The Heaven Trilogy (63 page)

“I mean no disrespect, sir. But I can’t stand to see you hurt our village.”

“Please, Nadia,” Ivena said.

The priest stood quivering, his face half off, his shoulders grotesquely slumped, staring at Nadia with his one good eye.

Karadzic blinked. Nadia turned to face her mother and spoke very quietly. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

She looked Karadzic in the eyes. “If you’re good, sir, why are you hurting us? Father Michael has taught us that religion without God is foolishness. And God is love. But how is this love? Love is—”

“Shut your hole!” Karadzic lifted a hand to strike her. “Shut your tiny hole, you insolent—”

“Stop! Please stop!” Ivena staggered forward three steps from the far side, uttering little panicky guttural sounds.

Karadzic glared at Nadia, but he did not swing his hand.

Nadia never took her round blue eyes off the commander. Her lower lip quivered for a moment. Tears leaked down her cheek in long, silent streams. “But sir, how can I shut up if you make my mother carry that load on her back? She has only so much strength. She will drop the cross and then you’ll beat her. I can’t stand to watch this.”

Karadzic ignored the girl and looked around at the scattered women, bent, unmoving, staring at him. “March! Did I tell you to stop? March!”

But they did not.
Something had changed,
Janjic thought. They looked at Karadzic, their gazes fixed. Except for Ivena. She was bent like a pack mule, shaking, but slowly, ever so slowly, she began to straighten with the cross on her back.

Janjic wanted to scream out.
Stop, woman! Stop, you fool! Stay down!

Nadia spoke in a wavering tone now. “I beg you, sir. Please let these mothers put down their crosses. Please leave us. This would not please our Lord Jesus. It’s not his love.”

“Shut up!” Karadzic thundered. He took a step toward Nadia, grabbed one of her pigtails and yanked.

She winced and stumbled after him, nearly falling except for his grip on her hair. Karadzic pulled the girl to the father, who looked on, tears running down his cheek now.

Ivena’s cross slipped from her back then.

Janjic alone watched it, and he felt its impact through his boot when it landed.

Nadia’s mother ran for Karadzic. She’d already taken three long strides when the dull thump jerked the commander’s heads toward her. She took two more, half the distance to the commander, head bent and eyes fixed, before uttering a sound. And then her mouth snapped wide and she shrieked in fury. A full-throated roaring scream that met Janjic’s mind like a dentist’s drill meeting a raw nerve.

Karadzic whipped the girl behind him like a rag doll. He stepped forward and met the rushing woman’s face with his fist. The blow sent her reeling, bleeding profusely from the nose. She slumped to her knees, silenced to a moan.

And then another cross fell.

And another, and another until they were slamming to the concrete in a rain of stone. The women struggled to stand tall, all of them.

A streak of fear crossed Karadzic’s gray eyes, Janjic realized. But he wasn’t thinking too clearly just now. He was trembling under the weight of the atmosphere. A thick air of insanity laced by the crazy notion that
he
should stop this. That he should scream out in protest, or maybe put a bullet in Karadzic’s head— anything to end this madness.

The commander jerked his pistol from his belt and shoved it against the priest’s forehead. He spun the girl toward the priest and released her. “You think your dead Christ will save your priest now?”

“Sir . . .” The objection came from Janjic’s throat before he could stop it.

Stop, Janjic! Shut up! Sit back!

But he did not. He took a single step forward. “Sir, please. This is enough. Please, we should leave these people alone.”

Karadzic shot him a furious stare, and Janjic saw hatred in those deep-set eyes. The commander looked back at the girl, who was staring up at the priest through the pools of tears that rimmed her eyes.

“I think I’ll shoot your priest. Yes?”

Father Michael gazed into the little girl’s face. There was a connection between their eyes, shafts of invisible energy.
The priest and the girl were speaking,
Janjic thought. Speaking with this look of love. Tears streamed down their cheeks.

Janjic felt a wedge of panic rise to his throat. “Please, sir. Please, show them kindness. They have done nothing.”

“Sometimes love is best spoken with a bullet,” Karadzic said.

