by David Perry
“I think he’s a sweet, lonely, and gentle old man,” Adriano said quietly. “That’s enough for me. He reminds me of my grandfather.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Yes, well.” Adriano picked up his iPhone, fell back on the bed, and started searching for the hotel wireless code. “We have that in common. We both lost our parents at an early age. At least yours are really dead. I don’t have that luxury.”
The flash of anger came out of nowhere, like an eruption. Then, just as suddenly, the lava cooled and sealed over the wounded vent.
Lee opened his mouth to say something but decided against it. Some things are better left unsaid. Especially in a marriage.
“Welcome to Rome. Don Bello has told me so much about you.” Reverend Vicky swept into the salon, high heels clicking on the parquet floors of the St. Paul’s rectory. An antique record player in the corner gushed forth a repertoire of light operatic highlights. Vicky seated herself on the sofa to the aural backdrop of a very young Maria Callas as Butterfly, pining away for Pinkerton in “Un bel di.”
“Oh dear, now the boys will think I’ve been gossiping,” Don Bello chuckled as Vicky stood up to embrace him warmly with a hug and a kiss to the top of his balding pate. “My reputation for discretion is shattered and they’ve barely met me.”
“Strangers on the train, eh?” Adriano laughed. “I hope you didn’t divulge too many of our secrets.”
“Only that you’re happily married and spending your sabbatical in Orvieto following a difficult year,” said Vicky. She smiled and motioned for them to take their seats. Her voice was sweetly accented with just a touch of her British heritage, but by birth or professional itinerary Lee couldn’t tell. It reminded him a bit of Brian’s voice, still British after thirty years in the States.
The priest’s hair was dark blonde and clearly natural, swept up into a bun and fastened on the left side with an antique tortoise-shell comb. Her clerical dress, light gray and just a touch above the knee, was accented by a simple but carefully tailored matching jacket fastened with a braided fabric frog clasp in an Asian motif. An unadorned pewter pectoral cross hung from her neck on a matching chain. It swayed gently as she walked across the room, revealing an inscription on the back that Lee couldn’t make out. Her earrings were simple, miniature black pearl studs. All in all, the thin white collar at the top of her ivory white blouse seemed nothing so much as the perfect accessory to an elegant ensemble.
“I understand that we have friends in common,” said Vicky, motioning for Don Bello to play bartender. “I met your friend, Bishop Swathmore, twice, briefly in the eighties at an interfaith gathering in Rome, and in 1998 when he was in England for the Lambeth conference. We were both protesting the Archbishop of Canterbury’s anti-gay rhetoric and disinvitation to gay Bishop Gene Robinson. I liked him. He had spunk.”
How completely disarming she is, Lee thought. She’s managed to steal an arrow from my conversational quiver before I’ve had a chance to pull it out myself. Don Bello must have given her quite the full report while they were freshening up at the hotel next door.
“I told Lee you’d have known Brian,” Adriano said.
“He was a great man. One of first openly gay bishops in the Episcopal Church as I recall.”
“The first,” Lee said. “Gene Robinson was the first openly gay person to be elected as bishop but Brian had already been bishop of California for many years when he came out of the closet. He announced that he was gay in a sermon at Grace Cathedral. Said he couldn’t take the hypocrisy anymore. I was there in the congregation when he spoke. I’ll never forget his words: ‘We must make more love in the world and being gay is part of God’s love.’”
“Perfectly said.” Vicky leaned into the couch and crossed her legs at the ankle. “The perfect example of what a church—the Church—should be. Open, inclusive, inviting.”
“Now Vicky,” mock-lectured Don Bello as he helped himself to the bar behind the sofa. “You mustn’t fault Rome for being—”
“Medieval? Homophobic? Misogynist? Sexist,” she offered back, clearly a cordially and oft-practiced verbal tennis match. “Do stop me, dear friend, when I’ve exhausted accurate descriptives.”
“I was going to say, You mustn’t fault Rome for being a prisoner of its traditions. Some things take time.”
