March 20, year 9
I went to them today, Judith and Eric. I said we must find where Hannah and the priest have taken the child. Immediately! I told them about Teresa and tried to explain how we have all been misled. They didn’t believe me. They looked at me, like I was possessed, like I were some kind of criminal. I feared them, as I fear them now, for I saw the devil in their eyes…
March 22, year 9
I write this now so it will be understood by all who read it for ages to come. Teresa said to me last night, ‘Do not concern yourself with the thought that a child will die. That must never enter your mind. Because he – it- is not human.’ Such were her words. I must obey them.
Stunned, Sally closed the notebook and pushed it away from her, as if the madness it chronicled were contagious. The talk of a child dying chilled her blood. Had Miz O actually murdered someone? Was that what was eating away at her conscience, all these years later, turning her into a helpless lunatic? Or was it just a made up story? Surely Miz O had come to her senses. Sally realized she didn’t even know when Year 9 was.
March 23, Year 9
I am alone now on this journey. But I have the strength of Teresa with me. I will find the child.
June 9, Year 9
The move to Lowell is complete. And on the same street no less. I can even see the house from my window. The house that will lead me to him. Not even Eric and Judith would have thought of this. Now I wait. Teresa says, “Patient endurance attends to all things!” I can be patient. I can wait for years if I have to. Ah, to have a purpose again.
Sally went to the front door and peaked out through the curtains at the houses up and down the street - the same houses she walked by every day. She wondered which one Miz O was referring to in the notebooks. These houses, so similar and anonymous, now seemed to her ominous and full of mystery. Sally realized that not a single neighbor had ever paid a visit. Miz O lived a life very much alone here.
She picked up the last of the notebooks. The cover page revealed that it chronicled Year 26 and Year 27. The ink was not as faded as it was in the earlier entries and the pages had not yellowed. The entries, Sally speculated, had quite possibly been written since she had come to work for Miz O. The penmanship certainly looked shakier than ever.
August24, Year 27
All these years of waiting for a clue. Finally it is here. But it comes when I am riveted to this bed. How I wish it could have been me to find the child and put an end to this blasphemy with my own hands!!
Pathetic, withered hands! (So much time has gone by!) But Teresa reminds me, “Pain is never permanent.”
September 18, Year 27
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The child has been found. She has found him for me. She is sure of it. Teresa has guided her. Maybe I will be finally liberated from this bed once the mission is carried out. My mission. Now hers. Ours!!! How happy I am. We have outwitted the devil. The blasphemy will be destroyed at long last.
Miz O had always said she had a story to tell. But Sally wanted to believe the notebooks contained nothing more than the ravings of a woman, living in a delusional world. Otherwise the story was too horrible to contemplate.
As a last gesture, she turned her attentions to the pictures in the manila envelopes. They all showed an attractive young man, who seemed to be unaware that his photo was being taken. The most remarkable series of shots caught him as he was being pulled from a mound of earth, as if somehow he had been buried alive. But most of the photos were far more mundane and showed him talking with people, going about his daily life, interacting with what appeared to be relatives or members of his family in what seemed to be a foreign country. Certainly not Lowell, at any rate.
As she shifted through the photos, a simple fact slowly dawned on Sally. At first, she denied its importance. But it wouldn’t go away. The more she mulled over the consequences, the more frightened she became. If the child were alive today, if he were not just the figment of Miz O’s feverish imagination, he would have to be in his late teens or early twenties. The man in the pictures was about twenty. Someone seemed to be tracking him with a camera, hunting him down.
She suppressed a gasp.
This was the child, whose birth had so preoccupied Miz O, the child that had got away, the child that Santa Teresa had ordered to be…
Sally couldn’t let herself finish the thought. She picked up one of the photos of the young man looking off into the middle-distance. Sally thought he had deep, penetrating eyes, wise eyes, and a kind face. Did he know he was a marked man? She shuddered, as she gathered up the notebooks and put the photographs back in their envelopes. Miz O would be stirring before long.
All at once she felt a hand grip her shoulder. She let out a scream and turned to see Maria.
“Hello, Sally,” she said in a flat voice.
Sally glanced at her watch. “It’s only one o’clock, Maria,” she stammered. “What are you doing here so early?”
2:29
A few tourists were milling about the plaza, but not enough to allay the general feeling of emptiness that prevailed at this hour. A lone sanitation worker was sweeping up the stray palm fronds that had been carried from the cathedral the day before and then dropped or cast aside in the rush to get home. The young man was reminded that Holy Week had begun. Not that he had forgotten. He had come to Oviedo at this time for a sole reason: the cloth that covered the face of Christ on the cross, the holy sudarium, was displayed to the public only once a year on Good Friday. For others the culmination of the week would be the triumphant resurrection of Christ, spirit eternal trumping lowly flesh on Easter Sunday. But for the young man, it would be seeing the sudarium with his own eyes, beholding what was said to be the very blood of the lamb, a lamb led to slaughter. He put the bloody image out of his head. It was important that he react to the sudarium with a clear mind, free of superstition and prejudice.
