The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

by Ian Caldwell

  “No,” I say. “I can’t do that. I’ll find another way.”

  “There is no other way.”

  But already, as I look at that photo, my heart begins to break. Because I know, better than I have ever known anything, that he’s wrong.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, THE MOON IS full. The air is soft with powdery light. I walk as far as the garden by Sister Helena’s priory before I stop and loop my fingers through the metal fence to hold myself up. I close my eyes and breathe. My chest begins to heave.

  I love him. I will always love him. He never planned to do this. He came to Castel Gandolfo without a weapon. He could’ve run away from what he’d done, but instead he called the police. And while he waited for them to arrive, he took off his raincoat and knelt beside his friend to spread it over him.

  A wind rushes through the garden, bending the stalks away from me. The plants pull at the soil as if to run from their own roots.

  I imagine the size of Simon’s hand. The size of the gun in it. Leo called it a peashooter. The smallest, least powerful weapon he could find. One giant finger looped against that trigger must’ve left no room to move. All it took was a tiny nudge.

  I would do anything to believe it was an accident. Except that there is no accidental way the gun could’ve been in Simon’s hand.

  I sit down. My fingers claw at the hot soil. He could’ve confessed. They would’ve asked him why he did it, and that’s when he could’ve kept silent to protect the Shroud. Instead, he let the silence protect himself, too. That choice, even more than what he did to Ugo, makes him a stranger to me.

  I was fourteen years old when he told me he didn’t want to be a Greek Catholic anymore. He sat me down and explained that on Sundays he would still walk me to our church, and come back afterward to pick me up, but from now on he would be going to Mass, not Divine Liturgy. I never understood why he wanted to leave. We both loved our Greek church. To see our father appear from behind the wall of icons, glittering in golden robes, fresh from the altar, where no laymen were allowed, had been one of our few opportunities to believe he was an important man. But that day, I told Simon I would leave our Greek church, too, because no matter where we went on Sundays, I wanted us to go together.

  He refused. He forced me to stay. He made sure that I was tonsured as an altar server in the Greek church. He made sure the priests there continued my Greek lessons. From that day on, whenever he asked me about the girls I was interested in, the first ones he mentioned were always the daughters of families from my Greek congregation.

  He shouldn’t have been able to become a Roman Catholic. Canon law says the rite of the father is the rite of his sons. But Simon asked Lucio for help. And my uncle, who never wanted anything more in the world than a nephew to continue our family line, finally realized what Simon could be. That was the moment he began to steal my brother away from me, to set him on the road where even I knew he belonged.

  So every Sunday morning, I polished the shoes while Simon ironed the clothes. We shaved together in the mirror. And then he walked me to my church and put me in the arms of my parish. And left me behind.

  He has been preparing me, all my life, for this moment. And all my life I have been resisting it. He became a Roman Catholic because his work with me was finally done. It must’ve almost killed him to be a father to his little brother. He knew he was made to outgrow our village, our home, our father’s small shoes. But he stayed with me as long as he could. As Lucio said, there was really no choice. In a Christian life, maybe there never is. Simon buried himself in order to raise me. The imprint of that decision is the watermark on every other feat he’s ever performed. That willingness to surrender everything. To sacrifice all. Future; priesthood; even the life of a friend.

  If you love something, die for it. That’s the message of the gospels. Whoever loses his life for my sake, Jesus said, will save it. I hate my brother for what he did. I hate him more for what I have to do tomorrow. But as I think about the account we’re about to settle, I also feel relieved. It is finished. The odyssey of being his brother. The fear of the destination. The unpaid debt. The wondering what we were made for. Tomorrow, it is finished.

  This is what we were made for.

  * * *

  I COUNT THE STEPS. I touch the new lock on the old door. I watch the new key as it turns. When I step inside, Mona and Peter look up with the same expression. As if I’ve come home too soon. As if I’ve woken them from a wonderful dream. Peter slowly crawls out of her lap to welcome me. The sight of him makes me want to hide my face and cry.

  “Peter,” I manage to say, “it’s bedtime. Please go brush and wash.”

  He looks at me and doesn’t argue. I’ve never worked harder to hide my feelings from him. Yet he senses them. His heart tunes automatically to the same frequency of sadness.

  “Go,” I repeat.

  I follow him and numbly watch him run the water. The cake of soap slips out of his hands, so I put it between his palms and hold his hands between mine as we lather.

  “Babbo, why are you so sad?” he whispers.

  From behind me, Mona says softly, “I don’t think he wants to talk about that right now, Peter.”

  But in the same mirror where Simon and I used to shave together, he watches me. Those blue eyes. My brother’s eyes. My mother’s eyes. In the photos on Lucio’s wall, even my uncle used to have those eyes.

  “Get in your pajamas,” I say.

  For a moment, as he changes clothes, he is almost naked in front of us. And the mother who has never seen him in underwear glances away. Around his thighs, briefly visible when he contorts himself to pull on his pants, are faint rings where the leg holes of his underwear fit snugly. I think of Simon’s bruise.

  He rushes into bed and turns to me. “Is Simon okay?” he says.

