Brotherhood of the Tomb

by Daniel Easterman

  Only the fire seemed real. A fine odour of warm peat crept through the room. Red and yellow and gold flames cast bright reflections on brass and copper. Ruth had made mulled wine filled with heavy spices: cloves and cinnamon and aniseed, with orange and lemon peel. They sipped the wine and listened to the music, and Patrick thought how unnatural everything had become, how far removed from a world in which the bodies of pale children decayed in summer cottages, and priests, like Oedipus, were blinded on high altars.

  ‘It troubles me that God can allow such things,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’

  He watched smoke spiral upwards, imagined it grey and nebulous on the darkening air outside.

  ‘I don’t,’ he replied. ‘But that’s just it, don’t you see? I can’t believe in a God who lets things like this go on. Oh, and things worse than this. Much, much worse. Any other god I could believe in, but not this one. To be omnipotent and hold back, to be capable and do nothing. Just watch. Watch and judge. I remember...’

  She twisted a little towards him, her eyes fixed on his profile.

  ‘I remember,’ he continued, ‘something I once read. It was in a book of Islamic theology: “These to heaven, and I care not. These to hell, and I care not.” What sort of God is that? And the Christian God isn’t any better. He lets children die on the street in Calcutta just so people can say what a wonderful woman Mother Theresa is. At least Molech kept his depredations to a reasonable level.’

  Who was Molech, Patrick? What did it mean, that verse they found on Clemente’s desk?’

  ‘Molech? He was a Canaanite god. Phoenician, if you prefer. He had a taste for children. Their parents used to take them up to his altar at a place called Topheth. That was where they did it - the burning, the sacrificial offering. To keep the crops from spoiling. To make their cattle fertile. For whatever reason - for whatever seemed important to them.’

  She shuddered and looked aside.

  ‘They burned them?’

  ‘Yes. So the Old Testament says. Maybe it’s just biased, a load of propaganda about Canaanite atrocities - who knows? But I don’t remember anything about cutting hearts out.’

  The fire in the hearth leaped and twisted, throwing a cloud of sparks high into the chimney. Ruth leaned against him, touching him for the first time since entering the apartment. He responded, putting his arm round her, drawing her to him.

  ‘My parents were enlightened,’ she said. ‘Or thought they were. Rich liberals with black friends, Jewish friends, intellectuals. No gay friends, of course: they weren’t that liberal. They had old money, so they could afford some eccentricities. They voted Democrat, donated to the AGCL, signed petitions to end the war in Vietnam. I was brought up to be nice to the maids and gardeners, and every Christmas I gave some of my toys to the local orphanage. They sent me to a succession of private schools, and Europe twice a year, and Vassar when I was old enough, because it had gone co-ed. And a year in Switzerland, to be “finished” as they put it.

  ‘The trouble is, where do you go from there? When I grew up, nobody was dropping out any longer. I was liberal all right, but I had my own trust fund. With a private income, you can afford to be liberal. Even with Ronald Reagan in the White House. Especially with Ronald Reagan in the White House.’

  She put her head on his shoulder.

  ‘I got married, but that didn’t solve anything. I don’t suppose it ever does. Mr Ehlers was a nice guy, as nice guys go. But after you’ve fucked about seven hundred times in a row, and taken your fifteenth vacation in three years, and put this year’s finishing touches on top of last year’s finishing touches on the bidets in the guest bathrooms, even nice guys can pall a little.

  ‘So I dropped out. Since I couldn’t be a hippy any longer, I joined the Company. My parents were furious. But I wanted to prove something to them.’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘Funny, I’ve forgotten what it was.’ She pulled him to her, frightened, angry with her fear. ‘Tell me, Patrick, tell me what the fuck it was! It wasn’t this - so what was it?’

  She was crying painfully now, her doubts grown inarticulate with rage. He kissed her eyes, tasting the bright, metallic tears. He knew the flavour well, it ran in his own veins, bitter, galling, cold as ice. His lips stumbled drunkenly down her cheeks, his hands fumbled across her breasts, clumsy, like a child’s. She pulled away briefly, then returned to him, her lips to his lips, her breath confused and harsh, mingling with his breath, with the heavy odour of wine and spices.

