Elders (14 page)

Maurilho took the hint. “Elder Passos, would you offer the blessing?”

Elder Passos gave thanks for the food and the hands that had prepared it, for all their many blessings, and as he opened his eyes after the prayer a familiar warmth washed over him—that sense of peace, an almost sedated feeling, like relaxing under your covers at night. No matter how rote the prayer, he thought,
prayer
worked. The gospel worked.
I know what I know
. If only for a moment, then, Elder Passos felt at utter peace with his life and what
he was doing with it for these two years. He was thousands of kilometers from his family, true, but he had reason to hope—he had reason to
expect
—that their hardest days lay behind them. He felt at peace with the righteous ambition inside him. He felt at peace with his sins even, for he knew he would abandon them. He and McLeod would both be meet for the message, would work harder than ever to make Leandro soften, and if the Lord willed it, Passos knew Leandro
would
soften.

Just then McLeod’s hand reached into Passos’s line of sight and ladled spoonfuls of rice onto his plate, then beans—not on top of the rice, but beside it, just as he liked. Passos looked into his junior companion’s face, stout and pink, like an under-ripe strawberry, and he smiled. He felt at peace with his companion too. McLeod might be irreverent at times, and too timid in teaching, but he was good and kind and generous.

“Thank you, Elder,” Passos said, “but shouldn’t I be serving you? You’re the birthday boy.”

“Your birthday’s today?” Rose said. “I thought it was Thursday.”

“It’s actually tomorrow,” McLeod said, “but Thursday’s the party. Are you guys still coming?”

Maurilho looked up from his food. “You mean the party at Josefina’s and—oh, I should know this by now—”

“Leandro,” Passos said. “McLeod just mentioned his birthday in passing and they insisted on hosting a party. Those people are just amazing. Golden.”

“Is Leandro still …?” Maurilho said, and mimed smoking a cigarette, sucking and blowing.

McLeod nodded his head in response, letting it sink with each nod. “It’s getting worse, actually. We come in the house now and you can smell it on him. I’m sure Josefina’s working with him—she really
is
golden—I’m just not sure Leandro’s as interested.”

“Well,” Maurilho said, hovering a forkful of rice halfway to his mouth. He shook his head and mumbled, “Yeah, that’s tough,” and took a bite. McLeod nodded again and took a bite of his own food. The whole table nodded, a brief wave of sympathy, then continued on with their meal, as if his companion’s pessimism were sure prophecy, as if everyone had already given up Leandro for lost. Passos looked around for a face to share in his sense of wrong, and finding none, he turned to his companion. Look at him: chewing, staring off like a cow, as if nothing had happened, as if he were just a bystander.

“Elder McLeod,” Passos said, and stopped. The virulence in his voice surprised even him. The table froze. His companion turned, wide-eyed.

“We don’t know that Leandro smokes,” Passos said.

McLeod paused. “Well, I think … I think it’s a pretty safe assumption. I’m just trying to be realistic.”

“Realistic,”
Passos said—spat, really. Again he surprised himself. The silence wound around them all like something living, snakelike. The sounds of chewing magnified.

After a long time Rose said, “Do you like the food, Elders?”

The next morning during companionship study Elder Passos apologized for his outburst, as he called it. He knew the word was an
overstatement, but he wanted to hedge on the side of penitence, especially in his role as the senior companion and zone leader, in his role as the exemplar.

McLeod raised a quick clement hand, which bothered Passos. He decided to go a step further. “On a different note, I’ve been meaning to ask you about something from Maurilho’s pamphlet yesterday.”

He would let McLeod play teacher to his senior companion, something juniors, and Americans in general, seemed to relish. McLeod especially seemed to pride himself on his knowledge of the gospel, if not his testimony of it.
Learning, always learning
, as Paul said,
but never coming to a knowledge of the truth
. More than once during companionship study McLeod had sought to settle a debate by recoursing to his Bible Dictionary, a feature available only in the English version of the quad, or to one of the missionary classics, so-called, also available only in English. Sometimes the debates concerned doctrine—usually obscure, inessential doctrine—and sometimes church history, which Passos considered inessential by definition. For how could the temporal chronology of the church at all rival in importance the gospel contained within the church? The gospel was bigger than any nation or tongue, bigger than any localized history. Not that Elder Passos didn’t take a certain interest. He’d learned all about polygamy, when and why it ended, all about the ban on blacks in the priesthood, when and why
it
ended. If only to arm himself against his grandmother and her friends, Passos had taken the church’s several skeletons out of the closet, one by one, and turned them around in the light.

McLeod prompted him. “What do you want to know?”

Passos ignored the hubris in the question. “What I wanted to
ask was where the anti-Mormons got the Jesus-as-sexually-active lie. That one was new. I hadn’t heard that one before. What sources did they wrench? What quotes did they twist?”

“They didn’t wrench or twist anything,” McLeod said. “That’s what the church believes. Brigham Young said it. Others have said it.”

“That Jesus was sexually active?”

“That he was married, yes.”

Elder Passos felt his face go hot and compressed. His companion said, “Uh-oh, the eyebrows.”

“Where is that written?” Passos said. “Show it to me.”

“I can if you want me to. You really want me to?”

“Show me in the scriptures where it says that Jesus was married, that he was sexually active.”

McLeod leaned away, said, “Calm down, calm down,” which of course had the opposite effect on Elder Passos. He said he wanted McLeod to
show
him, right now, chapter and verse.

