The Quest: A Novel (4 page)

“Italiano,” said the old man.

There was a long silence.

Mercado crouched next to him and spoke slowly in Italian. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Are you ill?”

The old man closed his eyes and did not respond.

Purcell took the flashlight from Mercado, knelt beside the old man, and stared down at him. The man’s beard was unkempt and his skin hadn’t seen sunlight in years. Purcell took the old man’s hand from under the blanket. The hand was filthy, but the skin was soft. “I think he’s been locked away for a while.”

Mercado nodded in the darkness.

The old man opened his eyes again, and Vivian spooned more soup into his toothless mouth. “He’s in terrible shape, poor old man.”

The old man was trying to speak, but his lips trembled and only
small sounds came out. Finally, he spoke in slow Italian. Vivian sat close to Purcell and whispered the translation into his ear as she continued to spoon-feed him. “He says he is wounded in the stomach.”

Purcell took the can and spoon from Vivian and laid them down. The old man protested. “Tell him he can’t eat until we’ve seen the wound.”

Mercado pulled down the blanket and tore aside the
shamma
. He turned on the flashlight again. A large mass of coagulated gore covered the man’s stomach. He spoke to the old man. “How did this happen? What made this wound?”

The man made a small shrug. “A bullet, perhaps. Maybe the artillery.”

Mercado said to Vivian and Purcell, “We’ll have a look at it in the morning. There’s nothing we can do now. Let him sleep.”

Purcell thought a moment. “He may be dead in the morning, Henry. Then we’ll never know. Talk to him.”

“I can see why you were put up for a Pulitzer, Frank. Let the old duffer rest.”

“There’s all eternity for him to rest.”

“Don’t write him off like that,” said Vivian.

The old man moved his head from side to side as if trying to follow the conversation.

Mercado looked at him. “He seems alert enough, doesn’t he? Let’s get his name and all that—just in case.”

“Proceed,” said Purcell.

Vivian moved next to Purcell again and put her head beside his.

Mercado began in Italian, “We cannot give you more to eat because of the stomach wound. Now you must rest and sleep. But first, tell us your name.”

The old man nodded. A thin smile played across his lips. “You are good people.” He asked, “Who are you?”

Mercado replied, “Journalists.”

“Yes? You are here for the war?”

“Yes,” Mercado replied, “for the war.”

The old man asked, “Americano? Inglese?”

Mercado replied, “Both.”

The old man smiled and said, “Good people.”

Mercado laid his hand on the old man’s arm and asked, “What is your name, please?”

“I am—I am Giuseppe Armano. I am a priest.”

A long silence hung in the darkness. Outside, the sounds of battle died slowly, indicating that everyone was satisfied with the night’s carnage. Occasionally a flare burst overhead and gently floated to earth, and as it fell, the crisscrossed steel reinforcing rods of the collapsed concrete ceiling cast their peculiar grid shadows over the floor, and the room was bathed in blue-white luminescence. But the small corner of the big chamber remained in shadow.

Mercado took the old priest’s hand and squeezed it. “Father. What has happened to you?”

The old priest winced in pain and did not respond.

Mercado gripped the priest’s hand tighter. “Father. Can you talk?”

“Yes… yes, I can. I must talk. I think I am dying.”

“No. No. You’re fine. You’ll be—”

“Be still and let me speak.” The old priestly authority came through his weak voice. “Put my head up.” Mercado slid a piece of stone under the sleeping bag. “There. Good.” The old priest knew when he was in the presence of a believer and again became the leader of the flock—a flock of one. Vivian moistened his lips with a wet handkerchief.

He drew a deep breath and began, “My name is Father Giuseppe Armano and I am a priest of the order of Saint Francis. My parish is in the village of Berini in Sicily. I have spent the last… I think, forty years, since 1936… what year is this?”

“It is 1974, Father.”

“Yes. Since 1936, almost forty years. I have been in a prison. To the east of here.”

“Forty years?” Mercado exchanged a look with Purcell. “Forty years? Why? Why have you been in prison forty years?”

“They kept me from the world. To protect the secret. But they would not kill me because I, too, am a priest. But they are the old believers. The Copts. They have the sacred blood and the…” His voice trailed off and he lay still, staring up at the sky.

