The Priest (8 page)

“I heard what the Priestess was telling
you…” Mauricio didn’t know if she wanted to talk about it.

“I almost lost my baby and I was so worried
about her; she is so tiny and I couldn’t do anything to help
her.”

“But your baby is fine now,” Mauricio
repeated the Priestess’ words. He sensed something stirring inside
when talking about this baby Rosie was carrying. There was this
tingling in his stomach and the odd happiness that he couldn’t help
feeling.
Our baby…
he thought.
I know this is
blasphemous, but this baby could be mine… Actually, I’m almost sure
she’s mine.
The more he thought about it, the more all the
half-conversations he had accidentally heard led to that
conclusion, even though Mauricio was well aware that it went
against the core of beliefs on which the Ginecean society was
built.
I’m still alive after I was caught in Rosie’s room, and
the Priestess ordered I’m not to be touched in case they still need
my semen. Why else could it be?

“Yes, she’s a strong one.” Rosie’s voice was
happier now.

“She’s going to be fine,” Mauricio said
again. He had a sudden desire to hug Rosie. He imagined her small
body in the cradle of his embrace. It felt right.

“I like it,” Rosie said, taking him by
surprise.

“What?”
Can you read my mind?
Mauricio thought.

“I like the way you said it, that my baby is
going to be fine. You sounded so sure of it, as if you know. It
makes me feel better.”

Mauricio was pleased by her statement and
the longing to be in her presence became stronger. “You know what
I’d like to change at this precise moment?”

“No, what would you?” Rosie’s voice came
labored, as if she was pacing back and forth. Steps were resonating
outside.

“I’d like to tear down this wall in front of
me.”

“Why?” she asked after a second.

“I want to hold you,” Mauricio said without
hesitating. A silence louder than one thousand voices echoed inside
the cell and Mauricio shivered. He slowly slid from the bed to the
floor and threw his head back. He sat, staring at the dark ceiling,
waiting for her to say something. When it was painfully clear that
Rosie wasn’t going to say anything, Mauricio slapped his head with
both hands and then pressed them against his temples to mitigate
the oncoming headache. Then he heard steps coming closer.

“Mistress! What are you doing out here,
alone?” It was a young woman’s voice.

“Hi, nurse Celia. I like to come here at
night and sing to my baby. The eucalyptus tree keeps me company and
the view of the lake is too beautiful to miss.” Rosie’s voice was
subdued and not at all haughty.

Mauricio wondered why she was being nice to
the nurse.

“Don’t worry; I won’t tell the Priestess
that you leave your room at night. But you have to promise me to be
careful. Don’t do anything stupid to compromise the health of your
baby girl,” Nurse Celia said.

“I would never do anything to harm her. You
know that. She is the only thing in the world I care for,” Rosie
said, lowering her voice.

“You are going to be a wonderful
mother.”

For several minutes, neither the nurse nor
Rosie said anything and Mauricio imagined that they were
contemplating the view he would never see. He stared at the wall
instead, waiting for the nurse to leave. He wanted to talk to
Rosie, to apologize to her. He knew he had spoken out of line.

“Mistress Rosie, I will accompany you back
to your room. It’s very late and it’s starting to rain,” Nurse
Celia said with a tone that didn’t allow cajoling from Rosie.

“I guess that’s all for tonight then, my
dear friend.” Rosie had come closer to Mauricio’s wall. Her voice
resonated loud and clear through the window’s bars.

“You really like this tree, don’t you?”
Nurse Celia asked with an amused laugh.

“I do,” Rosie answered immediately.

Mauricio heard the steps growing softer and
was left with the urge to bang his head against the wall. He was
happy. And completely exhausted. He climbed back on the bed, hugged
the rough linen of his sheet, and fell asleep immediately. He
dreamed of Rosie and of a young girl with Rosie’s features and his
colors. The girl, three or four years old, was the most beautiful
thing he had ever seen, and he knew he loved her.

Mauricio woke up the next morning to the
sound of chirping birds, which he now knew lived on the eucalyptus
tree just outside his cell. The rest of the world was so close to
him, yet still miles away. But his happiness from the night before
lingered, and the sad consideration didn’t change his mood. Rosie
had called him ‘dear friend.’ She hadn’t been offended by his
words. He felt energized.

