The Priest (20 page)

“You’ll have a beautiful life,” Rosie
said.

“But I want to be with you.” Mauricio hated
hearing the sadness in her voice. “I’m not going anywhere without
you,” he said, even though he knew he was talking nonsense. There
wasn’t any life together for them. If he wanted to see her, even
through bars, it meant going back to his cell, hoping that Rosie’s
mothers would let her continue visiting.

“I feared so…”

“I prefer to go back if it’s the only way to
see you,” Mauricio said truthfully. He didn’t care to be free that
much. He didn’t even know what it felt like.

“You don’t have to go back. I—” Rosie paused
for few seconds, collecting her words. “—will reach you. When the
baby is born, I’ll leave everything behind and I’ll come to live
with you.”

Mauricio didn’t say anything, but Rosie
understood his silent question and answered immediately. “I can’t
come with you right now, because the baby is not well. No—” She saw
the panic in his face and hurried to reassure him. “—no, don’t
worry. I’ll take good care of our daughter and when she is strong
enough, we’ll reach you.”

“I love you,” Mauricio said again, feeling
that the hour had already expired, and he had so many things he
wanted to tell her. “I have something for you… a gift.”

“You have a gift for me?” Rosie’s eyes were
bright with tears, already.

“I want to give you something.” He took her
hands in his. “It means a lot to me, and after what you have told
me tonight, it’s the perfect gift for you.”

“What is it?” Rosie asked before opening her
hands to see what was inside them.

“My freedom,” he answered.

“It’s beautiful.” She slowly caressed the
smooth surface of the pebble Mauricio had given her.

“I picked it up from the ground the first
time I set foot outside. I kept it on me this whole time; you can
build a sculpture with it, if you want.”

“Thank you… this is the most beautiful gift
I have ever received. I’ll never part from it.” Rosie couldn’t
contain her emotions anymore. “You are the love of my life.” She
leaned ever so slowly and raised her lips to meet his.

Mauricio had never been kissed before. The
softness of her mouth met his cracked skin and restored him fully.
He felt the air leaving her body and it smelled sweet. His arms
went around her, embracing her tiny body, and she said his name. It
sounded pure. To this day, he never let anyone call him Mauricio
again. Nobody else had that right. It was hers. He was Mauricio
only for Rosie, for the rest of the City of Men, he was simply the
Priest.

“Priest?” Lucas asked with a worried face,
and Mauricio came back from the past.

“Yes, Lucas.” Everybody knew that his mind
tended to wander aimlessly, but only the kids complained about it.
The adults were too intimidated by his persona.

“You haven’t answered my question about what
you are going to teach tomorrow.” Lucas was the smartest kid in his
class; he always had an abundance of questions when he entered the
classroom each morning.

“Tomorrow, we are going to study the Ethical
Rights on which our City of Men is based,” Mauricio said, in his
best formal tone. He loved that lesson. He couldn’t wait for the
right time of the year when he taught about their constitution.
Normally, Guen and Arias made an appearance for the occasion;
otherwise, they preferred to stay at the Sanctuary with their
daughter, Cordelia. Even in the City of Men, where everybody was
free, married couples of different genders weren’t widely accepted.
Mauricio was still fighting that battle and it pained him that his
friends weren’t integrated inside the city they had helped build.
But at least they lived close to the city, still outside its
borders, but close enough.

Compared to Lucas’ home, Guen and Arias’
Sanctuary was just around the corner. When he was born, Lucas’
parents had decided to move to the Caves, a big natural compound
with a system of caves—hence the name—and springs. They weren’t the
only ones there; other families who didn’t feel safe in the City of
Men had joined them. Nobody knew exactly how many families were
there. They remained separated, but at least Mauricio had convinced
the Cavers to send the kids to school. Everybody trusted the
Priest’s words. He had promised that the kids would be safe with
him, and so they were.

