opened the first button.
Rafael took his time answering. His thoughtful expression showed he was choosing his words and, at the same time, adding to the English priest’s tension second by second.
‘It depends,’ he answered at last, opting for subterfuge, but forcing another unequivocal question.
One could see more and more alarm in Phelps’s eyes. Seventy years, adding one or subtracting a couple, spent almost completely in devotion to Christ in study, with everything carefully planned, from a to c, passing over b, with the most detailed schedule possible, no adventures or hungry days. And now this. A trip, the unknown, dark and dangerous, and what most dismayed him, the calm of his companion in the seat beside him, looking out the window into the empty air, after calmly eating. But it was best not to think of that, since everything had started with a visit to the papal apartments and whatever they were going to do had the endorsement of the Vatican, perhaps of the Supreme Pontiff, the great Joseph Ratzinger. At the moment what most tormented him was the sparse reply to his last simple question.
‘On what?’ he insisted. It was logical that something that depends is subject to variables that can be explained.
‘If we arrive on time… or not.’
13
The tracts, testimony, medical examinations, bureaucracy, conditions, evaluations, impressions, interrogations, positive or not, that form part of the process of beatification or canonization are countless. Laws and rules exist, rigorous in most cases, that have to be followed scrupulously by the functionaries, emissaries, and prelates of the Holy See responsible for the case. A miracle, just one, is enough to unchain the machinery of verification. It can take years, sometimes decades, to legalize the facts, depending on the candidate in question and the interest of the Church in the matter. Much interest results in a faster process; little interest in delays capable of blackening and pulverizing the stones of the paved road. Preferably the candidate for sainthood should have been dead for more than five years in order to initiate the process of beatification, except in certain cases of sanctity in attitude or way of life. The venerable Mother Teresa of Calcutta is an example; in life she was more holy than many saints after death. Abu Rashid, the Muslim, seated on a narrow chair in a room on the seventh floor of the King David Hotel, might also fit that description.
Through the window the foreigner watched the ancient city, polemical but peaceful. Today was Friday, not yet noon, but already loudspeakers were heard calling to prayer from the tops of the minarets of the Al-Aqsa mosque. In former times it would have been the muezzin who called the faithful for the hour of prayer to Allah, facing the sacred city of Mecca.
‘Tell me everything, Abu Rashid,’ the man asked, not taking his eyes off the church cupolas of the Christian and Armenian quarters.
‘What can I say that you don’t already know?’ he answered.
The foreigner remembered the previous day and the fortunate visit to the Muslim’s house, as well as what happened afterward.
‘You brought back the dead and whoever was with you in the Haj, after the monstrous flood that drowned thirty people, around…’ the foreigner repeated for the fourth time. ‘Where are these living dead?’ he asked sardonically.
‘Around,’ he said. ‘I don’t walk around counting the life of each one.’
‘That we’ll have to see… we’ll have to see,’ the other replied. ‘Can you imagine the work you’ve made for me?’ An almost imperceptible look of irritation crossed his face.
‘You’re more than used to it. Someone has to do it.’ The voice remained calm, unaltered. Somewhat patient.
The foreigner left the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. He watched Abu Rashid with a certain reverence he wished to hide, which left him even more upset. He felt himself blush. The color rose in his cheeks. He hated this happening, especially when he was working on something important.
‘When did you see… the Virgin?’ Not without some fear he evoked the name of the Mother of God.
‘Every time she appears.’
The foreigner reacted as if it were blasphemy. He felt as if Abu Rashid were insulting his own mother, which is true, since the Virgin is the heavenly mother of every Christian.
‘And when is that?’ He decided to calm down. There was nothing to gain in losing control.
‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what she has to say to me.’
‘She’s the Mother of Christ, a Christian icon. Do you believe in her?’ Don’t lose patience, don’t lose patience.
‘I believe because I see her.’
‘It could be no more than a hallucination, man of God… of Allah,’ he corrected himself.
‘Allah is God,’ the Muslim countered.
‘But not mine,’ the other replied decisively.
‘Only one God exists. Mine could be yours.’
‘Leave the dogma. You believe because you see her.’
‘Correct.’
‘But she could be only a hallucination,’ he suggested.
Abu Rashid shook his head, denying it.
‘No. Hallucinations are like mirages. They deceive.’
‘And she doesn’t deceive?’
‘Never. Everything she tells me is always true.’ The word reflected the respect he had for the visions.
The foreigner got up again and paced from one side of the spacious room to the other. He sighed deeply, his hands behind his back.
‘What has that vision told you?’ he finally asked.
‘Oh, many things…’ He smiled.
‘For example,’ the foreigner insisted.
‘She spoke to me of the flood and the drowning.’
‘How many years ago was that?’
‘Ten.’
‘You’ve had this vision for ten years?’
‘More,’ the Muslim agreed, with the same smile on his face.
‘When did you have the first vision?’ the foreigner inquired, halfway between the bed and the door in his nervous demand. ‘Do you remember?’
‘As if it were today,’ Abu Rashid announced with a melancholy, nostalgic look, and remembered that day, his birthday, the eleventh, when she appeared at his side on the Mount of Olives, dressed in pure white, so brilliant that he had to shield his eyes with his hand. He was running back to the city to the same house he lived in today on Qadisieh Street to go with his father to pray at Hara mesh-Sharif.
‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ she asked him in a calming, melodious voice.
Contritely, respectfully, the boy explained his duties to God and his family.
‘God is always within you. It is enough to hear and feel Him,’ she replied like the song of a nightingale. The melodious reply had made the boy stop to see her better.
‘Who are you?’
‘I have many names. Maria of all wishes and ideas. The Virgin, anything you want to call me, including Lady.’
The boy found that very strange. A lady with any name you want to call her?
‘Okay, okay, okay,’ the foreigner said, calling him back impatiently to the present. ‘So, according to what you’re saying, she’s appeared to you since you were eleven years old,’ he summarized.
