by David Perry
A few minutes later they were once more at the steel door leading to St. Peter’s Square. Again, silence gripped the trio. There were so many questions to ask. So many things to say, but neither Adriano nor Lee could find the words. Finally, opening his mouth for a request, Lee was cut off by the Pope.
“My sons. It is said that there are only two prayers to offer to God. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you.’ So now with little more that I can do, I offer them both in your honor.” And with that Pope Francis laid his hands on their heads. “Divine Mystery of the Cosmos, thank you for the life and love of these two men and please protect them and their love. May it flourish and feed others with their curiosity, their kindness, and their talents. What God has brought together, let no one pull asunder.”
Adriano and Lee looked at each other, mouths agape, and then at the Pope.
“Who am I to judge?” Pope Francis smiled, turned, and walked back into the crypt.
CHAPTER LXIV
Ashes to Ashes
Friday, January 10, 2014, 11:11a.m., Cliffs of Moher, Ireland
Adriano and Lee stood on the cliffs and prayed.
Lee reached in his pocket, gripping the rolled-up paper tightly against the stiff breeze blowing in from the Irish Sea, and began to read.
In Memory of Bishop Brian Swathmore, December 23, 1937–January 10, 2013.
“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”
Those were the words of Henry David Thoreau, written in the front of a journal that Brian gifted me with before I went to work at sea, after he pulled me back from the cliff, after he saved my life, after he prevented my suicide.
Brian was courageous. Complex. Compassionate, but often capricious and sometimes honest to the point of near brutality. The five scariest words in the English language were Brian saying “Dear, we need to talk.” He loved giving sermons: from the pulpit and also from his living room couch. But above all, Brian was generous, loving, and loyal.
His wit was sharp, often self-deprecating, and sometimes completely inappropriate. When a mutual friend was cremated a few years back, Brian whispered to me in the midst of the crematorium, “Be careful when they shove me into the fire. You’ll be advised to stand far back.” Indeed, Brian loved his martinis, Cheetos, and crosswords. “My indulgences,” he called them. He was horrible at charades but repeatedly brought down the house with his memorable interpretation of Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” from Follies. His stories were delicious, his cooking not so much, although he did master an exquisite coq au vin and his British trifle—well, it was nothing with which to trifle. He loved disco dancing, cruising aboard ship, and lighthouses. But, most of all, he loved his family and friends. He loved me. He loved Adriano. He loved us.”
Adriano squeezed his husband’s hand and wiped away a tear.
Brian, Bishop Swathmore, was out as a gay man long before it was wise or safe to do so. He brought that integrity into his church, and all are better for it. Brian lost a generation of friends to AIDS and cared for the generation that survives. Because of Brian, thousands of people each year visit the AIDS Interfaith Chapel at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The chapel was his idea, and I helped him paint its walls. Three times he walked the Camino de Santiago, the legendary pilgrimage in Spain, and twice biked from San Francisco to Los Angeles as part of the AIDS/LifeCycle. He blessed Adriano and me from his hospice bed before we did the same ride in his honor. I’m convinced it is the reason we didn’t have one flat tire in the entire 545 miles.
Brian greatly admired Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, especially the film into which it was made. It chronicles the life of a WW I veteran who returns, shattered, by what he has seen in the trenches and devotes the rest of his life to seeking a higher truth. Brian, too, spent his time in the trenches, fighting AIDS discrimination, homophobia, and injustice. There’s a quote near the beginning of the film that, I believe, honors Brian as well.
“The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.”
With that, Adriano opened the small box containing the mortal remains of Bishop Brian Swathmore. Without their having to reach in, Lee and Adriano watched as the Irish winds pulled the ashes heavenward, scattering them over the waves below.
Afterward, the couple walked along the cliff holding hands. A few people gawked. Another gay couple smiled. Adriano and Lee didn’t notice any of it. They just walked. Like a miracle, or a special event planned by Magda, the skies over Moher, notoriously prone to fog and frigid rains, had cleared during their private remembrance for Brian. But now, Ireland’s more classic weather returned with a fury, obliterating the sun and sending hordes of tourists scurrying for cover toward the cave-like Cliffs of Moher information center and museum.
