Papal Decree (21 page)

Staughton finally understood Barry’s question. ‘It’s going to take time to find him,’ he said apologetically.

‘That son of a bitch,’ Barry swore again.

‘Uh!’ Travis interrupted over the radio. ‘Rafael would like to give the director some information.’

‘What is it?’ Aris asked.

‘Eight o’clock, the Osteria de Memmo I Santori, number twenty-two, Via dei Soldati. Don’t be late.’

Barry was furious, but he tried not to show it to the team. Rafael had made fools of them.

Not everything is what it seems.

‘That story sounds like a cheap thriller written by a hack writer.’

‘It’s the pure truth, Jonas,’ Ursino said.

The scene could only be the Relic Room, which Ursino oversaw religiously every working day.

Jonas was seated comfortably in a chair, legs crossed, in a dark suit with a matching shirt and shoes of the same color, listening to his friend recount the events of the night before. There were no secrets between them, and their friendship transcended the difference in their age, despite Jonas’s being half as old as Ursino.

‘So they killed a priest in Jerusalem and kidnapped Ben Isaac’s son?’ Jonas summarized with his hands behind his head, in a relaxed pose.

Ursino gave Jonas’s upper leg a little kick in reproach. ‘And that’s just the half of it, kid. There was also a Turk and a German in France.’ He raised a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t repeat this to anyone.’

It was Jonas’s turn to look offended. ‘When did I ever repeat anything said in here? And you talk a lot.’

Ursino had to agree. Jonas visited him from time to time. They had met in the year of Jubilee at a fund-raising dinner and had hit it off. Another friend, Hans Schmidt, had introduced them. They talked all night and many nights afterward. Jonas was a missionary, always traveling, but on his regular visits to the Holy See he never neglected a visit to see his friend in the Relic Room. Then he returned to the jungles, to mosquitoes, hunger, illiteracy, wars, intolerance, encephalitis, and illness. For seven months he hadn’t heard from Jonas. When Ursino feared the worst and was about to ask the secretary, for the love of God, to bring him some news, good or bad, Jonas gave signs of life, ill, but with the same spirit of mission he was familiar with. Fever had kept him in bed in a hut in Angola for months, and only God managed to save him, since there was no medicine capable of doing so. Ursino enjoyed Jonas more than he did any other person, probably because he had nobody else to enjoy, except the Holy Father, the secretary, and God, but with them he couldn’t have a good laugh or tell stories, and months could pass without seeing them. That might have been why Ursino tended to talk too much with Jonas, and Jonas had given proof of his trustworthiness.

‘But whoever’s behind the murders is very well informed,’ Ursino continued, carefully carrying over a kneecap of Saint Thomas Aquinas to be sent to a church being built in Campinas, Brazil.

‘Why?’ Jonas asked, stealthily fiddling with some fragments in a linen cloth on top of the desk.

Ursino put down the kneecap less carefully than he liked, and slapped the other’s hand. ‘Leave Saint Theresa’s wrist bones in peace.’

‘That’s her scaphoid?’

‘What’s left of it,’ Ursino explained while he folded the fragments up in the linen to protect them from Jonas’s curiosity.

‘Why?’ the missionary repeated his question.

‘Because they know about Christ’s bones.’

‘What?’ Jonas was so astonished he got up. ‘How could they know about that?’

‘Don’t ask me. Fewer than ten people know, I thought. Three are dead. The others are me, the secretary, the pope, Adolph …’ He was counting in his head. ‘And that’s all.’

‘And me,’ Jonas added.

‘You don’t count. Three of the Five Gentlemen are dead. Two are left,’ the missionary speculated.

‘How do you know about the Five Gentlemen?’ Ursino asked, truly surprised.

‘You yourself told me about them last year, you addled old man.’

‘They’re not going to get the other two,’ Ursino ventured to say.

‘Why not?’

‘They’re well protected inside the walls of the Vatican.’

They let the silence spread over the cases full of human history, a true hymn to their existence. Ursino sat down on a small chair to rest his bones. Jonas beat his foot nervously on the floor in a rhythm only he knew.

‘Can I smoke?’ Jonas asked.

‘Outside,’ Ursino said, pointing. ‘That habit is going to kill you.’

‘The doctor’s given up on me,’ Jonas said calmly.

