‘Did you hear me?’ Aloysius asked her arrogantly.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.
Nicolas twisted on the floor, sweating, moaning, and shivering. ‘Get me the first-aid kit,’ he ordered his wife.
She hurried to obey. She heated some water, brought clean towels, and a knife to use as a scalpel if necessary.
She took scissors and cut his shirt away from the wounds to begin the operation. None of the bullets had exited.
‘You’re going to have to get them out,’ he told her. ‘Go and get the case out of my dresser drawer.’
She obeyed and came back in a few moments with a small black case. She knelt down by him and opened it. It was full of containers, needles, and a syringe. She recognized the syringe and could almost feel the fluid injected into her veins, more times than she could remember.
‘Attach the needle to the syringe, insert it into the flask, and extract the fluid,’ he explained, almost fainting.
She did it with some difficulty, then repeated the gesture she’d seen him perform so often, squeezing the syringe until a few drops left the needle.
She started to insert it in his arm, but he grabbed her hand hard. He gasped with pain.
‘Wait. Get the book from the pocket of my shirt.’
She put the syringe on the floor and found the book easily. It was the paperback Bible.
‘Open it at random,’ he ordered.
She did.
‘Choose a verse and read it to me.’
Her voice was nervous, but then gained strength at the end. ‘Behold the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those who hope for his mercy.’
He thought about the words she read him for a few moments and made a decision. ‘I’m ready.’
She looked at the needle and injected the contents of the syringe. It would take 120 seconds to take effect.
He raised his head suddenly and frightened her. He seemed delirious.
‘Will everything be all right, Mother?’ he asked. ‘Tell me everything will be all right, Mama.’
She stroked his hair.
‘Shhh. Rest. Everything’s fine, my son. It’ll go away.’
Two minutes passed and Nicolas fell into a deep sleep. There was no more pain, doubt, or disillusion. Everything was perfect.
She opened the small pocket Bible again at random and read the first verse her eyes hit upon. I will place my hopes in the Lord; I will hope for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.
She took a deep breath and picked up the knife she’d found in the kitchen. She looked at Nicolas’s serene face, breathing peacefully, imprisoned in a drug-induced sleep. Her first stab was right in his heart, the second, an inch or so to the side. She continued stabbing his chest eighteen times, her fury increasing with each motion. When she stopped, she looked again at his peaceful face. He wasn’t breathing.
She took her time washing Nicolas’s blood off her skin. A hot, restoring bath, whose steam billowed into a cloud on the ceiling of the bathroom. She put on a blue dress with a jacket and packed a small suitcase into which she put Nicolas’s Bible. He didn’t need it anymore. She carried the suitcase to the hall and went to his room, to his first dresser drawer, where there was another case, larger than the one that held the syringe. Inside were stacks of fifty-euro bills. She emptied the box and went to the hall for her suitcase. She looked at Nicolas’s corpse one last time. He appeared to be sleeping.
‘We’ll see each other in hell, Nicolas,’ she said bitterly before going out into the cold, dark night.
71
The next day dawned sunny, as it often does after a storm.
Rafael had spent the whole night in a chair at Sarah’s side in the Policlinico Gemelli, courtesy of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who intervened personally to make sure the journalist was treated with every comfort.
Tarcisio had called Rafael early in the morning to meet him at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiense, where Tarcisio was presiding over a ceremony celebrating the founder, Don Bosco. It appealed very much to the secretary’s heart, since it was a Salesian ritual, and he himself was a Salesian brother.
Rafael showed up at the designated hour, ten in the morning, in the basilica where the bones of the apostle Saint Paul are exhibited. A line of Salesian priests and brothers filed past the secretary, who was seated next to the altar. The ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes, with a choir singing the praises of God, and then there were many petitions, since it was not every day they had the privilege of speaking personally with such an important figure. Rafael stood next to the tomb of the apostle, who never knew Jesus, but contributed decisively to His immortality. Rafael watched. The wide nave with eighty columns was full of tourists taking photos of the portraits of the popes displayed throughout the edifice from Peter to Benedict, the sixteenth to use that blessed name.
The stampede of brothers eased up gradually as they went to enjoy a simple meal being served in the cloister. Tarcisio delayed a little to exchange words with the rector of the Salesian congregation — instructions and recommendations from someone in an influential position important to the order.
The secretary returned to the sacristy. An assistant who had taken Trevor’s place came over to Rafael next to the canopy.
‘His Eminence can see you now,’ he said.
Rafael followed him to the sacristy, where Tarcisio was waiting.
‘Good morning, Rafael. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Sit down, please,’ he said, gesturing toward a chair next to a large oak table. ‘Did you get any rest?’ Tarcisio asked.
‘I dozed a little in the hospital.’
‘Is Sarah all right?’
‘We’ll have to see,’ Rafael replied.
‘I’ll mention her in my prayers,’ Tarcisio offered.
Rafael knew he would.
‘Your Eminence never questions things?’ Rafael asked, a little intimidated by the question he couldn’t hold back.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you ever doubt your faith?’
Tarcisio sighed. ‘Someone who wants to believe must first doubt. Faith comes after doubts, not before.’
Rafael took a deep breath. It was a profound response.
‘Whoever never doubts never really knows what it is to believe,’ the secretary added.
Rafael was a man with doubts, but he was in the presence of one of the most powerful men in the world. He didn’t know how to express his doubts without showing a lack of respect.
‘Yesterday I realized things that… that…’
‘That put your faith in doubt,’ Tarcisio concluded for him.
Rafael neither confirmed nor denied it.
‘My dear Rafael, I understand your confusion, your doubts, but let me say that they’re unfounded.’
‘I’m afraid everything is just a misunderstood exaggeration of history by Paul, whose bones may not even lie in that tomb out there.’
‘They’re in there, for sure, Rafael,’ Tarcisio reassured him.
‘Then what is the society guarding?’
‘A great lie. A Jesus Who never existed. Don’t forget something, Rafael. We’re His heirs. This is not based on anything that can be denied.’
Rafael wanted very much to believe this, but he felt a storm of doubts at the moment. He didn’t have the clarity of thought to distinguish between true and false or a plausible invention.
