Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo

Carts began rumbling by toward the Media Luna. Father Renteria crouched low,

hiding in the reeds along the river’s edge. “What are you hiding from?” he asked himself.

“Adios, padre,” he heard someone say.

He rose up and answered:

“Adios! May God bless you.”

The lights in the village went out one by one. The river was glowing with luminous color.

“Padre, has the Angelus rung yet?” asked one of the drivers.

“It must be much later than that,” he replied. And he set off in the opposite direction, vowing not to be stopped.

“Where are you off to so early, padre?”

“Where’s the death, padre?”

“Did someone in Contla die, padre?”

He felt like answering, “I did. I’m the one who’s dead.” But he limited himself to a smile.

As he left the last houses behind, he walked faster.

It was late morning when he returned.

“Where have you been, Uncle,” his niece Ana asked. “A lot of women have been here looking for you. They wanted to confess; tomorrow’s the first Friday.”

“Tell them to come back this evening.”

He sat for a quiet moment on a bench in the hall, heavy with fatigue.

“How cool the air is, Ana.”

“It’s very warm, Uncle.”

“I don’t feel it.”

The last thing he wanted to think about was that he had been in Contla, where he had made a general confession to a fellow priest who despite his pleas had refused him absolution.

“That man whose name you do not want to mention has destroyed your church, and you have allowed him to do it. What can I expect of you now, Father? How have you used God’s might? I want to think that you’re a good man and that you’re held in high esteem because of that. But it’s not enough to be good. Sin is not good. And to put an end to sin, you must be hard and merciless. I want to think that your parishioners are still believers, but it is not you who sustains their faith. They believe out of superstition and fear. I feel very close to you in your penury, and in the long hours you spend every day carrying out your duties. I personally know how difficult our task is in these miserable villages to which we have been banished; but that in itself gives me the right to tell you that we cannot serve only the few who give us a pittance in exchange for our souls. And with your soul in their hands, what chance do you have to be better than those who are better than you? No, Father, my hands are not sufficiently clean to grant you absolution. You will have to go elsewhere to find that.”

“What do you mean? That I must look somewhere else if I want to confess?”

“Yes, you must. You cannot continue to consecrate others when you yourself are in sin.”

“But what if they remove me from my ministry?”

“Maybe you deserve it. They will be the ones to judge.”

“Couldn’t you… ? Provisionally, I mean…. I must administer the last rites… give communion. So many are dying in my village, Father.”

“Oh, my friend, let God judge the dead.”

“Then you won’t absolve me?”

And the priest in Contla had told him no.

Later the two of them had strolled through the azalea-shaded cloister of the parish patio. They sat beneath an arbor where grapes were ripening.

“They’re bitter, Father,” the priest anticipated Father Renteria’s question. “We live in a land in which everything grows, thanks to God’s providence; but everything that grows is bitter. That is our curse.”

“You’re right, Father. I’ve tried to grow grapes over in Comala. They don’t bear. Only guavas and oranges: bitter oranges and bitter guavas. I’ve forgotten the taste of sweet fruit.

Do you remember the China guavas we had in the seminary? The peaches? The tangerines that shed their skin at a touch? I brought seeds here. A few, just a small pouch. Afterward, I felt it would have been better to leave them where they were, since I only brought them here to die.”

“And yet, Father, they say that the earth of Comala is good. What a shame the land is all in the hands of one man. Pedro Paramo is still the owner, isn’t he?”

“That is God’s will.”

“I can’t believe that the will of God has anything to do with it. You don’t believe that, do you, Father?”

“At times I have doubted; but they believe it in Comala.”

“And are you among the ‘they’?”

“I am just a man prepared to humble himself, now while he has the impulse to do so.”

Later, when they said their good-byes, Father Renteria had taken the priest’s hands and kissed them. Now that he was home, and returned to reality, he did not want to think about the morning in Contla.

He rose from the bench and walked to the door.

“Where are you going, Uncle?”

His niece Ana, always present, always by his side, as if she sought his shadow to protect her from life.

“I’m going out to walk for a while, Ana. To blow off steam.”

“Do you feel sick?”

“Not sick, Ana. Bad. I feel that’s what I am. A bad man.”

He walked to the Media Luna and offered his condolences to Pedro Paramo. Again he listened to his excuses for the charges made against his son. He let Pedro Paramo talk. None of it mattered, after all. On the other hand, he did decline his invitation to eat.

“I can’t do that, don Pedro. I have to be at the church early because a long line of women are already waiting at the confessional. Another time.”

He walked home, then toward evening went directly to the church, just as he was, bathed in dust and misery. He sat down to hear confessions.

The first woman in line/was old Dorotea, jMio was always waiting for the church d He smelled the odor of alcohol.

“What? Now you’re drinking? How long have you been doing this?”

“I went to Miguelito’s wake, padre. And I overdid it a little. They gave me so much to drink that I ended up acting like a clown.”

“That’s all you’ve ever done, Dorotea.”

“But now I’ve come with my sins, padre. Sins to spare.”

On many occasions he had told her, “Don’t bother to confess, Dorotea; you’d be wasting my time. You couldn’t commit a sin anymore, even if you tried. Leave that to others.”

“I have now, padre. It’s the truth.”

“Tell me.”

“Since it can’t do him any harm now, I can tell you that I’m the one who used to get the girls for the deceased. For Miguelito Paramo.”

Father Renteria, stalling for time to think, seemed to emerge from his fog as he asked, almost from habit:

“For how long?”

“Ever since he was a boy. From that time he had the measles.”

“Repeat to me what you just said, Dorotea.”

“Well, that I was the one who rounded up Miguelito’s girls.”

“You took them to him?”

“Sometimes I did. Other times I just made the arrangements. And with some, all I did was head him in the right direction. You know, the hour when they would be alone, and when he could catch them unawares.”

“Were there many?”

He hadn’t meant to ask, but the question came out by force of habit.

“I’ve lost count. Lots and lots.”

“What do you think I should do with you, Dorotea? You be the judge. Can you pardon what you’ve done?”

“I can’t, padre. But you can. That’s why I’m here.”

“How many times have you come to ask me to send you to Heaven when you die? You hoped to find your son there, didn’t you, Dorotea? Well, you won’t go to Heaven now. May God forgive you.”

“Thank you, padre.”

“Yes. And I forgive you in His name. You may go.”

“Aren’t you going to give me any penance?”

“You don’t need it, Dorotea.”

“Thank you, padre.”