THE mule suddenly sat down under the priest: it was not an unnatural thing to do, for they had been travelling through the forest for nearly twelve hours. They had been going west, but news of soldiers met them there and they had turned east: the Red Shirts were active in that direction, so they had tacked north, wading through the swamps, diving into the mahogany darkness. Now they were both tired out and the mule simply sat down. The priest scrambled off and began to laugh. He was feeling happy. It is one of the strange discoveries a man makes that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration: there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.
   He came cautiously out of the belt of trees into a marshy clearing: the whole state was like that, river and swamp and forest: he knelt down in the late sunlight and bathed his face in a brown pool which reflected back at him like a piece of glazed pottery the round, stubbly, and hollow features; they were so unexpected that he grinned at them—with the shy evasive untrustworthy smile of a man caught out. In the old days he often practised a gesture a long while in front of a glass so that he had come to know his own face as well as an actor does. It was a form of humility—his own natural face hadn't seemed the right one. It was a buffoon's face, good enough for mild jokes to women, but unsuitable at the altar rail. He had tried to change it—and indeed, he thought, indeed I have succeeded, they'll never recognize me now, and the cause of his happiness came back to him like the taste of brandy, promising temporary relief from fear, loneliness, a lot of things. He was being driven by the presence of the soldiers to the very place where he most wanted to be. He had avoided it for six years, but now it wasn't his fault—it was his duty to go there—it couldn't count as sin. He went back to his mule and kicked it gently: "Up, mule, up"—a small gaunt man in torn peasant's clothes going for the first time in many years, like any ordinary man, to his home.
   [56] In any case, even if he could have gone south and avoided the village, it was only one more surrender: the years behind him were littered with similar surrenders—feast-days and fast-days and days of abstinence had been the first to go: then he had ceased to trouble more than occasionally about his breviary—and finally he had left it behind altogether at the port in one of his periodic attempts at escape. Then the altar stone went—too dangerous to carry with him. He had no business to say Mass without it: he was probably liable to suspension, but penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death. The routine of his life like a dam was cracked and forgetfulness came dribbling in, wiping out this and that. Five years ago he had given way to despair—the unforgivable sin—and he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of the heart. For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had a word for his kind—a whisky priest—but every failure dropped out of sight and out of mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret—the rubble of his failures. One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace. Until then he carried on, with spells of fear, weariness, with a shamefaced lightness of heart.
   The mule splashed across the clearing and they entered the forest again. Now that he no longer despaired it didn't mean, of course, that he wasn't damned—it was simply that after a time the mystery became too great, a damned man putting God into the mouths of men: an odd sort of servant, that, for the devil. His mind was full of a simplified mythology: Michael dressed in armour slew a dragon, and the angels fell through space like comets with beautiful streaming hair because they were jealous, so one of the fathers had said, of what God intended for men—the enormous privilege of life—this life.
   There were signs of cultivation: stumps of trees and the ashes of fires where the ground was being cleared for a crop. He stopped beating the mule on: he felt a curious shyness. ... A woman came out of a hut and watched him lagging up the path on the tired mule. The tiny village, not more than two dozen huts round a dusty plaza, was made to pattern: but it was a pattern which lay close to his heart; he felt secure—he was confident of a welcome—that in this place there would be at least [57] one person he could trust not to betray him to the police. When he was quite close the mule sat down again—this time he had to roll on the ground to escape. He picked himself up and the woman watched him as if he were an enemy. "Ah, Maria," he said, "and how are you?"
   "Well," she exclaimed, "it is you, father?"
   He didn't look directly at her: his eyes were sly and cautious. He said: "You didn't recognize me?"
   "You've changed." She looked him up and down with a kind of contempt. She said: "When did you get those clothes, father?"
   "A week ago."
   "What did you do with yours?"
   "I gave them in exchange."
   "Why? They were good clothes."
   "They were very ragged—and conspicuous."
   "I'd have mended them and hidden them away. It's a waste. You look like a common man."
   He smiled, looking at the ground, while she chided him like a house-keeper: it was just as in the old days when there was a presbytery and meetings of the Children of Mary and all the guilds and gossip of a parish, except of course that ... He said gently, not looking at her, with the same embarrassed smile: "How's Brigida?" His heart jumped at the name: a sin may have enormous consequences: it was six years since he had been —home.
   "She's as well as the rest of us. What did you expect?"
   He had his satisfaction: it was connected with his crime: he had no business to feel pleasure at anything attached to that past. He said mechanically: "That's good," while his heart beat with its secret and appalling love. He said: "I'm very tired. The police were about near Zapata ..."
   "Why didn't you make for Montecristo?"
   He looked quickly up with anxiety. It wasn't the welcome that he had expected: a small knot of people had gathered between the huts and watched him from a safe distance—there was a little decaying bandstand and a single stall for gaseosas—people had brought their chairs out for the evening. Nobody came forward to kiss his hand and ask his blessing. It was as if he had descended by means of his sin into the human struggle [58] to learn other things besides despair and love, that a man can be unwelcome even in his own home. He said: "The Red Shirts were there."
   "Well, father," the woman said, "we can't turn you away. You'd better come along." He followed her meekly, tripping once in the long peon trousers, with the happiness wiped off his face and the smile somehow left behind like the survivor of a wreck. There were seven or eight men, two women, half a dozen children: he came among them like a beggar. He couldn't help remembering the last time ... the excitement, the gourds of spirit brought out of holes in the ground ... his guilt had still been fresh, yet how he had been welcomed. It was as if he had returned to them in their vicious prison as one of themselves—an émigré who comes back to his native place enriched.
