Sign of the Cross

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘Bingo. The text clearly says that he’s speaking to both the abbot, Pompeianus, and the monk, Maurus. But you seem pretty sure he’s aiming the question at Maurus.’

  ‘Let me explain.’

  They spent a while dissecting the passage until Cal was satisfied that Murphy was on the right path.

  Collecting his papers, Murphy asked, ‘So how was your trip?’

  Cal rocked back in his chair. ‘Did I ever tell you how much I hate the Vatican?’

  ‘Actually, Cal, I believe I’m the one who has precious little time for all the pomp and politics. Until now you’ve struck me as a person who’s been rather smitten by the place.’

  ‘Well, stick a fork in me.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t have your audience with the Holy Father. If you had I expect you’d be more upbeat.’

  ‘I was asked to take a rain check. But that wasn’t the worst of it.’

  Murphy rolled his eyes. ‘All right then, professor, unburden yourself to the somewhat rusty Irish priest.’

  Cal didn’t need to be asked twice.

  ‘It was a difficult couple of weeks.’

  ‘Was the stigmatic not cooperative?’

  ‘To a point, he was guarded but I found ways to get the goods on him.’

  ‘So you unmasked the fraud.’

  ‘If only it were that simple.’

  ‘My, my, you didn’t conclude the fellow’s been touched by a miracle, did you?’

  ‘You don’t believe in miracles?’

  ‘I couldn’t very well be a practicing Catholic, let alone a priest if I didn’t,’ Murphy said. ‘But I’m also a practicing skeptic. There’s too much self-deception and outright deception in the world today. I’d say my baseline supposition about a newly minted priest who starts bleeding from the wrists is that the pressures of life have gotten the better of him. A cry for help and all that.’

  ‘That was my baseline too.’

  ‘But now you’re in the miracle camp?’

  Cal shook his head. ‘I don’t know where I’m at. Can I talk to you in confidence?’

  ‘Of course,’ Murphy said with an obvious turn to seriousness.

  Cal didn’t hold anything back. Who else was he going to be able to talk to? He spoke about Giovanni’s preternatural ability to divine Cal’s paternal loss, the jolting vision he’d had when the young priest touched him, the curious lineage of stigmatics at St Athanasius and its crypt, the accident on the mountain that he suspected was no accident, and being forced to deliver an alternative version of his official report. His account was cathartic. Murphy may have sensed that letting him unburden his heart was beneficial because he didn’t interrupt his outpour with questions.

  When he was done, Cal smiled at him and said, ‘Well, that’s it. Some story, huh?’

  ‘Indeed it is. If you weren’t who you are, I might take some of it with a mighty grain of salt. But you’re a full professor at the Harvard Divinity School. That makes you a sober judge. Unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘All those blows to the head from your boxing match scrambled the gray matter.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. The concussion didn’t help.’

  ‘You really think that fellow intentionally ran you off the road?’

  ‘I did at the time, but now I’m not so sure to be honest.’

  ‘Well, you certainly had quite the time of it.’

  ‘The thing that’s gotten to me isn’t the factual basis of the case. As academics, we’ve got an obligation to do the best research we can and then give the evidence we’ve uncovered enough breathing room to speak for itself. It’s the decision by the powers-that-be in the Vatican to cover up the facts that rankles.’

  ‘And why do you suppose they’ve taken that decision? I would have thought that a credible miracle every now and again would water the tree of faith.’

  Cal couldn’t help himself. He decided to turn Murphy’s decision into a teachable moment.

  ‘Why do you think they’ve done it?’ he asked.

  ‘I imagine they’re concerned about a cult of personality. I had a romp around the web about your Padre Gio. He’s already a pretty big deal, at least in Italy. Give it any kind of Vatican validation during his lifetime and the situation could get severely out of control. A real loaves and fishes miracle would be red meat to the faithful and that might have the effect of drowning out all the other initiatives and priorities of the Holy See.’