While walking Lucas safely home, he
wondered, as he often did when he was with kids around ten years
old, how his daughter was doing. Maurice was ten now, and he
imagined her as a small replica of his beloved Rosie. He pictured
Maurice with chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and maybe freckles on her
nose. She would be funny, smart, and talk with her mother’s lilting
accent. Mauricio had never stopped waiting for Rosie, even if he
knew deep inside what she had bargained that night to give him
freedom: Rosie had given up her own.

He had kept in contact with Ginecea, and he
had read with tears in his eyes of the ecstatic news about the
First Daughter’s wedding. He had built a web of spies in all the
slaves’ facilities, and they were good at reporting anything he
asked. And he had asked to know anything regarding the First
family, anything at all. He had a box full of clippings from
magazines that he opened every night before going to bed. There
weren’t many pictures of Rosie after she had married; she and her
wife conducted a photographer-shy life somewhere on the marine
coast, away from the bright lights of Ginecea. If Rosie’s pictures
were few, Maurice’s were none. Rosie had never given permission to
snap photos of the baby. And so Mauricio had to imagine what his
daughter looked like, but he knew about her through what the press
wrote. He knew that she was a good student, that she was kind to
her mothers, and that she liked to visit the First House. He knew
she took ballet lessons and that her dream was to become the
youngest President of Ginecea one day.

He was proud of his Maurice and would have
given anything to talk to her.
One step at the time,
he used
to remind himself when he had bouts of melancholy. Every time he
freed a slave, it was a step closer to a better Ginecea. A Ginecea
where slavery was illegal. One day, men and women would live
together, free to love whomever they wanted. But, it was too much
to ask in a single generation. He knew that. It would take decades
to change current society, but someone had to start it. Someone had
to take the first step toward the realization of such a dream.

He had taken that first heavy step, and with
that step, he had laid the foundation for a better world; he had
also destroyed any chance to see Rosie and his daughter again. He
hadn’t known that when he started his journey of exile and
self-preservation he would create a place where dreams could
finally be dreamed. He hadn’t realized that because he was too busy
living for the first time in his life. The first nucleus of the
City of Men had been created by three desperate fugitives who had
nothing to lose and a courageous woman who had nothing to gain by
staying with them.

“Yes?” Mauricio looked down at Lucas,
pointing at his midsection with a laughing smile.

“It has been ringing for more than five
minutes.” The boy couldn’t help to be amused by the Priest’s
ability of losing track of reality.

Mauricio followed the boy’s finger and saw
his cell phone illuminated. He smiled at Lucas and opened the
battered phone.

“Leander?” Mauricio acknowledged the other
man’s easily recognizable voice.

“You’re late.” Leander was one of the few,
along with Guen and Arias, who wouldn’t call him Priest. But
Leander also avoided, if possible, calling him Mauricio, since he
knew that name was painful for his friend to hear.

“I need to escort an important person to his
home first,” Mauricio answered, winking at Lucas, whose smile
widened.

“Say hi to Lucas for me. Then hurry back to
the well.” Leander had the happiest tone.

“Is it working?” Mauricio asked.

“Yes, we’re waiting for you to do things
officially.” Leander’s voice was light. After so many months,
almost a full year of working double shifts, the new well was ready
to give potable water to the growing population of the City of Men.
They had managed ten years with several small wells that didn’t
reach deep enough, but had produced an adequate amount of rationed
water for the first group of citizens. At the beginning, it had
been difficult to find aquifers. They didn’t have any instrument to
locate water, only a strong will to survive. They had become
thieves by necessity. They had only stolen what they needed from
the women’s facilities under Mauricio’s direct orders.

“It’s bad enough we can’t even beg for what
we need the most, but we will not, under any circumstances, succumb
to the temptation of taking what is superfluous. We will educate
ourselves, and we will thrive, thanks to our labor. We will go to
bed every night knowing that we did our best with what we have been
dealt. Little or much. And we will wake up every morning with the
certainty that what we do is going to make a difference.” Leander
had written down what was universally known as the Priest’s first
speech. The nickname had come soon after, when people realized
that, while everybody was looking for their soulmates, he simply
thought about building the foundation for what would one day become
the City of Men. Mauricio’s asceticism, his gift with words, his
sharp mind, and most of all, his devotion to the mission of
creating a better world for everybody, had granted him the title
Priest.