“Over here!” Lee said, pulling his sodden sweatshirt hoodie over his head and motioning toward a small stone structure at the entrance to the cliffs. “This is closer.”
The pair ran down a short gravel path, horizontal sleet as escort, trying to avoid slipping in their dash for the rough-hewn stone building with a sign over the entrance that read “Meditation Room.” Behind them in the soaking mist, two other people were also running for the same shelter.
Lee turned the handle and walked in.
The building was small, and semicircular but quite cozy and relaxing, clearly its architectural intent, like a glorified confessional or artisan-constructed doctor’s examination room. There was just enough room for maybe four people, although two was more appropriate. A photomural of native grass curved along the wall to the right of the door, punctuated by a polished wood bench that extended the length of the interior. Above the seat a quote was inscribed, peeking out from among the foliage:
“I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I’ve enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.”—Seán O’Casey
At the end of the room a simple fountain filled with smooth pebbles provided the only sound, a gentle, seducing melody designed to soothe. On the wall opposite, there was a circular sign featuring black and white letters on a background of mossy green:
Worried? Lonely? Under Stress? Suicidal?
Samaritans are here.
24-hour helpline
1 850 60 90 90
www.samaritans.ie
[email protected]
Confidential emotional support.
Behind them, the door pushed open again, letting in a frigid blast from the coast. Adriano and Lee turned to greet their fellow refugees.
“Grigori!” Adriano exclaimed, as the Swiss Guard entered, clearly startled, and made an attempt to flee, an attempt blocked by his companion.
Grigori’s friend pulled down his rain-soaked hood and stepped fully into the room. Lee recognized him immediately.
“Deacon Andrea.”
The dead man smiled.
CHAPTER LXV
Absolution
Friday, January 10, 2014, 2:00 p.m., Liscannor Village, Ireland
It was a rowdy crowd at the Pope’s Own Pub.
“What is that they’re watching?” Lee had to yell to be heard above the constant din of screams at the television screen, where a squadron of humpy young men were chasing each other down a muddy field.
“I think it’s soccer or Gaellic football,” said Adriano, likewise raising his voice to be heard as equal parts groan and cheer arose from the packed crowed squeezed into the tiny bar. Evidently, someone scored.
A bell behind the bar rang out as the red-faced barman yelled.
“Drinks on the house for Mayo, but not for ye Dublin scum!”
More groans and cheers erupted, followed by the occasional flung handful of peanuts and matchboxes toward the bartender. He dodged all projectiles with a laugh as everyone returned to the game.
With Grigori in the lead, followed by the resurrected Andrea, the quartet pushed through the bar toward a blessedly open area Lee could just spy over Grigori’s substantial shoulders near the back of the pub. From what he could see on the television, Lee thought the Swiss Guard would have been quite at home on the field. As they forced their way through the scrum, Lee couldn’t help but notice Andrea’s limp while he walked, a kind of right-foot-forward, left-foot-shuffling-behind sort of maneuver.
Suddenly, like Charlton Heston parting the drainage ditch on a Hollywood backlot, they popped out of the melee into a small semi-private room, somewhat shielded from the competitive dissonance in front by a curtain and half wall crowded with sports trophies. Five people were squeezed into a large, leatherette booth, two elderly men that Adriano and Lee did not recognize and three middle-age clerics that they did.
“So, you have found us. Life is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Or the Bible,” said Reverend Vicky Lewis, standing up in greeting. Her smile was genuine if somewhat wan. Next to her, Archbishop Arnaud and Bishop Gio Sancarlo nodded in guilty politeness. “I’d like you to meet my father, and an old friend of his.”
