The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two (6 page)

2:14

Sally arrived promptly at eight every morning and relieved Maria who worked the night shift at the house in Lowell. Which meant mostly that Maria watched a lot of TV, ate a lot of potato chips (Sally always found the empty bags in the trash) and spent the rest of the night sleeping in the bedroom down the hall. As usual Maria had not cleared away the dinner tray from the night before, so Sally began her day tidying up. Surprisingly, for such a large woman, she had perfected the art of making herself invisible. She could walk into a room, while the patient was asleep, clean the place up, mop down the floors, disinfect the bathroom, in short, do everything except change the bed sheets, without being noticed. Not that there was much chance today of waking Miz O, who appeared to be off in her own strange dreamworld.

Gathering up the dirty dishes, Sally went downstairs and washed them, while she reran in her mind the conversation she’d had recently with Miz O about the depth of her sins. “Someday I’ll show you. Some day you’ll know.” The words had stayed with Sally for days. She didn’t know why. It was a variation on a theme she’s heard every since she’d begun working here. Whatever Miz O was guilty about - Sally thought, wiping her hands on a dishtowel - it couldn’t be much. But it was the way the woman had grabbed her arm, her fingernails almost cutting into Sally’s flesh, and the intense look in her eyes. Well, for the first time, Sally had actually believed her. Maybe she wasn’t just a woman whose mind was wasting away. What if there really was a story to tell?

Sally poured herself a cup of coffee. (The one constructive thing Maria actually did before leaving was to make a fresh pot of coffee with enough for Sally.) She was tempted to turn on the television and watch a bit of one of morning talk shows. But first – duty always coming first in Sally’s priorities – she went back upstairs to check on the old woman. When she peaked in the door, it was with some surprise that she discovered Miz O, sitting up in her bed, looking straight at her. Even more surprisingly, she was smiling almost peacefully.

“Good mornin’, darlin’,” Sally called out, hoping the day was, in fact, beginning on a positive note. “Lovely April morning out there. Should I open the window? Air out the room a bit? You’ll be able to smell the lilacs, I bet.”

“Would you please, Sally?”

Thank goodness, Sally thought. It was going to be a good day, free of demons. Maybe they would watch some television together here in the room. Relax for a change.

“I had a dream last night,” said Miz O.

“A good dream, I hope.”

“A
wonderful
dream. Miraculous, in fact, But I am afraid it will fade, so I am just going to close my eyes and try to hold onto the feeling as long as I can.”

“Yes, you do that. I’ll leave you then.”

“Oh, no. Don’t move, please. It’s fading. It’s fading away.” Panic filled the woman’s face.

Maybe not such a good day, after all, thought Sally. “Tell me about your dream. Maybe if you talk about it, it will help you remember.”

“Oh, yes. Talk about it! What a good idea.” Her face relaxed. She turned her head so she could fix Sally directly in the eyes. Then, her usually strident voice soft as a hush, she began, “I dreamt I was never born. I dreamt that my whole life had never been lived. And that I didn’t end my life in this bed, staring out the window down the street to the church steeple. I dreamt that life itself was the dream. And all my pain dissolved. Because my suffering had never taken place. It had been erased. It had somehow disappeared. Everything that had happened had never happened. I had never sinned and I was free. Free from it all. The sins, you see, had …
died
! And I felt joy for the first time in so many years! And that joy came from knowing that I had never walked the earth.”

Her voice dwindled to a mere trickle of sound.

“Never….ever,” she said.

And she closed her eyes, closing out Sally in the process.

2:15

Knowing she was late for lunch, Teresa dodged the pedestrians on Cinco de Mayo and picked up her pace. Her mother was far from being a disciplinarian. If anything, she coddled her children. But the one thing that set her off was lateness for meals, especially Sunday, which was the big meal of the week and the one occasion the family came together without fail. She’d had an argument with her boyfriend, time had slipped away from her and suddenly she’d thought, “
La comida
! Lunch! Mother’s not going to be happy.”

She rounded the corner of Cinco de Mayo and Altamirano at a clip, colliding with an older couple.

“
Perdón
!” she mumbled automatically.

The woman facing her seemed momentarily stupefied. “Hannah?
”
she said. “Hannah Manning!”

No sooner had the name popped out of the woman’s mouth than she blushed with embarrassment. The young girl who had almost bumped into her was a teenager. Hannah Manning would be 39 or 40 now. Still the resemblance was astonishing. Same blonde hair. Same look of innocence around the eyes. For a second, she’d been transported twenty years back in time. Her confusion translated into a flood of words.

