The Sparrow Read online

  "What about you, Marc?" Sofia asked. "Did you think it was a miracle, too? Is that when you decided to become a priest?"

  "Oh, no. I wanted to be a hockey star," he told them, through a burst of surprised laughter. And when they refused to believe this, he insisted, "I was a very good goalie in high school!" The talk moved on to sports at that point and never came back to Marc’s childhood. But Sofia was not far wrong, although it was almost ten years before Marc Robichaux found a focus for his clear sense that life was God’s gift, to give or take.

  His grandmother’s rosary had come with him to Rakhat, and so did his conviction that all life is fragile and evanescent, that God alone endures. And yet he knew that Anne would find such an answer to her unanswerable question inadequate and unsatisfying. Why? she would ask. Why does it have to be that way?

  In the brief hours before the first of the Rakhati dawns, as Marc kept vigil with Alan’s body, he watched Jimmy Quinn moving quietly from tent to tent, listening, agreeing, finding common ground and relaying messages. There had been times, Marc knew, when each of the mission members had thought privately that Alan Pace might cause trouble, but none of them had anticipated that it would come about like this or that Anne of all people would drive a wedge into the group.

  Finally, with the night noises quieting and the orange sun’s chorus tuning up, Jimmy came across the clearing toward Marc. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Marc said quietly. "Has the diplomacy gone well?"

  Jimmy stared toward what they called east because that’s where daybreak began, and ticked off the summaries with his fingers. "George thinks it’s D.W.’s fault for pushing Anne past her limits. Anne is ashamed of herself for blowing up and says it was twenty years of frustration coming to a head. D.W. understands that and wishes he’d waited until Anne was rested up. Emilio also understands about Anne but he’s afraid your feelings were hurt. Sofia says not even Job got an answer to Anne’s question and Job got to ask God to His face."

  Unexpectedly, Marc smiled. The orange sunlight filtered through the eastern edge of the forest and reached his silvering hair, restoring to it the golden tint of his youth. He had been a spectacularly beautiful child and even in middle age, the lovely lines of his face softening, he could be a treasure to look at. "Tell Father Yarbrough I should like to be the celebrant, please. And be sure that Dr. Edwards comes to Mass, oui?"

  Jimmy waited to see if Marc had anything more to say but Robichaux turned away. The beads of an antique rosary began again to slip through his fingers in the gentle rhythm only Marc, and perhaps God, could hear.

  THERE WAS A brief, tight discussion before the Requiem about whether they should bury Alan, cremate the corpse or take it back to the Stella Maris. The issue was whether or not the bacteria in his body would contaminate the local ecosystem. To Anne’s considerable relief, she and Marc found themselves on the same side of the argument.

  "The moment we stepped out of the lander, we affected this ecosystem," Anne said, voice husky from crying. "We have breathed and vomited and excreted and shed hair and skin cells. This planet has already been inoculated with whatever bacteria we’re carrying."

  "Have no illusions," Marc Robichaux added. "Our presence is now a part of this planet’s history."

  So a grave was dug and the yellow tarp’s shrouded contents were carried to its edge. The Liturgy of Resurrection was begun, and when the time came, Marc spoke of Alan Pace and of the beauty of his music and the delight he had taken in hearing whole songs only a few weeks earlier.

  "The voyage was not without reward for Alan," Marc said. "But we are left with Anne’s question. Why would God bring him all this way, only to die now?" He paused and looked at Sofia before continuing. "The Jewish sages tell us that the whole of the Torah, the entirety of the first five books of the Bible, is the name of God. With such a name, they ask, how much more is God? The Fathers of the Church tell us that God is Mystery and unknowable. God Himself, in Scripture, tells us, ‘My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are not your thoughts.’"

  The noise of the forest was quieting now. Siesta was the rule in the heat of midday, when three suns’ aggregate light drove many animals to shelter. They were all, priests and lay, tired and hot, and wanted Marc to finish. But Marc waited until Anne lifted her eyes to his. "It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable."

