The Book of Q (34 page)

For three more days, as his head cleared, he did what he could, “Baba Pearsic” allowed again to act the priest. Women, children, old men—the latter in the familiar flat hats, wool jackets, and countless layers of clothing—all seemed strangely comforted by him, those who knew they wouldn’t survive the camp eager to talk with him. Not about God or faith, but simply to talk. There were plenty of village
hohxas
wandering about, holy men to handle the more elaborate Muslim rites.

At night, he managed what little sleep he could, trying to ignore the occasional screams within the camp, depravity, like a virus, having spread even to the hunted. It only sharpened his memories. No one ever talked of rape, he remembered. Not because it was a sin, or because it might be too painful for the women involved, but because husbands and fathers thought of its victims as abominations, forever unclean, no matter what the circumstances or who the perpetrator. Proof that barbarism played no favorites.

It wasn’t all that difficult for the “Hodoporia” to slip to the back of his mind.

On the fifth morning, he was in the medical tent, the driver still stretched out on a bare mattress. Pearse had been with him through the latest surgery and half the night. When the most recent dose of morphine began to kick in, Pearse stood and started for the next mattress.

A voice from behind broke in: “I told you you could give absolution.”

The words in English stopped Pearse in his tracks. Not sure if he had heard correctly, he turned. The face he saw nearly knocked him to the floor.

“Salko?” Mendravic was already sidestepping his way through the mattresses, the same immense figure he had known a lifetime ago, his embrace as suffocating as the last one they had shared.

“It’s good to see you, too, Ian,” Mendravic whispered in his ear. He then stepped back, the familiar grin etched across his face. “Father, I mean.”

It took Pearse several seconds to recover. “Salko. What are you—”

“The priest’s outfit suits you.”

Still dazed, he asked again, “What are you doing here?”

“That’s all you have to say?” He laughed.

“No, I’m …” Pearse could only shake his head. Without warning, he pulled Mendravic in and embraced him again. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You, too. You, too.”

When Pearse finally let go, he was no less confused. “I still don’t understand—”

“Fighting the Serbs. I’ve been smuggling people in from Priˇstina for the last few months. Mainly through Montenegro.”

“So why here?” It seemed to be all he was capable of saying.

“Because two days ago, I heard about a ‘Baba Pearsic’ in Kukes—an American who’d been in Bosnia. Slitna, to be exact. Most of the Catholic priests are either in the north or in Macedonia. I thought I’d come and see for myself. And here you are. So, how’s the head?”

“That’s unbelievable.”

“You’ve stayed in one place for a few days. Not so unbelievable. Again, how’s the head?”

“About ninety percent.”

“So, better than it was before.” He laughed.

Pearse was about to answer, when movement from one of the beds broke through.

“You do what you need to do here,” Mendravic said. “I’ll be outside.”

Twenty minutes later, Pearse joined him. They began to walk.

“You make a good priest.”

“You make a good rebel.”

Again, Mendravic laughed. “Don’t flatter me. I’m not with the KLA, but I understand what they’re doing. It was the same with us. Except here, Dayton only made Milosˇevic´ stronger. Until your friends in the West understand that, there’s really no choice but to fight these people.”

“So you never went back to Zagreb?”

“Of course I went back. It never felt right. It wasn’t mine anymore.”

“And Slitna? You knew the people there.”

Mendravic took hold of his arm and stopped. “Slitna?” Pearse began to list names; again, Mendravic cut him off. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Petra didn’t tell you?” Before Pearse could respond, Mendravic continued. “The entire village was destroyed. Wiped out. The day after you left. You were very lucky.”

“‘The entire …’” The news hit Pearse as if it had happened yesterday. “Why?”

The loss seemed no less immediate for Mendravic. He shook his head. “They never really needed reasons.”

“But you and Petra—”

“We were also very lucky. Off getting something—I don’t remember what. Whatever we were so desperate to find in those days. When we came back, it was as if the place had never existed. Except for the rubble. And the bodies.”

“I … didn’t know.”

“Yes. Well … I was sure Petra would have told you—” He stopped abruptly, only now aware of the look in Pearse’s eyes. “When was the last time you spoke with her?”

“Petra? A month, maybe two after I left. Why? Is she all right?”

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s outside of Sarajevo now. Teaching again.” He started to walk. “She has a son.”