   "This is the father," the woman said. Perhaps it was only that they hadn't recognized him, he thought, and waited for their greetings. They came forward one by one and kissed his hand and then stood back and watched him. He said: "I am glad to see you ..." He was going to say "my children," but then it seemed to him that only the childless man has the right to call strangers his children. The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands: he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn't look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were girls: a thin washed-out child—of five, six, seven? he couldn't tell—and one who had been sharpened by hunger into an appearance of devilry and malice beyond her age. A young woman stared out of the child's eyes. He watched them disperse again, saying nothing: they were strangers.
   One of the men said: "Will you be here long, father?"
   He said: "I thought, perhaps …I could rest ... a few days." One of the other men said: "Couldn't you go a bit farther north, father, to Pueblita?"
   "We've been travelling for twelve hours, the mule and I" The woman suddenly spoke for him, angrily: "Of course he'll stay here tonight. It's the least we can do."
   He said: "I'll say Mass for you in the morning," as if he were [59] offering them a bribe, but it might almost have been stolen money from their expressions of shyness and unwillingness. Somebody said: "If you don't mind, father, very early ... in the night perhaps ..."
   "What is the matter with you all?" he said. "Why should you be afraid?"
   "Haven't you heard ...?"
   "Heard?"
   "They are taking hostages now—from all the villages where they think you've been. And if people don't tell ... somebody is shot ... and then they take another hostage. It happened in Concepcion."
   "Conception?" One of his lids began to twitch, up and down, up and down: in such trivial ways the body expresses anxiety, horror, or despair. He said: "Who?" They looked at him stupidly. He said furiously: "Whom did they murder?"
   "Pedro Montez."
   He gave a little yapping cry like a dog's—the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He said: "Why don't they catch me? The fools. Why don't they catch me?" The little girl laughed again: he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound, but couldn't see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child—bury it quickly and forget and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.
   "You see, father," one of the men said, "why ..."
   He felt as a guilty man does before his judges. He said: 'Would you rather that I was like ... like Padre José in the capital ... you have heard of him ...?"
   They said unconvincingly: "Of course not, father."
   He said: "What am I saying now? It's not what you want or what I want." He said sharply, with authority: "I will sleep now ... You can wake me an hour before dawn ... half an hour to hear your confessions ... then Mass, and I will be gone."
   But where? There wouldn't be a village in the state to which he wouldn't be an unwelcome danger now.
   The woman said: "This way, father."
   He followed her into a small room where all the furniture had been made out of packing-cases—a chair, a bed of boards tacked together and covered with a straw mat, a crate on which [60] a cloth had been laid, and on the cloth an oil-lamp. He said: "I don't want to turn anybody out of here."
   "It's mine."
   He looked at her doubtfully: "Where will you sleep?" He was afraid of claims. He watched her covertly: was this all there was in marriage, this evasion and suspicion and lack of ease? When people confessed to him in terms of passion, was this all they meant—the hard bed and the busy woman and the not talking about the past ...?
   "When you are gone."
   The light flattened out behind the forest and the long shadows of the trees pointed towards the door. He lay down upon the bed, and the woman busied herself somewhere out of sight: he could hear her scratching at the earth floor. He couldn't sleep. Had it become his duty then to run away? He had tried to escape several times, but he had always been prevented ... now they wanted him to go. Nobody would stop him, saying a woman was ill or a man dying. He was a sickness now.
   "Maria," he said. "Maria, what are you doing?"
   "I have saved a little brandy for you."
   He thought: If I go, I shall meet other priests: I shall go to confession: I shall feel contrition and be forgiven: eternal life will begin for me all over again. The Church taught that it was every man's first duty to save his own soul. The simple ideas of hell and heaven moved in his brain: life without books, without contact with educated men, had peeled away from his memory everything but the simplest outline of the mystery.
   "There," the woman said. She carried a small medicine bottle filled with spirit.
   If he left them, they would be safe: and they would be free from his example: he was the only priest the children could remember. It was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God—in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake, even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken with the enormity of the problem: he lay with his hands over his eyes: nowhere, in all the wide flat marshy [61] land, was there a single person he could consult. He raised the brandy bottle to his mouth.
   He said shyly: "And Brigida ... is she ... well?"
   "You saw her just now."
   "No." He couldn't believe that he hadn't recognized her. It was making light of his mortal sin: you couldn't do a thing like that and then not even recognize ...
   "Yes, she was there." Maria went to the door and called: "Brigida, Brigida," and the priest turned on his side and watched her come in out of the outside landscape of terror and lust—that small malicious child who had laughed at him.
   "Go and speak to the father," Maria said. "Go on."
   He made an attempt to hide the brandy bottle, but there was nowhere ... he tried to minimize it in his hands, watching her, feeling the shock of human love.
   "She knows her catechism," Maria said, "but she won't say it. ..."
   The child stood there, watching him with acuteness and contempt. They had spent no love in her conception: just fear and despair and half a bottle of brandy and the sense of loneliness had driven him to an act which horrified him—and this scared shamefaced overpowering love was the result. He said: "Why not? Why won't you say it?" taking quick secret glances, never meeting her gaze, feeling his heart pound in his breast unevenly, like an old donkey engine, with the balked desire to save her from—everything.
   "Why should I?"
   "God wishes it."
   "How do you know?"
