Evelio Rosero - Good Offices

Just then, the three Lilias returned, one of them carrying a tray daintily covered with a little cloth, on the tray a gold-rimmed glass, snacks, and a bottle of brandy.

Matamoros, who had been on the point of saying something, stopped himself, all aglow, and opened his arms.

“Please,” he said, “I’m not going to drink alone.”

The five residents of the presbytery looked at one another, shocked.

“That’s right,” one of the Lilias said, obligingly. “We’ll all have a drink. It’s cold.”

“I don’t drink,” another Lilia said, smiling. With her smile, she seemed to be waiting for them to beg her to drink, to have a drink, to beg her just once, no need to insist.

The third Lilia shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Then, by shrugging her shoulders, seemed to say: “Not for me, but you go ahead.”

“Me neither,” Tancredo said. “No matter, Father. We’ll keep you company.”

“Father,” Sabina said, “we’re not allowed to drink. And even if we were, none us who live in the presbytery would want to, not now, not ever. Father Almida very occasionally has a drink from the bottle they’ve brought you. .”

“It’s not the same bottle, señorita,” one of the Lilias interrupted sweetly, as if explaining the best way to make bread. And she started laughing, softly, generously. “There are lots of these bottles, lots and lots, all the same. Before bed, señorita, Father Almida and your godfather, Sacristan Celeste Machado, always drink a big glass of warm milk with an even bigger glass of brandy. They tell us it helps them to sleep. We believe them.”

Sabina flushed.

“Really?” she asked the Lilias, as if threatening them. “Do you also put yourselves to sleep with brandy?”

“Sometimes,” replied the Lilia who had previously said, “I don’t know.” Then she added, thoughtfully: “Although mint tea is better.”

Biting her lip, Sabina confronted her. “Reverend Almida will hear about this, you can be sure. We’ll see what he makes of it.”

Matamoros stood up; he seemed about to take his leave. He buttoned his overly large jacket with its big pockets, where he already had his empty cruet tucked away, and rubbed his hands together. “Its cold,” he said and smiled. But smiled to himself, or to no one, as if he were elsewhere, a million light years away, joining a chorus of angels, reminding himself of happy times long ago that concerned him alone; as if he had never been with them, all that time, since arriving at the church in the downpour and celebrating Mass and singing; as if he had heard nothing of the caustic exchange between Sabina and the old women. Straightening his jacket, he turned the collar up over his turtleneck. Now they saw that he was skinny and old and sad, like one of those people who never want to say goodbye yet say it. Sabina sighed: a weight was lifting from her; at last the priest would leave. But Father Matamoros turned calmly toward the Lilia holding the tray and, bowing to her, picked up the glass and bottle, and walked off.

In the doorway he stopped.

“Well,” he said, “if I’m going to drink alone, it won’t be sitting by myself in that solitary chair, surrounded by saints and archangels, while you stand and watch. Let’s go to the table.”

And he abandoned the sacristy, heading, it seemed, for the office. As soon as they were alone, the presbytery’s five residents recovered themselves.

“This is unacceptable,” Sabina said. “Father Almida will be angry, and he will have every right. Who asked you for. . refreshments? Is this how we obey the Father the first night he trusts us to be alone, in charge of his church? We should all go to bed. Tomorrow is the Family Meal. .”

“Sleep?” one of the Lilias asked maliciously, regarding Sabina out of the corner of her eye. The other two cocked their heads attentively, as though listening to Mass. Sabina stepped back, as if someone were pushing her. Tancredo stepped back too, instinctively, and opened his mouth as though preparing to speak. The Lilias know everything, he realized; they’ve found us out. And then: they found us out, who knows how long ago? Maybe ever since the first day. For a split second, he was terrified, imagining himself without Father Almida’s protection, without the presbytery roof over his head, submerged in the perpetual night that is Bogotá. He regretted his nights with Sabina. Yes. It was possible Almida knew too, even the sacristan. That was why they did not trust him, denying him his university education, restricting him to the drudgery of the Meals. “That’s it,” he repeated to himself. And he scrutinized the three old women one by one, as if seeing them for the first time. None of them took his examination personally; rather, they seemed to feel a certain pity for him, as though he were only a child, a toy, and not to blame for how he was being played.

“We heard a Mass that deserves our gratitude,” one of the Lilias said, or they all said at once, because the voice sounded like a vibrant, sung reproach, drowning out the rain. “It wasn’t just any old Mass.”

No one knew who was the eldest. Although all three were small, two of them were taller than the third and resembled one another; the third looked like their doll. Over the years, they had acquired the same habits and gestures; it was as though they acted as one, without planning to do so, and as though what one of them said had been thought by the other two, so that what the first began was almost completed by the second, who, unconsciously, as if sharing bread, left time for the third to finish. Machado had once said that the Lilias were going to die on the same day, and of the same complaint, and that it was also possible that they would come back to life at the same time. Almida did not appreciate the joke: he said that on the day of the Resurrection there could be neither first nor last. He said the joy of Resurrection would occur simultaneously, so diverting the conversation away from the Lilias. He never allowed them to be made fun of. He respected them for some reason, Tancredo thought, and not just for their cooking. Or was he afraid of them? Sometimes it was as if Almida fled from them, in the grip of an inexpressible panic, a presentiment.

“As far as the refreshments are concerned,” another of them said, “it’s not our decision. Before he left, Juan Pablo Almida himself suggested we feed the Father when he finished Mass.”

“So feed him and get it over with,” Sabina said. “We mustn’t waste any more time.”

Tancredo looked fleetingly at the door. He was increasingly annoyed by Sabina’s every word, by her imprudence. If the Lilias knew everything, it was unwise to bait them. As a matter of fact, one of them answered back: “Waste time, señorita. Time for what?”

Cornered, Sabina exploded.

“Oh, that’s enough,” she said. “I won’t put up with your whispering and your rudeness any longer. It’s terrible listening to your intrigues, your inventions, your lies, but it’s more terrible listening to you, just your voices, and even worse to know you’re out there, behind our backs, spying. If you want to say something to me, say it now; stop beating about the bush.”

“What are you talking about, señorita? I don’t understand,” a Lilia replied, her tone conciliatory. “What do you want us to say? What do you want to hear?”

And another: “You’re not the little Sabinita we once knew. For the past few years you’ve been an ill-mannered little madam. You don’t seem like the sacristan’s goddaughter any more. It’s as if you’ve never read the Bible. You make the three of us sad, we who watched you grow from a girl, who were your mothers and grandmothers and friends, your servants.”

Sabina tensed up, began stamping her foot, fists clenched, lips pursed. In the light of the single bulb, she was more than golden, suffused with the flames of her hair, with the fiery moon of her troubled face. She could not speak for rage. Tancredo rushed to intervene.