“I don’t think Father Lavelle is part of any plot. He is severely depressed.”
“What does it take to look depressed, American? A long face?” Pesci smiled.
“Medically I think the man would have to be considered depressed.”
“And I would want to make sure I trusted the doctor who came to that conclusion,” said Cardinal Pesci.
Jim moved the conversation onward. He had always thought that generalizations about entire people were the product of lazy minds. He could accept the difficulties of the Vatican in the Middle East but he could not accept that all Arabs hated or that all Jews were cunning. It seemed, however, more common to Europeans to describe entire people in simple sentences.
As to the survival of the Jews, Jim had always thought it was part of God’s plan, and later learned that indeed it had to do with the Second Coming. Pesci apparently overlooked the theology of the matter.
“Specifically, do we have any evidence at this point of Israeli subterfuge? What do we have?” asked Jim.
Suddenly there was a rapid knocking on the large main entrance door. The door opened silently on perfect hand-oiled hinges.
Cardinal Pesci looked up, startled, his flesh quivering under his loose chin.
A middle-aged monsignor, with fluttering hands and weeping eyes, glided quickly across the carpeted floor, sputtering rapid Italian. Jim’s Latin enabled him to pick up a few words about death. He recognized Lavelle’s name.
Cardinal Pesci listened, nodding. Then he turned to Jim.
“Father Lavelle has created a serious problem. He has committed suicide in his room.”
Jim’s breath stopped. He started to speak. Nothing came out. He got up from his seat, still holding his notebook.
“I must go to him,” he said.
When Jim got to the room, a nun was gesticulating wildly, and the priest who had been sitting outside was weeping with his head in his hands. The door to the room was closed.
Jim opened it. Two bare blue-veined feet hung in midair. Those delicate toes were dark from settled blood never to be pumped back up to the heart. Father Lavelle was hanging by the bed sheet from a light fixture in the middle of the room. A chair stood upright to the left of the feet, just above the ankles.
The tan had darkened bluish on the face, and the tongue stuck out slightly at the mouth, while the eyes stared stupidly, so placidly stupid, up at the ceiling. Father Lavelle had let himself strangle slowly without moving his legs a kick.
It was not one of those suicides where someone hoped possibly to be saved from himself.
Jim Folan touched the feet. They were already cold.
He shut the door behind him, and he was alone with the body.
“How could you do it? How could you do it? We’ve just begun, Pierre. We’ve just begun. We’ve just begun. He’s God, Pierre … He’s God …”
Jim stood up on the chair, and hugged the small man to him with one hand while he untied him with the other. He lowered Father Lavelle to the floor, trying not to let him fall, but stepping off the chair, he fell himself. People ran in and he ordered them out.
He wanted oils for the last rites.
“Oils. Unguent. Unction. Oil Unctus,” said Jim, and they all looked confused. “Extremo Uncti,” he said. And they understood. He shut the door behind them. They were not to be in this room.
Jim knelt by the body and prayed that no more suffer like Father Lavelle from this thing that had been found in Jerusalem. He prayed that Father Lavelle somehow be accepted ultimately into heaven despite what appeared to be the final mortal sin of suicide.
He prayed, and when he looked down at the man who had been hanging like so much baggage, this human life who had made himself just weight by his own hand, this purposeful waste of such a tender soul, Jim Folan said, “Ah, shit.” And he cried.
And then the oils came with worried priests, whom Jim dismissed. He put his thumb in the small jar and rubbed the oils between Father Lavelle’s eyebrows, and there, kneeling on the floor beside him, gave him the last rites of the Church, under the possibility that when it was too late to move his legs Father Lavelle had at the last moment regretted the taking of his life.
“In the name of God, the Almighty Father Who created you,” said Father Folan, “in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Who suffered for you, in the name of the Holy Spirit, Who was poured out upon you, go forth, faithful Christian. May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion, with Mary the Virgin Mother of God, with Joseph, and with all the angels and saints.
“My brother in faith, I entrust you to God, Who created you. May you return to the One Who formed you from the dust of this earth. May Mary, the angels, and all the saints come to meet you as you go forth from this life. May Christ, Who was crucified for you, bring you freedom and peace. May Christ, the Son of God, Who died for you, take you into His kingdom. May Christ, the Good Shepherd, give you a place within His flock. May He forgive your sins and keep you among His people. May you see your Redeemer face to face, and enjoy the sight of God forever. Amen.”
Father Folan did not need to look at the little book the Italian priests had brought him. He knew the words quite well in English. He had said them for his mother, and for a cousin. This was his purpose in life. He was a priest.
But for Father Lavelle, he whispered one more thought into the dead ears:
“May you see now and for all eternity that He is risen.”
Cardinal Pesci did not hear of the prayers. He heard only that the American went right into the room, and when he left he had cleared out all the notes and had opened every book in case some piece of notepaper had been kept in one of them. Then the American asked everyone who had had any contact with the priest what they knew about him.
But what impressed His Eminence most was that this American, with the innocent Irish face, had so casually informed the Secretary of State that he would use Lavelle’s room in the Dominican residence in Jerusalem, since now it would be vacant.