  Cal got a phone call from the department secretary, who asked him to come by to see the dean of the divinity school. Murphy got up to leave but Cal stopped him.

  ‘Did I ever tell you were wise beyond your tender age, Joe?’

  ‘First time, professor.’

  ‘You know you’d make a damned good parish priest if you ever changed your mind. That or a corner man for a boxer.’

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ Murphy said with a laugh, ‘this Jesuit isn’t enough of a people person to tend a flock. It’s academics for me.’

  ‘Students are people too.’

  ‘Are they now? In that case I feel I’ve been promoted from beast of burden.’

  No sooner had his jet lag dissipated that Cal found himself calling Deborah at the chemistry department to ask for a date. It wasn’t as if he’d spent a great deal of time thinking about her, but his dance card was empty and he fancied a twirl around the floor.

  They met at the Queen’s Head, the pub in the basement of Harvard’s Memorial Hall, and got a booth. When she ordered a sparkling water he reminded her of her promise to start drinking. She stood pat. The bar didn’t serve liquor so he got a beer.

  ‘How’re you settling into your job?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s been kind of crazy,’ she said. ‘Setting up my lab, pulling together course materials for September, figuring out how things work in the department. Then, out of the blue, I got asked by my old professor at Stanford to contribute a chapter to a book.’

  ‘When it rains it pours. But it’s all good stuff.’

  As they talked he was getting decidedly mixed vibes from her. She wasn’t nearly as vivacious and engaged as she’d been before his trip.

  ‘How was Italy?’ she asked.

  ‘Veni, vidi, vici,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  At first he thought she was joking but she looked dead serious. Rather than openly lamenting the death of classical education in America he said, ‘Latin. Julius Caesar. I came, I saw, I conquered.’

  ‘I took Spanish,’ she said, taking a sip of water. ‘So it went well?’

  ‘Well enough. Got my business done at the Vatican.’

  ‘Did you see the pope?’ she asked.

  ‘I was supposed to but he stiffed me.’

  ‘I was joking,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t. He really did stiff me.’

  She looked around the pub in a distracted way and squeezed the lemon into her drink.

  ‘Are you, ok?’ he asked. ‘I’m kind of getting the impression you don’t really want to be here.’

  ‘Am I that obvious?’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I met someone last week.’

  He smiled at his realization that he wasn’t at all disappointed. He hadn’t really thought she was his type and that was before he found out she didn’t know her Julius Caesar.

  ‘Congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy?’

  ‘Well, this is what’s been worrying me. He’s a grad student even though he’s older than me.’

  ‘In your department?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Hmmm. In your supervisory chain?’

  ‘No. Different area altogether.’

  ‘Then relax, you’re ok. University policy is that faculty members can’t have affairs with undergrads. Period. You also can’t have sex with grad students you supervise, evaluate, or grade. Otherwise, have at it. But even though you’re in the clear, I’d recommend discretion. You’re new on the block and your chairman, from what I know of
him, is old school. That is if you’re still interested in getting tenure one day.’

  ‘Oh God, yes, I’m desperate for tenure. I probably shouldn’t ask but has this ever happened to you?’

  ‘No comment,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘You’re not mad at me, are you?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t made enough friends to lose any yet.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to friends.’

  He only wished she’d told him before he tidied his house, put out fresh towels and made his bed.

  Cal lived on Lowell Street, one of those leafy roads within walking distance of the university favored by senior faculty members. The house was a renovated Victorian on a tiny lot with only enough of a backyard for a small patio and a barbecue. He’d bought it when he was awarded his tenured professorship with money from his trust fund. Now, years later, the value of property in the neighborhood had gone through the roof and he was sitting pretty in, what amounted to, a lavish bachelor pad with enough room for all the books, maps and objet d’art he could hope to accumulate.

  Dropping his keys into a replica of a bronze Coptic bowl, he trundled up to the bedroom and selected a book from his bedside stand. He’d recently undertaken a re-reading of Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of Gods series and in the morning he’d wake up to Campbell beside him, not the chemist. But he was still fatigued from his trip and he didn’t read all that many pages before surrendering to sleep.

