|
By Sandro F. Piedrahita A Spanish priest leads an African prince in suicidal despair on a journey to Christ. “I consecrate myself to God till death, looking on myself henceforth as a slave whose whole office lies in being at the service of his Master.” Saint Pedro Claver Incensed, incensed! Padre Pedro tries to control his ire, lest it be a sin. He cannot believe how horribly the slaves are treated, so much worse than animals. He addresses the captain who has brought them to Cartagena, making no effort to disguise his anger. “If you want to rip them from the liberty of their land, then at a minimum you might treat them humanely when you bring them on their voyage of doom.” “They are blacks without souls,” the captain responds. “They are not baptized Christians. They pray to pagan gods.” “Of course they have souls,” Padre Pedro responds emphatically. “They are made in the image and likeness of God! And you should be concerned about the state of your own soul at this moment. Torturing these innocent men and women for profit will take you far from Heaven!” “Look, father, I did not let you come on board to preach to me. You said you wanted to take care of the sick Negroes and baptize some of the others. So have at it! I don’t need to hear you preach.” Father Pedro looks at the crowded compartment at the bottom of the ship in disbelief. There is barely any space for the Africans to stand, and all the men are shackled together in pairs, sweating in the preternatural heat. There are feces all over the floor, and many are visibly ill, their bodies covered in ulcers or bleeding pustules. There is one man lying on the floor, his left leg obviously suffering from gangrene, and Padre Pedro immediately baptizes him and gives him the last rites before directing two of his assistants, black men he had brought as interpreters, to take him from the vessel to the nearest public hospital run by a group of Carmelite nuns. The next thing Padre Pedro does is give the captives some water, as well as some bread and cheese he has brought with him. When he approaches a young woman cowering in a corner, she tries to move away from him defensively, her face full of fright, and utters something in terror in her native tongue. The black interpreter Padre Pedro has brought with him tells the priest that the woman has asked if he is the man who has come to eat her. “No, little child,” Padre Pedro responds through the interpreter. “I have come to ease your pain, to quench your thirst with the living water.” “What do you mean?” the black woman asks in her African language. “I have come to baptize you in Christ. I know that the Middle Passage is horrible, that you have suffered greatly, more than any human being should suffer, but in a strange and inexplicable way, some good may come from this. Through your suffering, you may come to know the Lord who loves you and has suffered with you. And that is an inestimable bounty.” The woman has no idea what the priest is saying, but her eyes are suddenly less afraid. “Ask if she has ever heard of Jesus,” Padre Pedro tells his interpreter. The woman responds that she has not. “Jesus is the living God, the one who has created everything. He died for you on the Cross many centuries ago.” Padre Pedro realizes she does not understand him. It is always a challenge to try to explain the Faith to recently arrived slaves. Indeed, Padre Pedro thinks, many Spanish Catholics fail to understand the Cross even after years of instruction, sometimes at the peril of their own souls. “Ask her if she believes there is a spirit who has created everything,” he says to the interpreter. “Yes,” the woman answers in Yoruba. “There are many spirits who have created the heavens and the earth, the animals and the humans.” “Well, I am here to tell you there is only one spirit that has created all.” Padre Pedro turns to his interpreter. “Is there a word for God in her language?” “Olorun,” the interpreter answers. “Well, tell her that there is only one Olorun. That there are no other gods other than the One True God. And that He came to earth, became man, and was crucified for our sins.” “There is no word for ‘crucified,’ in Yoruba,” responds the interpreter. “The closest word to ‘sin’ is ‘ese.’” “Tell her that Olorun was killed as a sacrifice to heal the ‘ese’ of every man and woman who turns to Him.” “I don’t think she is going to understand that,” the interpreter tells the priest. “So many men do not understand it,” replies Padre Pedro. “But tell her anyway. By dint of repetition, someday she shall understand. And hopefully she shall throw herself into the abyss of God’s Mercy when she does so.” * * * As Padre Pedro and his interpreters make their way through the throngs, they notice that one man is still in shackles, while all the rest have been rid of their chains in preparation to disembark. He is a very black man, young and muscular, with fury in his eyes. “Why is this man still in shackles while the others are not?” Padre Pedro asks the captain of the ship. “He rebelled in open sea,” the captain responds. “Attacked one of the sailors and then threw himself into the ocean. If our nets hadn’t caught him, he would not be here today. Then he refused to eat, wishing to commit suicide. But we opened his mouth with a speculum oris and the help of a thumbscrew and forced him to eat the yams we had for him. He is a very valuable slave, strong and healthy. We shall obtain a good sum for him at auction. We couldn’t let him just die.” “I wish to speak with him,” Padre Pedro says. Since the African captive also speaks Yoruba, the interpreter can help the priest communicate with him. “What is your name?” the priest asks. “Adesola,” responds the man. The interpreter tells the priest that the name means “a child crowned with wealth.” “Tell him that I am here to help him, to ease his pain.” Adesola laughs derisively. “You can do nothing for me,” he says in his native language. “I was born a prince, and I shall never be a slave. As soon as I am unshackled, as soon as I have the opportunity, I shall take my life.” “Oh, Lord,” says the priest, suddenly alarmed. He realizes this man is in greater need of him than all the rest. “That would be the greatest of sins. Do you understand that?” Adesola laughs again. “Who are you to tell me how to lead my life? Don’t you see my life is no longer worth living?” “You must not lapse into despair,” says the priest. Then he turns to his interpreter. “Is there a word for ‘despair’ in Yoruba?” “There is a word for despair in every language,” replies the interpreter. “Then tell him there is always hope. That hope in God is an antidote to despair.” But Adesola makes a sign with his hand, as if to say the priest’s words are nonsense. “If Olorun has let this happen to me,” says Adesola, “then I no longer believe in Olorun. The only choice is death.” Padre Pedro suddenly hollers to the ship’s captain. “Come here, I need to speak to you!” “What is it?” the captain asks. “Are you going to give me another speech? The man is still in shackles because he’s potentially violent.” “That is not why I’m calling you,” says the priest. “I need to know how much it costs to purchase this captive. I want to take him with me.” “The apostle to the slaves wants to buy a slave? Surely you surprise me, Padre Pedro. I thought you spent all your time railing against the institution of slavery. I thought you loved the blacks more than the whites themselves. Don’t you come to the port every time a slave ship arrives? Don’t you kiss their wounds?” “Don’t worry about that,” flashes Padre Pedro. “What is your price?” “For a slave as strong and young as this, I’d say five-hundred pesos.” “Five-hundred pesos?” replies Padre Pedro incredulously. “It would take me months to collect such an amount.” “I’m sorry, father,” the captain responds. “Maybe you can buy an older captive, if you need a servant. But this young buck will cost you quite a sum.” “What if I pay you the amount a little at a time? I don’t know. I can collect alms. I know some devout Catholics who are rich. Maybe they will help me collect the money for you.” “Why this insistence, father? There are plenty of slaves who are less costly.” “None of them needs me as much as this one does. Don’t you see he is in danger of perdition?” “I don’t know what you are talking about,” the captain answers. “You are imagining things.” “Let me take him with me. I shall have the money for you within a week.” “I don’t know, father. We’re talking about a great deal of money.” “You have my pledge, as a man and as a priest. I shall pay you the full amount in seven days.” “If you say so, father. But if you don’t come up with the money, I’ll have to send the appropriate authorities to reclaim the slave.” “All right,” says the priest. Then he tells his interpreter to address Adesola. “Tell him that I have purchased him. That I will treat him kindly and give him all the liberty he needs. And once I am sure of his eternal salvation, I shall set him free.” The interpreter tells Adesola what the priest has said, and Adesola laughs again. “Even if you set me free, what future will I have? I was born a prince, and the most I can be in this land, even if you liberate me, is a wretched working man.” A week later, Padre Pedro, true to