   He was aware of an immense load of responsibility: it was indistinguishable from love. This, he thought, must be what all parents feel: ordinary men go through life like this crossing their fingers, praying against pain, afraid. ... This is what we escape at no cost at all, sacrificing an unimportant motion of the body. For years, of course, he had been responsible for souls, but that was different ... a lighter thing. You could trust God to make allowances, but you couldn't trust smallpox, starvation, men. … He said: "My dear," tightening his grip upon the brandy bottle ... he had baptized her at his last visit: she had [62] been like a rag doll with a wrinkled, aged face—it seemed unlikely that she would live long. ... He had felt nothing but a regret; it was difficult even to feel shame where no one blamed him. He was the only priest most of them had ever known—they took their standard of the priesthood from him. Even the women.
   "Are you the gringo?"
   "What gringo?"
   The woman said: "The silly little creature. It's because the police have been looking for a man." It seemed odd to hear of any other man they wanted but himself.
   "What has he done?"
   "He's a Yankee. He murdered some people in the north."
   "Why should he be here?"
   "They think he's making for Quintana Roo—the chicle plantations." It was where many criminals in Mexico ended up; you could work on a plantation and earn good money and nobody interfered.
   "Are you the gringo?" the child repeated.
   "Do I look like a murderer?"
   "I don't know."
   If he left the state, he would be leaving her too, abandoned. He said humbly to the woman: "Couldn't I stay a few days here?"
   "It's too dangerous, father."
   He caught a look in the child's eyes which frightened him—it was again as if a grown woman was there before her time, making her plans, aware of far too much. It was like seeing his own mortal sin look back at him, without contrition. He tried to find some contact with the child and not the woman; he said: "My dear, tell me what games you play. …" The child sniggered. He turned his face quickly away and stared up at the roof, where a spider moved. He remembered a proverb—it came out of the recesses of his own childhood: his father had used it— "The best smell is bread, the best savour salt, the best love that of children." It had been a happy childhood, except that he had been afraid of too many things, and had hated poverty, like a crime: he had believed that when he was a priest he would be rich and proud—that was called having a vocation. He thought of the immeasurable distance a man travels—from [63] the first whipping-top to this bed, on which he lay clasping the brandy. And to God it was only a moment. The child's snigger and the first mortal sin lay together more closely than two blinks of the eye. He put out his hand as if he could drag her back by force from—something; but he was powerless; the man or the woman waiting to complete her corruption might not yet have been born: how could he guard her against the nonexistent?
   She started out of his reach and put her tongue out at him. The woman said: "You little devil, you," and raised her hand. "No," the priest said. "No." He scrambled into a sitting position. "Don't you dare ...
   "I'm her mother."
   "We haven't any right." He said to the child: "If only I had some cards I could show you a trick or two. You could teach your friends ..." He had never known how to talk to children except from the pulpit. She stared back at him with insolence. He said: "Do you know how to send messages with taps—long, short, long? ..."
   "What on earth, father!" the woman exclaimed.
   "It's a game children play. I know." He said to the child: "Have you any friends?"
   The child suddenly laughed again knowingly. The seven-year-old body was like a dwarf's: it disguised an ugly maturity.
   "Get out of here," the woman said. "Get out before I teach you ..."
   She made a last impudent and malicious gesture and was gone—perhaps for ever as far as he was concerned. To those you love you do not always say good-bye beside a deathbed, in an atmosphere of leisure and incense. He said: "I wonder what we can teach ..." He thought of his own death and her life going on: it might be his hell to watch her rejoining him gradually through the debasing years, sharing his weakness like tuberculosis. ... He lay back on the bed and turned his head away from the draining light: he appeared to be sleeping, but he was wide awake. The woman busied herself with small jobs, and as the sun went down the mosquitoes came out, flashing through the air to their mark unerringly, like sailors' knives. "Shall I put up a net, father?"
   "No. It doesn't matter." He had had more fevers in the last [64] ten years than he could count: he had ceased to bother: they came and went and made no difference—they were part of his environment.
   Presently she left the hut and he could hear her voice gossiping outside. He was astonished and a bit relieved by her resilience: once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers—if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest's woman. He alone carried a wound, as if a whole world had ended.
 
   It was dark outside: no sign yet of the dawn. Perhaps two dozen people sat on the earth floor of the largest hut while he preached to them. He couldn't see them with any distinctness: the candles on the packing-case smoked steadily upwards—the door was shut and there was no current of air. He was talking about heaven, standing between them and the candles in the ragged peon trousers and the torn shirt. They grunted and moved restlessly: he knew they were longing for the Mass to be over: they had awakened him very early, because there were rumours of police. …
   He said: "One of the fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty ..." He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that never came. He said: "We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty—for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal. …" Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the immense nocturnal heat: people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority: "That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure." He said: "Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of [65] suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger ... that is all part of heaven—the preparation. Perhaps without them—who can tell?—you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven?" Literary phrases from what seemed now to be another life altogether—the strict quiet life of the seminary—became confused on his tongue: the names of precious stones: Jerusalem the golden. But these people had never seen gold.
   He went rather stumblingly on: "Heaven is where there is no jefe, no unjust laws, no taxes, no soldiers, and no hunger. Your children do not die in heaven." The door of the hut opened and a man slipped in. There was whispering out of range of the candlelight "You will never be afraid there—or unsafe. There are no Red Shirts. Nobody grows old. The crops never fail. Oh, it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God. That is more difficult. Our words are made to describe what we know with our senses. We say 'light,' but we are thinking only of the sun, 'love' ..." It was not easy to concentrate: the police were not far away. That man had probably brought news. "That means perhaps a child ..." The door opened again: he could see another day drawn across like a grey slate outside. A voice whispered urgently to him: "Father."