  It happened at precisely 11:05 p.m. according to his clock radio.

  He’d only been asleep for thirty minutes or so and in his confused state he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming, since what he saw had a profoundly dreamlike quality.

  He didn’t know what had awakened him. The room was completely silent except for the whooshing blades of the ceiling fan.

  A scene seemed to be playing out in the space between his bed and bathroom, where a nice Baluchi carpet lay on the floorboards. It was as if a silent 3D movie was being projected into the space, a movie so hyper-realistic that Cal instantly sat up and spouted a profanity.

  He was about to fling off his covers and defend himself against the intruder when his brain processed who he saw.

  Giovanni Berardino.

  In pale blue pajamas.

  The tubby young man looked terrified and he appeared to be struggling against unseen hands pulling at him.

  Suddenly he turned ninety degrees and seemed to look straight into Cal’s eyes. He mouthed something. Twice.

  Cal strained to lip-read.

  Then a black sack appeared over his head and poof, the performance piece ended. Once again, the bedroom was Cal’s and Cal’s alone.

  He rose and walked the space that Giovanni had just occupied. Breathing hard from the shock of it, he sat back down on the bed and tried to make some sense of what he’d seen.

  He replayed the silent mouthing but the phrase didn’t yield to deciphering.

  In English.

  ‘Not English, Italian!’ Cal said out loud.

  Then he got it.

  It wasn’t a phrase at all, but a multisyllabic word.

  Aiutatemi! Aiutatemi!

  Help me! Help me!

  At the exact same time, Irene Berardino was awoken by a strange sensation in her bedroom in Francavilla. At 5:05 a.m. it would be twenty minutes until sunrise and pinkish light leaked around her curtains. Later, she would be unsure about what had interrupted her sleep, yet she was certain there had been no sound.

  But the vision of her brother in his pajamas near the foot of her bed so shocked her that she cried out, alerting her mother across the hall to her distress.

  Giovanni looked terrified and seemed to be resisting some unseen forces tugging him in one direction.

  Then he wheeled around and mouthed something at her. Again later, she would liken the experience to watching television with the sound turned off.

  She knew it was irrational. She knew he wasn’t really there. But she still called out to him.

  ‘Giovanni!’

  It was as if someone had suddenly twisted a volume knob.

  It was so loud it scared her and made her cry.

  Help me! Help me!

  Cal tried to go back to sleep but his hallucination had been so vivid and troubling that he lay awake until 2:30 a.m. then gave up the ghost and got up to make a coffee. There was a six-hour time difference with Italy and at 3 a.m., a polite-enough hour for a call, he rang the number for Giovanni’s parish house in Monte Sulla.

  A woman picked up; she sounded rushed and troubled in her greeting.

  Cal spoke to her in Italian. ‘Hello, this is Calvin Donovan. I visited you recently on behalf of the Vatican.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Professor Donovan, this is Sister Vera.’ She sounded out of breath.

  ‘I wonder if I might have a word with Father Berardino.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord, my Lord!’ she cried. ‘Padre Gio is gone, professor. He’s gone! Some men came and took him this morning. They wore masks. The police are here! We do not know what to do. What are we to do?’

  SEVENTEEN

  Cal had never tried to raise a Vatican secretary of state on the phone and it proved to be a difficult task. The first time he called he identified himself and asked for Cardinal Lauriat only to be told that the prelate was unavailable.

  ‘When will he be available?’ he asked.

  A monsignor replied that it was difficult to say.

  ‘I do need to speak with him today. Could you please tell him that Calvin Donovan called? Here’s my mobile number.’

  He tried again an hour later, also to no avail.

  Finally on the third try he ratcheted up the pressure.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to tell the cardinal that it’s imperative I speak to him. It concerns the priest, Giovanni Berardino. Is your office aware that he’s been kidnapped?’

