David Nobbs - Obstacles to Young Love

Naomi feels so happy for them in their happiness, and yet so sad, for she is convinced that they are deluded, and she cannot think it good to be deluded. Yet she realises that her reactions are more suited to Coningsfield than to the village of Tartar Chico, high above the Cajamarca Valley in the mighty Andes.

The service is very simple. One woman breastfeeds throughout. A dog drifts in, decides that there’s nothing for him, and wanders out. Paul’s voice is low and warm and kind. The groom repeats his vows strongly. The bride repeats hers shyly, almost inaudibly. Some things are the same the world over. Father Paul puts the stole over them both, and they take communion. Their intense pride is heartbreaking. There is absolute silence in this simple home. Naomi feels the desperate heat of the faith that is warming this cold room. Again, she fears that she may cry. She fights the emotion by becoming a government inspector, directed by Stanley Kubrick, who will bully her if she breaks down.

After the ceremony, everyone goes outside. A vast pot of boiled maize appears, and they offer some to Paul, Simon and Naomi.

‘We must accept,’ says Father Paul. ‘It would be a great insult not to.’

The three of them go back inside, but the other guests don’t follow. Naomi lowers her privileged, much-admired, occasionally kissed, first-world backside onto the cloth that saves it from coming into contact with the hard, rough bench beneath.

Paul explains that nobody will eat until they have eaten.

‘You may hate it, Naomi, but it has to be like this. I tried to change it, and it didn’t work. Believing that all men are equal is one of the privileges enjoyed by those who are more equal than others. These people have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.’

A tray, with a cloth on it, is brought in. On it are two vast bowls of maize, one with one spoon, one with two. Married people eat out of the same bowl. It is the custom.

A bowl of sauce is brought. Paul warns that it will be very fiery.

‘These people wouldn’t be so poor if they were allowed to practise birth control,’ says Naomi.

‘Naomi!’ hisses Simon. ‘This is not the time.’

‘No, no. Feel free to say what you think, my friends,’ says Paul, ‘but say it casually, as if we’re discussing the weather. Don’t let these good people see that we are arguing. They would be very upset.’

‘I don’t know that I’m up to that,’ says Naomi.

‘Really? I thought you’d just left drama school,’ says Simon. ‘I thought you were a fully fledged actress now.’

The remark hits Naomi just as she is experiencing her first taste of the sauce. The fire burns right down her throat. She can’t breathe.

‘That wasn’t very nice, Simon,’ she gasps.

‘Children, please. We’re on show. Don’t spoil their day,’ warns Paul again.

The maize is palatable, if not exciting.

‘This will be their permanent diet,’ Paul tells them. ‘Ten years ago, there’d probably have been a little meat. Not now, even for a wedding. These people are cut off from everything except the effects of recession. Prices for their pathetic little crops remain stable, while inflation rises.’ His voice remains calm, he is smiling, only his eyes show his anger. ‘And these are the people with whom, in markets and railway stations, tourists think it clever to haggle.’

Paul’s little history lesson defuses the situation, but Naomi is still shocked by the tartness in Simon’s remark about her. It seems as if in the tension and embarrassment of the occasion some deeper, less pleasant aspect of his personality has been revealed.

The sauce is fearsome, but in tiny quantities, worked very thinly into the maize, it makes a tolerable meal – if you don’t have to eat it every day.

Their bowls hardly seem to empty, and there is a whole wedding reception out there, waiting patiently. Patience is sprinkled over this land like a condiment.

‘In Cajamarca,’ Paul continues, ‘there’s a room called El Cuarto del Rescarte – the Ransom Chamber. After he’d been defeated and captured by Pizarro and his little band of conquistadores in 1532, Atahualpa realised how greedy for gold the Spaniards were.’

Naomi thinks back to Peter Shaffer’s play, and wonders, briefly, what Timothy is doing at this moment.

‘So Atahualpa offered to fill a large room with gold and silver in exchange for his release. But Pizarro had no intention of releasing him. Realising this, Atahualpa tried to escape. Pizarro wanted to keep him alive, but was overruled. He was led out into the Plaza de Armas, to be burnt at the stake. He accepted baptism, and the sentence was commuted to strangulation.’

Naomi winces and mutters, ‘Fear. Always fear,’ through a mouthful of recalcitrant maize.

‘I took an American economist to the Ransom Chamber a few years ago,’ continues Father Paul. ‘He looked at it in deep awe, and said, in tones of wonderment, “I’ve always been telling my students that inflation began in this room in Cajamarca, and now I’m here.” I really think he was almost on the point of having an orgasm about inflation.’

‘Have you ever had an orgasm, Paul?’

Naomi says this to shock Simon. She is sorry to have to shock Padre Pablo, but there is something about Simon today that makes her really want to shock him.

Simon is shocked, but Paul isn’t, not remotely. He smiles, and replies very casually, so that the waiting guests might think he was saying, ‘Jolly good maize, this,’ or, ‘Pity England didn’t qualify for the World Cup finals.’

‘Hundreds,’ he gleams. ‘Not that I’ve kept count. Nobody ever pretended that celibacy was easy, or that priests are sexless freaks. Each time I have one I remind myself that if I hadn’t taken Holy Vows I might be doing it with a beautiful woman and not just with my veined old hand.’

A small child enters with a bowl, a child much too small to realise that they are superior beings who eat alone and undisturbed. Several appalled adults rush in and remove the child, who doesn’t cry. They learn to accept life’s restrictions at an early age in this land.

‘Actually, Naomi, I have grave doubts about celibacy. It’s too difficult except for saints. And it separates us from our parishioners and makes us less able to understand their problems.’ He smiles at her and there is naughtiness in those deep, understanding eyes. ‘Besides, you remind me of what I have missed.’

Simon raises his eyebrows in surprise but Naomi knows that there is no lechery in the remark, and accepts the compliment gracefully.

At last Paul thinks that they have eaten enough, even though their bowls are far from empty. They mime their delight, and the fullness of their stomachs, and there is laughter.

They shake hands again with every single person, and every adult thanks them for coming.

And every adult is glad that they are going.

They walk down the great hills in silence.

That afternoon, in the warm sunshine, Naomi, Simon, Paul and Greta sit in the garden of the Parish House, the Parroquia. Greta is German. She’s training to be a nun. She is of medium height and slim, with straight, sandy hair. She has a disappointed face and strikingly good legs.

The Parish House is on the little main square of the village of Baños del Inca. On the other side of the square are the hot baths. The water in the streams round the village is so hot that every morning Simon has to collect a bucket of hot water from one of them, carry it home and mix it with at least the same amount of cold, before he can shave with it. Simon and Naomi go over to the public baths every morning, and have a hot bath together in a space big enough for a football team. Twice they’ve made love in the hot baths. It’s their delayed honeymoon, after all. But today for the first time Naomi doesn’t feel that it’s quite like a honeymoon. Today for the first time Naomi is not in paradise. Today for the first time she cannot be content with small talk.