She felt as if he’d punched her in the stomach.
‘A what?’
‘A trophoblastic cancer in the ovaries. That’s why the pregnancy test was positive, and why you had nausea and coughed up blood. Perhaps you also felt short of breath. Those are some of the symptoms. But there’s a high rate of success for treatment. I’ve already talked with the doctor. He’ll explain everything to you shortly.’ It was best to say it all at once.
He didn’t mention that the doctor had told him she was in the third stage of metastasis. Having cancer was bad enough news.
She didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t expected this particular misfortune. She had cancer. Everything had changed in seconds. One moment she was pregnant, and the next she was at the gates of death. Nice irony, God! Maybe it was a punishment for rejecting a child, but a God Who punished wasn’t God. At least the God she’d grown up with loved all beings unconditionally. Good, bad, criminal, saintly. A Father and a Mother always loved their children above everything else.
‘You’re going to overcome this, Sarah,’ Rafael assured her.
She smiled sadly. ‘This time you can’t protect me.’
The priest looked at her seriously and pressed her hand again. He gave her a timid smile, pleasant, or at least she thought so.
‘I know there’s a part of me somewhere inside you. Only you know where it is and what it could be. Use it to protect yourself. I’ve never let you down, have I?’
Tears ran down Sarah’s face. She shook her head. No, he’d never let her down.
‘That Rafael you have within you will never let you down,’ he repeated.
She closed her eyes. She felt pain. ‘I don’t know if I can make it alone,’ she confessed through her tears.
He made her look at him. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Sarah,’ he assured her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
73
Five years had passed since that first night, but it seemed like fifteen. His hair had turned white, his back bent with the weight of humanity, of believers, nonbelievers, heretics, infidels, all of whom weighed upon him every day.
Night was worse than day, when he gave himself over to his thoughts, caught in the meshes of loneliness in the middle of a colosseum filled with lions and gladiators.
Ratzinger was alone in his office, the light dim, conducive to thought and meditation. A whiskey appealed to him. Perhaps he’d have one.
The last several days had been terrifying. Filled with conflict, murders, disrespect for God. As pope he was accustomed to this. The majority disrespected Him, or, at best, accepted Him only in times of trouble. No one ever needed Him or even lost time thinking about Him when things were going well. Why? God was only necessary to satisfy the most important requests, the most tormented, while the others were insignificant. Success was always attributed to the individual, failure to others, society, destiny, or chance, and then, yes, God’s presence was missing.
No one seemed to care that God was always present in good and bad times, whether He was celebrated, called upon, or ignored. It was the one immutable certainty.
Someone knocked on the door and partly put his head into the room.
‘Your Holiness.’
‘Ah, Ambrosius. Are seven days over?’ He asked in a firm voice.
‘Yes, Your Holiness,’ the other replied. ‘How do you feel today?’
‘Perfect, Ambrosius. And you?’
‘This weather makes my joints ache,’ the other complained.
‘God always knows where to grab us,’ the pope agreed.
‘Are you ready to make confession?’
‘Not today,’ Ratzinger decided, pushing an envelope toward the front of his desk. ‘I’d like you to give this to the superior general.’
‘Certainly,’ the other replied, taking the envelope and putting it away carefully, showing some discomfort. ‘When do you want me to come back, Your Holiness?’
‘We’ll see later,’ the pope answered shrewdly. ‘It’s my will that the provision made by my predecessors Clement the Seventh and Pius the Ninth be canceled.’
‘What did Your Holiness say?’ He couldn’t have heard right.
‘The ritual of the first night will not be repeated. My successor will not put his eyes on the content of that letter which you faithfully guard. I order it to be destroyed immediately.’
‘And the secret, Your Holiness?’ Ambrosius asked, visibly uncomfortable and suspicious.
‘What secret? There you have a copy of a letter sent by Loyola to Francisco Xavier. Nothing which you guard is real. It was all a hoax.’
The other was ashamed.
‘Jesus, the Nazarite, was crucified and rose from the dead on the third day,’ Ratzinger proclaimed. ‘His body was never found, nor will it ever be, because He ascended into the heavens to join His Father, where He sits on the right hand. That’s what Scripture says. That’s what actually happened.’
The priest retreated in defeat, without turning his back on the Supreme Pontiff until he reached the door.
Ratzinger sighed and got up with difficulty. He looked out at Saint Peter’s Square through a slit in the curtains. A few camera flashes from the Roman side recorded the facade of Saint Peter’s Basilica for posterity.
The whiskey could wait. He gave a sad sigh and retired to his bedroom. ‘That’s what actually happened.’
