The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two (10 page)

2:24

There were piles of photographs. They were everywhere. And they were of him, the child now a man. Well, almost all. One series seemed to have been taken recently and showed Dr. Johanson and Judith in the plaza. They had been shot from a distance, then cropped and blown up. Although the faces were fuzzy, they were obviously meant to be shown to somebody, used as evidence. Dr. Johanson scrutinized his own face, so much older and worn than the image he saw every morning in the mirror. His eyes had a blurry quality that made him appear possessed. He felt uncomfortable, seeing himself this way. Yet he noted his expression hardly varied from one photograph to the next.

Meanwhile, Judith sifted through the photographs of the young man. There were pictures of the mudslide and the miraculous descent down the hill. Until now, they had assumed Claudia had been drawn here by the newspaper accounts of the “Miracle in Mexico,” just as they had. But some of the shots had been taken beforehand, before he’d emerged from the mudslide, unsteady but alive. How could Claudia have known where he was when no one else did? What else did she know?

A week earlier, she’d been spotted, going into a hostel on Calle Altamirano. So they had come here in search of the girl, thinking she would know of the young man’s whereabouts. Since the hostel was only a few blocks from where the young man himself lived, it was logical to assume she was lodging there. They should never have let her go last night. Obviously a mistake. One they hoped to rectify now.

The hostel was presided over by a bearded youth, who wasn’t too scrupulous about who came and went, as long as he got his money up front. The clientele was mostly students, happy for a roof over their heads and a place to smoke pot, undisturbed. He himself appeared to have indulged, when Judith and Dr. Johanson arrived, asking for Claudia.

“I’ll check,” said the youth. He returned a moment later. “
Señorita Claudia no está
.”

“Is she coming back soon?” asked Dr. Johansen.

“Who can tell? All the time, she come, she go.”

Judith let her disappointment show. “We’re her parents.
Sus padres.
I knew we should have let her know we were coming. But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?”

She wasn’t sure she was getting through to him. “Do you mind if we wait for her?”

“Wait as long as you want,” replied the youth, gesturing to a pair of dirty wrought iron garden chairs in the patio.

“Does she usually come back for supper?” asked Dr. Johanson.

The youth shrugged.

“And we bought her a few gifts, too!” Judith moaned, every bit the disconsolate mother, as they took their seats in the patio and prepared to wait. The sun had clouded over and, as often happened in Querétaro with little notice, a light shower began to fall. Judith wrapped her arms around her body and shivered in a slightly exaggerated manner intended to communicate to the youth that she was cold. “I should have put on a sweater today,” she said. “The weather is so changeable.”

“I don’t suppose we could wait in the room?” Dr. Johanson asked, taking out his wallet to indicate that they would, of course, pay for any
molestia
. The youth caught a glimpse of a 500-peso bill and his attention revived. The two Americans appeared respectable enough. More importantly, Claudia was behind on the rent and the 500 peso note would square the accounts.

“Why not?” The youth slipped a key off the ring that hung around his waist and handed it over.

“Thank you for being so understanding.”

“It’s the door to the right at the top of the stairs,” said the youth, pocketing the bill.

They didn’t know what to expect when they entered the room. Least of all so many photographs documenting the young man’s life in Mexico. “What does this mean, Eric?” asked Judith, breaking a long the silence. “It’s like she’s keeping an archive.”

One conclusion was unavoidable. If the young man had left, so had Claudia. But Claudia’s was not a planned departure or the room would have been tidied up, and the pictures filed way. The disorder spoke of her haste. The coffee maker, the only appliance in the room, was still on, the coffee itself long since turned into a thick black crust.

“Judith?”

His companion did not hear him. She was contemplating a large photograph of the young man, looking at something over the photographer’s shoulder. The hair was short and the face was cleanshaven, so it had not been taken recently. But the eyes had not changed. They were so intensely focused inward that they exerted a hypnotic power, drawing the viewer in with a force that made Judith feel as if she were falling into the photograph itself. “Look, Eric. Look how beautiful he is! I never noticed until now.” She held the photograph up against her chest. “Look at him. Look at our savior.”

“Judith, we have to find the girl!”

“I know. But for a second, just look.” They found themselves quietly marveling not just in the young man’s beauty, but also in his very existence. They had helped create him. No, that was not true. But they had
brought
him here, brought him back anew.