  They had not made love since his return from the safe house. He had been distant, colder than usual, without response. Now, with a suddenness that dismayed him, the pent-up fears of his confinement focused on a raging physical need. To enter her would free him from everything. Like a prophet surprised in solitude by a sudden, tumultuous god, he cried out.

  He closed his eyes and saw Natalya Pavlovna, the thin body, the piercing eyes. He thought of her naked beneath him, the small, flat breasts, the bruised nipples, the churning breath. She had come to him like a lover, seeking out his sins, and he had never touched her or been touched by her.

  Twisting, he reached out a hand for Ruth, pulling her to the floor with him. Her eyes were closed, she could not bear to look at him or have him look at her, her heart was pounding, uncomfortable and fast. His fingers touched her, now light, now pressing urgently. Her breath came quickly, she wanted to cry out, to expel the awful thing that had lodged inside her: a dead child gutted and cast aside like an unwanted fish on a harbour wall.

  He undressed her passionately, but as though in a dream: her top, her skirt, her underthings. Her skin felt hot and fevered to his desperate touch, he could not sense her presence in the room with him. Imperceptibly, they had begun to move to different rhythms. She made love to exorcize the ghost of a child she had never met, whose silent, ravaged heart had entered her dreams and wrought havoc there; he to find a dream that might make waking more bearable.

  Her nakedness appalled him, her need to be touched, her vehemence in lovemaking. Her exorcism called for rage, his for forgetfulness. As she undressed him, he felt his sense of unreality deepen, as though the shedding of his clothes entailed in some fashion a loss of identity. His head felt light, almost detached from his body. And yet his thoughts were clear, almost unbearably so. He felt her hands, hot and restless, move across his back and chest.

  What happened next was unpredicted and unrehearsed. It was rather as if he had been staring at one of those trick pictures, the sort psychologists use to test perception, in which a duck becomes a rabbit or a beautiful woman reveals herself as an old crone.

  An almost imperceptible shift occurred between one breath and the next. He looked round to see that the fire had burnt low and the room was now bathed in candlelight. He could not even be sure it was the same room. There were heavy hangings on one wall where there had been none before. Outside, the sound of traffic had vanished. It was chillier than it had been a moment earlier.

  He was still naked, still tumescent, still crouched above the form of a naked woman on the floor. But the woman was not Ruth. Her hair was jet black, tousled, in heavy braided folds across her face. She was small-breasted, with narrower hips and more abundant pubic hair. Even as he looked, she brushed back the hair from her face.

  ‘In ainm De, a Phddraig, lean ort! For God’s sake, Patrick, don’t stop now,’ she said.

  He did not know how he knew, but the language was Irish, Leinster Irish of the eighteenth century. But that was impossible - she could not be speaking Irish. He knew her, knew her as well as he knew himself: it was Francesca. Only that was impossible too: Francesca was dead, she had been dead twenty years.

  He stumbled back, slipping, then raised himself on one hand.

  ‘Cad ta ort, a Phddraig? Cad ta ort, a stor? Patrick, what’s wrong? What is it, darling?

  Standing, he felt his head spin. The candles moved and the room lurched. He was falling, he could feel himself spinning through space, then th
e floor crashing against him and the breath pumped out of his body.

  When he came round, Ruth was standing over him, a wet sponge in her hand, a look of deep concern on her face.

  ‘Patrick, what’s wrong? What is it, darling? How do you feel?’

  He put his hand to his head. Out of nowhere he had a pounding headache. His stomach felt queer. It reminded him of migraines he had experienced in his teens.

  ‘I’m ... all right,’ he murmured. ‘Just ... blacked out. My head feels terrible: I think it’s a migraine.’

  She raised him to a sitting position against the sofa.

  ‘Shall I get a doctor? Has this happened before?’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll be okay. This used to happen when I was younger. I’ll be better after a sleep.’

