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.
The courtyard is small. The walls seem immensely high, giving me the sensation of standing at the bottom of a pit. The earth is crossed with shadows. On the opposite side, two guards sit in a glass-paneled kiosk, watching us. But Gugel drives in a circle and returns to the archway, stopping so that my door is opposite an entrance in the wall. When he lets me out, he says, “Father, this way.”
The private elevator.
He inserts a key and operates it himself. When the car stops, Signor Gugel pushes aside the metal grate and opens a door. The flesh of my neck tingles.