his word, paid off the full amount that was due. Henceforth he would live in his own home with Adesola, who would at once be Padre Pedro’s slave and master. Not for nothing had Padre Pedro sworn, as soon as he was made a priest, that thereafter he would become the “slave to the slaves.” * * * “Prince Adesola.” Padre Pedro, speaking through his interpreter, addresses his new slave as soon as he enters the room where the black man is housed. The priest is bearing a large crucifix in one of his arms and a depiction of Heaven in the other. The black man is startled, not expecting his noble background to be recognized by the white man who has bought him. “Yes,” Adesola answers. There is anger on his face. “What do you want?” “I have come to teach you certain things,” Padre Pio responds. “But first I need to learn about you. You say that you are a prince.” “A very powerful prince. My father commanded an army of more than a thousand men. And I did not live in a hut, as all you white men think. I lived in a palace. I bore a golden crown on my head, and I wielded a golden scepter. I had fifteen concubines.” “How were you captured?” “We lost a great battle, and I became a slave to our rivals, just like my father and mother. They sold us to the Spanish merchants. I do not know the fate of my parents. All I know is that they were not on the same ship that brought me here.” “Well, I want to teach you about another prince, the Prince of Peace. He was also the son of a great Father, the creator of all things.” “I’m not interested in your faith. I once had my own. But all the divine spirits have failed me. Please just leave me alone. Or order me to do what you want. I am your captive after all.” “My purpose is not to enslave you. My mission is to convert you. That is why I purchased you at such great cost.” “You can’t get inside my head!” Adesola replies angrily. “You have bought my body, but my mind is another matter.” “The Lord Christ died for you, for the African as well as the European. I promise you that if you receive Him in Baptism, your load will be less heavy. He’ll help you bear the pain of living in exile in a strange land, far from your principality.” “I have no idea what you’re saying, that someone died for me. Who could you be talking about? Many men died for me in battle, but we were defeated. The only respite for me is death.” “No, no, and then again no!” Padre Pedro is suddenly animated. He shows Adesola the picture of Heaven and tells him that if he is faithful and courageous, he will arrive there and have more riches than any earthly prince, that his suffering in Cartagena will be a long-lost memory. “I’m going to take my life, whether you want me to or not. I don’t see why you really care. To you, I am just another black man, even if you address me as ‘prince.’ Let me jump into a river, and forget about me.” “I understand your despair,” responds the priest. “But there will soon come a time when things will be better. I promise you that, Prince Adesola. God is always with you, even when no one else is.” “God! God! You talk about your white God! I have never seen Him. He certainly wasn’t with me on that ship that traversed the seas and brought me to the land of the white man. He wasn’t there when many of my men died of dehydration, when they were beaten, when so many of our women were taken violently by white sailors. How do you expect me to believe in a beneficent God when all I’ve seen is horror?” Padre Pedro does not fail to recognize that Adesola is a man of great intelligence. The priest thinks that will present him with certain obstacles, but perhaps also with opportunities. Having dealt with heretics, Muslims and pagan slaves, he knows the most intelligent are the most difficult to convert, but that once they are converted, their zeal is all the greater. “What if I were to tell you that your life on earth is but a breath? That your monstrous suffering on that ship for three months is like a grain of sand in the immensity of time? I just want you to think about it. And let me leave this crucifix with you and place it on the wall above your bed. I want you to contemplate it, to think about the sheer brutality of the crucifixion of our gentle God. That is what the Christ was willing to endure for you and for me, for the salvation of all men, black and white alike.” “Are you saying this dead man nailed to the wood is the white man’s God?” “No, that’s not what I am saying. I’m saying He is the God of all.” “I still think it would be better if I were dead,” responds the black man. “I shall return tomorrow, Prince Adesola.” * * * The months pass. Padre Pedro continues to visit Adesola every day in his bedroom, trying to teach him things of God. Adesola’s intelligence never ceases to astonish the zealous priest. In half a year, Adesola has learned how to converse in Spanish almost fluently and can even argue about complicated philosophical questions. He still believes his end must be suicide but has lost some of his bottomless rancor when he speaks to Padre Pedro. The slave’s arguments in favor of killing himself have become more logical than visceral. Since he believes there is no God and no afterlife, and human life is full of sorrow, why not hang himself from a rope or throw himself from a cliff into the sea? After all, he will never be a prince again, never lord over the masses, so why continue with the charade? He was not born to be a servant. Padre Pedro surmises that Adesola’s greatest sin is pride. The Catalan priest fully understands that pride is what prevents the former prince from accepting Jesus because the only way to accept Jesus is through humility. And Padre Pedro has never been as flummoxed in his efforts to convert a slave as in his attempt to convert Prince Adesola. With the passage of time, Padre Pedro realizes that his recalcitrant slave has grown to admire him and hopes that will allow him to make inroads into his soul. Adesola knows that whenever a slave ship docks into the harbor of Cartagena, Padre Pedro is always ready to welcome the Africans, bringing them biscuits, beef jerky, cheese, ham, tobacco, and sometimes a bit of brandy. The African prince also realizes that Padre Pedro has baptized thousands upon thousands of slaves into the Catholic faith, sometimes right there on the boat when they arrive and often during his many visits to the Africans in the slave quarters where they are forcefully domiciled. It is not a secret that rather than sleeping in the mansions of the slave owners, Padre Pedro sleeps in the huts of his beloved black men when he goes to the plantations to inspect how they are being treated. And Adesola also knows that Padre Pedro administers Confession to hundreds of Africans in church every week and angrily reproves any slave owner who tries to force slave men and women to couple merely to produce more slaves. Padre Pedro demands that African men and women unite in Christian marriage only and is not shy about telling the slaves that to do anything differently is a great sin. But despite all this, the proud Adesola refuses to believe the teachings of the man he has grown to admire and in secret continues to plot his suicide. At times, he has held a knife in his left hand and been tempted to do what Padre Pedro calls the unforgiveable but at the last moment has resisted the strong temptation. Other times he has thought of simply walking into the sea and giving up. The truth is that he has never forgotten his beloved Africa, the dances about a campfire, the sound of the drums beating in unison, the days of hunting for boars in the tropical jungle. And everything he remembers fills him with a deep melancholy that he cannot shake. In the morning, he wakes up sad and in the evening falls asleep just as sad. The only thing that breaks up the monotony of his depression is the work which Padre Pedro has asked him to perform in the fields – not because you are a slave, the priest has told him, but because work is good for the state of your soul. Padre Pedro has often heard Adesola’s arguments against the divinity of the Christ in other men, mostly disbelieving Spaniards, Dutchmen and Englishmen, but never in the mouth of an African. Perhaps, thinks the priest, Adesola’s intelligence is what will lead to his perdition. How could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow the existence of evil? inquires the princely Adesola. How could a man who is God Himself suffer the humiliation of the Cross? Padre Pedro tries to answer the questions with arguments both simple and complex, but they never satisfy the young African. Padre Pedro thinks Adesola is stubborn and proud, but he chalks up his radical unbelief to his relentless despair. He is in a strange land, without kinsmen or friends, condemned to duties far beneath his intelligence. Perhaps, thinks the priest, the best thing for Adesola would be to find a woman to marry and raise a family of his own, but to accept the sacrament of marriage, he would first have to be baptized. And the gallant Prince Adesola steadfastly refuses to do so. Since Padre Pedro fails to persuade Adesola through reason and logic, he turns, as ever, to relentless prayer. * * * What truly begins to soften Adesola’s heart is when Padre Pedro brings Carlitos to