The girl stared into the eyes of her priest, and her look gripped Janjic with terror. He wanted to tear his gaze away from the girl’s face, but he couldn’t. It was a look of love in its purest form, Janjic knew, a love he had never seen before.

Nadia spoke softly, still staring at the priest. “Don’t kill my priest.” Her voice whispered across the courtyard. “If you have to kill someone, then kill me instead.”

A murmur ran though the crowd. The girl’s mother clambered to unsteady legs, gulping for air. Her face twisted in anguish. “Oh, God! Nadia! Nadia!”

Nadia held up a hand, stopping her mother. “No, Mother. It will be okay. You will see. It’s what Father Michael has taught us. Shh. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”

Oh, such words! From a child! Janjic felt hot tears on his cheek. He took another step forward. “Please, sir, I beg you!” It came out like a sob, but he no longer cared.

Karadzic’s lips twitched once. Then again, to a grin. He lowered his gun from the priest. It hung by his waist.

He lifted it suddenly and pressed the barrel to the girl’s head.

The mother’s restraint snapped and she launched herself at the commander, arms forward, fingernails extended like claws, shrieking. This time the second in command, Molosov, anticipated her move. He was running from his position behind Janjic as soon as Ivena moved, and he landed a kick to her midsection before she reached Karadzic. She doubled over and retched. Molosov jerked the woman’s arms behind her and dragged her back.

Nadia closed her eyes and her shoulders began to shake in a silent sob.

“Since your flock has failed to prove its faith, you will renounce your faith, Priest. Do that and I will let this little one live.” Karadzic’s voice cut through the panic. He looked around at the women. “Renounce your dead Christ and I will leave you all.”

Ivena began to whimper with short squeaky sounds that forced their way past white lips. For a moment the rest seemed not to have heard. Father Michael stiffened. For several long seconds his face registered nothing.

And then it registered everything, knotting up impossibly around his shattered cheekbone. His tall frame began to shake with sobs and his limp arm bounced loosely.

“Speak, Priest! Renounce Christ!”

THE PHONE rang, and Ivena jerked upright. Her heart slammed in her chest.
Oh, Nadia! Oh, dear Nadia.
A teardrop darkened the page by her thumb. She closed her eyes and let the book close on one finger.

The phone rang again, from the kitchen.

Oh, Nadia, I love you so much. You were so brave. So very, very brave!

Ivena began to cry then; she just could not help it. Didn’t want to help it. She bowed her head and sobbed.

She had done this a hundred times; a thousand times, and each time she reached this point it was the same. The hardest part of remembering. But it was also the most rewarding part. Because in moments like this she knew that her heart was breaking with her Father’s, looking down at miserable man; at the leper; the whore; the common pedestrian in Atlanta; Nadia. The ache in her heart now was no different from the ache in God’s heart for his stray creation. It was there only because of love.

And she did love Nadia. She really did.

The phone rang incessantly.

Ivena sniffed, twisted to stand, and then thought better of it. Whoever it was could wait. It was only ten o’clock and she had no deliveries today. They could call back. She was nearly finished here anyway; no use running off prematurely. Nothing mattered as much as remembering. Except for following.

Ivena took a gulp of cool tea and let the phone ring out. When it did, she adjusted herself on the chair, sniffed again, and then began to read.

FATHER MICHAEL’S world kept blinking on and off, alternating like intermittent static between this ghastly scene here and the white-flowered field there. He was jerked back and forth with such intensity that he hardly knew which scene was real and which was a figment of his imagination.

But that was just it. Neither world came from his imagination. He knew that now with certainty. He was simply being allowed to see and hear both worlds. His spiritual eyes and ears were being opened in increments, and he could hardly stand the contrast. One second this terrifying evil in the courtyard, and the next the music.

Oh the music! Impossible to describe. Raw energy stripping him of all but pleasure. The man was only a few hundred meters distant now, arms spread so that his cloak draped wide. An image of Saint Francis, but more. Yes, much more. Michael imagined a wide, mischievous grin on the man, but he couldn’t see it for the distance. The man walked toward him steadily, purposefully, still singing. The giggling children sang with him in perfect harmony now. A symphony slowly swelling. The melody begged him to join. To leap into the field and throw his arms up and dance with laughter along with the hidden children.

