Papal Decree

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  He caught a glimpse of her in the middle of the nave, looking at a trompe l’oeil fresco that created the illusion of a nonexistent cupola, an ingenious masterpiece by Andrea Pozzo. He ran over to her.

  ‘You made things real easy,’ she was shouting upward, red in the face. ‘Real easy.’

  Rafael had never seen her like this; she was beside herself.

  ‘I could have died, JC. You played with my life,’ she continued to shout furiously at no one.

  A coughing attack made her double over. She raised a closed hand to her mouth to stop the coughing. Rafael ran to help her.

  ‘Are you all right, Sarah?’ He was worried.

  She coughed a little more and then calmed down.

  ‘Do you feel better?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘It’s over, thanks. Something caught in my throat.’

  Rafael shook his head and looked at her hand.

  Sarah followed his glance and understood. Her hand was full of blood.

  69

  It was like a rebirth.

  When Myriam saw her son coming down the steps from the plane at Heathrow, a little after midnight, thin, rumpled, with a knapsack on his back, it was as if she’d given birth to him a second time. Her tears flowed uncontrollably as little Ben embraced her, crying and smiling, too, like a newborn. His father also hugged him tightly, feeling as if he’d recovered a part of himself he thought he’d lost forever. The entire nightmare had vanished with his son’s smile and the opportunity to touch, embrace, and caress. Everything was good.

  ‘You can never go out again without my permission, son,’ Myriam said with a voice still heavy with emotion.

  ‘I need a vacation, Dad,’ Ben said with a smile.

  ‘Of course, Ben. I’ll take care of everything.’

  They got into the backseat of the car. Myriam gave both of them an unhappy look. ‘You’re going to delegate authority, Ben. All three of us are going on vacation, as a family.’

  ‘Please, not another cruise,’ Ben Isaac objected.

  ‘We will not be taking another cruise. I promise.’

  ‘Take us home, Joseph,’ Ben Isaac told the driver.

  Having his son safe and sound was worth any price, all the money he had … any parchment.

  They looked at the London streets as if seeing them for the first time. The long lines of traffic didn’t matter, nor did taking more than an hour to get home. The lights in the dark streets were comforting. The most important thing was that they were all together. They were a family again, or for the first time.

  Myriam wanted everything to last forever. Her husband, her son, together, united, the Isaacs.

  ‘I’m going to call Dr. Forster to see if you’re all right,’ Myriam advised when they arrived at the house.

  ‘That’s not necessary, Mother. I’m fine.’

  ‘Your mother’s right. We want to make sure,’ Ben Isaac admonished him. ‘Do you want me to call a psychologist?’

  The experience could have been traumatizing.

  ‘Not for now,’ the young man declined. ‘Let’s see how things go and decide later, okay?’

  He couldn’t lie to himself. It hadn’t been a walk in the park. He’d been tortured, and had seen an innocent person killed in front of him. That couldn’t be erased, wiped from his memory like a computer hard drive.

  ‘That seems sensible to me,’ his father agreed. ‘What about you, Myr?’

  His mother held his face in her hands and looked at him directly. ‘Don’t hold things in. That does no one any good. If you need help, we’re here.’

  Little Ben didn’t say yes or no. The car parked at the door of the large house inside the Isaac property.

  ‘I’m going to take a long shower and go to bed,’ the young man declared as soon as he got out of the car. Coming home was a wonderful feeling.

  ‘That sounds like an excellent idea,’ his father said jovially.

  ‘Ah!’ Little Ben remembered something, opening his pack and taking out a package for his father.

  ‘What’s this?’ The older man asked curiously.

  ‘Your friend sent you this. He said you should guard it in the vault, and it couldn’t be in better hands.’

  Ben Isaac had no idea what his son was talking about.

  ‘You’ve never mentioned him,’ little Ben observed.

  ‘Who?’ his father asked.

  ‘JC.’

  ‘Let’s go, darling,’ Myriam called, hugging her son. ‘Go take your shower and rest.’

