The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two

by Leonard Foglia

  He felt like crying with relief. What for most young men would have been a rite of passage – the act that, more than any other, signaled the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood -represented something far more basic to him. It said his biological urges were those of everyone around him. The circumstances of his birth had not set him apart. Along with the exultation of having given himself to another person for the first time, of having taken physical pleasure in another human being, came this other, deeper realization: He was just a man. This was the answer he had expected to find in the cathedral in Oviedo, in the Camara Santa. He certainly hadn’t expected it to come in a rural hotel in the foothills of Llanes in the arms of a young woman. He had known happiness before. But never this joy, the joy of feeling part of the human race. One like millions, who’d gone before and millions who would come after. No better, no different. The same.

  He threw on his clothes and called out to Claudia. As soon as she saw him running toward her, she started taking pictures of him. Instead of protesting, he found himself acting up for the camera leapfrogging over bushes, flinging his arms in the air, making childish faces and generally calling attention to himself.

  “You’ve turned into a madman,” squealed Claudia with delight.

  “And the madman is going to get the beautiful photographer,” he growled, stalking her with giant steps. “Fe, fi, fo fum! Madman wants camera! Madman wants to take pictures of beautiful woman.” Claudia squealed with laughter, as Mano wrestled her for control of the camera. Finally, she gave in and put up her hands in surrender.

  “You win!”

  “Now it’s my turn,” said Mano. He raised the viewfinder to his right eye and began slowly circling Claudia, observing her closely, attentively, for the first time. He observed the blonde hairs on the nape of her neck, the gentle swell of her breasts; observed the indentation in the small of her back, and the sleek muscularity of her legs. And her eyes. Green. Almost the color of the sea. He zoomed in on the eyes. The camera had become a pretext. He was allowing himself to luxuriate in the sheer physicality of this woman who had liberated him.

  “Are you going to take a picture or not?” she asked. The intense scrutiny was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to take hundreds,” he replied, and began snapping indiscriminately every part of her body. Her cheeks, her toes, her fingers, her nose, her thighs. He was like paparazzi gone berserk.

  “Mano, what’s got into you?”

  “You, Claudia, you.” And he fell backwards into the grass, laughing or crying with happiness. Claudia couldn’t tell which.

  They spent the afternoon exploring Llanes, a one-time fishing village, with a harbor that snaked so far inland that low tide left fishing boats stranded on the sand, and enough medieval remnants, in the center at least, to qualify as a tourist attraction. What distinguished the town however was something not old at all, but very new and hip. A local artist had decided that the large concrete cubes that buttressed the port’s sea wall would make the perfect canvas and the town authorities had apparently agreed. So instead of a blight of institutional grey, the sea wall had been transformed into a fanciful tumble of colors. There were hundreds of the boldly painted blocks– striped, zigzagged, criss-crossed, starred and flowered. The patterns were endless. They could have been the toy blocks of a giant’s offspring, Gulliver’s young son, say, who, like all five-year-old children, had failed to put his playthings back in the toy chest when he was through and simply left them along the water’s edge. One thing was certain, “Los Cubos de la memoria,” as they were called, provided a lively counterpoint to the staid buildings of the past.

  As Claudia and Mano walked along the sea wall, she photographed them from every possible angle. Occasionally, Mano would ask to take a shot and invariably include her in it. Closer to the harbor’s entrance, an older couple appeared equally captivated. “Cuidado,” they heard the woman say, as the man climbed down from the promenade and, like a crab, he made his way over the crazy quilt of blocks. She had a camera and he was apparently going to pose for it, perched atop one of the cubes. But he had to work to steady himself on the uneven and unexpectedly slippery surfaces.

