The Honorary Consul (16 page)

       "Since my last confession, Father..." The man swung around and said angrily, "You must not joke about things like that. I will not listen to you if you joke..."

       "But that's no joke, Father. I'm not in a position to joke about anything at all. Surely every man has a lot to confess when it comes to dying."

       "My faculties have been taken away," the other said in a stubborn voice. "You must know what that means if you are really a Catholic."

       "I seem to know the rules better than you, Father. You do not need faculties, not in an emergency—if there is no other priest available... there isn't, is there? Your men would never let you bring one here..."

       "There is no emergency—not yet."

       "All the same time is short... if I ask..."

       The man reminded him again of a dog, a dog who has been reproved for a fault which he does not clearly understand. He began to plead, "Señor Fortnum, I assure you there never will be an emergency... it will never be necessary..."

       " 'I am sorry and beg pardon'—that's how I begin, isn't it? It's been the hell of a long time... I've been once to church in the last forty years... a while ago when I got married. I was damned if I'd go to confession though. It would have taken too long and I couldn't keep the lady waiting."

       "Please, Señor Fortnum, do not mock me."

       "I'm not mocking you, Father. Perhaps I'm mocking myself a bit. I can do that as long as the whisky lasts." He added, "It really is a funny thing when you come to think of it. 'I ask forgiveness of God through you, Father.' That is the formula, isn't it—and all the time you'll have the gun ready. Don't you think we ought to begin now? Before the gun is loaded. There are plenty of things I have on my mind."

       "I will not listen to you." He made the gesture of putting his hands against the protruding ears. They flattened and sprang back.

       Charley Fortnum said, "Oh, don't worry, forget it. I was only half serious. What difference does it make anyway?"

       "What do you mean?"

       "I don't believe a thing, Father. I would never have bothered to marry in a church if the law hadn't forced me to. There was the question of money. For my wife, I mean. What was your intention, Father, when you married?" He added quickly, "Forgive me. I had no business to ask that."

       But the little man, it seemed, was not angry. The question even appeared to have an attraction for him. He came slowly across the floor with his mouth ajar, as though he were a starving man drawn irresistibly by the offer of bread. A little saliva hung at the corner of his mouth. He came and crouched down on the floor beside the coffin. He said in a low voice (he might have been kneeling in the confessional box himself), "I think it was anger and loneliness, Señor Fortnum. I never meant any harm to her, poor woman."

       "I can understand the loneliness," Charley Fortnum said, "I've suffered from that too. But why the anger? Who were you angry with?"

       "The Church," the man said and added with irony, "my Mother the Church."

       "I used to be angry with my father. He didn't understand me, I thought, or care a nickel about me. I hated him. All the same I was bloody lonely when he died. And now"—he lifted his glass—"I even imitate him. Though he drank more than I do. All the same a father's a father—I don't see how you can be angry with Mother Church. I could never get angry with a fucking institution."

       "She is a sort of person too," the man said, "they claim she is Christ on earth—I still half believe it even now. Someone like you-'un Ingles'—you are not able to understand how ashamed I felt of the things they made me read to people. I was a priest in the poor part of Asunción near the river. Have you noticed how the poor always cling close to the river? They do it here too, as though they plan one day to swim away, but they have no idea how to swim and there is nowhere to swim to for any of them. On Sunday I had to read to them out of the Gospels."

       Charley Fortnum listened with a little sympathy and a good deal of cunning. His life depended on this man, and it was vitally important for him to know what moved him. There might be some chord he could touch of fellow feeling. The man was speaking immoderately as a thirsty man drinks. Perhaps he had been unable to speak freely for a long time: perhaps this was the only way he could unburden himself to a man who was safely dying and would remember no more what he said than a priest in the confessional. Charley Fortnum asked, "What's wrong with the Gospels, Father?"

