Cardinal Celent remained at the window, staring blankly into the sky for several minutes. His eyes occasionally squinting from the bright sun, involuntarily closing then reopening.
He turned away from the window, slowly, allowing his eyes to readjust to the darkened interior of his Vatican flat. He was cautious of his step and reminded himself to be careful of quick movements and the danger of losing his balance. A fall just a week earlier had left him on the floor for nearly five hours, unable to pull himself up to his feet, until a fellow priest came to the flat with a dinner tray. After being helped back to his feet and moving as quickly as he could to the toilet, then relieving himself, he had been holding his bladder as a mind game in an attempt to keep himself alert and because he did not want the embarrassment of being found with clothing-soaked with urine. He then ate a bit of dinner and rested. The next day he was himself again, although a bit more cautious about his movements. That caution had carried over and was fast becoming habit. In his eighty plus years of life, he had experienced many broken bones and he wasn’t quick to wish for any more.
His bones were growing brittle, and his skin was a little thinner and now sagging on his arms where they once covered taught muscles. But his mind remained sharp. Ever since his youth, he had been considered brilliant and described as a near genius. Always enjoying science and art, his flat above the Vatican Museums was a perfect place for him. Why I’m almost a museum piece myself. He was quick to point out on the rare occasions he visited with others. For almost sixty years he had lived in this flat at the Vatican. It was both his sanctuary and his prison. It was difficult to say which was which, and when, but he had learned to call it home, and the flat did offer the comforts of location and security. The Cardinal had sparsely furnished the flat with a sofa, a couple of armchairs, a desk, and several small end tables. All of the furniture had come to him from priests, nuns, and lay people who lived or worked in the Holy See. He didn’t have to buy a single piece of furniture in all his years here. But he did buy books. He had the flat loaded with them. Books were piled everywhere, on tables, tucked into chairs, along the sides of chairs and tables, on windowsills and fireplace mantels, and still not one book was out of place. If anyone asked Cardinal Celent anytime, where any title was, he would tell you exactly. He had read and re-read them all. There were books of fiction and non-fiction, books of reference, books of paintings and drawings, books of photographs, books of romance, books of life, and books on death. Books had become his solace.
His days here were uneventful. He had had enough excitement and adventure in his younger days that the routine of his quite unassuming days at the Vatican were welcomed. It was only now, as he entered the last stage of his life that he had grown anxious about the inevitable events that must soon occur. Although, he had prepared for this time, all the preparation he had done would not make the transition any easier. Cardinal Celent wasn’t fearful, he was hopeful. He knew the truth. And the realization that he would now be able to pass it on filled him with anxious anticipation and a sense of relief.
He pulled on his coat, grabbed a walking cane, and opened the door. He sucked in a long breath as he took the first step down the set of stairs that led from his flat to the street below. He followed the street to Bramante’s Stairway, navigated the stairs and made his way to the black Mercedes, which was parked where the driver had left it when Dominic had arrived. He opened the back door to the car and climbed in. Moments later the driver opened the driver’s side door, slid into the seat, and waited.
SIXTEEN
FEBRUARY, 1945
Roosevelt Aviation School
Roosevelt Field, Naval Air Facility
“Using just one word,” Bill swept the room of classmates with his eyes then continued, “please describe the following: A limited stretch or space of continued existence.” He paused looking directly at each of the seventeen men in the room.
“No one?” Bill looked around hoping that someone would say something. When no one did, he said, “Okay, then. What if I added this...the interval between two successive events?”
A student in the back of the room wearing a grease covered sweater shuffled his feet, looking as though he was about to answer, when he caught a stern glance from another student. He looked away from Bill, finding interest instead in a spot on the floor.
“Come on now, gentlemen. Someone must have some idea?”
Blank faces and empty stares were their responses.
Bill glanced around a room filled with mechanics and engineers who couldn’t shut up in the dining room or out on the tarmac, yet here, not one of them was willing to speak out. “Let me help you along here.” Bill turned to the black chalkboard behind him and wrote one word on it.
Time.
He turned back to the classroom and waited for some response. There was, again, none. “The two definitions I just gave you...describe time.” Bill looked around the room once again and realized, by more blank looks and condescending glares, that this crowd was not buying into anything a nineteen-year old kid was selling. And he hadn’t even said anything! The thought caused him to let out a long sigh.
“I understand that you’re supposed to be some kind of a whiz kid, a genius, I guess, but we don’t have time for this.” An older mechanic sitting in the front row spoke up.
“My point exactly,” Bill said, happy just to have someone speak up. He walked over to the mechanic and stood by his side. “We don’t have time.”
“If that is your point, you’re making no point,” the same student said with a Texas twang. “My men and I have more important issues at hand.”
“Yeah. Football and girls,” another shouted out to rowdy applause and laughter.
“Let’s not waste any more of our time,” the older mechanic said, punching up the ‘time,’ “and end this.”
The others responded to the pun with raucous enthusiasm.
“What if I could make you travel through time?” Bill asked. “What if you already had?”
