I believe in my brother as I believe in nothing else on this earth, except for the love of this little boy. And I will never abandon either of them.
So let this be the lesson between us. What I do for Simon, I would do for you. There is one law under God. And it is love.
This is love.
Peter cries, and I hold him. Not until he falls asleep will I let him go.
SLEEP WON’T COME FOR me. In the middle of the night I walk out to the living room and sit on the couch. I stare out the window at the moon. I pray.
Before dawn I put the moka pot on the stove. The brothers next door have already showered by quarter to seven, when I ask them to stay with Peter again. On the kitchen table I leave his favorite superhero cup beside the plastic bottle containing the last of our Fanta. Then I write a note, choosing from the words I know he can easily read.
Peter—
I have gone to help Simon. I will be back as soon as I can. If you need to talk to me, Brother Samuel will let you use his phone. When I get home, you and I will call Mamma. I promise.
Love,
Babbo
I look at those words again—when I get home—and they choke me. I’m so glad to be back under this roof. This apartment has been in my family for more than twenty years. It’s the only place where I still feel the presence of my parents. And yet I know: Boia could find a way to take it from us. To reassign it to another family. Even Lucio could not stop him. Boia could have the pre-seminary fire me, forcing me out of the Vatican economy. Peter and I would lose our Annona pass, so that we couldn’t buy our food tax-free; our gas privileges, so that we would have to pay almost double for fuel in Rome; our parking pass, so that we could no longer afford to have a car at all. John Paul pays a little extra to all his workers with children, and if I were to lose that, too, along with my job, then Peter and I would have nothing. My savings would last us only a few months. What I’m about to do is right. I know that. But I beg God not to let Peter suffer for it.
On my way to the palace, archbishops roll by in chauffeured sedans. Lay workers race past on Vespas. Nuns pedal bicycles. I hurry through the crosswalk on foot, fighting the consciousness of my own smallness. At the first checkpoint the gendarmes sneer when I say, “I have a meeting with Cardinal Boia.” But they make the phone call and I’m on the list. Wordlessly they let me by.
My heart thumps as I reach the Secretariat courtyard. I don’t know where to go next. Gianni said there was an archway leading to the private courtyard and the elevator. But that archway is sealed with huge doors. I have to backtrack and take the only other elevator I know, down by the Secretariat offices.
The doors open to a different world. These hallways are five hundred years old. They were built to giant scale, two hundred feet long and twenty-five feet high. Their ceilings were painted by Raphael. The priests who march by are Secretariat men, former prefects of their seminary classes, former stars in their home dioceses, men who found the language training at the Academy no harder than the etiquette classes. Even so, many of them won’t cut it. The motto here is that a new door opens every time you push another man out a window. I think to myself that Simon never belonged here. He could wipe the floor with these priests. He’s already proven he was made for bigger things. And yet they will push him out the window at the first sign of weakness.
I cross into the final wing of the palace. The last checkpoint of Swiss Guards makes its phone call. I’m now a hundred paces from seeing Simon. I keep the thought of him with me at every step. Otherwise the idea of what I’m doing terrifies me.
A priest-secretary greets me at the door. He’s thin as a staff, with a cassock so expensive that the fabric shimmers like liquid silk. His hands are clasped in the half-begging, half-praying pose that Secretariat priests use to keep people from embracing them. He gives me a fraction of a bow, then leads me into a library that nothing, not even Lucio’s palace, has prepared me for.