   "Yes?"
   "The police are on the way: they are only a mile off, coming through the forest."
   This was what he was used to: the words not striking home, the hurried close, the expectation of pain coming between him and his faith. He said stubbornly: "Above all remember this—heaven is here." Were they on horseback or on foot? If they were on foot, he had twenty minutes left to finish Mass and hide. "Here now, at this minute, your fear and my fear are part of heaven, where there will be no fear any more for ever." He turned his back on them and began very quickly to recite the Credo. There was a time when he had approached the Canon of the Mass with actual physical dread—the first time he had consumed the body and blood of God in a state of mortal sin: but [66] then life bred its excuses—it hadn't after a while seemed to matter very much, whether he was damned or not, so long as these others ...
   He kissed the top of the packing—case and turned to bless ... in the inadequate light he could just see two men kneeling with their arms stretched out in the shape of a cross—they would keep that position until the consecration was over, one more mortification squeezed out of their harsh and painful lives. He felt humbled by the pain ordinary men bore voluntarily; his pain was forced on him. "O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house ..." The candles smoked and the people shifted on their knees—an absurd happiness bobbed up in him again before anxiety returned: it was as if he had been permitted to look in from the outside at the population of heaven. Heaven must contain just such scared and dutiful and hunger-lined faces. For a matter of seconds he felt an immense satisfaction that he could talk of suffering to them now without hypocrisy—it is hard for the sleek and well-fed priest to praise poverty. He began the prayer for the living: the long list of the Apostles and Martyrs fell like footsteps—Comelii, Cypriani, Laurentii, Chrysologi—soon the police would reach the clearing where his mule had sat down under him and he had washed in the pool. The Latin words ran into each other on his hasty tongue: he could feel impatience all round him. He began the Consecration of the Host (he had finished the wafers long ago—it was a piece of bread from Maria 's oven); impatience abruptly died away: everything in time became a routine but this—"Who the day before He suffered took Bread into His holy and venerable hands ..." Whoever moved outside on the forest path, there was no movement here—"Hoc est enfim Corpus Meum." He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years. When he raised the Host he could imagine the faces lifted like famished dogs'. He began the Consecration of the Wine—in a chipped cup. That was one more surrender—for two years he had carried a chalice round with him: once it would have cost him his life—if the police officer who opened his case had not been a Catholic. It may very well have cost the officer his life, if anybody had discovered the evasion—he didn't know: you went round making God knew [67] what martyrs—in Concepcion or elsewhere—when you yourself were without grace enough to die.
   The Consecration was in silence: no bell rang. He knelt by the packing-case exhausted, without a prayer. Somebody opened the door: a voice whispered urgently: "They're here." They couldn't have come on foot then, he thought vaguely. Somewhere in the absolute stillness of the dawn—it couldn't have been more than a quarter of a mile away—a horse whinnied.
   He got on his feet—Maria stood at his elbow; she said: "The cloth, father, give me the cloth." He put the Host hurriedly into his mouth and drank the wine: one had to avoid profanation: the cloth was whipped away from the packing-case. She nipped the candles, so that the wick should not leave a smell ... the room was already cleared, only the owner hung by the entrance waiting to kiss his hand: through the door the world was faintly visible, and a cock in the village crowed.
   Maria said: "Come to the hut quickly."
   "I'd better go." He was without a plan. "Not be found here."
   "They are all round the village."
   Was this the end at last? he wondered. Somewhere fear waited to spring at him, he knew, but he wasn't afraid yet. He followed the woman, scurrying across the village to her hut, repeating an act of contrition mechanically as he went. He wondered when the fear would start: he had been afraid when the policeman opened his case—but that was years ago. He had been afraid hiding in the shed among the bananas, hearing the child argue with the police officer—that was only a few weeks away. Fear would undoubtedly begin again soon. There was no sign of the police—only the grey morning, and the chickens and turkeys stirring, flopping down from the trees in which they had roosted during the night. Again the cock crew. If they were so careful, they must know beyond the shadow of doubt that he was here. It was the end.
   Maria plucked at him. "Get in. Quick. Onto the bed." Presumably she had an idea—women were appallingly practical: they built new plans at once out of the ruins of the old. But what was the good? She said: "Let me smell your breath. Oh, God, anyone can tell ... wine ... what would we be doing with [68] wine?" She was gone again, inside, making a lot of bother in the peace and quiet of the dawn. Suddenly, out of the forest, a hundred yards away, an officer rode. In the absolute stillness you could hear the creaking of his revolver-holster as he turned and waved.
   All round the little clearing the police appeared—they must have marched very quickly, for only the officer had a horse. Rifles at the trail, they approached the small group of huts—an exaggerated and rather absurd show of force. One man had a puttee trailing behind him—it had probably caught on something in the forest. He tripped on it and fell with a great clatter of cartridge-belt on gunstock: the lieutenant on the horse looked round and then turned his bitter and angry face upon the silent huts.
   The woman was pulling at him from inside the hut. She said: "Bite this. Quick. There's no time ..." He turned his back on the advancing police and came into the dusk of the room. She had a small raw onion in her hand. "Bite it," she said. He bit it and began to weep. "Is that better?" she said. He could hear the pad, pad of the cautious horse hoofs advancing between the huts.
   "It's horrible," he said with a giggle.
   "Give it to me." She made it disappear somewhere into her clothes: it was a trick all women seemed to know. He said: "Where's my case?"
   "Never mind your case. Get onto the bed."
