‘Don’t shoot!’ A man’s voice speaking in English from somewhere near the altar.
‘Then put on the damn lights!’
‘All right, all right… just a minute!’
Debora’s voice in his mind.
‘Hurry up with those lights!’ Mingolla called.
‘Wait a second, will ya!’
The man’s voice, Mingolla realized, was American… and not just American. It had a distinct New York City accent.
Dim yellow light flooded the church from fixtures along the walls, leaving the vaulted ceiling in shadow, and though Mingolla had expected to see something unusual, he wasn’t prepared for the extraordinary dilapidation of the church. Straw matting the floors, piles of animal waste, bird droppings speckling the pews. Swallows made looping flights overhead, swooping between the massive buttresses, flaring in the lights and vanishing. Two pigs were curled up in the center aisle, a black rooster was pecking at a dirt-filled seam between stones, and a goat was wandering along the altar rail. No one was in sight, but Mingolla could sense them hiding among the pews.
‘Jesus!’ said Corazon.
A priest in a black cassock came out of the entrance to a side altar some twenty yards away in the east wall, and approached them hesitantly. Skinny, with gray shoulder-length hair. He was one of the oddest-looking men Mingolla had ever seen. His features were firmly fleshed, youthful, yet his skin had the wrinkles and folds of someone in his sixties: like an actor made up to play an old man. He wore a necklace of white stones on which symbols had been scratched, and he fingered this as he might have a rosary.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay here.’
Mingolla gestured toward the pews with his rifle. ‘Tell the others to stand up.’
‘They’re frightened,’ said the priest. ‘They’re only girls.’
‘They can’t be too frightened,’ Mingolla said. ‘One tried to take my rifle.’
‘They were just trying to protect me.’
Again Mingolla motioned with the rifle. ‘Tell ’em.’
The priest called out in Spanish, and one by one the girls stood. They were all young, in their teens, and several were pregnant. Wearing white cotton shifts. With their dark skins and black hair and stoic faces, they might have been sisters.
‘What’s the story here?’ said Mingolla.
‘Huh! I tell you what’s the story!’ Corazon jabbed a finger at the priest’s face. ‘This motherfucker been feedin’ lies to these women to get ’em on their backs.’
‘No, that’s not…’
‘Don’t tell me no lies!’ said Corazon. ‘I was raised by bastards like you. Fuckin’ Catholic Church been screwin’ people here since they first come!’
‘I can’t deny…’ the priest began.
‘Goddamn right you can’t!’ Corazon paced away.
Mingolla was less interested in the priest’s explanation than in Corazon’s uncharacteristic passion, but he said, ‘Let him talk.’
‘I can’t deny the Church’s excesses,’ said the priest. ‘Though since before the war we have fought on the side of the people.’
Corazon sniffed.
‘But I assure you, I’m not taking advantage of the girls.’ He made a gesture of helplessness. ‘Something’s goin’ on here… it’s extraordinary. Hard to explain.’
‘I bet,’ said Corazon.
‘Who’s the father?’ Mingolla pointed to one of the pregnant girls.
‘I am,’ said the priest. ‘But…’
‘What I tell you?’ Corazon went chest to chest with the priest. ‘These
Something about Corazon’s vehemence rang false to Mingolla. It was as if she was performing for him, putting on a show to convince him of her humanity, her untampered soul. And maybe that was what his bad feeling about the place had been trying to tell him. Not that there was danger of bodily harm, but a danger that he might buy what Izaguirre was selling.
‘You’re from New York, aren’tcha?’ said Mingolla.
The priest looked blank for a moment, then nodded. ‘Brooklyn.’
‘I’m from Long Island.’
‘I hardly remember the place,’ said the priest absently. ‘So much has happened.’
‘Yeah? Like what? What’s happening now?’
The priest heaved a sigh. ‘Maybe she’s right about me.’ He nodded at Corazon. ‘Maybe I’m only erecting a justification for violating the rule of celibacy. I wouldn’t be the first priest to suffer delusions.’
‘Delusions… bullshit!’ said Corazon. ‘The man ain’t got no delusion, he just wanna little pussy.’
‘But even if they’re delusions,’ the priest continued, ‘they still have substance. This place’—he looked up to the ceiling, following the flight of a swallow—‘the foundations are carved from an enormous boulder that the Indians claim has magical properties. Maybe it’s true. Even when I first came here I could sense life in these stones. It seems to attract life. Like the swallows. Generations that have never flown beyond these walls.’
‘Lotta churches like that,’ said Corazon.
‘True, but the swallows here…’ The priest gave a wave of his hand. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Bet your ass,’ said Corazon.
‘Shut up!’ Mingolla told her.
‘The fuck I will! You don’t know these bastards!’
She was about to say more, but Mingolla cut her off and told the priest to go on.
‘Have you ever seen the murals they paint down here?’ asked the priest. ‘In bars and hotel lobbies? They’ll have ocean liners and volcanoes and racing cars and Jesus all in the same painting. It seems nonsensical, random. But I’ve come to believe that that tendency is at the heart of a syncretic process permeating the region. You see it—the process—at work in every area of life, and I believe it’s all reflective of something more important going through that same process.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘God… or at least the idea of God.’ The priest held up a hand as if to ward off ridicule. ‘I know, I know! Ludicrous, demented. But we—the girls and I—live every day in that process, in the syncretic blending of Christ and some Indian spirit.’ He rushed his words to override Corazon’s interruption. ‘You’d have to stay here to understand, to feel the truth of what I’m saying. But you must believe me! I haven’t coerced the girls… at least not knowingly. They were drawn here, just as I was drawn to violate my vow of celibacy. Drawn by dreams, voices. Intimations. The scheme of the new god is working itself out in us. Pagan and benign.’ He touched his necklace and muttered something in a language unfamiliar to Mingolla; he pointed to the girls. ‘Ask them if you want. They’ll tell you.’
‘Sure they will,’ said Corazon. ‘They fuckin’ brainwashed.’
‘What’s your new god alla ’bout?’ Mingolla asked.
‘It’s not yet clear,’ said the priest. ‘We keep adding to the image, and someday it’ll be complete. But…’
‘What image?’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’ The priest started off along the east aisle, beckoning, and they followed him toward the side altar. Standing at the back of the altar, mounted on a head-high pedestal and fronted by banks of flickering candles, was a twice-life-size statue of the Virgin clad in a stiff gilt gown whose folds looked like flows of golden