“Remember the first picture of him we ever saw, Eric?” Judith asked. “The sonogram in your office. I could barely believe it. It was our first sign that the greatest change the world will ever know had begun. And now, look at him. Vigorous, manly. We were not mistaken. The goal is within reach now.”

Dr. Johanson kissed her chastely on the forehead. “Gather up the pictures. All the evidence of him,” he said.

Judith did as she was instructed, reverently piling one picture on top of the other. She had been in the young man’s presence several times, spoken with him even. Yet these photographs made him seem even more real to her. In her mind’s eye, she saw the paintings and icons that artists had made of his image over the centuries. Now it was cameras and computers and television that would transmit his image to posterity. Emotion overcame her as she worked her way around the room, collecting everything.

“She’s with him, Judith. I know she is,” muttered Dr. Johansen. “I don’t know if they went off together, but I am certain she is with him, whether he knows it or not. It was folly to let her run free, once Yan discovered she was here. Our job is to protect him!”

Women, he thought, had tempted man from the beginning. Eve, Mary Magdalene, Lilith. The examples were legion.

He chose not to share the thought with Judith.

2:25

The crowds thinned out as he headed away from the commercial district and deeper into what was obviously the older quarter of Oviedo. The sidewalk cafes diminished in number and the noise of the city faded to a hum. Then, all at once, the street opened up into the Plaza Alonso 11, and there at the far end, as the farmer had promised, stood the Cathedral of Oviedo, lit by floodlights that gave the stones a golden hue.

The doors were closed at this hour and wouldn’t reopen until the morning. So the young man put his backpack on the ground and dropped to his haunches, not sure what to make of the structure. In its lower reaches, it had a gravity that bordered on solidness. The three massive portals suggested the importance of the ceremonies that took place inside. But as it rose, it gained lightness and fancy and its Gothic origins became more apparent. There was only one tower – he would later learn that money had run out before the twin tower was built. But the cathedral did not seem lopsided for that. The single tower thrust upward irresistibly, one ornate pilaster feeding into another, forcing the eye to behold the most amazing transformation of all: The spire that crowned the tower looked to be made of lace. It wasn’t solid, but filigreed and the night sky shone through the delicate patterns of stone. This blending of stone and sky lent etherealness to the structure that had started out so unimaginatively.

The young man remained there for minutes on end, hardly moving, oblivious to everything else. Mexican cathedrals with their surfeit of gold and silver trappings emphasized the uncountable richness of God’s kingdom. This one struck him as different. The spire seemed to be connecting directly with heaven itself. That connection both exalted and frightened him.

From one of the two outdoor cafes in the plaza that still hoped to pull in some last-minute business before shutting down for the night, Claudia sat observing him. As soon as she spotted him, she’d paid her bill and reached for her omnipresent camera. She had been right: this was where he was coming. Her intuition – well, that’s what some would call it, she thought – had not failed her. From afar, she took a picture of him, silhouetted against the façade of the cathedral. The homecoming!

Exiting the airport terminal in Madrid, fourteen hours earlier, she had a moment of panic when she saw him station himself by the side of the roadway and stick out his thumb. She was even more surprised to see someone pick him up so quickly. But she followed her instincts. She knew where he would end up eventually. So she had rented a car, driven to Oviedo and checked into a hotel. Then she’d gone to the plaza to wait.

She was accustomed to waiting. The church was still open, but she could not bring herself to go inside. That was something she would do for the first time with him.

She took another picture of the young man, still lost in contemplation. How much of the last year had she devoted to him and his life? Enough to have predicted that his story would eventually lead him here! She was the only person who knew he was in Oviedo. What more striking proof did she need that her mission was a just one? And now she would play her part in its culmination?

After about a quarter hour, the young man stood up and shook his arms, as if coming out of a trance. With backpack in hand, he headed out of the plaza, glancing down the side streets, as he went. The second street captured his attention and he proceeded down it. Claudia watched him enter a doorway, dwarfed by a blazing sign that announced the Hotel Ovientense. The lobby was little more than a counter at the foot of a stairwell, but she saw a clerk hand a key to the young man, who disappeared up a narrow staircase.

In a matter of minutes, she was back there herself, having checked out of her own hotel. Grasping the key tightly, she climbed the same claustrophobic staircase, as he had, opened the door to a tiny windowless room, and collapsed on the bed. She was exhausted. But before falling asleep, she couldn’t help wondering if all that separated them now was a thin wall in a cheap hotel.

