The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  Felipe Reyes looked at his superior for a moment longer and then sank abruptly onto the cool stone of a garden bench, surrounded by summer blossoms in dazzling sunlight, shaken and sickened and unconvinced that any of it was necessary. There were sunflowers and brilliant yellow daylilies, delphinium and liatris and gladioli, and the scent of roses from somewhere nearby. The swallows were out now, as the evening approached, and the insect noise was changing. The Father General sat down beside him.

  "Have you ever been to Florence, Reyes?"

  Felipe sat back, open-mouthed with disgusted incomprehension. "No," he said acidly. "I haven’t felt much like touring. Sir."

  "You should go. There’s a series of sculptures there by Michelangelo that you should see. They are called The Captives. Out of a great formless mass of stone, the figures of slaves emerge: heads, shoulders, torsos, straining toward freedom but still held fast in the stone. There are souls like that, Reyes. There are souls that try to carve themselves from their own formlessness. Broken and damaged as he is, Emilio Sandoz is still trying to find meaning in what happened to him. He is still trying to find God in it all."

  It took Felipe Reyes, blinking, several moments to hear what he’d been told, and if he was too stiff-necked to look at Giuliani for the time being, he was able at least to admit that he understood. "And by listening, we help him."

  "Yes. We help him. He will have to tell it again and again, and we will have to hear more and more, until he finds the meaning." In that instant, a lifetime of reason and moderation and common sense and balance left Vincenzo Giuliani feeling as weightless and insubstantial as ash. "He’s the genuine article, Reyes. He has been all along. He is still held fast in the formless stone, but he’s closer to God right now than I have ever been in my life. And I don’t even have the courage to envy him."

  THEY SAT THERE for a long while, in the late August afternoon, the light golden and the air soft, the small near sounds of the garden punctuated by a dog’s barking in the distance. John Candotti joined them after a time. He sat heavily on the ground across the garden walkway from their bench and put his head in his hands.

  "It was hard," the Father General said.

  "Yes. It was hard."

  "The child?"

  "The closest legal term might be involuntary manslaughter." John lay back, flattening some ground cover, unable to stay upright any longer. "No," he amended after a time. "It wasn’t an accident. He meant to kill, but in self-defense. That Askama was the one who died—that was an accident."

  "Where is he now?"

  Candotti, drained, looked up at them. "I carried him up to his room, sleeping like the dead. That’s an awful phrase. Anyway, asleep. Ed’s with him." There was a pause. "I think it did him good. It sure as hell didn’t do me any good to hear it, but I really think he’s better now." John put his hands over his eyes. "To dream of all that. And the children … Now we know."

  "Now we know," Giuliani agreed. "I’m sitting here trying to understand why it seemed less awful when I thought it was prostitution. It’s the same physical act." He wasn’t the Father General. He was just plain Vince Giuliani, with no answers. Unknowing, he trod the path of reason that Sofia Mendes had traveled all those years before. "I suppose a prostitute has at least an illusion of control. It’s a transaction. There is some element of consent."

  "There is," Felipe Reyes suggested wanly, "more dignity in prostitution than in gang rape. Even by poets."

  Giuliani suddenly put his hands to his mouth. "What a wilderness, to believe you have been seduced and raped by God." And then to come home to our tender mercies, he thought bleakly.

  John sat up and glared red-eyed at the Father General. "I’ll tell you something. If it’s a choice between despising Emilio or hating God—"

  Surprisingly, Felipe Reyes broke in, before John could say something he’d regret. "Emilio is not despicable. But God didn’t rape him, even if that’s how Emilio understands it now." He sat back in the bench and stared at the ancient olive trees defining the edge of the garden. "There’s an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists."

  "So God just leaves?" John asked, angry where Emilio had been desolate. "Abandons creation? You’re on your own, apes. Good luck!"

  "No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering."

  "Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine," Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. " ‘Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.’"

  "But the sparrow still falls," Felipe said.

