The priest turned and left the bishopric.

"That man is turning into a recluse," remarked the prelate. "He doesn't know how to get on with people. He's better off going to the mountains."

It wasn't that Father Benito Mazon had sought out a parish in the foothills of a volcano to isolate himself from people. The fact is people withdrew from him, and this suited him perfectly. In the end, he came out ahead. No matter how disagreeable Don Benito was, G.o.d was not only agreeable but indispensable. Only Father Mazon, with his eyes of an uneasy wolf, iguana's profile, and paper-thin habit, had the ability to administer the sacraments, baptize, sing a requiem, and certify a death. People in the village depended on him in order to live with a clear conscience. And he depended less on one. Even if n.o.body attended the miserable little adobe church on the edge of the volcano, Benito would receive his stipend, and of course, the same village that distrusted him for being disagreeable would not let him die of hunger. One.

Well, the fact is that we parishioners-one-feel animosity toward Father Benito Mazon. He seems to live indifferent to one. One reproaches his hypocrisy in introducing the girl Mayalde, who is sixteen years old, as his G.o.ddaughter. One knows that G.o.ddaughters tend to be priests' daughters. Should he be given credit for the charity he has shown in putting a roof over the girl's head? Or must one display indignation at the hypocrisy?

One does not have easy answers. In the end, habits follow their own course, with or without complete explanations. One suspects. One intuits. One fears. In the end, one shrugs one's shoulders. One.

"It's worse to have bad habits than to have no habits at all," Father Mazon whispered in outrage to our most devout woman, Dona Altagracia Gracida, during the act of confession.

"And where does the girl sleep, Father?"

"Be careful, woman."

The parish in the mountains was barely a house, made of adobe bricks, with a wood-burning stove, a small living/dining room, a bedroom, and an outdoor bathroom. The church was just as modest. But the adjoining chapel was a small, richly decorated Baroque delight, almost as splendid (almost) as the lamented Acatzingo. This was how it should be. Father Benito worships G.o.d because he believes that G.o.d is horrified by the world.

Mayalde's beauty created a small storm of indecision in the village. She was a fresh, lovely girl, comparable in her look of purity to the snow that crowns the mountain before it is obliterated in ash. A lightskinned brunette with very large black eyes, as if she wanted to see beyond the frame of her oval face and then immediately, as if conscious of the vanity signified in using beauty to gain happiness, she lowers them to attend to her tasks in the humble house that sc.r.a.pes the sky. She is used to it. She doesn't expect anything else from life. One might think that the priest always treated her badly in order to treat her well. That is what he always told her: "If Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, why shouldn't you?"

Then he sat her on his knees. "Do you think I don't suffer, Mayalde, seeing you suffer?"

All manual tasks were her responsibility. When Father Mazon walked by and saw her washing clothes, making the bed, or dusting polychromes in the church, he would say things like: "You'd like to be a lady, wouldn't you?"

"I spoiled you too much when you were little. Now I'm going to get rid of all that spoiling."

"Clean the church. It'll do you more good. I'm going to check each holy vessel as if you were drinking my milky c.u.m from it."

Then he sat her again on his knees. She feared these moments of affection because Father Benito agonized so much to be good and then treated her badly to compensate for the failing of tenderness.

"You're a mule. A sterile freak. But you work very hard and endure the cold of the mountains."

She didn't smile openly for fear of offending him. But the d.a.m.n priest made her laugh inside, and she mocked him as she tended to the birds in their cold cages, gathered scarce mountain flowers and put them in water, went to the market and came back, humming, with baskets full of vegetables, pigs' feet, warm tortillas, and serrano chiles.

"The girl is simpleminded," we would say in the village.

She knew that this way, by being so obliging, she provoked Father Benito. She wasn't a good-for-nothing. And she wasn't a beast of burden. When she went down to the market, one admired her cadenced walk, the lightness of her flowered dress, the guessed-at feminine forms, firm and rounded. Mayalde was, for one, the elusive magic of the village. She smiled at everybody.

"She's simpleminded."

One thought, however, that her coquettishness was fidelity to Father Benito Mazon. That was what one told oneself.

One day Father Benito broke the flowerpots and freed the canaries. She remained very still, staring at the priest and imagining that she, if she decided to, could change into a flower or fly like a bird.

Father Benito did not want to admit that nothing defeated Mayalde. He felt like telling her, "Go on, my girl. Go back to your mother. Tell her to treat you well and that I remember her. You know I'm no good at being your father. We'll see if she even bothers to see you. Though I doubt it. You should have seen how glad she was to get rid of you."

For her part she thought, I make him angry because I love things, I love the flowers, the birds, the markets, and he doesn't. I serve him, but he doesn't enjoy it. He's a sour old man with vinegar in his blood.

It was clear to Mayalde that Father Benito wanted to enjoy things. She bathed outside under an improvised shower in a small courtyard, and she knew the priest spied on her. It amused her to play with the schedule. Sometimes she bathed at dawn; other times she bathed at night. The priest always spied on her, and she soaped her s.e.x and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s before pretending alarm at being caught, covering herself quickly with her hands and laughing without stopping as she imagined the confusion of the priest with the narrow eyes of an uneasy wolf and the iguana's profile.

