The Sparrow

'Emilio,' John said, after a time, 'you told us that Marc began eating the native foods at the beginning, while you and Anne Edwards were still acting as controls, right?'

'Shit, John. Give me a break.' He stood to leave. 'I'm going down to the beach, okay?'

'No. Wait! I'm sorry, but this might be important. Was there anything you ate that Marc didn't?' Sandoz stared at him, his face unreadable. 'What if Marc Robichaux was developing scurvy? Maybe that's why he died. Maybe because he'd been eating their food longer than you, or maybe you were getting vitamin C from some food he didn't eat. Maybe that's why he didn't stop bleeding.'

'It's possible,' Sandoz said finally. He turned away again and had walked a few steps into the sunlight when he jerked to a halt with an involuntary cry and then stood still as a pillar.

John got up instantly and moved around the table, squinting in the dazzle as he went to Sandoz. 'What? What's wrong?' Sandoz was bent over, breathing hard. Heart attack, John thought, frightened now. Or one of the spontaneous bone fractures they'd been warned about. A rib or a vertebra simply shattering without warning. 'Talk to me, Emilio. Are you in pain? What's wrong?'

When Sandoz spoke, it was with the precision and clarity of a linguistics professor explaining something to a student. 'The word hasta'akala is a K'San compound probably based on the stem sta'aka. The suffix ala indicates a similarity or a parallel. Or an approximation. The prefix ha makes the stem take on an active aspect, like a verb. Sta'aka was a kind of ivy,' Emilio said, his voice regulated and even, his eyes wide and sightless. 'It was very pretty. It would climb on larger, stronger plants, like our ivies, but it had branches with a weeping growth habit, like a willow.' He held up his hands, the fingers falling gracefully from the wrists, like the branches of a weeping willow, or sta'aka ivy. 'It was symbolic of something. I knew that, from context. Supaari tried to explain, I think, but it was too abstract. I trusted him, so I gave my consent. Oh, my God.'

John watched him labor to bring this new understanding to light. It was a bitter birth.

'I gave consent for Marc, as well. And he died. I blamed Supaari, but it was my fault.' Bleached and shaking, he looked at John for confirmation of what he took to be an inescapable conclusion. John resolutely refused to follow Emilio's logic, unwilling to assent to anything that would add to the burden of guilt the man carried. But Sandoz was relentless. 'You can see it, can't you. Hasta'akala: to be made like sta'aka. To be made visibly and physically dependent on someone stronger. He offered us hasta'akala. He took me to the garden and showed me the ivy and I didn't make the connection. I thought he was offering Marc and me his protection and hospitality. I thought I could trust him. He asked my consent and I gave it. And I thanked him.'

'It was a misunderstanding. Emilio, you couldn't have known—'

'I could have! I knew everything then that I have just told you now. I just didn't think!' John started to protest, but Sandoz wouldn't listen. 'And Marc died. Christ, John. Oh, Jesus.'

'Emilio, it wasn't your fault. Even if you'd understood about the ivy, you couldn't have known that they'd do this to your hands,' John said, gripping the man's shoulders, helping him control the fall, dropping to his own knees as Sandoz went down. 'Robichaux was probably already sick. You didn't cut up his hands, Emilio. You didn't make him bleed to death.'

'I am responsible.'

'There is a difference between being responsible and being culpable,' John insisted.

It was a fine distinction and one which was not very comforting but on short notice, with a man crumpled on the ground in front of him, his face bruised with sleeplessness and now with fresh grief, it was the best John Candotti could do.

It must have been past one in the morning several nights later when Vincenzo Giuliani heard the first signs of the nightmare. He had dozed off reading in the room next to that of Sandoz, having given Edward Behr the night off. 'Old men don't need much sleep,' he'd told Behr. 'You're no good to him if you're as worn out as he is.'

