The cup shattered in Emilio's hand. There was a small fuss as Edward Behr brought a cloth to soak up the spilled coffee and John Candotti collected the broken china. Voelker simply sat and stared at Sandoz, who might have been carved from rock.
They are so different, Vincenzo Giuliani thought, looking at the two men seated across the table from one another: the one, obsidian and silver; the other, butter and sand. He wondered if Emilio had any idea how much Voelker envied him. He wondered if Voelker knew.
'…power surge,' Felipe Reyes was saying, explaining Emilio's lapse to them, covering the embarrassment. 'You can get erratic electric potentials when your muscles are tired. This kind of thing used to happen to me all the time—'
'If I keep my feet, Felipe,' Sandoz said with soft venom, 'who are you to crawl for me?'
'Emilio, I just—'
There was a brief ugly exchange in gutter Spanish. 'I think that will be enough for today, gentlemen,' the Father General broke in lightly. 'Emilio, a word with you, please. The rest of you may go.'
Sandoz remained in his seat and waited impassively as Voelker, Candotti and a white-faced Felipe Reyes left. Edward Behr hesitated by the door and gave the Father General a small warning look, which went unacknowledged.
When they were alone, Giuliani spoke again. 'You appear to be in pain. Is it a headache?'
'No. Sir.' The black eyes turned to him, cold as stone.
'Would you tell me if it were?' A pointless question. Giuliani knew before it was out of his mouth that Sandoz would never admit it, not after what Voelker had just implied.
'Your carpets are in no danger,' Emilio assured him with undisguised insolence.
'I'm glad to hear it,' Giuliani said pleasantly. 'The table suffered. You are hard on decor. And you were hard on Reyes.'
'He had no right to speak for me,' Sandoz snapped, the anger visibly flooding back.
'He's trying to help you, Emilio.'
'When I want help, I'll ask for it.'
'Will you? Or will you simply go on night after night, eating yourself alive?' Sandoz blinked. 'I spoke to Dr. Kaufmann this morning. It must have been upsetting to hear her prognosis. She doesn't understand why you have tolerated these braces for so long. They are too heavy, and poorly designed, she tells me. Why haven't you asked for improvements? A tender concern for Father Singh's feelings,' Giuliani suggested, 'or some kind of misbegotten Latino pride?'
It was subtle, but you could tell sometimes when you hit home. The breathing changed. The effort at control became slightly more visible. Suddenly, Giuliani found he had simply run out of patience with Sandoz's damnable machismo and demanded, 'Are you in pain? Yes or no.'
'Am I required to say, sir?' The mockery was plain; its target was less clear.
'Yes, dammit, you are required. Say it.'
'My hands hurt.' There was a pause. 'And the braces hurt my arms.'
Giuliani saw the quick shallow movement of the chest and thought, My God, what it costs this man to admit he's suffering!
Abruptly, the Father General stood and walked away from the table, to give himself time to think. Emilio's sweat and vomit were familiar now, his body's fragility mercilessly exposed. Giuliani had nursed him through night terrors and had watched, appalled, as Sandoz pulled himself back together, holding the pieces in place with who knew what emotional baling wire. One could not forget all that, even when Sandoz was at his most aggravating, when one felt as though the man perceived the simplest effort to help him as insult and abuse.
For the first time it occurred to him to wonder what it was like to be so frail in what should have been the prime of life. Vince Giuliani had never known illness more debilitating than a cold, injury more damaging than a broken finger. Perhaps, he thought, if I were Sandoz, I too would hide my pain and snarl at solicitude…
'Look,' he said, relenting, returning to the table. 'Emilio. You are, bar none, the toughest sonofabitch I ever met. I admire your fortitude.' Sandoz glared at him, furious. 'I am not being sarcastic!' Giuliani cried. 'I personally have been known to request general anesthesia after a paper cut.' A laugh. A genuine laugh. And buoyed by that small triumph, Giuliani tried a direct appeal. 'You've been through hell and you have made it abundantly clear that you are not a whiner. But, Emilio, how can we help you if you won't tell anyone what's wrong?'
When Sandoz spoke again, the words were barely audible. 'I told John. About my hands.'
Giuliani sighed. 'Well. You may take that as evidence that Candotti can keep a confidence.' The idiot! It was not the sort of revelation that came under the seal of confession. Although it might have felt like that to Sandoz, he realized.
Giuliani got up and went to the private lavatory adjacent to his office. He came back with a glass of water and a couple of tablets, which he placed on the table in front of Sandoz. 'I am obviously not among those who believe it is noble to suffer needlessly,' Giuliani told Emilio quietly. 'From now on, when your hands hurt, take something.' He watched as Emilio struggled to pick up the pills, one by one, and wash them down with water. 'If this doesn't work, you
He picked up the glass and carried it back to the lavatory, where he remained for a few minutes. Sandoz was still sitting at the table, withdrawn and pale, when Giuliani returned. Taking a chance, the Father General went to his desk and brought back a notebook, tapping out a code that opened a file only he and two other men, now dead, had been privy to.
'Emilio, I have been reviewing the transcripts of Father Yarbrough's reports. I read them last year when we first got word of you from Ohbayashi but now, of course, I am studying them rather more carefully,' Vincenzo Giuliani told him. 'Father Yarbrough described the initial interaction between you and the child Askama and the Runa villagers much as you have, in outline. I must say that his narrative was far more poetic than your own. He was, in fact, deeply moved by the experience. As I was, while reading of it.' Sandoz did not react, and Giuliani wondered if the man was listening. 'Emilio?' Sandoz looked at him, so Giuliani pressed ahead. 'At the end of his description of the first contact, in a locked file, Father Yarbrough added a commentary meant only for the current Father General. He wrote of you, 'I believe that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Today I may have looked upon the face of a saint. »
'Stop it.'
'Excuse me?' Giuliani looked up from the tablet he was reading, blinking, unaccustomed to being addressed in this manner, even in private, even by a man whose nights were now a part of his own, whose dreams interrupted his own sleep.
'Stop it. Leave me something.' Sandoz was trembling. 'Don't pick over my bones, Vince.'
There was a long silence, as Giuliani looked into the terrible eyes and absorbed the implications. 'I'm sorry, Emilio,' he said. 'Forgive me.'
Sandoz sat looking at him a while longer, his head turned away slightly, still shaking. 'You can't know what it's like. There's no way for you to understand.'
It was, in its own way, a sort of apology, Giuliani realized. 'Perhaps if you tried to explain it to me,' the Father General suggested gently.
'How can I explain what I don't understand myself?' Emilio cried. He stood abruptly and walked a few steps away and then turned back. It was always startling when Sandoz broke down. His face would hardly move. 'From where I was then to where I am now—I don't know what to do with what happened to me, Vince!' He lifted his hands and let them fall, defeated. Vincenzo Giuliani, who had heard many confessions in his years, remained silent, and waited. 'Do you know what the worst of it is? I loved God,' Emilio said in a voice frayed by incomprehension. The crying stopped as suddenly as it had begun. He stood for a long while, staring at nothing Giuliani could see, and then went to the window to look out at the rain. 'It's all ashes now. All ashes.'
And then, incredibly, he started to laugh. It could be as shocking as the sudden tears.
'I think,' the Father General said, 'that I could be of more help to you if I knew whether you see all this as comedy or tragedy.'
Emilio did not answer right away. So much, he was thinking, for keeping silent about what can't be changed. So much for Latino pride. He felt sometimes like the seedhead of a dandelion, flying apart, blown to pieces in a puff
