The Sum of Our Days Read Free

same uniformed woman who had taken my handbag. At that time she still had a shred of innocence, but six years later, when she escaped from the care of the Filipino doctor in the hospital, there was nothing left of the girl I had met in that prison. At twenty-six, she looked sixty.
    When we left the jail it was raining and we ran, soaking wet, the two blocks to the parking garage where we had left the car. I asked Willie why he treated his daughter so coldly, why he didn’t place her in a rehabilitation program instead of leaving her behind bars.
    â€œShe’s safer there,” he replied.
    â€œCan’t you do anything? She has to have some treatment!”
    â€œIt’s pointless, she has never wanted to accept help, and I can’t force her, she’s of age.”
    â€œIf she were my daughter I would move heaven and earth to save her.”
    â€œShe isn’t your daughter,” he told me with a kind of mute resentment.
    At the time, a young Christian was hanging around Jennifer, one of those alcoholics redeemed by the message of Jesus, who have the same fervor for religion they once had devoted to the bottle. We saw him occasionally at the prison on visiting day, always with Bible in hand and wearing the beatific smile of God’s chosen. He greeted us with the compassion reserved for those who live in the darkness of error, a tone that drove Willie to frenzy but that had the desired effect on me: it made me feel guilty. It takes very little to make me feel guilty. Sometimes he took me aside to talk to me. While he was quoting the New Testament—“ Jesus said to the sinning woman, Let he who is without sin cast the first stone ”—I observed his bad teeth with fascination and tried to protect myself from his saliva spray. I have no idea how old he was, but when he wasn’t talking he seemed very young—maybe because of his freckles and the way he reminded me of a cricket—but that impression disappeared the minute he began preaching, all exorbitant gestures and strident voice. At first he tried to draw Jennifer into the ranks of the just by using the logic of his faith, but she was immune; then he opted for modest gifts, which had better results. For a handful of cigarettes she would tolerate for a while his reading passages from the Gospel.
    When Jennifer got out of jail, he was waiting at the gate of the prison, dressed in a clean shirt and reeking of cologne. He often called us late at night to give us news of his protégée, and to threaten Willie, telling him he must repent of his sins and accept the Lord in his heart; then he could receive the baptism of the elect and rejoin his daughter in the shelter of divine love. He did not know whom he was dealing with: Willie is the son of a bizarre preacher; he grew up in a tent where his father, with a fat, tame snake rolled about his waist, imposed on believers his invented religion, which was why when he sniffed even a hint of a sermon, he split. The evangelical was obsessed with Jennifer, drawn to her like a moth to the flame. He was torn between his mystic fervor and his carnal passion, between saving the soul of this Mary Magdalene and taking his pleasure of her somewhat battered, but still exciting, body, something he confessed to us with such candor that we could not make fun of him. “I shall not fall into the delirium of concupiscence; no, I shall wed her,” he assured us with that strange vocabulary he had, and immediately treated us to a lecture on chastity in matrimony that left us speechless. “This guy is either a complete idiot or he’s gay,” was Willie’s comment, but he nevertheless clung to the idea of that marriage because that good-intentioned wretch might rescue his daughter. However, when her suitor, on his knees, set forth his plan to Jennifer, her response was a burst of laughter. That preacher was killed, brutally beaten to death, in a bar in the port, where he had