“My mistake. I’m sorry. It’s nothing.
Nada
. I wasn’t paying attention, that’s all. Excuse me.
No hablo español
. Come, Eric. We must be going.”

“Excuse us,” said the man. Then in a scolding tone he said to the woman, “Must be more careful. Not run into people.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” replied Teresa, taken aback by the woman’s agitated state. “I speak English. Nobody got hurt.”

But the couple had brushed past was her and was hastening on their way. For older people, Teresa thought, they moved swiftly. Then she thought she had better get going herself, too, or she’d have a scolding in store, by the time she reached home. She unlocked the heavy door on Venustiano Carranza and pushed it open, the moan of the wooden planks announcing her arrival.

“Teresa?” came her mother’s voice from the dining room. Firm! Not as cheerful, as usual.

“I know, I know,” the girl said apologetically, as she slipped into her seat next to Little Jimmy. She noticed her older brother’s place was empty. Perhaps she’d get out of a scolding today. “Sorry I’m late. But I almost got run down by some tourists on Altamirano.”

Her mother considered the explanation and decided to let her daughter squirm. For a minute the silence was broken only by the scraping of knives and forks before she relented. “Tourists? Well, I’m not surprised. There are more and more of them each year. When your father and I first came here, the place was not in any of the guidebooks. Only the rare backpacker came through. If this keeps up, this town will be another San Miguel de Allende before long.”

An hour away, San Miguel was a picture-postcard magnet for American tourists and retirees, who swarmed the shops and the plazas in such numbers you heard more English in the streets than Spanish. Jimmy called it “the 51
^st
state” and claimed it had about as much to do with the real Mexico as Palm Beach.

“When your mother and I bought this house,” he said, “you could pick up property in the Centro Histórico for a song. At night, it was so quiet, you thought you were in the country. Well, those days are gone.”

“The woman called me ‘Hannah.’ For a moment she thought I was you. I know it. From the look on her face, you’d have thought she’d seen a ghost.”

Hannah laid down her fork. “Who was it? Anybody we know?”

“Nobody I’ve never seen her before. But she used your maiden name. She said ‘Hannah
Manning
.’ She was with some older guy. I almost gave them a heart attack. They got out of there so fast you think they’d robbed a bank.”

“Did they say anything?”

“No. Just, ‘Excuse me. I made a mistake.’ That sort of thing. I hardly had the chance to talk with them.”

“You said the woman was with an older guy? How old?”

“I don’t know. Late sixties. Seventy. He talked kind of funny. Weird accent. Oh, I remember. The woman called him Eric. She said something like ‘We’ve got to get going, Eric.’”

Hannah could tell from the look on her husband’s face that he was thinking the same thing as she was. But they tried not to show their agitation in front of the children.

“Where’s your older brother,” she asked.

“Oh, he’s probably off drifting in his own world, as usual,” Little Jimmy cracked.

“Don’t talk that way about him,” Hannah snapped.

“Everyone at school thinks he’s strange.”

“That’s
enough
!”

“Why are you getting so upset, Mother?” Teresa asked.

“Because rules are rules. All this week he’s been out of the house, wandering around town, coming home at all hours. I never know how much to cook. How many places to set.”

“But he’s always been that way.”

“Well, as long as he’s part of this family, he will participate in mealtimes. He should be here.” Hannah got up, cracked open the window and looked up and down Venustiano Carranza. “No sign of him!”

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“I’ll go find him,” said Jimmy to his wife. “You wait here.”

“No,” she answered her husband in a whisper. “I’ll recognize them more easily than you.” Then addressing her children: “Teresa, you and Little Jimmy stay here with your father ‘til I get back. Promise me.”

“I promise,” replied Teresa, puzzled by her mother’s uncustomary anxious behavior. “What’s the big deal? Who are these people, Dad?”

The wooden door swung open.

“And don’t unlock this door for anyone.”

With that, Hannah was gone.

She saw them in the plaza. Twenty years had passed, but she would never forget those two faces. Judith had changed the most, filled out, her face fleshier than before, her hair blinding white now. All told, she looked rather innocent, a Norman Rockwell grandmother. But Dr. Johanson had stayed remarkably the same, just an older version of himself. The nasty scar that bisected his forehead had faded with time to a thin pink line. He still had that courtly bearing.