  Emilio’s head came up and he looked at Marc, his face very still. Marc noted this and smiled, but continued. "The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God."

  20

  NAPLES:

  JUNE 2060

  "REYES, RELAX! WE’RE in far less danger out here."

  "Far less is not the same as none," Felipe Reyes told the Father General sourly. They were out of sight of land now and unlikely to run onto rocks, which Giuliani knew to be the real hazard while sailing in the bay, but Reyes was unconvinced. "I was a lot happier when we could see the shoreline."

  Giuliani grinned into the sun, as they sailed close-hauled on a starboard tack. He’d put Reyes on the tiller, figuring that the man could control it using his upper arm and elbow. Usually he gave virgins the jib sheet and taught them how to keep the sail from luffing so he could take the tiller himself, but Reyes didn’t have a secure enough grip to handle rope.

  "This is the first day, including Sundays, in almost ten years that I haven’t been in at least four meetings," the Father General said. He was stripped to the waist, tanned and big-shouldered, in remarkable condition for a man of his age. Felipe Reyes, stocky and unathletic, kept his shirt on. "It’s getting so I always make a sincere Act of Contrition before I go into a meeting. Statistically, it’s a good bet I’m going die during one. Prepare to come about."

  Reyes ducked far lower than necessary as the boom passed over his back. He had a vision, as vivid as anything Santa Teresa de Avila ever experienced, of being swept overboard and sinking like a stone.

  "I’m sorry it has to come at Emilio’s expense," Giuliani continued, "but I’m delighted by the chance to get out on the water."

  "You love this, don’t you," Reyes said, watching him.

  "Oh, yes. Yes, I do. And I am, by God, going to take a year off when I’m eighty and sail around the world!" he declared. The wind was coming up and there was weather to port. "Sailing is the perfect antidote for age, Reyes. Everything you do on a sailboat is done slowly and thoughtfully. Most of the time, an old body is entirely capable of doing whatever needs to be done while you’re cruising. And if the sea is determined to teach you a lesson, well, a young back is no more capable than an old one of resisting an ocean, so experience counts more than ever. Coming about."

  They sailed on in silence for a while, passing and saluting a couple of men on a fishing boat. Reyes had lost track in all the jibes and tacks of which way they were going, but he had the impression that they might be circling the bay. There were a lot of fishermen out. Funny, for so late in the afternoon.

  "I tried to get Sandoz to come out here with me yesterday. Thought he’d enjoy it. He looked at me like I was suggesting a suicide pact."

  "Probably scared to be out in a boat," Felipe said, hoping it wasn’t obvious that he was actually pretty frightened himself.

  "But you guys are from an island! How can you be scared of the sea?"

  You guys, Felipe noted. Plural. So much for not being obvious. "Easy. Hurricanes and poll
ution. Toxic tides and sharks. Nothing like living on an island to convince you that land is the correct place to be." Felipe looked out at the horizon and tried not to notice the storm clouds. "I never learned to swim, myself. I doubt that Emilio ever did either. Too late now, in any case," he said, holding up his prostheses.

  "You won’t need to swim, Reyes," the Father General assured him. He was quiet for a while and then said casually, "Tell me about Emilio. I knew him as a kid—he was one of my secundi during formation, you know. God’s best beloved, we primi used to call him. Only a matter of time until he leads a revolt of angels … Had to be the best at everything, from Latin to baseball." Sandoz had turned the joke around and grown a beard that made him look like Satan in a bad religious painting; it was a neat and soundless answer to the ribbing, now that Giuliani thought of it. "And later, I knew him by reputation, as an academic. Brilliant in his field, I understand. What was he like, as a parish priest?"

  Reyes blew out a breath and sat still. Just as he’d suspected. That was what this invitation was about. "He was a good priest. Very likable guy. Young. Great sense of humor. Athletic." Hard to believe it was the same man. All the warmth and fun gone. Not surprising, under the circumstances. The hearings were not going well. Emilio answered questions in monosyllables or got lost trying to recall technical discussions he said he’d only half-listened to. Reyes was embarrassed for him. He seemed inarticulate and confused at times, got angry and defensive when pressed.

