fun to play with Lucas,
and now that the sources of his amusement were scarce, that was one
of the few pleasures left to him.

“What kind of President do you think she
would be?” Lucas asked.

“What can I say—” Mauricio opened and closed
his hands to lessen the stiffness and let the blood circulate. “—I
can only hope that she’ll be more open-minded than the last three.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic ball, like some believe,”
Mauricio answered truthfully, adding a touch of dryness at the end.
He had grown tired of the people who worshipped him and believed
that he had an answer for everything. He was thankful for Lucas’
friendship because the man allowed him to be himself: old and
cranky.

“Things have been hard for the slaves
lately,” Lucas commented with an ironic understatement. The slaves’
conditions had deteriorated since Maurice’s grandmother’s
presidency. Rosie’s mother had been at least fair for being a pure
breed. Although she hadn’t done anything to better the slaves’
lives, she hadn’t done anything to worsen them, either, which was
more than could be said about the other three presidents Ginecea
had elected since then. The Tarin incident and his escape became
what the pure breeds needed to launch a full-scale repression of an
already repressed and beaten population of men. It didn’t matter it
was a woman who actually committed the multiple murders and
attempted to kill the President’s daughter. The accident got an
outrageous cover up, and now, every pure breed girl in Ginecea
studied in school that men, soulless creatures with animalistic
instincts, had taken the lives of valiant guards, who had children
and families, that tragic night.

“I don’t think that we’re going to see big
changes soon, anyway,” Mauricio said cautiously. He owed Lucas some
hope, but he didn’t want to lead him around chasing wild
dreams.

“You don’t think that your daughter would be
sympathetic to our cause?” Lucas asked, shifting around.

Mauricio kept silent for a long moment. He
didn’t want to consider the possibility that his own daughter could
be the next bad president—the next butcher, as her predecessors had
been called by the male population, and for good reason. Thousands
of innocent slaves had died victims of poor hygienic conditions,
starvation, and, most of all, indifference. The City of Men had
mourned their friends and relatives with a monthly ceremony to
commit the names of the fallen to memory. The Priest’s sculpture
garden had spontaneously become a memorial for the victims. Every
month, rock by rock, a new sculpture was erected with the exact
amount of stones as the number of men, and the occasional fathered
woman, who had lost their lives.

“Honestly, I don’t think she can even
consider such a thought. To be sympathetic with our cause, you must
at least acknowledge that slavery is a problem. Maurice has lived
all her life as the purest of the pure breeds; for her, slavery is
a part of society. Like the sun and the moon rotating between day
and night. She could be a magnanimous president. But that, I am
afraid, is the whole extent our hopes can travel.” Mauricio felt
exhausted.

“But what if she comes to know the truth
about her birth?” Lucas was one of the few persons that knew about
the relationship between the Priest and Maurice Layan. The others
were Leander and Julius. Guen and Arias had been killed a few years
before in a riot that had claimed several other lives; they died to
defend the women’s rights to live in the City of Men.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects generated by the pure
breeds’ carnage of slaves had been a resurgence of hatred against
women in the City of Men. Mauricio felt responsible for the
massacre, and his health had started declining since then and never
got better. He had never forgiven himself for the death of his
closest friends, and eventually, the guilt dug a hole too deep into
his heart. Now, in the box of memories that he kept under his bed,
Mauricio also had a few mementos that belonged to Guen and Arias.
Cordelia had been nice enough to give him something.

“She’d never believe me. The new Priestess
would assure her about the holiness of the incognito. At the same
time, the Priestess would be tipped off that we know and retaliate
immediately against the slaves. We wouldn’t stand a chance against
an army of vengeful pure breeds.” Mauricio had plenty of time to
think nowadays. His health had declined to the point that he could
barely leave his room. He was still leading the City of Men from
his bed, and in the rare occasions he had slept the night before,
he would lead the city from his couch. Since he didn’t have to
supervise the fields anymore, he could think, undisturbed, for
hours. Sometimes he wished to be relieved from thinking, too. But
his mind was still sharp and lying around in his apartment bored
him greatly.

“But if we could find a way to prove it?”
Lucas asked.

“You're late for patrol duty,” Mauricio
answered instead.

“Don’t change the topic; it’s not like we’re
going to talk about it later. So, what if we can prove it?”

“How? I thought about it for several years,
but all the plans I made were flawed. We don’t have either the
power or the influence. We need the women’s cooperation to
succeed.” Mauricio started his routine of stretching to reactivate
the muscles in his sleepy legs.

“There are women who want to help us.” Lucas
pointed a finger outside the window to show the Priest the workers
painting the internal walls of the city.

“Yes, but they’re all fathered, and they
barely have political rights.” Mauricio took a look at the women
working just outside his window. He waved one hand and they
answered back immediately, calling his name.

“They can vote!” Lucas said with
emphasis.

“Yes, but they have to elect one voter, who
in turn is going to represent thousands of them. Their vote is
hardly significant to further our cause.” Mauricio, in the capacity
of the Priest, greeted the women with gentle words of appreciation
for their work.

“I understand that, but if they all decided
to vote differently from what's suggested by their employers, their
vote would start counting.” Lucas was stubborn, and he knew he was
on to something.

“In that case, yes, it would definitely
change the balance. And if all the fathered women would rebel
against the pure breeds, things could finally change in Ginecea.”
Mauricio blew a soft kiss with his hand toward a young girl who was
smiling at him with affection.

“Hi, Lara. How is your mom?” the Priest
asked the girl.