sleep in his own bed in the Jesuit novitiate. Indeed, the African prince finds the priest’s conduct astonishing, as do most of the other priests and novices who live in the same home. In fact, many of the other priests violently protest, clamoring that Padre Pedro’s excessive zeal is endangering them all, as there is a possibility of contagion. But Padre Pedro will have nothing of it. Not only does he put Carlitos in his bed, but the priest sleeps on the floor every night, never ceasing to pray for his recovery. Carlitos’ condition is gruesome. He has pink bloody pustules all over his black face, almost completely covering his eyes such that the man is nearly blind, and he is constantly drooling, the saliva falling from his lips that are also preternaturally swollen. He has bloody ulcers all over his arms, indeed all over his body, and he can barely walk. Adesola was present when Carlitos first arrived, with Padre Pedro trying to lift him along, and Adesola was enlisted by the priest to help him carry his fellow black man into the priest’s room. The African prince’s first reaction was a deep revulsion, the instinct to vomit, and yet Padre Pedro’s heroic charity was a better lesson to Adesola than the priest’s endless sermons about how the true Christian must carry Christ’s Cross. For the first time, Adesola had a glimmer of understanding of the priest’s lectures, when the priest had told him that in helping bear the Cross ourselves or those of others, we are serving Christ himself. There was a frisson of recognition in Adesola’s soul: perhaps in helping carry Carlitos, he was helping the disfigured black man carry his own Cross, just like Simon of Cyrene had helped the Christ carry His Cross during His ascent to Calvary. Soon Adesola learned the full story. Padre Pedro, as often, was visiting a plantation to make sure that the blacks were treated well, administering Confession, and performing marriage ceremonies for those slaves who were living in sinful union. When he approached one of the huts, the slave owner told him to avoid it, for it housed a man with a pestilent disease that might be spread to others. This only served to pique Padre Pedro’s curiosity, and he decided to enter the sick man’s abode. What he found there was astonishing: a black man covered in his own blood, seemingly with no hope of remission. Apparently the slave master and the other slaves had left him there to die, without even administering the last sacraments to him. Padre Pedro asked the man if he wanted to go through with his Confession, and the dying man nodded in agreement. “What is your name?” the priest asked. “They call me Carlitos,” the man answered, speaking with great difficulty. “Tell me your sins that they may be forgiven.” “Oh, father,” Carlitos answered, still struggling. “I have had many concubines throughout my life, more than I can remember. I had a lawful wife, bless her soul, but I was not faithful to her. And despite being a slave, I had a great pride. I thought I was the strongest and most handsome of them all. And now look at me! A monster who frightens all the others!” “Not in the eyes of God,” Padre Pedro responded. “In the Lord’s mind your sins are far uglier than your bloody pustules. But now you have confessed them, and they are entirely forgotten.” The priest immediately asked to speak with the slave’s owner, a man who seemed otherwise kind but had no idea what to do with the diseased African. “What are your plans for him?” Padre Pedro asked. “To let him die,” the slave master responded. “I even called a physician from Cartagena, and he told me there is no hope of recovery. And I don’t want the other slaves getting sick. So I’ve decided to simply let the Lord take him.” “Carlitos will not die of this disease,” Padre Pedro replied, surprising the slave owner. “Of that you can be assured.” “I don’t know how you can say that. The physician who gave his diagnosis is one of the best in Nueva Granada.” “Well, I tell you it will not happen. Come, have your men take him into the wagon. I shall take him with me to the Jesuit quarters.” * * * Padre Pedro asks Adesola to help care for Carlitos while the priest goes to the port to welcome the slaves arriving in slave ships. Padre Pedro is not only thinking of alleviating the suffering of the disfigured slave, but also of mending the soul of the proud prince. He knows that acts of goodness, just like acts of concupiscence, can become a habit when repeated and that acts of charity are pleasant in the eyes of the Lord and can even overcome the power of sin. At first, Adesola balks at the request. “How can you give me such a task, knowing the man might be contagious?” “I wouldn’t worry about that,” the priest answers. “If God wants you to fall ill, it will happen even if you are a thousand leagues far from the diseased. And if God wants you to remain healthy, it will happen even if you kiss Carlitos’ bloody sores with your own lips.” “I don’t know,” answers Adesola, shaking his head. “It is an order,” Padre Pedro responds. “But not from myself, your human master, but from Him who is the Master of us all.” At first, the task is extremely difficult. Adesola wipes the bloody pustules on Carlitos’ face and arms with a white rag and feels he is about to retch. Then he does what he finds to be the most challenging: cleaning and replacing Carlitos’ soiled underpants. A prince! he thinks. A prince and now I am performing the lowliest of duties! But soon he overcomes the initial revulsion and learns to tend to Carlitos with kindness. He is surprised to learn that Carlitos comes from the same region of Africa as he and that he is fluent in Yoruba. He learns that Carlitos has two sons and a daughter, but that they were left in Cuba many years before. The African prince remembers words Padre Pedro has told him again and again as he thinks of Carlitos’ plight. “When we have nothing left but God,” the priest had taught him, “we discover that God is enough.” And slowly, gradually, Adesola’s thoughts of suicide begin to recede from his mind. He has found a purpose, even though he will not admit it even to himself. In tending to Carlitos’ extreme pain, he starts to forget his own. Yet that does not mean he is willing to be baptized and embrace the God of the white man, the God of the cruel Spanish usurper who has destroyed his life. Even though Padre Pedro is insistent, sometimes speaking to him with kindness, at other times with an obstinate anger, Adesola simply does not believe and resists the entreaties of the Catalan Jesuit priest. “Why would God allow Carlitos’ pain?” Adesola asks Padre Pedro, thinking the priest will be unable to come up with a rational answer. “To help you share it,” the priest responds, as if it went without saying. “To help you get closer to Him, even if you don’t understand.” One night, Carlitos’ condition suddenly takes a turn for the worse. Padre Pedro is at his bedside, as is Adesola. The truth is Adesola has grown to love Carlitos, with whom he has shared so many memories about their distant Africa. He no longer sees caring for the man’s monstrous disease as an imposition of his master, but as something he would do willingly, even if no one required it. So as the man vomits, Adesola softly wipes his face with a kerchief even as his own body is covered in the verdant puke. Carlitos is given to fits of coughing, and he is coughing blood. “Will he die tonight?” Adesola asks the priest. “No, he will not,” Padre Pedro responds. “Never forget the Great Physician’s skill.” Adesola and Padre Pedro spend the whole night tending to the beleaguered Carlitos. The man has a high fever, and he is sweating profusely, so much so that it seems his shirt has been seeped in water. “I thirst,” the sick black man whispers. Adesola takes a sponge dipped in water and presses it to Carlitos’ lips. “Is there nothing else we can do?” Adesola asks the priest. “He is suffering so!” “You can pray, Prince Adesola,” the priest says in a soft voice. “Pray to Jesus in Heaven and to His Blessed Mother. That should alleviate not only Carlitos’ suffering, but also your own.” “You know I don’t believe. Don’t use this moment of pain to try to convert me!” “You shall be converted in God’s good time. I think you are resisting because of your pride, but the seed has already been planted. Because charity causes joy, it is the most contagious of virtues.” The sun rises, and the lambent light falls upon Carlitos’ face. The worst is over, his fever has broken, and he has ceased to vomit. In a fortnight, he shall be healed completely. Adesola collapses on a chair and falls asleep while the tireless priest continues to pray for the two black men with whom he has shared the night. * * * Adesola resists conversion, resists the urge to pray. The power of Padre Pedro’s example is so great that the African prince often thinks of turning to Jesus on the crucifix above his bed to ask for some special favor. And Adesola has heard the rumor that Padre Pedro has even told the noblewomen of Cartagena, who complained that the Jesuit was filling the churches with smelly Negroes, that the blacks were closer to Christ than they were, for Christ’s Mercy is closest to those who suffer. But Adesola will not bow to the God of the white man, no matter