   But before he could move, a horse blocked the doorway: they could see a leg in riding-boots piped with scarlet: brass fittings gleamed: a hand in a glove rested on the high pommel. Maria put a hand upon his arm—it was as near as she had ever come to a movement of affection: affection was taboo between them. A voice cried: "Come on out, all of you." The horse stamped and a little pillar of dust went up. "Come on out, I said."—somewhere a shot was fired. The priest left the hut.
   The dawn had really broken: light feathers of colour were blown up the sky: a man still held his gun pointed upwards: a little balloon of grey smoke hung at the muzzle. Was this how the agony was to start?
   Out of all the huts the villagers were reluctantly emerging—the children first: they were curious and not frightened. The [69] men and women had the air already of people condemned by authority—authority was never wrong. None of them looked at the priest. They stared at the ground and waited: only the children watched the horse as if it was the most important thing there.
   The lieutenant said: "Search the huts." Time passed very slowly: even the smoke of the shot seemed to remain in the air for an unnatural period. Some pigs came grunting out of a hut, and a turkey-cock paced with evil dignity into the centre of the circle, puffing out its dusty feathers and tossing the long pink membrane from its beak. A soldier came up to the lieutenant and saluted sketchily. He said: "They're all here."
   "You've found nothing suspicious?"
   "No."
   "Then look again."
   Once more time stopped like a broken dock. The lieutenant drew out a cigarette-case, hesitated and put it back again. Again the policeman approached and reported: "Nothing."
   The lieutenant barked out: "Attention. All of you. Listen to me." The outer ring of police closed in, pushing the villagers together into a small group in front of the lieutenant: only the children were left free. The priest saw his own child standing close to the lieutenant's horse: she could just reach above his boot: she put up her hand and touched the leather. The lieutenant said: "I am looking for two men—one is a gringo, a Yankee, a murderer. I can see very well he is not here. There is a reward of five hundred pesos for his capture. Keep your eyes open." He paused and ran his eye over them: the priest felt his gaze come to rest; he looked down like the others at the ground.
   "The other," the lieutenant said, "is a priest." He raised his voice: "you know what this means—traitor to the republic. Anyone who shelters him is a traitor too." Their immobility seemed to anger him. He said: "You're fools if you still believe what the priests tell you. All they want is your money. What has God ever done for you? Have you got enough to eat? Have your children got enough to eat? Instead of food they talk to you about heaven. Oh, everything will be fine after you are dead, they say. I tell you—everything will be fine when they are dead, and you must help." The child had her hand on his boot. He looked down at her with dark affection. He said with [70] conviction: "This child is worth more than the Pope in Rome." The police leant on their guns: one of them yawned—the turkey-cock went hissing back towards the huts. The lieutenant said: "If you've seen this priest, speak up. There's a reward of seven hundred pesos. …"
   Nobody spoke.
   The lieutenant yanked his horse's head round towards them; he said: "We know he's in this district. Perhaps you don't know what happened to a man in Conception." One of the women began to weep. He said: "Come up—one after the other—and let me have your names. No, not the women, the men."
   They filed sullenly up and he questioned them: "What's your name? What do you do? Married? Which is your wife? Have you heard of this priest?" Only one man now stood between the priest and the horse's head. He recited an act of contrition silently with only half a mind—" ... my sins, because they have crucified my loving Saviour ... but above all because they have offended ..." He was alone in front of the lieutenant "I hereby resolve never more to offend Thee ..." It was a formal act, because a man had to be prepared: it was like making your will—and might be as valueless.
   "Your name?"
   The name of the man in Conception came back to him. He said: "Montez."
   "Have you ever seen the priest?"
   "No."
   "What do you do?"
   "I have a little land."
   "Are you married?"
   "Yes."
   "Which is your wife?"
   Maria suddenly broke out: "It's me. Why do you want to ask so many questions. Do you think he looks like a priest?" The lieutenant was examining something on the pommel of his saddle: it seemed to be an old photograph. "Let me see your hands," he said.
   The priest held them up: they were as hard as a labourer's. Suddenly the lieutenant leant down from the saddle and sniffed at his breath There was complete silence among the villagers—a dangerous silence, because it seemed to convey to the [71] lieutenant a fear. ... He stared back at the hollow stubbled face, looked back at the photograph. "All right," he said, "next," and then as the priest stepped aside: "Wait." He put his hand down to Brigida's head and gently tugged at her black stiff hair. He said: "Look up. You know everyone in this village, don't you?"
   "Yes," she said.
   "Who is that man, then? What's his name?"
   "I don't know," the child said. The lieutenant caught his breath. "You don't know his name?" he said. "Is he a stranger?" Maria cried: "Why, the child doesn't know her own name! Ask her who her father is."
   "Who's your father?"
   The child stared up at the lieutenant and then turned her knowing eyes upon the priest.  … Sorry and beg pardon for all my sins," he was repeating to himself with his fingers crossed for luck. The child said: "That's him. There."
   "All right," the lieutenant said. "Next." The interrogations went on—name? work? married?—while the sun came up above the forest. The priest stood with his hands clasped in front of him: again death had been postponed: he felt an enormous temptation to throw himself in front of the lieutenant and declare himself—"I am the one you want." Would they shoot him out of hand? A delusive promise of peace tempted him. Far up in the sky a buzzard watched: they must appear from that height as two groups of carnivorous animals who might at any time break into conflict, and it waited there, a tiny black spot, for carrion. Death was not the end of pain—to believe in peace was a kind of heresy.
   The last man gave his evidence.
   The lieutenant said: "Is no one willing to help?"
