The Sparrow

14 NAPLES: MAY 2060

Not even Vesuvius could delay spring forever. As the weather moderated, Emilio Sandoz found he could sleep more easily in the open, lulled by waves and bird cries, his back against sun-warmed rock. He thought perhaps it was the sunlight on his closed eyes that banished the darkness even in sleep; he was less likely to awaken sweating and nauseated. Sometimes the dreams were merely puzzling, not terrifying. Or vile.

He was on a beach, with a child from La Perla. He was apologizing because, though his hands were unharmed in the dream, he couldn't seem to do the magic tricks any longer. The child looked at him with the strange and beautiful double-irised eyes of the VaRakhati. 'Well,' she said, with the confident practicality of the half-grown, 'learn some new tricks.'

'Padre, c'e qualcuno che vuol vedervi.'

He sat up, breathing hard, disoriented. He could still hear the dream-child's words and it seemed important to him not to forget what they were before he'd had time to think about them. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his forearm, resisting the impulse to shout at the boy for waking him.

'—un uomo che vuol vedervi.'

A man who would see you, the boy was saying. What was his name? Giancarlo. He was ten. His mother was a local farmer who sold produce to restaurants in Naples. Sometimes the retreat house ran short when there were extra people in the refectory, and Giancarlo brought vegetables to the kitchen. He often hung around, hoping to be sent on an errand, to bring a message to the sick priest, perhaps, or to help him up the stairs sometimes. 'Grazie,' Emilio said, hoping this was thanks in Italian, but unsure. He wanted to tell the boy that he could manage the stairs on his own now but couldn't find the words. It was so long ago, so many languages ago.

Pulling himself together, he stood carefully and climbed slowly off the huge weathered rock that was his sanctuary, using his bare feet to find purchase, startling badly when Giancarlo suddenly produced a stream of treble Italian. It was too fast, too complicated, and Emilio was whipsawed between fury at being asked to understand something that was beyond him and despair that so much was beyond him.

Slow down, he told himself. It's not his fault. He's a good kid, probably just curious about a man wearing gloves but no shoes…

'I don't understand. I'm sorry,' he said finally, moving again, hoping the sentiment would get through. The boy nodded and shrugged and offered him a hand he didn't dare accept, to steady him on the last jump to the ground. He wondered then if Giancarlo knew about his hands, and if he'd be frightened by them. It would be another week before he could try the braces again. In the meantime, he wore Candotti's fingerless gloves, which had been, as John predicted, a good and simple solution to some problems: concealment, for example.

Emilio leaned against the rock for a time, and then smiled and jerked his head across the beach toward the long stone stairway. Giancarlo smiled back and they walked along in companionable silence. The boy stayed close as they worked their way up the bluff, killing time by hopping with two feet from step to step, spending his energy with the profligacy of the young and healthy, uncomfortable in the presence of enfeeblement. It was slow going but they got all the way up the stairs without pausing more than a few moments now and then.

'Ecco fatto, padre! Molto bene!' Giancarlo said, in the encouraging if slightly patronizing tone used by well-meaning adults addressing small children who succeed at something very simple.

Recognizing both the words and the attitude, Emilio realized in time that the child would pat him on the back; expecting the touch, he was able to tolerate it and gravely gave the child his thanks again, sure now that grazie was Italian. And once again, he veered unsteadily, warmed by the good- heartedness of this child, staggered by mourning for another. With a gesture and a smile that took a great deal of effort, he gave the boy leave to go. Then he rested on a stone bench at the top of the stairs, to give himself time to recover before going in.

The habit of obedience was not extinguished in him; summoned, he appeared, even if the fear made his heart pound. It took him longer to get a grip on his feelings than it did to get over the climb from the beach. Regular hours, regular food, regular exercise, on orders from the Father General. Given half a chance, his body was healing, repairing itself. Hybrid vigor, Anne would have said, half-seriously. The strengths of two continents.

He thought sometimes of the peculiar peacefulness he'd experienced toward the end of the voyage back, watching blood seep from his hands and thinking, This will kill me, and then I can stop trying to understand.

He wondered then if Jesus expected gratitude as Lazarus emerged, stinking, from the crypt. Maybe Lazarus was a disappointment to everyone, too.

The short, stocky man waiting for him was almost past middle age, wearing a black skull cap and a dark plain suit. A rabbi, Emilio thought, his heart sinking. A relative of Sofia's, a second cousin perhaps, here to demand an accounting.

The man had turned at the sound of Emilio's footsteps. Smiling a little sadly through a full and curling beard mostly gone to gray, he said, 'No me conoces.'

A Sephardic rabbi might use Spanish but would not have addressed a stranger so familiarly. Emilio felt himself slide into helpless frustration and looked away.

But the man saw his bewilderment and seemed to sense his fragile state of mind. 'I'm sorry, Father,' he said. 'Of course, you wouldn't recognize me. I was only a kid when you left, not even shaving yet.' He laughed, pointing to his beard. 'And now, as you see, I still don't shave.'

Embarrassed, Emilio started to apologize and back away when the stranger suddenly let rip a torrent of Latin insults and taunts, the grammar flawless, the content appalling. 'Felipe Reyes!' Emilio breathed, mouth open with astonishment. He stepped back, the surprise was so great. 'I can't believe it. Felipe, you're an old man!'

'Things like that happen, if you wait long enough,' Felipe said, grinning. 'And only fifty-one! Not so old. Mature, we like to call it.'

For a few moments, they stood and looked at each other in wonderment, taking in the changes, visible and implied. Then Felipe broke the spell. Waiting for Emilio to appear, he had drawn a couple of chairs to either side of a small table near a window in the large open room and, laughing again, he motioned Emilio across and pulled out a chair for him. 'Sit down, sit down. You're too thin, Father! I feel like I should order you a sandwich or something. Don't they feed you here?' Felipe almost said something about Jimmy Quinn but thought better of it. Instead, he fell quiet as they sat together, beaming at Sandoz, giving him time to get over the shock.

Emilio finally burst out, 'I thought you were a rabbi!'

'Thank you,' Felipe said comfortably. 'As a matter of fact, you made a priest out of me. I am a Jesuit, old friend, but I teach at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. Me! A professor of comparative religion!' And he laughed delightedly at Emilio's amazement.

For the next hour, in the language of childhood, they reminisced about La Perla. It was only five or six years ago for Emilio and he found to his surprise that he could recall more names than Felipe, but Reyes knew what had happened to everyone and had a hundred stories, some funny, some sad. Of course, it had been almost forty years since Emilio had left; he shouldn't have been surprised that so much of the narrative came down to a litany of deaths, and yet…

His parents were long gone but there was his brother to find out about. 'Antonio Luis died a couple of years after you left, Father,' Felipe told him.

'How?' he made himself ask.

'Just like you'd expect.' Felipe shrugged and shook his head. 'He was using product, man. Always screws them up in the end. He had no judgment. He was skimming cash and the Haitians laid him down.'

His left hand hurt like hell and the headache was making it hard to concentrate. So many dead, he thought. So many dead…

'…so Claudio sold the restaurant to Rosa, but she married this pendejo who drove the place into the ground. They lost it a few years later. She divorced him. Never got back on her feet again, really. But remember Maria Lopez? Who worked for Dr. Edwards? Father? Do you remember Maria Lopez?'