what Padre Pedro says and does for the black man! Weren’t his brothers placed in chains by those who followed the same God? Weren’t they considered property in the religion of the white man? Didn’t he himself belong to Padre Pedro? And yet the urge persists. Adesola has learned something in carrying for the desperately ill Carlitos, that there can be something redemptive in suffering, that it is not devoid of meaning as he once thought. Adesola’s depression lifted rather than worsened after Carlitos was put under his care, and his thoughts of suicide are far behind him. No longer does he dream of throwing himself into the ocean or of swallowing the bitter poison. By nursing Carlitos back to health, he has learned that life is precious. Perhaps, he thinks, it is as Padre Pedro says. Perhaps the Christ was tortured on the Cross to carry all our suffering. But he quickly puts away such thoughts and lets himself fall asleep in the comfortable bed Padre Pedro has procured for him. The following morning, as he is working with slaves owned by other Jesuits, he looks up at the immense blue sky above, at the endless fields before him, at the beauty of his fellow Africans, and feels a sudden revelation. Yes, there is a God, he is sure of it this time. Who else could have created all this splendor? As he works, he is delighted by the strength of his own arms, at the steadiness of the machete, at everything he can perceive through his five senses. He breathes in the air and is invigorated, takes a drink from his canteen, and his thirst is quenched. He wants to cry out in joy to his fellow slaves that the Lord is risen! But then, like Peter on the waters, he begins to doubt. Even if there is a God, that does not prove the existence of the God of the white man. The beauty of nature is not necessarily evidence that Christ died and on the third day was resurrected. So he continues to work, works himself into exhaustion, for his thoughts have filled him with awe and dread at the same time. That night, he returns to his room in the Jesuit quarters. He looks up at the Christ above his bed, bearded, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. Surely that is not the God of the African! But as he begins to fall asleep, he hears a voice speaking to him in Yoruba. The voice addresses him as “omo,” meaning “son” in Adesola’s native language. “Omo,” the voice repeats, “why do you resist letting me enter into your heart? Don’t you know I thirst for you?” Suddenly Adesola looks up at the crucifix and notices something has changed. The face of the Christ has turned into that of a black man, with dark skin, thick lips, and woolly hair. “Oh, why, oh why,” the voice demands, “why must you refuse me, the living water?” And then Adesola sees a bright light, a light that almost blinds him, emanating from the face of the suffering black man on the crucifix. “Lord, is it you?” Adesola asks. “Emi ni,” answers the Christ, meaning I am. “Don’t worry about the color of my skin. Isn’t it enough for you to know you are made in My image and likeness?” “I’m a sinful man,” Adesola replies. “Why would you deign to appear before me?” “I have appeared to you many times, my lowly son, but you did not recognize me. In the face of Padre Pedro, in that of Carlitos, in that of your fellow slaves, and in the face of the white man who did not scourge you.” “I was blind,” Adesola answers. “Truly I did not see you.” “Go and get baptized, confess your sins, and pledge your life to Me. I do not promise you an easy life. I promise you a life full of difficulty and sometimes sorrow. But if you steadfastly believe, if you adhere to My Commandments, I shall open the very gates of Heaven for you!” “Fiat,” says Adesola in the Yoruba language. Jeki o sele! Let it be! * * * Padre Pedro is on his deathbed. Adesola has come to pay his last respects, accompanied by his wife Carmen, his son Joaquin, and his daughter Sofia. “Thank you for coming,” the old priest says in a weak voice. “I have never forgotten you, Prince Adesola.” “I’m not a prince,” replies Adesola. “The only Prince is in Heaven with His Father and the Holy Spirit. I’m but a simple foreman working on a quarry.” “Do you enjoy your work?” the old priest asks. “I do,” Adesola responds. “Sometimes it’s difficult for me to lead the other black men who work with me, but the Lord grants me the wisdom to do so. And I have even been able to enroll my children in a special school for Negroes run by the Carmelite nuns. So I can’t complain.” “Never complain,” Padre Pedro commands. “Just pray!” andro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) God Alone Suffices (Fiction, June 2023) Salvifici Dolores (Fiction, July 2023) That Person Whom You Know (Fiction, September 2023)
0 Comments
By Sandro F. Piedrahita At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father…for you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children.” – Matthew 11:25 It was a single word, but nothing else needed to be said. “Alzheimer’s,” the doctor said in a professional manner, as if it was just another word, but in my mind his diagnosis was brutal and sadistic. How could a single word signify the loss of everything, the undoing of my mind? Me, a man who had always taken pride in his intelligence, professor emeritus of Italian literature, writer of many works of literary criticism and two acclaimed novels, now being told that in a few months – a year if I was lucky – I would not even remember my own name. I had feared such a verdict – I’m using the right term – when my son demanded I visit a physician to find out what was wrong with me. I had been losing my keys, forgetting where I left my glasses, misremembering telephone numbers I had known for years. But what convinced my son Carlo that I needed to be checked out was the day when he found me sitting on a sofa, my pants dripping in urine because I could not find the bathroom in my own home. He offered to take me to the hospital himself, since he feared I could no longer drive without getting lost. I put off the visit to the doctor as long as I could, but finally Carlo was exasperated and told me I could no longer delay. He scheduled an appointment, irrevocable as death. The doctor was a small, slight man with something of a lisp. I knew that he was going to give me the worst news of my life – worse even than the death of my wife Elena – and I detested him for it even before he uttered the devastating word. “Alzheimer’s,” he said. “Alzheimer’s,” he repeated. “You suffer from Alzheimer’s,” he said a third time. He spoke to me with a calm and even voice, as if telling me I was suffering from the flu. “It’s in the early stages,” he said, “but your cognition will soon deteriorate. There is no cure, but there are various forms of palliative care.” “How bad will it get? Will I completely lose my mind? Will I even be able to read?” I bombarded the doctor with one question after another, but he kept saying the same thing. “You could lose your sense of self in a year. You could lose your identity itself. I must be frank. Alzheimer’s is not a disease for the faint of heart.” I thought I detected a macabre grin on the young face of the physician, but it was probably just my imagination. He probably didn’t even realize he was being cruel. Then he suddenly left the room as if nothing had happened, as if it was just another ordinary day, when in fact he had given me a sentence worse than death. “We are going to find a place for you to live, old man,” Carlo said as soon as we left the hospital and he began to drive. “A home where kind nurses will take care of you. You’ll see. You are going to be fine.” “I am not going to be fine. Don’t talk to me as if I were a child.” “That wasn’t my intention, vecchio.” “I was thinking maybe I could move in with you,” I responded, hoping at least for a small reprieve before I was sent to a home for the hopelessly demented. “After all, Nino is off to college, and Margherita is recently married. I could just move into one of your two spare bedrooms.” “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Carlo replied in an even voice as he continued to drive. “I’m not going to make Lucia a slave to your disease. I hate to say this to you, old man, but things are going to steadily get worse. I promise you I’ll find a home where you’ll be taken care of well.” “Fine, fine,” I replied. “But putting me in a hospice can wait. I’m still in control of all my faculties. I’m as intelligent as ever and haven’t forgotten old memories. I’ve never been more lucid, even if I lose my keys from time to time.” “You’re a brilliant man, Giovanni. You always made sure everybody knew that. I remember when I was a kid and dreaded showing you my report cards. No matter how good my grades were, they were never good enough. I still remember your booming voice. ‘Don’t forget you’re the son of Doctor Giovanni Avitabile! Come back with better marks!’ And when I told you I was going to be a grade school teacher, you didn’t hide your disappointment. I guess you wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor. Or an author and professor of literature, just like you.” “I just didn’t want you to waste your intelligence. You never strived hard enough. Not everyone has to be a professional man, but that was definitely in your cards. You only had to make a minimal effort, but you refused.” “And I’m glad I did. I’ve been able to raise a family. I bought a nice home. