Papal Decree (5 page)

The professor stared at the students seriously with his arms crossed over his chest. The women considered him fascinating, the men respected him. He looked about forty and was in excellent physical shape. He never smiled or changed his tone of voice. Always confident. He made them think, challenged them, since this was his job as a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He cleared up doubts with new questions and another point of view. He didn’t give easy answers. Reflection and reasoning were the best weapons for surviving in the real world. They wouldn’t free them from death, but they would prolong their life.

‘The church always finds the solution in Holy Scripture. It’s all there. No one needs to wander lost, because the Bible is also a book of philosophy,’ he explained.

What a waste,
the female contingent thought. Such an attractive person dedicated to the life of the church, a disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a man of God.

Malicious tongues, anonymous sources, not that credible, said he was close to Pope Ratzinger. It was just a rumor, for no one could say if it was true or not.

‘Erotic also, and pornographic,’ a male voice was heard to say, coming from the door, at once revealing a much older man, with white hair, beard, and mustache. His age showed, along with a gleam of playfulness. The smile of a rebellious child who has done some mischief.

‘Jacopo, you never change,’ the professor said accusingly without altering his tone of voice.

‘Were you about to tell a lie, Rafael?’ he said, looking at the class provocatively. ‘The Bible is the first historical, fantastic, science fiction, gospel, thriller, and romance novel since the beginning of time.’

‘Do you need something, Jacopo?’ Rafael asked firmly. ‘I’m in the middle of a lecture.’

‘I beg your pardon for sticking my sensible opinion into these minds instead of what you stick in there … whatever that is,’ he joked. ‘Do you know that after all these centuries and millennia, everything we read in the Bible still has no archaeological confirmation? None. And many of the “characters” ’ – he sketched quotation marks in the air as he said the word – ‘and locations that are cited in this book, so important to so many, are not mentioned anywhere else? Only the Bible mentions them, but since it is the Bible …’ He stopped talking and assumed a serious tone. ‘I need to tell you something.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Obviously not,’ and he left the classroom.

Rafael excused himself from the class and promised he’d be only a minute.

‘What’s happening?’ Rafael asked when he left and shut the door. ‘What is it that can’t wait?’

‘Yaman Zafer,’ Jacopo said.

Rafael’s eyes lit up. Now Jacopo had all his attention. ‘Yaman Zafer?’

‘Yes,’ the older man confirmed.

Rafael turned his back and sighed. Jacopo didn’t see him close his eyes. He might have cried, but he didn’t know how. Life sometimes dries up a person’s eyes, making him weep blood inside instead of water outside.

Jacopo was not the type of man who could be called sensitive. Sixty-six years had set a cloak of rationality over his feelings, shielding him from human emotions … or at least he liked to think so. Rafael couldn’t shield his feelings, but even so he was the coldest bastard Jacopo knew.

‘Do you have any more information?’ Rafael asked, turned back to him again, looking at him with sad, serious eyes.

‘Someone called him in the middle of the night to talk about a parchment. That’s what Irene said. He caught a flight the next morning, and …’ He left the rest unspoken.

‘Where?’ the priest wanted to know.

‘Paris. An old refrigerator warehouse on Saint-Ouen.’

Rafael continued to look at him steadily and then headed for the exit.

‘Paris it is.’

Shimon David was a conscientious old man, or at least he liked to think so. His neighbors didn’t use that word, but substituted another, less complimentary one, but he didn’t know about that, so he wasn’t hurt. For them Shimon was an old busybody, always attentive to the smallest movement on the street and in the neighborhood. If someone wanted to know if a particular person was home or arriving late, Shimon was the person to ask. He would even know whether the delay would be long or short. The limit of his knowledge stretched from one end of the street to the other, and nothing else mattered to him. A widower, he had lived there for more than two decades. All his life he had been a mailman. He could tell a lot about a person from the mail he received. Shimon knew many things about his neighbors, more than they sometimes imagined, because no one wanted to know about him.

The street was in the suburbs of the Holy City. In the distance in the midst of buildings and stores, someone who knew what to look for could make out the gold cupola of the Dome of the Rock, within the walls.

