The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  "Oh shit, oh fuck, oh dear, cried the fairy princess as she waved her wooden leg in the air," he recited blandly, alone in his office.

  Sofia was offering a fair price. He could bury the transaction in "Obsolete equipment sales," maybe. The rocks were worth fuck-all as things stood. Why not sell one off? he thought. And who gives a damn what it’s used for?

  WAITING IN HER small rented room for Ian Sekizawa’s response to the proposal, Sofia Mendes stared out the window at the Old City of Jerusalem and asked herself why she had come here.

  In her first hours of freedom, she had decided simply to carry on as before. She informed the Jesuits in Rome of her new status, assured them of her willingness to act as general contractor on the previously negotiated terms, and made arrangements to have the agreement rewritten in her own name. There was a 30 percent advance payment and, realizing that she could fulfill the contract from anywhere in the world, she had used the money to buy passage to Israel. Why?

  Without her mother to light the Sabbath candles, without her father to sing the ancient blessings over the bread and wine, she’d lost touch with the religion of her truncated childhood. But after years of wandering, she felt a need to go home somehow, wanted to see if she was capable of belonging somewhere. There was nothing left for her in Istanbul—peaceful now, exhausted from achieving its own destruction. And her ties to Spain were too tenuous, too faint and historical. So. Israel. Home by default, she supposed.

  On her first day in Jerusalem, shyly, never having done so before, she’d sought out a mikveh, a place of ritual cleansing. She chose a place at random, unaware that it catered to Israeli brides preparing for their weddings. The mikveh lady who took care of her assumed at first that she was about to be married and was distressed to find that Sofia did not even have a sweetheart. "Such a beautiful girl! Such a lovely body! What a waste!" the woman exclaimed, laughing at Sofia’s blush. "So, you’ll stay here! Make aliyah, find a nice Jewish boy and have lots of beautiful babies, naturally!"

  It was hopeless to contradict the good-natured advice, and she wondered why she wanted to, as she allowed herself to be preened and cleaned—hair, nails, everything rinsed, smoothed and shined, her body made free of cosmetics, of dust, of the past. Why not stay? she asked herself.

  Wrapped in a white sheet, she was escorted to the mikveh itself and then left alone to descend the tiled steps, with their intricate mosaic designs, into the warm, pure water. The mikveh lady, standing discreetly behind a half-closed door, helped her remember the Hebrew prayers and urged her, "Three times. All the way under, so every bit of you is immersed. There’s no rush, dear. I’ll leave you now."

  Breaking the surface of the water for the third time, smoothing her hair away from her forehead and pressing the moisture from her eyes, Sofia felt weightless and suspended in time as the words of the old prayers drifted through her mind. There was a blessing for tasting the first fruit after a winter of want, now said for new beginnings, she recalled, when some turning point had come to a life. Blessed art Thou, O God, Ruler of the Universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us, for enabling us to reach this season …

  Perhaps it was the mikveh lady’s talk of marriage and children that brought Emilio Sandoz to mind. Sofia Mendes had kept her distance from men since that final night with Jaubert—too much, too early. Even so, she found the idea of priestly celibacy barbaric. What she knew of Catholicism was repellent, with its persecutions, its focus on death, on martyrdom, its central symbol an instrument of Roman criminal justice, appalling in its violence. In the beginning, it was an act of heroic self-control to work with Sandoz: a Spaniard, dressed for mourning, heir to the Inquisition and the expulsion, the representative of a pirate religion that took the bread and wine of Shabbat and turned it into a cannibalistic rite of flesh and blood.

  She had challenged him on this point one night at Anne and George’s, inhibitions weakened by Ronrico: "Explain this Mass to me!"

  There was a silence as he sat still, apparently looking at the dinner plates and chicken bones. "Consider the Star of David," he said quietly. "Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image—the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space." His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. "I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts— like eating bread and drinking wine—can be transformed and made sacred." Then the sunrise smile appeared, transforming his dark face like dawn. "And that, Señorita Mendes, is the best I can do, after three shots of rum at the end of a long day."