       "They make no sense," the ex-priest said, "anyway not in Paraguay. 'Sell all and give to the poor'—I had to read that out to them while the old Archbishop we had in those days was eating a fine fish from Iguazu and drinking a French wine with the General. Of course the people were not actually starving—you can keep them from starving on mandioca, and malnutrition is much safer for the rich than starvation. Starvation makes a man desperate. Malnutrition makes him too tired to raise a fist. The Americans understand that well—the aid they give us makes just that amount of difference. Our people do not starve—they wilt. The words used to stick on my lips—'Suffer little children,' and there the children sat in the front rows with their pot bellies and their navels sticking out like doorknobs. 'It were better that a millstone were hung around his neck,'

       'He who gives to one of the least of these.' Gives what? gives mandioca? and then I distributed the Host—it's not so nourishing as a good 'chipá'—and then I drank the wine. Wine! Which of these poor souls had ever tasted wine? Why could we not use water in the sacrament? He used it at Cana. Wasn't there a beaker of water at the Last Supper He could have used instead?" To Charley Fortnum's astonishment the doglike eyes were swollen with unshed tears.

       The man said, "Oh, you must not think we are all of us bad Christians as I am. The Jesuits do what they can. But they are watched by the police. Their telephones are tapped. If anyone seems dangerous he is quickly pushed across the river. They do not kill him. The Yankees would not like a priest to be killed, and anyway we are not dangerous enough. I spoke in a sermon once about Father Torres who was shot with the guerrillas in Colombia. I only said that unlike Sodom the Church did sometimes produce one just man, so perhaps she would not be destroyed like Sodom. The police reported me to the Archbishop and the Archbishop forbade me to preach any more. Oh well, poor man, he was very old and the General liked him, and he "thought he was doing right, rendering to Caesar..."

       "These things are a bit above my head, Father," Charley Fortnum said, lying propped on his elbow on the coffin and looking down at the dark head which still showed the faint trace of a tonsure through the hair, like a prehistoric camp in a field seen from a plane. He interjected "Father" as often as he could: it was somehow reassuring. A father didn't usually kill his son, although of course it had been a near miss in the case of Abraham. "I am not to blame, Father."

       "I am not blaming you, Señor Fortnum, God forbid."

       "I can see how the American Ambassador from your point of view—well, he was a legitimate objective. But me—I'm not even a proper Consul and the English are not in 'this' fight, Father."

       The priest muttered a cliché absentmindedly, "They say one man has to die for the people."

       "But that was what the crucifiers said, not the Christians."

       The priest looked up. "Yes, you are right," he said, "I was not thinking when I spoke. You know your Testament."

       "I have not read it since I was a boy. But that's the kind of scene which sticks in the mind. Like Struwelpeter."

       "Struwelpeter?"

       "He had his thumbs cut off."

       "I never heard of him. Is he one of your martyrs?"

       "No, no, it's a nursery story, Father."

       "Have you children?" the priest asked sharply.

       "No, but I told you. In a few months there should be one around. He kicks hard already."

       "Yes, I remember now." He added, "Don't worry, you will be home soon." It was as though the sentence were framed in question marks and he wanted the prisoner to reassure him -by agreeing, "Yes, of course. It goes without saying," but Charley Fortnum refused to play that game.

       "Why this coffin, Father? It seems a bit morbid to me."

       "The earth is too damp for sleeping on, even with a cloth under you. We did not want you to catch rheumatism."

       "Well, that was a kindly thought, Father."

       "We are not barbarians. There is a man near here in the 'barrio' who makes coffins. We bought one from him. It was much safer than buying a bed... There is a greater demand in the 'barrio' for coffins than beds. Nobody asks questions about a coffin."

       "And I suppose you thought it might be handy later on for stowing away a body."

       "That was not in our minds, I swear. To ask for a bed would have been dangerous."

       "Oh well, I think I will have another whisky, Father. Have one with me."

       "No, You see—I am on duty. I have to guard you." He gave a timid smile.

       "You would not be difficult to overpower, would you? Even for an old man like me."

