The Good Conscience Page 11

  “He can’t talk,” she replied. She kept her eyes down, and her fingers slowly twisted a fold of the curtain. “He’s delirious, he says things that don’t make sense. He’s hurt, Jorge, his feet are bleeding … ay!” She suffocated a sudden sob that was born more of her words than of the unhappy condition of her nephew.

  From the moment the servant had discovered Jaime outside the entrance and had run in crying that the boy had been killed, Balcárcel had decided to take advantage of this crisis to reaffirm his authority in the family. He did not really care about the boy’s hurts. His wife’s reaction affected him little more.

  “No one needs to know anything about it,” he said. “There has already been so much talk about the boy that people call him half crazy.”

  “Crazy? But he was attacked…!”

  “Bah! His injuries are self-inflicted, that’s obvious.”

  “Jorge … don’t you think we ought at least to try to understand why? I mean, the child must be suffering in some way. We should try to understand and help him.”

  “There is nothing to understand. We simply have to watch him closer and prescribe stricter rules for his conduct. Did you know that he has been deceiving us? He has merely been pretending to go to confession. I asked Father Lanagorta and Father Obregón. He has not knelt in the confessional in over a year.”

  “But we take communion together every Friday!”

  Balcárcel compressed his lips and tapped his belly. His face, ironical and at the same time outraged, waited for Asunción to grasp the full gravity of the boy’s misbehavior. She dropped the curtains and walked to the center of the room.

  “Satan has entered him,” she said softly.

  “I forbid you to make a drama of it,” said her husband with self-satisfaction. “Neither you nor Rodolfo will see the boy until he is better and I have taken him personally to Father Obregón. Afterward, I shall have a very clear talk with him. Decidedly it is not with wishes that we will save him, but with sternness and energy. Understand me well, Asunción. The savings which I have accumulated with such effort will enable me to retire next year. Once we own the block of buildings along the Olla lake, we will have a fortune of more than a million pesos and a monthly income of ten thousand pesos. Your brother will leave us this house when he dies, and the store can be modernized and its profit multiplied. What I am saying is that Jaime, as our only heir, will someday, if he knows how to handle his means, be able to live very comfortably indeed. We are the best in Guanajuato, Asunción. We cannot permit our line to be extinguished and our fortune squandered by the foolish behavior of this youth. He is quite capable of giving everything away to beggars.”

  Asunción did not hear her husband clearly. Of his words she retained only those that seemed to tell of his sterility, and it was these that raced back and forth across her eyes—the retinas drenched in Jaime’s blood—until suddenly she lost her physical balance-and reached an arm toward Balcárcel. He went on talking. She moved toward him blindly. His words came from far away, from a leaden quagmire. She embraced him, but could not silence him …

  “And Don Chema Naranjo has well observed that if not Jaime, then who is going to inherit my business? Do you remember when we came home from London? Our life then was very different from today. We have had to rebuild our fortune from the bottom up. Now Jaime, thanks to our labor, will have every opportunity. Hasn’t Eusebio Martínez asked and asked for him to lead the Youth Front? The boy can go decidedly far, if we can just clear the cobwebs out of his mind in time.”

  … She embraced as she would have liked to embrace Jaime: she put her hands to his genitals and squeezed hard, struggling against his infamous sterility, trying to find the juices of his life. Balcárcel cried out in pain. She moved away and fell on her back on the bed and began to mutter prayers while she felt that an enormous black triangle was covering her mouth, and the tongue of her delirium reached humid and pink toward the lips of a blank face. She cried the Confiteor and broke the seal of the story that had been locked in so many years of a cold bed waiting for insemination, counting their love-making on the fingers of both hands, smelling the heavy and aging slumber of the tranquil man who all those years had laid so dully beside her, so rarely upon her. But it was not her husband but Jaime that she was seeing now. The two figures mixed, the blood of the youth flowed into the body of the man, and Asunción muttered her prayer without understanding it, while her soul lost itself in the whirling and diffuse visions of her hysteria.

  “Decidedly, the condition of our nephew has affected her,” Balcárcel said to the doctor when Asunción freed her arms from the bed clothes and woke, her skin as pale as the sheets.

  “The sedative has worked well,” said the physician before departing.

  Balcárcel pulled his armchair near the head of the bed. Asunción did not dare to open her eyes. Her husband closed his as he prepared to spend the night sitting up beside her.

  “Put your arms around me.”

  “Why have these disagreeable things happened, dear God? I am a good man. I could have been a brilliant man. I contented myself laboring to the end that nothing would be wanting in this home. Perhaps I have been a little severe at times. But I had to counterbalance Asunción and Rodolfo’s softness. Every family must have a head.”

  “Put your arms around me.”

  “I have not worked for myself, but for the boy. A few sick fools may criticize me for having been harsh in my lending, but I detest prodigality and I have a tranquil conscience. Too easy credit is dangerous. How many families have I saved from ruin! But why am I thinking these thoughts. Enough, enough.”

  “It would cost you nothing to embrace me.”

