Reading Online Novel

The Sixth Station(68)



Blessedly, there was a small buffet laid out for us, so I gobbled down some fruit and yogurt and carried my espresso back to my seat.

“Did you read at all last night?”

“The book? No.”

“Good.” He indicated the plastic bag, and I dug it out again.

As I did so, he tapped his jacket to indicate that he had the test tube on him, and then he pointed to the book. He handed the tube to me. It was out of the box but still surrounded by satin. “It may trigger some memory.”

“Of what?”

He didn’t answer. Obviously, the discussion was over.

I opened the diary to the second entry, which was written on small sheets of lined paper from what must have been a field book, and carefully glued onto sheets of vellum.

“The book was assembled by a master bookbinder in London in 1990,” he said. “These must have been the soldier’s field notes exactly as he recorded them at the time.”

I began to read aloud:

“Day One, Year One. The Log of Yusef Pantera.”

The priest exchanged a look with Cesur, who got up and relocated himself at the back of the cabin. He was packing. Looked like a Glock. Great.

The priest let out a sigh that somehow made me know that he thought I couldn’t have been more pedestrian.

“Continue, please.”

“Yusef Pantera? That’s the man who was named as Demiel ben Yusef’s father at the tribunal—no?”

Jacobi just pointed to the book. And so I continued:

“The Girl, who had spent most of the past eleven months in one long fit of fearful, mournful crying, this day spilled tears of fear, and also of sorrow and of pain. Today the nun and the priest had spilled tears, too—of joy, as they trembled before the Baby.

“Even I, when faced with the wonder and power of the universe, was moved. But nonetheless I kept my own counsel, even as the successful completion of the experiment and the sight of the Child almost overcame me.

“The recording equipment was of course operational inside and out. No sigh, word, accident, gesture, meal, or even bathroom visit could be overlooked. How would history, we often wondered, judge the teenage mother this time, now that there was recorded proof instead of oral history to rely upon?

“Would She still be adored and glorified, or would She be scorned as a selfish, frightened, freakish, used-up kid?”

“He capitalizes ‘She,’ ‘Baby,’ and ‘Girl.’”

Father Jacobi brought me up short. “Yes, yes, please do not interrupt the narrative with questions.” Chastised, I continued:

“As we gathered the equipment, we all silently wondered if ‘it’ would be there. The sign. But, there were things to do first before we would be able to step outside to look.

“Sister Grethe woke the Infant, washed Him again, making Him squall so loudly that even the arrogant priest quipped, ‘He’s got a set of lungs on him, all right. We can probably hear him all the way to Jerusalem!’

“‘The cry heard ’round the world, eh, Father?’ I added. Yes, I was happy that day.

“We’d had a rough time of it, the four of us, during the confinement. I knew the others thought I was the wrong man chosen for the great task, the task of eventually marrying the Girl and becoming human father to the Child.

“And while the other two accepted the decision, they wished it had been different.

“But who were they to question Headquarters? I was appalled that Headquarters had chosen them, quite frankly. I understood their qualifications: She was a master geneticist, and he had wormed his way into the heart of the Vatican without them ever suspecting he was shilling for the other side. Brilliant both—to that I will admit.

“Grethe’s face revealed nothing—it never did—as the three of us admired the strange little light-skinned brown Baby boy with the giant black eyes, the strong little arms, the chubby little legs, and the patch of unruly black curls that sprouted on top of His head like a crown. The Girl was still asleep, which was a blessing in and of itself—even if a man-made one.

“I lifted the Baby’s basket and put it firmly at the center of the wooden rectangular altar that had been placed inside the wide, ancient, brick, arched chapel section of the room. It was in this tiny chapel, in this small house where Mary, the Mother of Jesus Herself, had prayed, had lived, perhaps had died.

“It was the spot for which I and the others before me had been bred so that one day when He returned, we would be ready to serve and protect. It fell to me to fulfill that destiny.

“The altar had been laid with a long white cloth embroidered with a dove carrying an olive branch, the Occitan Cross, the Star of David, the crescent moon and star—a symbol of Islam—which had originally been the symbol of the goddess Diana, whose temple lay about four kilometers from the house.