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. I’ve got a life expectancy of only seventy or eighty years,’ he joked.

‘You rascal,’ Ursino said. ‘How long are you going to be here this time?’ He changed the subject.

‘Only tonight.’

So little time,
Ursino lamented silently. He liked having a friend around. Normally Ursino came in without speaking and left silently. Days passed without speaking a word. After a long time, he ended up almost grunting like a caveman. Sometimes he shouted just to give his larynx some exercise. A telephone call left him smiling the rest of the day. Yesterday and this morning were exceptions that proved the rule.

‘Where are you going next?’ Ursino wanted to know.

‘Do you know a priest named Rafael Santini?’ Jonas asked, ignoring his friend’s question.

Ursino was surprised by the question. ‘I do. Why?’

‘I need to find him. Do you know where he lives?’

‘Do you?’ Ursino asked apprehensively.

‘I don’t. That’s why I asked.’

‘You can’t,’ Ursino answered abruptly. Partly he felt jealous that Jonas wanted to meet him, but that wasn’t why he’d been brusque. ‘Who told you about him?’

‘He’s here on the list,’ Jonas said, tossing a paper down on the desk.

Ursino picked it up and read it. He found Rafael’s name after his own.

‘Why is my name on this list?’ He didn’t understand. ‘And what does this mean at the top?’ He referred to the title dominating the upper part in big letters. It said
Deus vocat
.

‘God calls,’ the other said.

‘Yes, I know. It’s Latin.’

Jonas approached him and lit a cigarette.

‘Don’t forget what I told you about smoking in here,’ Ursino cried, getting up also.

Jonas stuck the piece of fibula from some unknown saint into his friend’s eye. The holy relic also served as a weapon. Ursino gave a brief cry and sank heavily to his knees, while Jonas drove the bone deeper.

‘Jonas,’ Ursino whispered with a sad grimace.

‘Dead men don’t talk,’ the other said, suddenly yanking out the bone and stepping aside to avoid the blood that gushed from where there had once been an eye. Ursino, or his corpse, remained kneeling for a time before tumbling over, his legs sprawled under him.

‘Ad maiorem Dei gloriam,’
Jonas murmured. ‘Your Jonas died today with you.’

The man looked at the body as if for the first time.

I know well what you can do and none of your desires will be denied.

He blessed himself before picking up the piece of paper and leaving the holy Relic Room, where the silent witnesses of history reposed.

It was strange how decorative figures – static, immutable – could change their expression depending on the scene they were witnessing. The same rebellious, mischievous cherub, who held his finger over his lips to ask the Reverend Father Hans Schmidt to restrain himself, now seemed wide-eyed in the silent call for judgment.

‘Your theory is that the mind is our enemy,’ Cardinal Ricard, another counselor, said with a sarcastic smile.

‘Let’s say the mind possesses us,’ Schmidt added serenely.

‘Do you mind explaining? Lay it out, please.’

‘Certainly. Our mind, a voice we have inside our head telling us to do one thing or another, that judges and reacts to situations, was made for a specific purpose. To aid us in a practical way. Just as our immune system recognizes the characteristics of an aggressor to overcome constant attacks, the purpose of our mind is the same. We never stick our hand in the fire because we know it burns. How do we know that? We store that information. Unfortunately, we corrupt the whole purpose of the creation of the mind by letting it possess us.’

Everyone looked at Schmidt with evident interest. A few shook their heads in a gesture of disapproval, but listened to him attentively.

‘Aren’t we the ones doing the thinking?’ the same cardinal countered.

‘No, Your Eminence. We are the ones who know, who have the idea of thinking, which is very different. If we can listen to our thoughts, then we are the ones who listen.’

‘Does that mean that someone thinks for us?’ another counselor spoke.

‘No. It means we give too much importance to thinking. Thought exists for practical purposes, not for speculation. Thought exists for me to say that it’s cold outside, and so I have to dress warmly, not for saying,
Oh, damn, it’s cold outside. The hell with the weather.
’

‘But through thought I know who I am, who I was – I have a notion of my history,’ the first cardinal argued.

‘A false notion of self. A false notion of your own history. The self is the root of the problem.’

‘What are you saying? Why false?’

‘Because everything is mixed up here,’ Hans said, pointing at his head. ‘The real, the unreal, the imaginary, the past, desires, dreams.’

