THE lieutenant1 waited till after dark and then he went himself. It would be dangerous to send another man because the news would be around the city in no time that Padre José had been permitted to carry out a religious duty in the prison. It was wiser not to let even the jefe know: one didn't trust one's superiors when one was more successful than they were. He knew the jefe wasn't pleased that he had brought the priest in—an escape would have been better from his point of view.
In the patio2 he could feel himself watched by a dozen eyes: the children clustered there ready to shout at Padre José if he appeared. He wished he had promised the priest nothing, but he was going to keep his word—because it would be a triumph for that old corrupt3 God-ridden world if it could show itself superior on any point—whether of courage, truthfulness4, justice ...
Nobody answered his knock: he stood darkly in the patio like a petitioner5. Then he knocked again, and a voice called: "A moment. A moment."
Padre José put his face against the bars of his window and said: "Who's there?" He seemed to be fumbling6 at something near the ground.
"Lieutenant of police."
"Oh," Padre José squeaked7. "Excuse me. It is my trousers. In the dark." He seemed to heave at something and there was a sharp crack, as if his belt or braces9 had given way. Across the patio the children began to squeak8: "Padre José. Padre José." When he came to the door he wouldn't look at them, muttering tenderly: "The little devils."
The lieutenant said: "I want you to come up to the police station."
[193] "But I've done nothing. Nothing. I've been so careful."
"Padre José," the children squeaked.
He said imploringly10: "If it's anything about a burial, you've been misinformed. I wouldn't even say a prayer."
"Padre José. Padre José."
The lieutenant turned and strode across the patio. He said furiously to the faces at the grille: "Be quiet. Go to bed. At once. Do you hear me?" They dropped out of sight one by one, but immediately the lieutenant's back was turned, they were there again watching.
Padre José said: "Nobody can do anything with those children."
A woman's voice said: "Where are you, José?"
"Here, my dear. It is the police."
A huge woman in a white night-dress came billowing out at them: it wasn't much after seven: perhaps she lived, the lieutenant thought, in that dress—perhaps she lived in bed. He said: "Your husband," dwelling11 on the term with satisfaction, "your husband is wanted at the station."
"Who says so?"
"I do."
"He's done nothing."
"I was just saying, my dear ..."
"Be quiet. Leave the talking to me."
"You can both stop jabbering," the lieutenant said. "You're wanted at the station to see a man—a priest. He wants to confess."
"To me?"
"Yes. There's no one else."
"Poor man," Padre José said. His little pink eyes swept the patio. "Poor man." He shifted uneasily, and took a furtive12 look at the sky where the constellations13 wheeled.
"You won't go," the woman said.
"It's against the law, isn't it?" Padre José asked.
"You needn't trouble about that."
"Oh, we needn't, eh?" the woman said. "I can see through you. You don't want my husband to be let alone. You want to trick him. I know your work. You get people to ask him to say prayers—he's a kind man. But I'd have you remember this—he's a pensioner14 of the government."
[194] The lieutenant said slowly: "This priest—he has been working for years secretly—for your Church. We've caught him and, of course, he'll be shot tomorrow. He's not a bad man" and I told him he could see you. He seems to think it will do him good."
"I know him," the woman interrupted, "he's a drunkard. That's all he is."
"Poor man," Padre José said. "He tried to hide here once."
"I promise you," the lieutenant said, "nobody shall know."
"Nobody know?" the woman cackled. "Why, it will be all over town. Look at those children there. They never leave José alone." She went on: "There'll be no end to it—everybody will be wanting to confess, and the Governor will hear of it, and the pension will be stopped."
"Perhaps, my dear," José said, "it's my duty ..."
"You aren't a priest any more," the woman said, "you're my husband." She used a coarse word. "That's your duty now." The lieutenant listened to them with acid satisfaction. It was like rediscovering an old belief. He said: "I can't wait here while you argue. Are you going to come with me?"
"He can't make you"" the woman said.
"My dear, it's only that ... well ... I am a priest."
"A priest," the woman cackled" "you a priest!" She went off into a peal15 of laughter, which was taken tentatively up by the children at the window. Padre José put his fingers up to his pink eyes as if they hurt. He said: "My dear ..." and the laughter went on.
"Are you coming?" ,
Padre José made a despairing gesture—as much as to say, what does one more failure matter in a life like this? He said: "I don't think it's—possible."
"Very well," the lieutenant said. He turned abruptly—he hadn't any more time to waste on mercy, and heard Padre José's voice speak imploringly: "Tell him I shall pray." The children had gained confidence: one of them called sharply out: "Come to bed, José," and the lieutenant laughed once—a poor unconvincing addition to the general laughter which now surrounded Padre José, ringing up all round to the disciplined constellations he had once known by name.
