Jan Slauerhoff - The Forbidden Kingdom

“Who let you in?”

“I come and go as God sees fit. I ask you in the name of God: when will you finally have the church built to accommodate the faithful, and when the seminary that will produce our missionaries?”

Campos was furious at having been caught without a doublet by this brown habit.

“Never!” he replied. “We have enough churches here: there’s one in every street, and I’m constantly tripping over processions. No more churches, singing or processions. The Chinese laugh at psalms.”

“Remember the last words of Saint Xaverius: China will be conquered not by the sword but by the word.”

“They don’t understand the word.”

“Please give us a church. The Jesuits have twelve, and we Dominicans, who have more followers, only two.”

“How often have I told you that I don’t want any Dominicans here? Jesuits are enough for me. But you go on squabbling with each other, compete, stir things up, all the better! In that way you will lose prestige and wipe yourselves out. No church, no monastery, no chapel, nothing more, but you can have the Ilha Verde, not to fill the churches, but to cultivate it. Didn’t the Dominicans always excel at agriculture? Provide the colony with grain and vegetables, and afterwards supply spiritual nutrition.”

“Your Grace should consider that we must devote all our strength to ploughing the hardened spirit of the Chinese.”

But Campos’s patience was exhausted. He got up and was about to push the troublesome Dominican through the door, when it flew open and Capitão Ronquilho entered and burst out laughing at the sight of the Procurador with bare arms and the imploring Belchior with wide, hanging sleeves confronting each other.

“Give him his church now, Excellency! He’ll never stop. Soon he’ll be serenading you with the choir begging for that church. That would be even more of a nuisance.”

Belchior shot a flaming glance at the soldier and at the governor, and hurried out, but turned on the threshold.

“I shall excommunicate you if you do not bow to God’s will!”

“There’ll be no excommunicating here. The Pope gave the Jesuits the sole right and we are the supreme authority here. You’re troublemakers and fanatics, you and your whole order! I’ll excommunicate you ! You must leave the colony within the month. Head off further into China. Off you go! Off you go!”

The Dominican disappeared, leaving him panting and cursing. Ronquilho looked down at him with good-natured mockery, crossed his arms over his braid-covered chest, glanced in the mirror at the back of the room, which showed him the image of a heavily built, well-dressed officer, born to conquer both fortresses and women. He stretched, as he was fond of doing, to feel his muscles flexing. His face wore a peevish expression, but he was good-hearted and kind when he got his way — and he always did — which filled him with satisfaction of a more spiritual kind. What he was like when he did not get his way, he had yet to experience.

He now felt obliged to cheer up the sulking Procurador and, going up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

“No need to get angry with those priests. You know very well that their only weapon is talking big. Give him ten escudos for the poor every time he comes, which he has to accept. He’ll be bound to feel insulted at the paltriness of the gift and leave.”

“That Dominican isn’t the only one. I could handle that irritation. No, there’s much more.”

He clenched his fists and again thought of Pedro Velho, his enemy, whom he had to swear in, of the unceasing Chinese extortion, of the fleet that was late, his daughter who no longer obeyed him, which brought him back to the man in front of him. He motioned him towards a chair and asked him:

“Did you see Pilar this morning?”

Now the capitão ’s unwrinkled brow also frowned.

“Yes, I saw her. This morning I went to pay my respects, hoping for a favourable glance, one word that would give me courage. But I found her kneeling before Nossa Senhora da Penha; she didn’t even look up. ‘May I come back after a hundred credos, Pilar?’ I asked her. ‘No,’ she said hastily and hoarsely, ‘I have to change.’ She said no more; I found her so strange and pale, blushing violently and with sparkling eyes as if she had been up all night praying. I left and had to drink three glasses of muscatel, to banish the sad thought that I shall never be closer to her.”

Now it was Campos’s turn to console.

“Patience! She’s still young. What is seventeen? Don’t dismiss your concubine yet; I swear she’ll be yours before she’s nineteen.”

In this way they tried to allay each other’s concerns, the father and the suitor of the young lady, both of whom imagined she was in a silent women’s chamber, with scarcely a thought in her head, albeit praying, but inhabiting a world to which they had no access.

THEY WENT HOME together, the Procurador in his palanquin, the capitão riding alongside on a small but noble and powerfully built Burmese horse. Everywhere the people of Macao stopped and greeted them respectfully. But in the new Rua Central it was their turn to stop and bow. The rearguard of the procession, whose beginning was now barring their way here, was moving from the open door of the cathedral in the square a hundred metres higher up. Cursing under their breath, they backed against the wall but soon a door opened, and an old man invited them in. They dismounted and saw the procession passing from the semi-darkness of a cool patio, both angry at having to wait and burdened by a premonition, and glad that they were not visible, could keep their hats on and could enjoy a cool drink which the old man soon sent them.

In the bright sunlit street, crossed only by the short narrow shadows of the trees, the procession passed. At the front were the Chinese converts, in their blue robes, with candles, followed by older Christians: Negroes in white choir surplices, against which their black faces and white bulging eyes stood out strangely. The latter, at the peak of ecstasy, walked along twitching and banging their sticks on the uneven pavements. Then there were little Japanese girls with woolly lambs and crudely embroidered texts between them. After a gap, surrounded by his brown monks, beneath a high canopy, came Belchior, the host in the golden box resting on his raised hands. The bells rang, booming and unrelenting. Around the corner of the street came Christ, in a short tunic, dragging the cross, barefoot, with a bleeding head. The bells stopped. All kneeled in the sudden silence. A softly sung lament became audible. From an open church door Veronica, in a red robe with her neck bared, came down into the street, went up to Jesus, jammed the crown of thorns onto her own head, tore off her veil and wiped the sweat and blood from the suffering face. A double cry rang out from a closed house: “Pilar! Come here!”—but no one heard. All were immersed in prayer, all eyes were focused on the broken figure pulling the cross over the hard cobbles and on the young girl bringing him a last consolation. They passed, another line of monks followed and four trumpeting angels brought up the rear.

Campos and Ronquilho did not know which of them had stopped the other from charging in and pulling Dona Pilar from the clutches of the monks and into the house. A jealousy more overpowering than sexual envy made them clutch at their throats and then at the window bars, to support their bodies. Rage at the divine rapture in which they had no part and which had shone so powerfully from Veronica’s eyes paralysed them. Only when the procession had passed did they come to themselves. The father identified with the suffering of the suitor he wanted as his son.