Strangely, it was not a surprise to see them. The moment Teresa had told her what had happened in Calle Altamirno, she knew. She’s always known in her blood it would happen one day. But now seeing Judith Kowalski and Dr. Johanson brought home the reality that they and their son were always going to have to face. The past could no longer be kept hidden. How many times over the years had they started to tell their son the special circumstances of his birth? There always seemed to be a reason to put it off. Until he was older and could understand. Until he could appreciate how different he was. Somehow the right moment never came.

Four other people joined the couple in the square. Hannah recognized none of them. They were younger than those who had held her hostage years ago or those she’d met at the art gallery, unaware that she was the principal attraction, not the paintings on display. It occurred to her these people might be the next generation of Dr. Johanson’s recruits. Were she and the family going to have to flee a second time?

All week long since her son’s first excursion out of the house, she’d had a feeling of foreboding. Jimmy tried to reassure her that he was a grown man now. He would manage. But she couldn’t surrender him so easily to the world. He still needed protection from the truth they’d withheld for so long. After a quick exchange of greetings, the younger people departed. Maybe she was letting her mind get carried away. But the fact remained: Eric and Judith were here.

Just as she was about to return home and tell Jimmy what she’d observed, her son emerged from one of the pedestrian walkways feeding into the plaza. Hannah’s impulse was to call out to him, alert him to the presence of the couple, who probably still believed he was theirs. Perhaps they wouldn’t recognize him. Perhaps he would pass by unnoticed. But to her astonishment, he walked right up to them, and Dr. Johanson took his hand and shook it.

She watched in disbelief, as the three walked off together into the Meson Santa Rosa. The large pots of exotic vegetation in the entranceway made it seem as if they were venturing into a jungle. She raced back to the house to tell Jimmy that after all these years, their worst fear had been realized.

They had finally found him.

2:16

Most people ate in the central patio of the Meson Santa Rosa at one of the dozen tables arranged around the baroque fountain in the center, which provided as a counterpoint to conversations increasingly animated by tequila, the soothing sound of water trickling from one basin to another. The potted plants were abundant and vines climbed the walls, helter-skelter, giving the illusion of a country glade. More formal gatherings took place in the opulent dining room, tucked off to one side of the patio, tended by its own staff of white-jacketed waiters.

That’s where they were headed now.

As far as the young man was concerned, for the past week he had simply befriended a couple of foreign tourists, shown them a few of the sights of Querétaro, the town he had grown up in, and beguiled them with some of its more colorful legends. Now, as a reciprocal gesture of friendship, they had invited him to a farewell luncheon at the Meson Santa Rosa. He’d prepared himself for a sentimental ode to international friendship and hands reaching across the border, that sort of thing. But when he entered the back dining room, he was surprised to discover a single oblong table in the center with nearly a dozen unfamiliar people seated around it. There were three empty chairs.

“These are some of our friends,” Dr. Johanson said, as if that were explanation enough for this odd gathering. The faces indicated so many different nationalities that the young man wasn’t sure whether to greet them in Spanish or in English, so he just nodded. An Asian man pulled out a chair at the head of the table and gestured for him to sit down. Judith and Eric went to their places at the opposite end, facing him. Judith immediately took her seat, but Dr. Johanson remained standing. His bearing was almost regal. He gave the slightest nod to the white-jacked waiters, who were standing at attention in the four corners of the room, and they promptly left, as if cued by an invisible orchestra leader.

Dr. Johanson had chosen this room for its suggestions of old world elegance. He couldn’t name the Colonial grandee in the portrait that hung over the fireplace, but he appreciated the man’s prideful stance and the authority in his face. Dr. Johanson could identify: for once he felt back in control. The plan they had all lived with for so many years – decades, now – and which had seemed to crumble when Hannah had disappeared with that rebel priest, was now, against all expectations, back on track. Through what could only be viewed as God’s handiwork, they had located the child. Well hardly a child, now. A grown man of 20, lithe, fine-featured, not so much handsome as compelling in his intensity. Even more miraculously here he was, about to break bread with them. Granted, to outsiders he appeared reserved, detached almost, but Dr. Johanson understood that the grandeur of his mind and soul elevated him above conventional pleasantries.

“A miracle in Mexico!” he began. “Could we have been given a clearer sign? It was like the star in the heavens that guided the wise men and it has led us to you!”

Several people nodded vigorously in approval. A few clapped. A collective euphoria rose in the room.

