Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [107]
That girl ought to wash her mouth out.
No, the punishment wasn’t fair, muttered the housemaid. To threaten her with the police, well, that much was to be expected. But not to make her collect that number of chestnuts. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right to make her count up to 666 chestnuts. On her knees as well, in the damp grass, it being so cold. But you should have seen her! Seen her count! The chestnuts flew through her fingers. The way her mother used to count matchsticks.
666 chestnuts in a flash.
‘Now go and tell your father about it.’
That wasn’t necessary. That was adding insult to injury. Which is why, when there was a knock at the door and she opened and saw it was Polka, she expected the worst. After all, the tiniest spark can set fire to the whole house.
During the conversation, however, the priest beat his fist on the chestnut table in the rectory dining-room only once. The table was as big as a diocese, to use a parishioner’s metaphor, since on feast days all the local priests could sit around it together. Don Marcelo beat his fist and said, ‘Don’t ask me what Lot got up to with his daughters again!’ We know this because it was the only thing the housemaid heard from the kitchen.
She was very worried, because she’d often heard about Lot’s wife in that passage from Scripture which was read during Mass and seemed to serve as a warning to all women, about gossip, curiosity, that instinct for wanting to know what’s happening, which is why she was punished and became a pillar of salt. She was lost while the angels went about the business of destruction, of burning and razing Sodom and Gomorrah, because there couldn’t be witnesses to such destruction, they didn’t want people talking about the terror inflicted by those angels. This is what crossed her mind, the lesson, applicable to all, that it was better to look the other way. But what confuses her now, what disturbs her as she plucks two pigeons for the priest’s dinner is his warning to Polka not to ask what Lot got up to with his daughters, and his daughters with him, again. He’s not in the mood for sermons. And if he doesn’t tell the whole story, it’s because he doesn’t feel like it, the pillar of salt is enough. She pricks up her ears. Polka starts talking about a certain Elisha, prophet and disciple of Elijah, who lost his temper with some boys who called him baldhead as he was walking along. ‘Go away, baldhead, go away!’ So, bald as he was, he turned around and cursed them in the name of Jehovah and forty-two of the boys were mauled by two she-bears. How many? That’s a lot of carnage for the Lord, I’d say. Anyhow he speaks well, can keep up with the priest, is better even. Little devil, he makes me laugh! The priest puts his hand on his head, which is shorn, and says, ‘I went too far, OK, but you can’t compare what I did with what the bald prophet did to those children.’
She can’t resist, quickly wipes the layer of blood and down off her hands. She’s nervous and heads out of the service entrance towards the chapel to see what it says about Lot and his daughters, there’ll be something in those books, something about the forty-two boys mauled by she-bears on account of the prophet’s temper. Which explains why the housemaid’s expression changed, perhaps for ever, and why the priest asked her if something was wrong when she appeared with a face the colour of pure wax. She was so upset she said nothing about the negligence of serving him with bird down in the cracks of her fingernails.
‘He’s going to be the new gravedigger,’ said the priest.
She wiped the pigeons’ blood on her apron. She knew that rather than talking to someone he was trying to convince himself.
‘Someone has to do it,’ continued the priest. ‘But I did stipulate one condition. No more Carnival procession. No more lame cardinal. No more goliard’s sermons from the tavern’s pulpit.’
And, without wanting to, she felt sorry. Polka was a wretch, but he was funny. She cursed him,