They ate without speaking, and when the table was cleared, Father Benito Mazon asked Felix Camberos if he was a student or a mountaineer.

"Well," Felix said with a laugh, "a person can be both things."

But the priest insisted: "A student?"

"Not a very good one." Felix modulated his smile.

"Everyone chooses their life. Look at Mayalde. She's mad to become a nun. I a.s.sure you it's true, by the nails of Christ."

This caused great hilarity in the priest, indifference in the young man, and stupefaction in the girl.

"Father, don't say falsehoods. It's a sin."

"Ah," Mazon said in surprise. "Are you rebelling, little girl? Don't you want to go to a convent to get away from me?"

She didn't say anything, but Father Mazon was already on the track that one knows.

"Well, I swear to you, your rebellion won't last very long. And do you know why? Because you're submissive. Submissive in your soul. Submissive to men. Because submission is stronger in you than rebellion."

Felix intervened. "But affection is stronger than submission or rebellion, don't you agree?"

"Of course, young man. Here you can prove it. In this house there is only love . . ." The priest paused and toyed with the blue and white Talavera cup he always had with him, supposedly to keep from forgetting his humble origins, before he raised his wolfish eyes. "Haven't you proved that yet, boy?"

"I think I have." Felix decided on irony to counteract the priest's snares.

"Wasn't it enough for you?"

"Affection is a good thing," said Felix. "But you need knowledge, too."

The priest smiled sourly. "You're a student, aren't you?"

"A student and a mountaineer, as I told you."

"Do you think you know a great deal?"

"I try to learn. I know that I know very little."

"I know G.o.d."

Abruptly, the priest rose to his feet. "I am on intimate terms with G.o.d."

"And what does G.o.d tell you, Father?" Felix continued in an agreeable tone.

"That the devil comes into houses by the back door."

"You invited me in through the front door," Felix responded with exacting harshness.

"Because I did not know you were going to steal the host from my temple."

"Father." Felix also stood, though he had no answer that wasn't a lie. "You have to control yourself if you want to be respected."

"I don't control myself or respect myself-"

"Father." Mayalde approached him. "It's time you went to bed. You're tired."

"You put me to bed, girl. Undress me and sing me to sleep. Prove that you love me."

He said it as if he wanted to transform his wolf's eyes into the eyes of a lamb. Felix circled the dining room chair as if that piece of furniture gave him balance or checked, like a barrier, his desire to break the chair over the priest's head.

"Father, restrain yourself, please."

"Restrain myself?" Father Mazon replied with a nasal growl. "Up here? In this wilderness? Here where nothing grows? You come here to ask me to restrain myself? Has anyone shown restraint with me? Do you understand me? What do you think the knowledge is that you're so proud of, student?"

"It's what you people have denied all your life," exclaimed Felix.

"I'm going to explain to you the only thing worth knowing," the priest replied, letting his arms drop. "I come from a family in which each member hurt the others in one way or another. Then, repentant, each one hurt himself." He looked at the student with savage intensity. "Each one constructed his own prison. Each one, my father, my mother, especially my sisters, we beat ourselves in our bedrooms until we bled. Then, together again, we sang praises to Mary, the only woman conceived without sin. Do you hear me, Senor Don University Wise Man? I'm talking to you about a mystery. I'm talking to you about faith. I'm telling you that faith is true even if it's absurd."

The priest held his own head as if to stabilize a body that had a tendency to race away. "The Virgin Mary, the only sweet, protective, and pure woman in the corrupt harem of Mother Eve. The only one!"

Mayalde had withdrawn to a corner like someone protecting herself from a squall that doesn't end because it is only the prelude to the one that follows.

Mazon turned to look at her. "Not only a woman, an Indian. A race damaged for centuries. That's why I keep her as a maid." He looked with contempt at Felix. "And you, thief of honor, learn this. Life is not a sheepskin jacket."

"It's not a ca.s.sock, either."

"Do you think I'm castrated?" Benito Mazon murmured, both defiant and sorrowful. "Ask the girl."

