Read Ebook: The Woman & the Priest by Deledda Grazia Steegmann Mary G Translator

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Ebook has 541 lines and 31325 words, and 11 pages

scolding the old men, now thrusting their bearded faces between the pillars of the altar rails in order to hear better, and the women crouching on the ground, divided between curiosity and fear. The sacristan, holding the Mass-book in his arms, glanced at Paul out of his long dark eyes, then turned them on the people and shook his head, threatening them in jest if they did not attend.

"Yes," said the priest, "the number of you who come here grows ever less; when I have to face you I am almost ashamed, for I feel like a shepherd who has lost his sheep. Only on Sunday is the church a little fuller, but I fear you come because of your scruples and not because of your belief, from habit rather than from need, as you change your clothes or take your rest. Up now, it is time to awake! I do not expect mothers of families, or men who have to be at work before the dawn, to come here every morning, but young women and old men and children, such as I shall see now when I leave the church, standing at their own doors to greet the rising sun, all those should come here to begin the day with God, to praise Him in His own house and to gain strength for the path they have to tread. If you did this the poverty that afflicts you would disappear, and evil habits and temptation would no longer assail you. It is time to awake early in the morning, to wash yourselves and to change your clothing every day and not only on Sundays! So I shall expect you all, beginning from to-morrow, and we will pray together that God will not forsake us and our little village, as He will not forsake the smallest nest, and for those who are sick and cannot come here we will pray that they may recover and be able to march forward too."

He turned round swiftly and the sacristan did the same, and for a few minutes there reigned in the little church a silence so intense that the stone-breaker could be heard at his work behind the ridge. Then a woman got up and approached the priest's mother, placing a hand on her shoulder as she bent down and whispered:

"Your son must come at once to hear the confession of King Nicodemus, who is seriously ill."

Roused from her own sad thoughts, the mother raised her eyes to the speaker. She remembered that King Nicodemus was a fantastic old hunter who lived in a hut high up in the mountains, and she asked if Paul would have to climb up there to hear the confession.

"No," whispered the woman, "his relations have brought him down to the village."

So the mother went to tell Paul, who was in the little sacristy, disrobing with the help of Antiochus.

"You will come home first and drink your coffee, won't you?" she asked.

He avoided looking at her and did not even answer, but pretended to be in a great hurry to go to the old man who was ill. The thoughts of both mother and son dwelt upon the same thing, the letter which had been delivered to Agnes, but neither spoke of it. Then he hastened away, and she stood there like a block of wood whilst the sacristan busied himself in replacing the vestments in the black cupboard.

"It would have been better if I had not told him about Nicodemus until he had been home and had his coffee," she said.

"A priest must get accustomed to everything," replied Antiochus gravely, poking his head round the cupboard door, and then he added as though to himself as he turned back to his work inside:

"Perhaps he is angry with me, because he says I am inattentive: but it's not true, I assure you it's not true! Only when I looked at those old men I felt inclined to laugh, for they did not understand a word of the sermon. They sat there with their mouths open, but they understood nothing. I bet you that old Marco Panizza really thinks he ought to wash his face every day, he who never washes at all except at Easter and Christmas! And you'll see that from now on they will all come to church every day, because he told them that poverty would disappear if they did that."

The mother still stood there, her hands clasped beneath her apron.

"The poverty of the soul," she said, to show that she at least had understood. But Antiochus only looked at her as he had looked at the old men, with a strong desire to laugh. Because he was quite sure that nobody could understand these matters as he understood them, he who already knew the four gospels by heart and intended to be a priest himself, which fact did not prevent him from being as mischievous and inquisitive as other boys.

As soon as he had finished putting everything in order and the priest's mother had gone away, Antiochus locked the sacristy and walked across the little garden attached to the church, all overgrown with rosemary and as deserted as a cemetery. But instead of going home to where his mother kept a tavern in one corner of the village square, he ran off to the presbytery to hear the latest news of King Nicodemus, and also for another reason.

"Your son scolded me for not paying attention," he repeated uneasily, whilst the priest's mother was busy preparing her Paul's breakfast. "Perhaps he won't have me as sacristan any longer, perhaps he will take Ilario Panizza. But Ilario cannot read, whereas I have even learnt to read Latin. Besides, Ilario is so dirty. What do you think? Will he send me away?"

"He wants you to pay attention, that is all: it is not right to laugh in church," she answered sternly and gravely.

"He is very angry. Perhaps he did not sleep last night, on account of the wind. Did you hear what an awful wind?"

