The Quest: A Novel (5 page)

Purcell also thought about Vivian, lying beside him, and he pictured her naked, standing beside the sulphur pool.

He thought back a few days to when he’d met her and Henry Mercado in the Hilton bar in Addis Ababa. It had seemed like a chance meeting, and maybe it was, just as meeting the priest in this godforsaken place was totally unexpected. And yet… well, Vivian would say it was fate and destiny, and Henry would say it was God’s will.

A parachute flare burst overhead and lit up the sky. He stared at it awhile, then closed his eyes to preserve his night vision, and drifted off into a restless sleep.

T
hey took turns sitting up with the sleeping priest, listening for signs of death and sounds of danger.

At about three in the morning, Purcell woke Vivian and informed her that the priest was awake and wanted to speak.

She wondered if Purcell had woken the priest, and she said to him, “Let him rest.”

“He wants to speak, Vivian.”

She looked at Father Armano, who was awake and did seem to want to speak. She shook Mercado’s shoulder and informed him, “Father Armano is awake.”

Mercado moved toward the priest and knelt beside him. “How are you feeling, Father?”

“There is a burning in my belly. I need water.”

“No. It is a wound of the stomach. You cannot have water.”

Vivian said, “Give him a little, Henry. He’ll die of dehydration otherwise, won’t he?”

Mercado turned to Purcell in the darkness. “Frank?”

“She’s right.”

Vivian gave him a half canteen cup of water. The old priest spit up most of it, and Purcell saw it was tinged with red.

Purcell said, “It’s going to be close. Talk to him, Henry.”

“Yes, all right. Father, do you want to—?”

“Yes, I will continue.” He took a deep breath and said, “In Rome… the cardinal… the relic…” He thought awhile, then spoke slowly. “So he told us to go with Il Duce’s army. Go to Ethiopia, he said. There will be war in Ethiopia soon. And then he warned us—the black monastery was guarded by monks of the old believers. They had a military order… like the Knights of Malta, or the Templars.
The cardinal did not know all there was to know of this. But he knew they would guard this relic with their lives. That much he knew.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who asked, “How can he remember this after forty years?”

Mercado replied, “He has thought of little else in that prison.”

Purcell nodded, but said, “Still… he may be hallucinating or his memory has played tricks on him.”

Vivian replied, “He sounds rational to me.”

Mercado said to the priest, “Please go on, Father.”

Father Armano nodded vigorously, as though he knew he was in a race with death, and he needed to unburden himself of this secret that burned in him like the fire in his stomach.

He said, “The cardinal told us to go carefully, to go only with soldiers, and if we should find this black monastery, go into it. Avoid bloodshed if you can, he told us. But you must move quickly, he said, because the monks would spirit the relic away through underground passages if they thought they were being overpowered. He spoke as if he knew something of this.” Father Armano needed more water, and Purcell took the canteen and poured it slowly around his lips as Vivian translated.

The priest asked to be propped up so they sat him against the wall in the corner. He began talking without prompting. “So, a bold priest asked, ‘How will we know what to look for and what to do when we enter the monastery?’ And the cardinal said, ‘The words of His Holiness are in the envelope, and if you should ever arrive at your destination, you will open the envelope and you will know all.’ ”

Father Armano paused, and a faraway look came into his eyes. At first Purcell thought he was dying, but the priest smiled and continued. “Then something happened which I will never forget. His Holiness himself came into the small room where we sat with the cardinal. He spoke with the cardinal and we could hear him address the cardinal by his Christian name. He called him Eugenio. So now the cardinal with no name had a name we could use in our heads when we thought of him. But we could not call him Eugenio, could we?” The priest asked for some time to rest.

Mercado seemed to be thinking, and Purcell asked him, “Do you know who this Cardinal Eugenio could be?”

“No…”

Purcell asked, “How many cardinals would there be living in Rome at that time? And how many do you think were named Eugenio?”

Mercado replied, “I wasn’t a believer in those days and cared not at all for cardinals… but there was one who was secretary of state for Pius XI… Eugenio Pacelli.”

