'Yes. Sure.' Squinting now against the light, Emilio asked, 'Did Maria end up going to medical school?'
'No way.' Felipe paused to smile thanks at a brother who brought them both cups of tea, unasked for. Neither drank. Hands in his lap, Felipe continued, 'But she got out. Dr. Edwards left her a pile of money, did you know that? Maria went to the University of Krakow Business School and ended up making an even bigger pile of money. Married a Polish guy. They never had children. But Maria set up a scholarship fund for La Perla kids. Your work is still bearing fruit, Father.'
'That wasn't my doing, Felipe. That was Anne.' It came to him that it must have been Anne and George who'd bought out Sofia's contract. He remembered Anne laughing about how much fun it was to give away money they'd saved for retirement. He remembered Anne laughing. He wanted Felipe to leave.
Felipe saw the distress but went on, voice quiet, insistent on the good that Sandoz had done. The trees planted on Chuuk Island had matured; a man who'd learned to read and write as a teenager in the Jesuit literacy program became a revered poet, his work illuminated by Arctic beauty and the souls of his people. 'And remember Julio Mondragon? That kid you got to quit defacing buildings and paint the chapel? He is a tremendous big deal now! His stuff goes for amazing prices and it is so beautiful, sometimes even I think it's worth the money. People come to the chapel to see his early work, can you imagine?'
Emilio sat, eyes closed, unable to look at the man he had inspired to take up the burdens of priesthood. That of all things he did not wish responsibility for. The words of Jeremiah came to him: 'I will not mention God or speak anymore in his name.' And then Reyes was kneeling in front of him and through the roaring in his head, he heard Felipe say, 'Father, let me see what has been done to you.'
Let me see: let me understand. Emilio held out his hands because, hideous as he found them, they were far easier to display than what was inside him. Gently, Felipe pulled the gloves away and as the mutilation was revealed, there was the familiar whir of servomotors and micro-gears, the metallic susurration of mechanical joints, but strangely muffled by the overlayment of extraordinarily lifelike artificial skin.
Felipe took Emilio's fingers in his own cool mechanical hands. 'Father Singh is brilliant, isn't he. It's hard to believe now but I actually made do with hooks for a while! Even after he made the prostheses, I was pretty depressed,' Felipe admitted. 'We never did find out who sent the letter bomb, or why. But the strange thing is, after a while, I was even grateful for what happened. You see, I am happy where I am today, so I am thankful for each step that took me here.'
There was a silence. Felipe Reyes's hips were beginning to get arthritic and he suddenly felt like the old man he was becoming, getting to his feet and watching the bitterness transform Emilio's face.
'That bastard! Did Voelker send for you?' He was up now, moving away from Felipe, pacing, putting distance between them. 'I wondered why he didn't leave a biography of Isaac Jogues next to my bed. He had something better, didn't he. An old friend of mine who's got it worse. That sonofabitch!' Sandoz said, incredulous, fluent in his fury. He suddenly stopped and turned on Felipe. 'Did you come here to tell me to count my blessings, Felipe? Am I supposed to be inspired?'
Felipe Reyes pulled himself to his full, if modest, height and looked frankly at Emilio, whom he had idolized in youth and whom he still wanted to love, in spite of everything. 'It wasn't Voelker, Father. The Father General asked me to come.'
Sandoz went very still. When he spoke, his voice had the quiet, nearly calm sound of viciously controlled anger. 'Ah. Your task then is to shame me for making such a fuss. For wallowing in self-pity.'
Felipe found there was nothing he could say and, helpless, let the silence linger, Sandoz watching him like a snake. Suddenly, the man's eyes lit up dangerously. Comprehension dawning, Felipe knew.
'And the hearings, too?' Sandoz asked, the voice caressing now, brows up, mouth open slightly, waiting for confirmation. Felipe nodded. To bitterness, Sandoz added amused contempt. 'And the hearings. Of course! God!' he cried, in direct address. 'It's perfect. Just the sort of creative touch I've come to expect. And you here as devil's advocate, Felipe?'
'It's not an inquisition, Father. You know that. I'm just here to help—'
'Yes,' Emilio said softly, with a smile that left his eyes untouched. 'To help find the truth. To make me talk.'