  They sat for a while, wrapped in their private musings.

  "You know, he was always a good priest," Felipe told them, remembering, "but it must have been about the time that they were planning the mission, something changed in him. It was like, I don’t know, sometimes he would just—ignite." Felipe’s hands moved, making a shape like fireworks. "There was something in his face, so beautiful. And I thought, if that’s what it’s like to be a priest … It was like he fell in love with God."

  "Offhand," said the Father General wearily, in a voice dry as August grass, "I’d say the honeymoon is over."

  THE SUN WAS already fairly high when Edward Behr awoke to the sound of a coffee cup rattling on a saucer. Blinking, he sat up in the wooden chair where he’d spent the night and groaned. He saw Emilio Sandoz standing by the night table, carefully setting the coffee down, the servos releasing his grip almost as quickly as natural movement might have.

  "What time is it?" Ed asked, rubbing his neck.

  "A little after eight," Sandoz told him. Wearing a T-shirt and a pair of baggy pants, he sat on the edge of his bed and watched Brother Edward stretch and scrub at his eyes with his pudgy hands. "Thank you. For staying with me."

  Brother Edward looked at him, sizing things up. "How do you feel?"

  "Okay," Emilio said simply. "I feel okay."

  Emilio stood and stepped over to the window, holding the curtain aside, but couldn’t see much: just the garage and a little bit of hillside. "I used to be a pretty fair middle-distance runner," he said conversationally. "I did about half a kilometer this morning. Had to walk most of it." He shrugged. "It’s a start."

  "It’s a start," Edward Behr agreed. "You did well with the coffee, too."

  "Yeah. Didn’t crush the cup. Only spilled a little." He let the curtain fall. "I’m going to go get cleaned up."

  "Need any help?"

  "No. Thanks. I can manage."

  No anger, Brother Edward noticed. He watched Emilio open the drawer and pull out clean clothes. It took a while, but he did fine. As Sandoz moved toward the door, Brother Edward spoke again. "It’s not over, you know," he warned. "You don’t get over something like that all at once."

  Emilio stared at the floor for a while and then looked up. "Yes. I know." He stood still a few moments and then asked, "What were you, before? A nurse? A therapist?"

  Edward Behr snorted and reached for the coffee. "Not even close. I was a stockbroker. I specialized in undervalued companies." He didn’t expect Sandoz to understand. The generality of priests, vowed to poverty, were hopelessly ignorant of finance. "It involved recognizing the worth of things that other people discounted."

  Sandoz didn’t see the connection. "Were you good at it?"

  "Oh, yes. I was very good at it." Brother Edward held up his cup and said, "Thanks for the coffee."

  He watched Sandoz go and then, sitting very still, in silence, Edward Behr began his morning prayers.

  AT TEN, THERE was a metallic rap at the Father General’s door, and when he called out, "Come in," he was not surprised to see Emilio Sandoz enter the office, managing the lever without any hesitation and shutting the door behind him.

  Giuliani
started to stand, but Emilio said, "No, please. Sit down. I just wanted—I wanted to thank you. That couldn’t have been easy for you to do."

  "It was brutal," Vince Giuliani admitted. "And all I had to do was listen."

  "No. You did more than that." Sandoz looked around the office, which seemed oddly empty. Unexpectedly, he gave a short laugh and his hands went to his hair, as if to run his fingers through it, an old nervous habit, now likely to tangle the joint mechanisms of the braces. He let his hands fall. "Sorry about the table. Was it valuable?"

  "Priceless."

  "Figures."

  "Forget it." Giuliani sat back in his chair. "So. You seem better."

  "Yeah. I slept well. I’ll bet poor John Candotti didn’t, but I did." Emilio smiled but added, "John was great. Thank you for bringing him here. And Ed. And Felipe. Even Voelker. I couldn’t have—" He grimaced and turned away for a moment but came back almost immediately. "It was like—like vomiting poison, I suppose." Giuliani said nothing, and Emilio continued, with only a little irony, "Seems to me I heard somewhere that confession is good for the soul."

