The Complexity of Religious Figures Theme Analysis

Far back inside the darkness the mules plodded on. The effect of the brandy had long ago worn off, and the man bore in his brain along the marshy tract-which, when the rains came, would be quite impassable-the sound of the General Obregon's siren. He knew what it meant: the ship had kept to time-table: he was abandoned. He felt an unwilling hatred of the child ahead of him and the sick woman-he was unworthy of what he carried. A smell of damp came up all round him; it was as if this part of the world had never been dried in the flame when the world was sent spinning off into space: it had absorbed only the mist and cloud of those awful spaces. He began to pray, bouncing up and down to the lurching, slithering mules stride, with his brandied tongue: “Let me be caught soon…Let me be caught.”

“‘We must not think that young Juan did not laugh and play like other children, though there were times when he would creep away with a holy picture-book to his father's cow-house from the circle of his merry play-mates.’”

The boy squashed a beetle with his bare foot and thought gloomily that after all everything had an end-some day they would reach the last chapter and young Juan would die against a wall, shouting: “Viva el Cristo Rey.”

“I'm breaking the law enough for you as it is,” Captain Fellows said. He strode out of the barn, feeling twice the size, leaving the small bowed figure in the darkness among the bananas. Coral locked the door and followed him. "What a religion!" Captain Fellows said. “Begging for brandy. Shameless.”

The old man pushed the coffin aside with his foot the better to approach Padre José: it was small and light and might have contained nothing but bones. “Not a whole service, you understand-just a prayer. She was-innocent,” he said. The word sounded odd and archaic and local in the little stony town, outdated like the Lopez tomb, belonging only here.

“It is against the law.”

He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had a word for his kind—a whisky priest—but every failure dropped out of sight and out of mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret—the rubble of his failures. One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace. Until then he carried on, with spells of fear, weariness, with a shamefaced lightness of heart.

How often the priest had heard the same confession—Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization—it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

The half-caste was calling after him: “Call yourself a Christian.” He had somehow managed to get himself upright. He began to shout abuse—a meaningless series of indecent words which petered out in the forest like the weak blows of a hammer. He whispered: “If I see you again, you can't blame me…” Of course, he had every reason to be angry: he had lost seven hundred pesos. He shrieked hopelessly: “I don't forget a face.”

“In the lamplight Padre José’s face wore an expression of hatred. He said: "Why come to me? Why should you think? I'll call the police if you don't go. You know what sort of a man I am.”

He pleaded gently: “You're a good man, José. I've always known that.”

“He said: "They were bad priests to do a thing like that. The sin was over. It was their duty to teach-well, love.”

“You don't know what's right. The priests know.”

He said after a moment's hesitation, very distinctly: "I am a priest.”

“The priest said: "There's no need for anyone to inform on me. That would be a sin. When it's daylight they'll discover for themselves.”

“They'll shoot you, father,” the woman's voice said.

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes. Of course.”

But what good could he do now? They had him on the run: he dared not enter a village in case somebody else should pay with his life: perhaps a man who was in mortal sin and unrepentant: it was impossible to say what souls might not be lost simply because he was obstinate and proud and wouldn't admit defeat. He couldn't even say Mass any longer—he had no wine. It had all gone down the dry gullet of the Chief of Police. It was appallingly complicated. He was still afraid of death; he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.

The priest tore off some of the raw meat with his teeth and began to chew: no food had ever tasted so good, and now that for the moment he was happy he began to feel a little pity. He thought: I will eat just so much and she can have the rest. He marked mentally a point upon the bone and tore off another piece. The nausea he had felt for hours now began to die away and leave an honest hunger: he ate on and the bitch watched him. Now that the fight was over she seemed to bear no malice: her tail began to beat the floor, hopefully, questioningly. The priest reached the point he had marked, but now it seemed to him that his previous hunger had been imaginary: this was hunger, what he felt now: a man's need was greater than a dog's: he would leave that knuckle of meat at the joint. But when the moment came he ate that too-after all, the dog had teeth: she would eat the bone itself. He dropped it under her muzzle and left the kitchen.

He felt quite certain now that something valuable was in the hut, perhaps hidden among the maize, and he paid her no attention, going in. Now that the lightning had moved on, he couldn't see-he felt across the floor until he reached the pile of maize. Outside the padding footsteps came nearer. He began to feel all over it-perhaps food was hidden there-and the dry crackle of the leaves was added to the drip of water and the cautious footsteps, like the faint noises of people busy about their private businesses. Then he put his hand on a face.

The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency: it seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved: salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.

He could hear the half-caste panting after him: his wind was bad: they had probably let him have far too much beer in the capital, and the priest thought, with an odd touch of contemptuous affection, of how much had happened to them both since that first encounter in a village of which he didn't even know the name: the half-caste lying there in the hot noonday rocking his hammock with one naked yellow toe. If he had been asleep at that moment, this wouldn't have happened. It was really shocking bad luck for the poor devil that he was to be burdened with a sin of such magnitude.

The crash of the rifles shook Mr. Tench: they seemed to vibrate inside his own guts; he felt rather sick and shut his eyes. Then there was a single shot, and opening his eyes again he saw the officer stuffing his gun back into his holster, and the little man was a routine heap beside the wall-something unimportant which had to be cleared away. Two knock-kneed men approached quickly. This was an arena, and there was the bull dead, and there was nothing more to wait for any longer.

“If you would let me come in,” the man said with an odd frightened smile, and suddenly lowering his voice he said to the boy: “I am a priest."

“You?” the boy exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said gently. “My name is Father—” But the boy had already swung the door open and put his lips to his hand before the other could give himself a name.