  They came about again and sailed toward another fishing boat. This time, the fisherman called out to the Father General. Felipe could patch together enough Italian to understand that Giuliani was confirming that he’d be attending a wedding in July. The Father General seemed to know a lot of the fishermen.

  "Did you ever hear about the Basura Brigade?" Felipe asked suddenly.

  "No. What was that? Basura means garbage, right?"

  "Right. That was typical Sandoz, now that I think of it. It was at the beginning, when he first got back to La Perla. The neighborhood—well, it was a slum, you understand. A lot of squatters. There was a sort of shanty town in the east end. And it was never incorporated, so there was no garbage pick up. People threw stuff into the sea or dumped it over cliffs. Emilio just started picking trash up in the streets. Bags and bags of it. And he’d carry it up to Old San Juan and leave it in front of the Edwardses’ house so the city would haul it. He got in trouble with city council, but the Edwardses claimed it was their trash. So they got away with it for a while."

  "Coming about."

  Felipe ducked under the boom again, letting it pass inches above his head, taken up with his story. "At first the kids would just kind of follow Emilio around—he was terrific with kids. Anyway, they’d follow him around, and he’d hand them each a bag, and pretty soon there’d be this whole parade of little kids with big bags of garbage, trailing up the stairs behind Emilio and leaving this incredible pile of trash in front of the Edwards place. And that was a very fancy tourist neighborhood, so there were tons of complaints."

  "Let me guess. The city finally decided it was better to pick up the garbage in the neighborhood than to make an issue about it with a very telegenic priest."

  "You bet. I mean, he could be so charming, but you just knew he would keep bringing the garbage up until hell froze over. And he pointed out that the kids were doing something constructive and let the council figure out that those same kids could be picking pockets in San Juan, so …"

  Giuliani waved to another fisherman. "You know, I have never been able to reconcile the stories I hear about Emilio with the man I know. The last word I’d choose to describe him is charming. He was the grimmest man I ever met, in formation. Never smiled. Worked like a dog. And just ferocious about baseball."

  "Well, you know, Latino boys still aspire to the F’s. They want to be feo, fuerte y formal." He looked to see if the Father General had enough Spanish. "Ugly, strong and serious. The macho ideal. I imagine Emilio took a lot of abuse as a kid because he was small and good-looking, so he made up for it by being very serious, very correct. "

  "Well, I’d have said sullen and hostile rather than serious and correct. You know, I’m not certain I’ve ever seen him smile. Or heard him say more than three words in a row. When I hear people describe him as charming or funny, I think, Are we talking about the same person? Coming about." Giuliani motioned toward another boat and Felipe nodded and changed the tiller position. "And then I hear he does impressions and magic tricks, he’s great with kids—" He fell silent but Reyes offered nothing further, so he mused, "I have always found him stiff and standoffish, but he has an uncanny ability to make friends! Candotti and Behr would walk over hot coals for him."

  "Can I sit on the other side of this thing?" Felipe asked. "This arm’s getting tired."

  "Sure. You want me to take it? I sail alone quite a bit when I get the chance."

  Felipe was surprised to find he didn’t want to give the tiller up. "No. Actually, if I can just switch sides, I’ll be fine," he said and gingerly stood to move. He sat down rather abruptly, the slap of the waves pushing him off balance, but settled into the tiller again. "I’m beginning to see the attraction of this sailing business," he admitted. "This is my first time in a boat, you know. When did you start sailing?"

  "When I was a kid. My family had a thirty-two-foot cutter. My dad had me working out celestial navigation problems when I was eight."

  "Father General, may I speak frankly?"

  There was a silence. "You know, Reyes," Giuliani said at last, squinting at the horizon, "one thing I hate about this job is that everyone always asks permission to speak frankly. Say whatever you want. And call me Vince, okay?"

  Taken aback, Felipe gave a short laugh, knowing himself to be utterly incapable of calling this man Vince, but then he asked, "When did you get your first pair of shoes?"

