Children of God Page 11

  In his work, he was the technical beneficiary of the nearly extinct American baby boom generation, whose senescence had created a huge market for equipment that aided the enfeebled and disabled. It took a week to train the system to recognize his speech patterns in the four languages he would use most often during this project, and then almost as long again to learn to subvocalize into the throat mike. Preferring the familiar, he also ordered a virtual keyboard and by the thirteenth of October, he had begun to pick up speed using handsets that allowed him to type with barely perceptible movement of the fingers.

  Robolinguist, he thought that morning, settling in with headset, braces and keyboard gear. Absorbed by the search for hyponyms and collocations in data radioed back from Rakhat, he didn’t notice the sound of knocking beyond the earphones, and so he was surprised by a woman’s voice calling, “Don Emilio?” Pulling apparatus off his head and hands, he waited, not quite knowing what to do or say, until he heard, “He’s not home, Celestina, but it was a lovely idea. We’ll come back another time.”

  Deal with it now or deal with it later, he thought.

  He reached the door just as the child’s piping voice rose in insistence, and opened it to a woman in her thirties who looked harassed and tired, but who had Celestina’s Renaissance angel looks: brown eyes in an ivory oval, wreathed by dark blond curls.

  “I brought you a guinea pig,” Celestina announced.

  Sandoz, unamused, looked at her mother and waited for an explanation.

  “I am sorry, Don Emilio, but Celestina has come to the conclusion that you require a pet,” the woman apologized, gesturing impotence in the face of a juvenile onslaught that he surmised had been going on since the christening party. “My daughter is a woman of considerable moral stamina, once her mind is made up.”

  “I am familiar with the phenomenon, Signora Giuliani,” he said with wry courtesy, remembering Askama—for once with simple affection and no jolt of pain.

  “Please: Gina,” Celestina’s mother said, dry humor overcoming her discomfort with the situation. “As I am to be your mother-in-law, I feel we should be on a first-name basis. Don’t you agree?”

  The priest’s eyes widened gratifyingly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Celestina didn’t tell you?” Gina pulled a coiling strand of hair away from her mouth, blown there by the wind, and automatically did the same for Celestina, trying to make the squirming, resistant child look presentable. It was an uphill battle. “My daughter intends to marry you, Don Emilio.”

  “I’m going to wear my white dress with the names on it,” Celestina informed him. “And then it’s going to be mine forever. And you, too,” she added as an afterthought. “Forever.”

  The mother’s momentary distress registered, but Sandoz sat on the bottom step so he was eye to eye with Celestina, the curling halo around her face bright with the sunlight that fell just beyond his door. “Donna Celestina, I am honored by your proposal. However, I must point out that I am quite an elderly gentleman,” he told her with ducal dignity. “I fear I am not a suitable match for a lady of your youth and beauty.”

  The child stared at him suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

  “It means, carissima, that you are being turned down,” said Gina wearily, having explained all this a hundred times, this morning alone.

  “I am too old for you, cara,” Sandoz confirmed regretfully.

  “How old are you?”

  “I am turning eighty soon,” he said. Gina laughed and he glanced up at her, his face grave, eyes alight.

  “How many fingers is that?” Celestina asked. Holding up four of her own, she said, “I’m this many.”

  Sandoz held up both hands and slowly opened and closed them eight times, counting for the child in tens as the braces whirred.

  “That’s a lot of fingers,” said Celestina, impressed.

  “It is indeed, cara. A multitude. A plethora. A whole bunch.”

  Celestina mulled this over, twisting a handful of hair around delicate fingers, small wrist braceleted with the last vestiges of baby fat. “You can still have the guinea pig,” she decided finally.

  He laughed with genuine warmth, but then looked up at Gina Giuliani, the reluctance plain on his face, and shook his head slightly.

  “Oh, but you would be doing me a great favor, Don Emilio!” Gina pleaded, embarrassed but determined, for the Father General had encouraged Celestina’s notion of giving Sandoz a pig on the grounds that caring for the animal would provide a certain amount of physical and emotional therapy. Besides.… “We have three others at home. The whole family has been mobbed by the creatures ever since my sister-in-law brought the first one home from the pet shop. Carmella didn’t realize it was already pregnant.”

