The Fifth Gospel(194)

            Peter stares at it. His face changes. His lips curl back.

            I look down. It’s the picture of Michael with his nose broken and eye blackened. The sight makes Peter start crying all over again. I grit my teeth and push the photo back into my wallet.

            “It’s okay,” I say, pulling him closer to me and staring over his shoulder at my watch. The exhibit begins in forty minutes. “That man,” I lie, “just has a bloody nose.”

            But Peter’s body is stiff. It trembles fiercely.

            “Babbo,” he whispers, crowding himself deeper into my arms. “That’s him.”

            “What?”

            He digs his face into my shoulder, trying to shield himself completely with my body. In a muffled voice I hear him cry, “That’s the man in our apartment.”



* * *



            I FEEL HOT TEARS wetting my cassock. I feel Peter trying to climb into my lap, trying to envelop himself in my robes. But all I can think is: Michael.

            I have to tell someone. I have to do something.

            I stand, but Peter clings to me. He has fistfuls of my cassock. He won’t let me put him down.

            I reach the phone on the table and call Mignatto, then Lucio. There’s no answer.

            “Peter, let go. I need to bring you back to Brother Samuel.”

            He roars hysterically. When I pull him off me, he battles my outstretched arms, lunging at me. His face is sheer panic. I’m abandoning him.

            I close my eyes. Calm myself. Kneel.

            “Come here,” I say.

            He runs into my arms with so much force that it almost knocks me over.

            “You’re safe. Babbo’s here. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

            I stroke his hair. I squeeze him. I let him cry. But it doesn’t pass. He’s never been so inconsolable. At the tips of my fingers, even as I hold him, I feel the tattoo of my racing pulse. Every passing minute brings the exhibit closer. Michael will be there. I can’t stay here. If I don’t hurry, I’m going to be late.

            I look down at the phone in my hand and can think of only one solution.



* * *



            MONA ARRIVES TWENTY MINUTES later. Peter is still breathing hard. Only the promise of seeing her has made any change in him.

            “Mamma,” he squeaks, and goes to her for a hug.

            Her first instinct is the right one: to sit down on the floor and let him fold himself into her lap.

            “Brother Samuel’s going to come over, too,” I tell her.

            She nods.

            “Go to Samuel’s if you want, but please don’t go anywhere else.”

            She nods again.

            Just seeing him in her arms fills me with guilt. But she doesn’t ask why I would leave our crying son behind. She doesn’t doubt.

            “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I say.

            “Alex,” she says softly, “it’s okay. Samuel and I are going to take good care of him. Just go.”



            MY HEART THRUMS. TIME is wasting. I’m late.

            Gendarmes are posted at the entrance to the Belvedere Courtyard. Over their shoulders I see dozens of black sedans parked inside.

            “Which way?” I say.