  “Está bien!” she called out, as he stood up hesitantly on a lemon yellow cube and attempted a smile that didn’t entirely conceal the uneasiness he felt. “Sonrie! Enrique, sonrie!” But before she had a chance to snap the picture, his feet went out from under him and, having nothing to grab onto, he fell backwards onto the cube below. Claudia and Mano watched in horror, as his head struck the corner of a blue and white block. The cubes instantly lost their playful appearance and revealed themselves to be the hard concrete they actually were.

  “Ayúdanos, ayúdanos,” screamed the woman, her cries drowning out those of the gulls cycling overhead. Climbing on to the blocks, Mano could see the motionless body of the man, whose unnaturally extended limbs looked like those of a discarded marionette. Claudia immediately ran back toward the center of town to find help. The woman’s wails only increased, as Mano inched closer to the body. There was a deep gash in the back of the man’s head, from which gushed an alarming stream of blood. “Can you hear me?” Mano asked, but there was no response. Mano tore off his shirt and gently lifted the man’s head. Balling up the shirt, he pressed it against the wound. He wasn’t sure if the man was dead or just unconscious, but if the latter were true, the one thing he could do was help staunch the flow of blood. He cradled the man’s head tightly, close to his chest, and rocked him ever so easily. “No te asutes, don’t worry. I’m here. I’m here.” The way Mano kept repeating the words, they sounded like the refrain of a song. Or a prayer.

  Claudia came running back and caught Mano’s eyes for a second. She could tell from his look that the situation was not good. She was followed by a policeman and several construction workers, who had been replacing the cobblestones on one of the docks.

  “Is he alright?” the woman cried out. She desperately wanted to join in the rescue effort, but her high heels and tight jeans prevented her from climbing onto the cubes. “Help is here,” Claudia said, restraining her. Indeed, more than a dozen men were now scrambling over the blocks, to get to the man. The wail of an ambulance siren grew louder.

  The men fell into formation, as if obeying some silent directive. Only eight could fit around the man, four on each side, with Mano still pressing his blood-soaked shirt to the man’s head wound. “Listos? Ready?” asked one of the men, the unannounced leader. The others all slipped their hands under different parts of the lifeless body.

  “Uno,” said the leader. Everyone took a deep breath.

  “Dos.”

  All at once, the injured man opened his eyes and gasped for breath, as he tried to speak.

  “Espérense. Wait,” ordered the leader.

  The injured man gasped for a few more breaths, then reached up with one hand and took hold of Mano’s arm. He looked hard and directly at Mano, as if imprinting his features permanently on his memory. “Gracias, joven,” was all he was able to say. His eyes closed, but his breathing appeared to have returned to normal.

  “Tres.”

  Slowly the team of rescue workers lifted the man off the concrete cubes, Mano continuing to staunch the blood from the head wound, which was bleeding less forcefully now. Gingerly, the group slowly returned to the safety of the promenade. A policeman took over for Mano, and the group moved as one down the promenade, like some industrious multi-legged insect, carrying a twig back to its nest. The ambulance siren pierced the air again, then diminished quickly in volume as the vehicle left the port.

  Mano stayed behind, letting the adrenalin in his body subside. He was saturated in blood. He glanced back to where the man had fallen. The block, which had been blue and white minutes before, now looked as if it had been the target of a balloon filled with red paint, thrown by some prankish child, who squealed with delight, as the balloon struck the tip, exploded and rained its contents down all four sides.r />
  The next group of vacationers would probably think the red streaks were just part of the artist’s whimsical imagination. They would pose on the promenade with the block in the backdrop, not knowing when they pasted the photograph in their scrapbook or hung it on the bedroom wall, that behind their smiling faces were the dried rivulets of a man’s blood.

