I had to admit he was right. We stepped into the front room.
The floor was laid with an exquisite Turkish carpet that covered the entire surface, and to the left and right were long simple wooden shelves attached to the walls with benches tucked underneath. If there hadn’t been votive candles covering the shelves, you might have thought you’d stepped into a Turkish tea shop. Except for the exceptionally old bricks and beautiful arches, that was it.
We walked through another open archway into the second room of the two-room house, where an ancient statue of the Virgin stood atop a white marble altar under an arched hearth. A very large, intricate silver crucifix on a metal stand stood to the right and slightly behind the altar, which was laid with a pristine white cloth embroidered with crimson. Two large candles were burning in metal candlesticks on either side of the statue, and a little bouquet of flowers stood in front.
The priest gestured for me to kneel down on the marble kneeler at the altar. I hesitated. I was already shivering uncontrollably, and kneeling on cold, hard marble was hardly what I wanted to do, but I knew that if I wanted to hear the rest of the story, I’d have to do the bossy old guy’s bidding.
He gestured again, slightly annoyed that I hadn’t jumped to his command immediately. Shaking as though I were dropping into some kind of hypothermia, I nonetheless managed to ease between him and the crucifix and knelt down.
I bowed my head and put my hands together on the freezing cold altar and waited for him to continue. Instead, a horrible pain—a blow?—to my head felled me. I felt a blanket go ’round my shoulders, heard the gate come down and the door lock, as the room went dark.
24
My brain felt as though it were swelling rapidly inside my head, squeezing the skull to bursting.
I heard the front grate opening, even though I didn’t remember that we’d ever pulled it closed! Then the noise stopped, but a blinding light began pouring in under the door. It looked as though the sun itself had melted and was dripping liquid light that was crawling toward me.
The wooden door suddenly swung fully open, and the whole room filled with a light so unbearably bright that the air itself became one with the light.
Then I saw them. Standing at the threshold bathed in the frightening, glorious light were three men. And each was holding a box.
It’s a dream. It’s just a dream. Calm down. You must have gone into hypothermia or shock. Doc said you had endometriosis back when you were trying to conceive. Did you get an early, heavy period? No—not due for at least two weeks. The priest will call an ambulance. Just a dream …
It was almost harder to see in the blinding light than it would have been in the pitch black, but I could make out the silhouette of a man standing over me. Not one of those from the doorway. This man was wearing fatigues with a bandolier of bullets strapped across his chest, a rifle and a semiautomatic pistol in his hands.
Iraq 2005? No, that was long ago. But still, he’s not an American soldier. I know that.
I was shivering, that I knew, when the man spoke.
“Father—don’t do anything foolish.” I moved my eyes until they honed in on another man in the room, a young priest. It wasn’t Father Paulo—I couldn’t see him anywhere.
Sadowski? No, Sadowski’s dead. Dead. I think I killed him. No, no. Not me.
The three figures in the doorway were still standing without moving a muscle. Like department store displays.
Don’t move; he thinks you’re dead. He walks over and around you as though you’re just an overturned piece of furniture.
“Hand them over, Father. I don’t want to kill you.” His accent was undetectable. “But you know I will, and I’ll take your pals here with me.”
I could see that the priest was holding three boxes, one on top of another. “These are just gifts…” the priest said. “Gifts. They brought—”
“Hand them to me,” the soldier said again, aiming the gun between the young priest’s eyes.
“Your guns are useless here,” the priest replied in a surprisingly haughty way, as though he weren’t about to die. “Are you blind, man? Don’t you see who our visitors are?” he said, gesturing toward the men in the doorway.
“Hand them to me or you may detonate or spread whatever is in the boxes. You will kill the Baby!”
Oh, God. Has someone taken a baby into the house? I hear no baby!
He turned to look aside. I could see the outline of a woman standing there. She seemed to be wearing a burqa and was standing stock-still.
Someone else was moving into my line of vision—but it/she/they were crawling on the floor. It was a young girl, blood seeping down her legs. Her tiny white nightgown was transparent with sweat—and occluded with blood. The poor little thing was whimpering but was so weak even her cries were barely audible.