“Sounds familiar for some reason.”

“He assumed another name in 1939. Pius XII.”

“That sounds more familiar.”

Vivian pondered this information. “But we don’t know for sure…”

“No,” said Mercado. “We’ll have to go to the Italian Library when we get back to Addis.”

The old priest was following some words. Mercado turned to him. “If I showed you a picture of this cardinal as he looked in 1935, would you—”

“Yes. Of course. I could not forget that face.”

Realizing that Father Armano might not live long enough to see a photograph, Mercado asked, “Was this cardinal tall, thin? Aquiline nose? Light-complexioned?” He added a few more details.

“That could be him. Yes.”

Mercado leaned closer to Father Armano and asked, “And did His Holiness say anything to you?”

“Yes. He came right up to us. We were standing, of course. He seemed a kind man. He even tried to speak in the Sicilian dialect. He spoke it with a bad accent, but no one laughed, of course. He spoke of humility and obedience… he spoke of duty and he spoke of the Church, the true Church. He said we should treat the priests of the Ethiopian church with respect, but also with firmness… He did not mention the envelopes. The cardinal still had them on his person. His Holiness seemed not to know of the mission sometimes, but other times he seemed to know. The words were general. You understand? He blessed us and left. The cardinal then gave everyone an envelope and also we took an oath of secrecy. I am still bound by
that oath, but I must tell you all that happened, so I am breaking my oath. It is of no importance after such a long time… And we made the oath under false…” His voice trailed off.

Mercado touched his arm and said, “It’s all right, Father—”

“Yes. Yes. Let me finish. So, we were taken to the Piazza Venezia. There was a military procession there. Tanks, cannons, trucks. I had never seen such things. It seemed that all Italy was in uniform. And he was there, also. The new Caesar, Il Duce. He stood like Caesar on a balcony. I did not like that man. He was too much with guns and the talk of war. And the king was there too. Victor Emmanuel. A decent man. Is he…?”

“Dead. There are no more kings, Father. Go on.”

“Yes. Dead. Everyone is dead. Forty years is a long time. Yes… I must finish. In the piazza they had the ceremony of the blessing of the guns. They put us to work, the priests from Sicily. We helped with the blessing. Then His Holiness arrived. He blessed the guns also. I did not like this. His Holiness stood with the king and Mussolini. Then came the cardinal, Eugenio. I was close to them. They spoke very intently. All the parade was going by for them, and the soldiers marched, but they paid no attention. I did not like the looks in their eyes. I was that close. Perhaps I imagined all this later… in the prison. The looks in their eyes, I mean. Perhaps they were talking about something else. Who knows? But I felt then, or maybe later, that they were talking about the thing…” His voice cracked and he stopped speaking.

Purcell picked up the canteen, but Mercado grabbed his arm. “You’ll kill him, Frank.”

“If he doesn’t have a bad stomach wound, we’re killing him with dehydration. If it’s bad, then he’s dead anyway. We can’t get him to a doctor for hours.”

Mercado nodded.

Purcell emptied the canteen over the old priest’s mouth, saying to Mercado, “Keep him on track, Henry. The monastery.”

Mercado said, “I’m starting to feel guilty about pushing a dying priest to stick to the facts and give us a good story.”

Purcell replied, “The whole point of the Catholic religion is guilt.”

Mercado ignored him and asked Father Armano, “Would you like to rest?”

