Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 by Humans (v1.1) Page A

Brasilia—translated Jack’s dry
questions into rough- toned Portuguese, translated the priest’s indifferent and
querulous answers, and kept her own personality firmly out of the equation.
                Even her voice. A rich contralto,
she kept it muted and flat, with none of the full-throated power that used to
resound through the great music halls of Sao Paulo and Bio, when the crowds would rise to
their feet, weeping and applauding, roaring the choruses with her, she striding
back and forth on the stage, loving them, loving herself.
                She never strode any more. Never
sang.
                The three sat in the shade of a
large tree beside the squat, blunt adobe church, on folding chairs brought out
from its dark interior, in which two old women in black, not together,
whispered their prayers, their J’S enlacing in the air like the ghosts of
snakes. Some distance away, in a brown field, their pilot sat in the shade of
his plane reading fumetti, comic books that use staged photos instead of
drawings. Behind them, the village baked in the sun, most of the residents away
at work in the factory out of sight beyond the brown hills, the children away
at their classes in the factory school: one of the benefits the factory had
brought, to make up for the death and horror it had also brought.
                Father Tomaz’s bland recital of
children born dead, children bom without arms, without eyes, without brains,
poured through the transitional vessel of Maria Elena, unsullied by any trace
of passion. Maria Elena’s mind was full of her own two dead children, but
nothing of them, nothing of herself, touched her words, neither to the priest
nor to the doctor.
                What would Father Tomaz say if she
were to tell him about her failed children, about Paco’s leaving her, about her
agreement with Paco’s conviction that she was now foul—befouled? That Paco had
died before their argument was resolved? He would say, “God is testing you, my
child. He works in mysterious ways. We cannot understand Him, we can only bow
to His will, secure in the knowledge that our suffering is recorded in Heaven,
and that our reward is in Heaven as well, with our God, and our Savior, and His
angels and saints, in eternal joy. Amen”
                Jack’s forms eventually were all
filled in, Father Tomaz’s recital of the plague years was finished, and the
three stood from the folding chairs to stretch. They carried the chairs back
into the church—the sibilant old women continued, unending, unquenchable—and
when they were back outside, in the sun, Father Tomaz said to Maria Elena,
“Would you tell him, we don’t need medicine. What we need is faith in God.”
                “No,” Maria Elena said. “I won’t
tell him that.” And she allowed at last the hatred to show in her eyes.
                The priest, offended, stepped back a
pace, glaring at her. Jack said, “What was that about?”
                “Nothing,” she said.
                Today’s pilot was new, a skinny
brown man with a bandit moustache. He got to his feet as he saw them coming
across the field from the church, and grinned beneath that moustache. He’d
probably been bored, even with his comics, which he now tossed up into the
plane onto the seat beside his own.
                As they walked, Jack took Maria
Elena’s elbow, ostensibly because the dry cracked field was uneven, bumpy, a
litde awkward to walk on, but really, she knew, just to touch her. They’d been
working together now for four months, and after the first month he’d begun to
pursue her with a kind of lighthearted determination, not as though he didn’t
really care, but as though his caring had to be kept swathed in protective
padding. This caution, or self-protection, or whatever it was, made it easier
for Maria Elena to fend him off, without ever having to explain