When the new guard came, he wasn’t surprised
to see a different woman banging good morning on the bars of his
cell. He thought that as women went, this one wasn’t terribly mean.
For example, she banged only twice instead of the usual half a
dozen attempts to destroy his ears. Although he couldn’t find
anything else decent about the guard, he decided it was enough.
Mauricio was surprised that, instead of taking him directly to the
deposit room as usual, she opened a door that led to a place he had
heard about, but had never seen. He was even more surprised when
the guard ordered him inside.

“You have ten minutes to eat,” the guard
said.

He had never seen so much food, and his
stomach started rumbling at the sight. He couldn’t believe he had
been admitted inside a dining room. And he was completely alone. He
ate until he felt his stomach would burst, and he still had time to
waste. The idea that maybe he should have been worried by the
unexpected boon passed through his mind, but he was full for the
first time in his life and yet he decided to reach for another
helping.

“Time’s up,” the guard announced from the
doorway. Mauricio couldn’t eat anything else, anyway. He grabbed a
few pieces of bread while passing the table and stuffed them in his
pockets, which he realized the guard caught him doing, but she
turned her head away. He started worrying.

“The doctor will take a look at you now,”
the guard said, without the customary sneer. Mauricio went through
the door she had opened for him and braced himself for the
worst.

“Remove everything and wear this gown,” the
doctor ordered Mauricio. He went to the corner behind a screen and
did as instructed. He felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. He was
subjected to the same treatment he received four years earlier,
down to the cold fingers probing him in an uncomfortable way. Even
the request at the end was the same.

“Fill the cup,” the doctor said.

Mauricio went behind the screen and did his
best not to disappoint the doctor. Somehow he knew that if she
wasn’t happy with the result, his day was going to change
drastically. He closed his eyes and tried to forget that on the
other side of the thin layer of rice paper, the doctor waited. He
breathed slowly in and out, and the image of Rosie appeared behind
his eyelids. Mauricio’s mind slowly relaxed and his body
followed.

“Done?” The doctor tapped on the screen’s
frame.

Mauricio closed the lid tightly on the cup
and put it on the window-tray at his side. The doctor heard the
click of the tray receding inside the window and told him to wait
where he was. He remained seated to contemplate the white wall
before him. Mauricio was good at waiting; he had done it all his
life. Normally, he just let his mind wander between thoughts. It
was his way to escape from his imprisonment. But this time,
something was off. The meal he had stuffed into his hungry stomach
was a sign of something he couldn’t fathom; the doctor personally
supervising his production was another clue of a larger picture he
wasn’t seeing.

“Well, at least you are good for something,”
the doctor commented.

Someone entered the room. Mauricio peeked
through the frame of the screen and saw his new guard walking
toward his corner. Shortly after, the imposing figure of the
Priestess filled the space, and the doctor bowed to her. He sat
down.

“We finally have enough to freeze. The semen
is in perfect condition, despite the treatment the semental
received during the last month,” the doctor said.

“Thank the Heavens I came back in time to
supervise the whole procedure,” the Priestess commented and then
added, “We are done with him.”

The guard moved the screen, one hand already
on the whip.

“It will never happen again,” the Priestess
said under her breath when her eyes found Mauricio, sitting on the
chair. He shivered at the tone of her voice.

The guard sensed his hesitation and tugged
him by his sleeve. He moved along but gave a last look at the
Priestess. She looked back at him with disgust. He walked, knowing
exactly what was going to happen. He wasn’t useful anymore. His
days as a semental were over. He was going to be employed in the
fields. Finally, he was going to see the sun. Finally, he was going
to have a place among the other slaves. This should have been the
happiest day of his miserable life, but he could only think that he
would never hear Rosie’s voice again.

He knew that she was going to leave him soon
anyway, but he thought that he still had some time to spend talking
to her from the safe haven of his cell. Now, it was all too sudden.
He followed the guard back to his cell, putting one foot in front
of the other automatically, so it came as another unpleasant
surprise when he realized that he was somewhere else entirely.

“Get in,” the guard commanded him with a gun
aimed at his head.

