Evelio Rosero - Good Offices

“No, not yet. We must finish with our hearts what began in our souls. We already made a start, you saw for yourself. You’d better go, Tancredito, and entertain him. Talk to him about you and Sabina, for example. Why not? His advice will be illuminating. The two of you can’t go on as you are, don’t you see? One of these days the world will come to an end, and what will we have suffered for?”

That they should call on him to reveal his relationship with Sabina felt like a threat. Tancredo did not know how to reply. Those women knew everything, even from before he was born. He tried to ascertain from the Lilias’ faces whether there was mockery or compassion in their words. He discovered nothing there. Unconcerned, they carried on talking as though running through a list, each going in different directions, stopping from time to time at the open grave, staring hard at the cats with wide-open eyes, as if memorizing them, then withdrawing again in one direction or the other, crossing themselves. It was obvious that Tancredo was disturbing them. They were moving impatiently round the courtyard, and now their impatience was not so much to do with burying the cats as with Tancredo leaving the courtyard. Why do I disturb them so? he wondered. Maybe they didn’t want to bury their cats, as they should, with him there. Then why ask for his help? Was it possible, he thought, that once he had left the courtyard the Lilias would slither up the walls like giant snakes, roaring with laughter? Would they take to the air, congratulating themselves on their crime? He gave up. Who was he to defend the cats? He went out through the little gate in silence.

Once in the middle of the garden he hesitated. Where to go? He did not want to go near the church or return to the courtyard with the Lilias. A painful fit of laughter doubled him over, choking him. “My God,” he said to himself, “how was it they decided to drown the cats? How did they manage to catch them when they all seemed drunk? How were they able they do it?”

He decided to return to the courtyard, groping his way. Taking a deep breath, he leaned over the gate; he could see two of the Lilias dripping in the moonlight: they passed through the night in front of him. The other Lilia, in the depths of the darkness, stomped again and again on the earth bordering the grave. She had still not disposed of her shovel. The others were returning to the sink. “There was a place in the world to bury them after all,” one of them said, just as she was passing Tancredo. She stopped suddenly, lit by the moon, stopped in profile, bony, her gray hair falling over her face, her eyes wide, discovering him.

“Tancredito.” She raised her voice and smiled as though smiling at a child. “You’re not needed here now. Off you go.”

And she carried on toward the sink, where the other Lilia was already washing her hands.

Then Tancredo caught sight of the ladies. He caught sight of them just as he turned and left the courtyard. He caught sight of the old ladies of the Neighborhood Civic Association flattened like bats against the walls surrounding the big stone sink. Pale but calm, too serene. How had he not seen them before? They were all there, every one, the same seven or nine devout parishioners, feeble, confused grandmothers who not long ago had said goodnight in the drizzle, at the doors of the church. Seven or nine ladies? At this hour? Celestial grandmothers, housewives, helping to kill cats in the parish church. The whole time Tancredo was in the courtyard they had been hiding, not moving — why? So as not to be seen taking part in such a crime against cats? Surely it went against their dignity. Now, thinking him far away, they came alive again, their sullen expressions came back to life, their murmuring voices revived, they said goodbye furtively, by the light of the moon, and still they carried their umbrellas, in case of rain. They said goodbye to the Lilias, clustered around them. They were whispering. Making suggestions. And they went through the wide courtyard gates in single file, silent as thieves, back to their houses.

As the last one left, Tancredo sought out the Lilias.

“What were the ladies of the Association doing here?” he asked.

The smallest Lilia approached Tancredo and confronted him, eye to eye. Her yellow face was frightening, cold. She shook her head.

“You ask things that you shouldn’t,” she said.

And with that, still some way off, but coming closer, the sound of the Volkswagen’s motor approaching the courtyard gates electrified the Lilias and Tancredo.

“Almida,” the women said.

“They’re coming,” Tancredo said.

He did not run to open up. He could not. He felt thrown into a panic. The world, that night, was too out of kilter. And he admitted to himself, on top of everything, in his heart of hearts, that he had hoped Almida and the sacristan would never come back, that they had disappeared forever, like so many in that country, that the Volkswagen, with no one inside, would end up on some out-of-town rubbish dump, and that Friday’s journalists would greet the day with the news: PARISH PRIEST AND SACRISTAN DISAPPEAR.

“Tancredito, you go to the office,” the Lilias told him. “You should find San José in there. We saw him leave the kitchen. Take care to explain things to him. Pretend the telephone has just rung and you’re going to answer it. It’s not unusual for us to get up to attend Father Almida, but it’s extremely unusual that you and Sabina should be kissing on the altar, isn’t it? Off you go now, don’t let them see you.”

At that moment the courtyard gates opened. The sacristan himself was pushing them, bent and stealthy, in order to let the Volkswagen through, its headlights illuminating strips of shadow.

“The Lilias know everything,” Tancredo repeated to himself. The Lilias had spied on them all that time, their whole lives. He and Sabina were never alone. And he fled to the office, as if the telephone really had just rung.

Picking up the receiver, utterly convinced of the telephone’s ringing, he heard no voice. Just a continuous buzz that diminished and slipped away into silence. He hung up. If Reverend Almida had come in at that moment, he would have said the telephone had rung. He would have had an excuse for being up, in the office. He would have said that he had been worried by the absence of the Father and the sacristan. He would have concealed the presence of the singing priest there in the church, with Sabina, at the altar. That was the worst, the most inexplicable thing, to explain the presence of Matamoros, drunk, at that hour. But no one came into the office. Tancredo lit a candle on top of the typewriter. He waited a good while, seated near the black writing-desk, contemplating the telephone attentively. How much time had passed? He did not hear Almida’s and the sacristan’s voices, or their footsteps going up the stairs. Maybe they had already gone up? It was as if two transparent ghosts had arrived instead of the flesh-and-blood Machado and Almida. Without noticing, Tancredo picked up the receiver again and went on studying it attentively. The candle burned low.

“Who was it, Tancredito?” he heard one of the Lilias ask. Who was it, who could it have been, if the telephone had not rung?

Surprised, he noticed one of the old women standing there, the smallest of the Lilias, a shovel still in her hand, sleeves rolled up, arms dirty.

“Nobody,” he managed to say.

“And Father San José, Tancredito? I don’t see him here. Did he go to the bathroom? Look after him, I beg you. We won’t be long. Maybe he left, we’d never forgive ourselves; what would a decent soul be doing out on the streets of Bogotá at this hour?”

“He’s in the church,” Tancredo said.

“In the church!”