“Yes, well,” said Vicky archly, “it’s long past time for the Vatican jailer to open those stuffy cells of repression. Does not the Bishop of Rome, our Holy Father, hold the keys to heaven and earth? It’s time to loosen up a bit. Francis has been pope for nine months now, the appropriate time to give birth to new ideas, don’t you think?”
“I told you boys, our dear Vicky is possessed of a formidable mind and crackling opinions.”
“Grazie caro.” She pursed her lips and blew Don Bello a kiss. “But right now, I’d like to be possessed of Stoli on the rocks, and don’t forget our guests.”
“Of course, where are my manners,” said Don Bello with a chuckle. “What beverages of the Raj may I offer you?”
“A vodka martini would be fantastic,” said Adriano.
“Two, please,” Lee seconded the drink order.
“I read about Brian’s death in the Episcopal News Service online edition,” Vicky said, taking her drink from Don Bello and leaning forward on her knees toward Lee. “They sent out the obituary to all of the Anglican churches in Europe. I remember it had a wonderful image of Brian in a ‘Silence Equals Death’ sweatshirt, along with his official photo in clericals.”
“I took that picture, right before Brian performed our wedding ceremony,” said Adriano. “Brian loved it.”
“As well he should. Both of our churches have gluttoned themselves too long on the plate of silence, and because of it, many have been pronounced spiritually dead. Congratulations,” Vicky said, raising her glass in a toast. “I’m so proud to say our church honors marriage equality. Your friend Brian, he was ahead of his time.”
“As are you, dearest Vicky,” said Don Bello, rejoining her on the couch. “You open the door so that the rest of us may follow.”
“Thank you, Vicky. Yes, Brian was a great man,” said Lee quietly. “And a very dear friend.”
“I suppose you know we, too, lost a beloved member of our pastoral family this past year as well.”
“Yes,” Lee said. He took a sip of his martini and looked the priest straight in the eye. My God, he thought, she’s appropriating every subject I was going to offer up. Why did she bring that up? Neither Adriano nor Lee had mentioned anything to Don Bello about Deacon Andrea. Unless Marco had said something to him. But, why would he do that? “Adriano and I were reading something about that.”
“It was right after last year’s Mass of San Andrea, his feast day, and his birthday,” Don Bello said quietly, patting Vicky gently on the knee. “We were all on the altar together that last night. Remember, Vicky?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, suddenly looking like an actress onstage in a play, caught off guard by her cue. “So much changed in just a month. On All Souls Day on November second, we were all so happy to be together. Andrea, as usual, had arranged everything for the migrant blood drive, even though he was less than fond of needles.” Vicky gave a slight smile at the memory. “That blood drive chang…” Her voice drifted off. “Anyway, less than a month later, it was all over when we were on the altar together again. I remember how upset Andrea was. He had just found out about the letter from the Vatican—by fax…” She drifted off for a second time. “He was incredibly distraught. We’d never seen him like that, Gio—Bishop Sancarlo and I.”
“You were close to him?” Adriano asked quietly.
“Who?” Vicky looked up sharply, spilling a bit of her drink. She had a strangely quizzical look on her face. “Andrea, you mean. Yes, of course. We all knew him—loved him. He would have made a fine priest, in any church. But, now he’s dead. There’s really nothing more to say about it. He is gone.” She finished off her drink in a violent gul
p. “Truly, your friend was right. Silence equals death, in so many ways. Shall we eat?”
Abruptly, Vicky stood up and motioned for them to follow her into the rectory’s dining room. Adriano gave Lee a look as if to say, “What was that about?” and quickly polished off his martini as well.
“You must forgive Vicky,” Don Bello whispered, putting his arms around Lee and Adriano and leading them into dinner. “It was rough on all of us, but, well, Vicky feels things very strongly. She cares deeply about her family, her church.”