“Well, look,” McLeod said, “it’s not that simple. It’s not in the scriptures, or it’s not obvious anyway. I could show you—I will, right now—but you have to take off your senior-companion hat, your zone-leader hat, for just a minute. I only brought one piece of contraband from home, and it’s nothing bad, but I need a guarantee all the same. Do I have one?”

“Just show me what you’ve got,” Passos said.

“I’ll take that as a yes?”

“Just show me already.”

“That’s a yes, then,” McLeod said, and he reached his hand deep into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, black paperback volume called
From Adam-ondi-Ahman to Zion’s Camp: A Dictionary
of Mormon Arcana
. Before Passos could even lay hands on it his companion had launched into an explanation, starting with the title: how Adam-ondi-Ahman was what Joseph Smith called the Garden of Eden, how Zion’s Camp was a ragtag military expedition charged with taking back land the church had lost to—

“I already knew all that,” Elder Passos said, though he hadn’t known any of it. “Get to the point.”

McLeod nodded for Passos to bring his chair closer to his desk as he flipped to the index, scanning aloud until he found “Jesus Christ, marriage of.” He turned to the first of several page numbers, then pressed the book flat with his hand so that Passos could check his translation, he said.

“Just go,” Passos said.

“ ‘The church does not have an official position on the question of Jesus’s marriage,’ ” McLeod began, “ ‘though many early church leaders suggested from the pulpit that the marriage at Cana, as recorded in the New Testament, was Jesus’s own marriage to Mary and Martha. Some leaders further believed that Jesus bore children. To quote Brigham Young: “The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with His train. I do not know who
they
were, unless His wives and children.” ’ ”

McLeod broke off. “That’s sourced from the
Journal of Discourses
, which is a collection of—”

“I know about the
Journal of Discourses
, Elder!”

“Okay, sorry, sorry.” McLeod continued. “ ‘Orson Hyde, one of Young’s fellow apostles, went even further, speaking on the nascent church’s behalf: “We say it was Jesus Christ who was married, to be brought into the relation whereby He could see His seed before He was crucified.” Hyde’s literal reading of Isaiah 53:10 was
not uncommon among the early brethren. In July of 1899, in a solemn assembly in the Salt Lake City Temple, Apostle George Q. Cannon proclaimed: “There are those in this audience who are descendants of the Lord’s Twelve Apostles—and, shall I say it?—yes, descendants of the Savior Himself. His seed is represented in the body of these men.” ’ ”

McLeod looked up from the page and said, “You want me to keep going? There’s more.”

“Let me see that.” Elder Passos pulled the book closer and read the entry again, understanding most of the words, and all of the operative ones. He turned to the copyright page: the book was published by a press called the Zion Underground. “This isn’t even published by the church. I’ve never heard of this publisher. And the entry says it isn’t even the church’s position.”

“Not officially,” McLeod said.

“You’re not even supposed to have this, you know.”

“Passos,” McLeod said, his voice low with warning.

“I know, I know. I won’t report this … this
garbage
—though I probably should.” He held the book out over McLeod’s desk with his thumb and forefinger, as if to show what a reeking thing it was. Then he dropped it. “I don’t know why you read that crap anyway. I guess if you’re not
talking
filth with Sweeney and Kimball, then you’re reading it, is that right?”

“Me and Brigham Young,” McLeod said. “Filth peddlers.”

“I’m serious,” Passos said.

“I know you are.”

“Good.”

For the rest of companionship study the elders ran through the lesson they had designed for Josefina and Leandro for that night.
Their discussions now centered around specific gospel topics that the missionaries felt, after prayer and pondering, might suit the couple’s needs. Tonight’s lesson took up obedience and sacrifice, and enduring to the end. The essentials, Passos thought. At one point during the run-through, Elder Passos looked up a supporting passage in the Book of Mormon and readied himself to read it aloud. “The
real
gospel,” he muttered into the page.

By the time
the elders arrived that night at Josefina’s, Brazil had already beaten Venezuela and most of the attendant postgame revelry had quieted or moved indoors. Josefina came to her door in a white flowing blouse and black pants, both modest, her hair done up in a bun. Her look fell closer to the formality of her Sunday dress than the casualness of her usual attire. Why the change? McLeod wondered—worried. Has she seen me … seeing? Is that the reason for her modesty?

“Elders,” Josefina said. “You’re early.”

“Do you need us to come back? We can come back,” McLeod said.

“No, no. Nonsense, nonsense. No, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.” She led them quickly into the house, where Maurilho and Rômulo, to McLeod’s surprise, sat on the love seat in the entryway/living room. He watched Josefina disappear into the kitchen, noticed Rose at the kitchen counter, facing away from them, her hands fast and furtive. Rose came into the front room a moment later and squeezed down beside her husband.

“Well, hello,” McLeod finally said to the group, his voice questioning.

Maurilho and Rômulo and Rose looked up as Josefina re-emerged from the back room carrying what looked like a camping chair. She forced a tight smile. “Please, Elders, please have a seat.
Rose and her family were kind enough to accompany our lesson tonight.”

The three of them smiled for the elders as if they’d been waiting for Josefina’s permission. McLeod and Passos sat down in their usual spots on the couch as Josefina settled into the camping chair. Behind Josefina the bookshelf had filled out—a new volume of the
World Book Encyclopedia, A–B
, caught McLeod’s eye among the other books, the faded gold lettering on the spine like light off the river—and in front of Josefina the coffee table featured a new centerpiece, a bowl of polished stones. Fanned out around the bowl were the several preview pamphlets that the elders had left after their first lesson, and also Josefina’s well-read copy of the Book of Mormon. Leandro’s copy too, Elder McLeod thought, though the thought felt dutiful.