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody. Now where were we? What do you think of the home for the aged run by the Carmelite nuns?” “I’ll pay for a nurse to come to my home and take care of me if you don’t want to take me in. I still have quite a bit in my savings account. And I still receive royalties from the books I’ve published. So don’t think of burying me in an old-age home – at least not yet.” “You can do whatever you want with your money. I’ve never asked you for a dime. But you are going to need round-the-clock care.” “I’ll give you everything if you just let me stay in your home. I don’t want to be surrounded by drooling old men and women. I don’t want to be abused by some maid who doesn’t care a whit about me. Perhaps at some point you’ll have to put me in a hospice, but not yet. And then you can take all my savings. It will be a hefty sum. I was thinking of leaving my house to the university, but if you take me in I’ll throw that in as well.” “It’s not about the money, Giovanni. You’ll really be much better off in a special home. And Lucia and I can visit you from time to time. I promise you will not be forgotten. You should just pray about it, ask the Lord for guidance.” “You know I don’t believe. I’ve always been an atheist. I know your mother raised you Catholic, but that was against my wishes.” “And I’m glad she did,” responded Carlo. “If you were a believer too, you wouldn’t be so terrified now. You’d simply put your future in God’s hands. You’ve been blessed your whole life, Giovanni, but now is the time of the Cross. It happens in every man’s life. And it would be a good idea if you had the humility to let Christ help carry your Cross.” “Well, I won’t have it. What kind of God would make me an invalid in old age, force me to lose the core of who I am? Either your God doesn’t exist or He cares very little about His creation. Why is there so much suffering in the world? If your God is loving and omnipotent all at once, why must humanity be martyred in a myriad ways?” “Why don’t you go ask your niece Nennolina?” Carlo inquired. “She is a child, and she is suffering so, but she places her hope in Christ. I hate to say this, but at her age, she understands life so much better than you do.” “She’s my goddaughter, always on my mind. As you know, I shall be at the hospital – how I hate that word – on the day of her operation. But her experience doesn’t inspire me to believe. How could a just and loving God let a little girl’s leg be amputated?” “Do you understand what that means, that she’s your goddaughter? It means that you should be teaching her about the faith, not the other way around.” “Don’t insist. Maybe your God wants me to grovel, but I won’t do it. I’ve lived a righteous life without needing to resort to prayer. If I were to meet Him, I would demand that He excuse Himself for causing humanity such constant pain.” “You can’t demand anything of God, Giovanni. You just don’t get it. Don’t you think it’s presumptuous for you to think God has to settle accounts with you, that He has to give you a private explanation of His inscrutable will?” “That’s the right word, inscrutable. What possible explanation could there be for punishing a five-year-old girl with cancer of the bone? What possible good could come from the amputation of her leg? No, your God is a phantom. He never existed and never will. And if God exists, I have no reason to trust in His munificence and grace. If he doesn’t care about five-year-old Nennolina, why would He care about an old man like me?” * * * We arrived at the hospital at eight in the morning. Nennolina’s parents were waiting for us, her mother Maria with reddened eyes after crying so much, her father Michele stoic as a rock. Father Giuseppe, whom I’d known for years as my wife’s confessor, was also there. Even at his late age, he still had the build of an athlete. Before he became a priest, he had been a professional soccer player. He probably knew of my flaws and virtues as well as anyone, and yet we never spoke about serious matters. We were allowed to visit Nennolina in the room where the operation was to take place. When she saw me, Nennolina smiled her picaresque smile and exclaimed, “I was hoping you’d be coming today, Uncle Giovanni. Today is an important day for me. I’ll be giving up my little leg to Jesus.” And then she gave me a big hug and kissed me on the cheek as if the day were one of celebration rather than pain. I was barely able to contain myself. I didn’t want to cry in her presence, but the truth is her innocence appalled me. What priest had convinced her she’d be sacrificing her leg to Jesus? I felt rage and at the same time a great melancholy. She noticed when a single tear – just one thick drop – fell from my left eye and told me not to worry, that everything was in God’s hands. I was inspired by her bravery, but at the same time I felt her hope was deeply misplaced. The truth is she would be a cripple for the rest of her life. And that would be assuming her cancer didn’t metastasize and spread to the rest of her body, in which case she would die as a child. At all events, it was an unmerited punishment. “You don’t need to cry, Uncle Giovanni. If God wants to grant me a miracle, I’ll grow another leg. And if He doesn’t, I’ll joyfully accept His holy will. You should know Doctor Uzzauto has told me they’ll fit me with a wonderful artificial leg. I’ll be able to walk and even run with the other children. And Jesus will be so happy. I’m offering this suffering to Him, and I will be praying for sinners. That includes you, Uncle Giovanni.” I didn’t know what to say. I felt like hugging her tightly, ripping out that traitorous cancer with my very hands. But she seemed to be happy, oblivious to the tragedy she was living through. I wanted to tell her that God was a jerk if He existed. I wanted to scream out that the universe was unfair. But I knew her faith was getting her through this horror and to open her eyes would serve no purpose. In due course, I thought, she’d understand the amputation of her leg was not a blessing but a curse. “I’m glad you think about me, Nennolina,” I said. Her mother looked at me askance, knowing I was an unbeliever. And I thought I detected some anger against me in her eyes for even contemplating that God did not exist. If God did not exist, her daughter’s suffering would be meaningless and brutal. In some dark corner of her soul, Maria hated me for even thinking that God was not with them in their pain. Then the doctor appeared, with a big smile and a red balloon. “Are you ready, signorina?” he asked in a mirthful tone. “Ready to be like Pegleg Pete,” Nennolina joked mischievously. Her innocence amazed me. “Or like the pirate Black Beard,” the doctor replied happily. “In no time we’ll have you fitted with a prosthetic leg. You’ll be tougher than the pirate.” And I hated the surgeon for his joyful tone, even though I realized he was trying to make a difficult moment as easy as possible for my Nennolina. I felt angry at his deception, although I understood it was necessary. “Why don’t we all pray now?” Father Giuseppe said. “That’s a good idea,” agreed Maria. As everyone kneeled, I said in a somewhat muffled tone. “I’d rather keep standing up.” “Aw,” Nennolina cried. “Why don’t you kneel and pray with us, Uncle Giovanni? The more people pray, the more God listens. You should know I’d rather see you pray for me rather than a thousand angels.” “Very well,” I said. “I’ll do it just for you, Nennolina.” And then I knelt next to the priest. “Don’t forget to say the words too,” Nennolina chided me. “After Father Giuseppe says the first half of the Our Father, then all of us say the second half. And we’ll do the same with the Hail Mary. Mary is the most powerful of intercessors.” “Where did you learn that big word?” I asked her. She was a five-year-old, after all. “How do you even know what an intercessor is?” “I learned it in my catechism course, Uncle Giovanni. I’m preparing for my Holy Communion, the most glorious day of my life. And Mary can be an intercessor for you too. Whatever worries you, put it in her hands, and she will take it from you and make it disappear. Is there anything that worries you, Uncle Giovanni, other than my little leg?” I felt like saying, yes, yes, damn it, I’m about to lose my mind, but said nothing and instead got on my knees to pray. It must have been more than forty years since I had mouthed the Lord’s Prayer or the Hail Mary, some time before I decided I was brilliant and had no need of God. * * * After about three hours of worry – three hours of prayer for everybody but me – the doctor came out of the room where the intervention had happened and ushered us into the room. When I saw Nennolina, I felt that I was about to collapse, seeing her missing a leg and yet with a broad smile on her face. “The operation was a success,” she said in her little voice triumphantly. “That’s what the doctor said.” “Does it hurt, my darling?” asked her mother. “A little bit. It’s not that bad. Pain is like fabric. The stronger it is, the more it is worth.” “Who