The pillow-slip was still damp with Paul's tears and his fevered anguish of the night, and as she drew it off to replace it with a fresh one the thought came to her, for the first time in her life:

"But why are priests forbidden to marry?"

And she thought of Agnes's wealth, and how she owned a large house with gardens and orchards and fields.

Then suddenly she felt horribly guilty in even entertaining such thoughts, and quickly drawing on the fresh pillow-slip she went away into her own room.

Marching forward? Yes, she had been marching since dawn and was yet only at the beginning of the way. And however far one went, one always came back to the same place. She went downstairs and sat by the fire beside Antiochus, who had not moved and was determined to wait there all day, if needs be, for the sake of seeing his superior and making his peace with him. He sat very still, one leg crossed over the other and his hands clasped round his knee, and presently he remarked, not without a slight accent of reproach:

"You ought to have taken him his coffee into the church, as you do when he is delayed there hearing the women's confessions. As it is, he will be famished!"

"And how was I to know he would be sent for in such a hurry? The old man is dying, it seems," retorted the mother.

"I don't think that can be true. His grandchildren want him to die because he has some money to leave. I know the old chap! I saw him once when I went up into the mountains with my father: he was sitting amongst the rocks in the sun, with a dog and a tame eagle beside him and all sorts of dead animals all round. That is not how God orders us to live!"

"What does He order, then?"

"He orders us to live amongst men, to cultivate the ground, and not to hide our money, but to give it to the poor."

The little sacristan spoke with a man's confidence, and the priest's mother was touched and smiled. After all, if Antiochus could say such sensible things it was because he had been taught by her Paul. It was her Paul who taught them all to be good, wise and prudent; and when he really wished to he succeeded in convincing even old men whose opinions were already fixed, and even thoughtless children. She sighed, and bending down to draw the coffee-pot nearer the glowing embers, she said:

"You talk like a little saint, Antiochus; but it remains to be seen if you will do as you say when you're a man, whether you really will give your money to the poor."

"Yes, I shall give everything to the poor. I shall have a great deal of money, because my mother makes a lot with her tavern, and my father is a forest keeper and earns pretty well, too. I shall give all I get to the poor: God tells us to do that, and He Himself will provide for us. And the Bible says, the ravens do not sow, neither do they reap, yet they have their food from God, and the lily of the valley is clothed more splendidly than the king."

"Yes, Antiochus, when a man is alone he can do that, but what if he has children?"

"That makes no difference. Besides, I shall never have children; priests are not allowed to have any."

She turned to look at him; his profile was towards her, against the bright background of the open doorway and the courtyard outside; it was a profile of pure, firm outline and dark skin, almost like a head of bronze, with long lashes shading the eyes with their large dark pupils. And as she gazed at the boy she could have wept, but she knew not why.

"Are you quite sure you want to be a priest?" she asked.

"Yes, if that is God's will."

"Priests are not allowed to marry, and suppose that some day you wanted to take a wife?"

"I shall not want a wife, since God has forbidden it."

"God? But it is the Pope who has forbidden it," said the mother, somewhat taken aback at the boy's answer.

"The Pope is God's representative on earth."

"But in olden times priests had wives and families, just as the Protestant clergy have now," she urged.

"The priests in olden times...." she persisted.

But the sacristan was well-informed. "Yes, the priests in olden times," he said, "but then they themselves held a meeting and decided against it; and those who had no wives or families, the younger ones, were the very ones who opposed marriage the most strongly. That is as it should be."

"The younger ones!" repeated the mother as if to herself. "But they know nothing about it! And then they may repent, they may even go astray," she added in a low voice, "they may come to reason and argue like the old priest."

"That man was not a priest, he was the devil's brother come to earth! God save us from him! We had best not even think about him!" and he made the sign of the cross. Then he continued, with recovered serenity:

It hurt her to hear the boy talk like that. She longed to be able to tell him something of her trouble, to warn him for the future, yet at the same time she rejoiced at his words, as though the conscience of the innocent lad were speaking to her conscience to commend and encourage it.

"Does he, does my Paul say it is right for priests not to marry?" she asked in a low voice.

The mother smiled wanly; but there passed before her eyes a fleeting vision of lovely children running about the house, and there was a pang at her heart. Antiochus laughed aloud, his dark eyes and white teeth flashing in his brown face, but there was something cruel in his laughter.

"A priest's wife would be a funny thing! When they went out for a walk together they would look from behind like two women! And would she go and confess to him, if they lived in a place where there was no other priest?"

"What does a mother do? Who do I confess to?"

"A mother is different. And who is there that your son could marry? The granddaughter of King Nicodemus, perhaps?"

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