Mauricio thought that it was uncalled for
since the collar on his neck was already stinging painfully, and he
wasn’t even tugging at it. He climbed two steps and found himself
inside a small room, about the size of his cell, with two rows of
seats facing each other. There were two more men sitting down,
strapped to the seats and firmly shackled to the floor. His guard
pushed him into the first free spot and briskly anchored Mauricio
on the seat like the other two slaves. From the painful expression
on their faces, their collars were giving them hell, too. A
metallic shutter rolled down and walled the space where the bars
usually were.

The room was humming. Mauricio felt the roar
vibrating under his feet and spreading though his body. The guard
sat on the opposite row facing the three slaves. She, too, strapped
her body to the seat. The roar became louder and the seats moved.
Or, was it that the whole room moved with the seats? Mauricio
didn’t have time to speculate further about what was happening
because the most excruciating pain exploded in his neck and
traveled up to the roots of his hair and down to his toes. He
couldn’t help but scream as the pain spread to his teeth.

“Shut the collars off!” the guard yelled and
banged on the wall. A metallic sound resonated in the room. She
repeated the order twice and kept banging on the wall until someone
from the other side shouted back.

Mauricio noticed that the pain was gone, but
his brain wasn’t responding to outside stimuli. He kept
twitching.

“I thought you had shut them off already!” A
window on the wall opened, or more precisely, a section of the wall
went down, and the face of a woman bathed in a bright glow
appeared. Mauricio’s eyes were offended by the sudden luminosity
and he shut them tight.

“No. That was your job, not mine,” the guard
answered. “You better hope that these slaves didn’t suffer
permanent damage. The manager at Tarin is going to demote you as
soon as she finds out,” she added, almost gleefully.

“Why should she? Nothing happened. It was
just an oversight. Nobody died,” the woman behind the window
replied, ignoring the tone of the other.

“Tarin’s manager doesn’t like damaged
goods,” the guard kept pressing the subject.

Mauricio hoped that they would stop talking.
He was still in a considerable amount of pain, and the room was
moving, making him even more uncomfortable.

“They’re still in one piece,” the sitting
woman proclaimed with a shrug and disappeared behind the
opening.

Mauricio felt the urge to throw up. His
stomach heaved and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. In a matter
of seconds, the food he had eaten with such abandon was cast on the
floor. The man closer to Mauricio cringed and tried to move his
shackled leg away from him. The guard, whose boots had been soiled
by his breakfast binge, howled in fury.

“Great! That’s the last thing I need today,
a carsick slave.” She slammed her right hand on the wall behind
her. “Stop the van. I need to open the door for few minutes to let
some fresh air in.”

At her words, the roar ceased and the room
stopped moving. Mauricio raised his head and turned around in time
to see the guard standing up and pushing a button next to the
metallic shutter.

“Much better,” she murmured under her breath
when the wall rolled up with a clattering sound and the room was
filled with bright light and crisp air.

Mauricio wasn’t sure what he was looking at,
exactly. The quality of the light and the scent in the air were
completely different from what he was used to. When his eyes
finally focused beyond the brightness, Mauricio gasped and, at the
same time, the guard pushed him out. He hit the ground, his feet
fumbling in the air and his hands barely breaking the fall. The
rich flavor of dry dirt filled his mouth, tickled his nose, and
made him sneeze.

“I’m going to unlock your hands, so you can
clean yourself up. Don’t try anything, or you’ll regret it.” The
guard came closer, waving a key in her left hand while her right
was ready on the holster, showing him what her intentions were
regarding punishment.

I’m outside… I’m outside… I’m really
outside. I can’t believe it.
Since birth, Mauricio had spent
all his life inside, moved from one wing of the facility to
another. He had dreamed of this moment and recently, thanks to the
window in his cell, he had even had a limited experience of what
lay outside, which, in turn, had led him to fantasize even more
about seeing the world outside his cell. But he had never expected
that actually seeing the outside with his eyes was going to be so
intense as to leave him incapable of following the guard’s order.
I’m going to faint again. This, this air, is making me
lightheaded. I like it. It’s so bright out here, so many colors.
What’s that?
His head snapped to follow every little change in
the scenery. Something moved on his far right, but it was too far
away and too fast; a gust of wind transported small, light-green
leaves from a nearby tree to his feet, but they were gone already
by the time he thought of catching one in his hands.
Come back
here.