Mercado said to the priest, “Go on. Slowly. Go slowly.”

“Yes… you must go to Berini and tell them what has happened to me. Giuseppe Armano. They will remember. I have a family there. A brother. Two sisters. Could they be alive?” Tears welled up in the old priest’s eyes, but he insisted on continuing. He spoke more quickly now. “I left my village in 1935. August. It was a hot day. A man came and said I was in the army. Il Duce needed priests for his army. So we went… some other priests, too… and many young boys. We walked in the sun and reached Alcamo. There was a train for us in Alcamo and then a boat from Palermo. I had never been on a train or boat and I was frightened of the train, but not so much of the boat. And the boys, peasants like myself, some were frightened, but most were excited. And we sailed in the boat to Reggio. And there was a train in Reggio and we went north to Rome…” He lay back and licked his dry lips. Vivian moistened them again as she translated for Purcell.

The old man smiled and nodded at the kindness. He again refused Mercado’s offer to sleep. “I am very sick. You must let me finish. I feel the burning in my belly.”

“It’s just the food, Father. It has made the acid. You understand?”

“I understand that I am dying. Be silent. What is your name?”

“Henry Mercado.”

“Henry… good. So we went to Rome, Henry. All my life, I wished to go to Rome. Now I was in Rome. What a city… have you seen it? Everyone should go to Rome before he dies… You are a Catholic, Henry?”

“Well, yes, sort of. Yes.”

“Good.” The priest stayed silent awhile, then continued. “We were taken to the Vatican… all the priests from Sicily… there were twelve of us, I remember… to the Vatican, some place in the Vatican. A small building near the Sistine Chapel. There was a cardinal there dressed all in white. He did not give his name and I remembered thinking that this was ill-mannered, but what was I going to say to a cardinal of the Sacred College? We sat in chairs of fine fabric and we listened. The cardinal told us we would go with Mussolini’s army. Go to war in Ethiopia. We listened sadly, but no one spoke. The cardinal showed us an envelope, a beautiful envelope of hard paper, colored like butter. On the envelope was the seal of His Holiness… the
ring of the fisherman…” The old priest stopped, and Vivian finished her translation.

Purcell thought he had passed out, but then he opened his eyes and asked, “Who sits on the throne of Saint Peter, now? How many since Pius?”

“Three, since Pius, Father,” Mercado replied.

Purcell said to Mercado, “The guy is near dead and he wants to know who his boss is. Listen, Henry, he is going to ask you a thousand irrelevant questions. Get him back to the story, please.”

“He is telling the story in his own way, Frank. The man has suffered. You and I know how he has suffered. These questions are important to him.”

Vivian put her hand on Purcell’s arm and said softly, “Let Henry handle it.”

Purcell grunted. Mercado spoke again in Italian. “After Pius XI was Pius XII. Then John XXIII. You would have liked him, Father. A good man. He died eleven years ago. Now Paul VI sits on the throne of Saint Peter. A good man also,” he added.

The old priest made noises that sounded like quiet weeping. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “Yes. All good men, I am sure. And Il Duce? Is he still alive?”

Mercado replied, “There was a war. In Europe. Mussolini was killed. Europe is at peace now.”

“Yes. A war. I could see it coming, even in Berini. We could see it.”

Mercado asked, “Father, did you see what was in the envelope? The one the cardinal showed you?”

“The envelope…?” He paused. “Yes. There was an envelope for each priest. The cardinal told us we must keep the envelope in our possession always. Never, never must it leave our person… we were never to mention the envelope to anyone. Not even to the officers. The cardinal explained that when a priest dies in the army, all his possessions are given to another priest. So the envelope would always be in the hands of those who were sworn… we had to take an oath… sworn never to open it… but we would know when to open it. This cardinal with no name said that as a further precaution, the message on the inside was written in Latin, so if someone else should open
it, he would have difficulty with the words. My Latin was bad and I remembered being ashamed of that. Latin is not used so much by a country priest. Only in the Mass. You understand? But the letter was in Latin, so that if it was opened by error, it would no doubt be taken to a priest for translation. This cardinal said that if we ever came upon the letter in that way, we were to say we had to take the letter and study it. Then we were to make a false translation on paper and burn the letter.” The priest breathed heavily, then moaned.

