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Around that time, missionaries from the Basto region arrived in Requião. The Maria da Fonte revolt had interrupted those men's fruitless apostolate. Marta received the news eagerly and wanted to attend the sermons. She said that she needed to save her soul. Feliciano had returned from Pernambuco with little religious devotion. Nevertheless, he respected other people's beliefs and did not oppose his niece's devotions. Father Roque advised him not to let Marta sink too deeply into mysticism. He should travel with his wife and take her away from that place. According to Roque, sermons and consecrated hosts could not cure Marta's illnesses. The former friar knew Frei João de Borba da Montanha's remedies well. He knew that the first would be to exorcise Marta as though she were possessed.
“They will destroy her, you will see,” the priest-schoolmaster kept saying.
There were four missionaries who set up their vestibule of paradise in Requião.
The first was Father José da Fraga, still young, clean and well presented. He had a grave and intelligent air. He had taken holy orders at Brancanes with the intention of preaching Christianity in China. Family interests and requests made him remain in Portugal. Even so, he had not abandoned his apostolic vocation. He had read Raulica and Lacordaire, and imitated the latter with some skill. Osório advised him to save his pearls for a less swinish audience. At dawn, the women huddled together before the pulpit. That way they could doze more comfortably during the sermon. The men said that God had not called him along that path. In their local speech, the priest was not suited to preaching.
The second, Father Cosme de Tagilde, was robust and middle-aged. He had written The Stairway to Heaven by the Cliffs of Golgotha and The Seraphic Way to the Kingdom of the Cherubim. He was a preacher of sentiment. He had previously been a sergeant in the royalist army. He had taken holy orders to inherit the property of a devout relative who detested the army. While a soldier, he had read novels by Prévost and Madame de Genlis. Those readings left him with sugary language full of tragic exclamations. He knew how to move mothers with tender images of children. He addressed the woman whose dead child was watching her from Heaven. He imagined the child holding out his arms and begging, “Mother, do not sin!” The child warned that if she were lost, she would never see him again. Cosme made his voice childlike and tilted his head with studied sweetness. He held out his open hands and rounded his lips like a child's mouth. Then he moaned, “Mother, oh mother!” with trembling voice and arms. All the women who had lost children then began to wail.
The third was the elderly Father Silvestre da Azenha. He wore a cassock so filthy that it deserved a place in the lives of the saints. He was a good man and incapable of lying deliberately. Despite that, he had mastered the topography of Hell and the genealogy of devils. He claimed that the legions were divided into squadrons, each led by a prince of vice. He named Lucifer, Asmodeus, Satan and Beelzebub as ministers of those departments. Behemoth was responsible for brutalising the faithful, a task the narrator considers unnecessary. Leviathan commanded pride, and Mammon held the department of greed. In the narrator's pun, modern science killed Mamona and turned him into castor oil for sinners' bowels. Silvestre also explained the rabble of incubus demons to the women. He told stories of women who were said to have become pregnant by those beings. In Latin, he said that they could even have intercourse with a woman against her will. The listeners did not understand the words, but they sensed the threat. They protested, crossed themselves and spat towards one another's heels.
Frei João de Borba da Montanha was the fourth and most important member of the mission. He had left the Varatojo convent in old age, with a weak chest and a chronic throat-clearing cough. He had few teeth, and his words came out whistling like a blackbird's song. For that reason, he worked chiefly in the confessional, where he harvested souls for Heaven. His greatest glory came from his supposed triumphs in exorcisms. Silvestre discovered devils in the world, and João drove them out. Hand in hand, they were presented as the terror of Hell. The vicar of Caldelas had previously entrusted José Dias's mother to Frei João's treatment. The narrator calls the friar omnipotent, but the tone is plainly ironic.
Frei João had paid for the third edition of The Sinner Converted to the Path of Truth from his own pocket. The work had been written by his fellow friar from Varatojo, Frei Manuel de Deus. He sold each half-bound copy for 720 réis. He called the book his bucket for drawing souls from Hell's sulphurous well. The devout women considered themselves more or less sunk in that well. For 720 réis, they climbed into Frei João's bucket. The narrator concludes with a single word: “Cheap.”
Simeão chose Frei João in agreement with his son-in-law, Feliciano. Marta remembered José Dias speaking to her hopefully about that missionary. José had believed that Frei João might remove the obstacles to their marriage. Now Marta wanted to confess to the same friar. She awaited that moment with anxiety, joy and almost seraphic excitement. It seemed to the narrator that her dead beloved was contributing supernaturally to that expectation. Father Osório saw the first signs of madness in that joy. From daybreak, Marta waited in contemplation at the church door. The missionaries arrived surrounded by hooded women with bleary eyes and iron-shod clogs. The clogs struck the churchyard grating that kept the pigs out.
After the mission service, the devout women received the host inside the church. The narrator describes their rough tongues and presents communion in deliberately grotesque terms. While the church remained silent, two stalls were being set up in the churchyard. The trays rested on folding stands and had little blue-cloth parasols. Women covered in road dust displayed religious goods there. Their legs were calloused and dirty, but they competed vigorously for customers. Old jealousies led them to trade insults outside the church. From outside came cries such as “Get away, drunkard!” and “Be quiet, you old lump!”