2:26

The moonlight spilled through the window of the second-floor bedroom in Lowell, creating an oblong of white light that covered the entire bed. The sleeping body of Miz O appeared almost iridescent, without weight, as if at any moment it might float upwards, levitated by a magician’s wand. All the other window shades were drawn, as was the rule. Only the one beside the bed remained open. Day or night, the church down the street remained in view. But for now not even the flicker of an eyelid disturbed the woman’s sleep and the church, cool blue in the moonlight, seemed to belong to another world.

Still, Maria was careful not to make any noise, as she picked up the dinner dishes and stacked them on a tray. The food had hardly been touched. Nothing new there. Miz O barely ate enough to keep a sparrow alive. She placed the tray on the Miz O’s dresser, then after a quick glance at her employer’s inert form, quietly slipped open the top drawer. It contained nothing but folded cotton underwear, but Maria ran her hand carefully around the edges of the drawer just in case something had been secreted there. The second drawer yielded a jewelry box, but the jewels it contained were paste and without value. Just as she prepared to open the bottom drawer, the old woman snorted and Maria quickly backed into the shadows of the room.

Maybe it was the moonlight, reflected off the bedcovers, that made Miz O look different to her tonight. Not ethereal (nothing about the crusty woman was otherworldly). Rather, Maria had the impression she was looking a plaster cast of someone no longer living. Even the bedcovers seemed sculpted in the moonlight. It was, she thought, the rigidity of death she was seeing.

She sensed she should leave the room, before Miz O woke up and asked what she was doing there. But the sight of what appeared to be a corpse, laid out for dissection, carried a hypnotic charge. For the first time, Maria felt she truly understood that the body was merely a shell that housed the spirit. And what a sorry shell it was, too. She wondered at what point, the body stopped growing and started dying. She was only 36, but perhaps the inevitable decomposition of her own body had already begun.

She crossed herself, grateful that she believed in the spirit, a redemptive spirit that transcends death. That was what made life’s travails tolerable. She pitied those who believed only in the reality of the body, which was bound to wither and atrophy, like the sad shell on the bed across the room from her. The flesh was not just weak, as the Bible said, it was fetid and offensive.

“It’s a pathetic sight, isn’t it,” said Miz O, without opening her eyes. “But don’t be disgusted by it, Maria. We both know this body is only dust and ashes.”

Maria stiffened with fear. Was Miz O talking in her sleep? Dreaming? The old woman couldn’t possibly have read her thoughts. Her eyes were sealed tight and the voice was toneless. Still, she had said “Maria.”

“Did you hear me, Maria?”

There she’d said it again! But the body remained frozen.

“Um, I was just cleaning up, Ma’am. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Not to worry. I never sleep. You know that. And it’s good that you look at me that way. You are right. This body, this shell, is a loathsome, earthbound thing. It is only our spirit that soars. Don’t feel sorry for me. There are times I leave this body and soar. When I am free, free of all the weight and filth and the hypocrisy. Do you believe that is possible?”

“Yes,” mumbled Maria, still shaken by this voice that seemed to have surged out of nowhere.

“Good. Because ‘the human soul is so glorious that God has chosen it as His dwelling place.’ Do you know who said that?”

“Yes. Saint Teresa.”

Miz O smiled faintly. “So you read the book I gave you?”

“Some of it.”

“‘Through illness and suffering God calls to us.’ She said that, too. And that is what gets me through the days and, more importantly, the nights. For it is at night when the spirit runs most free.”

Outside the window, a dog began howling. Miz O opened her eyes and swiveled her head toward the window. The howling had a drawn-out plaintive quality to it.

“Listen,” Miz O said, at once alert. “Do you know what he is saying?”

“Who?” Maria shifted uneasily.

“That dog. He comes here often to speak to me. Always outside this window. I’ve been listening to him for months now. He understands me better than anyone. It’s always around this time of night, when his owners are asleep, that he comes.
Owners!
As if any of us can claim to own another living creature! But at night, all creatures are free and that’s when we speak. Lately, he has been coming more often to let me know that my prayers are being heard. And that they will be answered. Soon! I take great comfort in that, although sometimes he reprimands severely me for my impatience.”

She turned to Maria. “Animals are our connection with the divine. Did you know that?”