  It was possible, she admitted to herself, that one had misjudged. Out of ignorance. Or prejudice. Sandoz had made no move to convert her. He was a man of impressive intelligence who seemed to her clearsouled and fulfilled. She had no idea what to make of his belief that God was calling them to contact the Singers. There were Jews who believed that God is in the world, active, purposeful. After the Holocaust, it was difficult to sustain such an idea. Certainly her own life had taught her that prayers for deliverance go unheard, unless she wanted to believe Jean-Claude Jaubert was God’s agent.

  Still, Israel rose from the ashes of the six million. Jaubert got her out of Istanbul. She was alive. She was free now.

  Sofia left the mikveh that day with a strong sense of purpose, and when she got back to her room, she contacted Sandoz in San Juan and spoke plainly, without false modesty or bravado. "I should like to be a part of your project. I want not merely to make arrangements for the voyage but to be a member of the crew," she told him. "My former broker, who is in a position to make valid comparisons, can provide references that will establish my intellectual suitability for a project such as this. I respond quickly to new situations and have unusually broad experience, technically and culturally. And I would bring a rather different perspective to the problems the crew may encounter, which may prove useful."

  He did not seem at all surprised. Correct and respectful, he told her that he would relay her offer to volunteer to his superiors.

  Then came a meeting with the bizarre Yarbrough. He told stories and asked sly, shrewd questions and got her to laugh twice and at the end, he said in his unfathomable dialect, "Well, darlin’, the Company hired you a while back ’cause you was smarter’n hell and very damn quick on the uptake, and we already know you work harder’n six mules, and you get along fine with all these other folks who’re goin’, and I expect you can learn anything you put your mind to, which is gonna count for a whole lot if we ever meet these Singers. But what decides me, bein’ as ugly as two warthogs in a mud ditch personally, is that havin’ you around while we live for six, eight months inside a rock would prolly keep everyone else from pullin’ their own eyes out by the roots. I’ll have to check with the boss, but far’s I’m concerned, you’re in, if you’re game."

  She stared at him. "Does that mean ‘yes’?"

  He grinned. "Yes."

  Standing at the window now, she could see the Kotel, the Western Wall. Too far away to hear the murmur of prayers, she could watch the tidal ebb and flow of tourists and pilgrims, pointing, davening, weeping, placing small pieces of paper bearing petitions and prayers of gratitude into the spaces between the ancient stones. And she knew why she was here. She had come to Israel to say good-bye to the past.

  She heard her system’s message signal and opened the file, read Ian Sekizawa’s one-word reply and smiled.

  "Done," the screen said.

  THAT YEAR, SEVERAL superb works of Renaissance art were sold without publicity to private investors. At an auction in London, a price was found for what had previously been considered a priceless collection of seventeenth-century Oriental porcelains. Long-held pieces of property and stock portfolios quietly went on the market at calculated times and in carefully selected locations where considera
ble gains were available upon sale.

  It was a matter of taking profits, liquidating some assets, redeploying capital. The total needed, as Sofia Mendes predicted, was not an inconsiderable amount of money, but it did not beggar the Society by any means and did not even affect Jesuit missions and charitable projects on Earth, which were operated under current cash flow from educational and research facilities, leasing agreements and patent licenses. The sum accumulated in this way was deposited in a reliably discreet Viennese bank. Jesuits around the world were instructed to monitor the public news media and private data nets for any mention of Jesuit financial activity and to relay that information to the Father General’s office at Number 5. No pattern was detected, all that year.

  14

  NAPLES:

  MAY 2060

  NOT EVEN VESUVIUS could delay spring forever. As the weather moderated, Emilio Sandoz found he could sleep more easily in the open, lulled by waves and bird cries, his back against sun-warmed rock. He thought perhaps it was the sunlight on his closed eyes that banished the darkness even in sleep; he was less likely to awaken sweating and nauseated. Sometimes the dreams were merely puzzling, not terrifying. Or vile.

  He was on a beach, with a child from La Perla. He was apologizing because, though his hands were unharmed in the dream, he couldn’t seem to do the magic tricks any longer. The child looked at him with the strange and beautiful double-irised eyes of the VaRakhati. "Well," she said, with the confident practicality of the half-grown, "learn some new tricks."