Mauricio had always found his nickname
ironic. It was the male counterpart for the word “Priestess,” and
he wanted nothing to do with her, not even by a distant phonetic
connotation. She was everything that was wrong with Ginecea, and
whereas she had built her power on a castle of lies and
prevarications against one race, Mauricio wanted to free peoples'
minds and teach them the truth. He didn’t want power; he didn’t
like that the desert community of fugitive men and rejected women
looked at him as their leader. He only wanted to have a family.
Like Guen and Arias. Like Lucas and his parents. Like Leander and
Julius. He wanted love, like everybody else.

Instead, he went to his apartment alone
every night, as Lucas had pointed out. He always had a meal on the
table. The community cared for him, and he didn’t need anything in
terms of food, clothing, or shelter. But he longed for the family
that would never be and rarely accepted invitations to share his
free time with others. It was too painful to watch parents interact
with their kids or couples trying to hide their affection for fear
of wounding him. What was left for him was to dedicate his celibate
and indefatigable mind to the betterment of their society.

A communal well had been his pet project for
some time now. He had needed new geology texts to get an idea about
what was necessary to drill deeper than they had before. A
particularly thankful group of ex-slaves had helped him with the
logistics of getting the texts. They had stolen the books for him
from Sundial, a facility that was dangerously close to their
dwelling. He had studied the texts every night until his brain
could take no more, and finally, he had come out with a feasible
plan. Finding the perfect spot had been equally strenuous, but
Mauricio loved the challenges that filled his time and his mind
with positive energy. And now it was finally done. Water would be
available for everybody at least once a day. It was a great step
forward for the City of Men. It was the turning point that Mauricio
had been waiting for. Finally, they could start plowing fields
large enough to supply food for the whole community. Nothing fancy
at first, just basic starches and grains.

“I’ll come as soon as I drop off Lucas.”
Mauricio smiled and then added, “Thanks, Leander.”

“For?” Leander’s voice was muffled by the
sound of cheering people.

“For being with me from the beginning,”
Mauricio said, remembering the night a young man had risked
everything to help him escape.

“I got the best part out of the deal,”
Leander answered with sincerity and ended the conversation before
Mauricio could reply. Leander always felt guilty when talking with
him. As if Mauricio had gotten the short end of the stick, while he
had won the jackpot. Over the years, the sentiment had become
ingrained in their friendship, like a ghost haunting their happy
moments. Mauricio had tried to explain to Leander that he was happy
for him and that he deserved every moment of joy he had so
strenuously worked for. The Priest had celebrated Leander and
Julius’ union, and he was also the godfather of Ariane, the orphan
girl they had adopted. But no amount of reassurance on Mauricio’s
end could make Leander feel any better.

“And if you find someone whom you love even
more?” Lucas asked after some woolgathering of his own. It seemed
that while Mauricio was talking to Leander, the boy had kept
thinking about the Priest’s solitude.

“I discovered long ago that I’m a man who
has been blessed with one true love.”

“But you could try to live with someone and
maybe, after a while, discover that this person is nice. Maybe even
nicer than the other one you are always thinking of.” Lucas had put
a few thoughts together about fixing the Priest’s lonely life.

Mauricio was sure that the kid had also
written down a few possible names. “Well, I see your point… but it
wouldn’t be fair for this person you have in mind.”

“Why not? He is nice enough!” Lucas said
with great conviction.

“I am sure that he is more than nice. But I
am also sure that he is someone else’s soulmate, and as you can
understand, it would be a disgrace if he got stuck with me when he
could be with someone he could love with all his heart. Don’t you
agree with me?” Mauricio patiently explained.