A lady of perdida

The people of Perdida live in a peculiar limbo, their village lost somewhere on the border between Portugal and Spain. As insular as they are isolated, their church has no regular priest. Instead they must rely on the infrequent visits of a man on a donkey to bless their marriages, baptise their children, bury their dead and hear their confessions. When the peripatetic priest announces that this will be his last visit, however, that he has suffered a loss of faith, the people of the village are thrown into a panic. How can they ever sin again -the indolent cork cutter and the drunken fisherman, the maker of the copulating clocks and the ladies of the brothel- if there can be no absolution? And what miracles can they conjure which might restore the fallen priest´s faith? What temptations can they put in his way to persuade him to stay with them?