We took for granted that Father Schneider was a saint. It was said that he was a saint and he looked like a saint. He visited lepers, collected money for missions, and beat his chest while telling us how our classmates from Seventh were giving in to tobacco and blaspheming. Stay pure, he begged us on the verge of Germanic and blue tears. He considered the older ones lost. Thirteen years and straight to Hell. Follow the narrow path, he advised, pointing at it in the air with his bony fingers. And so narrow.
One morning he gave us a terrible sermon. Of course, it had no effect on half the indifferent students in the class. No matter how saintly Father Schneider was, which no one doubted, the indifferent half didn’t pay attention even to the Blessed God. But surely the diligent half must have felt the intended effect of the sermon: increasing their fear of God. And Docampos? Neither one thing nor the other. It happened that he, a vocational slacker, the indolent paradigm of indifference, by passing so much, sometimes passed on passing; that is, sometimes he only paid attention to be contrary. So he listened to the homily. And it left him perplexed.
We took for granted that Father Schneider was a saint. It was said that he was a saint and he looked like a saint
Once upon a time there were two brothers. The older was a scoundrel without brain or heart, a womanizer, a drinker, a lazy man, a freeloader who never visited his old parents unless it was to get money from them that he then squandered in casinos. The younger was the complete opposite: a devoted son, husband, and father, generous, hardworking, austere, a man of faith who lived a spotless life. Great word, ‘spotless’. But, alas, bad luck wanted that, under unclear circumstances that Father Schneider’s parable did not clarify, for the only time in his orderly life the good man let himself be dragged one night by circumstantial friends who led him to drinking and a dive full of bad women. And in the midst of a sinful orgy, on his first and only night of sin, the lightning bolt of some instant evil that the Jesuit saint also did not explain, let’s say a stroke although at the time we did not know the word stroke, struck him down and, God help us, left him dry, unconfessed, and condemned without remission. And without mitigating circumstances. Please, what a scare.
Or not. Because it turns out that the other one, the joker, the party animal, the one who didn’t nag and wasted money drinking and doing whatever it was that was done with the bad women, the sinner, suffered a heart attack that left him lying in the middle of the street when returning from one of his escapades. But fate wanted an early-rising priest to pass by on his way to the parish, just in time to attend to our mischievous character in his agony. This one, knowing he was at death’s door, sincerely repented of his many sins and died completely free of guilt. And there he is, at the right hand of the Father… without even wondering where the sucker of his brother has ended up.
The younger was the complete opposite: a devoted son, husband, and father, generous, hardworking, austere, a man of faith who lived a spotless life. Great word, ‘spotless’.
Docampos went out to the yard dismayed. As deputy head of Sports, a minor position assigned to him to see if that way he would take an interest in something, he did not forget to go to the ball room to get the ball that was supposed to entertain our recess. But he ignored the game and came to sit on the bench where Nájera and I were eating tuna sandwiches with red peppers bought at Braulio’s store, one of the bus drivers to whom the priests had granted the business. Nájera was a wise man, although his classmates took a while to realize it. Most discovered it in the first year of BUP, when he loudly accused the Literature teacher of using sophisms. Such an intervention gave him an intellectual prestige that was never questioned again, not because the others understood what he meant, but precisely because we did not. It was not so much his wisdom as our ignorance that elevated him.
– Did you hear what the priest said?
– No. That if you hang out with girls you’ll get very bad grades…? Quit that cigarette soon if you don’t want to be a rascal?
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Nájera mocked the rhymes that Father Schneider had made popular by repeating them loudly in the hallways or through posters that challenged us from the bulletin boards on the wall.
– No. The sermon.
– The sermon? But you listen to sermons? That’s really good.
Nájera turned to me, chewing inattentively, unmoved.
– Docampos, ‘The Absent One’, pays attention at mass. He’s the best.
The Absent One. The nickname was given by Varona, an old and cynical Physics and Chemistry teacher. It described with scientific precision his usual attitude in the classroom. Docampos was about to reply to Nájera when Rojas, from E, his teammate on the soccer team and fierce rival in the yard, approached.
– Come on, Docampos, winning against you isn’t fun if you don’t play.
– Who are you going to beat, dummy.
And that was the end of the metaphysics. Although while Docampos ran toward the field, Nájera’s exclamation echoed in the yard.
– Don’t overthink it, man, God doesn’t exist!
Yes. You go ahead and shout those things, I thought. You’ll see if Schneider hears you. He’ll wash your mouth out with soap. But how are we going to beat E with Fede as goalkeeper.
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