taught you that?" I asked her. I could not believe they were the words of a little girl. “Nobody taught me that, Uncle Giovanni. Is it not obvious? God never allows us more suffering than we can bear. I am sure He was with me during my operation, and that is why all went well.” I was sure she was parroting the words of some nun or priest. How could she possibly say the operation went well? It was an amputation, after all. “God allows suffering so that we can be closer to Him,” Nennolina continued. “That’s why I’m offering my little leg to Jesus. Sure, it hurts a little bit, but never as much as Jesus did when he was crucified.” “Offer your pain to the Lord,” Father Giuseppe intervened. “It will be more precious to Him than a hundred prayers. You’ll be sharing in His own pain during the Passion.” I thought the priest was a fool. The idea that Nennolina participated in Jesus’ Passion through her suffering seemed preposterous. I could never understand why there should be any suffering at all if God could prevent it all through the snap of His fingers. At all event, I said nothing. I knew the priest’s words gave some comfort to Nennolina and her parents. And I suppose it was just as well. The five-year-old would have the rest of her life to recognize the falsehood behind Father Giuseppe’s words. “I want to go to the cemetery,” I told Carlo when he arrived. “It’s been a rough few days.” “Sure,” said my son. “If it’ll make you feel better to visit Mom.” We said goodbye to everyone, and I kissed my Nennolina. “Promise me you’ll be good,” I said to her. “I promise you,” she replied. “And don’t forget to say a little prayer for me, Uncle Giovanni. Maybe if everyone prays for me, I’ll grow my leg back. Or if it doesn’t, it won’t matter. It would be God’s will after all.” “Yes, I heard you say it the first time. I shall say a prayer for you.” But inside, I knew that I would not. * * * On the way to the cemetery Carlo and I were mostly silent for the first half hour. Then my son turned off the radio and looked at me. “When did you last come to see Mom?” “About three months ago. Before I started getting lost when I drive.” “You can’t visit now, can you?” “I’d rather not risk it,” I answered him. “Ever since I got lost driving to La Trattoria Veronese. I’ve been going there to eat for years, especially after your mother passed away. And suddenly I couldn’t find it. It took me three hours to get home.” “You miss her, don’t you?” “About as much as an amputated leg.” Carlo guided me to the place where her tomb was found. I no longer remembered how to get there, a place I had visited more than seventy times in the last two years. But so it was with my disease. I was forgetting everything. “That was a big blow, Carlo. You don’t know how much I loved her. We spent forty-two years together. When she passed away, it was as if a part of me had died. And that was when I decided finally and irrevocably that I would not worship your God. You don’t know this, but your mother was making inroads into my soul.” “Really?” Carlo asked. “Did you ever go to Mass?” “I had no idea how to help her through her clinical depression. I tried a hundred different things, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually I realized that the only thing that kept her from total and utter desolation was her strong faith in God. It was her faith that kept her from falling into the cesspit of despair. Perhaps it even protected her from suicide. She was so forlorn after her twin sister died that when she asked me to accompany her to church, I could not refuse. We must have gone to church together a dozen times.” “Why didn’t you keep going? Why did you revert to being an atheist? Didn’t you realize that God was offering you His grace?” “My lack of faith was entrenched when she was taken from me. I always expected I would be the first to die, never even thinking of the possibility that she would die before me.” “If you had faith, your grief would lose its sting,” Carlo replied. “I, too, grieved for my mother, but I knew that she was with the angels. Lucia and I go to church every Sunday. Why don’t you start going with us?” “Because I rage against your God. Your mother was as Catholic as could be, and yet she wasn’t spared. The last few years of her life were truly a torment. And then He took her from me, cruelty upon cruelty, leaving me desperately alone. And now look at what He’s doing to me! I am about to lose even my memories. I shall be the mere husk of a man. What do I have to thank Him for?” “Those forty-two years you spent with her, for starters. The intelligence with which you were blessed. That part of your family which still remains. The books you wrote that are still getting read. I know it all seems bleak now, but it would help if you began to see everything with eyes of faith. Don’t forget in the darkness what God has shown you in the light.” “I think faith in God is a crutch used by people in an effort to avoid facing the multiple horrors of life. I know it helped your mother. I know it’s helping Nennolina and her parents now. But I don’t want to be false to my inmost self and turn to God just because I’m afraid of what will come. ‘To thine own self be true’ and all that. I shall resign myself to my fate with courage and open eyes.” “In some strange way, Giovanni, you’ve been given a blessing. You have the chance to make your peace with God before you lose your faculties. For others, death comes like a thief in the night. You have the opportunity to repent.” “Repent? Of what? I never cheated on your mother, never struck her. I never stole a cent in my entire life.” “How about your pride for starters, Giovanni? The way you treated people with disdain, the way you tyrannized my mother. You don’t need to be a murderer to run afoul of God’s Commandments.” “I treated no one with disdain. I don’t suffer fools gladly, that is all. There are so many academics who are truly idiots. And how exactly did I tyrannize your mother? If you’re going to be making such an accusation, you should at least have some facts to back it up.” “You never let her forget she was not as intelligent as you. You made her feel so small, so insignificant. I hate to say this to you – I know it will cause you pain – but you were a contributor to her depression. The way you would rail against her if dinner was not ready at six o’clock on the dot because it would force you to delay your writing schedule. The way you lashed out at her if your white shirt was not ironed perfectly every morning. She was your little slave, and you never let her forget it. Don’t you realize how unhappy you made her?” “So now I’m responsible for her depression!” I cried out in anger. “When I did all I could to help her overcome it! I took her to I don’t know how many psychiatrists. I took her on long walks, tried to make her exercise. In the end, I even deigned to speak privately to Father Giuseppe, to see if he had any ideas as to how to improve her condition. So you are misremembering what happened.” “Just use your Alzheimer’s as an opportunity to make your peace with God. Make a true examination of conscience. Throw yourself at the feet of His mercy now that you have the chance to do so.” “I won’t abandon the certainties of a lifetime merely because of a moment of fear. I may end up a drooling invalid at the end, but I shall retain my pride.” * * * On the day of Nennolina’s First Holy Communion, I was among the first to arrive, accompanied by Carlo and Lucia. When the little girl first saw me, she approached me with joy painted on her face. “I am so glad you’ve come!” she cried out. “That you will share this special – no, super special! – day with me.” “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I told her. “I know you never come to Mass, Uncle Giovanni. I never see you with Uncle Carlo and Lucia when they come. So I prayed so hard that you would come to church today. I pray every night for your conversion.” “Where do you learn about conversion, Nennolina?” Given her age, the girl’s intelligence always surprised me. “From Jesus, silly! Sometimes He appears to me in dreams. Sometimes I hear His words when I pray. I know you need to accept Him to receive His grace, Uncle Giovanni. So I always say a special prayer for you. Without His grace, you can do nothing. With His grace, there is nothing you can’t do.” “That’s what the nuns taught you, right, Nennolina? You didn’t think of that on your own.” “It wasn’t the nuns, Uncle Giovanni. I’ve already told you the Good Lord speaks with me from time to time. That shouldn’t surprise you. He’s so happy that I offered Him my little leg. Offer him your own sufferings too, and you’ll see that He will speak to you as well, even in the silence of your heart. I pray every night for the conversion of all poor sinners, but especially for you. I’ve kept that a secret from everyone. Even my mother doesn’t know.” “And why do you think I’m a sinner, Nennolina?” “Because we all are. Also, because you never go to Confession or receive the Holy Eucharist. I know that for a fact. The Holy Eucharist is God’s greatest gift to man; it is actually the body and blood of Christ. That’s why I am so excited today, because I’ll receive Communion for the first time. Without receiving the