Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  “One goes into administration,” Dean Osborne said, “to provide opportunities for those who have that drive . . . that insatiable curiosity, that inexorable energy . . .”

  Anita turned slowly, still holding the book. In her eyes Dean Osborne read contempt, anger, and, strangely, an infinite compassion.

  “Mario is such a man,” she whispered.

  Dean Osborne grimaced.

  “All right, I’ll make a deal. Go back to Golgotha Falls. See how the priest is doing. If he’s as bad as you say, call me. I’ll send a private ambulance.”

  “The priest’s sanity is too fragile, Dean Osborne.”

  “I won’t justify Mario. I won’t. I won’t give him that satisfaction!”

  “Dean Osborne, let us look at those slides. If it’s pornography I’ll renounce parapsychology. But if it’s the real thing, then you’ll come to Golgotha Falls.”

  Dean Osborne had turned an ashen gray, loath to make this confrontation with Mario, with his career, with himself.

  So many images whirled loose in his mind he became dizzy. His father, his grandfather, both Harvard professors. His uncle Philip, famous for his work on the cyclotron. Images of sedate homes, country estates, scientific conventions. Images of strangers and colleagues, inaudibly saying failure as they regarded him with merciless eyes.

  Something goes soft after three generations. Some vital impulse is lost to even the most prominent of families. It was Dean Osborne’s bad luck to have inherited a destiny too heavy for his nature. Respected and quoted in newspapers, a man of means and influence, he had lived in subtle but constant humiliation among the scientific community. And Anita had reopened the wound tonight.

  Dean Osborne recalled the omniverous curiosity, the sheer and immense desire to know as he had stared the other evening at Mario’s slides.

  Was it his destiny, his final humiliation, to be party to Mario Gilbert’s success? Or was there something else, a rebirth of the intellect, a rebirth of the spirit inside himself, that waited in the safe?

  That waited, possibly, at Golgotha Falls.

  There was a muffled noise from the corridor. Mrs. Osborne appeared with a book under her arm.

  “I’m going to bed, Harvey,” she said. “Will you be long?”

  “There’s a man dying, Mrs. Osborne,” Anita told her.

  She raised an eyebrow, coolly and composed, but concerned.

  “Is this true, Harvey? What is going on?”

  Dean Osborne fretfully paced the floor behind his desk and then threw the remains of his dead cigar into the fireplace. A stroke of lightning turned the trees into livid, fiery blurs outside the window.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I don’t know what is going on.” His face expressed annoyance. “Look, Emily. I have to go to campus for a short while. Go to bed and I’ll be home in half an hour.”

  Mrs. Osborne glanced at Anita, then back at Dean Osborne.

  “The storm warning is for gale winds, Harvey.”

  He kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “Keep the hall light on,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.”

  Anita felt her looking as they went into the hall. Mrs. Osborne’s aloofness was a mask for neurotic hypersensitivity, and with each flash of lightning she winced.

  Dean Osborne smiled wanly and, pulling on galoshes, black raincoat, and umbrella, went out the door with Anita.

  The wind turned the umbrella inside out before they got to the van.

  In seven minutes, they reached the parking stall behind the sciences administration building. Dean Osborne unlocked the door, and together, dripping rainwater, they went up the marbled stairs. In the far distance, they heard the gurgle of the all-night chemistry retorts and a smell of organic compounds being filtrated by a night experiment.

  The office was deserted, and the fluorescent lights made it sur­realistically bleak.

  Dean Osborne knelt down and turned the tumblers of the safe. His hands trembled, and his heart pounded, and as he swung open the door, he paused, not knowing what he wished to find. Dripping water, he sat at a desk used to collate mimeographed bulletins, and placed the box marked Golgotha Falls between himself and Anita.

  “Open it,” Anita breathed.

  With nervous, clumsy fingers, Dean Osborne lifted off the long box top. The slides were too small, too tightly packed to come out easily. He knocked several onto the table top.

  The emulsions glittered viridian under the fluorescent lamps.

  Dean Osborne picked up a slide at random and held it to the light. The lightning flash silently illumined his tense profile.

  He picked up another slide and peered at it. Then another, and another.

  “Take a look,” he said.

