Dies Irae

by Ruby Spinell

  “Did you always want to be a priest?”

  “No,” there was a long pause, “not always.” A barely perceptible shrug dislodged the pause. “Couldn’t hack the grades, great on practice, but not on theory. Have you ever known innately how to perform a task, Detective, and been unable to explain what you were doing? They want explanation, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The world?” Father Elias gave hiim a quizzical, half humorous look. “It is easy for me to lose myself in just about any hands-on construction.”

  “The cabinet?”

  “Yes, that sort of thing. I’m very talented,” he looked intently at the palms of his hands outstretched on the table as if questioning them. “Sometimes, I think they have a mind of their own. I had a brother. He died a few years ago. He was the exact opposite. The only thing he ever did with his hands was catch a pigskin in the end zone. But contrary to the label most athletes get, he had a brain, got great grades. What a wonderful, sharp mind!” The sigh forced an extended exhalation.

  “How did he die?”

  “Slowly …”

  Eli waited … “Slowly?”

  “What?”

  “You said, slowly?”

  “Did I?” he shook his head in consternation. “He died in the Viet Nam War. I’d like more coffee, how about you?” He had risen from the table and was half way to the counter before he finished the sentence.

  “You were close, you and your brother,” said Eli as the Father put the two cups of steaming hot coffee down beside the empties.

  “Yes.”

  “Any other brothers or sisters?”

  “No, just us. Our folks died in a car crash when we were teenagers, just old enugh to make it on our own. We went to the same college. Dated the same girls.”

  “There must be a natural bitterness in losing a loved brother to the people you are now involved in helping.” Elias looked at him, his steady pale eyes almost grey.

  “No bitterness, Detective. One does what one has to do. Bitterness, anger … these boomerang. They’re pointless. I’m a lucky man to be able to carry the love of Christ to the very people who killed my brother. I couldn’t do it without grace. No bitterness. Great peace.” He said these last words low, almost to himself, and drained his coffee cup.

  “What about ill feeling in the neighborhood over the sisters’ involvement in Asia?”

  “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t exist. I can think of half a dozen former supporters who’ve switched attendance to St. Hilary’s. Some of those would go farther if they could. Have you noticed on Eighth, the cluster of Vietnamese families? The Murphys, Mr. and Mrs. Keane, the Rubinskis, and old Mrs. Cooley up and sold their houses to avoid what they called the yellow plague.”

  “How does Bishop Danley feel about the sisters’ involvement in Asia?”

  Elias sat with his head bent. Eli could see the nerve jump at the mandible insert. “I think it best you ask His Reverence that, Detective.”

  “I will Father, I will. One last question, was it you that burned the tiger root in mirror image into the old gate posts?”

  Instead of answering, the priest asked his own question. “Are you familiar with the mystic diagrams used in magic rites? Perishable, Detective, that’s the key. Perishable. A reminder of the eternal change which governs the universe.

  “Mystic diagrams used in magic rites, drawn on paper, burned. Evil forces sketched in dust, scattered in disarray. As perishable as we are. I burned the tiger roots when Tim was first listed missing in action.”

  “Your brother?” Elias nodded.

  “You’ve been very helpful,” Eli said. “I can drop you off at St. Hilary’s.”

  “No. I’d just as soon walk.”

  “Are you sure?” Eli calculated almost eight miles.

  For answer, Father Elias pulled his collar high, waved, thrust both of his hands in his pockets, and strode off. By the time Janah pulled the car from the curb and passed him before making his turn, the priest’s hair and shoulders were white.

  At that very moment, Mirari Buttrick Janah was reading a note on the lower west side of Manhattan. Great! Puglia’s? Ziti? Seven p.m. He’d found her message on his answering machine and responded as she thought he would. The receptionist at Pius handed her the note with the key.