The dining room was warmer, cozier, more personal than the salon had been. Photos on a sideboard showed Vicky as a young woman, laughing with two young priests. Long lanyards and plastic name tags hung around their necks, the sort used for conventions. Lee could make out the dome of St. Peter’s in the background of the picture. Several awards, engraved vases, a simple oversize coffee cup engraved “You Go Girl!” competed for space with various knickknacks, postcards from around the world, and a beautiful and carefully groomed bonsai tree. A pile of DVDs was topped with one called Pink Smoke Over the Vatican. Next to it was a half-burned flare, like the type one used in a lifeboat or next to a roadside flat tire, wrapped in rainbow ribbons. On the wall, a framed bit of calligraphy, a paraphrase from Bobby Kennedy’s eulogy: “Some women see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”
A quartet of gas wall sconces provided light. A stack of books, files, and assorted papers were stuffed under a credenza on the left, kept in place by a laptop balanced precariously on top. This was the room she spends most of her time in, Lee thought. This is where she lives. This is her room. The rest belongs to the Church.
The large, antique wooden dining room table had been converted into a buffet. The four guests circled the room, selecting from various bruschetta, a collation of Italian meats and cheeses, and a large tureen lit by a small gas burner filled with steaming pasta alongside two others warming a meat and a cream sauce.
“Dig in,” said Vicky, once again all smiles and charm. “I don’t often have guests, so I hope a casual buffet is all right. Serve yourself, and then we’ll all go back into the living room with our plates.”
As Lee helped himself to a dollop of pasta and several truffle-laden pieces of bread, he glanced at the photos on the sideboard. One caught his attention in particular. He waited until all four of them were back in the dining room, plates balanced on their laps, and laughing at an innocently ribald joke told by Don Bello, before making an excuse that he needed more bruschetta.
Alone for a moment with the food and the flickering light of the gas, Lee walked over to the photo of Vicky and the two clerics he had seen before in passing. Picking it up, two of the trio were immediately identifiable. One was a twenty-something, laughing Vicky, blonde hair slightly askew in a breeze forever frozen on film. On her left, she was framed by a handsome young priest, mouth open in mid-laugh. His right hand could just be seen gently resting on her shoulder. On her right was another, more dour-looking priest, a smile of tight fortitude pulled across his face like a mask. Lee turned over the transparent frame. The photo shop’s mark was clearly on the back, “Foto Trestevere: 1-3-83.” And next to it, a scrawled inscription written in cursive ink, “The Magi.” Of course, now Lee recognized the other man in the photo. Even across two decades of aging it was clearly Bishop Arnaud, the officiant at the Sant’Andrea service in Orvieto earlier this week.
Lee quickly put another piece of bruschetta on his plate and rejoined the group in the salon. Before his body finished sitting, Lee was pretty sure he knew the identity of the other man in the frame—he was the beloved former bishop of Orvieto, Giovani “Gio” Sancarlo.
CHAPTER XXV
Doctor, Heal Thyself
Friday, December 6, 2013, morning, Orvieto
A year.
Dr. Luke Wagner stood at the front window of his office in Orvieto’s tiny hospital overlooking the plaza in front of the cathedral. It was chilly, actually downright cold. Occasionally an errant snowflake would float down in front of the glass, a promise of even colder, if more atmospheric, weather to come.
A white Christmas would be nice. It had been a long time since he had seen one, and not here. In Germany, at his grandfather’s home outside Cologne. They had walked to the cathedral and lit candles in front of the reliquary of the Magi. As a child, Luke had loved visiting there. It was the largest reliquary in Europe, holding the bones of the Three Wise Men who had visited the baby Jesus. They, too, had survived the Allied bombings of May 1942. His grandfather had been on leave and visiting home that night, the night of a thousand bombers, the greatest aerial attack in the history of the world. The skies had rained a vengeful death, and all around the Cathedral Cologne erupted in flames. Hundreds died, and 45,000 homes were destroyed—ninety percent of the city. The death toll would have been higher, but Cologne’s bomb shelters were deep. Still, Luke’s grandfather had fled not to the shelters, but to the church, to the kneeler in front of the Magi. That night, he had prayed to the three kings of three different faiths, Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar, and they had listened. While Cologne was consumed, its cathedral lived.
Now, Luke’s grandfather was old, very old, just a few years short of a hundred. And every year, he would repeat the story to Luke, the story of the Three Kings and how they had saved his life. How he wished he was back there now with his grandfather. How he wished he were anywhere but here in Orvieto.
