Speaker for the Dead

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      Quim sat miserably on a stool in the Bishop's office.
      "Estevão," the Bishop said quietly, "there'll be a meeting here in a few minutes, but I want to talk to you a minute first."
      "Nothing to talk about," said Quim. "You warned us, and it happened. He's the devil."
      "Estevão, we'll talk for a minute and then you'll go home and sleep."
      "Never going back there."
      "The Master ate with worse sinners than your mother, and forgave them. Are you better than he?"
      "None of the adulteresses he forgave was his mother!"
      "Not everyone's mother can be the Blessed Virgin."
      "Are you on his side, then? Has the Church made way here for the speakers for the dead? Should we tear down the Cathedral and use the stones to make an amphitheater where all our dead can be slandered before we lay them in the ground?"
      A whisper: "I am your Bishop, Estevão, the vicar of Christ on this planet, and you will speak to me with the respect you owe to my office."
      Quim stood there, furious, unspeaking.
      "I think it would have been better if the Speaker had not told these stories publicly. Some things are better learned in privacy, in quiet, so that we need not deal with shocks while an audience watches us. That's why we use the confessional, to shield us from public shame while we wrestle with our private sins. But be fair, Estevão. The Speaker may have told the stories, but the stories all were true. Né?"
      "É."
      "Now, Estevão, let us think. Before today, did you love your mother?"
      "Yes."
      "And this mother that you loved, had she already committed adultery?"
      "Ten thousand times."
      "I suspect she was not so libidinous as that. But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn't she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?"
      "What she was yesterday was a lie."
      "Do you mean that because she was ashamed to tell her children that she was an adulteress, she must also have been lying when she cared for you all the years you were growing up, when she trusted you, when she taught you--"
      "She was not exactly a nurturing mother."
      "If she had come to the confessional and won forgiveness for her adultery, then she would never have had to tell you at all. You would have gone to your grave not knowing. It would not have been a lie; because she would have been forgiven, she would not have been an adulteress. Admit the truth, Estevão: You're not angry with her adultery. You're angry because you embarrassed yourself in front of the whole city by trying to defend her."
      "You make me seem like a fool."
      "No one thinks you're a fool. Everyone thinks you're a loyal son. But now, if you're to be a true follower of the Master, you will forgive her and let her see that you love her more than ever, because now you understand her suffering." The Bishop glanced toward the door. "I have a meeting here now, Estevão. Please go into my inner chamber and pray to the Madelena to forgive you for your unforgiving heart."
      Looking more miserable than angry, Quim passed through the curtain behind the Bishop's desk.
      The Bishop's secretary opened the other door and let the Speaker for the Dead into the chamber. The Bishop did not rise. To his surprise, the Speaker knelt and bowed his head. It was an act that Catholics did only in a public presentation to the Bishop, and Peregrino could not think what the Speaker meant by this. Yet the man knelt there, waiting, and so the Bishop arose from his chair, walked to him, and held out his ring to be kissed. Even then the Speaker waited, until finally Peregrino said, "I bless you, my son, even though I'm not sure whether you mock me with this obeisance."
      Head still bowed, the Speaker said, "There's no mockery in me." Then he looked up at Peregrino. "My father was a Catholic. He pretended not to be, for the sake of convenience, but he never forgave himself for his faithlessness."
      "You were baptized?"
      "My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in."
      Peregrino was skeptical. It was too elegant a gesture, for the