The young man shifted in his seat. Dr. Johanson’s remarks obviously were not going to conform to the traditional format. A change had come over the couple who days before had struck him as wide-eyed and clearly adrift in a foreign land. They weren’t mere tourists any longer, eager to have their pictures taken before El Templo de la Cruz or Neptune’s Fountain. They were more like the strangers who came up to him after the mudslide in Mataxi, eager to touch his arm or the hem of his cotton shirt. The air of reverence made him uneasy, as did the rhetoric of Dr. Johanson. He tried to keep his face a blank and not reveal his disquiet.

“Twenty-seven years ago, Jolene Marshall – may she rest in peace – was granted a vision. A vision not just of a new world to come, but also of how it would come about. And most importantly, what her role would be in its creation. Our Lady appeared to her with divine instructions that the Lord in His infinite wisdom had decided it was time for his son to return to earth. But he would do it only with the assistance of man.”

Dr. Johanson cast his eyes upon a musty portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe that hung behind him, then turned back to the young man. “How appropriate it now seems that to shield you during your childhood and adolescence Our Lady would pick the country she has watched over for 500 years. For it is, indeed, a land of continuing miracles.”

He took a sip of water, wanting his voice to be strong and commanding for what he was about to say. “Jesus told us he would be with us forever. Until the end of time. When we read this in the Bible, we think this means his spirit will watch over us. And it does. But he also meant it literally, not just symbolically. If all of our lives are a spiritual search, what a joy it has been to discover that Our Father has pointed the way back to Him. We need only follow His footprints in the sands of time. First he leaves behind His image on a piece of linen cloth, the Shroud of Turin. No one can see it for 1800 years. Not until man invents photography and takes a picture of it, and the negative reveals the face and body of Jesus that were there all along. 1800 years! Imagine! How patient He is. Unlike us.

“He left His blood behind, too. Not just on the shroud, but on the Sudarium of Oviedo in Northern Spain, where it has been kept faithfully since the Middle Ages, protected against all odds from human destruction. And then it is learned that in that blood, as in every cell of the body, is DNA, which contains all the necessary data to resurrect a person. A human blueprint, as it were. So many people erroneously believe that science takes us away from God. But this is not correct. Science reveals the greatest evidence of God’s existence. Science is part of God’s plan. It is how he always intended to return. Science, He decreed in His wisdom, would bring about the second coming. Our task, as it has always been: Decipher His ways and follow the path He has set forth.”

Dr. Johanson took a dramatic pause, before facing the young man and saying, “God and science are responsible for you.”

The announcement caused a hush. The only sounds came from the cars in the street and the vendors in the plaza, hawking their wares. In the dining room, everyone held his breath. Dr. Johanson profited from the moment to take another gulp of water. When he resumed speaking, his tone was less exalted, almost good-natured. “These are merely the details that have led to your sitting here before us, your friends. How you arrived here is now of little importance, really. What matters is your presence. And that we are together at last. Surely you have always known in the deepest part of yourself that you were destined for great things. The mudslide was not just a sign for us. It was a sign for you, was it not?” The question required no response. In Dr. Johanson’s mind, it had already been answered

All during the talk, Judith Kowalski kept her focus on the young man and tried to bore beneath the outward aura of calm acceptance he projected. If her companions saw a peace in his soul that could have only been put there by a higher power, Judith was not so certain. She remembered how everyone had been taken in by his mother’s innocence years ago. Hannah Manning had seemed the perfect candidate to be a surrogate mother – innocent, pliable, obedient. But that innocent girl, barely out of childhood herself, had tricked them and made off with the child that was to have been theirs. Or more accurately, the world’s.

Judith had to admit she had lost faith over the years. She believed they had done wrong to abandon the babe in that New Hampshire cottage twenty years ago without a fight. But Eric had been her rock. It was his steadfastness that had kept going, kept her faith from turning to bile. “The ending is not yet here,” he reassured her, whenever her courage failed her. After all, he was the one who had isolated the DNA of Christ from the cloth of Oviedo and genetically altered the eggs Hannah carried in her womb, so that she would give birth to none other than the second Redeemer, Christ himself. It was Dr. Johanson’s knowledge, his vision, that had inspired them all to carry out the instructions that Jolene had received.

And it turned out he was right. Here they all were, guided by an act of God - for what was the mudslide, if not a case of divine intervention - back into the life of the young man himself.