There was an unobtrusive monitor near Emilio's bed that carried the sounds of his night into the Father General's room. Like a new parent, alert to the slightest disturbance of an infant's sleep, Giuliani came fully awake the moment the breathing became harsh and irregular. 'Don't wake him,' Behr had instructed, his own eyes shadowed with the effects of broken sleep and the emotional toll of the aftermath of the nightmares, which were coming now three and four to a week. 'It's not always the same dream, and sometimes he gets through it on his own. Just be ready with a basin.'

On this night, Giuliani moved out into the hallway, pulling on a robe, and listened for a time before stepping into Emilio's room. There was a full moon and his eyes had little trouble adjusting to the light. Emilio had quieted and Giuliani, relieved, was about to turn away when suddenly Sandoz sat up, gasping. He struggled to get out of the bed, the loose and nerveless fingers tangling in the sheets, and seemed unaware that anyone else was in the room with him. Giuliani went to the bedside, helped him clear the linens, and held the basin until the sickness passed.

Brother Edward had not exaggerated the violence of the vomiting. Vincenzo Giuliani was a sailor who'd experienced a great deal of seasickness but never anything like the gut-wrenching reaction to this dream. When it was over, he took the basin away, rinsed it and brought it back with a plastic tumbler of water. Sandoz accepted the glass, pressing it between his wrists awkwardly and bringing it to his lips. He spat into the basin several times and then let Giuliani take the glass from him.

Giuliani left the room again and brought back a wet cloth to wipe the sweat from Emilio's face. 'Ah,' Sandoz said ironically, 'Veronica.'

When Giuliani returned a third time, he went to the wooden chair in the corner of the room to wait for whatever would come next. For a while, Sandoz simply stared at him through lank black hair dampened by exertion, mute and trembling, hunched over on the edge of the bed.

'So,' Sandoz said at last, 'you have come as a tourist perhaps? To see how the whore sleeps. As you see: the whore sleeps badly.'

'Emilio, don't talk like that—'

'The choice of word disturbs you? It did me, at first. But I have reconsidered. What is a whore but someone whose body is ruined for the pleasure of others? I am God's whore, and ruined.' He was still now. The physical effects were passing. 'What was it you bastards used to call me?'

'God's best beloved,' Giuliani said, almost inaudibly, ashamed sixty years too late.

'Yes. I wondered if you'd remember. God's favorite! Isn't that what they used to call a king's mistress? Or his catamite. His favorite?' There was an ugly laugh. 'My life has a certain amusing symmetry, if viewed with sufficient detachment.'

Giuliani blinked. Sandoz saw the reaction and smiled mirthlessly. He turned away then and used his wrists to pull a pillow up so he could rest his back against the headboard of his bed. His quiet, lightly accented voice was cool and musical when he spoke again.

' 'The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is the middle of the night. Are you not concerned to be in the bedroom of someone so notorious?' Sandoz asked with theatrical insolence. He stretched the thin bruised arms out negligently, resting them on the top of the headboard, and raised one knee.

The pose would have been lascivious but for the sheets, Giuliani thought, and at the same time it might have been a deliberately provocative imitation of the figure on the crucifix just above the man's head. Vince Giuliani had been taken in by this kind of double-edged mockery once, but no longer, and he refused to be baited. Given a label, he realized now, Sandoz was apt to show his contempt with burlesque.

'Are you not concerned,' Sandoz pressed, with great sincerity, 'that, alone and unsupported, you will make a decision that gives scandal?'

It was devastatingly accurate. Giuliani heard his own voice, saw his own pious self-assurance mirrored, and found it difficult not to look away. 'What can I do to help you, Emilio?' he asked.

'Does one dream in coma? I have often wondered if a well-placed bullet to the brain would be helpful.'

Giuliani stiffened, angry in spite of himself. The man did not make anything easy.

'Failing that,' Sandoz continued, 'you might provide enough liquor for me to drink myself insensible every night. I have headaches all the time anyway. A hangover would hardly register.'

Giuliani rose and moved to the door.