As he and Claudia approached the cathedral entrance, they were sidetracked by an elderly beggar, who, having nothing of his own to peddle, had scavenged the plaza for the least damaged palm fronds and was using them to earn the pity of the passer-by and a coin or two. Mano fished in his pocket for some spare change. Automatically, Claudia dropped back and pulled out her camera, sensing an extraordinary photograph – an ironic commentary of Jesus entering the temple in triumph. The beggar struck a suitably humble pose, thinking it might increase his tip. Mano turned around just in time to see what was happening.
“No!” he said sharply, putting up his hand to shield his face. “No pictures!”
Claudia lowered the camera. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“It’s just that I don’t photograph well,” he said, trying to temper his outburst.
“As a professional, I can assure you that is definitely not true,” Claudia said playfully, raising the camera to eye level again.
“I’m serious. No pictures right now. Okay?”
“Well, sure. If that’s the way you want it…”
She tucked the camera away in her backpack, chastising herself for the second misstep in less than ten minutes. She was going to have to be more careful or she’d spoil everything. She was no longer the observer, taking photographs from afar. She was now an active participant in the story. To fail at this point would be unthinkable.
Mano tossed a few coins to the beggar who, misunderstanding the situation, continued to implore the young man to take the palm fronds. Claudia couldn’t have imagined a better picture. But she didn’t take it.
The view ran from the back of the cathedral to the splendor of the high altar. Nothing impeded it, so that the first, and most enduring impression imparted by the interior of the cathedral was not that of height, nor of openness, but rather of pure gold. The altarpiece actually consisted of dozens of oil paintings, depicting the life of Christ, but they were framed in gold, abutted by pilasters of gold, separated by gold pedestals. Until one got close enough to make out the subject matter of the paintings, it looked as i
f the gold had simply rained down from the heavens, streaking the altar with magnificence. Claudia would have lingered before such a sight, but Mano had a specific destination. A sign reading Camara Santa pointed them to the right.
“What’s the Camara Santa?” asked Claudia.
“It’s means the Holy Chamber. It’s where they keep the church’s most sacred relics.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know. Let’s go see.”
Together, they walked briskly past several chapels, unlit and gloomy, until they reached the transept. Turning right again, they found themselves in a modern entry area that sold brochures, postcards and, most importantly, entrance tickets to the Camara Santa. Manning the ticket counter was a plump woman with a determined manner that matched the moustache on her upper lip.
“How many?” she barked, by way of a greeting.
Mano held up two fingers.
“Ten euros,” she barked again, pushing the tickets across the counter. “Take the circular staircase through that door and follow the signs. A tour just began, so if you hurry you won’t miss much.”
They followed instructions, going up the staircase to a room above, then down a second set of stairs to the Camara Santa itself. Behind a stern iron grill that divided the chamber in half were a series of chests and trunks that contained the precious relics, some said to go back to the very days of Jesus. A dozen tourists were gathered around a young, attractive guide, who was explaining that this was the oldest part of the cathedral and pointing out various pre-Romanesque architectural details to buttress her case. The thick walls and tiny windows gave Claudia the impression of being in a subterranean prison, and the treasures behind the grill – the overwrought Cross of the Angels, symbol of the city of Oviedo supposedly fashioned miraculously by God’s angels – held little interest for her. It was when the guide turned their attention to the Holy Arc, a silver-covered chest, that Claudia noticed the sudden change in Mano’s attitude. Concentration had narrowed his eyes and his body had tensed up. All she could think was that he resembled a wild animal, sensing danger.
“It was in this trunk,” the guide was explaining, “that the holy sudarium was saved from the hands of the infidels and brought to Oviedo in the 9th century. You all know about the sudarium, don’t you.”?
A few tourists coughed and one nodded vaguely.
“The sudarium,” explained the guide patiently, as she had already done no doubt several hundred times before, “is the cloth that covered Jesus’ face on the cross. No, not the shroud that his body was wrapped in. The shroud is in Turin, Italy. The sudarium is a separate cloth that was used by the Jewish people to cover a face distorted by the agony of death.
“After the crucifixion, the sudarium remained in Palestine until 614, when Jerusalem was captured by the Persians. Along with several other lesser relics – splinters of the cross, a thorn from the crown of thorns and sandals of lesser disciples – the cloth was spirited out of Jerusalem to Alexandria, Egypt. Then, when that city came under attack, the cloth made its way along the northern coast of Africa, crossed the Mediterranean Sea and ended up in Toledo, Spain. But only until Spain itself was invaded by the Moors and the sudarium was hidden in a cave outside of Oviedo. In 1075, King Alonso VI presided over the opening of the trunk and, discovering its invaluable treasures, ordered that they be housed in the Camara Santa, where they have remained ever since. So you can see that the sudarium has had quite an eventful history.”