       "There are always two of us on duty," the priest said. "Miguel is out there now with his gun. Those are El Tigre's orders. There is another reason for that too. One man might be talked around. Or even bribed. We are all of us human beings. This is not the sort of life any of us would have chosen."

       "The Indian does not speak Spanish?"

       "Yes, that too is a good thing."

       "Do you mind if I stretch my legs a little?"

       "Of course you may."

       Charley Fortnum went to the doorway and checked the truth of what the priest had said. The Indian was squatting by the door with the gun on his lap. He smiled at Fortnum confidentially, as though they shared a secret joke. Almost imperceptibly he moved the position of his gun.

       "You speak Guaraní, Father?"

       "Yes. I used to preach in Guaraní once."

       A few minutes ago there had been a moment of closeness, of sympathy, even of friendship between them, but that moment had passed. When a Confession is finished, the priest and the penitent are each alone. They pretend not to recognize each other if they pass in the church. It was as though it were the penitent who stood now by the coffin looking at his watch. Charley Fortnum thought: he is checking to see how many hours are left.

       "Change your mind and have a whisky with me, Father."

       "No. No, thank you. One day perhaps when all this is over." He added, "He is late. I should have been gone long before now."

       "Who is late?" The priest answered angrily, "I have told you before that people like us have no names."

       ***

       The darkness was falling and in the shuttered outer room one of them had lit a candle. They had left his door open and he could see the Indian sitting close beside the door nursing his gun. Charley Fortnum wondered when his turn would come to sleep. The man called Léon had been gone a long while. There was a Negro he had not noticed before... If I had a knife, he wondered, could I make a hole to escape by?

       The man called Aquino brought in a candle, carrying it in his left hand. Charley Fortnum noticed that he kept his right hand always concealed in his jeans. Perhaps it held a gun—or a knife—and his thoughts went back to the rather hopeless idea of cutting a hole through the dried mud of the wall. In an impossible situation one had to try the impossible. He asked, "Where is the Father?"

       "He has things to do in the town, Señor Fortnum."

       They always treated him with great courtesy, he noticed, as though they were trying to reassure him, "There is nothing personal in this affair. Once it is over we can meet as friends." Or was it perhaps the habitual courtesy which a prison warder is said to show even the most brutal murderer before his execution? People have the same awed respect for death as they have for a distinguished stranger, however unwelcome he may be, who visits their town.

       He said, "I'm hungry. I could eat an ox." It wasn't true, but perhaps they would be foolish enough to let him have a knife with his food. He had an impression he was in the hands of amateurs, not professionals.

       "Soon," Aquino said, "be a little patient, Señor Fortnum. We are waiting for Marta. She has promised to make us a stew. She is not a very good cook, but if you had been in prison like me..."

       He thought: stew. That means I'll be given only a spoon again. "There is still some whisky left," he said. "Will you have a drink with me?"

       Aquino said, "We are none of us supposed to drink."

       "A small one—to keep me company."

       "A very small one then. I will eat one of the onions Marta has brought for the stew. It will take away the smell. I do not want to disappoint Léon. For him it comes naturally to be strict, but we are not all priests, thank God. That is a very large whisky," he protested.

       "Large? Why, it is only half as big as mine. Salud."

       "Salud."

       He noticed Aquino still kept his right hand in his pocket.

       "What are you, Aquino?"

       "What do you mean, what am I?"

       "Are you a worker?"

       "I am a criminal," Aquino said with pride. "We are all criminals."

       "Is that a full-time occupation?" Fortnum raised his glass and Aquino followed suit. "You must have begun somewhere."

       "Oh, I went to school like all the world. It was run by priests. They were good men, and it was a good school. Léon was there too—he wanted to be an 'abogado'. As for me, I wanted to be a writer, but even a writer has to live, so I went into the tobacco business. I made money selling American cigarettes in the street. Smuggled cigarettes from Panama. Good money too... I mean I was able to share a room with three others and we had enough to buy 'chipás'. You get quite fat on 'chipás'. They are better than mandioca."