Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ and wondered if he was expected to feel honoured. He also wondered how much the Bishop, a wealthy man even as a priest, had charged for the service.

      ‘I used to go out and say Mass for the miners. Your father would count the heads at Mass and then give me an American dollar for each one – he always seemed to have a bank of dollars. He would joke that he was buying his way into Heaven on the bended knees of the Indians.’

      ‘What did the Indians think of him?’ McKenna had never known the Bishop to talk of his father before and he wondered if this was the reason he had been brought here. The Bishop had chosen to speak in Spanish and that meant this was more than just a social call. McKenna was puzzled, seeking a connection between himself and his father that would concern the Bishop, but he could think of none. Even the older Indians up on the altiplano, ones such as Jesu Mamani, had never asked McKenna about his father.

      Bishop Ruiz hesitated, then said, ‘I do not know, to be truthful. I have never known the miners to love any of the mine owners.’

      They didn’t love my father, McKenna thought. You know the truth about him but you can’t condemn him because that would mean condemning your own kind.

      ‘When your father sold out to that other company, they worked the mine out in five years, drove the miners like dogs, then closed it down and went home. They left a caretaker-manager and his wife there, Americans. When the revolution came in 1952, the miners went back there and killed them – horribly. I saw the bodies—’ He shook his head, worked his mouth at an old vile taste, shuddered because he knew the future might one day taste the same. ‘The miners all went to communion the next morning and the priest up in Altea, poor Padre Luis, was too frightened to turn them away from the altar rail. He was afraid they would have killed him, too, if he had refused them.’ He looked across his wide, leather-topped desk at McKenna. ‘Those are the sort of people you are dealing with, my son.’

      Now he’s getting to the reason for my being here, McKenna thought. But he was still puzzled: ‘I don’t think they connect me with the mine. What that other company did, I mean. As for what my father did—’ He tailed off, not wanting to condemn his father to this man who would give absolution too easily, because his own money came from the same sort of exploitation.

      ‘I did not say they did,’ said Bishop Ruiz patiently. In the cathedral next door the bells tolled for the midday Angelus. One of the bells was cracked and it sounded what could have been a blasphemous note; but the bells had been rung for four hundred years and tradition won out over music. The Bishop listened to it, flinching a little, then put it out of his mind; he would leave the question of a new bell to his successor, just as his predecessor had left it to him. He looked across at the young priest who was a more immediate problem. ‘Padre McKenna, did you read the Pope’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae?’

      ‘Of course,’ said McKenna, and knew now why he had been sent for.

      ‘It has come to our ears—’ Bishop Ruiz sat up straight. That’s it, thought McKenna, never lounge when using the royal or episcopal plural; the day, only half over, had been full of shock and now he was beginning to feel hysterically facetious. ‘It has come to our ears that you have been giving the Pill to some of the women up in Altea.’

      ‘Where did you hear that, your grace?’

      ‘We have our sources,’ said the Bishop; and McKenna had a vision of the fat little priest Padre Luis sitting exactly where he himself was sitting now. Padre Luis didn’t have the courage to condemn murder but he could condemn a priest who went against the Holy Father’s orders. ‘We are assured they are reliable. Are the reports true?’

      McKenna sighed inwardly, then nodded. ‘Yes, your grace.’

      ‘Does the Superior of your order condone this?’

      ‘He doesn’t know. I bought the supply of the Pill out of my own funds, had them mailed down to me from the States.’

      ‘Addressed to you as a priest?’ The Bishop’s voice, which had become formal once he had got down to business, suddenly broke. The bells next door abruptly subsided, the cracked bell clanging out the last note sardonically.

      ‘No. They were addressed to Senor T. J. McKenna, care of general delivery at the post office here in San Sebastian. I did my best to be discreet, your grace.’

      Bishop Ruiz had a sense of humour; he permitted himself a smile at the young rebel. ‘That seems to be where your discretion stopped, at the post office. Padre, do you realize the magnitude of what you have done? It is one thing to sit in the confessional and condone what married couples tell you they have done. But you have—’ He threw up his elegant hands. ‘You are doing far worse than question the Holy Father’s dictum, you are actually sinning against it actively. As much – as much as if you were bedding with these women yourself!’

      McKenna had expected a more sophisticated reprimand than that. ‘The thought couldn’t have been farther from my mind. I mean about going to bed with these women.’

      ‘Don’t joke,’ said the Bishop sharply, realizing he was not dealing with a stupid village priest like Padre Luis. I keep forgetting, he thought, this young man comes from the same class as myself. Well, almost: the blood may be coarser, but he has as much education and money.

      ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound facetious—’

      ‘Did the women come to you and ask your help in this way?’

      ‘Well, not exactly—’ McKenna hesitated, knowing even now that nothing he might say was going to win justification for what he had done.

      ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘One woman talked to me in the confessional. She has had twelve children in sixteen years – only four of them have survived.’

      ‘That was God’s will,’ said the Bishop, tasting the brass of an old platitude.

      ‘Forgive me for saying so, your grace, but I was the woman’s confessor. As far as I could tell, she had done nothing to warrant God’s punishment like that.’

      ‘Are you questioning God’s will?’

      McKenna took a deep breath. ‘I guess I’m questioning the Church’s interpretation of God’s will. I can’t bring myself to believe that He meant these people to live like they have to, that poverty and the annual grief at the loss of a child are necessary for a state of grace. Forgive me again, but the Church in this country has done little, if anything, to alleviate the poverty of the Indians. I don’t know what the full answer to the problem is, but after listening to that woman I knew I had to do something. And cutting down the number of mouths to feed seemed to me at least a start towards defeating poverty. I didn’t hand out the Pill indiscriminately – I warned the women about possible side effects, but they were willing to take the risk. Women, even simple peasant women, get tired of being continually pregnant. Men, especially priests, too often forget that. The Church isn’t just Rome, your grace – I’m part of it, too. I didn’t do this hurriedly or without a great deal of soul-searching—’

      ‘Do you think the Holy Father did not search his soul before he made his decision? You should not question his wisdom. A son does not tell his father what to do.’

      McKenna heard the echo of Agostino’s remark earlier this morning. Oh God, he thought admiringly, how You weave Your web up there in Heaven. It СКАЧАТЬ