  But I tell him we aren’t going to bed. “Follow me.”

  When we get to the door of the apartment, he says, “Where are we going?”

  I motion for Mona to come, too. Then I lead them up the stairs to the roof.

  It is like standing on the deck of a ship at night. The ocean below us twinkles. Wash on a clothesline billows like signal flags. Across the channel is John Paul’s palace. Beneath us, like fishing boats, are the buildings of our village. Supermarket and post office. Autopark and museums. Rising above them all, white as baptism, is Saint Peter’s.

  Holding my son in my arms, I step almost to the edge of the roof, so that he can see everything. Then I say, “Peter, what’s your happiest memory here?”

  He smiles and looks over at Mona. “Seeing Mamma,” he says.

  She touches his cheek and whispers, “Alex, why are you doing this?”

  “Peter, open your eyes as big as they’ll go,” I say, “and look at everything. Then squeeze your eyes closed tight, and make a postcard in your mind.”

  “Why?”

  I kneel so that we’re at the same level. “I want you to remember everything you see tonight.”

  And I think: Because we may not see it very much anymore. Because this isn’t one of those times when we say see you later. This is a time when we say good-bye.

  With a quaver in his voice he says, “What’s wrong, Babbo?”

  “No matter what happens,” I whisper, “we’ll always have each other, you and I. Always.”

  Into this child’s life God has put only one example of love that never fails. I am it. From the bottom of my heart I mean those words. No matter what happens.

  “Are we going to live at Mamma’s house?” he asks.

  My throat closes. “Sweetheart, no.”

  I feel broken. I lift him in my arms and squeeze almost as hard as I can.

  “Then why are we here?”

  There is no answer he can understand. So I lift him in the air and point to all our favorite places. I remind him of the things we’ve don
e here, the adventures we’ve had. The way we used to sit in the shade of the trees below us, throwing pieces of old bread to the birds, watching people drop letters into the big yellow box at the post office and imagining the countries they were destined for. The night we climbed to the top of Saint Peter’s to watch the fireworks for John Paul’s silver jubilee, and we saw John Paul sitting in his own window, watching them, too. The winter morning we came out of the Annona, the village supermarket, and our plastic bag broke and the eggs cracked all over the street and Peter started to cry until—a miracle—for the only time in his life, it started to snow. Remember, Peter, that magical feeling. How, in an instant, every particle of sadness can be swept away by the smallest gift of God’s love. He watches us. Cares for us. Never, ever abandons us.

  God bless Mona, she comes to my rescue. When I am empty and exhausted, when Peter wants to hear more stories but my memories are growing darker and darker, she begins to tell him about when we were young. About what I was like as a boy.

  “Mamma,” he asks, “did Babbo used to be good at soccer?”

  Mona smiles. “Oh, very good.”

  “Even as good as Simon?”

  The muscles under her eyes tighten. “Peter, in every way, he was better.”

  I carry my son back downstairs. He frowns when he sees the apartment again. He tucks himself in bed, then gets up. He closes the closet and checks that it’s really shut. We pray. Mona holds his hand, and somehow that’s enough. I turn out the light and see fingernails of moonlight reflecting in the wet of his eyes.

  “I love you,” I say.

  “I love you, too.”

  And for a second, my heart feels full again. Wherever this child is beside me, that’s where I will call home.

  * * *

  MONA FOLLOWS ME BACK to the kitchen. She runs a hand through her hair. She stands and takes down one of the cups from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. All this time, she doesn’t speak.

  Finally, she puts her cup down and sits beside me, wresting my hands from an open Bible that happens to be there. An open Bible she has been reading to our son.

  “Alex, what are you about to do?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “It’s not your job to save Simon. Do you understand that?”

  “Please,” I say. “Don’t.”

  She nudges the Bible back at me. “Look in there, and tell me something. Who saves Jesus?”

  I stare at her, wondering what she can possibly mean.

  “Show me,” she says, “the page where he wins his trial.”

  “You know he doesn’t w . . .”

  My words trail off. But she waits. She says nothing. She wants to hear me speak those words.

  “Jesus,” I say, “doesn’t win his trial.”

  Her voice is quieter now. “Then show me where everything ends happily ever after because his brother comes to save him.”

  “So I should abandon him? Just run away?”

  Her expression is crimped. She hears the accusation. Her eyes slip.

  “No matter what you do,” she says, “nobody’s ever been able to control Simon. Nobody’s ever been able to change his mind. If he wants to lose this trial—”

  I rise from my chair. “We’re not having this conversation.”

  But for the first time since her return, she won’t bow and scrape. “There is only one life in your hands, Alex. And it’s his.” She points toward the bedroom. “But you’ve filled his head with stories about two people he never sees. You’ve let him believe that the two most important people in his life are never around. Even though the most important person in his life is always around.”

  “Mona,” I say, “I have a chance to give Simon his life back. I owe him that.”

  Her lip curls. “You don’t.”

  But she doesn’t understand. “No matter what happens to me,” I say, “I’ll still have Peter. If he loses his priesthood, he’ll have nothing.”