  ‘I am sorry, did you say kidnapped?’ the monsignor asked.

  ‘Yes, early this morning.’

  ‘Could you please hold the line?’

  Now the secretary of state was on the phone in a flash and Cal had to conclude he’d been in his office all along, ducking his calls.

  ‘Professor, I trust your journey home was smooth?’ Lauriat said.

  ‘I’m fine but Giovanni Berardino isn’t.’

  ‘I have heard nothing of this alleged abduction. What is the source of your information?’

  ‘I called him this morning. One of the nuns told me what happened.’

  ‘Why did you happen to call this morning?’

  Cal lied. This was no time to talk about mystical experiences. ‘I had a follow-up question for him.’

  ‘An amazing coincidence, I would say,’ the cardinal said, ‘especially since your job is done. In any event I have not been notified at this time.’

  Cal was incensed. The cardinal was more concerned about why he’d reached out to Giovanni than the abduction itself.

  ‘I expect these things take time to work up through your organization,’ he said. ‘I’ve been following Twitter and Reuters – Italy. There doesn’t seem to have been anything released by the local authorities yet but this is going to be big news. You’ll be deluged by the press soon.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your concern. I will see if anyone in Abruzzo has made the Vatican aware of the situation. I can assure you that the Italians have competent law enforcement authorities to handle this type of situation. If there has clearly been an abduction and a criminal organization demands a ransom, then the Vatican will have to consider its position. As to public statements, the Vatican press office is quite adept.’

  ‘Why do you think this is the work of a criminal group?’

  ‘Who else would take a priest, especially one with such a high profile? But you are correct, I should not speculate.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘Professor, I do thank you for giving me an early notice on the matter. Do tell us when you will be returning to Italy.’

  ‘I’m getting on a plane tonigh
t.’

  ‘But why? Surely not because of this situation.’

  It was a question he felt he couldn’t answer truthfully. He couldn’t tell him that the young priest had reached across the ocean to personally beg for help. He couldn’t tell him that he had a strange feeling that he was somehow personally involved in the drama.

  ‘I’m not sure I know why,’ was what the only way he wanted to respond. ‘But I feel I need to help in any way I can.’

  ‘Help whom? With all due respect, professor, the Vatican has the internal resources to deal with this.’

  ‘Help Giovanni, of course.’

  The tone turned sharp. ‘You are a private citizen, professor, and you are certainly free to do what you want. But please be aware that your work on this matter has ended and you do not, in any way, represent the Vatican going forward.’

  On the way to the airport, Cal stopped at his office to chase up the footnote he had made a mental note to find, whilst recovering in the Croatian hospital. It was somewhere in the research he had done for his stigmata book six years ago; a footnote in the Vatican library’s digital card catalogue, something about a Holy Nail. But for the life of him he still couldn’t recall the exact details.

  He’d forgotten how many boxes of note cards he’d accumulated in the course of the project and, with the file boxes laid out before him, he strategized on how to search through a few thousand cards. Then it dawned on him. Whatever the reference, he hadn’t included it in the book because it was either inconsequential or oblique to the subject matter. There was only one file box stuffed with cards that were unused in the manuscript. Even so, there were hundreds of unsorted cards and with an eye on the clock and an approaching boarding time, he began rapidly flipping through them.

  Twenty minutes into the exercise he found it.

  At the time it had been a curious discovery. Even after reviewing his notes he couldn’t quite recall why he had sought out the early manuscript of the book with the accession code of VAT. GR. 1001, indicating it was from the Vaticanus graecus, or Vatican Greek collection. Its digital file in the Vatican Library catalogue had several footnotes, including one that Cal had recorded onto his own index card: includes 17th cent. Nicolò Alamanni production marginalia and possibly a transcription of the author’s original marginalia regarding nail relic and wounds of Christ. The card had been stickered to indicate that the book was temporarily unavailable so Cal was unlikely to have ever retrieved it. He was unsure what to make of it but he slipped the index card into his bag, tidied his office and headed out the door.