Pure elation seemed to inflate the voice of Dr. Johanson. “When we saw your picture on the news, and not just your picture, but the word ‘Miracle’ headlining it, we knew that our work was not over, as we had feared, and that it was time for us to come together again. We have been fortunate to have known for so long what our mission in life was – to reclaim the world from the forces of evil. And sitting here now, we know that it can happen. It
will
happen. With you as our leader, with you blazing the path, the world will be made clean and resplendent once again.”

The young man’s mind reverted to his time under the mud and the searing feelings that ran through him; the sensation that he was more alive, more aware, underground than he had ever been above it; the intermingling of atoms that made flesh mud and mud flesh. The bowels of the earth had seemed to contain the full catalogue of human emotions and he, trapped in the earth’s embrace, was privy to them all. He felt he had known the deepest part of his humanity during the mudslide. Now he wondered, why him? Why had he survived? Why was he given this vision?

He felt as if a hand was tightening around his throat. He couldn’t see the black planet, but he could hear its whirling force, approaching, threatening to crush him. When would he wake up? He forced out a question: “Why this way? Couldn’t God bring his own son back with the wave of a hand?”

Dr. Johanson smiled knowingly. “That is the very question your m—-, uh, Hannah asked twenty years ago. Of course, He could have. But man had to show that he was willing to learn again, to follow obediently and prostrate himself at the foot of the Divine. God has always chosen us, but now we had to choose Him. And we had been given all the tools to demonstrate our devotion. He had entrusted us with the holy seed. It was our duty to plant it.”

Dr. Johansen’s oratory was compelling. Yet none of the eyes around the table were focused on him. They were trained on the young man, trying to deduce his reaction from the way he sat back in his chair, blinked his eyes, sipped his water. “There is a world out there, longing for your grace and your guidance,” the doctor said. “Although it is far beyond any of us to know when your leadership will begin, we pray it will start soon. We will be with you always. We are your disciples.”

The Asian man spoke up first. “I am Yan from China.” One by one, they went around the table, solemnly introducing themselves to the young man.

“I am Juliette from France.”

“I am Stanislau from Russia.”

“I am Alessio from Italy.”

“I am Sonakul from Thailand.”

“I am Gonzalo from Spain.”

“I am Feodor from the Ukraine…”

“We are Pierre and Yvette from Belgium.”

Dr. Johansen cast the latter a benevolent smile. “Some of you have been with us from the beginning. Pierre and Yvette are the newest to our midst, but dare I say, they will not be the last. Every day we grow stronger, more numerous, more committed in our duty. Welcome, Pierre and Yvette.”

The couple acknowledged the greeting with a faint blush.

Focus passed to the next person, who said, “I am Anne from Canada.”

“And, of course, you know us,” Dr. Johansen concluded, with a gallant gesture to Judith Kowalski. “We may have prepared the way, but let me emphasize that we are now all here to follow. Not submissively, like sheep. But like soldiers. With heads high and banners flying. Soldiers in a vast army, mightier than you can imagine. We are no longer alone.”

Dr. Johanson extended his left hand to Judith and his right to Anne from Canada. With the same ceremonial formality that had governed the waiters’ departure from the room, the two women joined hands with the doctor, then turned and offered their free hand to the person beside them. One by one the chain made its way around the table, until it came to the Asian man. Deliberately, Yan from China reached past the young man and took the hand of Juliette from France, completing the ring of prayer.

As the twelve of them lowered their heads and closed their eyes, the young man realized why he had been excluded. They did not wish to pray with him, but
to
him. They were
his
minions, the warriors in
his
army, the obedient subjects of
his
holy realm. Such blind devotion chilled his insides.

The voice of Dr. Johanson rang out. “God eternal!”

“God eternal,” chanted the others.

“World triumphant!”

“World triumphant” came the echo.

“Soon to be cleansed of sin and blasphemy. Purged of evil and evildoers. Thy justice will be done.” Dr. Johanson’s voice had acquired a thunderous zeal. Preaching, he seemed to became another person altogether, as if freed from the usual social conventions. His face, so amiable minutes before, grew hard, the skin stretched taut over the patrician features. “We gather here to thank you for His blessed presence, the holiness of His vision, the irresistible strength of His mighty sword. Now and forever.”

“Now and forever!!”

“Henceforth we will be guided by one nobler than princes, greater than any sovereign. From this moment on, we will be led by the King of Kings.”

“Amen,” chorused the group rapturously.