  “Truly, signora, I have no way to keep or feed a pet—” He stopped. A classic blunder! he thought, remembering George Edwards’s advice to Jimmy Quinn at his wedding: Never give a woman reasons that can be argued with. Say no, or prepare for defeat.

  “We brought a cage,” said Celestina, who, at four, already understood the principle. “And food. And a water bottle.”

  “They are very nice pets,” Gina Giuliani assured him earnestly, her hands on Celestina’s shoulders, holding the child near. “No trouble at all, as long as they don’t multiply beyond all reason. This one is quite young and innocent, but she won’t remain that way long.” Seeing Sandoz’s resolve weaken, she pressed her attack with merciless melodrama. “If you don’t take her, Don Emilio, she will surely be subject to unspeakable acts—by her own brothers!”

  There was a silence one was tempted to call pregnant. “You, signora, are ruthless,” Sandoz said at last, eyes narrow. “I am fortunate to escape having you as my mother-in-law.”

  Laughing and victorious, Gina led Sandoz to her car, Celestina skipping beside them. Opening the back door, Gina reached in and passed the priest a bag of kibble, heedless of his hands, which she had decided to ignore. He juggled the bag ineptly for a moment, but managed to get a secure grip on it as Celestina chattered about how to hold and feed and water the animal, and told him that its mother was Cleopatra.

  “Named in a salute to the Egyptian custom of royal incest,” Gina remarked very quietly, so Celestina wouldn’t hear and demand an explanation. She lifted the cage out of the back seat.

  “Ah,” Sandoz said, equally quiet for the same reason, as they began the short walk back to his apartment. “Then this one shall be named Elizabeth, in the hope that she has followed in the footsteps of the Virgin Queen.” Gina laughed, but he warned her, “If she is with child, signora, I shall not hesitate to have the entire dynasty returned to your doorstep.”

  They went upstairs and settled Elizabeth into her new home. The pig enclosure was a simple affair of lath and chicken wire, made to fit around a plastic orange crate. There was an overturned vegetable bin for the little animal to hide in. The cage was open at the top.

  “Won’t she climb out?” Sandoz asked, sitting down and peering at the pig: an oblong lump of golden hair, with a white saddle and blaze, the size and approximate shape of a cobblestone. Its front end, he observed, was distinguished from the back mainly by two wary eyes, bright as jet beads.

  “You will find that guinea pigs are not a mountaineering race,” Gina said as she knelt to attach a filled water bottle to the cage. She lifted the animal momentarily so he could inspect the absurd little legs that supported the pig’s solid bulk and then she went to his kitchen for a dishcloth. “You will also find that a towel over your lap is a sensible precaution,” she said, handing him the cloth.

  “She’ll make peepee on you,” Celestina told him as he accepted the animal from her mother. “And she’ll—”

  “Thank you, cara. I’m sure Don Emilio can deduce the rest,” Gina said smoothly, sitting in the other chair.

  “It looks like little raisins,” Celestina told him, relentless.

  “And is quite inoffensive, unlike my daughter,” Gina said. “Guinea pigs do enjoy bei
ng petted, but this one is still a little shy about being handled. Take her out for five or ten minutes now and then. Celestina is correct, if indelicate. Don’t rely upon a guinea pig’s continence. If you keep Elizabeth Regina in your lap for much longer than that, she is likely to take you for a Anglican convert and baptize you.”

  He looked down at the animal, which was instinctively trying to appear rocklike and decidedly inedible, in case an eagle flew overhead. There was a little V of black marking her forehead between silly folded-over ears the shape of scallop shells. “I’ve never had a pet,” he said quietly. He retained feeling in the outer edges of his hands, where the nerves had not been severed, and now used an exposed section of his smallest finger to stroke the pig’s back from blunt head to tailless behind, a short but silken distance. “All right. I will accept your gift, Celestina, on one condition,” he said severely, looking at the mother. “I find, signora, that I require a purchasing agent.”

