Before God Almighty, before the Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of the Crown of Poland, I put my hand on this Holy Cross. I will defend the honor of Poland with all my might will fight with arms in hand to liberate her from slavery even if it mean my death…
After seeing Butkiewicz’s body, Francesca never shared the treasures of her root cellar with anyone, not even her comrades in the Armja Krajowa—the Home Army. It was the wisest thing she ever did. When the Soviets took over oppression of the Poles from the Nazis, she once again protected herself from rape and hunger in the dirt.
****
Francesca stood up, tore off the paper and the ribbon and threw the rose to the water. Raphael held it in the air like a kite, making sure it missed the tide, then let it drift to the ground. “Damn,” she said as she hobbled toward it. She picked it up and threw it again. Raphael waded into the water and held onto it. When the wave had passed, he made sure it floated towards her, and landed at her feet. This time she wadded the flower up with the paper in the ribbon and stuffed the ball into a trashcan before walking away in frustration to her California refuge—a make-shift efficiency apartment on Montalvo Street.
****
“How strange that someone so determined to live now contemplates taking her own life,” Raphael opined to Fra Angelico at his easel, while he sat wrapped in his red cloak, on a stool at a table where the Dominican Friar mixed his colors.
“I am a fortunate son of God, my friend. I never had to live the horrors this woman saw. Perhaps if I had, I would never have touched a brush to paint.” Angelico turned away from his work and gazed steadily into Raphael’s eyes. “You are on a mission. What do you want from me?”
“Death and Fate have challenged me to a war and I have no weapons. You're the artist saint, Angelico. Paint Grasinski a dream of life worth seeing and thus worth living.”
Angelico put down his palette. “I've tried, Raphael.” He pulled two handfuls of canvases out of a storeroom, all as rich and vibrant as the frescoes he painted in the convent San Marcos. “I call this one the Warrior of Warsaw—after Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. I hoped that if she understood the holiness of her struggle, she would come to see herself as a hero. She killed three Nazis by her own hand, you know.”
Raphael came closer to the painting. “No, I didn’t know. She does not think of it now. At least, I didn’t see it.”
“Her survival depended on keeping secrets. Age helps to forget too.”
“How did she kill them?”
“One she shot through the head with his own gun when he fell into her hiding place. She dragged the dead weight up the stairs an inch at a time and hid the body in the ruins of the chateau. One she drowned in the well after knocking him unconscious. And the third? A knife to the throat as he lay on top of her. I suppose the abortion she had afterward brings her kill-toll to four. As my epitaph reads: the deeds that count on earth do not count in heaven. It's true, but the dead do not know it.”
“She’s not dead, Angelico.”
“But she may be out of time.” Angelico smiled. “You paint her dreams, Raphael. Perhaps you are fated to succeed with Francesca where I have failed.”
“Your humility shames me, Father." Raphael said. He knelt and gazed at the canvases that remained against the wall. “For inspiration you tried variations. David’s Napoleon, West’s Death of General Wolf…”
“I was defeated by Dali’s Persistence of Memory,” Angelico said.
Raphael stood up and back from the last painting, staring at the relentless, emotionless images reflective of Picasso’s Massacre in Korea. “Charles has told me that Albion Rector, is about to get an opportunity of a life-time—to paint a mural inside the 9/11 Memorial.” Raphael turned to Angelico. ”Rector must find a way to include God’s deliverance in the mural, and I am not the artist to inspire that job. Shall we strike a bargain? Will you temporarily trade Grasinski for Rector?”
****
“Go on, Credo. Go on.” Raphael gently spurred on the big black, but the horse shied again. He would have to dismount and lead the beast across the boundary between the Spirit World and Dreamland. Not that he blamed Credo for his reluctance to enter the ominous dreamscape again. “I know it's frightful, but there’s no other way for me to recover the years of Francesca’s memory, Boy. We have to identify the man Death said she was seeking—and why she wants to find him so badly she’s willing to forego heaven to find him.”
