“They’ll come back tomorrow,” is all Simon offers.
I nod. But what we need to navigate now, we can’t discuss in front of Peter.
My brother puts a giant hand on his nephew’s hair and musses it. His cassock sheds a dust of dried mud everywhere.
“Did you have to lift the car?” Peter asks.
“What?”
“When you changed the tire,” Peter says.
Simon and I exchange a look.
Foggily Simon says, “I just used a . . .” He snaps his fingers in the air.
“Jack?” Peter supplies.
He nods and stands abruptly. “Hey, Peter, I need to get cleaned up, okay?” He glances at me and adds, “Ubi dormiemus?”
Latin. To prevent Peter from understanding. It means “Where will we sleep?”
So he and I agree. It may not be safe to stay here.
“The Swiss barracks?” I suggest. The safest place in our country after John Paul’s apartments.
Simon nods and trudges back toward the shower, doing his best to disguise a slight limp.
* * *
WHEN HE’S GONE, I tell Peter to collect his favorite pajamas. Then I boot up our computer and wait impatiently for the old CPU to search my e-mail for Ugo’s name. My thoughts are uneasy. My ears search the air for sounds outside in the hall.
Two dozen messages surface. All were written this summer. The last, from two weeks ago, is the one. As I reread it, I wonder if my eyes are fooling me. My judgment right now probably isn’t sound. But when I hear the familiar thump of water locking in the pipes, I print it and fold the paper into my cassock, then follow Simon into the bedroom Mona and I once shared.
I find him holding his dirty cassock over the laundry bag that our mother once embroidered with the words GENESIS 1:4: GOD SEPARATED LIGHTS FROM DARKS. He looks even more agitated than before. I feel the same way. It’s settling over me now that Peter was in danger. That Sister Helena may have saved his life.
“Who would’ve done this?” I whisper.
Notching one of my drawers out of its track, he searches the hole for his emergency cigarettes. On this very dresser our father kept two ashtrays because one wasn’t enough. Until John Paul outlawed it, smoking was the national pastime. But Simon’s expression doesn’t lighten when he finds what he wants. The drawer won’t go back in its slot, so he shakes it and the whole dresser lurches.
“Why would they come for us?” I ask.
Flicking off his towel, he steps into his underwear. Now I see why he’s been favoring his leg: the skin is purple. Something has been cinched around the muscle.
“Don’t say it,” he says, seeing that I’ve noticed.
When Secretariat men enter the world of cocktail receptions and three-fork dinners, they feel they’ve betrayed the spirit of the priesthood. So they turn to old solutions. Some whip themselves. Some wear hair-shirts or chains. Some do what Simon has done: tighten a cilice around their thigh. These are quick medicines for the pleasures of embassy work. But he should know better. Our father taught us the Greek way: fasting, prayer, sleeping on a cold floor.
“When did you—?” I begin.
“Don’t,” he snaps. “Just let me get dressed.”
There’s no more line on the reel. We need to get out of here.
Peter appears in the doorway, holding a mountain of dinosaur sleepwear. “Is this enough?” he says.