The two former enemies—Vicky’s father, the British officer who had postponed the battle of Orvieto at the end of WWII, and Magda’s father, and Luca’s grandfather, the German colonel who conspired with Don Bello to save Il Duomo—tipped their respective hats with broad smiles.
“How do you do?”
“Eine freude, sie zu treffen.”
“I need a drink,” Grigori grunted truculently. He waved his right hand in the universal symbol for “another round,” and getting affirmative nods from the quintet, turned to secure alcoholic sustenance.
“I’ll help,” said Andrea with a perky grin. Except for the two old men, he seemed the only person perfectly comfortable, even happy, about this strange, surreal reunion, arranged via text and cell phone call from the Cliffs of Moher meditation room.
“No, it’s crowded,” said Grigori protectively. “Your leg!”
Andrea gave him a look, the sort that both Adriano and Lee instantly recognized as the “Don’t patronize me, dear” glance of couplehood. Grigori just shrugged in surrender and put his hand on Andrea’s shoulder as they navigated back into the packed saloon. A few seconds later, they were swallowed in an Irish sea of revelers.
Vicky smiled. “Please, sit down.”
It was Archbishop Arnaud then who spoke. “Nothing we’re about to say is ever to leave this room, understood?”
It was Adriano who answered back. “Your Eminence,” he snarled with a smile. “We’ll be the ones to decide that, unless you’d like to fake another auto accident for us as well.”
“Now, now,” said Bishop Sancarlo. “Please, none of that. No threats, and no secrets! There have been far too many of those. Arnaud, you may be the new head of the Vatican Press Office, but you’re not on duty here.” Then, turning to Adriano and Lee, he said, “When Grigori called us from the Cliffs, we decided it was time for a full confession…”
“…but only to you two,” said Arnaud with so much force that his eye patch slipped. Lee caught a glimpse of the red and scarred flesh beneath before Arnaud pushed it back into place.
“Jean Claude,” Vicky interjected, “we agreed. All of us.”
“Yes,” said Gio. “And, we have no choice. It’s what Andrea wants, and whatever he wants is the only thing now that matters.”
“Excuse me,” said Vicky’s father, pulling himself up by his cane. “We have heard this story before and it is a bit much for those of us raised in more genteel times. It was a pleasure to meet you. Wagner?” he said, motioning at Magda’s father. “Let’s let the young people talk.” With that, the two remarkably spry nonagenarians stood up, tipped their hats again, and walked farther back into the building toward a private office whose doorway was bedecked with Irish, English, Italian, and German flags.
“Auf wiedersehen,” said the retired Wermacht colonel. “I am glad you got to visit my beloved Orvieto and my grandson, Luca. It has been a long time since I have seen it, but I think, maybe Victor and I will go back soon, one more time. I’d like to see it again, before I die.”
“Your daughter has been incredibly good to us,” said Lee.
“Magda? Yes.” The old man shrugged. “She is a good, if mysterious, girl. So many secrets. So many secrets. Goodbye.”
With that, the elderly pair retreated.
“This is your father’s bar,” said Adriano, remembering their conversation at St. Paul’s in Rome.
“Yes,” answered Vicky. “It is. After last year, it seemed the perfect place for Andrea.”
“And Magda’s father?” Lee queried.
“He likes Irish whiskey.”
“Enough chitchat,” huffed Arnaud, clearly the least enthusiastic member of the gathering. “Let’s get it over with. I don’t like talking about it, and I certainly don’t want to rehash all of this in front of Andrea and him.”
“His name is Grigori,” said Vicky with some pique. “You may have never wanted to know it before, but you cannot escape it now and you certainly had chances to learn it before.”
“Tell us what happened,” said Adriano. “Everything.”
The trinity of collars exchanged looks, at a loss how to begin.
“If I may,” said Lee, looking at Vicky’s pectoral cross with complete clarity. “I think I have a hypothesis.”
“Go ahead,” growled Arnaud. “It’s easier to confirm and deny than speak.”
Gio and Vicky motioned to Lee to continue.