  “I understand,” Gina said hurriedly. “I’ll bring food and fresh bedding every week. At my own expense, naturally. I am very grateful that you’ll take her, Don Emilio.”

  “Well, yes, that too. But also some other things. If it will not inconvenience you too much, I need some clothes. I have no established credit and there are certain … practicalities I cannot manage yet.” He carefully lifted the pig from his lap and put her back into the enclosure on the floor. The animal shot under the vegetable bin and remained there, motionless. “I don’t need you to pay for anything, signora,” he said, straightening. “I have a small pension.”

  She looked surprised. “A disability pension? But you’re still working,” she said, gesturing at the sound equipment.

  “A retirement pension, signora. I myself find the legalities of this situation mystifying,” he admitted, “but I was informed last week that Loyola’s Company is, in fact, operating in some regions as a multinational corporation these days, complete with health benefits and pension plans.”

  “And branch offices, instead of provinces!” Gina rolled her eyes, still amazed herself that the dispute had come to this. “The fault line was there for nearly a hundred years, of course, but it is remarkable how much damage can be done by two stubborn, uncompromising old men—both dead now, and not a moment too soon, in my opinion.”

  Sandoz grimaced. “Well, it’s not the first time the Jesuits have gotten too far out in front of the Vatican. It’s not even the first time the Society has been disbanded.”

  “But it was even messier this time,” Gina told him. “About a third of the bishops declined to read the Bull of Suppression, and there are hundreds of civil suits over property still being litigated. I don’t think anyone really understands the legal status of the Society of Jesus right now!”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Well, John Candotti tells me that negotiations have reopened. He thinks there is room for movement on both sides, and there may be some sort of settlement soon—”

  Gina smiled, her eyes amused. “Don Emilio, anyone in Naples will tell you that there are very few political puzzles a Giuliani cannot either finesse or bludgeon into resolution. The new Pope is wonderful, and just as wily as Don Vincenzo. Be assured: those two will work it out.”

  “I hope so. In any case,” Emilio said, coming back to the more immediate problem, “there is no provision in the articles of incorporation allowing for the contraction of time that occurs when someone travels near light speed. As I am nearly eighty by the calendar, I find that I am legally due a pension from what used to be the Antilles province.” Johannes Voelker, the Father General’s private secretary, had brought this to everyone’s attention. The Father General was intensely annoyed by the reasoning but Voelker, a man of rigid principle, had insisted on Sandoz’s right to the income. “So. Do they still make Levi’s?”

  “Of course,” she said, a little distracted as Celestina left the guinea-pig cage and moved off toward the photonics. “Don’t touch, cara! Scuzi, Don Emilio. You were saying? Levi’s?”

  “Yes. Two pair, if you please. Perhaps three shirts? It is a very small pension.” He cleared his throat. “I have no idea what the fashions or prices are now and I will rely on your judgment, but I’d prefer you didn’t select anything terribly—”

  “I understand. Nothing extravagant.” She was touched that he would ask her to do this for him, but kept her face businesslike, running her eyes over him with a tailorly efficiency, as though she did this kind of thing for priests all the time.

  “One pullover sweater, I think—”

  “No good,” she said, shaking her head. “The braces will snag the knitting. But I know a man who makes wonderful suede jackets—” It was his turn to look doubtful, and she guessed at his objection. “Classic design in a durable material is never an extravagance,” she told him firmly. “Besides, I can get you a good price. Anything else?” she asked. “I am a married woman, Don Emilio. I have purchased men’s underwear before.”

  He coughed and flushed, eyes sliding away. “Not at the present time, thank you.”

  “I am a little confused,” she said then. “Even retired, don’t the Jesuits provide you with—”

  “I am not just retiring from a corporation, signora. I am leaving the priesthood.” There was an awkward pause. “The details have not been worked out. I will stay on here, as a contractor perhaps. I am a linguist by trade and there is work for me to do.”

  She knew a little of what he had been through; the Father General had prepared the family before bringing Sandoz to the christening. Still, she was surprised and saddened by the laying aside of vows, whatever the cause. “I sorry,” she said. “I know how difficult a decision like that can be. Celestina!” she called, rising and gathering her daughter to her side. “Well,” she said, smiling again, “we won’t trouble you any longer, Don Emilio. We’ve interrupted your work long enough.”