body and blood of Jesus, you won’t be able to resist temptation.” That had always seemed to me to be one of the Catholic Church’s most baffling beliefs, that the bread and wine were literally – not symbolically – the very flesh and blood of Christ. I could understand a child’s belief in transubstantiation, but never in the mind of an adult. At some point my goddaughter got in the line behind the other girls to receive the sacrament. She walked no differently from the other communicants despite her prosthetic leg. She had the slightest of limps, but if you did not know of her amputation, you would barely notice it. And suddenly I felt a frisson of hope. Perhaps her life would not be ruined after all. Perhaps what I had seen as a catastrophe was merely a challenge to be conquered. My little Nennolina radiated happiness, peace, tranquility. It was a special day for her – “super special,” she had said – and she participated in the celebration with reverence and joy, with none of the despair I had vicariously felt for her. Yes, her face evidenced courage, but it was somehow more than courage. Yes, it manifested peace, but it was more than mere tranquility. Hers was a total surrender to her God, as if nothing mattered, a faith as solid as a rock, a belief that every suffering in life could have a higher purpose. It reminded me of a prayer my wife used to have next to her bed, which I read every night without giving it much thought: “Do not despair. Don’t send me a desperate prayer as if to demand that I meet your demands. Close the eyes of the soul and repeat in a calm voice, ‘Jesus, I trust in you.’” My Nennolina trusted in the Christ – trusted blindly, completely, without reserve – and that trust could turn adversity into joy. I wondered if I couldn’t do the same and simply trust that God would help me deal with the cross of Alzheimer’s. But I quickly turned away from such hopeful divagations. I was not about to lose a limb. I was about to lose my very mind, my identity itself, and I did not see any possible escape. * * * Zoraya started living with me, a buxom sixty-year-old woman that Carlo had hired to take care of me. Initially I had hoped that the woman would rid me of my solitude, but that was not to be. She had a job to do – to help an old man get through his day without disaster – and that is all that she did. She was professional, though. I can’t complain on that score. My meals were always ready on time, she would accompany me to the bathroom when I needed it, she helped me dress in the morning and helped me get into my pajamas at night. But when I tried to engage her in conversation, she was as reluctant as could be. I was astonished that a woman could spend the whole day playing solitaire without going mad. So I decided to try to finish a novel about a May-to-December romance which I had been writing when my Elena died. There was nothing else I could do. It was one of the ironies of my disease, that I couldn’t find my way around the house but could still write a decent novel. Then the day came when Zoraya showed exactly what she thought of me, that I was a mere child or, worse than that, an animal. I had gotten up very early in the morning with a horrible need to defecate. Usually I first went to the bathroom at the same time, around nine o’clock in the morning, when Zoraya would come to my room to rouse me and take me to the bathroom. But for some unknown reason, there was once a morning when I woke up beset by a case of explosive diarrhea. I tried to find the bathroom, but it was not to be. One of the perks of being professor emeritus at Sapienza University was that I could buy a large house, and although the house had three bathrooms, it was impossible for me to even find one. So I soiled my pants and eventually found Zoraya’s room, where I told her what had happened. The first thing she did was slap me in the face. And hard. “I wasn’t hired to clean your merda,” she cried. “If you need to take a shit, you can call me before your ass explodes. My room is right next to yours, so there’s no excuse, you dirty old son-of-a-bitch.” Then she undid my pants and cleaned my butt with a wet sponge, all the while cursing at me, completely disgusted. “If you ever do this again, I swear I’ll strike you like a child. There is no reason for me to have to go through this. Do you understand?” I said nothing. “Do you understand, son-of-a-bitch?” she repeated. “I do,” I said. From that day on, Zoraya started treating me with cruelty. She didn’t strike me again, but she acted as if it were a terrible chore to take care of me. She constantly cussed at me, told me what a burden I was. One day she pushed me into a wall because I was late to dinner and she had to reheat my cold soup. On others she forced me to stay in my room as a punishment, sometimes even taking my typewriter away so I couldn’t write. I wondered whether madness would take me even before I succumbed to Alzheimer’s, for such was the horror of being locked up in my room all day without even having the palliative which was my writing. I thought of reporting her conduct to Carlo, but decided against it. At least with Zoraya I had the benefit of staying in my own home, where I still retained such pleasant memories. Yes, indeed, they hadn’t been ripped away from me yet! I dreaded the thought of being left to die in a hospital for the aged and the infirm, forgotten by everyone, surrounded by nobody but dying people. I could accept a certain level of abuse from Zoraya, suspecting I would not be treated better in a hospice and knowing there was no better place to slowly die than in my own home, where everything still reminded me of days of wonder. And the more I remained silent, the more emboldened became the cruel Zoraya. I had heard of elder abuse in the past, but had never realized it could be so demeaning. * * * Then came a monstrous day, absolutely monstrous. Carlo came by the house and told me Nennolina’s cancer had metastasized, that the doctors were still administering some tests but that they seemed to be fairly certain of their diagnosis. The news couldn’t have been more dire. Nennolina’s cancer had spread to her hands, her feet, her throat, her mouth and head, all in the space of a few months. And they couldn’t amputate her mouth, her throat or her head! No, they couldn’t! There was no cure for her condition, and all everyone could do was wait, hoping at least that she would not greatly suffer as she “carried her cross,” as my son Carlo put it. Oh, how I hated that expression! I felt God was playing His last cruel joke on me, letting me be predeceased by my five-year-old goddaughter. And in a perverse way, I even desired that my mental condition would be worse, much worse, that I would be so mentally infirm that I wouldn’t understand the great and undeserved tragedy of my little Nennolina. I had learned a new word, perhaps more frightening than Alzheimer’s. It was osteosarcoma, and it was decimating my five-year-old niece’s body. High-grade osteosarcoma to be more exact, a disease which attacks children much more than adults. Oh, the injustice of the universe! Despite the amputation of her leg, Nennolina’s tumor had somehow spread to the rest of her tiny body, probably through her bloodstream. Her immune system had simply been unable to fight the malignant cancer. I felt like screaming, ranting, railing, but it was useless. I felt nobody could hear me and knew there was no magic pill to restore her martyred body. The doctor had admitted with a stern face to Nennolina’s parents – no red balloon this time! – that osteosarcoma has one of the lowest survival rates for pediatric cancer. When Michele and Maria told their daughter she should expect to suffer through greater physical pain in the near future, she had responded in a calm voice, “May each step that I take be a little word of love. I will offer all my suffering to the crucified Jesus.” Carlo took me to Nennolina’s house as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. It was clear that she was already suffering a lot of pain, and Maria told me they would be praying a novena to Saint Therese de Lisieux, asking that her disease be as painless as possible. I responded, “You know I don’t believe, but I shall join you as an act of solidarity. I wish I could believe, truly I do, but I simply can’t.” Maria responded, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I realize that you feel you’re compromising your beliefs, but are doing it because you cherish Nennolina.” “That’s quite all right,” I responded. “If it will make you and Michele feel a little better…If it will somehow soften the girl’s pain… I swear to you that I would gladly trade places with your daughter.” “There’s something I want to show you, Giovanni. Every night my Nennolina writes a love letter to God. After writing it, she places it at the feet of a small statue of the Infant Jesus in the expectation that He will read them during the night. She never refers to you by name, but I’m almost certain she prays for you often. I’m going to get those letters for you. She must have written about a hundred of them, directed to Jesus and His Mother. Perhaps by reading those child’s letters you will receive a response to your existential anguish.” “Sure, I’d