  Arthur did not like Sundays, a holdover, he said, from the seminary. He called the seventh day ‘dead meat’ and usually scheduled a poker game. Wonder what new hand he held … or thought he held, that had him throwing in the old. Just boredom, my dear; he’s fond of women. Fond of women in a position that does not allow it to show except in ecclesiastical, sanctioned ways. She had seen how good he was playing those games. How many women did he know who allowed him to forget the priestly role? She would like to think she belonged to a unique band, but she doubted it.

  She emerged from the subway at Christopher Street and caught her breath. Her Sunday City was ankle deep, snow still falling. There were few places as beautiful as Manhattan under new snow. Minus delivery vans, thoroughfares relatively empty.

  She’d had a love affair with Manhattan since her dad helped her, at eight, up those narrow metal stairs in the double decker. The wind. The speed. Broadway opening out around her … she would never forget those rides. Looking around, suddenly she jumped back. A yellow cab skied around the corner on two wheels, stopping where she had been standing. She took a deep, long breath and smiled.

  When she let herself into the utilitarian single at Pius, a gull, rising like a copter in the space between the hotel and the adjoining apartment building, decanted and fell away. For a minute, she thought with longing of her cozy apartment on Spring. You had to sublet, you couldn’t afford it and the house. This is fine for the occasional overnight. You won’t be doing any entertaining!

  Besides the narrow bed, someone had placed a rocker facing the eight feet between the outer walls, facing the opening over the Hudson, facing the light, tiny portion of sky. She put the briefcase with the last chapter of the Valery article in it, on this, setting it rocking, lightly. Pulling off her boots, she immediately got her feet wet standing in the puddle they’d made on the carpet. Groaning, she started for the adjoining shower, pulling her sweater over the mass of tricolor hair, hopping out of the green wool skirt. She had plenty of time for a long, hot shower.

  At six-fifteen, she cut across Bedford to Seventh as one of St. Vincent’s ambulances caterwauled and sloshed its way north, snowflakes back-lit red and flashing. She had never hesitated to take on the walk to Little Italy when she was living on Spring. In New York, what were a few blocks? This wasn’t that much farther.

  But she hadn’t bargained on the snow slowing her as much as it did. At seven-fifteen she turned hurriedly south on Mulberry in order to intersect Hester, and fell. As she burst through the door of Puglia’s, she was grateful Arthur had not suggested Patrissy with its elegant charm.

  She could feel the sweat running down under both arms to her ribs. The waiter, strolling toward her between the long, plank tables, looked amused and then glanced around protectively. Probably grateful he’s placed no one near the door. She shook herself discreetly, as a dog would coming from a swim. Motioning her to follow, the waiter turned and headed toward the next room.

  Arthur Danley, standing when he saw her, shook his head in bemusement. Power. Mir felt it the first time they met. The cleric in traditional black waiting with her while the ancient toaster slowly warmed their English muffins; it never browned them. The breakfast room at Pius, full of clergy who seemed to know this and stuck to muffins.

  A priest. Ho-hum. A bishop who handled himself like a green beret. Hummm. She had always been partial to men who oozed energy. He wasn’t as tall as Eli or her first husband Brian.

  Brian’s energy leaked out in superfluous, inconsequential ways. She had been a child marrying a child who couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t finish a thing.

  Eli, always controlled, had great strength, always contained.

&n
bsp; Arthur. When she stood near him she felt the way she used to feel as a young girl when the Queen docked, and she went to stand on the pier at her berth under her bow. He loomed.

  He loomed now in a very expensive-looking black ski jacket he had unzipped, but not removed. The waiters knew him. They’d met five times. No one ever called him Bishop or Your Reverence in her presence. It was always Sir.

  Once she was seated, he bent to the waiter, “Hold the order, Sorze? I think we’d better let the lady drip.” The dark, heavyset Sicilian winked in complicity She was more than a little annoyed at the two of them, but damned if she’d show it. She tried to feel coy and protected so that these ‘feminine’ traits would show. Danley just looked at her, grinning.

  “Wine?”

  “Beer.” She made an effort to soften her voice. “I think I lost a bit of moisture walking over, footing was worse than I expected.”