  The corners of Giuliani’s mouth twitched. "That, certainly, was the principle upon which I was operating."

  Emilio went to the windows. The view was better from this office than from his room. Rank hath its privileges. "I had a dream last night," he said quietly. "I was on a road and there was no one with me. And in the dream I said, ‘I don’t understand but I can learn if you will teach me.’ Do you suppose anyone was listening?" He didn’t turn from the windows.

  Without answering, Giuliani got up and went to a bookcase. Selecting a small volume with a cracked leather binding, he paged through it until he found what he wanted and held it out.

  Sandoz turned and accepted the book, looking at the spine. "Aeschylus?"

  Wordlessly, Giuliani pointed out the passage, and Emilio studied it a while, slowly translating the Greek in his mind. Finally, he said, " ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’"

  "Show-off."

  Sandoz laughed but, turning toward the window again, he read the passage over. Giuliani walked back to his desk and sat down, waiting for Sandoz to speak again.

  "I was wondering if I could stay here awhile longer," Emilio said. He had no idea he was going to ask this. He’d meant to leave. "You’ve been very patient. I don’t mean to impose."

  "Not at all."

  Sandoz didn’t turn back to look at the Father General, but Giuliani heard his tone change. "I don’t know if I’m a priest. I don’t know if—I don’t know … anything at all with certainty. I don’t even know if certainty is what I should want."

  "Stay as long as you like."

  "Thank you. You’ve been very patient," Emilio repeated. He moved to the door and the braced fingers closed neatly over the lever.

  "Emilio," the Father General called out to him, voice pitched low, carrying easily in this quiet room. "I’m sending another group out. To Rakhat. I thought you ought to know that. We could use your help. With the languages."

  Sandoz went motionless. "It’s too soon, Vince. I can’t think about that. It’s too soon."

  "Of course. I just thought you should know."

  He watched Sandoz leave. Unaware of his own movement, schooled by old habit, Vincenzo Giuliani rose and went to the windows, and stood looking, for how long he had no idea, across a grassy open courtyard to a complex panorama of medieval masonry and jumbled rock, formal garden and gnarled trees: a scene of great and beautiful antiquity.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AS A FORMER academic, I feel uneasy without footnotes and a huge bibliography; even as a novelist, I believe several of the hundreds of sources I used must be named. Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory taught me how scholarship boys feel. The gorgeous prose of Alain Corbin in his book The Foul and the Fragrant was the inspiration for the Reshtar’s early poetry. And Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? but D.W. could, so I thank Ms. Ivins for insight into Texans, turtles and armadillos. The notion of predator mimicry comes from Dougal Dixon’s The New Dinosaurs, as does the snakeneck, which I found too charming an idea not to propagate. Emilio’s moment of illumination in the last chapter derives from Arthur Green’s theology in Seek My Face, Speak My Name. Finally, Dorothy Dunnett may consider The Sparrow one long thank you note for her splendid Lymond series.

  Thanks also to my mother, Louise Dewing Doria, whose "Just do it" attitude long predates the sneaker commercial, and to my father, Richard Doria, who’s always taken me seriously. Maura Kirby believed in this book long before I did. Don Russell dug me out of plot holes, designed the Stella Maris and is the source of Emilio’s sense of humor. Mary Dewing taught me how to write; our fifteen-year correspondence was my apprenticeship. Mary also read every draft of this book and never failed to find a way to make each one better. Many friends helped me improve the manuscript; I thank Tomasz and Maria Rybak, Vivian Singer and Jennifer Tucker in particular for critical readings at critical times. Charles Nelson and Helene Fiore were crucial links to the world of publishing. Stanley Schmidt gave me encouragement and invaluable advice; Mary Fiore did the same and then opened doors that led to Jennifer McGlashan and to Miriam Goderich and my invincible agent, Jane Dystel. And I will always be grateful to David Rosenthal of Villard and Leona Nevler of Ivy-Fawcett for their support and faith in this book. And I fall to the feet and kiss the collective hem of the staff at Villard, who worked very hard for this book and graciously tolerated a new author’s anxiety. Ray Bucko, S.J., proofed the final draft of The Sparrow and is himself proof that there are real Jesuits as extravagantly funny and plainly good as the guys I made up. He is not responsible for any remaining misrepresentation of Jesuit life—I am the author and I outrank him. Thanks also to the ladies of the Noble Branch of the Cleveland Heights Library, who brought a ton of reference works within easy reach.