  Anita slowly lifted a slide at random up toward the long, white fluorescent tube. She stared at it a long time.

  Magnificent, clearly defined, the cruciform shape hung in an ambiguous space of the thermovision flux.

  “So,” Dean Osborne said in a breaking voice. “Mario’s done it.”

  Anita said nothing.

  “He’s really, really done it,” he repeated, squinting at the slide.

  For an instant, she thought he was going to cry. The lips trembled and the face, in a peculiar expression of outrage against fate, against Mario, against the injustice of a brilliance not his own, a mockery of his own youthful ambitions, only slowly composed itself again. He covered his face in his hand and then stared again at the viridian slide.

  “Christ,” he mumbled.

  He gazed at Anita. “Then what happened in the lecture hall,” he stammered, “was truly a mass delusion.”

  Dean Osborne dropped the slide. It fell onto the other slides, glittering softly. He stared at them with repulsion.

  “The paranormal frightens me,” he whispered, abruptly pushing the pile away. “It has no place in this world!”

  Anita rose. She stood above him.

  “Dean Osborne. A man is dying. Will you help me?”

  Dean Osborne nodded slowly, confusedly.

  Anita moved toward the door. “Please call Mrs. Osborne. We have to get to Golgotha Falls right now.”

  Dean Osborne dutifully telephoned, then joined Anita in the dark corridor, turning off the office lights.

  Down the corridor she walked while the rain battered the skylights overhead. Dean Osborne caught up with her and together they went quickly down the stairs and out into the parking lot.

  Dean Osborne, dripping wet, clung to the dashboard as to life itself as the Volkswagen screeched up the streets of Cambridge, back into the darkness, toward Golgotha Falls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Within the papal jet, Francis Xavier watched the terminal building in dismay. It was very dark. Squalls battered the plate-glass windows of the terminal lounges where faces pressed forward, mesmerized by the spectacle of the gleaming, floodlit papal jet.

  “Where?” Cardinal Bellochi muttered nervously, pacing the rear cabin. “Where shall we go now?”

  Francis Xavier closed his eyes and leaned against the linen covering his headrest.

  “Where Christ sends us,” he answered softly.

  The rain and sleet drummed overhead. Out on the runway, under umbrellas blown inside-out, the delegation of Bishop James Mc­Elroy of Springfield spoke urgently with the undersecretary of state for the Vatican.

  In the forward cabin, the Jesuits waited. Some blew on their fingers to warm them. They alternately watched Cardinal Bellocchi and Francis Xavier.

  Francis Xavier opened his eyes calmly. A police car rolled past on the runway outside, its lights revolving. Flares and floodlights glittered iridescent in the violence of the storm. Energy seemed to spiral out of a pure, annihilating darkness.

  “Have the implements of the mass brought forward,” Francis Xavier calmly ordered.

  Cardinal Bellocchi raised an eyebrow, then signaled to a Jesuit. The Jesuit came forward and Cardinal Bellocchi whispered into his ear. Dumbfounded, the Jesuit nodde
d. Two other Jesuits followed him out onto the metal stairs.

  The Jesuit ducked into the rain and went rapidly down the pebbled steps to the concrete.

  In the cabins of the Vatican jet, no one spoke or moved as the grating sound of luggage compartments opening trembled along the curved walls.

  The bishop of Springfield spied three Jesuits, each carrying a heavy walnut box on his shoulder containing the personal religious vestments and articles of the Pontiff’s Office. Bishop McElroy, a large and florid-faced man, lumbered after them.

  “What is wrong?” Bishop McElroy demanded. “Why is His Holiness waiting inside?”

  The Jesuit stared at him, rainwater dripping off both their faces.

  “Excuse me,” the Jesuit said, pushing past Bishop McElroy.

  The Jesuit made his way back into the jet. Once inside, the three heavy containers were laid in the center of the plush carpet. Cold water dripped steadily onto the Vatican insignia. Silent, the Italian watched the slick, glistening water drip, drip . . .

  Francis Xavier stood in the forward compartment. The Jesuits turned to him reverently.

  “The journey that brought us here is a journey of more than six hours,” Francis Xavier said quietly. “But it is a journey that began even before our pontificate.”