  She walked her son to the door and stopped to look at Ben Isaac.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘In a minute,’ he replied.

  He walked to the vault with the package in his hand. It should contain a large bound book inside.

  He descended the twenty steps and walked to the solid door. He was nervous. Who was this JC, whom both his son and Sarah mentioned?

  He entered the code to open the door: KHRISTOS.

  He placed his eyes in front of the screen and a blue light read his retina. Entry authorized.

  He entered a cold chamber as soon as the heavy door opened. He didn’t have the courage to look at the showcases. He felt sad about not being able to look at the written words of the parchments again.

  He turned in front of the door to unwrap the package his son had given him. Inside was a book protected by a plastic bag with a hermetic seal. There was a Post-it attached. He read the message.

  Nothing has changed, except only you and I know, and I’ve already forgotten.

  He opened the seal and took the book out very carefully. He was completely perplexed. Nothing has changed?

  The cover revealed nothing, but the first page said it all.

  The History of Jesus, the Nazarite.

  The entire text was written in Hebrew.

  Tears ran down his face. The experience sent waves of anxiety through him.

  He turned some of the pages, yellowed with time, of the ancient transcription. The story of Jesus according to Mathew, John, Simon Kepha, Judas Tome, Phillip, Bar Talmay, Myriam. It was all there, a testimony from those days.

  He would guard it in one of the showcases, since there was room now. He went over and looked at the displays, astonished. There, immune to the passage of time, were the Gospel of Jesus and the inscription placing Jesus in Rome in A.D. 45. How could that be? Only one of the showcases was empty, the one containing the Status Quo agreements of 1960 and 1985.

  He read the Post-it over again and smiled incredulously. Nothing has changed, except only you and I know, and I’ve already forgotten.

  Who was this new unknown friend, known by two letters that could mean nothing? He glanced at the inscription and the Gospel of Jesus again and locked the new item very carefully in the empty showcase.

  He returned to the heavy door and looked at the three showcases. He took a deep breath and turned his back. The world always sets things right.

  70

  God had expressed Himself, but for the first time he hadn’t understood Him. Since he first found Him in the Holy Scriptures that had turned him into His most faithful servant. He had sent him Aloysius, who had guided him through the meanderings of the Word and the Mystery, teaching him the true meaning of all the passages of the Bible.

  Tonight God had sent him a message he couldn’t decipher. The pain in his shoulders made him almost lose consciousness. He was laid out on the backseat of the car Aloysius was driving.

  ‘I should take you to the hospital, Nicolas,’ his worried tutor advised.

  ‘No, Professor. I’ll deal with this at home,’ he said, in pain.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Aloysius, or Schmidt, or the Austrian iceman, was devastated by what had happened. Everything overthrown by a stranger, a legend.

  He had no doubt he had started a war with the church and if things were bad now, they would only get worse.

  She was already in bed when they arrived. She was awakened by loud knockin
g on the door. She hurried to open it, and saw an unknown man walk in behind Nicolas, who was wounded.

  ‘My God!’ she stammered, frightened.

  Nicolas lay down on the floor, full of pain. ‘You don’t need to stay, Aloysius. She’ll take care of me. Get some rest.’

  Aloysius looked hesitant, then said to him, ‘If you need anything, call me. Do you hear?’

  ‘Of course,’ Nicolas agreed.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Aloysius asked her arrogantly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

  Nicolas twisted on the floor, sweating, moaning, and shivering. ‘Get me the first-aid kit,’ he ordered his wife.

  She hurried to obey. She heated some water, brought clean towels, and a knife to use as a scalpel if necessary.

  She took scissors and cut his shirt away from the wounds to begin the operation. None of the bullets had exited.

  ‘You’re going to have to get them out,’ he told her. ‘Go and get the case out of my dresser drawer.’

  She obeyed and came back in a few moments with a small black case. She knelt down by him and opened it. It was full of containers, needles, and a syringe. She recognized the syringe and could almost feel the fluid injected into her veins, more times than she could remember.