  2:36

  After closing up the shop, Jimmy ran a couple of errands at the Mercado de la Cruz, where he got into a long discussion with one of his favorite vendors, so he was unusually late arriving home. As he rounded the corner from Altamirano onto Venustiano Carranza, he noticed a small cluster of people on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. If he was not mistaken, several of the people were pointing at his house and talking animatedly. As he got closer, the attention shifted to him and he heard someone say, “Es el padre!” It was reminiscent of the days following the mudslide, when people clamored to get a glance of the “miracle man” and, failing that, of members of the miracle man’s family. An uncomfortable feeling built up in his stomach. He quickened his pace and slipped his key into the lock of the front door, opened it and started to enter, when his foot tripped on something. He looked down at the ground and saw that several bunches of flowers had been placed at the base of the door. He chose not to acknowledge them or the people across the street who apparently had brought them. Nudging them aside with his foot, he swung the big door shut and double locked it from the inside.

  The sound of the door slamming brought Hannah into the entryway at a run. “Where have you been, Jimmy? I’ve been calling your cell phone for hours.”

  “At the market.” He took out his cell phone. “Sorry, I must have switched it off when I left the shop.”

  “Come with me,” she said, “You’ve got to see this.”

  “What?” But Hannah was already on her way to Teresa’s bedroom. Jimmy followed, the uncomfortable feeling growing in his belly. Teresa was sitting in front of her computer, hypnotized by an image on the screen. She barely glanced up at her father.

  “Something wrong?” Jimmy asked.

  “Show him,” Hannah said to her daughter, who angled the computer so her father could see. There on the screen was a picture of Mano.

  “What’s Mano doing there?” he asked.

  “It’s YouTube, Dad,” explained Teresa. “They’re videos sent in by people from around the world.”

  “But why would Mano be part of a video?”

  “You’ll see, Dad. Just watch.” Teresa pressed the button to activate the YouTube submission.

  In close-up appeared Mano’s face, his eyes focused dreamily on the middle distance. The background was fuzzy, but Jimmy could identify it as the Plaza de Armas, just a few blocks away. Superimposed on the picture in bold letters appeared the word:

  HE

  “That picture couldn’t have been taken very long ago,” Jimmy said.

  “Wait, Dad. There’s more.” Teresa clicked on the box marked PLAY.

  The picture dissolved into a second shot of Mano, this one showing his full body, caught in mid-stride.

  WALKS

  Once again, the photograph dissolved, giving way to a shot of Mano on a bench in the Alameda, his strong profile accented by the falling light.

  THE

  The subsequent photograph revealed Mano being pulled from the mudslide in the Sierra Gorda.

  EARTH.

  The sequence climaxed with a photograph of Mano walking down the muddy hillside with Hannah and Jimmy beside him.

  “We’re even in it,” Hannah said to her husband.

  “What’s going on?” Jimmy said, just as a triumphant chord blasted from the computer speaker and the full caption appeared:

  HE WALKS THE EARTH

  What followed was a series of candid shots of Mano, one melting into the next, revealing him in a full range of expressions -pensive, laughing, somber, playful, down-hearted, determined, exultant - all of which aimed at suggesting the fullness of his humanity. They were accompanied by a running commentary. “Six months ago,” the lightly accented voice was saying, “newspapers around the world heralded ‘A Miracle in Mexico.’ But it was not a miracle just for Mexico, but for every one of us. Our Lord in his divine wisdom has chosen this troubled time in history finally to fulfill the age-old promise that he would return one day. We are told in the Bible that ‘I will be with you always.’ For centuries we took this to mean that his spirit would be with us forever. But recently, we have come to understand that he meant much more. He left us with more than his spirit. He left us his blood on a cloth. The one true cloth. The cloth of Oviedo. And that blood – the blood of our Lord now made man – walks the earth again. This is the face of the second coming.”

  The music swelled a second time and a dramatic close-up of Mano appeared on the screen. He was looking directly at the camera and his eyes smoldered with an otherworldly intensity.

  The voice resumed: “Our Savior walks among us, my friends. I know. I have seen Him and spoken with Him. I have experienced His celestial power. But again, as in times past, there are those who do not believe. The Doubters. The Sinners. Those who would crucify Him all over again. So the time has come to declare ourselves. The end of days is at hand. The struggle will be fierce and long, and only those who believe with the fullness of their heart will be among the saved. Be among the righteous! Worship, praise and above all protect Him, our King of Kings.”

