Relic of Time (13 page)

“The fear of death,” Jason had said, summing his neighbor up.

“That bourne from which no traveler returns.”

“Because the traveler has ceased to exist.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps! Do you have doubts?”

“A thousand difficulties do not make a doubt.”

It was a quote from Cardinal Newman and it had taken Phelps back to the
Apologia
. Not that he had ever been far distant from it. If Newman's account of his conversion was the best there was, faith was built on sand, on a void, but it remained a fascinating exercise in self-deception. He must urge Catherine to get to know Frater Leone. There is no victory without an opponent.

“Don Ibanez showed me the basilica he had built,” he told the priest.

“He has a great devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

Phelps had been almost ashamed to think that the targets of his polemical books were all across the sea when only a few hundreds of miles to the south was the most influential superstition in the Americas. Frater Leone had brought him books and now Phelps was knowledgeable enough. The fable was both like and unlike so many others.

And then had come the outrage in Mexico City, the image stolen by a band of gunmen. Phelps had been as indignant as Frater Leone. The theft was not an attack on all that image stood for; it was simply a ploy in some anti-immigration nonsense. Let the masses indulge in their superstitions. Jason Phelps had no expectation that such devotions would disappear. They had a role to play. His own writings had been aimed at the intelligentsia, those with a capacity to understand. Apparently Don Ibanez was not among them. So be it. He had no desire to bait his neighbor. Let the simple think that their incredible beliefs and practices were credible. That did little harm, and some social good. But it was essential that those with minds acknowledged, at least among themselves, that nonsense was nonsense. That was the only solid basis for tolerance. Phelps had been even more outraged by the disappearance of Don Ibanez. Oddly, Frater Leone, unlike Clare, had taken the kidnapping calmly.

“No harm will come to him.”

“Because you are praying for him?” The old anger flared up.

“That, too.”

Phelps decided that the priest was not a foe worthy of his steel. He told Frater Leone he was a Stoic. “In the immortal words of Doris Day,
que será, será.”

“Providence is not fate.”

“Indeed it isn't. Fatalism is rational.”

He had followed events, on television and in the newspapers, the great deceivers. What an ass Theophilus Grady was, in his nineteenth-century getup, Teddy Roosevelt redivivus. The man made one long for the return of the death penalty. Even better, when the man was arrested they should deliver him up to the mercies of the Mexican mob.

And now Don Ibanez was back. One could almost believe that the old hidalgo had been rejuvenated by all these events, despite the anguish they must cost him. Imagine, popping off to Mexico on the spur of the moment. By contrast, Jason felt rooted in his retirement home.

The second night, sipping wine, Catherine had told him of her most recent affair, mindless days in Chicago with a man she had known when they were young. There was no need for her to describe those days of wild passion, even if she had been inclined to do so. He could sense her carnal appetite, the eager despair of the would-be libertine.

“He was killed in Mexico City, Jason. He had gone to the shrine, no doubt out of remorse. It is awful to think of oneself as an occasion of sin, but I am sure that was his judgment of me.”

“Nonsense.”

Seneca had been right about sensual pleasure. After many years, Phelps had come to agree with the old Stoic. The pleasures of the flesh cannot satisfy and invariably they bring on unpleasant complications. Hilda had been a complacent wife but of course she must have suspected. But his affair with Myrna had been too much. In his passion, he had become careless, almost taunting his wife, gone now to where betrayed wives go. And all of us, eventually. Seneca had recommended the pleasures of the mind. Moderate catering to the fire of the flesh, to be sure, but keep it cool, as students would say. Having Catherine in the house brought back wistful memories of the desires of the flesh.

Clare regarded Catherine as her replacement and so the two women worked well together. One afternoon, Clare took her home to show her the hacienda and of course the basilica.

“Basilica!”

“It's the exact replica of a church in Mexico.”

“Where the picture was stolen?”

“I'm praying so hard that it will be returned unharmed.”

Catherine had fallen silent, her eyes fixed on the basilica.

“Would you like to see it?”

A nod.

Inside, Catherine drifted in a trance toward the altar and stopped. When Clare came up beside her, she found the older woman weeping. She would not have expected such religious devotion of her. Why? Because she had volunteered to help Professor Phelps? But she worked for him herself. Clare helped Catherine to a pew.

“My lover was killed here.”

“Here!”

“In Mexico City. When the picture was stolen. He tried to stop them. . . .”

Of course people had been killed at the time; it seemed awful not to have remembered that. Now Clare did and she remembered as well reading of the American who had confronted the thieves and been shot down in consequence.

“He's a martyr,” she declared.

“He's dead.” Catherine looked toward the altar. “Is that a copy of the picture that was stolen?”

“Yes.”

Catherine took a deep breath, as if to prevent herself from crying again. Clare said, “Let's go outside. But say a prayer for him first.”