  ‘Attach the needle to the syringe, insert it into the flask, and extract the fluid,’ he explained, almost fainting.

  She did it with some difficulty, then repeated the gesture she’d seen him perform so often, squeezing the syringe until a few drops left the needle.

  She started to insert it in his arm, but he grabbed her hand hard. He gasped with pain.

  ‘Wait. Get the book from the pocket of my shirt.’

  She put the syringe on the floor and found the book easily. It was the paperback Bible.

  ‘Open it at random,’ he ordered.

  She did.

  ‘Choose a verse and read it to me.’

  Her voice was nervous, but then gained strength at the end. ‘Behold the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those who hope for his mercy.’

  He thought about the words she read him for a few moments and made a decision. ‘I’m ready.’

  She looked at the needle and injected the contents of the syringe. It would take 120 seconds to take effect.

  He raised his head suddenly and frightened her. He seemed delirious.

  ‘Will everything be all right, Mother?’ he asked. ‘Tell me everything will be all right, Mama.’

  She stroked his hair.

  ‘Shhh. Rest. Everything’s fine, my son. It’ll go away.’

  Two minutes passed and Nicolas fell into a deep sleep. There was no more pain, doubt, or disillusion. Everything was perfect.

  She opened the small pocket Bible again at random and read the first verse her eyes hit upon. I will place my hopes in the Lord; I will hope for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.

  She took a deep breath and picked up the knife she’d found in the kitchen. She looked at Nicolas’s serene face, breathing peacefully, imprisoned in a drug-induced sleep. Her first stab was right in his heart, the second, an inch or so to the side. She continued stabbing his chest eighteen times, her fury increasing with each motion. When she stopped, she looked again at his peaceful face. He wasn’t breathing.

  She took her time washing Nicolas’s blood off her skin. A hot, restoring bath, whose steam billowed into a cloud on the ceiling of the bathroom. She put on a blue dress with a jacket and packed a small suitcase into which she put Nicolas’s Bible. He didn’t need it anymore. She carried the suitcase to the hall and went to his room, to his first dresser drawer, where there was another case, larger than the one that held the syringe. Inside were stacks of fifty-euro bills. She emptied the box and went to the hall for her suitcase. She looked at Nicolas’s corpse one last time. He appeared to be sleeping.

  ‘We’ll see each other in hell, Nicolas,’ she said bitterly before going out into the cold, dark night.

  71

  The next day dawned sunny, as it often does after a storm.

  Rafael had spent the whole night in a chair at Sarah’s side in the Policlinico Gemelli, courtesy of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who intervened personally to make sure the journalist was treated with every comfort.

  Tarcisio had called Rafael early in the morning to meet him at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiense, where Tarcisio was presiding over a ceremony celebrating the founder, Don Bosco. It appealed very much to the secretary’s heart, since it was a Salesian ritual, and he himself was a Salesian brother.

  Rafael showed up at the designated hour, ten in the morning, in the basilica where the bones of the apostle Saint Paul are exhibited. A line of Salesian priests and brothers filed past the secretary, who was seated next to the altar. The ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes, with a choir singing the praises of God, and then there were many petitions, since it was not every day they had the privilege of speaking personally with such an important figure. Rafael stood next to the tomb of the apostle, who never knew Jesus, but contributed decisively to His immortality. Rafael watched. The wide nave with eighty columns was full of tourists taking photos of the portraits of the popes displayed throughout the edifice from Peter to Benedict, the sixteenth to use that blessed name.

  The stampede of brothers eased up gradually as they went to enjoy a simple meal being served in the cloister. Tarcisio delayed a little to exchange words with the rector of the Salesian congregation – instructions and recommendations from someone in an influential position important to the order.

  The secretary returned to the sacristy. An assistant who had taken Trevor’s place came over to Rafael next to the canopy.

  ‘His Eminence can see you now,’ he said.