From the same window from which he kept track of his neighbors, Shimon could see his beloved city of Jerusalem, the center of the world.

This afternoon Shimon didn’t appear at his window. His neighbors came home from work tired and didn’t spare a glance to check his absence. They entered their houses as always without looking back, so they didn’t notice whether Shimon was at his window or not.

Movements inside the house of Marian, an old woman of ninety who had died two months before without heirs, caught the zealous Jew’s attention. Perhaps someone had bought the house, which was next door to his. Certainly there had not been any changes or repairs. The three men who arrived in a white van entered the house and installed themselves as if they’d always lived there. The situation didn’t inspire confidence in Shimon. Information was everything.

He knew Marian’s house well. He’d been inside many times when she was alive, crotchety and very gossipy. But he liked to talk to her. She was always someone to talk to. Shimon’s first mistake was not knocking on the front door and, instead, trying a sneaky approach. He circled the house by the first-floor patio, one step in front of the other, careful not to make a noise. The first window was for the living room, and he dared not look in. It was shared by too many people to be empty, and Shimon didn’t want to risk being discovered. Not because he felt he was doing anything wrong, but to fulfill his duty to his neighbor’s belongings that should be passed along in perfect condition to the next owners, whoever they might be. The second window was Marian’s room. She’d moved down to the first floor when she realized she would die earlier if she had to climb the stairs every night. She was worn out by the effort. Marian was a very practical woman. But now was not the time to think about her. His mission was to find out who the intruders were. If they were intruders. They could be just three nice young men to add to the list of new neighbors. It would be a change, since the neighbors were starting to disappear as they moved out or died.

Shimon took another step toward the window, which by coincidence was across from his own, separated by a wall. When he got to the window, the curtains were closed. Damn. He couldn’t see anything. There was light inside, but the curtain was thick. He went to the corner in back. The sun was setting elsewhere. Already it was dark. His heart beat faster. He was too old for this. He heard a muffled noise. Someone was breathing hard … and then a crack. The hard breathing could be his, but the cracking noise wasn’t. He turned around to find the source of the noise and found himself again at Marian’s window. The curtains hid the interior, but let a pale reflection of light out around the sides. He didn’t see shadows. He clearly heard what was going on inside the room. Someone was breathing very hard. Another smack.

‘We don’t have all night, kid,’ a harsh male voice said.

‘I’ve already told you. I don’t know what you want me to say. You’ve got the wrong guy,’ a voice cried. ‘Let me go, please.’

Another crack, very hard, it sounded to Shimon. Chairs scraping and other unintelligible sounds.

‘I’m not going to be so gentle next time,’ the former voice menaced.

‘Do what he tells you, kid. We don’t have much time,’ another, more cordial voice, advised.

‘I’m nobody. You’re mistaking me for someone else,’ the tearful voice repeated.

‘Your name is Ben Isaac Jr.?’ the friendlier-sounding voice asked. ‘Son of Ben Isaac?’

The sorrowful voice didn’t answer.

A blow sounded. Perhaps to the head. ‘Didn’t you hear? Answer!’ the first voice joined in again.

‘I am,’ Ben answered fearfully. ‘Call my father. He’ll pay any amount you ask for.’ His pain was obvious.

The friendly voice started to laugh. ‘This is not about money. No one’s going to ask for ransom.’

‘No?’ Ben asked. He was completely confused.

‘No,’ the friendly voice confirmed. ‘But we want something, obviously. And you’re going to help us get it, Ben. Do we understand each other?’

Shimon was astonished, leaning against Marian’s window. He had to go home and call the police. Someone had kidnapped Ben Isaac Jr., whoever he was. He is terrified, the son of Ben Isaac Sr., who must have something important for mafia of this caliber. Why were they hiding in Marian’s house? Another mystery. One thing at a time. The police first. He walked rapidly toward the street. As rapidly as his age and the strength G-d permitted him. Human life was at risk. When the neighborhood heard about this, there would be an outcry. Shimon passed the window of the living room, and …

When he came to, he was a prisoner in a chair from Marian’s bedroom with a pulsing pain in his neck. Ben was next to him, drooling blood, with his head on his chest. He looked unconscious. Three men were watching Shimon.