  “You look as if you gained some,” he nodded at the droplets hanging and sparkling in her hair.

  “I look pretty bad huh?”

  “You look great!” ‘Great’ descended into a space somewhere and sent a rill of heat flopping over and over at the tip of her spine.

  She was not partial to robust skin coloring, too much like her own. Once blond, now grey, he still had very fair, slightly pink skin. His large hands were never stilled; they drummed now on the edge of the dark wood.

  As she leaned back from the table, shook and patted her hair hopefully into place, she felt his eyes on her, questioning. “I must say,” he said, “I was very pleased to find your message on my machine.”

  “You cancelled your game?”

  He pursed his lips, nodding. “Poker I can play any Sunday.”

  “I think you’re playing this Sunday.” Startled, he looked at her, then threw back his head and laughed.

  She laughed along with him. Then, apologetically, “It was a spur of the moment decision. I wasn’t coming down until the morning.”

  “Coming from where?”

  “My old home. I gave up my apartment and moved back up to Westchester. I’ve decided I’m a writer first and foremost. I can’t get what I’d like to do, done, down here. I’ve kept three days of proofreading at Linters and am finishing a freelance piece on Paul Valery.”

  “Humph.” The grunt expressed a measure of respect.

  “I know you appreciate Valery. Not everyone does you know.”

  He nodded. “Clergy and medical people do.”

  “The elite?”

  “Not necessarily. What made you call?”

  He was no fool. He looked coolly across at her. His fingers were still. The breadth of his shoulders filled the space that the three Asian men across the way could only fill together.

  “I’m very hungry.”

  He lowered his eyes. It could wait ’til later. He raised the waiter for their order with a bare look.

  The first English muffin meeting with Arthur Danley had been—as far as she was concerned—innocence itself. After all, the place had been crawling with Roman collars. She had been acutely aware of her hair, all over the place, and the simple neat coif of the sister waiting on the group of prelates at the nearby table. The friend who had borrowed her apartment for a steamy afternoon alliance had not given the requisite signal that they were through. Someone at the office suggested Pius House, neglecting to say it was a Catholic hospice.

  Sleepy, having the first coffee of her day, Mir found being surrounded by men supposedly off limits gave her indigestion. She acutely remembered making her way across the endless reaches in her usual lope, past the black garbed figures making discreet conversation, an English muffin in hand, and the devil in her saying, jump, fly, waltz! All kinds of anti-Pharisee indignation surfaced when she was near religious. It was awful.

  She was busy swearing to herself she would never eat there again when a powerful presence turned up at her shoulder and grinned. Danley had shown her his English muffin with a look that said, I know, funny isn’t it? There was a twinkle in his blue eyes while he acted as the perfect exemplar of obeisance before all Mary models, all mothers, all woman-fold.

  They were on stage and when they finally retrieved their slightly toasted muffins, she would not have been at all surprised to hear a smattering of applause.

  Back at her table, she looked down at the buttered English and wondered what she could do to make it palatable. She ended up eating it under an inch of grape jelly. Even then, she had to get up for a refill on the coffee to swallow it.

  Finishing, looking neither right or left, she let herself out of the cafeteria-like room and bolted up three flights of stairs. So much for that!

  A month later, she ran into him at the Nicholas Roerich exhibit. He recognized her right away, he said. She, engrossed in the deep ceruleans, pale lavenders and mauves surrounding Kanchenjunga, refused to break concentration—anymore than she already had—to look directly at the individual who was intentionally, she was sure of it, invading her space. So hulking sure they belonged to the earth! The way many men crowd you made her furious. Pretending she was unaware of it, she slid with eyes unlifted over to the Little Tibet Mongolian painting Roerich did between 1923 and 1927. He titled it “Tidings of the Eagle.”

  She had almost convinced herself that the impertinent viewer was no longer there when she heard the words, “Do you only talk with strange men over breakfast?” She looked up then, startled, and flushed red to the roots, remembering.

