Elders (19 page)

It had come out of Josefina’s mouth. It hung in the air in front of McLeod, twisting, like a strung-up thing.

“Well?” Josefina said.

“Look,” Passos said, “Josefina—”

“I asked Elder McLeod,” Josefina said.

At the sound of his own name he started even more, looked up, and his untrained eyes caught the sheen of her knees. McLeod jerked his gaze up to Josefina’s pupils and held to them like ropes over an abyss. “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“When did he call?” Passos interrupted.

“Half an hour ago,” Josefina said. “He said Elder McLeod pushed him to the ground and the two of you just left him like that. Is that true? Elder McLeod? Is it?”

Elder McLeod formed his lips around the word but no sound came. He held the
O
of his mouth like a suffocating fish. He, McLeod, the catch now, struggling, and Leandro streaming in the reel.

Passos said, “Wait. Wait, Josefina. What did he sound like on the phone? Did he sound like he’d been drinking? He was drunk, Josefina. He was angry. We tried to tell him to come home but
he wouldn’t. I asked when was the last time he’d been home and he got angry with us. He tried to hit my companion. Then he fell down and we tried to help him back up but he wouldn’t accept our help. He just kept yelling at us. That’s the truth, Josefina.”

Josefina turned back to McLeod, her eyes fathom-dark. “Is that true, Elder McLeod? Because he said you pushed him. He said you pushed him down and left him there.”

Elder McLeod shook his head. He managed, “No. I never pushed him.”

She studied his face. “What was he yelling at you?”

“I don’t want to repeat it.”

Josefina’s eyes held for a minute more, steadily, but then they cracked and broke like shells. “I am so embarrassed,” she whispered. “Oh Elders, I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” Elder McLeod said.

“Don’t be,” Passos said.

“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, Elders. I can’t believe—” She broke off to push back sudden emotion, bracing her hand against her sternum. “Please, Elders, please let me get you some cookies, some water.” She stood up and turned toward the kitchen as McLeod snapped his head down. Josefina might have noticed; his companion must have. But he couldn’t afford to be subtle any longer. Josefina came back after several minutes bearing one tray of glasses and another of cookies, neither of which Elder McLeod actually saw until they touched down on the coffee table in front of him: an array of white wafers, three clear glasses, and Josefina’s hand placing them there, like a still life. McLeod thanked Josefina without looking up. He ate and drank in silence. All three of them did.

After a long while Josefina said, “Really, Elders, I am sorry. Why I ever believed him over you … He’s not dependable. He’s not … I hope you can forgive me.”

Passos put his hand up, an imperial gesture. He said, “That’s not what we’ve come to talk about, Josefina. We’ve come to talk about your baptism. Do you still have the desire to be baptized in the Lord’s church? That is to say: Will you be baptized, Josefina?”

“Of course I do. Yes. I want that very much.”

Elder McLeod chewed his cookies like a chastened child. He felt disconnected from the moment, irrelevant to it: his companion taking out his planner, scheduling the baptism for next Sunday (“We’ll do it right after church,” Passos said), and tentatively scheduling the baptismal interview with the president (“We’ll try for next Thursday or Friday”), at which time they’d fill out the necessary paperwork. Elder McLeod heard Josefina respond, but heard it distantly, something about how excited she felt, and how sorry for earlier, sorry for everything.

The elders walked home in the dark, passing loud, rejuvenated bars, but Elder McLeod heard everything as if through gauze. Josefina is going to be baptized next Sunday, and what do I feel? They passed the town square where a few people in jerseys still clung to the corners, their yellow shirts brown in the darkness, and the streamers on the sidewalk like so much garbage, and the confetti and the ribbons from balloons, all garbage.

Just before curfew that night, Elder McLeod followed Passos to the pay phone at the end of their street. Passos called each senior
companion in the zone to collect the companionship’s estimated contacts for the week, number of lessons, number of baptismal challenges (if any), acceptances (if any), baptisms (if any). He then summed these numbers and called the mission office, passing them along to one of the president’s two assistants. Tonight Passos spoke to Elder Tierney, the American assistant, or so Elder McLeod assumed from his companion’s formal tone, vaguely rivalrous: “Oh, yes, hello … I’m fine, thanks. You?”

McLeod stood a few feet to the left of the pay phone, not listening to Passos’s report until he said, “But the zone did have one baptismal challenge this week … It was mine, actually. Ours. And it was an acceptance … Josefina da Silva … Yes, thank you. Well, we’re very excited. I wanted to set up an interview while I’ve got you on the phone. When is good for the president? … Oh he is? Oh, I hadn’t heard about that … In Santiago? … Well, that’ll work out fine, then. We were hoping for late week … Friday morning is great … Great. Thank you, Elder … The same to you. Good night.”

Passos hung up the phone and wandered over to him.

“What’s up?” McLeod said.

“We’re on for Friday morning.”

“Okay. Is that all? You were talking about something else, I thought.”

Passos looked distracted, his face far-seeming. “Huh? Oh. President Mason left tonight for a three-day mission presidents’ conference. In Chile. All the mission presidents in the South American Area, apparently.”

“Sounds big,” McLeod said. “Was that Elder Tierney you talked to? What did he say it was about?”

“Something about raising retention rates among new converts.”

“Ah, retention. I’m sure that’ll be productive.”

Passos came back to the present—the sudden creased brows. “Is that sarcasm, Elder? What did we talk about just the other day?” Then he softened. “We’ve done good work with Josefina. Let’s not jeopardize it now.”