  A final note to Don and our son, Daniel, who hardly ever complained about all the time and attention and love I lavished on fictional characters when my dearest real people were right downstairs: Thanks, guys. You’re the best.

  M.D.R.

  The

  Sparrow

  MARY DORIA RUSSELL

  A Reader’s Guide

  A Conversation with Mary Doria Russell

  Q: Until The Sparrow you had only written serious scientific articles and technical manuals. How did you end up writing a speculative novel?

  A: The idea came to me in the summer of 1992 as we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. There was a great deal of historical revisionism going on as we examined the mistakes made by Europeans when they first encountered foreign cultures in the Americas and elsewhere. It seemed unfair to me for people living at the end of the twentieth century to hold those explorers and missionaries to standards of sophistication and tolerance that we hardly manage even today. I wanted to show how very difficult first contact would be, even with the benefit of hindsight. That’s when I decided to write a story that put modern, sophisticated, resourceful, well-educated, and well-meaning people in the same position as those early explorers and missionaries—a position of radical ignorance. Unfortunately, there’s no place on Earth today where "first contact" is possible—you can find MTV, CNN, and McDonald’s everywhere you go. The only way to create a "first contact" story like this was to go off-planet.

  Q: How did religion come to play such a central role in the story?

  A: At the time I wrote this I was in the process of bringing religion back into my own life. I was brought up as a Cathotic but left the Church in 1965 when I was fifteen. After twenty years of contented atheism I became a mother. Suddenly I was in a position of having to transmit my culture to my son. I needed to decide what things to pass on and what things to weed out. I realized my ethics and morality were rooted in religion and began to reconsider those decisions I had made when
I was young. I found myself drawn, to Judaism and eventually converted. When you convert to Judaism in a post-Holocaust world, you know two things for sure: one is that being Jewish can get you killed; the other is that God won’t rescue you. That was the theology I was dealing with at the time. Writing The Sparrow allowed me to look at the place of religion in the lives of many people and to weigh the risks and the beauties of religious belief from the comfort of my own home.

  Q: What exactly are the risks and beauties of religion?

  A: The beauty of religion is the way in which it enriches your understanding of what your senses tell you. I see no conflict between scientific and religious thought. They are just two very different ways of interpreting what we see all around us. What I gained was a cultural depth, a perspective that reaches back 3,200 years. There’s a certain kind of serenity that comes from knowing that the ethics you draw on have been tested and re-tested by one thousand generations in every possible cultural and ethical climate, and that they have been found reliable and useful by so many people for so long under many different circumstances.

  The risks have to do with believing that God micromanages the world, and with seeing what may be simply coincidence as significant and indicative of divine providence. It’s very easy then to go out on a limb spiritually, expect more from God than you have a right to expect, and set yourself up for bitter disappointment in his silence and lack of action.

  Q: Where did the idea come from for the two alien races on Rakhat, the Runa and the Jana’ata?

  A: It started with a look at two austratopithecine species from Earth’s prehistory: herbivores and carnivores/scavengers. I began by thinking, What would it be like if the herbivores were still around? That was the beginning of the idea. Then I asked myself, What would civilization be like if a carnivore had domesticated its prey species? That’s where I came up with the idea for the relationship between the Jana’ata and the Runa. The Jana’ata are a carnivorous herding society that breed their prey, the Runa, for intelligence and adaptability as well as meat.