Once across, Raphael checked his saddlebags to see if the roses were intact. If they survived the crossing, they might well survive into the night. He nodded in relief. “They’re O.K., Boy,” he told Credo, and lifted himself into the saddle again.
They entered a battlefield, plowing through the ravaged bodies, shredded limbs and torn uniforms, welded together by shrapnel, that made it difficult to separate friend from foe. But Raphael drew his sword and probed each chunk of human form to see a face at least. Some were unrecognizable, their noses rotted or blown off, their eyes little more than hollow holes. Still, Raphael was sure the man’s face was carved into Francesca’s memory. His would be intact.
A wind was stirring, bringing in a velvety mist that reflected the moonlight so Raphael couldn’t see the ground. This is how she veiled her thoughts, deflecting knowledge of reality away from her consciousness with this cottony cloud. He drew Credo to a halt and pulled one white rose from the saddlebag, dropping it to the ground. The fog melted away as the warmth of the memory connected with the flowers entered Francesca’s dreamscape. Raphael could see it, stark against the grey-black background. He prodded Credo onward, each time dropping a rose when the mist made vision impossible, and each time the distraction cleared the way through her dreamscape for yet another mile.
The significance of the white rose, he knew not. Did it represent a lover, or perhaps a loyal friend? Whatever or whoever—it was a way to dispel the clouds that had kept Angelico’s messages at bay. Raphael dismounted, tying Credo’s reins to his belt. He knelt down and dug a small hole with his sword, placed a potato root in it and covered it with the dirt. He laid four roses in a circle around the planted mound, and remounted. Seeing the first rays of sunup penetrating Francesca’s eyes, he knew it was time to go, but he wanted a glimpse of the first thought in Francesca’s mind, the thought that sustained her.
Suddenly, the fog vanished and in the nanosecond between sleep and wakefulness Raphael saw the face of the man in the Corridor cell—Adolph Hitler—but not the man. Instead, before him, was the twisted body to match the twisted soul of a demon, a demon that had tormented Francesca so long she could no longer distinguish between her own life and his.
Raphael recoiled in horror at what he finally understood. Angelico was right. The deeds on earth do not count in heaven. But Herr Hitler was not in heaven. Nor was he in hell. He was alone in the Corridor of Suicides where Francesca would be for eternity if the demon had his way. And Death was right. He was the artist for the job—to have Francesca meet the same fate of the man who slew her innocence would be the ultimate injustice. He’d staked his claim as one willing to fight for justice, and if Francesca Grasinski was his first challenge to that claim, defeat was not an option.
Report
In the corner of his office, Charles had recreated St. Jerome’s study complete with red Cardinal’s hat and Einstein’s skull casually arranged on a rustic table. A lion, laying on its back and looking more like a tabby than the king of beasts, slumbered beneath. A lamb munched on grass, its neck bell tinkling with each chew. A stuffed owl was perched on the back of chair. Charles stood back, then snapped his fingers. The chair became a three-legged stool and the owl flew to his shoulder. He’d listened to Raphael’s tale of his tour through the Corridor of the Suicides for twenty minutes, and had yet to look at him.
“If it’s vengeance she’s after, then she’s beyond help,” he said, clearing the room of his menagerie. “You cannot turn back the hatred of a life-time in a thousand years, let alone one.” He glanced at h
is visitor, finally, and gave him a polite bow. “Well, your visit to the unpleasant side of our Spirit World seems to have affected you in a decidedly peculiar way.”
Raphael stood straight and defiant, one hand resting on the hilt of his golden sword, the other holding six thorn-studded white roses. He threw them at Charles’ feet.