  Celestina stood looking up at the two adults, dark and light, and thought of the paintings in the church, ignorant of the iconography that made them such a mismatch, thinking only that they looked pretty together. “Don Emilio isn’t too old for you, Mammina,” she observed with a child’s rash acuity. “Why don’t you marry him?”

  “Hush, cara! What an idea. I am sorry, Don Emilio. Children!” Gina Giuliani cried, mortified. “Carlo—my husband—doesn’t live with us any longer. Celestina, as you may have noticed, is a woman of action and—”

  He held up a braced hand. “No explanations are necessary, signora,” he assured her and, face unreadable, helped shepherd the child down the stairs and out the door.

  They walked down the driveway together, the adults’ silence decently covered by the little girl’s prattle, until they reached the car. There, ciaos and grazies were exchanged as he opened doors for the ladies with the deliberate and stately dexterity the braces permitted and enforced. As they drove away, he yelled, “No black! Don’t buy anything black, okay?” Gina laughed and waved an arm out the window, without looking back.

  “You, madam, are married to a fool,” he said softly, and turned toward the garage, where his work was waiting.

  HE SETTLED INTO A ROUTINE AS THE MILD NEAPOLITAN AUTUMN SET IN and the rains became more frequent. As promised, Elizabeth was an undemanding companion who quickly took on the size and proportions of a hairy brick and greeted his morning stirring with cheerful whistling. Never good company at dawn, he would call from his bed, “You’re vermin. Your parents were vermin. If you have babies, they’ll be vermin, too.” But he took her out to eat a carrot on his lap while he drank his coffee and, after a while, hardly felt foolish at all when he talked to her.

  Guinea pigs were, he discovered, crepuscular: quiet at night and during the day, active at dawn and dusk. The pattern suited him. He often worked nonstop from eight until past five, unwilling to pause until the pig whistled quitting time as the light diminished. He was aware, always, that his progress could be interrupted by the debilities he’d accumulated on Rakhat and in the months of malnutrition during
the solitary voyage home. So he concentrated as long as he could and then made himself a supper of red beans and rice, which he ate with Elizabeth’s beady eyes on him. Afterward, he would take her out and sit with her, numbed fingertips idly stroking her back as the little animal nestled down and slept the brief, uneasy sleep of prey.

  And then he went back to work, often until past midnight, the overarching structure of K’San—the language of the Jana’ata—becoming plain to him now, and increasingly beautiful: no longer solely the instrument of terror and degradation. Hour after hour, the rhythm of search and comparison, the patient accretion of pattern pulled him along, its inherent fascination sufficient to defend against both memory and anticipation.

  In late October, John tactfully informed him of the impending arrival of the other priests who were to be trained for the second Jesuit mission to Rakhat. They had all read the first mission’s written reports and scientific papers, John said, and they’d already worked through Sofia Mendes’s introductory AI language-instruction system and had begun studying Ruanja on their own. And each had been thoroughly briefed about Sandoz’s experiences by the Father General, and by John himself. John didn’t say it in so many words, but Emilio understood that the new men had been warned: Don’t touch him, don’t mother him, don’t play therapist. Just follow his lead and get on with the work.

  Emilio made little effort to get to know the new men, preferring to confer in cyberspace, buffered by machinery, or in the library, which he could leave when he needed to. But he broke his self-imposed solitude with trips to the kitchen to collect vegetable parings from Brother Cosimo for Elizabeth. And Gina Giuliani stopped by on Fridays, always with Celestina, to drop off pig supplies and sometimes other small items he could bring himself to ask for. She and John Candotti had a knack for helping him without making him feel helpless, and for this he was grateful beyond words. Heads together over lunch one Friday afternoon, the three of them had analyzed the apartment and Emilio’s daily tasks. When Gina couldn’t find ready-made items that suited his disabilities, John would make them: counterweights for things he needed to lift, utensils with broad handles, plumbing and door hardware that was simpler to operate, clothing that was easier to manage.