Across the courtyard, the tall cross leading to the cemetery stood bold against the other world’s gray sky. He had pointed to that very cross a thousand times, teaching his children the truth of God. And he had taught them well.

“You may look at that cross and think of it as a gothic decoration, engraved with roses and carved with style, but do not forget that it represents life and death. It represents the scales on which all of our lives will be weighed. It’s an instrument of torture and death—the symbol of our faith. They butchered God on a cross. And Christ emphasized none of his teachings so adamantly as our need to take up our own crosses and follow him.”

Nadia had looked up to him, squinting in the sun—he saw it clearly in his mind’s eye now. “Does this mean that we should die for him?”

“If need be, of course, Nadia. We will all die, yes? So then if we have worn out our bodies in service to him, then we are dying for him, yes? Like a battery that expends its power.”

“But what if the battery is still young when it dies?” That had silenced those gathered.

He reached down and stroked her chin. “Then you would be fortunate enough to pass this plain world quickly. What waits beyond is the prize, Nadia. This”—he looked up and drew a hand across the horizon—“this fleeting world may look like the garden of Eden to us, but it’s nothing more than a taste. Tell me,” and he looked at the adults gathered now, “at a wedding feast you receive gifts, yes? Beautiful, lovely gifts . . . vases and perfumes and scarves . . . all delightful in our eyes. We all gather around the gifts and show our pleasure.
What a glorious scarf, Ivena
.”

A chuckle ran through the crowd.

“But do you think that Ivena’s mind is on the scarf?” A run of giggles. “No, I think not. Ivena’s mind is on her groom, waiting breathlessly in the next room. The man whom she will wed in sweet union. Yes?”

“I don’t recall seeing a cross at the last wedding,” Ivena had said.

“No, not at our weddings. But death is like a wedding.” The crowd hushed. “And the crucifixion of Christ was a grand wedding announcement. This world we now live in may indeed be a beautiful gift from God, but do not forget that we wait with breathless anticipation for our union with him beyond this life.” He let the truth finger its way through their minds for a moment. “And how do you suppose we arrive at the wedding?”

Nadia answered. “We die.”

He looked down into her smiling blue eyes. “Yes, child. We die.”

“Then why shouldn’t we just die now?” Nadia asked.

“Heaven forbid, child! What bride do you know who would take her own life before the wedding? No one who understands how beautiful the bride is could possibly take her life before the wedding! It is perhaps the ugliest thing of all. We will all cross the threshold when the groom calls. Until then, we wait with breathless anticipation.”

One of the women had sighed with approval.

Somehow, looking at the large concrete cross now did not engender any such mirth. He looked down at the child and felt as though a shaft had been run through his heart.

Nadia, oh, my dear Nadia, what are you doing? I love you so, young child. I love you as though you were my own. And you are my own. You know that, don’t you, Nadia?

She looked at him with deep blue eyes.
I love you, Father.
Her eyes were speaking to him, as clearly as any words. And he wept.

“Don’t kill my priest. If you have to kill someone, then kill me instead,” a voice said.

He heard the words like a distant echo . . . words! She had actually said that?
Don’t be foolish, Nadia!

A flash of light sputtered to life about him. The white field again!

The music flooded his mind and he suddenly wanted to laugh with it. It felt so . . . consequential here, and the silly little game back in the courtyard so . . . petty. Like a game of marbles with all the neighborhood children gathered, sporting stern faces as if the outcome might very well determine the fate of the world. If they only knew that their little game felt so small here, in this immense white landscape that rippled with laughter. Ha! If they only knew! Kill us! Kill us all! Put an end to this silly game of marbles and let us get on with life, with laughing and music in the white field.

The white world blinked off. But now the commander had the gun pushed against Nadia’s forehead. “Renounce your faith, Priest, and I will let this little one live! Renounce your dead Christ and I will leave you all.”

It took a moment for him to switch worlds—for the words to present their meaning to him.

And then they did, with the force of a sledge to his head.

Renounce Christ?

Never! He could never renounce Christ!