   They stood silent beside the decayed bandstand. He said: "You heard what happened at Conception. I took a hostage there ... and when I found that this priest had been in the neighbourhood I put the man against the nearest tree. I found out because there's always someone who changes his mind—perhaps because somebody at Conception loved the man's wife and wanted him out of the way. It's not my business to look into reasons. I only know we found wine later in Conception. ... Perhaps there's somebody in this village who wants your piece [72] of land—or your cow. It's much safer to speak now. Because I'm going to take a hostage from here too." He paused. Then he said: "There's no need even to speak, if he's here among you. Just look at him. No one will know then that it was you who gave him away. He won't know himself if you're afraid of his curses. Now ... this is your last chance."
   The priest looked at the ground—he wasn't going to make it difficult for the man who gave him away.
   "Right," the lieutenant said, "then I shall choose my man. You've brought it on yourselves."
   He sat on his horse watching them—one of the policemen had leant his gun against the bandstand and was doing up a puttee. The villagers still stared at the ground: everyone was afraid to catch his eye. He broke out suddenly: "Why won't you trust me? I don't want any of you to die. In my eyes—can't you understand?—you are worth far more than he is. I want to give you"—he made a gesture with his hands which was valueless, because no one saw him—"everything." He said in a dull voice: "You. You there. I'll take you."
   A woman screamed: "That's my boy. That's Miguel. You can't take my boy."
   He said dully: "Every man here is somebody's husband or somebody's son. I know that."
   The priest stood silently with his hands clasped: his knuckles whitened as he gripped ... he could feel all round him the beginning of hate. Because he was no one's husband or son. He said: "Lieutenant ...
   "What do you want?"
   "I'm getting too old to be much good in the fields. Take me." A rout of pigs came rushing round the corner of a hut, taking no notice of anybody. The soldier finished his puttee and stood up. The sunlight coming up above the forest winked on the bottles of the gaseosa stall.
   The lieutenant said: "I'm choosing a hostage, not offering free board and lodging to the lazy. If you are no good in the fields, you are no good as a hostage." He gave an order. "Tie the man's hands and bring him along."
   It took no time at all for the police to be gone—they took with them two or three chickens, a turkey, and the man called [73] Miguel. The priest said aloud: "I did my best." He went on: "It's your job—to give me up. What do you expect me to do? It's my job not to be caught."
   One of the men said: "That's all right, father. Only will you be careful ... to see that you don't leave any wine behind ... like you did at Conception?"
   Another said: "It's no good staying, father. They'll get you in the end. They won't forget your face again. Better go north, to the mountains. Over the border."
   "It's a fine state over the border," a woman said. "They've still got churches there. Nobody can go in them, of course—but they are there. Why, I've heard that there are priests too in the towns. A cousin of mine went over the mountains to Las Casas once and heard Mass—in a house, with a proper altar, and the priest all dressed up like in the old days. You'd be happy there, father."
   The priest followed Maria to the hut. The bottle of brandy lay on the table: he touched it with his fingers—there wasn't much left. He said: "My case, Maria? Where's my case?"
   "It's too dangerous to carry that around any more," Maria said.
   "How else can I take the wine?" "There isn't any wine."
   "What do you mean?"
   She said: "I'm not going to bring trouble on you and everyone else. I've broken the bottle. Even if it brings a curse ..." He said gently and sadly: "You mustn't be superstitious. That was simply—wine. There's nothing sacred in wine. Only it's hard to get hold of here. That's why I kept a store of it in Concepcion. But they've found that."
   "Now perhaps you'll go—go away altogether. You're no good any more to anyone," she said fiercely. "Don't you understand, father? We don't want you any more."
   "Oh, yes," he said. "I understand. But it's not what you want—or I want ..."
   She said savagely: "I know about things. I went to school. I'm not like these others—ignorant. I know you're a bad priest. That time we were together—I bet that wasn't all you've done. I've heard things, I can tell you. Do you think God wants you [74] to stay and die—a whisky priest like you?" He stood patiently in front of her, as he had stood in front of the lieutenant, listening. He hadn't known she was capable of all this thought. She said: "Suppose you die. You'll be a martyr, won't you? What kind of a martyr do you think you'll make? It's enough to make people mock."
   That had never occurred to him—that anybody would consider him a martyr. He said: "It's difficult. Very difficult. I'll think about it. I wouldn't want the Church to be mocked. …"
   "Think about it over the border then ..."
   "Well ..."
   She said: "When you-know-what happened, I was proud. I thought the good days would come back. It's not everyone who's a priest's woman. And the child ... I thought you could do a lot for her. But you might as well be a thief for all the good ..."
   He said vaguely: "There've been a lot of good thieves."
   "For God's sake take this brandy and go."
   "There was one thing," he said. "In my case ... there was something …"
   "Go and find it yourself on the rubbish-tip then. I won't touch it again."
   "And the child," he said, "you're a good woman, Maria. I mean—you'll try and bring her up well ... as a Christian."
   "She'll never be good for anything, you can see that."
   "She can't be very bad—at her age," he implored her.
   "She'll go on the way she's begun."
   He said: "The next Mass I say will be for her."
   She wasn't even listening. She said: "She's bad through and through." He was aware of faith dying out between the bed and the door—the Mass would soon mean no more to anyone than a black cat crossing the path. He was risking all their lives for the sake of spilt salt, or a crossed finger. He began: "My mule ...
   "They are giving it maize now."
   She added: "You'd better go north. There's no chance to the south any more."
   "I thought perhaps Carmen ..."
   "They'll be watching there."