Felipe Reyes endured Emilio's gaze as long as he could. He looked away finally, but he could not close out the soft savage voice.
'You can't imagine the truth. I lived it, Felipe. I have to live with it now. You tell them: the hands are nothing. You tell them: self-pity would be an improvement. It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what I tell you. None of you will ever know what it was like. And I promise you: you don't want to know.'
When Felipe looked up, Sandoz was gone.
Vincenzo Giuliani, back in his Rome office, was informed of the fiasco within the hour.
In truth, the Father General had not summoned Felipe Reyes to serve as Emilio Sandoz's prosecutor. There would be no trial, no devil's advocate, not even in the loose colloquial sense that Emilio had used. The aim of the coming inquiry was to help the Society plan its next moves regarding Rakhat. Reyes was a well-respected specialist in comparative religious studies whom Giuliani expected to be of use as Sandoz worked his way through the details of the Rakhat mission. But there was no use denying it. The Father General had also hoped that Felipe Reyes, who had known Sandoz in better days and who himself had been maimed while studying at a Pakistani university, might give Emilio a healthier perspective on the apparent uniqueness of his experience. So it was with a good deal of chagrin that Giuliani learned how badly he'd misread Sandoz on this score.
Sighing, he rose from his desk and walked to the windows to stare out at the Vatican through the rain. What a burden men like Sandoz carried into the field. Over four hundred of Ours to set the standard, he thought, and remembered his days as a novice, studying the lives of sainted, blessed and venerated Jesuits. What was that wonderful line? 'Men astutely trained in letters and in fortitude.' Enduring hardship, loneliness, exhaustion and sickness with courage and resourcefulness. Meeting torture and death with a joy that defies easy understanding, even by those who share their religion, if not their faith. So many Homeric stories. So many martyrs like Isaac Jogues. Trekking eight hundred miles into the interior of the New World—a land as alien to a European in 1637 as Rakhat is to us now, Giuliani suddenly realized. Feared as a witch, ridiculed, reviled for his mildness by the Indians he'd hoped to gain for Christ. Beaten regularly, his fingers cut off joint by joint with clamshell blades—no wonder Jogues had come to Emilio's mind. Rescued, after years of abuse and deprivation, by Dutch traders who arranged for his return to France, where he recovered, against all odds.
Astonishing, really: Jogues went back. He must have known what would happen but he sailed back to work among the Mohawks, as soon as he was able. And in the end, they killed him. Horribly.
How are we to understand men like that? Giuliani had once wondered. How could a sane man have returned to such a life, knowing such a fate was likely? Was he psychotic, driven by voices? A masochist who sought degradation and pain? The questions were inescapable for a modern historian, even a Jesuit historian. Jogues was only one of many. Were men like Jogues mad?
No, Giuliani had decided at last. Not madness but the mathematics of eternity drove them. To save souls from perpetual torment and estrangement from God, to bring souls to imperishable joy and nearness to God, no burden was too heavy, no price too steep. Jogues himself had written to his mother, 'All the labors of a million persons, would they not be worthwhile if they gained a single soul for Jesus Christ?'
Yes, he thought, Jesuits are well prepared for martyrdom. Survival, on the other hand, could be an intractable problem. Sometimes, Vincenzo Giuliani suspected, it is easier to die than to live.
'I'm really starting to hate those stairs,' John Candotti called, walking across the beach. Sandoz was sitting on the rocks as usual, his back against the stone, hands exposed and loose, dangling between his drawn-up knees. 'I don't suppose you could brood in the garden? There's a real nice spot for brooding, right next to the house.'
'Leave me alone, John.' Emilio's eyes were closed and he had what John was beginning to recognize as the look of a man with a crushing headache.
'I vass only followink awdahs. Father Reyes sent me.' He expected an epithet, but Sandoz was back in control, or past caring. John stood on the beach, a few feet from Sandoz, and for a while looked out over the sea. There were sails in the distance, brilliant in the slanting sunlight, and the usual fishing boats. 'It's times like this,' John said philosophically, 'when I remember what my old dad always used to say.'
Emilio's head came up and he looked at John wearily, resigned to another assault.