  It was Giuliani’s turn to be taken aback. "I have no idea. When I was a toddler, I suppose."

  "I got my first pair of shoes when I was ten. Father Sandoz got them for me. When you were growing up, was there ever any question about your going to school? I don’t mean college. I mean, did anyone ever imagine that you wouldn’t go to high school?"

  "I see what you’re driving at," Giuliani said quietly. "No. There was no question at all. It was absolutely assumed that I would be educated."

  "Of course," Felipe said, shrugging good-naturedly, accepting the naturalness of such an attitude for families like Giuliani’s. He didn’t have to say, You had a mother who knew who your father was, you had educated parents, money for a sailboat, a house, cars. "I mean, if you hadn’t gone into the priesthood, you’d have been a banker or a hospital administrator or something, right?"

  "Yes. Possibly. Something like that, perhaps. The import business or finance would have come pretty easily."

  "And you’d feel perfectly entitled to be whatever you wanted to be, right? You’re smart, you’re educated, you work hard. You deserve to be who you are, what you are, where you are." The Father General didn’t reply, but he didn’t deny the observation’s truth. "You know what I’d be, if I weren’t a priest? A thief. Or worse. I was already stealing when Emilio took an interest in me. He knew about some of it, but he didn’t know I was already busting into cars. Nine years old. I would have graduated to grand theft auto before I was thirteen."

  "And if D. W. Yarbrough hadn’t taken an interest in Emilio Sandoz?" Giuliani asked quietly. "What would Emilio have been?"

  "A salesman," Reyes said, watching to see if Giuliani knew the code. "Black tar heroin, out of Mexico via Haiti. Family tradition. They all did time. His grandfather was assassinated in prison. His father’s death touched off a minor gang war. His brother was killed for skimming profits."

  Felipe paused and wondered if he had any right to tell Giuliani this. Some of it was a matter of public record; Emilio’s file probably contained at least this much information and perhaps a great deal more.

  "Look," Felipe said, caught
up now in the stark contrast between his life, Emilio’s life, and the lives of men like Vincenzo Giuliani, who were born to money and position and security, "there are still times when the thief I started out to be feels more authentic to me than the priest I’ve been for decades. To be pulled out of a slum and educated is to be an outsider forever—" He stopped talking, deeply embarrassed. Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the original "I" you once were. Angry, Felipe decided to say nothing more about Emilio Sandoz. Let Giuliani ask the man directly.

  But the Father General said, "So you memorize the rules and you try not to expose yourself to humiliation."

  "Yes."

  "And you are stiff and formal in direct proportion to how completely you feel out of your element."

  "Yes."

  "Thank you. That explains a lot. I should have realized—"

  They were interrupted by another shouted conversation in Italian as they hove back in toward Naples and came near another boat. Reyes caught something about the bambinos. Irritably, he asked, "Don’t any of these people actually fish?"

  "No, I don’t think so," Giuliani said genially. "They certainly know their way around boats, but they don’t fish."

  Puzzled now, Felipe looked at him. "You know all these guys, don’t you?"

  "Yes. Second cousins, mostly." Giuliani grinned as Reyes worked it out.

  "I don’t believe it. Mafia! They’re Mafia, aren’t they," said Felipe, eyes bulging.

  "Oh, goodness. I wouldn’t say that. One never says that. Of course, I don’t know for certain what their major source of income is," Giuliani admitted, his voice dry and soft as flour, "but I could take an educated guess." He glanced at Felipe and very nearly laughed. "And in any case, the Mafia is Sicilian. In Naples, it’s the Camorra. Amounts to the same thing, I suppose," he mused. "Funny, isn’t it. My grandfather and Emilio Sandoz’s grandfather were in the same line of work. Sandoz reminds me a little of my grandfather, now that I think of it. He was also a charming man in his own element but very stiff and wary with people he didn’t trust or was uncomfortable with. And I felt privileged to be a member of his inner circle. I’d have walked across hot coals for my grandfather. Coming about."