   [75] "Oh, well ..." He said sadly: "Perhaps one day ... when things are better ..." He sketched a cross and blessed her, but she stood impatiently before him, willing him to be gone for ever.
   "Well, good-bye, Maria."
   "Good-bye."
   He walked across the plaza with his shoulders hunched: he felt that there wasn't a soul in the place who wasn't watching him with satisfaction—the trouble-maker whom for obscure and superstitious reasons they preferred not to betray to the police; he felt envious of the unknown gringo whom they wouldn't hesitate to trap—he at any rate had no burden of gratitude to carry round with him.
   Down a slope churned up with the hoofs of mules and ragged with tree-roots there was the river—not more than two feet deep, littered with empty cans and broken bottles. Under a notice which hung on a tree reading: "It is forbidden to deposit rubbish ..." all the refuse of the village was collected and slid gradually down into the river. When the rains came it would be washed away. He put his foot among the old tins and rotting vegetables and reached for his case. He sighed: it had been quite a good case: one more relic of the quiet past.... Soon it would be difficult to remember that life had ever been any different. The lock had been torn off: he felt inside the silk lining. …
   The papers were there: reluctantly he let the case fall—a whole important and respected youth dropped among the cans—he had been given it by his parishioners in Concepcion on the fifth anniversary of his ordination. ... Somebody moved behind a tree. He lifted his feet out of the rubbish—flies buzzed around his ankles. With the papers hidden in his fist he came round the trunk to see who was spying. ... The child sat on a root, kicking her heels against the bark. Her eyes were shut tight fast. He said: "My dear, what is the matter with you ...?" They came quickly open—red-rimmed and angry, with an expression of absurd pride. She said:
   "You ... you ..."
   "Me?"
   "You are the matter."
   [76] He moved towards her with infinite caution, as if she were an animal who distrusted him. He felt weak with longing. He said: "My dear, why me ... ?"
   She said furiously: "They laugh at me.''
   "Because of me?"
   She said: "Everyone else has a father ... who works."
   "I work too."
   "You're a priest, aren't you?"
   "Yes."
   "Pedro says you aren't a man. You aren't any good for women." She said: "I don't know what he means."
   "I don't suppose he knows himself."
   "Oh, yes, he does," she said. "He's ten. And I want to know. You're going away, aren't you?"
   "Yes."
   He was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock. She said: "Tell me—" enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection—she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss. He said: "My dear, be careful ..."
   "What of? Why are you going away?"
   He came a little nearer: he thought—a man may kiss his own daughter; but she started away from him. "Don't you touch me," she screeched at him in her ancient voice, and giggled. Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast: but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew—the saving or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love. He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber—Maria's hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk; and the police beating the forest—violence everywhere. He prayed silently: "O God, give me any kind of death—without contrition, in a state of sin—only save this child."
   He was a man who was supposed to save souls: it had seemed quite simple once, preaching at Benediction, organizing the guilds, having coffee with elderly ladies behind barred windows, blessing new houses with a little incense, wearing [77] black gloves ... it was as easy as saving money: now it was a mystery. He was aware of his own desperate inadequacy.
   He went down on his knees and pulled her to him, while she giggled and struggled to be free. He said: "I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that." He held her tightly by the wrist and suddenly she stayed still, looking up at him. He said: "I would give my life, that's nothing, my soul ... my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are—so important." That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent. He said: "You must take care of yourself because you are so—necessary. The President up in the capital goes guarded by men with guns—but, my child, you have all the angels of heaven—" She stared back at him out of dark and unconscious eyes: he had a sense that he had come too late. He said: "Good-bye, my dear," and clumsily kissed her—a silly infatuated ageing man, who as soon as he released her and started padding back to the plaza could feel behind his hunched shoulders the whole vile world coming round the child to ruin her. His mule was there, saddled, by the gaseosa stall. A man said: "Better go north, father," and stood waving his hand. One mustn't have human affections—or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child. The passion to protect must extend itself over a world—but he felt it tethered and aching like a hobbled animal to the tree trunk. He turned his mule south.
 
   He was travelling in the actual track of the police: so long as he went slowly and didn't overtake any stragglers it seemed a fairly safe route. What he needed now was wine—and it had to be made with grapes: without it he was useless; he might as well escape north into the mountains and the safe state beyond, where the worst that could happen to him was a fine and a few days in prison because he couldn't pay. But he wasn't ready yet for the final surrender—every small surrender had to be paid for in a further endurance, and now he felt the need of somehow ransoming his child. He could stay another month, another year ... jogging up and down on the mule he tried to bribe God with promises of firmness. ... The mule suddenly [78] dug in its hoofs and stopped dead: a tiny green snake raised itself like an affronted woman on the path and then hissed away into the grass like a match-flame. The mule went on.
   When he came near a village he would stop the mule and advance as close as he could on foot—the police might have stopped there—then he would ride quickly through, speaking to nobody beyond a buenos días, and again on the forest path he would pick up the track of the lieutenant's horse. He had no dear idea now about anything: he only wanted to put as great a distance as possible between him and the village where he had spent the night. In one hand he still carried the scrumpled ball of paper. Somebody had tied a bunch of about fifty bananas to his saddle beside the machete and the small bag which contained his store of candles, and every now and then he ate one—ripe, brown, and sodden, tasting of soap. It left a smear like a moustache over his mouth.
   After six hours' travelling he came to La Candelaria, which lay, a long mean tin—roofed village, beside one of the tributaries of the Grijalva River. He came cautiously out into the dusty street it was early afternoon: the buzzards sat on the roofs with their small heads hidden from the sun, and a few men lay in hammocks in the narrow shade the houses cast. The mule plodded forward very slowly through the heavy day. The priest leant forward on his pommel.
