The Head of the Saint (10 page)

The world had changed a great deal for Samuel since he had arrived, barely alive, in Candeia. He no longer had the freedom to walk around where he wanted, whenever he wanted, without being followed by hordes of desperate women. If he was to go to his grandmother's house, he needed a plan. The day after he'd made the decision to visit Niceia, he announced that the saint had asked him not to talk to anybody, not to give consultations, and also that nobody should come anywhere near the head or pray to him before six p.m. the following day. Samuel waited there in silence so he could try to listen to the Singing Voice, calmly and clearly.

According to the made-up message from the saint, it would take a day to clean up the negative energies in the town. Anyone nearby could be harmed. Francisco spread the word among the people who were near the head, while Aécio broadcast it on his radio program. It worked. Samuel didn't tell his friends what he was doing, he just said he needed a rest, and some peace.

It was four a.m. when he went to his grandmother's house. As soon as he clapped his hands by the gate, Niceia opened the inner door and appeared. Samuel noticed the broken window and tried to see whether he could make out anything inside the house, but it was impossible. The camera was still there, lying on the ground. Nobody had been brave enough to go and retrieve it.

“Go away!” called Niceia firmly.

“I've just come to talk to you, I won't take too much of your time.”

“I want to talk to you, too.”

Samuel was surprised.

“Leave Candeia. There's danger coming.”

“What danger?”

“You see what's happening in this town? You see these hordes of people, this chaos, those people from the television? It's all because of you. It's all your fault.”

“It's not! I never asked the saint to let me hear his messages, I didn't even want to go there; it was you who sent me….”

“It's your fault. You shouldn't have done what you did, and there are some people who feel such hatred—” The old lady broke off, then said more loudly: “There are some people who would kill you today if they could. You must leave. What day is it today?”

“Sunday.”

“Then you'll leave on Thursday. That'll be enough time to sort things out.”

“I don't know what to do.”

“You listen clearly: on Thursday, before you leave, you've got to stop by here.”

“Why?”

“To say goodbye. I'm your grandmother, child.”

“You're my grandmother, but you've never even given me so much as a glass of water.”

“You're the one who ought to be giving things to me, now that you've gotten rich by deceiving the people of this town.”

“Is there anything you need?”

“I need nothing.”

Samuel sighed. The conversation was as difficult as he could have imagined.

“Between now and Thursday you be really careful, Samuel, really careful, because this is going to be a difficult week. Watch out, because…” The old woman stopped talking, then went on: “There are people coming. I'll be expecting you on Thursday.”

She slammed the door. Samuel hurried away and saw that there were indeed people already arriving. He walked with his head lowered so that nobody would recognize him. He ran over to the head. He wanted to make the most of the silence and say goodbye. He wanted to hear the Singing Voice, perhaps for the last time.

There was nothing to stop him leaving Candeia that same day if he'd wanted to. He had enough money to go anywhere he pleased, even to travel by plane. No longer was he the poor, broken young man who had arrived in the town dirty, barefoot and begging for water and dry bread. He had prestige now, and money. He showered daily at Francisco's, he wore good clothes, went to the cinema, ate lasagna and slept on a spring mattress inside St. Anthony's head.

He could have left the head, too, and built himself a house just next door. If he didn't, it was because of the Singing Voice. If he hadn't yet left Candeia, fed up with the routine of consultations, lies and noise, it was because of the Singing Voice.

Even after everything that had happened—the miracles, the weddings—the Singing Voice had kept singing, at least twice a day, at five in the morning and five in the afternoon. On the occasions when Samuel was able to hear her, he could tell she didn't speak Brazilian Portuguese very well. She used a mixed-up language, and Samuel didn't know whether the mixture was just an accent or whether it was a different way of singing.

There were four tunes, which she would vary. Sometimes she would sing the same song morning and afternoon. Sometimes she'd change. Samuel was able to hum along to each one of them, but he didn't really understand what they meant. He would catch the occasional word: “home,” “heart,” “farewell,” “sea,” “return,” “far.” The rest of the words seemed to belong to some other, strange language.

His plan to keep people away was still working, and early that morning he pressed his ear to the crown of St. Anthony's head and was able to hear the Singing Voice louder than ever.

The tune unlocked something in Samuel's chest, a drawer full of ancient dreams. There was a time when he used to dream. About the sea, for example. He dreamed about the day he'd take Mariinha to see the ocean for the first time and to find out whether it was true what they said about the water in the sea being salty.

So he liked it when the Voice sang about the blue sea.
“Vida de mar…,”
it went, and he could understand that very well. He thought of the ocean, about his former desires, about the time in his childhood when his hopes were still alive.

The Voice sang of longing, and he thought more about Mariinha—but without sadness, because not all longing is sad. He was able to imagine his mother united with her whole family of women, women who foretold their deaths matter-of-factly, as if it was just another day.