His cover story would be simply that he was continuing one project of Father Pierre Lavelle. Perhaps, thought His Eminence, the Pope had seen this ruthlessness, and had only told his Secretary of State a pretty little story about the man’s strong faith as being the main requirement. Perhaps the Pope was smarter than everyone thought.
No one told Cardinal Pesci that James Folan had wept.
6
Going Up to Jerusalem
Jim Folan arrived in the land of Israel to defend the faith with his Georgetown overnight bag, a ream of white paper, and an old green portable typewriter he had borrowed from a Swiss nun.
His shirt and chinos, so fine for Boston, clung to him in the noon heat of the eastern Mediterranean like heavy blankets of punishment. Even his socks were wet.
He was the first to customs because he had nothing, and because all he brought was in that overnight bag. It aroused questions, as he realized and should have known it would. Right here, almost forty Puerto Rican pilgrims had been gunned down years before by terrorists. Just because they were walking by.
As Pesci had pointed out, this was a land under siege, and everyone appeared so normal he had forgotten about it. “I am here to see Dr. Golban. She will vouch for me,” said Jim, and refused to answer any other questions.
He would take all the time he needed. He would make sure nothing was left unexamined, no matter how seemingly irrelevant. He had the resources of the Church at his call, Pesci had assured him, and Jim knew something else, coming from a technological nation, something His Eminence did not quite understand.
There was no greater time in all history to prove the exact nature of the bones than now. Ninety percent of all the scientists who had ever lived were alive now.
In some way, even though man couldn’t see it with the naked eye, almost everything left some molecular trace. These technicians would be used in such a way that they would not know what they were working on. But they would not be brought in right away. And
they might not even have to be brought in at all if major discrepancies about the validity of the whole were found.
That Jim Folan could do himself, very carefully. This, of course, would be fine with His Eminence, who had hinted that he did not want to rush.
“If it had stayed another two millennia where it was, it would not have been tragedy for us, if you understand.”
But Jim was not going to slow things down. In this world things got delayed enough without planning. And he suspected, with his experience as an administrator, that if he purposely tried to slow things down, then somehow everything would work faster.
The requested secrecy of His Holiness, however, was guaranteed to consume enough time. He did not take his notes with him but separated them into fifteen different packets, none of which contained enough information to let anyone know the nature of the suspicion of what had been discovered in Jerusalem. The name “Jesus,” of course, was never used.
The packets would be courier-delivered in diplomatic pouches to the apostolic delegate on Rue Shmuel Ben Adaya on the Mount of Olives over the course of two weeks. Officially, he was not a delegate to Israel but to the people of the area. Through that office Jim would keep in contact with Pesci, and submit major findings.
Jim still felt overwhelmed by what he had been entrusted to do, but reviewing things he planned made him feel better. He could not forget those poor blue-veined feet hanging in the middle of that room in the Vatican, however, and he reminded himself that, while it appeared the poor man had hanged himself as a bitter testament to what he had found, he still did not know enough about the man to be sure that that was the reason.
That was only the reason he discussed when he was alive. And what was, and what a man said was, could not be accepted as the same thing. The greatest investigative tool a person could have was knowing exactly what he did not know. And he did not know why Father Lavelle had taken his own life. Yet.
Jim looked at his watch. The woman at customs looked at him.
“Would you page her again?” said Jim. Very quietly a young man in a khaki police uniform took up a position behind the customs counter. Jim knew the young man had been posted on him.
He stood by the customs counter watching the people of Israel claim their baggage, wondering if they knew what a miracle this whole thing was, how it had been foretold they would return to this land on wings. How superstitious and improbable that Biblical prophecy must have sounded in a time when the only travel was by foot or animal.
He saw a dark old woman with two large shopping bags waddling through customs with two children behind. She wore a bright yellow print dress, wide as a tent, and a print cloth head cover, and smiled a gold-toothed smile, and from what country she came or her parents came or their parents came he could not imagine. Jim assumed it was somewhere east of Israel, or south. Or perhaps they had been the Jews who never left, or the Spanish Jews who had come to Safad in the fifteenth century. He had read of that holy place where they had studied.
He saw people he would have bet were Irish, and German and Slav and African. One woman was so black he was sure she could not be Jewish, but there she was, speaking Hebrew.
The tribe had scattered, and brought back with them the blood of those nations they had journeyed through. Perhaps they had stayed a few centuries, perhaps they even thought it was home, but here they were.
Jim Folan remembered a debate once in his Chevrus High School on the color of Jesus, and he would love to have offered the Jews of Israel now as proof. Although he hadn’t really needed them at the time.
There had been a lot of talk about the color of Jesus, and some students had heard some blacks saying Jesus was black. One student had said no one knew what color Jesus was exactly, but he thought he probably looked like the Goldbergs down the block, who were white and blond, so baby Jesus could well have been blond.
Another student said people of the Middle East were dark and he saw a picture of Arabs and they were dark, some darker than others, but dark.