  "Padre, c’è qualcuno che vuol vedervi."

  He sat up, breathing hard, disoriented. He could still hear the dream-child’s words and it seemed important to him not to forget what they were before he’d had time to think about them. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his forearm, resisting the impulse to shout at the boy for waking him.

  "—un uomo che vuol vedervi."

  A man who would see you, the boy was saying. What was his name? Giancarlo. He was ten. His mother was a local farmer who sold produce to restaurants in Naples. Sometimes the retreat house ran short when there were extra people in the refectory, and Giancarlo brought vegetables to the kitchen. He often hung around, hoping to be sent on an errand, to bring a message to the sick priest, perhaps, or to help him up the stairs sometimes. "Grazie," Emilio said, hoping this was thanks in Italian, but unsure. He wanted to tell the boy that he could manage the stairs on his own now but couldn’t find the words. It was so long ago, so many languages ago.

  Pulling himself together, he stood carefully and climbed slowly off the huge weathered rock that was his sanctuary, using his bare feet to find purchase, startling badly when Giancarlo suddenly produced a stream of treble Italian. It was too fast, too complicated, and Emilio was whipsawed between fury at being asked to understand something that was beyond him and despair that so much was beyond him.

  Slow down, he told himself. It’s not his fault. He’s a good kid, probably just curious about a man wearing gloves but no shoes …

  "I don’t understand. I’m sorry," he said finally, moving again, hoping the sentiment would get through. The boy nodded and shrugged and offered him a hand he didn’t dare accept, to steady him on the last jump to the ground. He wondered then if Giancarlo knew about his hands, and if he’d be frightened by them. It would be another week before he could try the braces again. In the meantime, he wore Candotti’s fingerless gloves, which had been, as John predicted, a good and simple solution to some problems: concealment, for example.

  Emilio leaned against the rock for a time, and then smiled and jerked his head across the beach toward the long stone stairway. Giancarlo smiled back and they walked along in companionable silence. The boy stayed close as they worked their way up the bluff, killing time by hopping with two feet from step to step, spending his energy with the profligacy of the young and healthy, uncomfortable in the presence of enfeeblement. It was slow going but they got all the way up the stairs without pausing more than a few moments now and then.

  "Ecco fatto, padre! Molto bene!" Giancarlo said, in the encouraging if slightly patronizing tone used by well-meaning adults addressing small children who succeed at something very simple.

  Recognizing both the words and the attitude, Emilio realized in time that the child would pat him on the back; expecting the touch, he was able to tolerate it and gravely gave the child his thanks again, sure now that grazie was Italian. And once again, he veered unsteadily, warmed by the good-heartedness of this child, staggered by mourning for another. With a gesture and a smile that took a great deal of effort, he gave the boy leave to go. Then he rested on a stone bench at the top of the stairs, to give himself time to recover before going in.

  The habit of obedience was not extinguished in him; summoned, he appeared, even if the fear made his heart pound. It took him longer to get a grip on his feelings than it did to get over the climb from the beach. Regular hours, regular food, regular exercise, on orders from the Father General. Given half a chance, his body was healing, repairing itself. Hybrid vigor, Anne would have said, half-seriously. The strengths of two continents.

  He thought sometimes of the peculiar peacefulness he’d experienced toward the end of the voyage back, watching blood seep from his hands and thinking, This will kill me, and then I can stop trying to understand.

  He wondered then if Jesus expected gratitude as Lazarus emerged, stinking, from the crypt. Maybe Lazarus was a disappointment to everyone, too.

  THE SHORT, STOCKY man waiting for him was almost past middle age, wearing a black skull cap and a dark plain suit. A rabbi, Emilio thought, his heart sinking. A relative of Sofia’s, a second cousin perhaps, here to demand an accounting.

  The man had turned at the sound of Emilio’s footsteps. Smiling a little sadly through a full and curling beard mostly gone to gray, he said, "No me conoces."