The guide paused a moment for effect. “I don’t need to point out that the presence of the sudarium, makes this one of the holiest places in Christendom. It is now kept in the locked cupboard that you see at the back of the chamber. We can’t show it to you, of course, but a photograph on the outside of the cupboard will give you an idea of what it looks like.” She stepped aside to afford the tourists a better view. Several edged forward, pressing their faces against the grill to see the astonishing object. A mother tried to keep her two young sons from climbing up the grill. It was then Claudia noticed the blind woman in the corner. She had a white cane and dark glasses that obscured much of her face, and clung to the shoulder of a companion, who whispered periodically in her ear. The woman was not facing the relics, however, but appeared to be looking in the direction of Mano.
“Don’t push,” admonished the guide. “Everyone will get a chance to see.”
What they saw - in the faded photograph at least - resembled a small, wrinkled tablecloth, spotted with reddish-brownish stains that could have been paint. For a relic with such a dramatic past, it was, Claudia mused, surprisingly mundane. Mano thought of Saint Teresa’s finger, all but unidentifiable in its glass test tube.
“Any questions?” asked the guide, preparing to usher the tourists back up the stairs.
“Yes, how can you be sure the cloth is real?” Mano’s voice rang out in the confines of the chamber.
“What do you mean ‘real’?” replied the guide, indignation lending a flush of color to her cheeks.
“Authentic. How do you know the cloth is what you say it is?”
“I can only tell you that Pope John Paul II prayed before this cloth. They say he spent several hours alone with it. There is a plaque on the side of the main altar commemorating his visit. He came specifically to pay honor to the cloth. Why would he do such a thing, if it wasn’t real?”
Several tourists nodded in agreement and cast disapproving looks at Mano, who refused to back down.
“But what is known scientifically about the cloth?”
The guide forced a smile. “Well, I am not a scientist, but I can assure you, after the Shroud of Turin, this cloth has been studied more than any other cloth in Christendom. Experts from all around the world come regularly to Oviedo to examine it. Historically, its existence can be traced back to Jesus’ day and -” she paused to take in the rest of the tourists – “I think our other friends today will find this interesting: Biologists have detected traces of pollen on the cloth, pollen that comes from plants that grew only in Palestine at that time.”
She let that sink in. Then added, “Most interesting of all, the blood stains on the sudarium correspond to those on the shroud of Turin. There are more than 150 points of coincidence, which means that both cloths must have enveloped the same body and that is the body of Christ…Now are there any other questions?”
Mano’s voice was more insistent than ever. “But the shroud of Turin is a fake. Everyone knows that.”
“I am sorry, Señor,” snapped the guide. “This is not the proper place for such an observation.”
“All I am asking is this: Is there any proof that the cloth touched the face of Christ? Or is it just a cloth that dates from that time period?”
“I told you that its history has been traced by experts back to the days of Our Savior. That is undisputed.”
“But how do we know it actually touched the face of Christ? You said it was Jewish custom back then to cover the faces of the dead with a cloth. Well, there were thousands of crucifixions. The blood on the sudarium could be that of a thief or a murderer. It seems to me—-“
The guide interrupted him. “Some things we must take on faith. People have dedicated themselves for years, for centuries, to the study and preservation of this cloth. I think to question their beliefs is disrespectful, don’t you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. The crowd showed their agreement by pulling away from Mano and starting up the stairs that led out of the Holy Chamber.
He approached the grill, trying to decipher the blurry photograph on the other side of the black metal bars, when he felt a hand tug his shoulder. He turned and found himself just inches from the blind woman. Her large dark glasses made her look like a giant fly. She reached up and caressed his cheek. He stood frozen, not wishing to offend the woman, but at the same time feeling as if she were draining the very energy from his body. She spoke to him in German, repeating the same phrase time and again, until her companion gently took her by the hand and u
shered her from the chamber. Claudia and Mano watched them make their way unsteadily up the stairs.
“That was weird. It sounded like she was saying the same thing over and over,” said Mano. “Too bad I don’t speak German.”
“I do,” said Claudia.
“Did you understand what she was saying?”
“Yes. She was saying, ‘Never fear the truth … Never fear the truth.’”
2:30
“Mom, come here! Quick! It’s important.”
Teresa’s voice brimmed with uncharacteristic excitement. Ever since Mano had left three days ago, there had been an undertone of tension in the house on Venustiano Carranza. Hannah told herself ten times a day that her son was an adult, who knew how to take care of himself. And if he didn’t, he’d learn quickly. But that still didn’t change the fact that Mano was all on his own somewhere in the wide world. How could she not worry?
She turned down the flame on the stove and covered the pot of frijoles she was preparing. “What is it?” she called out, anxiously, as she entered Teresa’s bedroom. Her daughter was glued to her laptop computer. “Look! There’s an e-mail from Mano!”
Hannah clapped her hands with joy, while Teresa made a place on the chair so her mother could sit beside her. Together, they read the e-mail.
The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two Page 12
