Toward That Which is Beautiful

the door was flung open and Tom Lynch stood there, tall and welcoming in the doorway. As Kate passed close to him she saw that he had on a soft blue shirt. She was perplexed by the rush of warmth she felt as he helped her off with her cloak. He seemed surprised to see her, almost as if he had forgotten she existed. “Well, I haven’t seen much of you except at early Mass. How have you been?”
“Okay, I guess. I know I fall into bed exhausted every night. They told me you’ve been out in the campo.”
“Yeah, I love to be out there in the mountains. I get restless if I’m cooped up around here too long.” He looked at the drink in his hand and ushered her into the living room. “I’m forgetting my duties as host,” he said. “What will everyone have? There’s coffee or hot tea, beer, whiskey, Scotch. You can see Father Jack and I are way ahead of you.”
Kate glanced at a table covered with bottles of liquor. All the comforts of home, she thought. Alejandro accepted a beer, and Señora Montoya and the nuns all settled for hot tea. She would have liked a glass of wine but felt self-conscious about being the only woman to have a drink. Father Jack was smoking a pipe, and its fragrance made Kate think sharply of home and her father sitting in his red chair in front of the fireplace. She took the chair furthest from the center of things. She was new; she should try to keep quiet today.
Father Jack opened the meeting with some statistics on the numbers of people coming to the clinic and the school. He then called for reports from each team member and finally sat back with a grunt. “Well, the big news we have this month is that the government is starting a new program of redistribution of the land. Tom has been trying to find out how this will affect our people here. As you know, many of them work on the lands of Alfredo Muñoz Pacheco. Few families here own more than an acre of land for themselves. Tom, will you fill us in on the situation?”
Kate watched the face of the Irishman as he spoke for a long time about the government’s new plan. Growing vehement as he spoke, he argued, “What we have done here is build a parish on the model of those in the States. I don’t think that’s what’s needed here. We need to go out in the campo and talk to the men, get them in groups to listen to their problems, see what they think they need the government to do.” His eyes were blazing, and his hands trembled a little as he brought his drink to his mouth.
Father Jack sighed and shifted in his chair. “Tom, we know what you think. You’ve told us a million times. Remember that our goal here is to work ourselves out of a job. In a few years we hope to turn the parish here over to the people.”
Sister Josepha nodded. Kate noticed how flushed the older nun’s cheeks had become, but when she spoke her voice was steady, controlled. “Father Tom, we’re not all called to promote a revolution. The sisters and I just go on day by day, healing the sick, teaching, visiting—something like Jesus did, I suspect.”
Frowning, the Irish priest’s tone was icy. “Just remember that I come from a country where my people were denied ownership of land for centuries. We’re not here to make everyone comfortable and at peace with the status quo. We have to provoke and unsettle and bother the hell out of the powers that exist. Our job is to disturb the consciences of the so-called Catholic elite.”
No one said anything for a few moments, and soon the talk moved on to other subjects. Kate, tense and nervous, kept quiet. After all, she thought, I’d better keep quiet until I know what I’m talking about.
After the meeting, Señora Montoya and Alejandro left, but the nuns stayed on to share the spaghetti dinner Marta had brought over. Father Jack brought out a bottle of red wine, and Sister Josepha nodded as the pastor held the bottle over her glass. Jeanne winked at Kate as she filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her.
After supper they sang a few Christmas carols, and Kate heard Tom’s voice over the others, slightly off key. She felt his eyes on her whenever she glanced his way, but he didn’t speak to her the rest of the evening.
On the way home Sister Josepha and Jeanne Marie shook their heads in mock despair at Tom’s tirade during the meeting. Jeanne Marie said, “Boy, do I get tired of hearing him put down our work.”
Kate felt more confused than ever. To her companions, Tom Lynch was a wild man. Yet his arguments made sense to her. If these experienced missionaries couldn’t agree on what they should be doing, how was she supposed to know?
She fell asleep thinking of Tom and wondering who had given him the lovely blue shirt.
So it had begun. Kate can’t remember exactly when she admitted to herself what was happening. She remembers only an inexplicable happiness suffusing her work as she taught her classes, met with the women who came in the afternoons to learn to read in Spanish, and occasionally drove out in the campo with Jeanne Marie on a sick call. She came to love the austere early mornings as she walked across the courtyard from the convent to join the other nuns in the church for Lauds and meditation. The sky was just lightening, the air cold and clean against her face. Every sensation seemed sharper, more penetrating in those days. Precisely at six the bell of the sacristy struck, and she looked up to see which priest was celebrating Mass that day. When it was Father Jack, Kate would feel calm