Acts of Faith (51 page)

“They rant about ‘the triumph of the proletariat,’ ”
the Cardinal stated with irritation. “It sounds like something from
Das Kapital.
”

The pontiff then declared in quiet, measured tones, “I am convinced that the true Armageddon will be between the soldiers of Christ and the dark forces of Marx.”

“The Brazilians are on the verge of rebellion,” von Jakob continued. “The priests stirring up the peasants are encouraged by some of our most charismatic theologians, especially the overesteemed Professor Ernesto Hardt.”

Tim nodded. “I’ve read a few of his articles. He’s certainly a persuasive advocate for reform.”

“ ‘Reform’ is the key word,” the German pronounced. “The man thinks he’s another Martin Luther. We’re most disturbed by the rumor of a book he’s preparing. They say it could be the rallying cry the Brazilians are waiting for.”

A voice at the other end of the table inquired, “I still don’t understand, Franz. Why can’t your office simply order him into penitential silence? This certainly proved successful with his countryman, Leonardo Boff.…”

“No, Hardt’s too dangerous,” von Jakob responded. “Unless we handle him carefully, he’d leave the Church—and God knows how many thousands he’d take with him.” He turned to Tim and asked, “Do you have any idea of the inroads the Protestants are making?”

“It seems more like a tidal wave,” the new archbishop acknowledged. “I’ve read a report estimating that every hour of the day, four hundred Latin American Catholics leave the Faith.”

There were murmurs of distress from all around the table.

Von Jakob continued to address Tim. “It is for this reason that you must persuade Hardt not to publish his book. I needn’t tell you how important this assignment is.”

Timothy had led a sheltered life. Even as far as Church politics was concerned, he was an innocent. But this did not mean that he was without scruples, and the
idea of suppressing a book—any book—struck him as morally repugnant.

He wondered if George Cavanagh would have accepted this assignment. And he wondered something else.

“With respect,” he asked, trying to hide his discomfort, “how did you come to choose me?”

“For a diabolical genius like Hardt, we needed a very special envoy. When I called Archbishop Orsino in Washington, he unhesitatingly suggested you.”

“But are you aware that I don’t speak a word of Portuguese?” he asked.

“You are fluent in Latin, Italian, and Spanish,” said the Cardinal, holding up a document that was obviously part of Tim’s dossier.

His Holiness added affably, “I’ve had occasion to learn a few words for my South American journeys. And with no disrespect to our Lusitanian brothers, I found that to speak Portuguese, you merely have to talk Spanish with pebbles in your mouth.”

There was a ripple of appreciative laughter.

“In any case,” von Jakob continued, “my Congregation has expert language tutors whose total immersion technique would be the envy of Berlitz. I have no doubt that in three months you will be speaking Brazilian Portuguese like a native.”

“There is only one problem,” His Holiness added good-humoredly. “You then have to discover
what
to say.”

On this note, the breakfast was adjourned.

As the princes of the Church dispersed to their several domains, Tim followed Monsignor Murphy to his office, which served as a sentry post for the pontiff’s inner court.

The papal secretary explained that Tim’s linguistic inculcation would consist of three daily four-hour sessions, each with a native Brazilian priest. They would even remain with him during meals, making sure only Portuguese was spoken.

“After that,” Monsignor Murphy joked, “you can relax with some light reading—like the history of Brazil.”

“Thank you, Monsignor,” Tim responded. “But something tells me these language lessons will be less of an ordeal than what comes after.”

The papal secretary hesitated, and then lowering his voice, said, “Your Grace, may I tell you something in confidence—as one Irishman to another?”

“Of course.”

“I think you should know that you’re not the first legate to be sent to Ernesto Hardt.”

“Oh,” Tim replied, “and what happened to my predecessor?”

Murphy’s answer was laconic.

“He never came back.”

Though she was determined to keep the enclosed picture, Deborah knew she should have burned her precious letter. Was not the photograph enough? Could not she feed her soul merely by looking at his picture and letting her heart provide the text?

Yet some inward force compelled her to hold on to everything that Danny had sent. And even afterward it was not hard for her to comprehend why she had merely placed these documents in the top drawer of her desk.

She had spent the fourteen years since Eli’s birth desperately searching her heart to find the proper words. Now, she had them. But like a coward—or so she later thought—instead of facing him to let him know the truth, she simply left the letter where he was certain to find it.

Nor did it take long.

The following evening, Eli did not appear in the refectory for dinner.

At first, Deborah merely thought he had—yet again—stayed late with Gila at her kibbutz. But when she got home and discovered Danny’s letter crumpled into a ball in the center of the floor, she called her son’s girlfriend, who only compounded her dismay by saying that Eli had not even been in school that day.

Deborah hung up and ran to share her anxiety with Boaz and Zipporah.

To her surprise and relief she found that Eli was at their
srif.
And judging by the thickness of the cigarette
smoke, the conversation must have been going on for several hours. Her son stared at her, his angry eyes burning with betrayal.

“Eli—”

He turned his back to her.

“You have every right to hate me,” she said helplessly. “I should have told you long ago.”

“No,” Boaz interceded. “We’re all to blame. As I’ve been trying to convince him since he got here.
We
were the ones who put you up to it.”

