“There are rewards to the way we live.”
Mendoza nodded, though he could hardly see it as such. “I am having dreams, though. Can certain types of dreams constitute a sin, Father?”
The priest shrugged. He enjoyed confession, the chance to talk to people, possibly to relieve them of their burden. He could count on one hand the number of times he had been allowed to hear confession before the kidnapping, but since then there had been instances when there had been several people waiting to speak to him. Perhaps he would have chosen slightly more sin, if only because it would have kept the people with him longer. “Dreams are a matter of the subconscious. That’s unclear territory. Still, I think it would be best if you told me. Then maybe I can help you.”
Beatriz leaned her head into the doorway, her heavy braid swung down against the light. “Are you finished yet?”
“Not yet,” the priest said.
“Soon?”
“Go and play for a while. I can see you next.”
Play. Did he think she was a child? She looked at Gen’s big watch on her wrist. It was seventeen minutes after one o’clock. She understood the watch perfectly now, though it dogged her a little. She couldn’t go for more than three minutes without checking the time no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. Beatriz lay down on a small red Oriental carpet just outside the door where Father couldn’t see her but she could comfortably hear confession. She slipped the end of her braid into her mouth. Oscar Mendoza had a voice as big as his shoulders and it carried easily, even when he whispered.
“It is more or less the same dream every night.” Oscar Mendoza stopped, not entirely sure he wanted to say anything too horrible to such a young priest. “Dreams of terrible violence.”
“Against our captors?” the priest said quietly.
Out in the hall, Beatriz lifted up her head.
“Oh no, nothing like that. I wish they would leave us alone but I don’t wish them any particular violence, at least not usually. No, the dreams that I have are about my daughters. I come home from this place. I escape or am freed, it’s different in different dreams, and when I get to my house it is full of boys. It’s like some sort of boys’ academy. Boys of every size, light-skinned, dark-skinned, some fat, some lanky. They’re everywhere. They are eating out of my refrigerator and smoking cigarettes on my porch. They are in my bathroom, using my razor. When I pass them they glance up, give me a dull look, like they couldn’t really be bothered, and then they go back to whatever it was they were doing. But that’s not the terrible part. These boys, what they are mostly doing, they are . . . they are, having knowledge of my daughters. They are lined up outside their bedrooms, even the rooms of my two little girls. It is a terrible thing, Father. From some of the doors I hear laughing and from others I hear sobbing and I start to kill the boys, one by one, I go down the hall and I break them apart like matches. They don’t even step away from me. Each one looks so surprised just before I reach up to snap his neck in my hands.” Oscar’s hands were shaking and he knotted them together and pressed them between his knees.
Beatriz tried to look discreetly around the corner to see if the big man was crying. She thought she could detect a trembling in his voice. Were these the sorts of things other people dreamed about? Was this what they confessed? She checked the watch: 1:20.
“Ah, Oscar. Oscar.” Father Arguedas patted his shoulder. “It is just the pressure. It’s not a sin. We pray that our minds won’t turn towards terrible things but sometimes they do and it is beyond our control.”
“It feels very real at the time,” Oscar said, and then he added reluctantly, “I’m not so unhappy in the dreams. I feel a rage, but I’m glad to be killing them.”
This piece of information was perhaps more troubling. “The thing to do then is to learn. Pray for God’s strength, for His justice. Then when the time comes for you to go back to your home there will be peace in your heart.”
“I suppose.” Oscar nodded slowly, feeling unconvinced. He realized now that what he had wanted the priest to do was not to absolve him but to reassure him that it was impossible, the things he dreamed about. That his daughters were safe and unmolested in their home.
Father Arguedas looked at him very closely. He leaned in towards him, his voice full of portent. “Pray to the Virgin. Three rosaries. Do you understand me?” He took his own rosary out of his pocket and pressed it into Oscar’s big hands.
“Three rosaries,” Oscar said, and sure enough, there was a loosening of pressure in his chest as he began to work the beads through his fingers. He left the room thanking Father. At least if he could pray he would be doing something.
The priest took a few minutes to pray for the sins of Oscar Mendoza and when he was finished he cleared his throat and called out, “Beatriz, was that fun for you?”
She waited, dried her braid on her sleeve, then she simply rolled over onto her stomach so that now she was facing into the room. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You shouldn’t be listening.”
“You are a prisoner,” she said, but without much conviction. She would never raise her gun to a priest and so she pointed her finger at him instead. “I have every right to hear what you are saying.”
Father Arguedas leaned back in his chair. “To make sure we weren’t in here plotting to kill you in your sleep.”
“Exactly.”
“Come in now and make your confession. You have something to confess already. That will make it easier.” Father Arguedas was bluffing. None of the terrorists made confession, although many of them came to mass and he let them take communion just the same. He thought it was probably a rule of the Generals, no confession.
But Beatriz had never made confession before. In her village, the priest came through irregularly, only when his schedule permitted it. The priest was a very busy man who served a large region in the mountains. Sometimes months would pass between visits and then when he came his time was crowded up with not only the mass itself but baptisms and marriages, funerals, land disputes, communion. Confession was saved for murderers and the terminally ill, not idle girls who had done nothing worse then pinch their sisters or disobey their mothers. It was something for the very grown up and for the very wicked, and if she were to tell the truth, Beatriz considered herself to be neither of those things.
Father Arguedas held out his hand and he spoke to her softly. Really, he was the only one who ever spoke to her in that tone. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll make this very easy for you.”
It was so simple to go to him, to sit down in the chair. He told her to bow her head and then he put a hand on either side of the straight part of her hair and began to pray for her. She didn’t listen to the prayer. She only heard words here and there, beautiful words, father and blessed and forgiveness. It was just such a pleasant sensation, the weight of his hands on her head. When he finally took his hands away after what seemed to be a very long time, she felt delightfully weightless, free. She lifted up her face and smiled at him.
“Now you call your sins to mind,” he said. “Usually you do that before you come. You pray to God to give you the courage to remember your sins and the courage to release them. And when you come to the confessional you say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.’ ”