‘Who are you?’ the one with the friendly voice, obviously the leader, asked. He was also the shortest.

‘Me?’ Shimon gasped in fear. He couldn’t think from the pain in the back of his head.

‘Yeah, you. Didn’t you hear me?’ He recognized the voice, the more brutal one.

‘I … I … I’m the neighbor from next door.’ What else could he say but the truth.

The one with the pleasant voice smiled and approached him, looking him in the eye.

‘No, do you know who you are?’ he asked sarcastically, while pressing a revolver against Shimon’s head, who closed his eyes and pressed his lips together in panic, a cold shiver going over his spine … the last. ‘Collateral damage.’

The summons arrived at his residence days before, but Hans Schmidt had been expecting it for a long time. The congregation complied scrupulously with every bureaucratic precept without fail, delay, or weakness.

Vienna was having its first cold days. The heat came on, warm clothes were taken out of drawers, and the latest fashions in winter wear were purchased. Hans enjoyed taking his daily walks through the Ringstrasse, indifferent to the freezing rain and cutting cold, filling the air with warm blasts of his breath. He closed his eyes and felt his breathing for a few seconds. He walked with no specific destination, like life itself. It was said that Freud enjoyed similar walking, and the reason was not difficult to understand. Life beat on indifferently. Smiles, cries, someone calling out a name, stores lit up appealingly. Sometimes he stopped by the Café Schwarzenberg to have a cup of hot coffee, and other times to look through the books and newspapers at Thalia.

He found no mention of his case. That wasn’t surprising, since the congregation didn’t publicize its work. Like many others, he considered himself the victim of hidden attacks by certain historians. Some even demanded that Saint Dominic be removed from the official list of Catholic saints. Wretches. They didn’t see the good this man did for the world, a benefit still felt today and in days to come. They demonized a man who saw far beyond the present and stopped at nothing to repel threats to the well-being of the Holy Mother Church. He would be important in the modern world.

Hans was not so obtuse.
Saint Paul, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine would have to be removed from the list along with Saint Dominic,
he thought without saying it aloud.

Like Saint Dominic, Father Hans Schmidt was being judged by similar people in the Vatican. Despite seeing his work suspended for almost a year, he was still a priest. The summons bore his complete name, Hans Matthaus Schmidt, preceded by his title. The congregation usually didn’t eliminate the former titles of the accused. Innocent until proved guilty. Although not officially condemned, he felt as if he were in purgatory, not knowing whether to expect hell or heaven. He knew the congregation would decide. In the words of some reassuring historians, in case of doubt, burn him at the stake. And these days there were many ways of burning without fire.

Hans Schmidt was advised by relatives and friends, ‘Careful what you say or write. It could cost you.’

His friends, the few who remained, were starting to avoid him.
Persona non grata
may have been too strong a term, but what did you call someone who was no longer invited by his social circle and relatives?

His mother would have sympathized if she were still alive. His father was unknown. He had grown up without a permanent male presence in the outskirts of the capital, in Essling, during the Second World War. Everything was excusable in that era, even abandoning a pregnant woman. Fortunately, he didn’t remember those times very well, but he remembered the Café Landtmann and seeing his real father with his wife and three small children one day when he returned from the seminary. What a dedicated father! He didn’t glance at Hans, maybe didn’t recognize him. He tenderly wiped away the kisses of his youngest child, ignoring his oldest there, looking at him, the fruit of another life. He didn’t remember now how he knew he was his father. His mother would have agreed with what Hans said or wrote, even though she was profoundly Catholic and devoted to the good Pope John, God protect him.

The Ringstrasse seemed different to him today. Full of life as always but with different nuances. Or that was his impression. He passed in front of the Landtmann and let himself look inside, as he did on that far-off day when he saw his father. Maybe he would still be there, decrepit, frozen by the years? He never saw him again after that return from the seminary. He wouldn’t be there today. Almost every table was occupied, but nobody fit the description. He was probably sleeping in peace in some cemetery in Vienna. Freud would have enjoyed Hans. Freud would have liked to analyze him there at one of the tables in the Landtmann he frequented. He wouldn’t have a coffee today, or leaf through the books in Thalia, either, or the newspapers.