The missionaries' works were sold at the stalls, either in paper covers or bound. There were also the Rule of Saint Benedict, mission books, meditations and books of hours. They were joined by the Month of Mary, the Month of Jesus and the Book of Saint Barbara. The Stations of the Cross carried images that the narrator calls sacrilegiously dreadful. Some figures of Christ looked to him like idols from Bié. Next came scapulars of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of Sorrows and the Immaculate Conception. Others represented Christ's Blood, his Sacred Heart, the Trinity and Saint Francis. Saint Francis's cords and Saint Augustine's belts sold very well. Each belt had a bone button and formed, according to the sellers, armour against the Devil. The narrator jokes that flesh attracted the fiend, while bone drove him away. There were also prayers threaded on metal or on a simple cord. The most sought-after medals cost ten réis. They showed the Hearts of Mary and Jesus, the Guardian Angel or Saint Teresa.
Chaplets hung from strings or lay spread out in coils. The Seraphic chaplets had seven mysteries, each with ten Hail Marys. Those of the Immaculate Conception had twelve Hail Marys and three mysteries. The missionaries selected the chaplet according to what they called each penitent's spiritual leprosy. Some women could manage rosaries of fifteen mysteries. There was also the chaplet of the nine choirs of Angels and others of the Blood and Heart of Jesus. The greatest trade, however, was in jet beads against the evil eye. They guaranteed that genuine jet split in two when an enemy stared at it.
The hawkers of the drugs of salvation called Marta the devout woman and the brasileira of Prazins. Marta bought two of everything they offered her. Her favourite book was The Converted Sinner, in the edition produced by her confessor, Frei João.
The secrets Marta revealed in the confessional are impenetrable. Despite that, Father Osório suspected the direction of Frei João's questions. He imagined that the missionary had investigated her longing, dreams and sensual memories of José Dias. The suspicion arose from the remedy Frei João had prescribed. Marta was to read chapter thirty-three of The Converted Sinner three times a day. The chapter was entitled Resistance to Temptations against Chastity. Another piece of information merely strengthened Osório's hypothesis. Marta had told Dona Teresa that José's soul appeared to her in dreams. At times, even while awake, she seemed to feel José lying beside her. At such moments, she bit the pillow so that her uncle would not hear her crying. The narrator allows that Marta may have told her confessor details she hid from her friend out of shame. He does not, however, state that this happened. What is certain is that Marta declaimed the reading before the oratory three times a day.
The prayer began as follows:
“Most loving Lord, do not hide from me or leave me alone.” “The lion surrounds me to devour me, and its roars keep me from the sweetness of your love.” “I shall cross the world and climb to Heaven until I find my love.” “Daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, tell him that I am dying of love.” “My beloved is white and red, chosen from among thousands.” “He is white because he is divine, and red because he is human and wounded.” “Sweet love, where have you hidden?” “The signs you leave increase my longing and wound me like arrows.” “I shall die and faint if I do not find you.”
The prayer continued by describing the beloved's body. His hair was pure gold and, at the same time, black as a raven. They were also bonds capable of binding the world and setting it alight with love. His eyes resembled doves beside streams of water. They were gentle, pure, soft, humble and loving. His cheeks were beds of fragrant flowers, always beautiful and scented. Neither sun, cold, water nor wind spoiled those roses and lilies. The voice wished that the gardener would sow flowers in her own garden. She asked the birds, flowers and fish where that gardener lived. She then recognised that the gardener was the very beloved she sought. His lips were lilies that released myrrh and words of mortification. The soul longed to receive that myrrh and behold the colour of the lips. His hands resembled worked gold covered with hyacinths. In each hand, a ruby pierced the gold from side to side. His breast and inward parts were ivory and sapphires, signs of pure, strong and constant affections. The supplicant asked why that breast closed itself to the one who loved it. She feared falling into the enemy's hands unless her beloved showed her where he rested at midday. His appearance was Lebanon, and his body had the grandeur of the cedar. His throat was exceedingly sweet, for through it passed the voice and breath of his loving breast. “He is entirely beautiful, perfect and lovable.” “This is my beloved and my friend; if you find him, tell him that I am dying of love.”
Marta said the prayer aloud, with sung modulations and in a state of rapture. The narrator states that the text stitched together extracts and imitations from the Song of Songs. In his view, they were the most sensual passages in ancient Hebrew poetry. The narrator calls them neurotic exaltations: Teresa of Jesus's hysterical ecstasies and Maria Alacoque's hallucinations. He also includes the Portuguese Madre Maria do Céu, singer of the little birds of Vilar de Frades. He calls that language a sweet, languid and disturbing poison. The images suggested the skin and shape of a naked body wrapped in soft furs. According to the narrator, modern French manuals taught adolescent girls to converse with Jesus in this way. Those books presented Christ with the softness, shape and movement of flesh.
Between the incomprehensible God and Christ made man, Marta saw a figure she could touch. Her only point of comparison was José Dias, the spouse of her soul. Longing rekindled her nerves and gave José power over them. When she addressed Jesus, she clearly saw her lover's body among the clouds. José appeared pale as marble, with rings of fair hair like those of cherubs. He seemed to listen to her in a blue clearing in Heaven. Thus, every opening of the book renewed her courtship with the dead man in Heaven. It was precisely that book which her confessor had given her to drive sensual temptations from her soul and body.