  Mano’s face was replaced by a repeat of the triumphant announcement, HE WALKS THE EARTH! And then the screen went dark.

  “How did you find this?” Jimmy asked his daughter.

  “I got a call from a girlfriend at school. She recognized Mano. One of the nuns saw it, too.”

  “Nuns watch YouTube?”

  “Everyone watches YouTube. The whole world will see this.” Teresa’s words hung in the air ominously. “That’s that man’s voice, isn’t it? The one who came to the shop the other day.”

  “It would seem so,” said Jimmy.

  “What man?” Hannah asked.

  “Johanson.”

  “Johanson was in the shop? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you. I thought I had handled it. He wanted to know where Mano was. I told him we didn’t know and to leave us alone in the future.”

  “Why would he do this?”

  “He told me that wherever Mano was, he wasn’t safe. That’s what he’s referring, I think, when he says there are those who don’t believe.”

  “Of course, there will be those who don’t believe,” Hannah protested vehemently. “We don’t believe!”

  “Play the video again, Teresa, so we can listen exactly to what he is saying,” requested Jimmy.

  The pictures of Mano came up, even more compelling the second time. Again, Dr. Johanson’s earnest voice. “…There are those who do not believe. The Doubters. The Sinners. Those who would crucify Him again…”

  “Stop it there,” Hannah ordered. “Does he think these people know where Mano is?” Hannah asked.

  “That’s what he implied when he came to the store.”

  “He has to be lying. This is some kind of ploy. Johanson is a madman. He’ll do anything to find Mano.”

  “That’s what I thought. But not now. Not with this video. In his strange, sick way, I think Johanson believes he is actually protecting Mano somehow.”

  Teresa burst into tears. “Why are they doing this to Mano? All because of a stupid mudslide? He was just lucky, right?”

  Hannah held her daughter close to her chest. “Yes, honey, he was lucky.”

  “But they’re talking about crucifying Mano!” said Teresa.

  “That’s just symbolic terminology,” Jimmy said. “They don’t mean it literally.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Hannah. “Teresa, write an e-mail to your brother. Tell him to come home immediately.”

  “No,” Jimmy countered. “He can’t come home. Have you looked outside?”

  The t
hree of them went to the living room. Jimmy cracked the drapes, then stepped aside so his wife and daughter could see. The crowd had already doubled in size. “He can’t come back here.”

  “Where’s Little Jimmy?” Hannah asked.

  “At soccer practice with his friends,” Teresa said.

  “Oh, God, we’ve got to get him.”

  “I’ll go,” said Jimmy. “But e-mail your brother right now.”

  “What do I say, Dad?”

  “Tell him – and use these exact words – to disassociate himself from whomever he is with. Immediately and without explanation. Just disappear. As quickly as possible. Disappear!”

  2:37

  Until Claudia said, “I think we better get you some fresh clothing,” Mano had been unaware of his appearance. His pants were soaked with blood, and blood had streaked down his bare chest making it look as if he was wearing a surrealistically patterned sport shirt. His face appeared to have been painted for battle. Anyone passing by on the promenade would have assumed he was the victim of the accident on Los Cubos de la memoria, not the rescuer.

  “Let me just rest a second,” replied Mano. The crowd of onlookers had dispersed and the ambulance had probably reached the emergency room by now. But the experience of holding a man’s life in his hands was still overwhelmingly vivid in Mano’s mind. He had cradled the man’s head for only a few minutes in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood that seeped through his shirt onto his hands and his chest and his pants. But blood was life and his only goal had been preventing life from leaving that body. Blocking it, literally, as he would block a breach in a castle wall or a leak in a dam, until the man himself recovered the will to struggle. And he had actually sensed the moment when life had won, when the man had regained consciousness and taken control over his own body.