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By Root 1087 0

Tingo María, ridding the bellies of the natives of parasites, and had fled from there, very annoyed and upset, because a pack of carnivorous rats had devoured her son. She was of Basque, and hence aristocratic, descent. Despite the fact that her turgescent horizons and gelatinous jiggling when she walked ought to have alerted him to the danger, Father Seferino Huanca Leyva committed (attraction of the abyss that has seen monolithic virtues succumb) the insane error of taking her on as an assistant, believing that, as she claimed, her aim was to save souls and kill parasites. In reality, she wanted to lead him into sin. She put her program for so doing into practice, coming to live in the adobe hovel, sleeping on a makeshift bed separated from him by a ridiculous little curtain which, moreover, was transparent. At night, by candlelight, on the pretext that they made her sleep better and kept her in good physical health, the temptress did exercises. But was Swedish gymnastics the proper term for that Thousand and One Nights harem dance that the Basque woman performed, standing in one spot waggling her hips, shaking her shoulders, wriggling her legs, and coiling her arms, a spectacle that the panting ecclesiastic witnessed through the little curtain lighted by the flickering candle as though watching a disturbing Chinese shadow play? And later, as everyone in Mendocita lay silently sleeping, Mayte Unzátegui, on hearing the creaking of the bed on the other side of the curtain, had the audacity to ask, in a mellifluous voice: “Are you having trouble getting to sleep, Father dear?”

It is quite true that, in order to conceal her evil designs, the beautiful corruptress worked twelve hours a day, giving vaccinations and treating scabies, disinfecting hovels and taking oldsters out for airings. But she did so dressed in shorts, with her legs and shoulders and arms and midriff exposed, maintaining that she’d fallen into the habit of going about that way in the jungle. Father Seferino continued to exercise his creative ministry, but he grew noticeably thinner, had dark circles under his eyes, kept constantly looking about to see where Mayte Unzátegui was, and on spying her passing by, his mouth fell open and a little stream of venial saliva wet his lips. It was at this time that he took to going about with his hands in his pockets night and day, and his sacristan, the ex-abortionist Doña Angélica, prophesied that at any moment now he would begin spitting up the blood of galloping consumption.

Would the pastor succumb to the evil spell of the social worker, or would his debilitating antidotes enable him to ward it off? Would his counterremedies lead him to the insane asylum, to the grave? In a sporting spirit, the parishioners of Mendocita followed this contest and began making wagers, with fixed time limits and a wide range of allergic outcomes on which the bettor could place his money: the Basque woman would be made pregnant by priest-seed, the man from El Chirimoyo would kill her to kill temptation, or he would defrock himself and marry her. But life itself, naturally, beat everyone at the game by using a marked card.

Arguing that the Church must return to its earliest days, to the pure and simple Church of the Gospels, when all believers lived together and shared their earthly possessions, Father Seferino initiated an energetic campaign to restore true communal life in Mendocita—a veritable laboratory of Christian experimentation. Couples were to become part of communities of fifteen to twenty members who would share the work, the maintenance, and the domestic tasks of the collectivity between them, and would live together in dwellings remodeled to house these new nuclei of social life that would replace the traditional couple. Father Seferino set the example, enlarging his adobe hut and installing in it, in addition to the social worker, his two sacristans: Lituma the ex-sergeant and Doña Angélica the ex-abortionist. This micro-commune was the first one to be set up in Mendocita, and was to serve as a model for those to follow.