“It’s not vengeance Francesca wants," he said. "She seeks what no earthly court can deliver—justice for six human beings. Her six. Mother and father, sisters and brothers: Anna, Joseph, Philippe, Frederick, Sophie and Kara. I saw them last night, in happier days, smiling at me from a brown leather frame Francesca keeps hidden away in a cigar box—her only earthly treasure, and a reminder of what was taken from her. In one year, she will have saved enough money to return to Warsaw and buy seven headstones for her and her family. Then, she will crawl back into the grave that saved her and open her veins to eternity. I’m not going to let that happen without a fight."
“Ah, you’ve discovered much in your investigation. And now you think you can persuade her to give up her life’s work.” Charles scooped up the flowers and took them to a pink porcelain vase on the bookshelf, picking up a water carafe along the way. Carefully, he poured in the water and added the roses stem by stem, his back to the desk on which lay a parchment he’d set out for restoration. “Vendettas are vows like any others, Raphael. She’ll not break faith with her wartime oath even if it means losing her soul. Calm yourself, and accept the inevitable—and the obvious.” The bookcase moved further from the desk. “Death has sent you on a fool’s errand. No doubt to put you in your place.”
“If justice was a fool’s errand, the Hall of Heroes would not exist. It’s you who must accept the obvious, Charles. Fate is nothing more than a tradition. You make mistakes.”
Fate glared at him through bespectacled eyes. “You just haven’t been dead long enough to know that what is, must be.”
Raphael pointed to the embellished “G” on the yellowed parchment. “You mistake your restoration for art, but art is more than perfected technique. You did not create this. An artist did—an artist who was an artist because he could make a dream appear real or see beyond the limits of the horizon. Fatalism has much in common with suicide, Charles, it denies a free future.”
His words cut pride to pieces. “I congratulate you for discovering what the saintly Angelico could not. He was good to the poor, and immensely talented, not to mention a little hysterical—all that weeping over his “viewpoint” of the crucifixion—but it took a devious mind like yours to unriddle Francesca’s demonic mind.” Charles returned to studying the manuscript that was spread before him on the desk. “I’m busy. Anything else?”
****
“You were an obedient Messenger and now you’re acting like a Muse on a mission. It will take Death and Fate a long time to get used to ambition in one such as you.” Angelico had turned around and was sitting on the kneeler of his psalter. The simple black and white of his Dominican habit matched his clean-cut analysis of Raphael’s frustration, and stood in sharp contrast to the fiery cape of the chain-mail armored Raphael who knelt piously on the psalter next to his. “Trust me, they’ll recover themselves,” Angelico said.
“I want to tell them, I can’t be anything else than what I am, but I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to explain to those who understand, and no words will suffice to those who don’t. That's a fact you must accept if only for sanity’s sake.” Angelico watched Raphael struggle to perch himself on the kneeler as he was doing. It was impossible. Metal clothing was protective in battle but unsuitable for the casual postures of friendly conversation. “You’ve made some sort of decision, my friend,” he said as he helped Raphael to his feet and led him out of the chapel and into his studio. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. All I can do is beg you to pray for me and ask you how fares young Albion.”
“I will pray for you and I’m doing well—although I was not expecting Rector’s dreams to need such vibrant colors. A man’s passion for a woman is a tough act for sacred inspiration to compete with." Angelico raised an eyebrow. “If you get my meaning.”
“Oh. Oh, my. I didn’t consider that. Is that what the scientists call an intervening variable?”
“No, that’s what the psychiatrists call wish fulfillment. So I wait. And wait.” Angelico smiled gently. “Tell me your plan, Raphael. You speak as one troubled by his intended course of action.”
“The outcome is unsure. I know Rector will be in good hands if I fail.”
“Lay aside your armor, my friend. The war for Francesca’s soul is not to be won by slaying fire-breathing dragons.”
“My costume is to remind me to be brave as the king’s soldiers.” A simple blue artist’s smock replaced the heavy gray metal. “I did not expect to be afraid.”
“We’re dead, and yet we live.There’s reason to fear such a miracle. But the angels will guide your way.”
