That night I couldn’t sleep. Roaming about the courtyard, I saw the flickering light of a single candle burning in the kitchen, accessed from the fountain patio. Through the doorway I could see the shadows on the walls and ceiling dance about the large room. Curious, I slipped in to see who was there.A whiskered Father Hernandez was seated on a stool, making for a tranquil moment. His lips were pursed up as he read the yellowed pages of a black leather bond Bible on the table before him. A pot of water was steaming on a cast iron cook stove fire behind him. As I crossed the threshold of the doorway those prominent brown eyes of his looked up at me with a stony greeting. He was arrested in deep thought.
“Disculpe, Father,” I said feeling embarrassed to have intruded upon him.
“Que es, my son?” His thin lips departed underneath his high boned weathered cheeks of a saintly face.
For a moment I stood across the table from him. I forgot my concerns. Father Hernandez, patiently waiting for my response, lifted one eyebrow then the other. I was under the eye of a glorious man who led a glorious struggle against tyranny in this part of the world.
“My son, it is foolish to make a long prologue of your account and then be short in the confession.”
I told Father Hernandez that I couldn’t sleep and wanted to get some fresh air.
“I’m not Catholic and don’t believe in confession,” I said with an honest face.
“Of course, it is the way of all men in the beginning,” he said. “To God I speak Latin; to the Church I speak Spanish; to the Indians I speak Mayan, but with foreigners I speak English.”
He closed the book he was reading and slowly got up to go to the pot of steaming water. I noticed the title, The Anahuac Mythology.
“Would you like some coffee?” he offered. “The beans are from our own finca.”
I willingly obliged him. He took two cups with saucers from the kitchen basin where the diner’s dishes had been washed and stacked. Opening up a jar of ground coffee that sat on the rough hued wooden table, he brewed the coffee by putting in a spoonful of ground coffee into the empty cups, and then poured the hot water.
Carefully, he put a saucer over each cup to let it steep. Father Hernandez, could have been performing communion for his worshipers, his mannerisms were so ritualized.
“Lechi?” he asked turning to a small cooler and taking out a pitcher of milk.
“Si, gracias,” I said sitting down on a stool next to the table. He sat down across from me with sustained earnestness.
“Perhaps you have never heard a straightforward confession, so you don’t know exactly what I’m asking of you.”
He was right. I never had gone to church. In my youth, my father wasn’t much on religion. He was a journalist, a critic of the hypocrisy of humanity. Not that there wasn’t some sense of spirituality in our lives, but dogmatic religion wasn’t his idea of finding peace of mind.
Father Hernandez searched the darken corners of the kitchen for a moment.
“I will tell you my own confession,” Father Hernandez went on to say. “At my age it becomes a time to meet death. I have shook hands with life long enough. My own life at best has been a monstrous boil on the face of God. You see, when I was a child, I was taken to a traveling circus, an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities. Is this God’s creation? I asked my parents. They could not give me an answer. That is why I became a priest. I wanted to know how God could create such afflictions of the flesh. All my years of devotion to God, to live as Christ, I have only yearned to depart this world.”
I could understand the Father’s dilemma.
“It is a paradox wrapped in the mystery of an enigma,” I interjected.
Anyone who has the ability to foretell the future will show you a greater ability to explain why it didn’t happen afterwards. This kind of knowledge doesn’t edify us. Instead, such talk does its best to distract us from our true purpose and nothing more.
“And . . . ” he pointed his bony finger directly at me, “man seems to demand more of God then God demands of man. This is why we have a merciful god.”
With that said Father Hernandez took the saucers off of our coffee cups, placing them underneath. He ceremoniously poured some milk into mine then his, stirring the coffee with a small tarnished silver spoon. The steam rose with a strong aromatic aroma. The smell revived my senses.
“Sometimes I like to mix in Mexican chocolate as a treat.” Father Hernandez was humoring me but still behind the light heartedness there was a sober intent. He enjoyed how I listened thoughtfully to the details of his life in El Desempeno. We both had found some solace in the lonely darkness of the night. The cordial ambience encouraged him to continue.
“There is one incident that happened not too long ago,” Father Hernandez said shifting into a grave tone of voice. He told me that it was of importance for me in regards to the expedition with Dr. Hornsby. He cleared his throat and began.
“Along the shores of the Rio Usumacinta some American archeologists found a large stone stele inscribed with Mayan hieroglyphics, buried in some temple ruins. It was not far from El Desempeno. One of the scientists claimed it had Mayan inscriptions dating back thousands of years. So, the archeologist got permission from the Mexican government to take it back to his university to put it on display in a museum.”
Father Hernandez explained that they didn’t ask the local Chols about taking the stele, which was used in their sacred rituals. So when the expedition arrived with their team of men to haul out the heavy stone, they met stiff resistance. The archeologists presented their document from the Mexican government to the Chols to prove they had a right to take it.
But a cadre of armed Chol men emerged from the jungle, forcing the archeologists to strip down to their underwear. They told them never to come back or they would be killed. The archeologist team had to forage through the jungle for days before being rescued along the Guatemalan side of the river by a paramilitary patrol boat. So far the stone stele has remained.
"The flame of a candle gives light, but it also burns," Father Hernandez looked thoughtful as he spoke his wisdom, absorbed in the flickering flame of the candle on the table between us.
I sensed that he was trying to influence me about the moral principle of charity in the wake of looters and scientists storming into the Chiapas region in search of valuable Mayan treasures.
“The fashions of civilizations pass away. Only the truth of their existence remains as sanctified graves. My grave, too, will be my victory.” Father Hernandez sipped the last of his coffee.
Setting the hand made ceramic cup down on the table, he looked weary. But with a deep breath he perked up and said, “There is no mystery. There are no secrets. It is all common sense. We are all seeds of . . . Elohim, the Creator of the Universe.”
“Elohim, Father?” I inquired.
“Strictu sensu -- translated it combines gods and goddesses. Without the spirit of the feminine and masculine, religion is total atheism. The intellectual mammal, Western man, tries to rise from the earthly mud without Elohim’s assistance. Instead, the occidentals embody the sinister curse of ignorance and perpetuate the hubris of self-deception. They make deals with the devil and pray to God for forgiveness.”
Father Hernandez rose up from his stool.
“Buenas noches, my son,” he said with a twinkling eye and quietly walked out the kitchen disappearing into courtyard and the darkness of night.
He left me there in the ardent nakedness of his wisdom. I felt he had just given himself permission to die.
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