Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [137]
Apprised of this by an informer (the ex-sorceress of Mendocita, Doña Mayte Unzátegui, a Basque with indigo-blue blood in her veins who had come down in the world and been dethroned as queen and sovereign of the neighborhood by Jaime Concha), Father Seferino Huanca Leyva realized (joys that blur men’s eyes and inflame their hearts) that the right moment had come at last to put his theory of armed preaching into practice. He went up and down the streets swarming with flies, shouting at the top of his lungs like a circus barker to announce that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, in the vacant lot where neighborhood soccer matches were held, he and the faith healer would prove with their fists which of the two of them was the better man. When the muscular Jaime Concha appeared at Father Seferino’s adobe hut to ask the priest whether this meant he was being challenged to a punching match, the only answer of the man from El Chirimoyo was to ask the sergeant in an icy voice whether he would prefer a knife fight to one with their bare fists. The ex-sergeant went away holding his sides with laughter and explaining to the neighbors that in the days when he’d been a Guardia Civil he used to kill vicious dogs he encountered on the street with one rap on their heads with his bare knuckles.
The fight between the priest and the healer caused extraordinary excitement, and not only all of Mendocita, but also La Victoria, El Porvenir, El Cerro San Cosme, and El Agustino came to watch it. Father Seferino turned up wearing trousers and a sports shirt and crossed himself before the fight, which was short but spectacular. The man from El Chirimoyo was physically less powerful than the ex-Guardia Civil, but trickier. The moment the fight started, he threw a handful of hot pepper powder in his opponent’s eyes (“Where I come from, anything goes in a fight,” he was later to explain to his fans), and when the giant (Goliath done in by one clever shot from David’s sling) began to stagger about, unable to see, he weakened him with a series of kicks in the privates till he doubled over. Without giving him a chance to catch his breath, he then launched into a frontal attack aimed at his face, a hail of both rights and lefts, changing his style only after he’d knocked him to the ground. He finished off the massacre as he lay there, by stamping on his ribs and his belly. Howling with pain and shame, Jaime Concha admitted defeat. Amid the applause, Father Seferino Huanca Leyva fell to his knees and prayed devoutly, his face turned heavenward and his hands crossed on his breast.
This episode—which even got into the newspapers and which upset the archbishop—began to win Father Seferino the sympathies of his still-potential parishioners. From that time on, the morning Masses were better attended and a number of sinners, especially female ones, asked to make their confession, though naturally these rare cases were not enough to fill up even a tenth of the vast schedule that the optimistic parish priest—making a rough estimate of the capacity for sin of the inhabitants of Mendocita—had set up. Another thing that was well received in the neighborhood and won him new clients was his behavior toward Jaime Concha after the latter’s humiliating defeat. Father Seferino himself helped the neighbor women put Mercurochrome and arnica on him, and informed him that he would not boot him out of Mendocita, that on the contrary (generosity of Napoleons who offer champagne and their daughter in marriage to the general whose army they have just wiped out) he was prepared to keep him on in the parish by appointing him sacristan. The healer was authorized to continue to