The Fifth Gospel(6)

            “Far enough,” I say. “I’ll get out here.”

            Guido looks around. “Here?”

            I’m already descending.

            “Don’t forget our deal, Alex,” he calls out. “Two tickets to opening night.”

            But I’m too preoccupied to respond. When Guido is gone, I take out my phone and call Simon. The coverage up here is so spotty that there’s no reliable connection. Just for an instant, though, I hear another mobile phone ring.

            I move toward the sound, fanning my flashlight into the distance. The hillside has been carved into a vast staircase, three monolithic terraces that descend one after another in the direction of the far-off sea. Every inch is planted with flowers arranged in circles within octagons within squares, not a petal out of place. The space up here is infinite. It creates a wild anxiety in me.

            I’m about to shout Simon’s name into the wind, when something comes into view. From up here, on the highest terrace, I make out a fence. The eastern border of the pope’s property. Just before the gate, the beam of my flashlight tangles with something dark. A silhouette dressed entirely in black.

            The wind snaps at the hem of my cassock as I run toward it. The earth is choppy. Clods of mud are turned up, grass roots sticking out like spider legs.

            “Simon!” I call toward him. “Are you okay?”

            He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even move.

            I’m lurching toward him now, trying to keep upright in the slicks of mud. The distance between us shrinks. Yet he doesn’t speak.

            I arrive in front of him. My brother. I lay hands on him, saying, “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.”

            He’s soaked and pale. His wet hair is painted to his forehead like a doll’s. A black cassock clings to his ropy muscles the way a pelt clings to a racehorse. Cassocks are the old-fashioned robes that all Roman priests once wore, before black pants and black jackets came into style. In this darkness, on my brother’s looming figure, it creates an almost ghoulish impression.

            “What’s wrong?” I say, because he still hasn’t answered me.

            There’s a thin, distant look in his eyes. He’s staring at something on the ground.

            A long black coat lies in the mud. The overcoat of a Roman priest. A greca, named for its resemblance to a Greek priest’s cassock. Underneath it is a hump.

            Not in any imagining of this moment have I conceived of something like this. At the end of the hump is a pair of shoes.

            “My God,” I whisper. “Who is that?”

            Simon’s voice is so dry that it cracks.

            “I could’ve saved him,” he says.

            “Sy, I don’t understand. Tell me what’s going on.”

            My eyes are drawn to those loafers. There’s a hole in one of the soles. A feeling nags at me, like a fingernail scraping against my thoughts. Stray papers have blown against the high fence that separates the pope’s property from the border road. Rain has pasted them to the metal links like papier-mâché.

            “He called me,” Simon murmurs. “I knew he was in trouble. I came as soon as I could.”

            “Who called you?”

            But the meaning of the words slowly registers. Now I know the source of that nagging feeling. The hole in those loafers is familiar.

            I step back. My stomach tightens. My hands curl up.