  “There is, decidedly, no reason for things to turn out badly. Everything in life must be paid for. Why am I repaid with unrest and rebellion? If I could only talk with you, Asunción, if you could only understand me. You may think that I have at times been cold with you. But that is my way of showing respect. I will not bring prostitution into my home. I’m not perfect, I have the desires of any man. But you I respect: when I fall into temptation, I go to León or Guadalajara or Mexico City. In my home I am clean, and I love you chastely. Would you understand that if I told you? I have wanted to be a good man.”

  “I won’t say anything to you. But let there happen, please, just one moment of tenderness.”

  “When Jaime grows up, he will understand matters. How could we have let him be reared by his mother, a woman whose life has proved her natural tendencies? She has ended up a whore disguised as a mystic. And the fugitive the police were after, the criminal. Why does that worry the boy so much? I can understand that he should feel a natural affection for his mother, for he is too young to see her for what she is. But the criminal! I obeyed the law and my own conscience when I turned the man in. May the boy soon grow out of his damn adolescence! He is living a kind of sickness. But by and by he will become a man, and will be all right. I hope to see my pains with him recompensed some day … if these quarrels don’t kill me first.”

  “I’ll never ask it of you again. Tomorrow will be like any other day, and I will ask you nothing. All I want is for you to come near and take me in your arms now. How long has it been since you told me that you love me?”

  Balcárcel leaned toward her. Her cheeks were red, on a face that was usually pale. She did not open her eyes.

  “Do you feel better?”

  Asunción nodded.

  “I have decided to take Jaime to the priest tomorrow. He can’t go on as he is. It doesn’t matter that he is sick. His real sickness is of the soul, and it is the soul that must be treated.”

  Asunción nodded.

  Balcárcel resumed his rigid posture. The velvet curtains, the mahogany wardrobe, the piano of inlaid wood, the portraits on the walls, the enormous bed and his mosquito curtains, all had more life than the man and woman in the room.

  When dawn began to filter through the curtains, Asunción said:

  “Why don’t you l
ie down? I swear that I feel all right. You won’t bother me.”

  * * *

  “Come, my son. It’s a long time that you haven’t confessed. The church is big and cold, we don’t have to stay here. First we’ll talk a little, in the sacristy. I’m glad to see you. Not since the Catechism, eh? My, how you’ve grown. Almost all your friends come to confess with me now.”

  Father Obregón passed his arm over Jaime’s shoulders and noticed the boy’s slight tremble. Jaime remembered the priest, he had instructed him when he was preparing for his First Communion. Afterward he had heard his schoolmates speak of Obregón’s gentleness, above all compared with the malice of Lanzagorta. But until now the priest had been only a large black figure without face. Now, as they walked down the central aisle, Jaime observed him. He felt the priest’s hand heavy on his shoulder. Father Obregón’s breathing gave off the smell of tobacco. His black hair was combed forward in a careless fringe. The small black eyes were lost in the vigorous drawing of the eyebrows, the lashes, the prominent cheekbones, the thick eyelids. A little fuzz that would never really be a beard but that was never cleanly shaven covered his chin. But what most caught the boy’s attention, as he lowered his eyes, were the sturdy shoes of scratched leather; the thick double soles, many times repaired, had with use and the dampness of the church taken a gondola shape that seemed to Jaime both strange and saintly. When they arrived in front of the altar, the man and the boy stopped and crossed themselves and executed a brief reverence. Obregón’s cough resounded across the empty nave. Their steps left marble echoes. The priest opened the gate in the wooden grill which separated the altar from the sacristy.

  Dampness had encrusted the high-ceilinged timbers of the sacristy, but the sensation was of warmth and richness. A great chest of blue tile and wood occupied the end of the room. There the ecclesiastical garments were kept. A chasuble with a yellow fringe had been laid on top of the chest. At the other end of the room was a baroque altar flowering with wreathes of entwined laurel and walnut leaves and plump angels. The gilded columns rose to the ceiling and continued across it in a painting of blue laurel and olive leaves strung upon a cordon; the Grecian fret continued around the room. Three walls shone with ostentatious richness; the fourth was naked white plaster broken by a tiny barred window that looked out on a gray alley. Father Obregón seated himself in a high wooden chair and invited the boy to take the other, smaller one.

  “Why haven’t you come to confess?” said the priest as he rubbed the boy’s undulant blond hair.

  “I didn’t need to,” said Jaime in a firm low voice. “I’m here now because they forced me to come.”

  “Forced you? No one can force you.”

  “Yes, they forced me. I have nothing to confess.”

  Obregón smiled and tapped his fingers on the richly carved arm of the chair. “For you I am merely another man, is that it?”

  “I’m a man, too,” the boy’s tight lips replied.

  “All of us are men. Our Lord was also a man, He suffered and died as a man.”

  Jaime lifted his face and challenged the priest: “Yes, that is why I can talk with Him. He can understand me and I can beg forgiveness without any need for anyone…”

  Obregón slapped his hand down on the arm of the chair and stood up. The western sun gilded his face and the altar. “No, Jaime, no one can say that. Two men are always needed to approach God. One man alone can’t do it. Do you understand me, you who are a man now? Alone you can’t do it.”