   The mule came to a stop of its own accord beside a hammock: a man lay in it, bunched diagonally, with one leg trailing to keep the hammock moving, up and down, up and down, making a tiny current of air. He said: "Buenas tardes." The man opened his eyes and watched him.
   "How far is it to Carmen?"
   "Three leagues."
   "Can I get a canoe across the river?"
   "Yes."
   "Where?"
   The man waved a languid hand—as much as to say anywhere but here. He had only two teeth left—canines which stuck yellowly out at either end of his mouth like the teeth of long-extinct animals which you find enclosed in clay.
   "What were the police doing here?" the priest asked, and a cloud of flies came down, settling on the mules neck: he poked [79] at them with a stick and they rose heavily, leaving a small trickle of blood, and dropped again on the tough grey skin. The mule seemed to feel nothing, standing in the sun with its head drooping.
   "Looking for someone," the man said.
   "I've heard," the priest said, "that there's a reward out—for a gringo."
   The man swung his hammock back and forth. He said: "It's better to be alive and poor than rich and dead."
   "Can I overtake them if I go towards Carmen?"
   "They aren't going to Carmen."
   "No?"
   "They are making for the city."
   The priest rode on: twenty yards farther he stopped again beside a gaseosa stall and asked the boy in charge: "Can I get a boat across the river?"
   "There isn't a boat."
   "No boat?"
   "Somebody stole it."
   "Give me a sidral." He drank down the yellow, bubbly chemical liquid: it left him thirstier than before. He said: "How do I get across?"
   "Why do you want to get across?"
   "I'm making for Carmen. How did the police get over?"
   "They swam."
   "Mula. Mula," the priest said, urging the mule on, past the inevitable bandstand and a statue in florid taste of a woman in a toga waving a wreath: part of the pedestal had been broken off and lay in the middle of the road—the mule went round it. The priest looked back: far down the street the mestizo was sitting upright in the hammock watching him. The mule turned off down a steep path to the river, and again the priest looked back—the half-caste was still in the hammock, but he had both feet upon the ground. An habitual uneasiness made the priest beat at the mule—"Mula. Mula"—but the mule took its time, sliding down the bank towards the river.
   By the riverside it refused to enter the water: the priest split the end of his stick with his teeth and jabbed a sharp point into the mule's flank. It waded reluctantly in, and the water rose—to the stirrups and then to the knees: the mule began to swim, [80] splayed out flat with only the eyes and nostrils visible, like an alligator. Somebody shouted from the bank.
   The priest looked round: at the river's edge the mestizo stood and called, not very loudly: his voice didn't carry. It was as if he had a secret purpose which nobody but the priest must hear. He waved his arm, summoning the priest back, but the mule lurched out of the water and up the bank beyond and the priest paid no attention—uneasiness was lodged in his brain. He urged the mule forward through the green half-light of a banana grove, not looking behind. All these years there had been two places to which he could always return and rest safely in hiding—one had been Conception, his old parish, and that was closed to him now: the other was Carmen, where he had been born and where his parents were buried. He had imagined there might be a third, but he would never go back now. ... He turned the mule's head toward Carmen, and the forest took them again. At this rate they would arrive in the dark, which was what he wanted. The mule, unbeaten, went with extreme languor, head drooping, smelling a little of blood. The priest, leaning forward on the high pommel, fell asleep. He dreamed that a small girl in stiff white muslin was reciting her Catechism—somewhere in the background there was a bishop and a group of Children of Mary, elderly women with grey hard pious faces wearing pale blue ribbons. The bishop said: "Excellent ... excellent," and clapped his hands, plop, plop. A man in a morning coat said: "There's a deficit of five hundred pesos on the new organ. We propose to hold a special musical performance, when it is hoped ..." He remembered with appalling suddenness that he oughtn't to be there at all ... he was in the wrong parish ... he should be holding a retreat at Conception. The man Montez appeared behind the child in white muslin, gesticulating, reminding him. ... Something had happened to Montez, he had a dry wound on his forehead. He felt with dreadful certainty a threat to the child. He said: "My dear, my dear," and woke to the slow rolling stride of the mule and the sound of footsteps.
   He turned: it was the mestizo, padding behind him, dripping water: he must have swum the river. His two teeth stuck out over his lower lip, and he grinned ingratiatingly.
   "What do you want?" the priest said sharply.
   [81] "You didn't tell me you were going to Carmen."
   "Why should I?"
   "You see, I want to go to Carmen, too. It's better to travel in company." He was wearing a shirt, a pair of white trousers, and gym shoes through which one big toe showed—plump and yellow like something which lives underground. He scratched himself under the armpits and came chummily up to the priest's stirrup. He said: "You are not offended, Se?or?"
   "Why do you call me Se?or?"
   "Anyone can tell you're a man of education."
   "The forest is free to all," the priest said.
   "Do you know Carmen well?" the man said.
   "Not well. I have a few friends."
   "You're going on business, I suppose?"
   The priest said nothing. He could feel the man's hand on his foot, a light and deprecating touch. The man said: "There's a finca off the road two leagues from here. It would be as well to stay the night."
   "I am in a hurry," the priest said.
   "But what good would it be reaching Carmen at one, two in the morning? We could sleep at the finca and be there before the sun was high."
   "I do what suits me."
   "Of course, Se?or, of course." The man was silent for a little while, and then said: "It isn't wise travelling at night if the Se?or hasn't got a gu