  The Jesuits exchanged glances. Cardinal Bellocchi saw the lips of Francis Xavier tensely drawn, the forehead beaded with perspiration, belying the soft enunciation of words.

  “The journey began even before our birth.”

  Several of the Jesuits swallowed heavily. A few had grown pale in inward terror.

  Francis Xavier stepped further into the cabin, embracing them all with his glance.

  “It is the journey begun two millennia ago, when Christ pitched battle against Satan,” Francis Xavier said slowly. “It is the journey down which the Eternal Church has marched on its holy mission. Brothers in Christ, that which we now embark upon is the longest journey of all.”

  A dull crash of thunder rolled over the airfield. Red flares and police lights flashed over Francis Xavier’s face, making his eyes soft and dark in the shadows.

  “My children,” he said very gently. “My soldiers. That journey is nearly ended.”

  Amber lights on the cabin walls flickered as the pilot tried an auxiliary circuit. The filaments flared, burned ruby red, and broke in two.

  The Jesuits crossed themselves.

  “We shall not be afraid,” Francis Xavier concluded. “For our strength is Christ.”

  A stern fist rapped at the metal door frame.

  Cardinal Kennedy of New York, a slender, white-haired man with quick, piercing eyes, stood on the final step. Behind him stood Bishop McElroy and four black-cassocked priests holding umbrellas.

  “The airport will be closed for three hours because of the storm,” Cardinal Kennedy said quickly to Cardinal Bellocchi. “Also, there will be no departures until the morning.”

  Bishop McElroy whispered behind Cardinal Kennedy.

  “The secret service is worried about the crowds blocking the exits.”

  Cardinal Bellocchi rubbed the ring on his finger. The mass of faces pressed against the passenger terminal windows disturbed the Nuncio. In their eyes was a dark, anguished appeal. The police cordons on the runways were badly pressured by reporters and television crews wielding portable lights that splayed over the jet door.

  “Come to the cathedral,” Cardinal Kennedy pleaded. “His Holiness will refresh himself. In the daylight, the weather will clear.”

  But the cathedral recalled to Cardinal Bellocchi’s mind an image of the Jesuit who had thrown himself at Bishop Lyons. Then came the arrogant, supplicating letter to the Apostolic Penitentiary. He left Cardinal Kennedy on the steps and went inside. For several long minutes, he and Francis Xavier whispered together.

  “His Holiness will depart from the jet,” Cardinal Bellocchi announced.

  Three black limousines circled lazily out onto the runway. A great cheer arose as Cardinal Bellocchi descended the metal stairs behind Cardinal Kennedy. Flashes of cameras and brilliant floodlights burned onto the stairway.

  The secret servicemen cleared the limousines and stepped back. Reporters’ voices were audible, shouting into microphones. Nuns from a Boston convent pressed ecstatically against the police lines.

  Then the three Jesuits came down the metal stairs, carrying the three heavy containers. Cardinal Bellocchi directed them into the first limousine.

  “Surely the ground crew could deliver His Holiness’s luggage!” Cardinal Kennedy whispered.

  The roar of the crowd drowned Cardinal Bellocchi’s reply. Red-flashing police cars surrounded the limousines. Secret servicemen edged toward the metal stairway. Even the policemen holding back the nuns turned toward the jet aperture, platinum-white in television lights.

  The howl of the storm mingled into the shriek of the crowd.

  Diminutive, shy, smiling, extending a single arm, Francis Xavier appeared at the doorway, and the white robe and skullcap glittered in the assault of white light.

  Under an umbrella held by the Vatican undersecretary of state, Francis Xavier stepped down the ramp into a blaze of flash cameras. A sudden group of prelates, priests, and anxious police surged around the bottom of the steps. Francis Xavier seemed to disappear inside the swelling press of bodies.

  In the lead limousine, in front of the three Jesuits with their wooden containers, Bishop McElroy was seated with the chauffeur.

  In the second limousine, seated with the undersecretary of state and his administrative assistant, Cardinal Kennedy, much beloved and acknowledging cheers, waved to the crowds.