The rest of the night proceeded uneventfully. The elders read at their desks—McLeod finished the second chapter in his new grammar book—and retired to bed. Just after lights-out Passos cleared his throat. “Elder McLeod, may I ask you a question?”

“Hmm-hmm.”

“What do the Americans think of Elder Tierney?”

“What do they ‘think’ of him?”

“I mean is he liked? Is he very popular?”

“He is with the mission president, obviously,” McLeod said. “Less so with us. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Passos said.

McLeod shook his head in the dark. He pushed soft, inaudible air through his nose, and he closed his eyes.

On Friday morning the elders picked up Josefina. She wore her Sunday best—that much McLeod could tell. Something white and loose on top, black on bottom. Elder McLeod didn’t allow himself more than that peripheral awareness, the same strategy he used with the newsstands. The three of them traveled by bus to the main
rodoviária
in Carinha, from there to the
rodoviária
in Belo Horizonte, and from there to the big chapel downtown, in a taxi, and all of it at reimbursable expense. The Work did feel best
at a dedicated pitch—Sweeney and Kimball had been right. The thought came to McLeod as he followed Passos and Josefina out of the taxi and onto the sidewalk in front of the church. Passos was reassuring Josefina that she had nothing to worry about in the interview, nothing at all. She really did want this, McLeod realized. She would be his first convert (he didn’t count Zézinho), his first convert to justify the message.

“You’re sure?” Josefina was saying to Passos. “What if the mission president asks me a question I don’t know the answer to?”

“It’s not that kind of interview,” Passos said. “It’s not a test. It’s a conversation.”

“It’s just to make sure you know how important this step is,” McLeod said. “Which you already do. You know so much already, Josefina. Trust us—you’ll do great.”

“Okay,” she said, “okay.”

Inside the ward building Elder Passos knocked at the bishop’s office, which President Mason often borrowed for interviews. After a moment the president opened the door and his big round face loomed up in the doorframe like a rising moon. The face smiled at Josefina, then looked beyond her to the empty foyer, then looked to McLeod and Passos. “Can I speak with you for a moment, Elders?”

They all trailed smiles into the bishop’s office, but as soon as McLeod pulled the door shut behind him, President Mason’s smile dropped off his face, then Passos’s and McLeod’s, in quick succession, like shorting-out wires. McLeod and his companion sat on two padded chairs in front of a midsize dark-wood desk; President Mason sat behind it in a large black leather chair, a framed picture of the risen Lord glorying at his back.

“I should have confirmed with you two, but I didn’t, and that’s my error,” the president said. “Elder Tierney had the interviewee’s name down as ‘Josef.’ ”

“It’s Josefina,” Passos said.

“An honest mistake,” the president said.

The elders waited in silence for the president to make sense of his ashen look. He shifted in his chair—leather creaked and buckled. He shifted again, said, “Is your investigator married?”

“Josefina,” McLeod said.

“Yes, Josefina. Is she married?”

“She is,” Passos said.

“Well, that’s good news then. That’s good news.” The president leaned forward in his chair—more creaking—and rested his forearms on the desk. He crossed his fingers in a loose weave, somewhere between relaxation and prayer. He sighed. “I think you heard I just returned from a three-day conference in Santiago, Chile. The theme of the conference was retention, and the South American Area is now committed to improving its performance in that regard. To this end, Elders, we’ve been instructed to only baptize families from now on, self-sustaining, celestial units. That’s always been our goal, of course—our ultimate goal—to exalt families, to unite them in the eternities. But for now I’m afraid that means, in this case … well, you know what it means. I’m sorry, Elders. But tell me about Josefina’s husband. Do they have any children?”

“Not yet,” Passos said.

“She’s pregnant,” McLeod said. “And the husband isn’t interested in the gospel at all. He’s made that very clear. I’m confused,
though. A few minutes ago you thought Josefina was ‘Josef’ and you were all ready for a baptismal interview, weren’t you?”

President Mason pinched his eyebrows, and his companion, McLeod noticed out of the corner of his eye, did too. Another tripwire effect—a puppeteer’s trick, as if a string ran from the puppeteer’s own bushy brows to the puppet’s dark sleek
V
.

“Elder McLeod,” Passos said, his voice low and chiding. He showed him his face from the day before—
I’ll take care of this—
but this time McLeod ignored it.

He turned his eyes to the president. “Well? Weren’t you?”

“Mind your tone, Elder,” the president said. He nodded at Elder Passos as if to point out for McLeod the proper attitude before the mission president, the proper tonal posture. His companion stared at him sidelong, a pleading, angry stare. Whose side was Passos on, in the end? Josefina’s? It certainly didn’t seem that way. McLeod had almost forgotten this part of Passos, but now it came rushing back at him. His companion the climber! His companion the missionary careerist! All at once McLeod felt a physical revulsion for Passos, something coursing up through him like bile. He felt it float him up free of the respectable world: he could say anything now, do anything, if only to embarrass Elder Passos.

McLeod looked into the president’s big foreboding face. “Why are you avoiding the question? When it’s a man, you’re all for it. It’s green lights all the way.”

“Mind your
tone
, Elder McLeod,” the president said.

“Are you going to answer the question or not?”

“Elder McLeod!” Passos grabbed him hard, strangling his wrist as if to cut off circulation to his mouth. “The kingdom can’t
grow without priesthood holders. Isn’t that right?” He turned to the mission president.