[195] The lieutenant opened the cell door: it was very dark inside: he shut the door carefully behind him and locked it, keeping his hand on his gun. He said: "He won't come."
A little bunched figure in the darkness was the priest. He crouched16 on the floor like a child playing. He said: "You mean—not tonight?"
"I mean he won't come at all."
There was silence for some while, if you could talk of silence where there was always the drill—drill of mosquitoes and the little crackling explosion of beetles17 against the wall. At last the priest said: "He was afraid, I suppose ..."
"His wife wouldn't let him come."
"Poor man." He tried to giggle18, but no sound could have been more miserable19 than the half-hearted attempt. His head drooped20 between his knees: he looked as if he had abandoned everything, and been abandoned.
The lieutenant said: "You had better know everything. You've been tried and found guilty."
"Couldn't I have been present at my own trial?"
"It wouldn't have made any difference."
"No." He was silent" preparing an attitude. Then he asked with a kind of false jauntiness21: "And when, if I may ask ...?"
"Tomorrow." The promptness and brevity of the reply called his bluff22. His head went down again and he seemed, as far as it was possible to see in the dark, to be biting his nails.
The lieutenant said: "It's bad being alone on a night like this. If you would like to be transferred to the common cell ..."
"No, no. I'd rather be alone. I've got plenty to do." His voice failed, as though he had a heavy cold. He wheezed23: "So much to think about."
"I should like to do something for you," the lieutenant said: "I've brought you some brandy."
"Against the law?"
"Yes."
"It's very good of you." He took the small flask24. "You wouldn't need this, I dare say. But I've always been afraid of pain."
"We have to die some time," the lieutenant said. "It doesn't seem to matter so much when."
[196] "You're a good man. You've got nothing to be afraid of."
"You have such odd ideas," the lieutenant complained. He said: "Sometimes I feel you're just trying to talk me round."
"Round to what?"
"Oh, to letting you escape perhaps—or to believing in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints ... how does that stuff go?"
"The forgiveness of sins."
"You don't believe much in that, do you?"
"Oh, yes, I believe," the little man said obstinately25.
"Then what are you worried about?"
"I'm not ignorant, you see. I've always known what I've been doing. And I can't absolve26 myself."
"Would Padre José coming here have made all that difference?"
He had to wait a long while for his answer, and then he didn't understand it when it came: "Another man ... it makes it easier ..."
"Is there nothing more I can do for you?"
"No. Nothing."
The lieutenant reopened the door, mechanically putting his hand again upon his revolver: he felt moody27, as though now that the last priest was under lock and key there was nothing left to think about. The spring of action seemed to be broken. He looked back on the weeks of hunting as a happy time which was over now for ever. He felt without a purpose, as if life had drained out of the world. He said with bitter kindness (he couldn't summon up any hate of the small hollow man): "Try to sleep."
He was closing the door when a scared voice spoke28. "Lieutenant."
"Yes."
"You've seen people shot. People like me."
"Yes."
"Does the pain go on—a long time?"
"No, no. A second," he said roughly, and closed the door, and picked his way back across the whitewashed29 yard. He went into the office: the pictures of the priest and the gunman were still pinned up on the wall: he tore them down—they would never be wanted again. Then he sat at the desk and put his [197] head upon his hands and fell asleep with utter weariness. He couldn't remember afterwards anything of his dreams except laughter, laughter all the time, and a long passage in which he could find no door.
The priest sat on the floor, holding the brandy flask. Presently he unscrewed the cap and put his mouth to it. The spirit didn't do a thing to him: it might have been water. He put it down again and began some kind of general confession30, speaking in a whisper. He said: "I have committed fornication." The formal phrase meant nothing at all: it was like a sentence in a newspaper: you couldn't feel repentance31 over a thing like that. He started again: "I have lain with a woman," and tried to imagine the other priests asking him: "How many times? Was she married?" "No." Without thinking what he was doing, he took another drink of brandy.
As the liquid touched his tongue he remembered his child, coming in out of the glare: the sullen32 unhappy knowledgeable33 face. He said: "O God, help her. Damn me, I deserve it, but let her live for ever." This was the love he should have felt for every soul in the world: all the fear and the wish to save concentrated unjustly on the one child. He began to weep: it was as if he had to watch her drown slowly from the shore because he had forgotten how to swim. He thought: This is what I should feel all the time for everyone, and he tried to turn his brain away towards the half-caste, the lieutenant, even a dentist he had once sat with for a few minutes, the child at the banana station, calling up a long succession of faces, pushing at his attention as if it were a heavy door which wouldn't budge34. For those were all in danger too. He prayed: "God help them," but in the moment of prayer he switched back to his child beside the rubbish-dump, and he knew it was only for her that he prayed. Another failure.