  She’s about to say something awful, but I won’t give her the chance.

  “When I’m done tomorrow,” I tell her, “there are going to be consequences. One of them may be that Peter and I can’t stay here anymore.”

  She starts to ask why, but I push on.

  “Before anything like that happens, it’s important to me that I be honest with you. Ever since you left, there’s nothing I’ve wanted more than to get our family back together.”

  She’s already shaking her head, trying to rewind the tape, trying to make this stop.

  “I used to dream about the three of us,” I say, “living in this apartment. I wanted that more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

  Suddenly she begins to cry. I have to look away.

  “But when you came back,” I say, “everything had changed. It’s nothing you did wrong. You did everything right. I love you. I always will. But everything else has changed.”

  She is staring up at the ceiling, trying to dry her eyes. “You don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me anything.” Her eyes come down, settling on mine. “But I’m begging you. Put yourself and Peter first. Just once. Forget about Simon. You’ve worked so hard to give Peter a good, happy life here. Whatever you’re about to do, remember that this place is his whole world.”

  I love her for these words. For this fierce defense of her husband and son. But I can’t take much more of it. I need to finish this.

  “Mona, I don’t know where Peter and I will live if we have to move. All I know is, we would be somewhere outside the walls.” I hesitate. “And if you wanted, you could join us.”

  She stares at me in silence.

  “I’m not asking what your plans are,” I say. “But I realized, tonight, what mine are. I want my family together.”

  She reaches over and folds her arms around me. She begins to sob, digging her fingers into my skin.

  “Don’t answer me,” I say. “Not tonight. Wait until you’re sure.”

  She tightens her grip. I close my eyes and hold her.

  It’s done.

  I have loved this life. In the future, whatever it may hold, I will stare up at the walls of this country and thank God for the years He gave me inside them. As a child, I watched the sun rise over Rome. As a man, I will watch it set over Saint Peter’s.

  CHAPTER 41

  FOR AN HOUR she watches me pace the living room, knowing what I’m rehearsing in my thoughts. Finally she says, “Alex, you need to sleep.” And before I can refuse, she takes me by the hand and leads me toward the bedroom. She waits for me to follow her inside. Then she locks the door after us.

  It has been almost five years since I slept with my wife. The old mattress sighs at the return of her long-forgotten weight. She doesn’t undress. She just removes her shoes and makes me lie down beside her. She turns out the lights. And when they’re off, I feel her fingers running gently through my hair. I feel her breath on the back of my neck. But her hand never strays. Her mouth never comes any closer.

  All night, my dreams are violent. Twice I rise in the dark to pray. Mona sleeps so lightly that she gets up to join me. Then, in the darkest hours, I’m swallowed by a loneliness that makes me desperate to wake her. To tell her what I’m about to do. When I think of what Simon has done to keep this secret, though, I turn over and say nothing. I twist in the sheets, and when I hear her asking if I’m all right, I pretend that I’m asleep.

  Before dawn I slip out of bed and begin to prepare. I lock myself in the bathroom and stand on the countertop. I wrap Simon’s cassock in a towel, then put it in a garbage bag. I put the gun case in a small plastic bag from the grocery store. When I return to the kitchen, I place the small bag beside me on the table.

  Then I work over my story, pouring cup after cup from the moka pot, paging through the Bible on the table to be sure I remember the verses well enough
to leave no opportunity for anyone to second-guess me. I force myself to think back to the night Ugo died, searching for details I might’ve forgotten. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be convincing.

  Mona appears a half hour later. Soundlessly she inspects my inner and outer cassocks, my best pair of shoes. On the kitchen table she lays out my keys and the summons from the cursore. She doesn’t ask about the small plastic bag. She must see that it contains something hard and dark, wrapped in a length of cable, but she never says a word. Every time she glances at her watch, I check my own.

  Peter is sleeping when I kiss him on the forehead. I sit on the edge of his mattress and stare across the room at the empty bed where Simon used to sleep long ago. Beside that bed I used to pray with my brother. Across the space between these mattresses we used to whisper in the dark. Before the memories can undo me, I leave the room.

  By half past eight I’m outside, the small bag hidden under my cassock, the garbage bag left in a dumpster across the border in Rome. There’s enough time for me to walk a final lap around my country. Instead I leave the gates and walk into Saint Peter’s Square to mill with the early crowds and feel the kiss of spray from the fountains. I watch the Jewish peddlers set up carts and the sampietrini set out chairs for an outdoor event that must be coming later in the afternoon. Mainly, though, I watch the laypeople. The pilgrims and tourists. I want to experience this place as they do.

  The sedan arrives promptly at nine thirty, driven by the papal butler, Angelo Gugel. Signor Gugel lives in our building. One of his three daughters used to babysit Simon and me when our mother was still alive. But there are no affectionate greetings, just a polite “Good morning, Father.” Then he drives me by the Sistine Chapel to the palace road. As we slip through, the Swiss Guards salute. When we reach the Secretariat, a folding wooden gate opens, revealing an archway. Beyond is terra incognita. John Paul’s private wing of the palace.