The Devil on Her Tongue (28 page)

“Your purity was important for me, Diamantina. That you were not yet dirtied. I could not have married you if this were the case.”

“Dirtied? Is this why you keep your vow of chastity, even though you’re no longer a priest? Does this mean you are so clean, Bonifacio?” I was breathing heavily.

A dog barked in the distance.

He turned his face from me but didn’t leave.

His silence allowed me to grow calm. Finally I asked, softly, “Why do you really think Father da Chagos agreed to marry us?”

He looked at me again. “Because he is an old friend. I told you, we knew each other in the past. I spoke to him of the difficulty I was having with the child. I wasn’t comfortable with any of the women here coming into our house, then going back to whisper and gossip to the whole village about the fallen priest and the slave child. Father da Chagos encouraged me to marry, insisting that to take a wife would help me to become part of the world I was out of step with.”

I waited a long moment, because I wanted to form my next words to have the most effect. “He didn’t do it for you, Bonifacio,”
I said slowly. “He did it for himself. When you first told me Father da Chagos would marry us, I knew why. It was to cleanse his parish of me. Baptizing me and marrying us wasn’t an act of friendship, wasn’t a favour to you or charity for me. You just came along at the right time, and were the perfect solution to his problem: me.”

He swallowed.

“How can he call himself a messenger of God?” I went on, growing more agitated. “How can he say that God speaks through him, if he could treat my mother and me so uncharitably? Does every priest have to be only good, or can they not be both good and bad, like the sailors and the fishermen, like the weavers and the farmers? Are priests not just men, Bonifacio?”

His face was suddenly chalky.

“What did
you
do? What, Bonifacio, did you do that was so terrible that you were turned away from the priesthood?”

He shook his head, but I persisted, newly angered by his white face and troubled look. “Why did you have to take Cristiano so far from his home? Why won’t he speak, apart from his babble at night?” I stepped so close to him that my breasts touched his chest. “Tell me!”

He just stared at me. Finally I backed away, and turned to go to the house, tensing for the sound of him following me, wondering if I had pushed him to a point that he might strike me. A thud made me look over my shoulder.

Bonifacio had dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands. He rocked, his shoulders bent as though he were as old as his father.

“Bonifacio?” I said, and he raised his face. He was weeping silently, his expression so stricken that I thought he was at the beginning of an apoplexy. I took a step forward, but he put up a palm to stop me. And then he prostrated himself on the dirt floor of the wash house, his arms stretched out at his sides, and began the Our Father.

As he said it the second time, I left him.

He didn’t come to the bedroom that night.

After Cristiano was asleep, I pulled off my clothing, slipping on the white sleeping gown I’d made. It was in the fashion of the one I’d once seen Sister Amélia wear, but had a lower neckline and looser sleeves. I stroked it down my body, pleased at the feel of the soft cloth against my bare skin. The silver talisman was cool between my breasts. I thought of Abílio, and his touch. Was that him I’d seen as we walked through Funchal?

Then I thought of the sailor on the beach. I had felt safe enough, my first night here, to take my gutting knife from my waistband and put it under my mattress. Now, as I lay on my bed, I put my hand under the mattress, reassuring myself it was there. I looked out at the olive tree, the moon caught in its top branches, and then back at the hanging sheets that separated my bed from my husband’s.

I closed my eyes, knowing that Cristiano’s nightmare would come too soon.

Bonifacio didn’t return the next day either. Papa didn’t ask about him.

I went about my chores while Papa, as usual, went to his garden. His endless hours in the big patch were not work for him, but pleasure. He loved keeping the weeds cleared away, picking off insects and staking the long trailing vines of his beans. In the cool of autumn in the mountains there were only the root vegetables left to be dug up, and sometimes Papa just stood, leaning on his hoe and looking at the neat rows with a calm expression. I knew he was in constant pain by the way he kept one hand pressed to his side, the difficulty he had in straightening after sitting or bending, and the soft, involuntary exhalations he made as he reached across the table. I gave him all the powders and tinctures I could to soothe the pain, but knew, at his age, that the difficulty in his bowel would not resolve itself.

By his colour and the odour of his breath, I doubted that Papa would live beyond the next planting season.

Late that afternoon, he came into the kitchen while I was preparing dinner, with Cristiano, cross-legged under the table, watching me.

Papa lifted the lid off the steaming kettle of water and dropped four handfuls of chestnuts into it. “I’ll show you how to make
licor de castanha
,” he said. “It’s ready much faster than the cherry. That takes twelve Sundays.” He sat on the stool by the table, looking under at Cristiano for a moment. “Espirito loves
licor de castanha
.”

This was the second time he’d mentioned Espirito.

I touched his arm so he would watch me speak. “Who is Espirito?”

He looked surprised. “He’s my other son, younger than Bonifacio by two years. You don’t know of him?”

“Bonifacio hasn’t mentioned him.”

Papa shook his head, clicking his tongue.