Before Maria could answer, the dog began to howl again, only this time it was a protracted moan that rose and fell in pitch, punctuated by what could have been high-pitched yelps of joy. The yelps gave way to growling, then short staccato-like barks, then growling again, at which point the moan returned, and the pattern repeated itself.

“What is the dog saying now?” asked Maria, who was both bewildered and unsettled by the sounds coming through the window.

“Oh, this is his song. He wants me to sleep now. A lullaby. So I must close my eyes. I’ve never seen him. But I picture him in my mind, strong and golden with clear, friendly eyes.”

Maria started toward the window. “Do you want me to look for you?”

“No, no,” protested Miz O. “The shell doesn’t matter. Only the spirit. Remember? That’s what you said earlier. I sense his spirit in his song.”

Maria was saved from further puzzlement by the phone ringing down the hall.

“What’s that?” asked Miz O in an abrupt change of voice, as if a trance had been broken.

“My cell phone. I’m, sorry. I usually keep the ringer on low so as not to disturb you.”

“Who would be calling you at this hour?”

Maria paused before answering hesitantly. “Um…probably my son.”

“Your son? I never knew.”

“Oh, yes. He calls me when he can’t sleep. Like all boys his age, he has nightmares.”

“How selfish of me, always running on about myself. I’ve never once asked about you. I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s nothing to be sorry for. You have your own concerns.” The continued ringing of the cell phone made Maria visibly nervous, but Miz O was not about to let her go quite yet. “How old is he?”

“Eight…”

“And alone every night without his mother? That’s not right. You should go to him. Go to him right now. Children need their mothers. Don’t worry about me.”

“No, it’s fine. My sister takes care of him evenings. He’ll see me when I get home tomorrow morning.”

“Well, at least talk to him now. Tell him that everything will be all right. Tell him that even though your body is here, your spirit watches over him, keeping him safe from harm. All of us - you, me, your son - need someone to tell us that.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll call him back in just a second. Let me just clear away this tray. Do you want me to draw the window shade?”

“Oh no. Moonlight is so…healing. I’ll be going back to sleep now. Good night, Maria.”

“Good night, ma’am.”

Balancing the tray on one hand, Maria drew the bedroom door shut and hurried down the hall to her room. What was all this craziness about canine lullabies? And yet, only minutes before, the woman had known exactly what she had been thinking, as if she were a mind reader. She’d come out of a deep sleep - or at least she seemed to be sleeping - and she’d spoken the exact thoughts in Maria’s head. And how could you discount the concern she’d shown, when Maria had mentioned a son. It all left Maria disoriented and confused.

She picked up the cell phone off the bedside table and, although only one person had the number, checked the caller ID out of reflex. She took a moment to compose herself before pressing the button to return the call.

Dr. Johanson’s voice came on the line, as clearly as if he were sitting there beside her. “Maria?”

“Yes.”

“The girl has disappeared. Do you have any idea yet where she might be?”

“No.”

“Has there been any attempt at contact?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“And you haven’t discovered anything at all.”

“Nothing. I’ve looked.”

“Well, we can’t waste any more time, fishing for clues. It is imperative we find the girl, that
you
find out where she is.”

Maria swallowed twice, before asking “How do I do that?”

“I am sure you will find the proper way,” said Dr. Johanson. The urgency in his voice did not escape Maria. “You realize how much is at stake here.”

“Yes, I do. That’s why I’m here.”

“Good. Because your moment has come.”

The line went dead before Maria could reassure him that she would not fail him or the others. Until tonight, she’d had no doubts. In fact, she had to control the impulsiveness that naturally prompted her to action. It was the moments she’d just spent with Miz O that had shaken her and knocked her off balance. She’d have to put their conversation out of her mind now.

It was Sally who had first addressed the old woman as “Miz O.” It was meant to be a good-natured nickname, but Maria had always seen it differently. To use the woman’s full name would be to dignify her, humanize her. Like the warden who identifies his prisoners by numbers only, Maria needed to keep their contact as anonymous as possible. Because that’s what Maria was – a warden -and Miz O was a prisoner in her own home. She just didn’t know it.

Maria acknowledged to herself that she had slipped up tonight. She’d softened, seen beyond “Miz O” to a real person! It was only a misstep, her first, but she had to make sure it didn’t lead to others. She had a task to focus on, one that had to be handled delicately. For in addition to the prisoner, there was another figure in the picture, who would have to be dealt with.

Sally!

The civilian. The bystander. The one who happens to be walking by the bank, when the bomb explodes.