The Head of the Saint Read Online Free PDF Page B

you said no one comes here, so how could you know?”
    “Because lots of people from
outside
Candeia have come. At first they used the head as a toilet. Then all kinds of couples used to come—the people used to call it the Saint’s Head Motel, although they stopped because they were afraid of the forest dogs. But people from the town really don’t come at all.”
    “Damned dogs.”
    “Well, I don’t believe a word of it. How can it be that women are praying over in their houses and the prayers end up here in the decapitated head?”
    “Aren’t they prayers to him?” Samuel asked.
    “I suppose the prayers must travel somehow to whoever they’re addressed to.”
    “It might be that this head makes people cleverer, because I’m getting an idea.”
    “Keep me out of it.”
    “Too late, you’re already involved. There are two parts to this idea: first of all we’re going to set up this girl’s date with the good little doctor on Friday.”
    “How?”
    “Hang on, I’ll tell you. Listen, Francisco: between now and Friday, you keep bringing me food, water, a sheet and pillow and those magazines with naked women. If you believe in my ability to hear things, you can get your pockets ready to earn some money.”
    “Sounds like a whole lot of trouble.”
    “But if it’s true, then I’m the guy who knows all the secrets of the women in this whole town. We can make money, and a lot of it.”
    “I don’t see how….”
    “You know all the people in Candeia; you can tell me who’s who. We’ll set it all up. Arrange a wedding or wreak chaos, depending on the individual case. Blackmail brings money. I don’t believe in saints, or in love. All I want is to be rich. I was born and bred selling things to pilgrims, man, trust me.”
    Francisco stared, deep in thought. “Are there more women talking?”
    Samuel pressed his ear up against the top of the head.
    “There’s just one, singing, but it’s quite quiet. She sings beautifully, this one. I don’t even need a portable radio.”
    “How many are there usually?”
    “Lots. But only about five or six I can hear clearly. The voices seem to be in the same places every day.”
    “Is she the only one who sings?”
    “The only one.” Samuel listened again. Nothing. “They must have stopped praying because it’s time to put dinner on the table. Speaking of which, where’s my food?”
    Samuel stayed in the shelter till the day of the doctor’s office hours, getting by with Francisco’s care and studying the phenomenon of the prayers that reverberated in the huge, hollow head of St. Anthony. Samuel used a piece of coal to mark the place where each voice came through and concluded that there were only four women he could hear clearly. The others were very weak, faltering like a radio with a broken aerial. It was during this more detailed inspection of the head that Samuel spotted the letter
M,
painted in white with a circle around it. Someone had left their mark before him, but it seemed to have no connection to the voices. Just an
M,
that was all.
    Francisco, who knew everybody in the town, worked out whom each of the voices belonged to. Samuel was glad he was no longer suspicious, that he had made Francisco see that there was no way he could have known so much about these women’s lives, their names, the details of their routines.
    The truth was, Samuel didn’t understand why he was able to hear the secrets that only St. Anthony should know. Whether it was a lapse on the part of the saint, or some trick of the Devil’s, there was no way of telling. It was the second-biggest event in Candeia’s history. The first was the day the engineer from Rio de Janeiro told the population that the giant skull could never be lifted onto the body at the top of the hill. He was right. St. Anthony’s head remained down on the ground forever. Evidence of an irreversible mistake that brought about the misfortune of the people of Candeia.

Mariinha was twenty-five when she