We walked to the ornate altar, tiers of rose-colored marble rising to support a statue of Mary holding her baby.
'See, Billy? We Sicilians worship the Mother of Christ, the mother of us all. But we do not pay so much attention to her son. He should have respected her more and not drawn all that trouble down on the family. As soon as he was born, they had to flee to Egypt!' He shook his head dismissively.
Sciafani wandered off to look at the other paintings along the main wall. I was glad not to have to listen to him rant and rave about the church and paintings and mothers. Something was eating at him and it was ready to boil over, which would have been fine, except I couldn't afford to have him go off his rocker right here, right now, while I was searching for happiness. Where would Saint Felice be, and what would happen when I found him? I peered down the corridor that led off to each side of the altar. The transept, I thought, remembering my brief career as an altar boy back in Boston. It was an honor, my mom kept telling me, and I guess it was, but one I'd been eager to pass up. Getting up earlier than everyone else to prepare for Sunday services wasn't high on my list at that age. Every once in a while, though, as the organ played and I felt the eyes of the congregation following me as I carried the heavy candle to the altar, I had felt holy, deep inside. There was something about being up on the chancel, dressed in my small black cassock, that set me apart from everyday life, and I'd liked that. I would forget about my alarm clock and the lonely early morning walk to church, and I'd feel sorry for all those poor people in the pews who weren't part of what we were doing, who had to follow along as I alone carried the gifts of bread and wine for the priest to work his magic on. I guess the church knew what Mussolini knew, that blood alone moves the wheels, even if the blood was made miraculously from wine every Sunday.
I never would have admitted it to Dad, but that experience had a lot to do with my becoming a cop. It gave me a feeling of separateness, a holy isolation from the day-to-day drudgery of life. And it gave me a chance to set things right, the way they should be, which is what I always thought the best part of religion was about. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But I liked the blue coat better than the cassock, and the police revolver far better than the heavy candlestick.
I looked at the flickering votive candles along each wall. Some were about to go out, while others looked like they had recently been lit. For the first time it hit me that there was no one in the church. Where were the people who'd lit those candles? Where were the old women who came every day to pray? No priest listening to confession? No one taking refuge from the battle inching toward the city?
I saw a man at the far end of the transept. He hadn't been there a second ago, but now he stood square in the middle of the tiled floor, hands folded behind his black robe. He didn't move. He looked straight at me. I walked away from the altar in his direction.
He was gray haired but stood straight, the robe showing only a slight bulge around his middle. His nose was bent, broken once, maybe twice. His eyes stayed on me, tracking me as I came closer, sizing me up. He looked to me like a man whose business was firmly rooted in this world, not the next. Before I could get close enough to speak, he turned sharply on his heel and strode to a narrow wooden door. He opened it and stooped to enter, leaving it ajar. The entrance led to a small landing and a circular staircase made from the same soft stone as the building itself. I grasped the iron rail and walked down the steps, the faint glow of candlelight beckoning me below. I thought about calling to Sciafani, but didn't want to risk him saying something to offend Cristu himself in the bowels of a cathedral.
At the bottom of the stairs, low arched ceilings ran to the left and right. Stone beams supported the arches, and between them were dusty carved caskets, some of shiny marble, others of dull stone. Crosses and bishops' miters adorned the caskets, the dates on them hundreds of years old. Candles fixed to the arches were the only light in this graveyard of priests and bishops. I followed the echo of clacking heels to a pool of golden light that bathed the cold stone. Inside a small chapel, rows of tall white candles lit the room, casting shadows in every direction and drawing sparkling reflections from the polished gold that decorated an open casket. Inside I could see mummified remains, dressed in chain mail and a faded blue cloak. Next to the casket, as still as the ancient corpse, stood the black-robed man.
' Buon giorno, Padre,' I said, using up a good portion of the Italian I could speak in a church.
'I'm not a priest, kid.' He spoke in low growl, his accent as much Brooklyn as Italian.
'Who are you?' I said.
He answered with a little gesture, a tip of the head, eyebrows up and mouth turned down. A very Italian response. Who 's to say, it all depends, who's asking, all rolled up into the twitch of a few facial muscles.
'Who are you looking for?'
'I've passed through purgatory twice, and I've come to find happiness,' I said, looking at the figure laid out in the open casket.
'Ah, yes, San Felice. So, you have found him. Is this what you imagined happiness to be?' He raised one hand, palm out, inviting me to step closer. I did.
The chain mail and cloth rested on bones. The head was bare. Leathery patches of brown dried skin stretched over cheekbones and curled up where it had split and wasted away. The lips were gone entirely, leaving brown teeth grinning at the ceiling. White gloves enclosed the hands crossed on his chest. A sword in a scabbard lay at his side. Traces of leather wrapped around the scabbard were visible, turned almost to dust. Everything around the corpse was worn, frayed, dark, and limp, so heavy with age that it seemed to yearn for the concealment of the grave. Everything except the white gloves.
'Over a thousand years old, the priests tell me. The gloves are to keep the small bones of the hand from falling apart. We wash them every Easter.'
'The gloves or the bones?' I asked.
'The gloves, of course. It is best to leave the bones of the dead alone as much as possible, don't you think?'
'I think somebody ought to have thought of that a thousand years ago,' I answered, tearing my eyes away from the skull's hideous grin. Whatever sainted name this guy had been given, it was obvious he'd been a soldier, a soldier who had done something that marked him as a holy man or perhaps a holy warrior. Now he was a relic, a curiosity for the religious to pray to. I felt sorry for him, alone here among the living.
'Why have you returned?'
'You've seen me before?' Panic rose from my gut. I didn't remember anything about this church, this man, or this rotting saint.
'Yes, but you stood back, with the other one. The Englishman. What happened?'
'I'm sorry,' I said, wishing we could get out of this underground chapel. 'I don't remember everything that happened. I got separated from my friends, and I'm trying to find them.'
'That is no concern of mine. I don't know you. I knew the man who came here, but all I know of you is that you were with him.'
'I knew about purgatory,' I said.
'It is a common enough expression,' he said.
It was time to clinch the deal. I pulled the handkerchief out, held it by two corners and flapped it once as I unfurled it for him to see. Candle flames danced crazily in the brief breeze it created. He looked at it, reached his hand out to feel it, and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. His eyes went to mine, and he nodded. Had I done this before? I couldn't remember.
'Come,' he said. 'Put that away and follow me.'
I followed him upstairs, glad to give the chambers of the righteous dead my back. In the transept, Sciafani leaned against the wall, waiting. He and the black-robed man stared at each other.
'This is Dottore Enrico Sciafani,' I said. 'He guided me here from Gela. And you are…?'
'You vouch for him?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Very well. I am Tommaso Corso, sacristan of this cathedral.'
'I'm Billy Boyle, lieutenant, U. S. Army. Now, tell me-'
'Not here,' he said, cutting me off with a wave of his hand. 'Come.'
We sat at a rough wood table in a small room off the sacristy, the place where the priest kept his robes and vestments, the chalice, all the special gear for the Mass. In a big church or a cathedral like this one, the sacristan was the guy in charge of all this stuff. Everything in the sacristy from candles to cassocks. Plus all the church property in the rest of the building, which really meant something when art treasures decorated the walls.