  But nothing like this had happened before: a hallucination, blacking out. His body was covered with sweat and he had started to shiver.

  ‘Stay there,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ll fetch a blanket.’

  He shifted himself to a more comfortable position. As he did so, he noticed something on his stomach, a long, fine line. He took it between finger and thumb and lifted it. It was a hair, a black hair about two feet in length.

  THIRTEEN

  Archbishop Pasquale Balzarin stood at the window of his second-floor study, watching the shadows lengthen on the lawn. Sunlight lay plaited through blades of untrampled grass. A bird soared overhead, lost in circles of its own making. On the lawn, a peacock passed, precise and shadowless, its feathers warm against the twilight. It walked through its own world, untouched by the worries of the man who watched it, a thing of beauty merely.

  Why now?’ he thought. ‘Why now?’ Arthritic fingers pressed nervously on the white beads of his rosary, investing the question with an element of prayer. Outside, the peacock screamed, turning its fan against the encroaching darkness.

  Balzarin had been Papal Nuncio to the Republic of Ireland for three years now. During his last visit to Rome, he had heard whispers. Fazzini was certain to step down from his Curial office on his seventy-fifth birthday. If Balzarin sat tight a few months more, he would step into Fazzini’s shoes and, of course, his cardinal’s hat. He wanted that more than he had ever wanted anything.

  Correction. What he wanted most of all in the world was to get out of Dublin. Out of its rain and mist and perpetual gloom. He was sixty now and wanted to spend his last days in the sun, preferably in his native Italy, best of all in Rome. After all, he did have fifteen years to go before he was officially expected to retire.

  There were moments on the verge of sleep when he cursed Saint Patrick for ever having brought the faith to this place at all. It was all a horrible mistake.

  Christianity was a Mediterranean religion: God’s son would never have volunteered to dwell among the cairns and cromlechs of this mist-soaked wasteland.

  He returned to his desk. A copy of the most recent edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican Yearbook, lay open at the first of many pages dealing with the Secretariat of State. It did no harm to keep up to date on who did what, who had been moved, who had passed on to a higher service. Casually, he flicked over a few pages then, consulting the index, turned to the section devoted to the Archives. He studied the entry for a few moments, made an annotation in pencil on a pad, and closed the book.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Avanti!’

  Fr. Assefa Makonnen stepped into the room. He was the nuncio’s addetto, roughly equivalent to a second secretary. An Ethiopian, he had been sent to Dublin a year ago, to encourage links between the Irish church and the Third World. It had taken him less than six months to learn that some of the church hierarchy in Ireland thought this was the Third World.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Your Excellency, but your visitor has arrived.’

  Balzarin sighed and pursed his lips. He had forgotten that a visitor was due. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was fourteen minutes to four.

  ‘Show him in,’ he said.

  As Makonnen turned to go, Balzarin called him back.

  ‘His name, Father, what is his name?’

  ‘Canavan, Your Excellency. Patrick Canavan. An American of Irish descent’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Balzarin whispered. ‘The American.’

  The clock whirred guiltily and struck the quarter hour.

  It had taken Ruth over two hours this morning to fix up this interview with the nuncio. Strings had been pulled, favours promised. She was still unhappy about his pressing on with his inquiries, but had decided it was futile trying to dissuade him.

  Makonnen introduced Patrick to the archbishop and saw him into a chair before seating himself nearby, pen and paper on his lap in readiness for note-taking.

  Patrick hesitated. They no longer made them like Balzarin. The nuncio was a patriarch from his purple skullcap to his highly polished boots. He seemed to have borrowed the parts for his face from a range of Renaissance painters, but the overall effect was uniform: a look of aristocratic disdain that wore the holiness of his office with ill-disguised impatience.

  ‘I’m very grateful, Your Excellency,’ Patrick began, ‘that you found time to see me.’

  Balzarin gestured briefly with his hand. Patrick was not sure whether the movement meant ‘Don’t mention it’ or ‘Get on with what you have to say’, but he rather thought the latter.

  ‘I’m not sure ... Has Father Makonnen explained to you the reason for my visit?’