As if in confirmation to his thoughts, Bishop Arnaud walked briskly out of the episcopal residence across the frozen plaza on his way to Mass. Luke quickly pulled the cord on the window shade and the Venetian blind came crashing down with a satisfying clatter, shutting out Arnaud’s despised visage.
How I wish you were dead. How I wish I were dead. I’ve sold my soul to a soulless man, Luke thought, then immediately ground his fingernails into his palm, a practiced strategy to remind him of his vows. I must obey. I must not question. Obedience is what I need. Obedience to my master. He remembered Archbishop Arnaud’s teaching. “When the student is ready, the teacher will present himself.”
Fuck you, Arnaud, Luke thought, then crossed himself, but without enthusiasm, only by rote
The doctor walked across the room and looked out the far window toward the Franciscan monastery in the hills outside the town. There, another man was seeking absolution, Bishop Sancarlo. If he begs for forgiveness, a bishop, descended from the apostles, what chance do I have? He closed his eyes and silently mouthed the words of Bishop Arnaud’s lesson on repentance:
I myself want once again to make a very sincere act of contrition, and I would like each one of you to do the same. As we call to mind our infidelities, and so many mistakes, weaknesses, so much cowardice—each one of us has his own experience—let us repeat to Our Lord, from the bottom of our hearts, Peter’s cry of contrition: “Domine, tu omnia nosti, tu scis quia amo te!”—“Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you, despite my wretchedness!” And I would even add, “You know that I love you, precisely because of my wretchedness, for it leads me to rely on you who are my strength. Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea.” And at that point let us start again.
Wretched. Cowardly. A pit of mistakes and infidelities. How would he ever expect forgiveness? He had given up. Two years ago, he had been ready to die, but someone had stopped him. Someone had pulled him back from the edge.
Andrea.
He had stood on the cliff and prayed.
Useless, he had thought, to turn my thoughts to God.
Behind him, the lights of Orvieto reflected in a million icy crystals. Snow had come early that year. It wasn’t yet December.
Below, the road would be deserted. He had wondered who would find him. Someone would, of course, and for that he was sorry. What a horrible thing to see, to discover, the body of a reprobate, crushed against the rock and never to see forgiveness. Never to see the face of God. Never to see tomorrow’s sunrise.
It should be beautiful,
and he smiled. He had often come here to sit near the altar and watch the dawn. Tomorrow, its rays would reach out to warm the city across a quilt of virginal frost. He had seen it before, prisms of color in the ice. Like a miracle it had seemed to him as a child.
No more. No more dawns, no more rainbows, no more miracles.
“Don’t!”
He had heard the scream, and had turned around to see—Andrea.
Two years ago, Luke had stood on the cliffs of San Giovanale above the La Chiesa del Crocifisso del Tufo with the blood of two people still wet on his hands and started to jump, but at the last moment, Andrea had pulled him back.
Andrea had saved his life, his wretched, cowardly, murderous life.
If only Andrea had let him die, justice would have been done. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for two lives. Andrea had sat with him until the dawn, alone with Luke’s two victims, and they had prayed. Andrea spoke of healing and forgiveness, and the inestimable love of God. He convinced Luke that there had been no sin, that he had done everything he could have for the two people now lying dead on the emergency room table. A week before Christmas, Luke had murdered a mother and child. He thought he could save them both but he had been wrong. He had to make a choice, a split-second choice. He chose to sacrifice the baby and save the mother’s life. And, in the end, it had not mattered. Both had died. First the baby and then the mother, with her oozing dead infant in her arms. Spitting up blood, she hurled the words at Luke. “You have killed my baby!”
The child had been his.
Having killed his lover and his child, Luke had walked to the cliff.
“You did the best that you could. You tried to save a life. There is nothing to forgive. God knows what is in your heart.” Andrea talked him down from the cliff. Andrea convinced him that a God of love had forgiven him. And, for a year, Luke had believed it. Wanted to believe it, wanted to believe anything that Andrea would tell him.