  A Sephardic rabbi might use Spanish but would not have addressed a stranger so familiarly. Emilio felt himself slide into helpless frustration and looked away.

  But the man saw his bewilderment and seemed to sense his fragile state of mind. "I’m sorry, Father," he said. "Of course, you wouldn’t recognize me. I was only a kid when you left, not even shaving yet." He laughed, pointing to his beard. "And now, as you see, I still don’t shave."

  Embarrassed, Emilio started to apologize and back away when the stranger suddenly let rip a torrent of Latin insults and taunts, the grammar flawless, the content appalling. "Felipe Reyes!" Emilio breathed, mouth open with astonishment. He stepped back, the surprise was so great. "I can’t believe it. Felipe, you’re an old man!"

  "Things like that happen, if you wait long enough," Felipe said, grinning. "And only fifty-one! Not so old. Mature, we like to call it."

  For a few moments, they stood and looked at each other in wonderment, taking in the changes, visible and implied. Then Felipe broke the spell. Waiting for Emilio to appear, he had drawn a couple of chairs to either side of a small table near a window in the large open room and, laughing again, he motioned Emilio across and pulled out a chair for him. "Sit down, sit down. You’re too thin, Father! I feel like I should order you a sandwich or something. Don’t they feed you here?" Felipe almost said something about Jimmy Quinn but thought better of it. Instead, he fell quiet as they sat together, beaming at Sandoz, giving him time to get over the shock.

  Emilio finally burst out, "I thought you were a rabbi!"

  "Thank you," Felipe said comfortably. "As a matter of fact, you made a priest out of me. I am a Jesuit, old friend, but I teach at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. Me! A professor of comparative religion!" And he laughed delightedly at Emilio’s amazement.

  For the next hour, in the language of childhood, they reminisced about La Perla. It was only five or six years ago for Emilio and he found to his surprise that he could recall more names than Felipe, but Reyes knew what had happened to everyone and had a hundred stories, some funny, some sad. Of course, it had been almost forty years since Emilio had left;
he shouldn’t have been surprised that so much of the narrative came down to a litany of deaths, and yet …

  His parents were long gone but there was his brother to find out about. "Antonio Luis died a couple of years after you left, Father," Felipe told him.

  "How?" he made himself ask.

  "Just like you’d expect." Felipe shrugged and shook his head. "He was using product, man. Always screws them up in the end. He had no judgment. He was skimming cash and the Haitians laid him down."

  His left hand hurt like hell and the headache was making it hard to concentrate. So many dead, he thought. So many dead …

  "… so Claudio sold the restaurant to Rosa, but she married this pendejo who drove the place into the ground. They lost it a few years later. She divorced him. Never got back on her feet again, really. But remember Maria Lopez? Who worked for Dr. Edwards? Father? Do you remember Maria Lopez?"

  "Yes. Sure." Squinting now against the light, Emilio asked, "Did Maria end up going to medical school?"

  "No way." Felipe paused to smile thanks at a brother who brought them both cups of tea, unasked for. Neither drank. Hands in his lap, Felipe continued, "But she got out. Dr. Edwards left her a pile of money, did you know that? Maria went to the University of Krakow Business School and ended up making an even bigger pile of money. Married a Polish guy. They never had children. But Maria set up a scholarship fund for La Perla kids. Your work is still bearing fruit, Father."

  "That wasn’t my doing, Felipe. That was Anne." It came to him that it must have been Anne and George who’d bought out Sofia’s contract. He remembered Anne laughing about how much fun it was to give away money they’d saved for retirement. He remembered Anne laughing. He wanted Felipe to leave.

  Felipe saw the distress but went on, voice quiet, insistent on the good that Sandoz had done. The trees planted on Chuuk Island had matured; a man who’d learned to read and write as a teenager in the Jesuit literacy program became a revered poet, his work illuminated by Arctic beauty and the souls of his people. "And remember Julio Mondragón? That kid you got to quit defacing buildings and paint the chapel? He is a tremendous big deal now! His stuff goes for amazing prices and it is so beautiful, sometimes even I think it’s worth the money. People come to the chapel to see his early work, can you imagine?"