“Send him to my house tomorrow, Petra,” cried the old man enthusiastically,
“and I’ll teach him to weave the nito! ”
“Huh! Get out! What are you dreaming about, grand-dad? Do you still think that the Popes even move their hands? The curate, being nothing more than a curate, only works in the mass—when he turns around! The Archbishop doesn’t even turn around, for he says mass sitting down. So the Pope—the Pope says it in bed
with a fan! What are you thinking about?”
“Of nothing more, Petra, than that he know how to weave the nito. It would be well for him to be able to sell hats and cigar-cases so that he wouldn’t have to beg alms, as the curate does here every year in the name of the Pope. It always fills me with compassion to see a saint poor, so I give all my savings.”
Another countryman here joined in the conversation, saying, “It’s all settled, cumare, 1 my son has got to be a doctor, there’s nothing like being a doctor!”
“Doctor! What are you talking about, cumpare?” retorted Petra. “There’s nothing like being a curate!”
“A curate, pish! A curate? The doctor makes lots of money, the sick people worship him, cumare!”
“Excuse me! The curate, by making three or four turns and saying deminos pabiscum,2 eats God and makes money. All, even the women, tell him their secrets.”
“And the doctor? What do you think a doctor is? The doctor sees all that the women have, he feels the pulses of the dalagas! I’d just like to be a doctor for a week!”
“And the curate, perhaps the curate doesn’t see what your doctor sees? Better still, you know the saying, ‘the fattest chicken and the roundest leg for the curate!’”
“What of that? Do the doctors eat dried fish? Do they soil their fingers eating salt?”
“Does the curate dirty his hands as your doctors do? He has great estates and when he works he works with music and has sacristans to help him.”
“But the confessing, cumare? Isn’t that work?”
“No work about that! I’d just like to be confessing everybody! While we work and sweat to find out what our own neighbors are doing, the curate does nothing more than take a seat and they tell him everything. Sometimes he falls asleep,
but he lets out two or three blessings and we are again the children of God! I’d just like to be a curate for one evening in Lent!”
“But the preaching? You can’t tell me that it’s not work. Just look how the fat curate was sweating this morning,” objected the rustic, who felt himself being beaten into retreat.
“Preaching! Work to preach! Where’s your judgment? I’d just like to be talking half a day from the pulpit, scolding and quarreling with everybody, without any one daring to reply, and be getting paid for it besides. I’d just like to be the curate for one morning when those who are in debt to me are attending mass!
Look there now, how Padre Damaso gets fat with so much scolding and beating.”
Padre Damaso was, indeed, approaching with the gait of a heavy man. He was half smiling, but in such a malignant way that Ibarra, upon seeing him, lost the thread of his talk. The padre was greeted with some surprise but with signs of pleasure on the part of all except Ibarra. They were then at the dessert and the champagne was foaming in the glasses.
Padre Damaso’s smile became nervous when he saw Maria Clara seated at Crisostomo’s right. He took a seat beside the alcalde and said in the midst of a significant silence, “Were you discussing something, gentlemen? Go ahead!”
“We were at the toasts,” answered the alcalde. “Señor Ibarra was mentioning all who have helped him in his philanthropic enterprise and was speaking of the architect when your Reverence—”
“Well, I don’t know anything about architecture,” interrupted Padre Damaso,
“but I laugh at architects and the fools who employ them. Here you have it—I drew the plan of this church and it’s perfectly constructed, so an English jeweler who stopped in the convento one day assured me. To draw a plan one needs only to have two fingers’ breadth of forehead.”
“Nevertheless,” answered the alcalde, seeing that Ibarra was silent, “when we consider certain buildings, as, for example, this schoolhouse, we need an expert.”
“Get out with your experts!” exclaimed the priest with a sneer. “Only a fool needs experts! One must be more of a brute than the Indians, who build their own houses, not to know how to construct four walls and put a roof on top of them. That’s all a schoolhouse is!”
The guests gazed at Ibarra, who had turned pale, but he continued as if in conversation with Maria Clara.
“But your Reverence should consider—”
“See now,” went on the Franciscan, not allowing the alcalde to continue, “look how one of our lay brothers, the most stupid that we have, has constructed a hospital, good, pretty, and cheap. He made them work hard and paid only eight cuartos a day even to those who had to come from other towns. He knew how to handle them, not like a lot of cranks and little mestizos who are spoiling them by paying three or four reals.”
“Does your Reverence say that he paid only eight cuartos? Impossible!” The alcalde was trying to change the course of the conversation.
“Yes, sir, and those who pride themselves on being good Spaniards ought to imitate him. You see now, since the Suez Canal was opened, the corruption that has come in here. Formerly, when we had to double the Cape, neither so many vagabonds came here nor so many others went from here to become vagabonds.”
“But, Padre Damaso—”
“You know well enough what the Indian is—just as soon as he gets a little learning he sets himself up as a doctor! All these little fellows that go to Europe
—”
“But, listen, your Reverence!” interrupted the alcalde, who was becoming nervous over the aggressiveness of such talk.
“Every one ends up as he deserves,” the friar continued. “The hand of God is manifest in the midst of it all, and one must be blind not to see it. Even in this life the fathers of such vipers receive their punishment, they die in jail ha, ha! As we might say, they have nowhere—”
But he did not finish the sentence. Ibarra, livid, had been following him with his gaze and upon hearing this allusion to his father jumped up and dropped a heavy hand on the priest’s head, so that he fell back stunned. The company was so filled with surprise and fright that no one made any movement to interfere.
“Keep off!” cried the youth in a terrible voice, as he caught up a sharp knife and placed his foot on the neck of the friar, who was recovering from the shock of his fall. “Let him who values his life keep away!”
The youth was beside himself. His whole body trembled and his eyes rolled threateningly in their sockets. Fray Damaso arose with an effort, but the youth caught him by the neck and shook him until he again fell doubled over on his knees.
“Señor Ibarra! Señor Ibarra!” stammered some. But no one, not even the alferez himself, dared to approach the gleaming knife, when they considered the youth’s strength and the condition of his mind. All seemed to be paralyzed.