  He didn’t have the collar turned on the beautifully cut charcoal grey pinstripe. Another man hovered in the next room, evidently his chauffeur. He went over and dismissed him after they had gone thoroughly through the museum for almost two hours, painting by painting. She thought it would have been kind of him to let the man go before that, but that wasn’t the way it happened.

  He called her for lunch a week after with tickets for the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit.

  She never saw the Roman collar again.

  He introduced himself as Arthur Danley. It was the slight Asian man in the black uniform that tipped her. He had called him, “Your Reverence, Bishop Danley.” She had the feeling the man said it loud enough for her to hear clearly, even though she stood across the room from them.

  “Who looks to the sky before lowering their pants? I mean, he was despicable! There he sat on the big lower limb of the old maple, right over a posted sign. Never let on he was there. Didn’t see him until I got up to leave.” Arthur Danley laughed so loud the three Asian men across the way all looked in unison at their table. “You wouldn’t have done it? You would have done it! You would have done just the very same thing, I can see it on your face. Men!”

  “How about Caffe Bondo? I could do with some very good espresso and pastry.” He licked his lips. He was still chuckling when Sorze returned with change. He helped her on with her coat and when the two of them reached the street, he tucked her hand into his pocket and with an arm about her waist, started high-stepping it through the snow along Hester toward Mulberry.

  Chapter Nine

  He glimpsed a sashay of pink lack curtains against the glass of the first floor apartment as he turned the car in through the driveway’s unbroken snow. By the time he parked, Mrs. Poole, wearing barn boots and a parka three sizes too big—probably her late husbands—was at the side entrance, taking bites from the rounded slope obscuring his steps with her aluminum, non-stick surface shovel.

  “Terrible unreliable they all are, Mr. Janah, don’t respect honest work. Young people today, don’t know.” The lowest step appeared. “That Greelie boy said he would be here soon as snow. Soon as snow, he said, big laugh that was. Pay ’im good … don’t respect money either.” The second step appeared.

  “Mrs. Poole, I’ll be back down as soon as I change, I’ll do that for you.”

  “Can’t have you doing that, Mr. Janah, you work hard ’n’ all … ain’t right” … but the escaped sigh as she leaned against the outer door frame, told him that was exactly what she had been hopin
g for.

  The second floor landing was quiet. He took the remainder of the stairs in twos, switched on the light within his own place, walked through to the bedroom to return within moments wearing old jeans, a battered wool ski jacket that had belonged to one of the boys, and a black knit hat. Pulling his old boots on by the door, he grabbed up gloves and bolted downstairs.

  “Truly, I’m happy to do it … been sitting too much today.” He shooed the old woman gently back into her apartment and proceeded to cut a straight path out to the street.

  There was very little traffic and the hush that fell with the white stuff gave him the feeling of being deep within one of those bubbles you play with as a child. He was the tiny toy man shovelling the walks along the sleepy street. Someone upended his bubble periodically and he all but disappeared in the gusting snow.

  He found his thoughts returning to Father Elias. The priest’s ease and inner peacefulness was more striking than anything he said. Very few men at his age, he figured forty-four or five, exude peace. Did he find life engrossing? Rewarding? A challenge? All of them? None?

  The word completion came to mind. He dwelt on it, rolling it around like a licorice drop. It surprised him. Snow flew to the gutter as he swung great arcs, enjoying the play of his shoulder muscles, the torque of his spine. The no-parking in effect allowed him to wall it for the plow.

  He was surprised because he viewed Father Elias’ life as narrow and circumscribed … as he had the Hebrew equivalent years ago. Strangely, the priest seemed content … not only content, he appeared right with his world. Takes all kinds I guess. He shook his head and a white cascade fell from his hat to his brows. From there it sifted to his lashes, he blinked clear, came to the end of the walk, turned and widened the path back against the flower garden that, come summer, would be alive with purple nasturtiums and blue phlox, Mrs. P’s favorite colors.