‘Can we not distinguish between reality and dream?’

Schmidt stopped for a moment and smiled. ‘I’ll give you an example. Do you remember the last trip you took?’ he said to the cardinal.

‘Very well,’ His Eminence replied.

‘Can you tell us where it was?’

‘Certainly. Croatia. I was in Zagreb a few days.’

‘Think of a place in Zagreb where you were.’

‘I’m doing so.’

‘Where was it?’

‘The cathedral.’

‘Now imagine me next to you. Can you see us having coffee on the esplanade of Ban Jelačić Square?’

The cardinal said nothing, and a sarcastic smile faded from his lips.

‘We’re not able to distinguish what actually happened from what we wish had happened or from a suggestion that might have happened,’ Schmidt explained with passion. ‘The past serves for nothing. It’s not for remembering or for mentally reviving. It was what it was, and there is nothing you can do to change it. Certainly, it’s not worth crying over. It’s not worth judging ourselves and others.’ He paused briefly. ‘Salvation is always in the present. We can only make a difference in our life now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only now.’

The room looked at him in silence. The prefect, the secretary, the cardinal counselors shifted their papers and moved uncomfortably in their chairs, impatient, constrained, some dry coughing, others with too much phlegm.

‘I ask myself,’ the secretary began, ‘if you realize the outrages you’ve told this congregation. You’ve polluted this holy place with a mountain of heresies.’

There was a concurring mutter and shaking of heads around the table.

‘Salvation is always in our Lord Jesus Christ,’ the secretary added, gaining the approval of the prefect.

‘I agree with Your Eminence,’ Schmidt affirmed.

‘But not completely,’ added Cardinal Ricard.

‘The extent of my agreement isn’t important. As I said previously, believing or not believing is equally correct.’

The cardinal got up indignantly. ‘There is only one belief,’ he shouted. ‘In our Lord Jesus Christ. It was He who said the kingdom of God is always at hand.’ He stuck his finger in the air, as if that sanctioned what he said.

Schmidt chuckled.

‘When Jesus said that He was not talking about time.’

‘What was He talking about, then?’ Secretary Ladaria asked.

Schmidt looked at his listeners with a genuine smile. He was very amused. ‘About distance.’

‘Distance? Explain that, please.’ William spoke now. He’d been silent so far.

‘Jesus meant that the kingdom of God, salvation, was near, that is, it was ready, within reach of anyone. But he wasn’t talking about a place or time …’ He let his words sink in before proceeding. ‘He was referring to a state or condition.’

‘A state,’ the secretary repeated, as if awakening from a trance. ‘And what state was that?’

‘The state of illumination.’

The entire congregation waited for an explanation.

‘Jesus almost always lived in this state,’ Schmidt continued. ‘It’s what happens when you live free from permanent control of the mind. The mind judges, classifies, files everything that surrounds it. It’s hot, cold, bad, good … this one’s an idiot, that one’s a thief, and everything is conspiring against us … Everything that passes before our eyes suffers instant classification. It happens often we meet a person, and in five minutes we’ve formed a fixed opinion. We like him or not, according to
our
mental classification. Nothing is more erroneous.’

Indignation was growing among the counselors. The prefect was the only one who showed no reaction.

‘Jesus didn’t judge and classify things. He was in a permanent state of enlightenment. Always in contact with the vital energy of the universe. He didn’t make value judgments or predictions, didn’t worry about problems that might or might not occur, and never tried to imagine how to correct things, because things never happen as we imagine. Jesus didn’t live in the past or in the future, only in the one state in which one can live: the present.
Consider the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin,
He said. There is no other way to live. You can’t do it thinking about what is going to happen in five minutes or ten or an hour, a day or a year. We can only make a difference now in the present. Jesus made all the difference living in this way.’

No one said anything for some time. They didn’t know what to say. The counselors tried to assimilate the outrageous words that the reverend Austrian father had uttered with such fervent passion. The entire session was a horrendous profanation of the holy, a sacrilege. In a way that Schmidt might have considered disrespectful, if he were a man given to classification, the counselors began whispering among themselves. William stayed out of the conversation in the beginning, but was compelled to intervene when whispering turned into a murmur and, later, into a heated altercation.