"Let's not disturb him," I said. "Let him finish his contemplation."
"He shouldn't be here. He should be with you."
"Maybe he's communicating with the Virgin."
"He may be. But even so, we have to go to him. If I approach him with you at my side, he will know that I have told you everything. He knows what I think."
"Today is the day of the Immaculate Conception," I insisted. "A very special day for him. I saw his happiness last night at the grotto."
"The Immaculate Conception is special for all of us," the padre answered. "But now I'm the one who doesn't want to discuss religion. Let's go to him."
"Why now, Padre? Why at this moment?"
"Because I know that he is deciding his future. And he may make the wrong choice."
I turned away and began to walk down the same path we had just come up. The padre followed me.
"What are you doing? Don't you see that you're the only one who can save him? Don't you see that he loves you and would give up everything for you?"
I hurried my steps, and it was difficult for him to keep up. Yet he fought to stay at my side.
"At this very moment, he is making his decision! He may be deciding to leave you! Fight for the person you love!"
But I didn't stop. I walked as fast as I could, trying to escape the mountains, the priest, and the choices behind me. I knew that the man who was rushing along behind me was reading my thoughts and that he understood that it was useless to try to make me go back. Yet he insisted; he argued and struggled to the end.
Finally, we reached the boulder where we had rested a half hour earlier. Exhausted, I threw myself down.
I tried to relax. I wanted to run from there, to be alone, to have time to think.
The padre appeared a few minutes later, as exhausted as I was.
"Do you see these mountains surrounding us?" he started in. "They don't pray; they are already a part of God's prayers. They have found their place in the world, and here they will stay. They were here before people looked to the heavens, heard thunder, and wondered who had created all of this. We are born, we suffer, we die, and the mountains endure.
"There is some point at which we have to wonder whether all our effort is worth it. Why not try to be like those mountains--wise, ancient, and in their place? Why risk everything to transform a half-dozen people who will immediately forget what they've been taught and move on to the next adventure? Why not wait until a certain number of monkeys learn, and then the knowledge will spread, with no suffering, to all the other islands?"
"Is that what you really think, Padre?"
He was silent for a few moments.
"Are you reading my thoughts now?"
"No. But if that's the way you feel, you wouldn't have chosen the religious life."
"I've tried many times to understand my fate," he said. "But I haven't yet. I accepted that I was to be a part of God's army, and everything I've done has been in an attempt to explain to people why there is misery, pain, and injustice. I ask them to be good Christians, and they ask me, 'How can I believe in God when there is so much suffering in the world?'
"And I try to explain something that has no explanation. I try to tell them that there is a plan, a battle among the angels, and that we are all involved in the battle. I try to say that when a certain number of people have enough faith to change the scenario, all of the others--everywhere on the planet--will benefit. But they don't believe me. They do nothing."
"They are like the mountains," I said. "The mountains are beautiful. Anyone who beholds them has to think about the grandness of creation. They are living proof of the love that God feels for us, but their fate is merely to give testimony. They are not like the rivers, which move and transform what is around them."
"Yes. But why not be like the mountains?"
"Maybe because the fate of mountains is terrible," I answered. "They are destined to look out at the same scene forever."
The padre said nothing.
"I was studying to become a mountain," I continued. "I had put everything in its proper place. I was going to take a job with the state, marry, and teach the religion of my parents to my children, even though I no longer accepted it. But now I have decided to leave all that behind me in order to be with the man I love. And it's a good thing I decided not to be a mountain--I wouldn't have lasted very long."
"You say some very wise things."