Read Online The Head of the Saint by Socorro Acioli - Free Book Online Page B

so they could be buried with their forgotten owners. Then they were buried with Father Zacarias’s blessing and called by their names, and the customary Mass was celebrated for each of them, seven days after their burial.
    Besides the priest and Chico the Gravedigger, nobody else was interested in the bodies. They just wanted to occupy the houses, to remake the town.
    Those who had no families used the larger houses to sell a night’s sleep for five
reais.
Hammocks were brought in from neighboring towns—admittedly at inflated prices, since by now everybody knew that Candeia had been brought back to life.
    There was absolutely no order to this activity. Candeia did have a mayor and a chief of police, who were actually father and son, but they only ever showed up occasionally, to pay the caretaker at the town hall, the cleaner at the police station and the health center assistant. Dr. Adriano was paid by the state government. They’d have a quick glance at the town, with the mildest look of contempt they could muster, and would leave again without a trace.
    Sometimes the mayor, Osório, would come to his house on his own, in the late afternoon. The house was one of a few he had in the area, but he preferred not to live in this one in Candeia and paid the town hall caretaker to maintain it. He’d park outside the house and spend the night there, dealing with the official municipality paperwork, and then leave. He didn’t have the slightest interest in the problems of the people of Candeia. Last time the townsfolk tried to tell him something, he didn’t come back for four months—and so didn’t release the paltry payment to the town’s three pensioners in that time. No one said a word, he didn’t get annoyed and Candeia died away.
    The activity continued at full pace. The biggest trade was in food and images of the saint. Father Zacarias stayed close to the head as much as he could, to try to understand what was happening, and blessed the statues people brought there, which encouraged sales.
    Francisco and his parents had never seen so much money. The radioman, Aécio, was endlessly announcing on Canindé radio supposed miracles performed by the head of the saint. It was like hypnosis—people just kept coming, more and more. Some of the houses in Candeia had their facades painted, and shop signs reappeared: “St. Anthony Hostel,” “St. Anthony Snack Bar,” “St. Anthony Barbers.”
    —
    Even though he had yet to hear the Singing Voice again, Samuel kept his resolve to run away. This was not what he was in Candeia for—he had come following his mother’s instructions.
    Samuel said he was tired. Until not long ago, his life had been about making money at the expense of the faithful Juazeiro pilgrims: singing prayers to Father Cicero, as a guide on the Santo Sepulcro road, selling hats and petitioner ribbons, taking photos of tourists. His greatest dream had been to live as long as possible with Mariinha, have a laugh with his friends in Juazeiro, go out with the young Horto girls, sell hats, sing some prayers. But this dream had died with his mother. Then all he had wanted was to get to Candeia, see his grandmother, meet his father and then kill him, if he had the nerve. It wasn’t looking likely. Old Niceia, his grandmother, was so fierce that no one had gone near her house. Samuel hoped that someone would and that they’d find his father inside—dead or alive.
    “Can you still hear the voices?” Francisco asked Samuel.
    “It’s harder now. Before, when it was quiet round here, I could hear them nice and loud. Now I can’t even hear the singing girl—there’s too much noise, too many women talking. Though there was one day when I heard Helenice, at four in the morning.”
    “What was she saying?”
    “Asking for forgiveness, asking God that all this not be a punishment,
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,
asking that He watch over Fernando’s soul.”
    “Right, Fernando was her husband. He died—it was