  Rafael followed him to the sacristy, where Tarcisio was waiting.

  ‘Good morning, Rafael. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Sit down, please,’ he said, gesturing toward a chair next to a large oak table. ‘Did you get any rest?’ Tarcisio asked.

  ‘I dozed a little in the hospital.’

  ‘Is Sarah all right?’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ Rafael replied.

  ‘I’ll mention her in my prayers,’ Tarcisio offered.

  Rafael knew he would.

  ‘Your Eminence never questions things?’ Rafael asked, a little intimidated by the question he couldn’t hold back.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you ever doubt your faith?’

  Tarcisio sighed. ‘Someone who wants to believe must first doubt. Faith comes after doubts, not before.’

  Rafael took a deep breath. It was a profound response.

  ‘Whoever never doubts never really knows what it is to believe,’ the secretary added.

  Rafael was a man with doubts, but he was in the presence of one of the most powerful men in the world. He didn’t know how to express his doubts without showing a lack of respect.

  ‘Yesterday I realized things that … that …’

  ‘That put your faith in doubt,’ Tarcisio concluded for him.

  Rafael neither confirmed nor denied it.

  ‘My dear Rafael, I understand your confusion, your doubts, but let me say that they’re unfounded.’

  ‘I’m afraid everything is just a misunderstood exaggeration of history by Paul, whose bones may not even lie in that tomb out there.’

  ‘They’re in there, for sure, Rafael,’ Tarcisio reassured him.

  ‘Then what is the society guarding?’

  ‘A great lie. A Jesus Who never existed. Don’t forget something, Rafael. We’re His heirs. This is not based on anything that can be denied.’

  Rafael wanted very much to believe this, but he felt a storm of doubts at the moment. He didn’t have the clarity of thought to distinguish between true and false or a plausible invention.

  ‘Excuse my presumption, Your Eminence, but why are you a Catholic?’

  Tarcisio smiled condescendingly. ‘For two simple reasons. B
ecause I want to be and I can be.’

  It was an affirmation of freedom, in fact, that put faith on the level of a simple choice. Either one accepted freely with a spontaneous will or rejected it, purely and simply.

  ‘I called you here because His Holiness asked me to give you this.’ Tarcisio handed him a rare book with extremely worn pages.

  Rafael opened it carefully. It was written in Latin with the title Jesus the Nazarite. The priest turned his eyes to Tarcisio, astonished.

  ‘His Holiness doesn’t want any of his flock to have doubts or confusion. The answers to your questions are there,’ he explained. ‘It’s a loan. His Holiness would like it back when you’re finished.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rafael said with a smile. This gesture made him feel better.

  A piece of paper fell out of the book. It was a photocopy of a carbon-dating test showing that the material analyzed belonged to a male from the fifteenth century.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It concerns the bones the Jesuits have been guarding.’

  The fifteenth century, not the first. This is why Tarcisio always spoke of a fraud. He knew.

  ‘What’s going to happen now between us and the society?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know?’ Tarcisio exclaimed, assuming a sardonic tone.

  Rafael shook his head. What was there to know?

  ‘Something very strange happened,’ Tarcisio revealed. ‘Adolph has suffered a severe attack of food poisoning and is being treated at this moment in the hospital. But it seems his last hour has not come,’ he said ironically. ‘Next time it could be worse. Food can kill you, Rafael. You just never know. Schmidt or Aloysius, however you prefer to call him, had worse luck,’ he continued. ‘He fell off the metro platform at Lepanto when the train was coming in. A tragedy.’ There was a trace of sorrow in his voice, even if Tarcisio sounded sarcastic.

  Rafael thought about these latest developments. Proof of the power of the church that could destroy the society next time. Whoever had been the strategist – Tarcisio, William, or the Supreme Pontiff – was brilliant.

  ‘Your contribution was very important, Rafael. We won’t let you forget.’

  ‘But I still feel lost. You could have told me about JC’s involvement,’ he argued.