“Why haven’t I met him?”

“He lives in Funchal with his wife. Whenever he comes to visit, he asks for my
licors
. My Telma made the best
licors
in the parish. Everybody wanted Telma’s
licors
.”

“When did she pass on?” I asked.

“Thirteen years ago. Bonifacio was seventeen and Espirito fifteen years old. She wanted her sons to live in Funchal. She was from Câmara de Lobos, on the ocean not far from there, and never liked the mountains as I did. ‘Promise me, Vitorino,’ she said before she died, ‘promise me our boys will not spend their lives here working themselves to death.’ ”

He got up and scooped the chestnuts out of the boiling water with a handled sieve, dumped them into a flat wooden bowl and shook them back and forth. Steam rose from them. “Cristiano, come and watch,” he said.

Cristiano came out from under the table and stood beside Papa.

Using a small knife, Papa made a cut two-thirds of the way around the flat face of the shell and peeled it away, then eased the rest of the nut out of the skin. “The chestnuts are nice and fresh, so both outer and inner skins come away. This is a good job for a boy when he’s old enough to use the knife. My boys always did this.” He handed the knife to Cristiano. “You are old enough.”

Cristiano looked at the knife, then picked up one of the chestnuts and slowly, carefully cut it the way Papa had.

“Good. That’s the way,” Papa said, and Cristiano’s mouth moved in the beginning of a smile. Then Papa added sugar to the hot water the nuts had been in. While we waited for it to come to a boil, Cristiano finished the peeling.

Papa skimmed froth off the surface of the boiling syrup, then dumped the chestnuts in and let them cook for a few moments. Then he fished them out again, putting them into an empty earthenware jar. “Now you can do the rest,” he said to me, and pulled another jar from a shelf. “Brandy. This much,” he said, holding his thumb and index finger apart. “Let the syrup boil again, and when it cools, pour the brandy over the chestnuts, but don’t stir—the chestnuts fall apart easily. Then put in the stopper. In only two Sundays it will be ready.” He turned to leave. “The chestnuts are delicious to eat, once they’ve sat in the liqueur. They were always Espirito’s favourites. You will like Espirito. He’s a good boy.”

“We’ll save them,” I said, “for the next time he comes.”

He nodded. “Tonight we will play dominoes, you and I,” he said, and I smiled at him.

T
hat evening, I hung Bonifacio’s clean shirts, smelling of the mountain air, on his pegs. I straightened a blanket thrown over the chest at the end of his bed, and then, on a whim, knelt in front of the chest and opened it.

Under a folded pair of old breeches was a worn leather bag with a torn strap. I took it out and looked inside. There was a long black buttoned robe of coarse cotton, as well as a black cincture. I sat back on my heels. Bonifacio’s Jesuit vestments. I imagined him wearing these in Brazil. At the bottom of the bag something glinted. I pulled it out. On a long strip of leather was a heavy pendant with a cross, and on the cross the sign of the Jesuit. As I put it back into the chest, I saw a small cloth sack almost hidden in one corner. I lifted it, then opened the drawstring and gazed in. I dumped the coins onto my skirt and counted them. One hundred and seventy-six réis.

I sat back on my heels. If Abílio had been correct about the cost of a passage to Brazil, this was enough. I counted the coins again, then put them back into the cloth bag and bounced it on my palm with a sudden lifting joy. I could take them and walk back to Funchal. I knew Abílio had also told me an unaccompanied woman would not be allowed on the long journey across the ocean, but that would be a simple matter to remedy: I would find a family and ask to join them.

To take Bonifacio’s coins would be stealing. I had only a moment of remorse at the thought, but it was not about taking the money. It was at the idea of leaving Papa and Cristiano.

Cristiano put his head around the sheet, and I jumped up. He looked at the bag I held, and at the open chest.

I hurriedly put the money back where I’d found it, arranging the leather bag and clothing as it had been, and slammed the lid of the chest as Cristiano watched me. “Go out and wash your hands and face before bed,” I said, a little more sternly than I’d intended.

He ducked behind the sheet and was gone.

I was almost asleep when Bonifacio got back. I sat up as he opened the bedroom door and went to his side of the room.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“In the hills. It’s peaceful there, with no voices, no stares. No temptations. I feel closer to God,” he said, his voice muffled behind the curtain.

I lay back down, but in the next instant he pulled the sheets open and I sat up again, staring at him in the darkness. “What do you want?” I asked, not exactly fearful, but unnerved by the way he stood, so still, his face shadowed.

“Come to the sitting room,” he said, glancing at Cristiano’s sleeping form. “Please,” he added, and at that I pushed back the blanket.

He looked a moment too long at me in my nightgown. I grabbed my shawl from the end of my bed and wrapped it around myself as I followed him. He sat at the table, and I sat across from him.

“Don’t,” he said, as I reached for the flint beside the candle in the middle of the table. “It’s easier for me in the dark.” He stared towards the window, and I watched his profile.