Angelico’s words echoed in his soul as Raphael looked about the great room of the Fortress of Forever. He knew Death was not there. Summoned by Francesca’s sneering demon to an abandoned root cellar outside of Warsaw, Death was waiting for her to finish putting flowers at the headstones bearing the Grasinski family names, including her own, take a taxi to the outskirts of the city, and make the ox-cart journey to the of the dilapidated chateau.
****
Three hundred sixty four days, twenty three hours and five earthly minutes had passed since Raphael had stood before the door to the Corridor of Suicides, and he still wrestled with his anger at his own failure. He had not been able to grow roses on Francesca’s battlefield. Nor was the enemy one that could be slain. Hope was waning. Courage elusive.
There was no other option. Death had said hell was full, but hell is infinite. And the word hell has many meanings. It is said in the Apostle’s Creed that Christ descended into hell before he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. What was He doing there if not gathering the souls of those to whom heaven’s gates had once been closed?
Raphael looked above the redwood door. Dante wrote that all who enter hell must abandon hope, but God never said that, and neither did the entrance to the Corridor of Suicides. He opened the door, artist’s case in hand, entered the Corridor, and thought the name of the one he sought. Instantly, he was outside the cell.
Raphael fell to his knees, feeling a pounding in his head so strong he felt faint; his throat closing. Without looking up, he reached for the handle, glowing hot from the fire that emanated from the blood swathed on the door casing. He drew back his blistered hand. Suicides cannot see a future, Angelico had said. But what if they could?
“Judas,” Raphael said to himself and instantly he was inside standing next to the man sleeping on a stone bed. Defeated by the persistence of memory, Angelico had said, a memory so horrible it became more real than the present, and executed all thoughts of the future. Raphael opened his artist’s case, welcoming back that uncertainty of the neophyte that begets a creative recklessness, and set to work feverishly, forgetting his fear as the vision passed from his soul to his hand. What had been revealed to him must now be revealed to one who had punished himself—as Francesca had punished herself—long enough. Yes, the Blood of the Lamb was on Judas' hands. But the crucifixion was not the end of the story.
Breathless, Raphael gathered his pallet and his brushes and stood back to look at his efforts. Judas was stirring. Raphael saw his muscles twitch, and the almond eyes of a Semite open slowly—Raphael sunk into the shadows, watching the man laying there, staring at the mural opposite his granite bed for a few seconds before pulling himself up. He stumbled to the mural Raphael had finished seconds before—a life-sized image of Christ exiting the tomb, bathed in a halo of crimson and crowned with gold, the earth flowering with a thousand white roses surrounding Him, wounded hands outstretched as though offering to embrace all who saw Him.
Judas dropped to knees, his hands hard-pressed against the nailed
scarred feet of the man he’d betrayed. “Jesus!” he cried through lips dripping with tears, and the door of his cell swung open, letting the name of the Savior echo throughout the cavernous Corridor.
Raphael, struck to his knees by a flash of blue light, put his face to the stone to shield his from the pure white light that flooded the room. All he could hear were the door-handles of millions of cells dropping to the floor, and the rush of the wind as it carried the Holy Name down the endless hallways. He dare not look up, but wrapped himself into a ball and prayed for deliverance for this ultimate blasphemy. It was forbidden to gaze upon a soul—and yet, it was not Judas’ soul he had seen. It was the desire of Everysoul. Even his own. He had not come between god and His creation. He was nothing but a hand God moved to reveal His absolute dominion: His victory over Death.
Then it was quiet. The terror had passed, and Raphael felt his breast. He was intact. His hands, once clenched in fear, were relaxed. He could feel existence rushing back into them. He cleared his throat. He could breathe. He raised his head slowly and leaned against the wall gazing first at the mural and then at his hands. Charles had called them mystical. It was difficult to deny when he stared at what he’d painted.
Raphael Redcloak Page 4