Pearse smiled to himself. “So she got married. Good for her.”

“No. She never married.”

Pearse’s reaction was immediate. “My God. Was she—”

Again, Mendravic cut him off. “No. Nothing like that. You didn’t have to worry about that with Petra.”

Pearse nodded.

“The boy turned seven just this May,” Mendravic added, his gaze now straight ahead.

“Really?”

“Really.”

It took another moment for Pearse to understand what Mendravic was saying. Seven years.

Pearse stopped. A son.

The Croat continued on, Pearse unable to follow. 

four

N
igel Harris sat in the breakfast nook of his penthouse suite atop London’s Claridges Hotel, fifteen newspapers piled on a small table in front of him. Nestled in among them stood a cup of weak tea, a plate with two hard-boiled eggs, no yolks, and a bowl of piping hot oatmeal—the same breakfast he’d had every morning for the past twelve years, save, of course, for his recent meeting in Spain. Not that he didn’t enjoy fruits and jams and countless other savories, but the bland diet was all his stomach could abide. His eyes weren’t the only casualties of a military career.

The brief meal with the contessa was still having its residual effects. So be it. He’d hardly been in a position to refuse, the contessa famous for her strict adherence to the rules of hospitality. How and what he had eaten had been as important as what he had said. He’d known that going in. More than that, he truly believed she would have taken a weak stomach for a weak character, and he couldn’t have her thinking that. Thus far, the results of their meeting had more than made up for the few days of discomfort.

Bringing the cup to his lips, he took a sip of the tea, the first always eliciting a momentary twinge in the hollow of his gut. Something to do with acids, the doctors had explained. The sickly sweet taste of bile constricted in his throat, a compression of liquid and air, nauseous tightening gripping at the base of his tongue. He swallowed several times, the saliva only adding to the swell of gastric insurgence. He waited, then took a bite of the first egg. He had trained himself to visualize its path, the malleable white adapting to the contours of his esophagus, down through the center of his chest, every toxin absorbed within its spongy skin. The burning began to dissipate. He ate the second egg. Routine. It had gotten to the point where he almost wasn’t aware of it. Almost.

He pulled the last of the papers from the table and flipped to the end of the A section, the op-ed pieces, with no hint of yesterday’s events. Instead, they offered the usual
New York Times
fare: a Hoover Institution expert on U.S. policy in Kosovo; Safire on Clinton (one more chance to paint Nixon in a softer hue); the mayor on tax restructuring. No doubt tomorrow, things would be different. For now, though, he’d have to settle for the editorials. He’d already made it through fifteen of the world’s leading papers, a mixed bag of responses to the Faith Alliance’s mission statement. He’d saved the
Times
for last. Best to build up his stamina.

The title of the first piece said it all: “Savonarola in a Suit.”

He sat back and read:

Harris glanced at the final paragraph, the historical tie-in something of a stretch, though amusing, a stern reminder of the fate the Florentine preacher had met at the hands of his own followers. Given the response from the majority of papers, however, Harris had little reason to heed the warning. Overwhelming approval. Confirmation of the fifty thousand E-mails that had arrived just in the last two hours.

Not bad for quarter to eight in the morning.

Pearse sat on a slab of rock, the mountainside strewn with countless such mounds, the camp some two hundred yards below. To the east, an artificial lake—courtesy of the Fierza hydropower station—spread out like a wide pancake, serenely smooth within a curve of mountains, the water long ago contaminated, unfit for drinking or bathing, according to the latest Red Cross bulletin. It didn’t seem to matter. The refugees continued to put it to use, dysentery, diarrhea, and fungus acceptable tradeoffs when pitted against their own squalor. He could just make out a small group of women huddled by the shore, too far, though, to see what they were doing. Still, from this distance, it looked quite tranquil, his perch a temporary refuge from the chaos below.

Mendravic sat at his side, silently waiting. They’d been here for over an hour, sitting, staring. Finally, Pearse spoke.

“She should have told me.”

Mendravic said nothing.

“Does he know about me?”

Mendravic started to answer, then stopped. “An hour ago, I would have said yes. Now …” He let the thought trail off. “I thought she’d told you. I haven’t seen them in months.”

Pearse nodded and continued to stare out. His eyes fixed on a clump of burned grass, a spray of blackened roots, only the tips still green. He had no idea what had caused its singular presence. Nothing other than to stare blankly into the charred wound.

