Like This Afternoon Forever. Jaime Manrique
home early from work and found Yadir in Lucas’s bedroom. Yadir was dressed, and about to leave, but she must have noticed how tense Yadir and Lucas became when they saw her, and how quickly Yadir left, mumbling a rushed goodbye to her.
When Yadir had closed the front door behind him, Ema said, “I don’t want that boy to visit you again when you’re alone, or I’ll have to tell your mother.”
Lucas nodded, but avoided her eyes.
“Look,” she added, “I’ve heard that deviates die of horrible illnesses after they have sex. That’s their punishment.”
The next time Yadir came to the door, Lucas opened it a crack and said, “Cousin Ema told me that if you come inside the house again, she’ll go to the police and tell your family.”
* * *
Yadir and Lucas never again said another word to each other. Lucas began to have nightmares that he had a terrible disease because of the things they had done. Two years passed and Lucas became frightened that his hormones had gone haywire. To diffuse his sexual feelings—which were present even when he was asleep—Lucas joined a dance group in school. The director of the group, Brother Mauricio, made learning the steps of the folkloric dances a lot of fun. Lucas noticed that his teacher favored him over the other boys. Whenever Brother Mauricio corrected one of his steps, Lucas heard muffled snickers.
Lucas had been a member of the group for several months when Brother Mauricio told Lucas that he was director of a religious community that had been founded ten years earlier. “Would you like to hear more about it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lucas said eagerly.
The next day, after classes were over, Lucas joined Brother Mauricio in his office. To hide his nervousness, Lucas sat on his open hands. Brother Mauricio pulled a chair so close that their knees almost touched. Lucas felt light-headed by the priest’s proximity, but he tried hard to concentrate and listen carefully, knowing that whatever Brother Mauricio said might be of importance in his life.
On his way home, Lucas mulled over what Brother Mauricio had told him about the community: its mission was to listen and console people in pain, to give spiritual guidance and assuage people’s fears of death, to spread Christ’s message of humility, and to serve the poor and the old. All that sounded admirable to Lucas. He believed it was something he would want to do with his life.
On another afternoon, Brother Mauricio asked Lucas to stay behind when all the other boys went home. It was only the second time this had happened.
“Lucas, I’ve been watching you carefully for a while,” he began, “and I think you have the potential to be a good priest and could be a serious candidate to enter our community. If you’re ready to practice the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, I will—with your permission, of course—talk to your mother and explain to her that you need to have an education that will lead to the priesthood.”
Lucas was so overcome he couldn’t speak. But he immediately worried about his continuing troubles with Latin. He knew that mastery of the language was no longer a requirement for being a priest, now that Mass was said in Spanish, but many of the required texts were in Latin, and his reading comprehension was inadequate. Though he was aware he had no particular talent that would make him an exceptional priest, Lucas believed that if he applied himself he would be adequately able to console those who suffered.
“Brother Mauricio,” he said with conviction, “it would make me happy if you would talk to my mother about my religious education.”
Lucas’s decision to become a priest was sealed when he read the story of Father Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, a nineteenth-century French priest. At that time, all priests were required to master Latin. Father Vianney could never learn the language well, yet he was ordained nevertheless. The bishop had said, “I will ordain him, though he lacks the brilliant quality of mind to be a learned Jesuit. We can send him to be the priest of Ars, a backwater in the Alps where the people are poor and illiterate. That will be his flock. He doesn’t need a brilliant mind to do that.”
Father Vianney made the long journey to Ars on a donkey. When he was in the vicinity of the village, a snowstorm hit and he wandered off the path and got lost. Half frozen, resigned to die, Father Vianney kneeled to say his last prayers. At that moment a shepherd boy appeared. The disoriented gaunt man wearing dark garments frightened the shepherd. “Don’t be scared, boy,” Father Vianney told him. “If you show me the way to Ars, I’ll show you the way to heaven.”
Soon after Father Vianney’s arrival in Ars, the shepherd boy fell gravely ill. Before he died, Father Vianney baptized him, the first person to be baptized in Ars in a very long time.
Lucas loved this story and he read more about Father Vianney. He learned that the people of Ars cherished Vianney’s simple but sincere sermons because his homilies related to the problems they faced in their daily lives. With the passage of years, the fame of his sermons spread throughout the region, and people began to flock to Ars on Sundays and on holy days to hear him. Toward the end of Vianney’s life, famous prelates from all over Europe would come to listen to him. Though Lucas often couldn’t follow the intricacies of the Jesuits’ discussions of their dogma, he felt he had been shown the path to becoming a priest through Father Vianney’s story.
At the end of the school year, Brother Mauricio told Lucas, “There’s a good Catholic school in Facatativá, where you could go for the first three years of your pre-novitiate. Your mother can visit you often. When you finish your studies there, if you still feel you have the calling, you can go on to the seminary and become ordained.”
As his dream to become a priest seemed more within reach, Lucas was both excited and afraid. He knew that if he continued on this path, soon there would be no turning back.
Perhaps sensing Lucas’s doubts, Brother Mauricio told him, “It’s clear to me you have a gift for consoling those in pain, and for spreading Jesus’ message of humility and service. Lucas, do you think you’re ready to devote your life to Jesus?”
“I’m ready, Father,” he said, without hesitation. At that moment, he prayed that if he became a priest his feelings for men would go away.
“Now all we need to do,” Brother Mauricio said, “is convince your mother to send you to Colegio San José in Facatativá.”
When Lucas told his mother the news, Clemencia, instead of being upset, said, “Nothing would make me happier than to have my son dedicated to the service of God.” She embraced him tightly and did not say another word about the subject.
CHAPTER TWO
facatativá
1992
It was at Colegio San José in Facatativá that Lucas met Ignacio Gutiérrez. Ignacio had arrived at the school just days before the beginning of classes. They spoke for the first time in the courtyard, during the free hour after classes had ended. Ignacio was standing by himself leaning against a wall, rhythmically moving a foot back and forth on the grassy ground. He stood out from the other seminarians because of his copper-colored skin. From the moment Lucas saw Ignacio’s shining black eyes, he was mesmerized. Lucas approached him.
“I’m Ignacio. I’m a Barí,” the young man blurted out. Then almost boastfully, he added, “I have no white blood in me.” Ignacio spoke with the peasant accent from a part of Colombia Lucas knew little about.
Lucas had heard of the Barí people before, but that was all—so he didn’t know how to reply. Ignacio had thick, gleaming obsidian hair and long, abundant eyelashes the same color. He looks like a panther, Lucas thought, wanting to touch the young man’s hair. He shook his head to break off Ignacio’s transfixing spell. “My name is Lucas,” he finally managed to say.
“I don’t like it here,” Ignacio muttered. “Do you?”
Lucas didn’t answer his question for fear of not saying the right thing and alienating this fascinating new