"Don't be vulgar. What I think is that there is no physical limit to desire," said Felix Camberos. "There is only a moral limit."

"Ah, you've come to give me lessons in morality!" shouted the priest. "And my desires? What about them?"

"Control yourself, Father." Felix was about to put his arms around Mazon.

"Do you think I don't spend my life struggling against my own wickedness, my sordid vileness?" shouted the priest, beside himself.

"I don't accuse you of anything." Felix stepped back two paces. "Respect yourself."

"I am a martyr," the priest exclaimed, his eyes those of a madman.

3. That same afternoon, when the two of them were alone, the priest sat a docile and mocking Mayalde on his knees and told her that G.o.d curses those who knowingly lead us down the wrong path. He caressed her knees.

"Think, child. I saved you from temptation and also from ingrat.i.tude. Don't you have anything to say to me?"

"No, Father. I have nothing to say."

"Get rid of the wild ideas that boy put in your head."

"They weren't wild ideas, Father. Felix put something else in me, just so you know."

The priest pushed the girl off his lap. He didn't stand up. "Forget him, girl. He's gone away. He didn't love you. He didn't free you from me."

"You're wrong, Father. I feel free now."

"Be quiet."

"You're a very sad man, Father. I'll bet sadness hounds you even when you're asleep."

"What a chatterbox you've turned into. Did the deserter give you lessons?"

Mayalde was silent. She looked at the priest with hatred and felt herself being pawed at. The priest didn't have anybody else to humiliate. What was he going to ask of her now? Would he humiliate her more than he did before Felix Camberos's visit?

Perhaps there was a certain refinement in Father Benito Mazon's soul. He didn't mistreat Mayalde. Just the opposite. One knows he said things about thinking carefully if life with him had favored her or not.

"Do you want to go down to the village with me? When the sun shines, it makes you feel like leaving this prison. Let yourself be seen, fix yourself up. I'll dress you."

"So I won't talk, Father?"

"You're an absolute idiot." The priest whistled between his teeth. "You don't know what's good for you. I'm a man of G.o.d. You're less than a maid." He began to hit her, shouting, "Wild ideas, wild ideas!"

The black cover over his body seemed like a flag of the devil as the priest shouted, "Man of G.o.d, man of G.o.d!" and Mayalde, on the floor, did not say a word, protected herself from the blows, and knew that in a little while the priest's rage would begin to give out like air in an old, broken bellows, "Wild ideas, wild ideas, what did that boy put in your head?"

And in the end, out of breath, his head bowed, he would say to her (one knows it): "You're an absolute idiot. n.o.body wants to see you. Only me. Thank me. Get undressed. Have you called anyone else Daddy?"

When, barely two years later, Mayalde came down the mountain to tell one that Father Benito had died accidentally when he fell over a cliff, one was not surprised that the features and att.i.tude of the eighteen-year-old girl had changed so much. It is clear to one that the priest kept her prisoner after the incident with the student Felix Camberos. The young woman who now approached looked stronger, robust, proven, capable of anything. Nothing like a prisoner.

"What happened to the priest?"

"Nothing. A slip. A misstep."

"Where do you want to bury him?"

"Up there. In the ashes. Next to where Felix Camberos is buried."

There the two of them are, side by side, on an abrupt slope of the mountain that looks pushed up toward the sky. From that point you can see all the way to the city that is generally hidden by the volcanic ma.s.s. The city is large, but from here you can barely make it out. One can imagine it as a conflagration. Though in the midst of the fire, there is an oasis of peace. The urban struggle concentrates on itself, and one forgets it if one takes refuge in an isolated corner, an island in the mult.i.tude.

We descended one day, she and I, from the slopes of the volcano to the great city that awaited us without rumors, curses, suspicions. But recollections, yes.

She could not forget, and she infected my memory.