“You are Andrea’s mother, and you, Bishop Sancarlo are his father.”
Adriano gasped.
“Yes,” said Vicky. “That is the truth.”
“And you,” Lee said, turning to a visibly consternated Arnaud, “were the bishop who secretly ordained Vicky as a Catholic priest as part of the Danube Seven.”
Arnaud simply nodded.
“How did you know?” It was Bishop Sancarlo who asked the question.
“The photo in Vicky’s dining room at St. Paul’s Rectory in Rome,” said Lee. “The date, 1.3.83. For the longest time I thought it said January third, 1983.’”
“Of course.” Adriano snapped his fingers. “Not in Europe. I can’t believe I didn’t see that myself. In Europe, the first number is the day, not the month.”
“I searched online for religious conferences in Rome for January 1983 but couldn’t find anything,” said Lee.
“But you did find one for March.” Vicky smiled, first at Lee, and then at both Arnaud and Sancarlo. “Remember?”
The two men merely looked down. Arnaud shook slightly. Sancarlo’s eyes were moist.
“I did the math,” Lee continued. “Nine months from March first, 1983, was the day Andrea was born. Me too, actually.”
“Andrea has always been punctual, even in birth,” sighed Vicky. “Yes, a few months after the conference, I realized that I was pregnant. I wanted the baby, but I knew that it would spell the end of Gio’s career. So, I called an old friend for help. La Donna Volsini. She took me to Civita Bagnoregio, then even more abandoned than it is now. It was the perfect place to wait out my pregnancy.”
“And you gave the baby to Clarissa Bernadone to raise as her own.”
“Yes,” said Vicky. “Actually, that was the idea of Velzna Volsini and Don Bello. Clarissa’s husband had been killed by the mafia. She was almost mad with grief. She and her husband never had a chance to have a child of their own.”
“So, she adopted Andrea,” said Adriano.
“There was no ‘adoption.’” Vicky shrugged. “The less paperwork the better. I gave birth and left Bagnoregio. Andrea stayed and Clarissa raised him
there.”
“I didn’t know,” said Sancarlo, looking up, his cheeks now coursing with silent tears. “I didn’t know until that day in Orvieto when Andrea got the letter from the Vatican putting a halt to his ordination. All that time, I knew Andrea, trained him as a priest, and didn’t know that he was my own son.”
“And that…” said Archbishop Arnaud, looking up with an almost preternatural calm. Lee thought, it’s the voice of a man speaking his last confession before the noose descends around his neck, the voice of complete, unmagnified truth. Arnaud continued, “…was among the worst of my sins. I am the one who found out that Andrea was the child of my two beloveds, Vicky and Gio.”
“The blood test,” said Adriano. “The blood drive on All Souls Day that Andrea arranged for the migrants. Luke was the doctor. He figured it out.”
“Yes,” confessed Arnaud. “He told me. But the fault is not Luca’s. The sin is mine. The sin of obsession and anger and jealousy. Luke confessed to me a few years ago after the death of his wife, and his unborn child, a death for which he unfairly blamed himself. He was looking for order in his life… direction.”
“And you and Opus Dei provided it,” finished Adriano.
Arnaud simply shrugged. “Luca came to me with what he had discovered, never knowing that I was friends, family,” he said, reaching out with both hands to squeeze those of Vicky and Gio. “After so many years, and so many risks—”
“—secretly ordaining Reverend Vicky and the Danube Seven,” interjected Lee.
“Yes,” said Arnaud. “I loved Vicky, and I-I…” Arnaud broke down and could not continue.
“And you loved me, Jean Claude.” Gio finished for him. “My dear, troubled, conflicted friend. It was a triple seduction.” Gio turned to Adriano and Lee. “At that conference in Rome we were full of love. Love for God, and love for each other. We didn’t know how to express it and expressed it in ways that have brought us here.”
“I was deeply attracted to both of you,” Arnaud finally managed, “but knew I could have neither Vicky nor Gio, and clumsily tried with both.”