“No. I must finish.” Father Armano continued, “The next day I was brought to an infantry battalion. The soldiers were all peasants from my province in Sicily. We went to a boat and the boat sailed for many days. And we sailed through Egypt and we could see Egypt on both sides of the canal. The boat went to Masawa, in Eritrea. You know the place? This was the new Caesar’s African empire. He called us his legions. ‘Go to Africa,’ he said, ‘and make Ethiopia Italian.’ In Masawa our engineers were building the harbor. Ships arrived with soldiers and tanks… there was going to be a war. A fool could see that. The army marched to Asmara. It rained every day. But then the dry season began… The governor of Eritrea assembled the army in front of his palace. He read us a telegram from Il Duce. ‘Avanti! I order you to begin the advance.’ Then a general—I cannot recall his name—he read a proclamation. He spoke of the new Fascist Italy and of sacrifice. The bishop of Asmara rang the church bells and everyone sang the Fascist anthem, ‘Youth.’ Everyone seemed happy on the outside. But on the inside, there was much sadness. I know this because the soldiers came to me and told me they were sad. We marched on Ethiopia. At first it was not so bad, except for the heat and the fatigue. In the early part of October we entered Adowa. There was little fighting. But then we marched out of Adowa and the army of the Ethiopians began to fight. So, this Ethiopian emperor was a brave man. Haile Selassie—they called him the King of Kings. The Conquering Lion of Judah. Descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, they said. A descendant of the House of David. A brave man. He led his army with his own person, while our new Caesar sat in Rome. I am sure this man is dead, no? He must have died in battle.”

“No,” said Mercado, “the emperor escaped to England, then returned to Ethiopia when the British drove out the Italians. He is still alive, but a very old man now.”

Purcell wondered if Father Armano could follow all this, but the priest said, “So, they are not all dead, then. Good. Someone lives from my time. This emperor was a brave man. His army was ill-equipped,
but they fought like lions against our tanks and planes. But we won that war. That much I could see before my imprisonment.”

“Yes,” Mercado said, “you won that war. But you lost the big one afterwards. The one with the Americans and the English. Italy fought with Germany.”

“With Germany? Insanity. Which war is this one, then?”

Mercado was pulled in two directions. On one hand, he wanted to put the old priest’s mind to rest about all that had transpired in forty years. He actually enjoyed telling it to him. But on the other hand, there was the priest’s own story, which had to be finished.

He glanced at Purcell, who now seemed resigned to the priest’s recounting of all he remembered of the past and all his questions about the present. Mercado said to Father Armano, “It is a civil war, Father. Ethiopia now owns the old Italian colony of Eritrea. Some Eritreans, mostly the Muslims, want independence. They are fighting the Ethiopians. Inside Ethiopia itself, there are Christians and Muslims who no longer want the emperor. Mostly it is the army that no longer wants Haile Selassie as emperor, and they have arrested him, but he is well. He lives in his palace under house arrest. There are some Royalist forces who still fight the army. There are others who want neither the army nor the emperor. It is a very confused war and there is much unhappiness in this land. Also, there is famine. Famine for two years now.”

“Yes, I know of the famine.” He asked, “And the Gallas? I heard you mention them. They are not to be trusted. In the last war, they took advantage of the fighting and killed many on both sides. They love fighting. They love it when there is strife in the land.” There was actual anger in the old priest’s gentle voice. He said, “It was the Gallas who attacked the place where I was imprisoned… they killed everyone…”

Henry Mercado remembered the Gallas very well—fierce tribesmen with no loyalty beyond their clans. He said to the priest, “Yes. I remember from the last war. I was here then. I am from your time, too, Father.”

The old priest nodded and said, “You must not fall into their hands.” He looked at Vivian.

Mercado did not respond, but the priest’s warning awakened old and bad memories of that colonial war, and especially of the Gallas. Between 1936 and 1940, they fought the Ethiopian partisans who still carried on the fight against the Italians, and when the British took Ethiopia from the Italians in 1941, the Gallas harassed the retreating Italians as well as the advancing British and the reemerging Ethiopian partisan forces. Wherever there was a clash of arms, the Gallas heard it and rode to it on their horses. This was how they lived; on military plunder. And they didn’t know a white flag or a press card when they saw one. In quiet times, they stayed in the Danakil Desert, near Eritrea, or the Ogaden Desert, near Somalia. But when the dogs of war were let loose, as now, thought Mercado, they were all over the countryside, as though someone had shaken a beehive, and the famine had made them more fierce and more predatory than usual.