When I married her after the priest died, I decided to take her far away from the little village in the mountains. I stopped talking behind the mask of the one who kept me far from the desire to make her mine. I became an "I" determined to show her that the uses of life are not sins you have to run away from by taking refuge in the mountains, that the false saint takes pleasure in humiliating himself only to inflict his arrogance on us, that humility sometimes hides great pride, and that faith, hope, and charity are not things of the next world. They should be realities in this world of ours.

I told her that Felix Camberos fought for these things.

I don't really know if the beautiful Mayalde resigned herself to abandoning the adjoining graves of Father Benito and the student Felix. There was a sense of transitory guilt in her glance that I attempted to placate with my love.

In the end, all that remained were these words of my wife, spoken years later: "All of that happened in the ill-fated year of 1968."

Chorus of Rancorous Families

and not only El Mozote on May 22 1979 we protested on the steps of the cathedral and the army came and fired and three hundred of us died blood pouring down the steps like water in a red waterfall on January 22 1980 cotton workers electricians office clerks teachers machine-gunned cut off between two avenues He in the Sampul River trapped in the water fleeing on one side Salvadoran soldiers firing at us on the other side Honduran troops blocking our way the Salvas grab children toss them into the air and cut off their heads with machetes they call it operation cleanup the next day the Sampul River can't be seen it is covered by a ma.s.s of turkey buzzards devouring the corpses better dead than alive fool we saw it in the villages they talk about it in the shacks go on look go see your father's two bodies half a body on one corner the other half on another corner come see fool your mother's head stuck on a fence look at the sky fool look at the dragonfly jet fighters 37 they bring you little presents they bring you six thousand pounds of incendiary bombs and explosives they bring you white phosphorus rockets they shoot at you with 60mm machine guns they're the spotter planes they see people they're the huey helicopters when they don't see people they fire at livestock huey oxen it's better to run away whole families on the roads it's better to have a fiery sky fall on you it's better to die in despair on the road in the daytime than to fall into their hands they tortured my father with a plastic bag filled with flour on his head talk they mutilated my father cutting off his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es they hung weights on my father's b.a.l.l.s until they maimed him forever but we're still there in our miserable villages the women wash boil grind we kids are couriers we carry the news they killed Gerinaldo Jazmin won't return to the village we kids played ambush Rutilio and Camilo and Selvin then we grew up however we could we formed gangs of rancorous orphans: there is rancor and n.o.body hides it there are the fourteen families' mansions in San Benito beach houses c.o.c.ktails at the country club Hollywood musicals at the Vi movie theater there are the mobs of one-eyed lottery-ticket sellers bootblacks shooshine the lucky little number the blind man on the streets and the fourteen only read condensed novels from reader's digest and the fourteen listen to music by mantovani even when they take a s.h.i.t and they are protected by soldiers nothing but dark-skinned little farts with no forehead no chin with boots that hurt and belts that pinch who follow the orders of strutting whites who don't dirty their hands and the gang was formed there children and grandchildren of guerrillas of soldiers of widows of other courier children the ones who got together night after night to wait for news about the disappeared then tell us who cares about my death?

what's more f.u.c.ked up?

being dead?

or being poor?

that's what we want everybody poor and that's why they're afraid of us now since we stood up to the death battalions the huey helicopters since we were kids we thought think now you're dead and your worries are over maybe only when you're dead do you see your papa again and your mama your little brother so be initiated into the gang take the vomiting test you stick your finger in the back of your mouth touch your uvula if you don't puke we jam a snapdragon to the back of your palate and a corncob up your sweet a.s.s be initiated with a savage beating to see if you can take it kicks to the b.a.l.l.s they cut off your father's son of a b.i.t.c.h kicks to the belly they kicked your pregnant mother b.a.s.t.a.r.d f.u.c.ker until you came out kicks to the knees they cut off your grandfather's legs to make him talk kicks to the shins your grandfather cut off my grandfather's now pull down your pants and take a s.h.i.t in front of everybody put on a happy face imagine you're not s.h.i.tting you're killing get used to the idea bro that killing is the same as the euphoria of s.h.i.tting you'll be the sergeant you s.h.i.t you'll be the captain you t.u.r.d but don't stop thinking about all of them the fourteen families the mob the killers and torturers in the battalions of death just like you the guerrillas who killed in self-defense just like you the gringos arming giving cla.s.ses on death weapons of death now remember a single soldier from the battalion: forget about him now remember a single guerrilla at the front: forget about him life begins with you in the gang get used to that idea n.o.body cares about your death try to remember a single acatl try to remember a single farabundo forget about them erase the words patriotism revolution from your head there was no history history begins with the salvatrucha gang your only ident.i.ty is your tattooed skin swastikas totems tears a little death knives stones rifles pistols daggers everything's good burn the earth leave nothing standing we don't need allies we need the jungle to hide rest invent we learn to walk like shadows each mara gang member is a walking tree a shadow that moves toward you toward you carefree a.s.shole do you think you saved yourself from us?

