The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [81]
The fact is that one fine day all of Cumbe began slyly commenting on the change in Alexandrinha, an indifferent parishioner who had suddenly become the most diligent one of all. She could be seen, early every morning, dusting the benches in the church, putting the altar to rights, sweeping the doorway. And she also began to be seen in the parish house, which, with the help of the townspeople, now had a roof, doors, and windows once again. That what there was between them was more than kissing and giggling became evident the day that Alexandrinha strode resolutely into the tavern where Father Joaquim had hidden out with a group of friends after a christening feast and was playing the guitar and drinking, happy as a lark. The moment she entered he fell silent. She marched over to him and said to him in a firm tone of voice: “You’re coming with me, right now, because you’ve had enough to drink.” Without a word, the little priest followed her out.
The first time the saint came to Cumbe, Alexandrinha Correa had already been living for several years in the parish house. In the beginning she had installed herself there to take care of Father Joaquim after he had been wounded in the town of Rosário, where he’d been caught in the middle of a shootout between Satan João’s cangaço and the police brigade of Captain Geraldo Macedo, known as Bandit-Chaser, and afterward she had stayed on there. They had had three children, whom people referred to only as “Alexandrinha’s kids,” and she was spoken of as Dom Joaquim’s “caretaker.” By her very presence she had a calming effect on the priest’s life, although he did not change his habits in the slightest. The townspeople would summon her when, having drunk more than he should have, the little priest became a problem, and once she appeared he was always docile, even when he was drunk to the gills. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the townspeople tolerated their relationship without making too much of a fuss. When the saint came to Cumbe for the first time, Alexandrinha was so well accepted by the town that even her parents and her brothers and sisters visited her in the parish house and called her children “grandson,”
“granddaughter,”
“niece,”
“nephew,” without feeling at all uncomfortable.
Hence it was as though a bomb had gone off when, in his first sermon from the pulpit of the church in Cumbe, to which Father Joaquim, with an affable smile, had allowed him to ascend, the tall, gaunt man with flashing eyes and cascading Nazarene locks, dressed in a long flowing dark purple tunic, railed against bad shepherds. A sepulchral silence fell in the crowded nave. No one looked at Dom Joaquim, who had taken a place on the front bench. He had opened his eyes with a more or less violent start, and was sitting there not moving a muscle, staring straight ahead, at the crucifix or at his humiliation. Nor did the townspeople look at Alexandrinha Correa, who was sitting in the third row. Unlike Dom Joaquim, she was gravely contemplating the preacher, her face deathly pale. Apparently the saint had come to Cumbe after enemies of the couple had had a word with him. Solemn, unbending, with a voice that reverberated from the fragile walls and the concave ceiling, he said terrible things about those chosen by the Lord who, despite having been ordained and taken the habit, turned into Satan’s lackeys. He mercilessly vituperated all Father Joaquim’s sins: the shamefulness of pastors of the Lord’s flock who instead of setting an example of sobriety drank cane brandy to the point of delirium; the unseemliness of those who