“Yeah. Okay,” shouted a scrappy little guy from the back row.
“How so?” the grease stained sweater wearing mechanic, who was reluctant to speak earlier, asked with genuine interest.
“Just like this.”
The class settled down
“What’s your name?” Bill called out to the reluctant student.
“Jonathan. Jonathan Kim.”
“Well, Jon, do you have a watch?”
“Sure.” Jon held up his left arm, displaying the inexpensive timepiece.
“Nice,” the older mechanic stated. “Cracker Jack prize?”
“No. Christmas gift.” Jon’s tone was serious.
“That’s great, Jon.” Bill brought the short attention span of the group back to him.
“When I ask you to, Jon, would you please stand up and walk over to me?” Bill moved to the center of the room as close to the chalkboard as he could get.
“Okay, I can do that.” Jon said, glancing around the room.
“Jon, what time is it?”
“One thirteen,” Jon said, then added, “and twenty seven seconds.”
“Perfect. When the second hand is at forty five seconds, I want you to walk over to me.”
“Got it.” Jon stood up. His lips moved as he silently counted out the seconds. “Forty five,” he said out loud, and walked directly to Bill, avoiding a stray leg that shot out to trip him.
He came up beside Bill and stopped.
“What time is it now?” Bill asked.
“It’s a...one thirteen and fifty three seconds.”
“Congratulations, Jon,” Bill said, slapping him on the back. “You’ve just traveled through time.
“Aw, this is stupid,” the older mechanic shouted.
“Look,” Bill turned to the older man, “I have a question for you. Are you game?”
The older mechanic looked to the others in the room, most of whom only offered a shrug.
“Go for it Captain,” a tall slim ma
n at the window side of the room shouted.
“Yeah, all right then. I’m game,” the older mechanic said.
Bill paused for a moment and looking directly at the older mechanic asked, “Do you believe in God?”
“Sure I do.”
“Would you mind standing up, please?”
The older mechanic stood, pushing the chipped wooden chair aside. “Okay?”
“Captain. I can call you Captain?”
“Well, I’m not really a Captain anymore, but sure, go ahead.”
“Are you standing still at this moment or are you moving?”
“I’m standing still,” Captain said, with a sarcastic grin forming on his face.
“And you believe that?”
“Yes, completely. I know when my feet are moving and I can assure you, son that they are not moving.” He glanced down at his feet as if to make sure that his statement was correct.
“Would you say that you have a strong belief in God, Captain?
“Yes, I do.”
“Would say that you believe in God as much as you believe that you are not moving?”
“Yes.” Captain raised an eyebrow. “I’m not moving. I haven’t moved my feet an inch since you asked me to stand up. And I still believe in God, whatever that has to do with this?” Captain’s tone grew agitated.
“Then I might suggest to the rest of us here, that you have a false belief in God.” Bill hesitated a moment as the others in the class grew restless. “You see, Captain, you believe that you are standing still, that you are not moving. And you...well really I...equated that same belief to your faith in God. You, Captain, are moving. We are all moving. And we are traveling through space and time at this very moment.”
“What kind of talk is this?” Captain said. “You’re no genius. You’re just nuts.”
“That may be so, Captain. And someday I’m sure that we will find out. But for the moment, I am the only one here who understands that this Earth we are standing on is moving through time and space at more than one thousand miles per hour. And that means that you, Captain, are not standing still at all. You are spinning through space and time at more than a thousand miles an hour.” Bill starred into Captain’s eyes, waiting.
Captain sat down without saying another word.
“You see, we all have beliefs and perceptions based on what we think we know to be, true, just like Captain’s faith. He believed that he was not moving. He had faith in his own perception. But as you have seen, we cannot believe in our perceptions.” Bill turned to the chalkboard and picked up a piece of chalk. “Maybe Mister Shakespeare said it best.” Bill wrote on the board. To Be or Not To Be. “So if we all believe that we are standing still, even though the Earth is spinning at a thousand miles per hour, does it make it so?”
“I guess not,” Captain said.
“My feet are firmly planted below me and yet I know that I’m not standing still. I understand that my perceptions of movement are clouded by my understanding of movement. The same is true about time. You are trapped by your perceptions of time and therefore cannot see that we travel through time every day.”
“Wait,” Jon said. “How can we travel through time every day?”
“When you wake up it’s one time. Then you go to work, and then you go back home. Each of those events takes place ‘through time.’ None of us has problems with the fact that every day we travel forward in time, yet not one of you wants to believe that we can also travel backwards in time. Why? When did we all agree that time only moves in one direction?”
“Because when we’re dead, time is up and no one ever comes back,” Captain’s matter-of-fact tone added to his sarcasm.
“Is that so, Captain?” Bill turned to the man. “What about Jesus?”
Momentarily caught off guard, Captain hesitated, then shouted out, “That’s because he’s God. He can do that.”