“The only thing Jesus was not was black,” said Father Braun, who taught the class.
A few of the boys clapped. Father Braun noted who they were but said nothing.
“That’s racist. That’s a racist remark, I think,” said one of the better scholars in the back row.
“No,” said Father Braun, “that was not a racist remark. The applause just now was racist, because they were happy He was not black. I am not happy that He was not black. I am just saying that we have evidence He was not black.”
“What evidence?” demanded the student. He was the best in the class, and everyone was sure he was going to become a Jesuit. Chevrus High was run by Jesuits and was known for producing Jesuits.
“The Bible. The Old Testament,” said Father Braun.
“Prove it,” said the student.
And Father Braun, who liked to be challenged, and encouraged students to challenge him, read from the Old Testament about the Queen of Sheba, who was “black but beautiful.”
And he put the book down and said:
“If the Jews were black, they certainly wouldn’t mention that Sheba was black. Such as if we were talking about you, we wouldn’t say a white kid came to class. We never would say that if we were white. But if we did, you could be pretty sure we weren’t white. Do you see?”
“Well, that doesn’t make Him white,” said the student.
“No, it doesn’t, but in the Song of Solomon there are references to beauty as white, ‘neck like ivory towers,’ and ‘white face under black locks.’ And since the people were white, we can assume He was white.”
“I heard Jews have colored blood,” said another student.
And then Father Braun had been noticing Jim looking out the window at the spring buds that always took so long in Portland, Maine.
“Jimmy Folan, what do you think?”
“Well, sir, Father Braun, I think this is the dumbest discussion I ever heard, sir. Father Braun, sir.”
“Oh, really. And why is that?” said Father Braun with a menacing smile. Jim heard some snickers behind him.
“Because we are talking about Jesus. And what He is is so much more important than what color He might have been, and that makes the whole discussion dumb. It’s like, like talking about the greatest ruby, sapphire, or something that ever was, and here people are going around talking about the color of the shopping bag it comes in. I mean, that’s stupid and, yes, I think so. It’s stupid.”
“Do you know it is a sin to call someone stupid, specifically prohibited in the Bible?” said Father Braun.
“I was referring to the topic of the conversation. And I think you know I was, sir.”
“I do now,” said Father Braun. “You have just given us all the best student answers to any question this year, and I just wanted to make sure it was as good as I thought it was. There are moments in teaching that I feel make a life worthwhile. You, Jimmy Folan, have given me one of them.”
Jim had felt tears come uncontrollably to his eyes and he was embarrassed. He didn’t know where to look. Later, when Father Braun had asked him whether he ever considered becoming a Jesuit, Jim had said he hadn’t. He had always thought Jesuits were for smart people, really smart. Bookworm kind of people.
“Think about it, Jimmy. You have a mind, and that is something special God gives. What are you going to do with it?”
And that started him thinking of the Jesuits. Later, in Vietnam, when nothing seemed to make sense, Jesus did. And so did the Jesuits. More and more they made sense for Jimmy Folan’s mind.
Now, looking at all the colors of the people of the world who were Jews, James Folan would like to have had Father Braun’s class here to solve the argument, or perhaps even begin another one.
One exceptionally beautiful young woman was making her way toward the customs desk, as though about to lodge a complaint. He guessed she might have been from some Arab country. Her complexion was more golden than brown, her hair richly black, and her ey
es soft, doe-like, a warm, rich brown.
Her face was elegant, with soft hints of high cheekbones, and precisely full lips, without makeup. She wore a khaki blouse, and shorts exposing legs so sleek, Jim Folan removed his eyes, reminding himself he was a priest.
The woman spoke Hebrew to the older customs woman, somehow able to ferociously inhale a cigarette without missing a beat of conversation. Her raven locks were pulled back tight into a beret, but wispy light strands had escaped and were floating around her ears like silken jewelry spun by the breeze.
She looked at him. Jim turned his head.
“You,” she said.
Jim looked back. He felt he had just been addressed by a policeman.
“You,” she said again in English.
“Yes,” said Jim.
“You are Dr. James Folan,” she said with a soft Middle Eastern accent that seemed to caress the consonants and float the vowels.
“Yes. Folan. James Folan,” said Jim.
“I am Dr. Golban. I am glad to meet you. You have no more bags than that?”
“No,” said Jim.
“You don’t plan to stay long. You’re leaving tonight, what?”
“No, I just sort of hurriedly came. I’ll stay as long as I have to.”
“I see. So the choice of you is some sort of rush or accident?”
“No. Not at all,” said Jim. “Do we have to talk out here?”
“No. Anywhere you want.”
“On the way to Jerusalem,” said Jim. She extricated him from customs, and guided him past some dark taxi drivers with large amounts of gold jewelry around their necks. She spoke sharply to them, and Jim gauged from his incredibly sparse and rusty Hebrew that insults had been exchanged.
Dr. Golban took him to an old yellow Volkswagen beetle, with dents and bumps and a blue front fender.
The seat covers were new green plastic material and the engine made a pitiful plea for junking.
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