• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2033 0

commerce with the world of the spirit, for it sufficed to be in his company just once on some social occasion to realize that he cared about the things of this world (women in particular) just as much, or perhaps more. On the very day that he arrived he showed Cumbe that he was capable of rubbing elbows with people in the town as though he were one of them and that his presence would not interfere in any substantial way with the habits and customs of the population. Nearly every family in Cumbe had gathered in the church square to welcome him when he opened his eyes after sleeping for a fair number of hours. Night had fallen, it had rained and stopped raining, and in the warm damp crickets were chirping and there were myriad stars in the sky. The introductions began, a long line of women filing past who kissed his hand and men who removed their sombreros as they came by, murmuring their names. After only a short time Father Joaquim interrupted the hand-kissing, explaining that he was dying of hunger and thirst. A ceremony then took place that was somewhat reminiscent of the stations of the cross during Holy Week, as the priest dropped in at one house after the other and was offered the choicest viands the householder could provide. Dawn found him still awake, in one of the two taverns of Cumbe, drinking brandy with sour cherries and having a ballad contest with the caboclo Matias de Tavares.

He began his priestly functions immediately, saying Masses, baptizing newborn babes, confessing the adults, administering the last rites to the dying, and marrying newly betrothed couples or those who were already living together and wanted to appear upright in the sight of God. As he had a vast territory to look after, he traveled about a great deal. He was active and even self-abnegating when it came to fulfilling his duties as priest of the parish. The fees he asked for many of his services were modest, he didn’t mind if people put off paying him or didn’t pay at all, for, of the capital vices, the one that he was definitely free of was avarice. Of the others, no, but at least he indulged in all of them without discrimination. He accepted the succulent roast kid offered him by the owner of a hacienda with the same warm thanks and rejoicing as the mouthful of raw sugar that a poor peasant invited him to share, and his throat made no distinction between aged brandy and the throat-scalding raw rum toned down with water that was the usual drink in times of scarcity. As far as women were concerned, nothing seemed to put him off: gummy-eyed crones, silly girls who hadn’t yet reached puberty, women punished by nature with warts, harelips, or feeblemindedness. He never tired of flattering them and flirting with them and insisting that they come round to decorate the altar of the church. He would have boisterous romps with them, his face would grow flushed, and he would paw them as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The fact that he was a man of the cloth made fathers, husbands, brothers look upon him as sexless, and they resignedly put up with these audacities on the part of the priest of the parish; had any other male made so bold, they would have had their knives out instantly. Nonetheless, they heaved a sigh of relief when Father Joaquim established a permanent relationship with Alexandrinha Correa, the girl who had remained a spinster because she was a water divineress.

Legend had it that Alexandrinha’s miraculous ability came to light when she was still a little girl, the year of the great drought, as the townspeople of Cumbe, desperate because of the lack of water, were going about digging wells everywhere. They had divided up into crews and from dawn on, each day, excavated everywhere where there had once been thick vegetation, thinking that this was an indication of water below ground. The women and children were doing their share of this exhausting work. But the earth that was brought up showed no sign of moisture, and the only thing found at the bottom of the holes was more layers of blackish sand or unbreakable