Zipporah nodded wordlessly.

Eli began to vent his rage, starting with his “grandfather.”

“How could you do this? How could you desecrate your own son’s memory?”

This at least was something to which Boaz could respond.

“I—we did it as an act of love.”

“Love,” the young boy sneered. “Who for? Some Christian that my so-called rabbi mother went to bed with?”

“Eli!” Deborah snapped. “You have no right to talk that way.”

“Oh, no? You should be ashamed.…” His rage continued though he had exhausted speech.

It was Deborah’s turn to try to make him understand.

“Eli, I am ashamed. But only for lacking the courage to tell you. There’s one thing I insist you understand because it’s why you came into this world.” She paused and then continued softly, “I loved your father. He was kind and good—and pure of heart—and I swear to you our love was mutual.”

Eli turned to look at Boaz and Zipporah. Contrary to his expectations, they both nodded.

“Your father was a
mensch
,” Boaz asserted.

“Which ‘father’ do you mean? Your son or … my mother’s ‘priest’?”

Again, Eli’s piercing stare took in all of them. Deborah was paralyzed, but Boaz answered passionately.

“I don’t have to tell you what a man our son was. You’ve been hearing that for fourteen years. The only lie we ever told you was that he’d been your father. And I tell you frankly, Eli, even if you cut me dead from this day on, I’ll always be grateful for the time you let our boy live on in you. And now,” he said, “I want you to apologize to Deborah. She barely knew him—and for that part of the lie your anger rightfully should fall on me.”

Eli was confused. “But, Boaz,” he stammered, “I … I’m not angry at you.”

“Why?” the old man countered. “You mean you hate Deborah because your father was a Christian? Dividing the world into ‘them’ and ‘us’ is the kind of twisted thinking that created the Holocaust. I have the right to say this because that arbitrary hatred lost me my parents
and
my son. The most important thing is not to be a Jew or a Christian, but to be good. Your father—whom I knew—was good.”

At last Deborah found her voice.

“He still
is
,” she said with quiet strength. “Tim is still alive. And now I owe it both to Eli and to Tim to have them meet each other.”

“Never!” the boy shouted. “I never want to meet that man.”

“Why?” Deborah demanded angrily. “You’ve been castigating all of us for sheltering you from the truth. What are you afraid of now—that you might like him?”

“How could I after what he did?”

“No,” Deborah exploded. “You’re wrong if you imagine he abandoned me. He offered to … leave the priesthood … live in Jerusalem. And afterwards I never told him about you. He still has no idea.”

A look of consternation crossed the boy’s face as Deborah continued.

“God knows I love you, Eli, and I’ve tried to be as good a parent as I could. But I realize now that I was wrong. I’ll never forgive myself for letting you grow up without a father.”

The boy’s eyes filled with tears.

Until this moment, Zipporah had only been a witness. Now she spoke in judgment.

“How much longer must I listen to this? How much more can we apologize and flagellate our guilty consciences? We’re all alive. And until yesterday we loved each other like no other family on earth. How could we”—she focused her gaze on Eli—“let a simple piece of paper alter that? Now, I suggest we have a glass of schnapps.” Looking again at Eli she cautioned, “Just a drop for you,
boychik.
And then we’ll sit down and talk until we can remember who we are and what we mean to one another.”

They kept talking through the night. Eventually, when nothing was a certainty except that they all had experienced some sort of catharsis, Rabbi Deborah Luria said to her son, “All right, Eli, when do you want to go with me to Rome?”

The boy replied from the embers of his anger, “Never.”

PART VI

T
im’s mind was playing tricks on him. After ten hours’ flight, the drone of the Varig Airlines DC-10’s engines began to sound as if they were tiring. He asked one of the ever-attentive stewardesses for another cup of black coffee and jokingly suggested that she make sure the pilot had some, too. The young woman smiled at His Grace’s sense of humor and hurried off.

While all the other passengers in the first-class compartment slept, Tim was hard at work preparing for his first mission as papal nuncio. Every time he had been paroled from his linguistic imprisonment, he had gone immediately to von Jakob’s office to study the massive dossier on Hardt, creating his own abridged version for the trip itself.

Born in Manaus on the Rio Negro in 1918, the son of a Swiss immigrant and a
mameluca
, a woman of mixed Indian and Portuguese stock, Ernesto Hardt had been educated by the Franciscans and upon graduation joined their number. After studying in Rome, where he received his doctorate from the Gregorian, he taught in Lisbon until 1962 when he returned to assume the first Chair of Catholic Theology at the newly founded University of Brasília.

These bare facts filled less than a page. The rest of the file consisted of Hardt’s vast bibliography and annotated
critiques by various conservative Vatican scholars. Von Jakob’s initialed marginalia were conspicuous by their frequency and acerbity.

A subsequent section devoted exclusively to correspondence between Rome and Brasilia consisted mostly of reprimands for Hardt’s dissident behavior with polite but evasive replies like, “It is difficult to preach the word of God in a land which He seems to have forgotten.”

Tim continued to leaf through Hardt’s publications—in Spanish, for they had achieved a wide circulation across Latin America. There was no question that they voiced a plea for the downtrodden, but their phraseology, though polemic, was soundly based on Scripture—indeed, on the Old Testament.