  Was the boy only a child? Did he understand? His face was firm and raised, challenging. A shadow of doubt crossed his eyes. Jaime was remembering the words of Ezequiel Zuno. The priest’s hand touched the boy’s curly head again. The sun that is closest to man, the dying sun, shone upon them.

  “How can I put it to you? I want you to understand, I don’t want to force anything upon you. Have you ever prayed for others? Tell me: have you ever asked God to do something for someone else?” Obregón’s voice became metallic and his hand fell heavily on the boy’s shoulder. “Or have you challenged God the same way you challenge me? Have you merely offended him with your pride?” The priest began to pace, thinking of his next words.

  “With my pride?” Jaime leaned forward. “Am I proud because I believe I must follow Christ’s teachings just as He did?”

  Obregón turned a flaming face: “You believe that you can equal Jesus Christ!”

  “I believe that I can imitate Him.”

  “How can I cure you of this evil!”

  “Don’t shout at me.”

  “I’m listening, my son.”

  The boy’s words were serene and calm. Hearing them, Father Obregón felt a deep tenderness. The ancient damp richly adorned sacristy was converted into a stage with two actors. But poor Father Obregón, who had been such an excellent seminarian, who had begun his ministry so well prepared, had gradually lost over the years, here in the provinces, the habit of dialogue. He felt himself weak inside, yet he had to find the right words. This boy who had come armed with insolence had at least the healthy confidence to believe what he said. How could his priest answer him? Answer him truly, not with the tired everyday phrases used with the simple pious people of his congregation. He felt that Jaime’s challenge was not wholly invalid. And this made him feel first ashamed of himself and then deeply tender toward the boy. He spoke quietly:

  “Before you say anything, let me tell you something. You are a man, yes, but you are still very young. Your sins can’t be very great. They can’t be very different from those of other young men like you. Have you ever stopped to think that there are thousands and thousands of young people who, just like you…”

  Obregón felt that his words were wrong, that they were dictated by weakness instead of true love.

  “Each of us has to do his penance,” Jaime said coldly. Then, noticing the priest’s anguished face, he went on: “Isn’t that right, Father? What good does it do me to think that others may be worse than I am? I believe that I have my own special punishment, a penance that I have to do alone, as if I were … the only sinner in the world. When others don’t realize that they have sinned, someone has to step forward and be penitent for them, doesn’t he?”

  “My son, my son, don’t torture yourself in this way,” said the priest with more certainty, drawing near the seated and motionless boy. “Understand that your sins are no more than the sins of your years. They can only be sins of love that has begun to search and so far has found only itself. That can’t be evil, you must not think that it is evil. Later, when you have to decide whether you are going to love someone besides yourself, God and your wife, that is when we will know if you have done right or wrong. So many are so ashamed of their first love, their self-love, that afterward they don’t dare offer it to others. And that is what is serious, my son. Tomorrow that will be your test: to learn to love others. That is why I want to help you, so your love will flow out without sorrow or desperation. To imitate Jesus! You ask the hardest task of all. If you fail, you die of hopelessness. That is why you must trust me, and understand that to come to God, you need my aid, or the aid of some other person.”

  “It doesn’t matter if that other person is a very humble and poor man, or a woman who is a great sinner?”

  “Christ came for them. But alone you can’t do it, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Jaime. “Yes, I think I do.” He smiled and kissed the priest’s hand. “But, Father, I believe that everything you say, all that world of love, is possible for me only if I follow Christ’s teaching.”

  “We all believe that, my son. And in order to follow His teaching, we need the Church, which is Christ’s Body on earth. How can you go one way while the Church goes another?” Father Obregón tapped the stones of the floor with a heavy shoe.

  “The Church isn’t Christ any longer,” said the boy harshly. “The Church is where Doña Asunción and Uncle Balcárcel and all the others come once a week in order to feel that they are decent. They
come here as if they were going to a theater or a party, to be seen. Christ doesn’t matter to them. They don’t want to live like him, and what is more, they can’t.

  “Don’t deny the possibility of goodness, don’t judge others. That is hardly His teaching. Do you believe that your aunt and uncle, and your father, and all these good people, have committed great sins?”

  “Yes, yes! They have all done much evil…”

  “But it is not for you to punish them for the evil they have done, but what you must do is do good yourself.”

  The sun disappeared and the room was suddenly dark. For several seconds Obregón could not see Jaime, and he was about to call out when he felt the boy embrace him.

  “Father,” said the voice hidden in the priest’s arms, “Can’t we be what He wanted? Can’t we forgive the evil in others, sacrifice everything in His name, assume as He did the guilt and the suffering of others, and lose ourselves in His heart? Why don’t you yourselves follow him in everything? Why don’t we all sacrifice as He did and live in humility and poverty? I am guilty, Father! Punish me, whip me!”

  The boy sobbed in Father Obregón’s arms, his nostrils full of the penetrating smell from the priest’s armpits and the stink of his seldom-washed clothing.