  In the third limousine, equipped with writing table and a white telephone, Francis Xavier sat alone in the rear seat. Cardinal Bel­locchi sat in the jump seat. A secret serviceman drove the long, glistening Cadillac.

  Hundreds of tiny cameras clicked, miniature plastic cameras held by nuns, airport personnel, and passengers come running from the terminals. Francis Xavier waved gently to them. Television floodlights from the white communications cars wavered over the limousine and blinded him.

  Three Boston Municipal Police cars formed the vanguard and led the limousines away from the Vatican jet in a broad semicircle. Four more police cars followed.

  Seven motorcycle police cut through the entourage, wheeled, and formed the spearhead in the rain.

  In the first limousine, Bishop McElroy looked over his shoulder and, without comprehending, saw the Jesuits jealously guarding their containers. Water dripped from them, slow and ominous. Bishop McElroy reached for a tiny black telephone and contacted the Boston cathedral.

  “What do you mean, difficulties?” he thundered. “I tell you, I am in the papal entourage, and we are leaving the airport and are en route to the cathedral!”

  Bishop McElroy nestled his jowls into his collar and listened.

  “I am aware of His Grace’s state of health.”

  Bishop McElroy’s red face turned scarlet with anger. He listened. Then he punched a button at the base of the telephone. Cardinal Kennedy listened gravely in the second limousine.

  “Disturbances?” Cardinal Kennedy asked. “What disturbances?”

  He listened thoughtfully.

  “Since when?” he asked. “Saturday?”

  Cardinal Kennedy glanced at his watch and craned his neck to examine the eastern skies. They were still dark and foreboding.

  “No,” he said, irritated. “I don’t know anything about a Jesuit. Well, if Cardinal Bellocchi was there, maybe he does.”

  Cardinal Bellocchi picked up his white telephone.

  “I understand,” he said after a while. “Yes. I will speak to His Holiness.”

  Cardinal Bellocchi put down the receiver. For a long time, he was content to watch the rain slanting down on the freeways. Then he turned and spoke quietly to Francis Xavier.

  “There have been disturbing signals at the cathedral,” he said gently. “The cathedral staff is badly frightened
.”

  “When did it start?”

  “Apparently after the incident I told you about.”

  “And the priest?”

  “Nobody knows where he is.”

  Francis Xavier looked carefully into the reflective clouds over the wet metropolis.

  “Delay our arrival until daylight.”

  Cardinal Bellocchi nodded. Working with Bishop McElroy and the cathedral staff, he organized a route that would circle through the heavy Catholic suburbs of the North.

  By 5:00 a.m., the Boston radio stations had announced that His Holiness had decided to make an impromptu tour of the outlying dioceses before returning to the cathedral.

  In the bedchamber of Bishop Lyons’s residence, the stricken prelate gazed in mute horror at a television set on the armoire. Images of a skeletal figure alternated with images of the papal entourage winding into the northern suburbs.

  The shock of the déjà vu immobilized the bishop. It was a vision of death, he knew, meant for Francis Xavier.

  “Absolve . . .” murmured Bishop Lyons.

  A Venetian vase shattered on the windowsill, sending fragments of glass onto the carpet.

  “Absolve!”

  The Gospel on the antique desk fluttered in a sudden breeze. One by one, stirred, the pages slowly advanced, as though an invisible finger traced the litany.

  “ABSOLVE!” Bishop Lyons shrieked, face flushed red, neck straining in an arc, veins bulging, back stiff.

  The Franciscans gathered closer to the bedside. To ease the bishop’s torments, they began to open the vials of holy oils, and commenced the last rites.

  It was a blue-gray dawn atmosphere for an eight-year-old boy named Eddie Fremont.

  Something was strange. In the kitchen his mother listened to the radio. She bent over it, rapt. Frightened, Eddie rubbed the sleep from his eyes and walked barefoot toward her.

  It was confusing to the boy. In his half-dreaming state he heard, or thought he heard, an airplane landing, and thousands of worshipers gathered at the Boston airport. At first Eddie thought his father had been killed in a crash. His mother, however, listened with a calm, serene sense of the miraculous.

  She looked at him with an intimate glance, wondering and curious. “The Holy Father has come to Boston,” she whispered, awe-struck.