“Or maybe he was just a man, a man who died and returned because he didn’t buy into your beliefs. He wasn’t restricted by them, like you are.” Bill glanced at the men in the room. They were young and old, mostly first generation Americans. They were thinking about getting home, and dinner, and their kids. They were certainly not thinking about time travel. “There were others who thought like you. Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society said in 1895 that heavier than air flying machines were impossible. Look out that window, gentlemen. I see an airfield with thirty or more of the machines that Kelvin said were impossible.” Bill paused letting that bit of trivia sink into the room filled with airplane mechanics.
“Now what if you had bought into Lord Kelvin’s beliefs?”
SEVENTEEN
DOMINIC CONCEALED HIMSELF in a crevice made of brick and mortar—that two thousand years ago, would have held a statue of some god or other as decoration—in the ruins of the ancient Roman baths. From his vantage point, he could clearly see the majority of the hillside and the few enormous walls of the once great Roman baths that remained. Beyond that the modern city complex, all stretched out before him. He liked it here and had come on more than one occasion to sit and ponder the sight below, where ancient civilizations met the modern. It was hard for him to say which was better.
The stand of fig trees, planted long ago by Dominic’s ancestors, was just to his right. He recalled the story told him by his Nonno when he was about six or seven.
“Your great, great, great uncle,” Nonno emphasized each word more powerfully than the last, “was a very powerful man during the time of Caesar. He was the keeper of all the fig crops in Rome and Caesar himself made him the Senatore dei Fico—the Senator of the Figs,” Nonno said this to Dominic with great reverence. His grandfather’s story would be repeated many times over at every family Christmas and Easter gathering, beginning the moment his Nonna brought out plates mounded with fig filled cookies—cuscidati.
The fig trees spread out in a tangled mass of branches and roots. No longer cared for and pruned, the branches wrapped around pillars that once held up the retractable roof of the baths, but now stood concealed from the casual observer, covered in and protected from the elements by the gnarled arms of the figs. Centuries of root structures from both the fig and ancient olive trees held the hillside in place, preserving the ruins from further decay and still producing fruit in abundance.
Dominic breathed in the scent of the damp crumbling stone and the rain-soaked earth. The scent of wet grass, dirt, and stone had become a comfort to him throughout the many days that he had sought refuge here. Refuge mainly from his own thoughts. He chuckled at how ironic it was that he had to get away and be by himself so that he could get away from his thoughts. It didn’t make sense, but then, not too much did lately.
He closed his eyes, imagining the sights, the sounds, and the smells of the baths centuries ago. Common citizens, as well as the elite, of the Roman Empire would have mixed here. It was the place where the city’s populous would come together.
Oil scented pools filled with waters pumped up from the nearby wells would have been heated through a labyrinth of fire-stoked bricks to steaming, and then pumped directly into the baths. Cold plunge pools would have been located nearby and the bathers would have dipped into the cold baths after soaking in the warm waters. The baths would have been filled to capacity during the day, as Romans took the medicinal as well as the spiritual values of the baths, very seriously. Public baths, like the one here on the hills of Rome, were common in all Roman cities and conquered lands.
Now, the ruins stood as a reminder of how far we have come, or how far we have fallen, Dominic thought. He wasn’t sure in which direction man had gone. It was one of the prime reasons he had become a priest. Even as a young man he had questioned where man had been and where he was going, both in a spiritual sense and in a simple scientific sense. What more could man achieve? What more could man do to benefit man? What more would man do to kill off his fellow man? Those questions had plagued him and his lack of ability to answer them, had tormented him.
&nbs
p; He’d entered seminary at Saint John Fisher in a quest to answer those questions and the many other questions that the answers to the first set of questions would bring about. He never got answers, only more questions.
Through the course of his lessons in seminary he had learned to remain silent, allowing the many questions he had to fester within him. He believed in God. At least at one time he did. Now, he wasn’t sure. How could there be a loving God, as the church taught, if there was so much suffering? He’d nearly driven himself crazy with the unanswered barrage of questions that had continued to fill his head. He was at once a rebel—rebelling from the church—and the Templar—filling the Temple of God. He’d succeeded at being the rebel. But as for filling the temple, there he had failed.
And now, he was feeling completely alone. Abandoned. Utterly confused about his past, his present, and his future. There was no sense to it. If God had a plan for him, Dominic had absolutely no idea of what it was. He was completely lost. No star to guide him, no flock to follow...He laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of his thoughts turning to song lyrics and cliché.
A movement in the shadows caught his attention and he watched as Tonita stepped out from behind the tangle of fig branches. She moved slowly, methodically, her eyes sweeping the ruins and the hillside. Apparently, seeing no one, she moved away from the stand of trees.
Dominic began to step out of the crevice, then hesitated and sank back as far as he could. He needed to be sure that no one had followed her. He had not seen a single person in the area of the ruins for the past several hours. His body ached from the crouched position he had to take to fit into the crevice, and he desperately wanted to stand. But he remained. And waited.
Tonita too, had remained hidden in the stand of fig trees for more than several hours. She had waited and watched. No one had entered or exited the ruin of the baths while she waited. Except, that is, for Dominic.
The Third Hour Page 7
