Fombombo

by T. S. Stribling

There was a slow movement, among the idlers, toward the cathedral. Señoritas came by with their missals, beggars with their cups. Youths and well-dressed men took a last puff at their eternal cigarettes, tossed away the stubs, and wandered toward the gloomy temple.

Strawbridge had never been in a Roman Catholic church in his life. In fact, since his boyhood he had scarcely been in any sort of church. Now his desire for silence and a place to think out the riddle he had found, drew him through the deeply recessed archway of the cathedral. On one of the columns he saw the holy water, in a shell of a size that amazed him in a superficial way. He passed on in and immediately forgot the shell.

The interior of the church was a semi-darkness punctuated here and there with groups of candles flickering before the different altars. To the right hand of the entrance he saw a life-size effigy of the crucifixion. The head of the figure drooped to one side, and the whole body was painted the pallor of death.

With the impersonal and faintly interested eyes of an American tourist the drummer stood looking at this figure. As he stood, an old man with an aura of white hair shuffled up before the crucifix, laid down a bundle on the stone floor, spread a filthy handkerchief, and knelt stiffly on it. Then he stared fixedly at the effigy, and spread out his old arms to it, and his lips began moving beneath his tobacco-stained beard. In his earnestness his old head shook and nodded; he reached up his scrawny arms farther and farther, as if to pull down from the figure the good he was seeking. He arose and went; other men took his place—young men, well-dressed men. They went through their devotions openly and unashamed.

But Strawbridge was somehow shamed before them. It seemed to him a rather improper thing for a man to be seen praying in public. In North America, to pray in public is a sort of test of audacity, not to say brazenness. In North America one who prays in public seldom thinks about God; he thinks about how he looks and what the people are thinking about his prayer. Now, for these Venezuelans to pray to God earnestly and unaffectedly in the open made Strawbridge feel uncomfortable, as if they were appearing in public wearing too few clothes.

The women, on the other hand, somehow pleased him. As each señorita and señora came in with a white handkerchief spread over her black hair, touched the holy water to her forehead, lips, and breast, and then knelt to pray, it gave the drummer a queer sense of intimacy and pleasure.

Presently reading and responses began in one of the chapels hidden from the American. The voice of the priest would rise in a muffled swell and then taper into silence again; a moment later this would be followed by a hushed babble of women's voices. There was something sad in the reading and responses. The same words were repeated over and over and filled the cathedral with a monotonous and melancholy music.

As Strawbridge stood musing among these frail and unaccustomed pleasures, his mind moved vaguely about the question which had brought him there: what could the Venezuelans find in life to take the place of business? Upon what other cord could any man string the rosary of his days? As the women came and went, as the responses filled the church with a many-tongued music, as the odor of incense flattered the gloom, he pondered his question, but could find no answer.

The drummer found a seat near a column of the nave and relaxed, American fashion, with his legs spread out and his arms lying along the back of the bench. He stopped thinking toward any point and allowed his fancies to drift idly. The life of the cathedral slowly developed itself around him. A woman was on her knees just inside the altar-rail, scrubbing the tiled floor. Several acolytes in lace robes were gathered in the transept, perhaps waiting to take part in some later mass. A priest in his cassock loitered near a confessional, evidently expecting a penitent. Presently a little girl did come and step into the double stall of the confessional. The father moved into the other side with the slowness of a heavy man and with a mechanical movement lifted the little shutter in the partition. The child placed her face in the aperture and began to whisper.

Strawbridge sat and looked with a dreamy emptiness at the priest and the little girl. He could feel the bench pressing his body and catch the queer fragrance of incense. Presently the child stepped out of the confessional and began a round of the stations, kneeling and telling her beads before each one. A beggar entered the booth and presently went away. A few moments later, to the drummer's surprise, Coronel Saturnino came down the aisle and stepped into the confessional. The officer put his mouth to the orifice and whispered steadily for five or ten minutes. Strawbridge could see his profile against the darkness of the booth—a handsome, almost flawless profile, with a slight sardonic molding about the nose and the corners of the mouth even in this moment of confession.