"Put aside evil thoughts," the priest would tell her when she confessed. And he would add with growing exaltation: "Repeat after me, child. I am a sack of foul-smelling filth. My sins are an abomination. I am pernicious, scandalous, incorrigible. I deserve to be locked away in a cell on bread and water until I die." And rolling up his eyes to heaven: "My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault."

Mayalde observed him with a smile, convinced he had lost his mind. The girl shrugged in amazement and kept her own counsel.

Father Mazon would sing these d.a.m.n hallelujahs that have been repeated in Mexican churches for the past five hundred years and eventually move away from Mayalde, the object of his recriminations, and conclude by praising himself, remembering what they had told him at home when he disclosed his ecclesiastical vocation: "Benito, there's nothing theological about you."

"Benito, you look more like a scoundrel."

"Benito, don't tell us you're not pretty h.o.r.n.y."

He agreed with the last two propositions but decided to put them to the test by subjecting himself to the disciplines of the first: entering the priesthood.

His relationship with the beautiful Mayalde joined together his three temptations: the divine, the worldly, and the erotic. How far had it gone? In the village, one didn't know for sure. The situation itself-priest with supposed G.o.ddaughter or niece who, in the end, turned out to be secret daughter-had occurred so often it couldn't withstand another version. The strength of the tradition obliged one to think certain things. It also allowed us, a few of us, to propose the exception.

"That only happens in old movies, Dona Altagracia. Let's say she really is his niece or an orphan or whatever all of you like and prefer, and the priest simply and openly exploits her as a maid without enjoying her as a concubine."

Some said yes, others no. One, who tries to be fair, would not admit baseless gossip or unproven suspicions. But when Mayalde came down the mountain to the market, a melancholy silence surrounded her. The village smelled of wet dog, of lit hearth, of roasted food, of burro dung, of ocote pine smoke, of untouchable snow, of unpardonable sun. She moved as if she weren't touching the ground. She was pursued by the evil thoughts of some, the suspicious silence of others, the ambiguous solitude of everybody. Was Benito Mazon a man of G.o.d or a d.a.m.ned sinner? In any case, only he dispensed the sacraments in this forgotten village. And if he gave us the host and extreme unction, what wouldn't he give to the pretty girl who lived with him?

A few of us had been educated and did not believe the falsehoods of the Church. But n.o.body-not even one, who is an atheist, to tell the absolute truth-dared challenge the weight of religious tradition in the villages. The sky would fall down on us. Centuries and centuries of proclaiming ourselves Catholics has its importance. Being an atheist is almost a failure of courtesy. But one thinks that what the believer and the indifferent ought to share is charity and compa.s.sion. It isn't justice that unites us. One knows Christians who go out of their way to be unjust. To inferiors. To children. To women. To animals. And who, beating their chests, proclaim themselves Christians and go to Ma.s.s on Sunday.

One is not like them. One tries to be sincere with the world and with oneself. One wants to be just even though one is not a believer. One thinks that even if one is not Catholic, justice is the most Christian thing there is. Because of justice, one helps others, and mercy is only a little medal they pin on us afterward.

Because of simple charity, then, one pretends not to see and lets him pa.s.s at night as one observes from the darkened window the limping young man who looks around in distress without knowing which way to go until one comes out in the midst of the silent ringing of the Angelus and directs him: "Go up the mountain a little way. Follow the bells."

"What bells?"

"Listen to them carefully. Up there you'll be received with charity."

I sent him away from the village because one knows very well who one's neighbors are. The boy, his leg injured, with dirty bandages around his knee, torn clothing, and muddy boots, was going to be suspect, no matter who he was and where he came from. One is not accustomed to the sudden appearance of people one doesn't know. One is predisposed against the stranger. Even more so in a village of less than a hundred souls lost in the volcanic heights of Mexico, a village of ash and snow, icy air, and numb hands. A village enveloped in a gigantic gray serape as if in a premature though permanent winding-sheet.

But if the stranger seeks refuge in the house of the priest, it means he has nothing to hide. The Church blesses those it receives. The boy could climb down from the church to the village without arousing anyone's suspicions. What he couldn't do was appear like this, hurt, confused, and exhibiting a youthful beauty as somber and dazzling as that of a black sun.

"Climb the hill. Take refuge in Christian charity. Ask for the priest. Find an explanation."

"I was mountain climbing and I fell," Felix Camberos said simply, for that was the name the boy gave when Father Benito Mazon opened the door as dawn was breaking.

"It's very early," the priest said disagreeably.

"Mountains are overcome early in the morning." Felix Camberos smiled, for better or worse. "Just like piety."

"All right, Mayalde, see to the stranger," said the priest, feeling strangely trapped in a contradiction he did not understand.

Benito Mazon had seen the figure of the boy, and in his heart, he had reasons for charity as well as suspicion. They merged in the figure of Mayalde. Who would tend to the injured boy? Why not the priest? Because he would have to kneel before the injured man in a posture his arrogance rejected. He would have to display humility to a man younger than himself. And above all, handsomer. The priest caught Mayalde's glance when Felix appeared. It was the face of a voiceless moon expressing everything by means of waxing and waning movements, as if a tide from heaven had carried the stranger to this desolate place.