Catherine swung on her, angry. “I don't pray!”

Clare was stunned. They did go outside then, in silence, and Clare suggested going into the hacienda for tea. “Or a drink, if you want one.”

“Yes, I do.”

Clare led her to the sideboard, so she could make her own drink. But all Catherine did was fill a glass half full of rum and bring it to her lips. She looked at Clare over the rim of the glass. After tasting the drink, she said, “I'm sorry.”

“Tell me about it.”

“About what?” She was angry again.

“You said he was your lover.”

“That's a fancy word for it, as fancy as calling what we had an affair.”

Catherine drank more rum and then they went onto the veranda and sat.

“He was someone I knew when we were kids. He was a writer, so I became aware of him. His wife died and I wrote him. Then there were telephone calls. So we met in Chicago. Three days.” She bit her lip, as if to stop herself from saying more. “Afterward, he went on pilgrimage to that shrine and was killed.”

“Oh, Catherine, that's so sad.”

“He believed all those things. He wore a medal. . . .”

Clare wanted to tell her again that the way he had died did make him a martyr, at least she thought it did. She would not have wanted to try to explain it to Catherine.

“You're not Catholic?”

“No!”

“But he was?”

She nodded. “I was, too, long ago.”

There must be things to say in such a situation, but Clare could not think what they might be. To fill the silence she began to talk about George Worth. Whether in relief to have the subject changed or because she was interested, Catherine listened avidly. When Clare described the Catholic Worker house, Catherine said, “I don't blame you.”

“I blame myself.”

Before that afternoon, Clare had regarded Catherine as a self-possessed professional woman, poised, successful. Now they were two women, disappointed in love, sharing their stories.

“And so you came here to work with Professor Phelps. Had you known him before?”

Catherine told her about her friend Myrna, whose doctoral dissertation had been directed by Phelps. “He can help me more than I can help him.”

“Help you?”

“It's a long story.”

After she had taken Catherine back to Professor Phelps's house and returned home, Clare thought about the strange conversation they had had. The man she called her lover had been gunned down in the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He had been a Catholic, and Catherine said she had been one, too, long ago. Suddenly Clare was filled with dread at the kind of help Professor Phelps might be to Catherine.

I don't blame you,
Catherine had said when she told her that she couldn't face life in a place like the Catholic Worker. No doubt she was just being kind or polite, but, remembered, the remark did not console. Catherine had also said that she didn't pray, that she had been Catholic once, and far from being ashamed of what she would not call her affair with the man who had been killed in the basilica in Mexico City, she clearly regretted that it had ended. It was even clearer what she thought of a man who, in remorse, had made his fateful pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe. All that made Catherine's sympathy feel like an accusation.

Her father's understanding of her return home was different. For him, people were called to different vocations and that was that. His own vocation consisted of wealth and ease and enormous holdings in Napa Valley, the deference of all. . . . She stopped. How many wealthy men were there who lived as her father did? He was proud of his property and had made it far more prosperous than how he had received it, but in a way George Worth probably could never understand, Don Ibanez was poor in spirit. Clare had no doubt that if tomorrow he lost everything, he would not lose the simple devotion that had led him to construct a replica of the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the grounds. If God's will had made him the heir of wealth, God's will could make him poor, and he would continue to say his prayers and show devotion to Mary. Her father, she realized, could very well reconcile himself to the kind of life George led.

Thus everything returned her to her sense of shame that she had turned away from the life the man she loved was resolved to lead.

In Congress the usual cacophony went on, expressions of outrage, condemnation, demands that something be done, pleas for caution and prudence. Negotiations were urged. Negotiations with whom? The Mexican government disavowed any part in the skirmishes along the border as if it was simply a squabble among drug dealers. It was a further insult to suggest that there was any official sanction for what was going on. Senator Gunther from Maine and a half dozen apoplectic patriots demanded a lightning strike by the Marines to clear up the southern border once and for all. The White House insisted that progress was being made. Progress!

Theophilus Grady smiled. What a sorry bunch members of Congress were, and of course the administration continued being the administration, all its attention on the Middle East. The whole spectacle made Theophilus Grady even more pleased that he had taken the matter into his own hands.

Morgan said, “I'm glad we struck our camps.”

We? Our? But Grady only said, “The Minutemen are doing all right.”

They were installed in the mountain redoubt of one of Grady's financial supporters, Dougherty, a zealot from Pocatello who had three television sets on in the hope of getting news of the fighting. Dougherty had a huge battle map installed in the front room, next to the fireplace. But news from the various fronts was scattered. It was a harmless pastime. Grady's men among the Minutemen kept him informed. There was guerrilla warfare going on across much of the Southwest but casualties were low. Except at Gila Bend, Arizona, where a band of Latinos had emerged from the back of a semi and wiped out the Minutemen who had retreated to that city.