At some point—not quite remembering when—he’d reached up and pulled the collar from his shirt. Seeing it in his hand now, he turned to Mendravic.

“Still think it suits me?”

Mendravic waited, then answered. “What are you really doing here, Ian?”

“That’s a very good question.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Whatever Mendravic had meant, Pearse had been asking himself the same question for the last hour, his only answer one that seemed to define the past eight years of his life.

Running.

Not that he’d known about Petra and the boy, not that he could have known. But whatever he thought he’d find in the church hadn’t really been there. Not for a long time now. Granted, he’d never lost his faith in the Word, in its power—he did have that—but it didn’t make much sense to be a servant of the church when the church itself was causing all the misgivings. He couldn’t help but wonder: Except for a collar and an address at the Vatican, how different had he really turned out from his dad? Priest or not, he’d made a habit of keeping everything at a distance. He’d abandoned Bosnia and Petra to become a priest. He’d abandoned Boston to become a scholar. He’d abandoned Cecilia Angeli … What reason this time? Kukes was simply one more noble distraction in an
all-too
-predictable pattern. And one that rang equally hollow.

His devastation at hearing of his son had nothing to do with the profligacy of a priest, the corruption of canon law, the depravity of mortal sin. It had to do with a boy, a woman, and a man. And the realization of a life lived in flight.

“You’re not here because you came to help the refugees,” said Mendravic, as if having read his mind.

Pearse slowly turned to him. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t really belong here, do you? The ICMC had no record of you. And the Vatican thought you were in Rome. It looks as if you simply appeared out of nowhere.”

“You contacted Rome?”

“I had to make sure I had the right priest, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to trek halfway across Kosovo for the wrong one.”

It took Pearse several moments to answer. Somehow, the mention of Rome brought him out of himself. He looked at Mendravic. “I have to get to Visegrad.”

The sudden shift caught Mendravic off guard. “What?”

“And then you have to take me to Petra.”

Before Mendravic could answer, Pearse was on his feet. “You’re right. I didn’t come here for the refugees. And I let myself forget that.”

Without waiting, he started down the mountain.

Via Condotti on a summer afternoon is, more often than not, a swirl of wall-to-wall people. The spill of tourists from the Spanish Steps combined with the surge of shoppers on the Corso take it to critical mass at around 4:00
P.M
., not the moment to be fighting one’s way toward a building nestled at its midpoint. Poor timing, to be sure, for Arturo Ludovisi, whose plane from Frankfurt had been delayed just long enough so that he now had the pleasure of experiencing Via Condotti at its most lunatic. Still, given the ledgers he had taken with him, he knew it was best to deposit them back in the safe as quickly as possible.

Pressing his way through the crowd, he arrived at the stoop of number 201, a building remarkable for its ordinariness, four floors of
gray-black
brick squeezed in between two elegant boutiques, men’s apparel draped over faceless mannequins. The shops’ interiors mirrored that austerity, stark walls, hardly any clothing in sight. Ludovisi had never understood the point.

As he fished through his pocket for the key, he carefully glanced around to make sure that no one was taking any special interest in him. Satisfied, he turned the handle and stepped inside.

The smell of damp wool wafted up to greet him as he shut the door. He turned on the overhead light, the dilapidation of the place brought into clear focus. Beyond the tiny foyer, a narrow staircase labored up to the second floor, a pronounced sag matched by an equally crumbly banister. Matted brown carpet, worn and stained, stretched taut along each step, enough of a cushioning, though, to mute the creaks and squeals from the wood below. Along the walls, strips of blue-and-white wallpaper—flowers and vases, as far as he could tell—vainly tried to brighten the hall. Years of cigarette smoke had smeared the pattern with a yellowish brown film, relieving it of all such responsibility. All in all, a grotty little cave, four floors high.

And yet, if just for a moment, the place managed to transport Ludovisi to another seedy little hallway, another building now long torn down, the sounds of screeching violins and crackling trumpets filling the air. The tiny
conservatorio
in Ravenna of il Dottore Masaccio, the man’s enormous foot pounding out the meter, thick fingers stabbing at the notes on the page, an ominous stare as the young Ludovisi tried again and again to master the dreaded triplet, always to no avail. He always
seemed better in two-two time. Room after room of young virtuosi, all but a select few with the talent only to frustrate the great maestro.