Listening to the Singing Voice, he was able to be happy. Yet however hard he tried, he never managed to discover where it came from. The woman wasn't praying, so she couldn't be one of the ones who had come to his consultations. He would recognize her voice if she had, he was sure of it. It was a serious voice, hoarse and pronounced.

Thinking about the Singing Voice without knowing her face was unbearable. But now Samuel had a date to leave. Thursday. He felt he had to obey the order he'd received from Niceia, his strange, strange grandmother. Perhaps because he missed having someone to obey. Perhaps because he sensed that Mariinha, were she alive, would have told him to do the same thing. Go away, leave this place, this whole deception.

The Voice sang beautifully that day, at five in the morning and five in the afternoon, as she always had done. After six the crowd of women resumed their praying and it was no longer possible to hear anything clearly.

Samuel did not have many days left in Candeia, and in those hours of rest and solitude he was sure that he was in love, completely in love, with someone whom he only knew by her voice and those few words that lived in his heart.

He decided to ask Aécio Diniz for help. It was risky revealing all the secrets of the Singing Voice, but it was his only hope.

Aécio broadcast on his radio program that Samuel, St. Anthony's messenger, needed to talk to the woman who sang every day, at five in the morning and five in the afternoon. At first he thought about making up a story about there being a message for her from the saint, but Samuel changed his mind.

“I don't want there to be any lies with her,” he said.

And he waited, nervously, for her to appear at his house at any moment.

It was before dawn on Monday when Samuel sensed somebody moving the curtain cloth. He thought it must be the owner of the Singing Voice, but it was a violent attack by a cloaked man who had come to bring him a message.

The man had been infiltrating the pilgrims for several days, but the only way for him to get access to the head was by disguising himself as a devotee waiting for a blessing for his love. He wore a St. Francis tunic, tied at the waist with a thick rope. This attracted no attention—he was just another stranger; there were people in town from right across Ceará. No one would ever presume that his purpose was to attack Samuel.

“Don't kill him or even hurt him—just give him a really good scare.” The instructions from the man's boss were as clear as day. By the second day in the camp he had already seen that the best time for the attack would be around three in the morning, when Francisco wasn't there and most of the pilgrims were asleep in their tents.

The man pulled up the hood of his cloak. He removed the rope from round his waist, rolled it up in his right hand and pulled back the improvised curtain to enter the head of St. Anthony. He leaped onto Samuel's back like a frog. He quickly wrapped the rope round Samuel's neck. Unknown to him, the despair of not being able to breathe was precisely what Samuel feared the most.

“I won't kill you, saint-boy, I won't do that. I'd like to, but my orders are just to pass on a message. You're to leave Candeia tomorrow. By tomorrow night, got it?”

“Who sent the message?”

“Best not to try to guess. It'll just make things more difficult for you.”

“I'm not afraid of Osório; you can tell him that from me.”

Samuel gathered his strength and tried to react but received two well-aimed punches to his face.

“I charge a lot to pass on messages, saint-boy. And yours was very expensive.”

He pulled the rope tighter, till Samuel groaned.

“I've said all I have to say. You sit quiet here till I've gone, and don't wake anyone up. You'll only make it worse if you shout, because I'm not here alone.”

“Damn coward!” Samuel tried to say, filled with loathing, but he was suffocating, turning purple, and didn't altogether believe that he would survive the experience.

“If you don't do what you're told, well, I wouldn't mind that too much, actually. Because then my boss will send me back, and this time it'll be to kill you. And I'd like to put an end to the friend of this damned St. Anthony.”

The last tightening of the rope lasted a few seconds; then Samuel was left unconscious. He woke up later, at five in the morning, feeling weak, but perhaps he'd only woken because the Voice was singing inside the saint's head, stronger than ever, in her incomprehensible tongue. Just a few words made it past the veil of that strange language to present themselves to Samuel. That day it was “courage”; she was singing about courage. She sang two lovely songs, in a rhythm that had seemed so strange at first but that was now so familiar to Samuel's heart. Then, finally, for the first time, the Singing Voice prayed. It was brief: “Give me courage, St. Anthony. I need courage, and strength.” Samuel wanted to meet her at once, to ask her to pray for him, to ask her to take him in her arms and hold him like a child. He remembered Mariinha, remembered her as if she had been the one singing in that strange language. He cried. Ever since Mariinha's death he hadn't shed a single tear, but he cried now. Niceia's prediction was coming true; things were starting to get dangerous in Candeia.

Francisco arrived soon after five and was alarmed at the state Samuel was in.

“There was a man who came in here. I couldn't get a proper look at him; I don't know who he was. He tied a rope round my neck and said I had to get out of Candeia.”

Francisco called two men into the head, and they picked Samuel up in their arms. He needed rest, medicine—something to help his neck heal—and to be kept away from everyone while Francisco tried to understand what had happened.

There was nowhere Francisco's friend could be taken but the house of his father, Chico the Gravedigger.