Speaker for the Dead

own boy, Libo, was shy, but even so he had several friends, and had won the affection of his teachers. Novinha, though, had no friends at all, no one whose gaze she sought after a moment of triumph. There was no teacher who genuinely liked her, because she refused to reciprocate, to respond. "She is emotionally paralyzed," Dona Cristã  said once when Pipo asked about her. "There is no reaching her. She swears that she's perfectly happy, and doesn't see any need to change."
      Now Dona Cristã  had come to the Zenador's Station to talk to Pipo about Novinha. Why Pipo? He could guess only one reason for the principal of the school to come to him about this particular orphaned girl. "Am I to believe that in all the years you've had Novinha in your school, I'm the only person who asked about her?"
      "Not the only person," she said. "There was all kinds of interest in her a couple of years ago, when the Pope beatified her parents. Everybody asked then whether the daughter of Gusto and Cida, Os Venerados, had ever noticed any miraculous events associated with her parents, as so many other people had."
      "They actually asked her that?"
      "There were rumors, and Bishop Peregrino had to investigate." Dona Cristã  got a bit tight-lipped when she spoke of the young spiritual leader of Lusitania Colony. But then, it was said that the hierarchy never got along well with the order of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo. "Her answer was instructive. "
      "I can imagine."
      "She said, more or less, that if her parents were actually listening to prayers and had any influence in heaven to get them granted, then why wouldn't they have answered her prayer, for them to return from the grave? That would be a useful miracle, she said, and there are precedents. If Os Venerados actually had the power to grant miracles, then it must mean they did not love her enough to answer her prayer. She preferred to believe that her parents still loved her, and simply did not have the power to act."
      "A born sophist," said Pipo.
      "A sophist and an expert in guilt: she told the Bishop that if the Pope declared her parents to be venerable, it would be the same as the Church saying that her parents hated her. The Petition for canonization of her parents was proof that Lusitania despised her; if it was granted, it would be proof that the Church itself was despicable. Bishop Peregrino was livid."
      "I notice he sent in the petition anyway."
      "For the good of the community. And there were all those miracles."
      "Someone touches the shrine and a headache goes away and they cry 'Milagre!-- os santos me abençoaram!'" Miracle!-- the saints have blessed me!
      "You know that Holy Rome requires more substantial miracles than that. But it doesn't matter. The Pope graciously allowed us to call our little town Milagre, and now I imagine that every time someone says that name, Novinha burns a little hotter with her secret rage."
      "Or colder. One never knows what temperature that sort of thing will take."
      "Anyway, Pipo, you aren't the only one who ever asked about her. But you're the only one who ever asked about her for her own sake, and not because of her most Holy and Blessed parents."
      It was a sad thought, that except for the Filhos, who ran the schools of Lusitania, there had been no concern for the girl except the slender shards of attention Pipo had spared for her over the years.
      "She has one friend," said Libo.
      Pipo had forgotten that his son was there-- Libo was so quiet that he was easy to overlook. Dona Cristã  also seemed startled. "Libo," she said, "I think we were indiscreet, talking about one of your schoolmates like this."
      "I'm apprentice Zenador now," Libo reminded her. It meant he wasn't in school.
      "Who is her friend?" asked Pipo.
      "Marcão."
      "Marcos Ribeira," Dona Cristã  explained. "The tall boy--"
      "Ah, yes, the one who's built like a cabra."
      "He is strong," said Dona Cristã . "But I've never noticed any friendship between them."
      "Once when Marcão was accused of something, and she happened to see it, she spoke for him."
      "You put a generous interpretation on it, Libo," said Dona Cristã . "I think it is more accurate to say she spoke against the boys who actually did it and were trying to put the blame on him."
      "Marcão doesn't see it that way," said Libo. "I noticed a couple of times, the way he watches her. It isn't much, but there is somebody who likes her."