Vivian finished translating for Purcell, then said, “This is getting interesting.” She suggested, “Henry, push him just a little.”

“In his own way,” Mercado answered flatly. “He will get it all out.”

The priest moaned again. Vivian put her hand on his sweaty forehead. “He has fever, Henry. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“I’m afraid not. If he holds out till morning, we can make Gondar in a few hours. There’s an English missionary hospital there.”

Purcell reminded them, “Prince Joshua’s army and the Provisional government army are less than an hour away—in those hills. I wouldn’t try it now, but in the morning, maybe. They should have a surgeon.”

Mercado thought a moment, then replied, “I don’t know. He is obviously a fugitive of some sort. When we find out from whom, then we can decide where to bring him.”

“Right. But push him just a little, Henry,” he said, mimicking Vivian’s words.

Mercado turned his attention back to the priest and asked him, “Father? Can you continue?”

“Yes. What are you talking about? I cannot go to Gondar.”

Mercado told him, “We will take you to an English hospital in the morning. Continue, if you feel—”

“Yes. I must finish it. The envelope… he told us that we were on no account to open it, unless, when we got to Ethiopia, we should see in the jungles a black monastery. Black like coal, made of black stone, he said. Hidden… in the jungles. There was none like it in all of Ethiopia, he said. It was the monastery of the old believers… the Coptics. And in this black monastery was a reliquary and within that reliquary was the relic of a saint, he told us. An important saint.
A saint of the time of Jesus, he told us… The relic of the saint was so important that His Holiness himself wanted very much to have the relic carried back to Rome where it belonged, in the true church of Jesus Christ. In the Church of Saint Peter.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who commented, “Don’t they have enough stuff in the Vatican?”

Mercado leaned closer to the priest. “Which saint? What kind of relic? A lock of hair? A bone? A piece of a garment?”

The priest laughed. “It was not the relic of a saint at all. Can you imagine such a thing? A cardinal of the Sacred College lying to a flock of rustic priests… Yes, we were well chosen to follow and serve with the Italian infantry. We asked no such questions as you ask now, Henry. We were simple country priests. We had strong legs and strong hearts and strong backs for the infantry. And we asked no questions of the cardinal who spoke to us in the shadow of the Basilica of Saint Peter, a man who had no name himself, but who spoke in the name of His Holiness. One priest, though, a young man… he asked why we should take a relic from a Christian country, even though it was not a Catholic country. It was a good question, was it not? But the cardinal said the relic belonged in Rome. That priest did not go to Ethiopia with us.” The old priest laughed softly, then let out a long groan and lay back.

Purcell listened to Vivian’s translation and said, “It sounds to me like Father Armano actually saw this relic—or whatever it was.”

Mercado nodded.

Purcell continued, “And probably tried to grab it for the pope, as per orders. And that’s what got him in the slammer for forty years.”

Again, Mercado nodded and said, “That’s a possible explanation of what he’s saying.”

“There may be a good story here, Henry.”

Mercado looked at the priest, who was now sleeping, or unconscious, and said, “This may be the end of the story.”

“Wake him,” suggested Purcell.

“No,” said Vivian. “Let him sleep.”

Purcell and Mercado exchanged glances, knowing that the priest might never wake up.

But Mercado said, “If it’s meant to be that we should hear the rest of this man’s story, then it will be.”

“I envy you your faith, Henry,” said Purcell.

Vivian looked at the priest and said, “He’s traveled a long road to meet us and he’ll finish his story when he awakens.”

Purcell saw no way to argue with the illogic of Mercado’s faith and Vivian’s mysticism, so he nodded and said, “We’ll post a watch to listen for Gallas and to see if the old man wakes up, or dies.”

“You’re a very practical man,” observed Vivian. She added, “All brain and no heart.”

“Thank you,” said Purcell.

Mercado volunteered for the first watch, and Purcell and Vivian lay down on two sleeping bags.

The two armies in the hills seemed to have lost their enthusiasm for the battle, though now and then a burst of machine-gun fire split the night air.

Purcell stared up at the black sky, thinking about the priest’s story, and about Henry Mercado. Mercado, he thought, knew something or deduced something from what the priest had said.