Mayalde had not controlled her own face when she saw Felix. Father Benito noticed this and decided to place the young man in the girl's care. Why? The reason seemed as apparent to the priest as it does now to oneself. Benito Mazon's iguana's profile and wolf's eyes were the opposite of the statue's profile and puppy's eyes of Felix.

Father Mazon felt an uncontrollable impulse to place Mayalde in Felix's hands and expose her to temptation. He savored the decision. It exalted him. He felt like a missionary of the Lord who first offers us the joy of sin in order to immediately impose the difficulty of virtue and to arrogate to himself, by means of confession, the right to forgive. Between one thing and the other, between sin and virtue (Mazon gloated) crawled a serpent made of temptation. The priest would not have to conquer it. But the girl would. This possibility was enough to a.s.sure her soul many hours of martyrdom, of hara.s.sment, of severity when he and Mayalde were alone again and he could corner her and feel the pleasure of humiliating and accusing her, and finally, with luck, the defeated girl would no longer resist.

Father Mazon went out to attend to his divine duties, and Mayalde remained alone with Felix. The girl was very discreet.

"Take off your trousers. Otherwise I can't tend to your knee."

Felix obeyed gravely, though he smiled and blushed just a little when he sat in front of Mayalde, displaying his brief, tight undershorts. She looked at him without curiosity and proceeded to clean the injury on his leg.

"What are you doing here?"

"Mountaineering."

"What's that?"

"Climbing the mountain."

"How far?"

"Well, up to the snow, if I can."

"And you fell?"

Felix's hesitant voice did not escape the concentrated attention of the secretive girl.

"Well, I slipped," the boy finally said with a laugh.

"Ah." She looked at him mischievously. "You slipped up." She gave him an affectionate tap on the leg. "Well, you're set, Don Slippery."

That afternoon the volcano threw out a few tongues of flame, but the ashes were soon extinguished by the summer's evening rain.

"How strange that you came here in August," Mayalde said to Felix. "That's when the snow goes away. In January it comes right up to our door."

"That's exactly why." Felix smiled with something like a distant star in his eyes. "I like to attempt what's most difficult."

"Oh my," Mayalde said in a quiet voice as she touched Felix's hand. "It must come from G.o.d."

She had a desire, too, just like Father Benito.

"Why 'oh my'?" Felix smiled. "What comes from G.o.d?"

"Bad thoughts." Mayalde looked up.

When Father Benito went down to the village to give extreme unction to the baker, Mayalde had already given her virtue to Felix. The baker took a long time to die, and the young couple could love at their leisure, hidden behind the altar of the Peacemaker. The ecclesiastical vestments served as a soft bed, and the persistent odor of incense excited them both-him because it was exotic, her because it was customary, both because it was sacrilegious.

"Don't you feel very secluded here?"

"What do you mean? Why?"

"This is like the roof of the world."

"You managed to get up here, didn't you?"

"I don't know. There's another world away from here."

"What's there?"

"The ocean, for example. Haven't you ever been to the ocean?"

She shook her head.

"Do you know what color the ocean is? I'd like to take you away with me."

"The priest says water doesn't have a color."

"He doesn't know anything. Or he's deceiving you. The ocean is blue. Do you know why?"

She shook her head again.

"Because it reflects the sky."

"You have a pretty way of talking. I don't know if it's true. I've never seen the ocean."

He kissed Mayalde, holding her head with both hands. Then she said: "Once I wanted to get away from life. Then you came."

2. The one who arrived at nightfall was Father Benito Mazon. He struggled up the hill, panting in the rain, his wolf's eyes more uneasy than ever. He had delayed his return. He wanted to give every opportunity to the young couple. He had endured the tolerance one offered him by giving back his own intolerance. He returned armed with an indifference that had fallen into the trap of his crude bitterness. The parishioners require a sacrament; they find it repugnant that he is the one who gives it to them, and he knows they have no choice.

He returned late because in the village he had spoken amiably with the civil and military authorities. One was amazed at so much courtesy in someone as dry and arrogant as Father Mazon.

Father Mazon, walking back, looks again at the desolation of the ash-colored volcano, compares it again to being abandoned by G.o.d, and would like to see things clearly, not with these clouded eyes . . .

The man of G.o.d arrived and took off his straw hat, revealing towcolored hair. Water ran down his cloak of corn leaves.

He looked coldly but without suspicion at the couple. "How's that leg doing?"

"Better, Father."

"When are you leaving us?"

"Whenever you say. I won't stay a minute longer than you want. I'm grateful for your hospitality."

"Ah, but first you put it to the test."

Felix couldn't avoid a smile. "Your hospitality exceeds my expectations."

The priest let the water run down his cloak and said to Mayalde without looking at her: "What are you waiting for?"

She came to remove his improvised raincoat.

"She's an obedient girl," the priest said severely.

She didn't say anything.

"Go on, prepare supper."