  The nuncio adjusted a photograph on his desk. On one finger, a ruby ring caught light from the fire.

  ‘You are a researcher in Semitic languages at Trinity College. You were a friend of the late Father Eamonn De Faoite, the parish priest of St Malachy’s, here in Dublin. You are ...’ He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, ‘... fifteen minutes late for your appointment. How can I help you?’

  Patrick shifted awkwardly. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a reassuring smile from the secretary.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, Your Excellency. Before he died, Eamonn De Faoite told me he had given you some papers. I believe those papers relate in some way to his death. With your permission, I would like to examine them.’

  Balzarin did not move. But Patrick sensed the effort he made to control his features. Shadows licked at his pale skin, cast by the flickering flames in the open hearth. The nuncio fixed his eyes on Patrick, as though he possessed a faculty beyond sight, that enabled him to read his visitor’s thoughts. He was nervous, but when he spoke, his voice betrayed nothing of his inner feelings.

  ‘I think you are mistaken, Signor ... ah, Canavan. I did not know Father De Faoite. He did not give any papers to me. If these were important papers, surely he would have given them to his own bishop. They would not concern me. I am the Papal Nuncio: parish affairs are no concern of mine.’

  Patrick coughed. In spite of the blazing fire, he felt cold. It was growing dark outside. He glanced across the room at Makonnen. The Ethiopian’s smile had gone and been replaced by a searching look directed at Balzarin. Patrick tried again.

  ‘I have every reason to believe that Eamonn De Faoite’s death was no parish affair. To my certain knowledge, it already involves at least one national intelligence bureau. At a very high level.’ Just how high it went, he had no way of knowing: but Chekulayev was not someone they would waste on parish politics.

  ‘An intelligence bureau?’ Balzarin seemed disturbed and more than a little interested, in spite of himself. ‘Could you be more specific, Signor Canavan? You are referring to the CIA?’

  Patrick shook his head.

  ‘At this stage, I think it’s better I don’t answer that.’

  ‘You are being deliberately mysterious, signore. Let me repeat, your friend left no papers with me, nor have I any other papers in my possession relating to his death. Father Makonnen tells me he died a little over two weeks ago. According to the bishop’s office, there was nothing unusual about his death. He was an old man who has now gone
to his heavenly reward. I really cannot see what interest either his life or his death could hold for what you term a “national intelligence bureau”. I am a busy man, signore. You will excuse me if I ask Father Makonnen to help you out. Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I could not be of greater help.’

  The Italian rose, intending to bring the interview to a close.

  ‘Please sit down, Your Excellency. I haven’t finished speaking.’

  Patrick watched Balzarin’s face turn an episcopal purple. The nuncio remained standing, momentarily lost for words.

  ‘Eamonn De Faoite was murdered on the altar of his own church,’ whispered Patrick. ‘His eyes were gouged out and he was left to die in severe pain. His killers had daubed verses from the Bible on the walls. And you tell me there was “nothing unusual about his death”.’

  Slowly, as though lowered there by a mechanism from above, Balzarin sank back into his chair.

  ‘Come ...? How ... did you obtain this information? All details of De Faoite’s death were kept from the public. The circumstances were much too ... disturbing. This is a Catholic country, signore.

  There are some things that are better left unsaid. Do you understand me? This is not a matter of politics or scandals or reputations; it is a matter of faith. As representative of the Holy See in Ireland, it is my duty to ensure that the Church’s image is not harmed unnecessarily. The Church has many enemies in this country, both here and in the north. I have no intention of letting you or anyone else play into their hands.’

  Balzarin talked himself back into a position of control. He leaned across the desk. The light was fading rapidly now, but nobody moved to turn on a lamp.

  ‘Let me ask you again,’ he said in a voice from which all signs of perturbation had been rigidly excluded. ‘How did you come by your information concerning the manner of Father De Faoite’s death?’

  ‘I found him. He died trying to tell me about something called “Passover”. He said you had papers that explained what it is about. I don’t care a damn if nobody ever knows a thing about his murder. That isn’t important. But those papers are.’