I saw a young priest, glossy as a blackbird, as if he had stepped from his anointing a moment ago: his purple stole and cord or cincture tied loosely, his polished shoes unexpectedly secular beneath a pleated, lace-hemmed alb of linen cloth. His name had lain undisturbed for years like an old bicycle wheel in a ditch ripped at last from under jungling briars, wet and perished. My arms were open wide but I could not say the words. ‘The rain forest,’ he said, ‘you’ve never seen the like of it. I lasted only a couple of years. Bare-breasted women and rat-ribbed men. Everything wasted. I rotted like a pear. I sweated masses …’ His breath came short and shorter. ‘In long houses I raised the chalice above headdresses. In hoc signo … On that abandoned mission compound, my vocation is a steam off drenched creepers.’ I had broken off from the renunciation while he was speaking, to clear the way for other pilgrims queueing to get started.