do you think you saved yourself from us?

just smell the acid of our tattooed skin just taste the rust of our navels just put your finger in the mudhole of our a.s.sholes just suck the curdled c.u.m of our p.r.i.c.ks just sink into the red b.u.t.ter of our mouths just twist around in the black jungle of our armpits we are the gang we save salvatruchas everything all of you nice and clean and neat in your sunday best hid shaved cleaned deodorized and on top of that tattooed skin and the warnings on our skin tears and teardrops painted on our faces by death while all of you read advertis.e.m.e.nts in the press on television peripherals we announce ourselves with our bitter stinking rancorous tattooed skin read the news on our skin

The Secret Marriage

Every time I want to tell you the truth, something interrupts us.

Don't worry, Lavinia. We're alone, my love. I've given orders not to be interrupted. What do you want to tell me?

I'm very unhappy. No, don't interrupt me. I want your love, not your sympathy.

You have both. You know that. Tell me.

Can I begin at the beginning?

I'm all yours. So to speak.

Leo, you know about my life, and you know I never lie to you. I want to talk to you about him. As you say in your discussions, I want to recapitulate. I only hope I can be brief. After all, we've been together nine years. I want you to be aware of my relationship to Cristobal. I won't hide anything from you. You know almost everything, but only in pieces. I want you to put yourself in my place and understand why my relationship with him has lasted so long. You have to imagine what it meant to me at the age of twenty-nine, when you begin to feel the terror of turning thirty, to renew my life thanks to a pa.s.sion that was fresh, new, and above all, dangerous.

I swear to you, Lavinia- Don't interrupt, please. I was at an age, nine years ago, when you still believe you can begin your life over again, throw the old baggage over the side, and remake yourself from head to toe. I confess I already carried that inside me. Restlessness, the little worm, whatever you want to call it. My career had given me successes, compensations. Being a top publicist is something. It's enough for a lot of women. They marry their careers.

They say a professionally successful woman always has a lover in her bed: her career.

Agreed. A career is very erotic. And yet I was dissatisfied. My career was just my dish of mole. mole. But the sauce needed spice. Well, I was fertile ground, as they say . . . The fact is that on the afternoon he came into the office, our eyes met, and we both said in silence what we repeated to each other afterward in a quiet voice, you understand, both of us in half-light. Love at first sight. An infatuation. I'm telling you this with no shame at all. Cristobal came into the office, and I undressed him with my eyes. I guessed what he looked like naked, and he did the same to me. We found out that night. Do you care if I tell you about it just the way it happened? But the sauce needed spice. Well, I was fertile ground, as they say . . . The fact is that on the afternoon he came into the office, our eyes met, and we both said in silence what we repeated to each other afterward in a quiet voice, you understand, both of us in half-light. Love at first sight. An infatuation. I'm telling you this with no shame at all. Cristobal came into the office, and I undressed him with my eyes. I guessed what he looked like naked, and he did the same to me. We found out that night. Do you care if I tell you about it just the way it happened?

No. I like it. If you kept anything secret from me, you'd be an egotist.