After a while he began again: "I have been drunk—I don't know how many times; there isn't a duty I haven't neglected; I have been guilty of pride, lack of charity ..." The words were becoming formal again, meaning nothing. He had no confessor to turn his mind away from the formula to the fact.
He took another drink of brandy, and getting up with pain because of his cramp35, he moved to the door and looked through [198] the bars at the hot moony square. He could see the police asleep in their hammocks, and one man who couldn't sleep lazily rocking up and down, up and down. There was an odd silence everywhere, even in the other cells: it was as if the whole world had tactfully turned its back to avoid seeing him die. He felt his way back along the wall to the farthest corner and sat down with the flask between his knees. He thought: If I hadn't been so useless, useless. … The eight hard hopeless years seemed to him to be only a caricature of service: a few communions, a few confessions36, and an endless bad example. He thought: If I had only one soul to offer, so that I could say: Look what I've done. … People had died for him: they had deserved a saint, and a tinge37 of bitterness spread across his mind for their sake that God hadn't thought fit to send them one. Padre José and me, he thought, Padre José and me, and he took a drink again from the brandy flask. He thought of the cold faces of the saints rejecting him.
This night was slower than the last he spent in prison because he was alone. Only the brandy, which he finished about two in the morning, gave him any sleep at all. He felt sick with fear, his stomach ached, and his mouth was dry with the drink. He began to talk aloud to himself because he couldn't stand the silence any more. He complained miserably38: "It's all very well ... for saints," and later: "How does he know it only lasts a second? How long's a second?": then he began to cry, beating his head gently against the wall. They had given a chance to Padre José, but they had never given him a chance at all. Perhaps they had got it all wrong—just because he had escaped them for such a time. Perhaps they really thought he would refuse the conditions Padre José had accepted, that he would refuse to marry, that he was proud. Perhaps if he suggested it himself, he would escape yet. The hope calmed him for a while, and he fell asleep with his head against the wall.
He had a curious dream. He dreamed he was sitting at a café table in front of the high altar of the cathedral. About six dishes were spread before him, and he was eating hungrily. There was a smell of incense39 and an odd sense of elation40. The dishes—like all food in dreams—did not taste of much, but he had a sense that when he had finished them, he would have the best dish of all. A priest passed to and fro before the altar [199] saying Mass, but he took no notice: the service no longer seemed to concern him. At last the six plates were empty; someone out of sight rang the sanctus bell, and the serving priest knelt before he raised the Host. But he sat on, just waiting, paying no attention to the God over the altar, as if that was a God for other people and not for him. Then the glass by his plate began to fill with wine, and looking up he saw that the child from the banana station was serving him. She said: "I got it from my father's room."
"You didn't steal it?"
"Not exactly," she said in her careful and precise voice. He said: "It is very good of you. I had forgotten the code—what did you call it?"
"Morse."
"That was it. Morse. Three long taps and one short one," and immediately the taps began: the priest by the altar tapped, a whole invisible congregation tapped along the aisles—three long and one short. He said: "What is it?"
"News," the child said, watching him with a stern, responsible, and interested gaze.
When he woke up it was dawn. He woke with a huge feeling of hope which suddenly and completely left him at the first sight of the prison yard. It was the morning of his death. He crouched on the floor with the empty brandy flask in his hand trying to remember an act of contrition41. "O God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins ... crucified ... worthy42 of Thy dreadful punishments." He was confused, his mind was on other things: it was not the good death for which one always prayed. He caught sight of his own shadow on the cell wall: it had a look of surprise and grotesque43 unimportance. What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn't even be a memory—perhaps after all he wasn't really Hell-worthy. Tears poured down his face: he was not at the moment afraid of damnation——even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been [200] quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.
收听单词发音 |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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patio
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| n.庭院，平台 | |
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corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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truthfulness
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| n. 符合实际 | |
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petitioner
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| n.请愿人 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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7
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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squeak
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| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
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9
braces
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| n.吊带，背带；托架( brace的名词复数 )；箍子；括弧；（儿童）牙箍v.支住( brace的第三人称单数 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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imploringly
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| adv. 恳求地, 哀求地 | |
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11
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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constellations
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| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
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pensioner
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| n.领养老金的人 | |
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15
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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jauntiness
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| n.心满意足；洋洋得意；高兴；活泼 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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wheezed
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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26
absolve
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| v.赦免，解除（责任等） | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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28
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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knowledgeable
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| adj.知识渊博的；有见识的 | |
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budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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35
cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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