The Fifth Gospel(216)

            “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.