love to read them,” I responded, knowing it was no time to argue. “Nennolina’s faith and courage are exemplary.” “Good,” said Maria. “Maybe that will reduce your fear as well. I know you’re also suffering from your own private pain. Through a special grace given to her by God, Nennolina understands more than most adults the true value of suffering. She has a deep wisdom beyond her years. She swears the Infant Jesus has given her this knowledge directly. You might find solace in her writing.” Then I added, in a somber voice, “I doubt I’ll be moved from my atavistic atheism by reading the letters of a child. And the fact that soon I won’t even remember her name adds nothing to my faith.” Then I went into Nennolina’s bedroom. As a result of her condition, she could not leave her bed, and she was in constant pain. “How’s my favorite niece?” I asked, trying to seem as cheerful as possible. “Not that great,” she said in a small voice. “It hurts a little. But if it’s the will of God, I won’t complain. I only pray that souls will find Jesus, a lot of them. I ask Him every night that He makes them good so they can join Him in Paradise.” And then she started coughing uncontrollably. I was alarmed and called her mother Maria. “Just let her be,” she said. “It won’t last long.” “I brought you a book,” I said, as soon as she stopped coughing. “You know how to read now, don’t you, Nennolina?” “Most certainly,” she replied. “It’s the Italian translation of a Spanish book called Marcelino Bread and Wine. I thought that you would like it. It’s about an orphaned boy who lives with a group of monks. They forbid him from entering a certain room, but he goes there anyway and finds a large crucifix. At some point, Jesus comes to life and speaks to the little boy. Every night, the boy brings Him food. At the end of the story, the boy asks to join his mother in Heaven, and God grants his wish.” “That is just lovely,” Maria said. “Especially coming from you, Giovanni. We’ll read it together tonight. What do you say, Nennolina?” “Thank you, Uncle Giovanni. It sounds like a great story. I too have been told by the little Jesus that I shall soon join His mommy in Heaven.” I was perplexed. “So the Infant Jesus has spoken to you?” “A lot,” Nennolina responded. “He speaks to me often, especially at night when the pain gets worse. He tells me, ‘You will suffer a little, my little bride, but soon you will be with me in Paradise.’ It’s God’s grace filling my spirit, Uncle Giovanni. Let’s say that my soul is an apple. In the apple there are those little black things that are the seeds. Then inside the skin there’s this white thing. Well, think of that as God’s grace. Jesus is making sure that His grace will always be with me. The Lord’s grace is like the kiss of a rose. And don’t forget we are also protected by the Madonnina!” * * * I took the letters Nennolina had written to Jesus and His Mother. They filled a big pouch. Many of them were repetitive expressions of love for Mary and the Christ. But there were some that may have been referring to me, although my name did not appear in any of the hundred letters. In one of the missives, dated October 15, 1936, Nennolina prayed, “I want to be good and pray that that man who does not wish Jesus well might convert.” Of course she might have been thinking about anyone, but I was intrigued and continued reading. Other than myself, I couldn’t think of any other person to whom she might have been referring. At the same time, I couldn’t understand why she would think that I didn’t wish Jesus well. I wished Him neither good nor ill. I simply questioned His divinity. Nennolina was insistent. I found more than fifty letters asking Jesus for the conversion of “that person whom you know.” In a single month, there were more than seven letters asking for the repentance of some unnamed sinner. On October 29, 1936, she prayed, “Dear Jesus, help my parents and all the world, and I entrust to you also that sinner whom you know.” On October 30, 1936, she prayed, “Dear Jesus, protect and bless all the world, my parents and that person that you know. I will pray a lot for that person.” On November 2, 1936, she prayed, “Dear Jesus, make it so that all sinners convert, and I entrust to you also that person that you know.” On November 3, 1936, she prayed, “Dear Jesus, make it so that all sinners convert, and I entrust to you also that person that you know.” On November 6, 1936, she petitioned on behalf of “the man that has been entrusted to you.” On November 11, 1936, she made a lengthier plea: “Dear Jesus! You must do me three graces, the first that I be always good to make my soul always more beautiful, the second that my heart be all full of light and of love to receive you in Holy Communion, the third to help that person whom you know.” On November 16, she prayed for “that person that I entrust to you very much.” On November 18, 1936, she pleaded, “I wish that they all come into Paradise with you, and especially help that man that I entrust to you.” In the ensuing months, she was no less relentless, praying constantly for my conversion. I came to the conclusion that she must have been thinking about me when she wrote about the wayward sinner, for she didn’t refer to me by name in any of her letters. It would have been strange for her not to remember her uncle and godfather while remembering others who were not as close to her as I was. At all events, I read all her letters in a single sitting, and at the conclusion I collapsed on my bed and cried. I was awestruck and deeply moved by the generosity of the little girl. Instead of praying for a remission of her cancer or for a cessation of her pain, she prayed incessantly for her uncle’s metanoia. And after all my weeping, I was left with a single question. Who was I to confound her expectations? So I left the house while Zoraya was in the bathroom and started walking. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to restrain me, for I was a man with a purpose. I hadn’t been to Father Giuseppe’s church in years, those few times when I went with my dear Elena as she grappled with her clinical depression. To my amazement, my condition didn’t preclude me from finding the church. Soon I found myself kneeling on a pew close to the altar beneath the crucified Christ. I didn’t pray. I just kneeled there silently. I owed my Nennolina no less. If she desperately wanted my conversion, then I would give her God a chance to convert me. Suddenly someone patted me on the shoulder. It was Father Giuseppe. “Good afternoon,” I said. “You must be surprised to see me here.” “Not surprised at all,” replied the priest in a jovial manner. “I’ve been expecting you for a lifetime.” “I must tell you I haven’t converted. I’m hoping for some sort of miracle. After all, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint Thomas – all of them doubted and were saved through outlandish miracles. I learned that with the Jesuits in my distant adolescence, when I first started breaking away from the faith. Saint Peter walked on water, Saint Paul recovered his sight after being blinded, Saint Thomas only believed when he could touch the wounds of the crucified Christ. And I came here to see if could also be a beneficiary of a marvelous miracle. I owe my Nennolina no less. I know she expects a miracle, that she has fervently prayed for it, that her old uncle’s conversion would be the miracle which she has sought relentlessly.” “Miracles are commonplace,” said the priest. “We just need to have the eyes to see them. Often we’re hoping for something grand, something impossible, when all we need to do is trust in Jesus and relinquish all our troubles to Him. Jesus will come to your aid in His own way and in His own time, even if you don’t immediately realize it.” “I want a miracle so badly,” I said as I began to softly weep. “Pray and you shall receive one. I can assure you of that. God can do the impossible, so start praying for Nennolina. She may die despite your prayers, but you can ask the Lord that she suffer less on her journey to Heaven. And what greater miracle can there be than her ascent to Paradise? You can also start praying for yourself, Giovanni, that you be delivered from the ravages of old age. Your son has told me all about your condition. Don’t be surprised if God grants you lucidity for a longer time than you might think. And if He doesn’t, it will be because He wants you to be more open to God’s grace. Perhaps in your suffering you will find Him closer than ever. Pray only that the will of God be satisfied, and know that His deepest will is your eternal salvation.” “I didn’t get lost on the way to church,” I confided. “It’s a small miracle. I find it hard to find the bathroom in my own house.” “Well, there you have it,” said the priest. “Un miracolo piccolino. Every difficulty and suffering in life must be embraced as an opportunity for you to increase your trust in God. Put your future in God’s hands. There is no better place to put it.” And then I collapsed into the arms of the old priest. “I believe,” I cried out amid my tears. “I believe in Christ. It is my Nennolina who has taught me to believe.” * * * My Nennolina died on a Friday, four years ago, with myself, her parents, and Lucia and Carlo at her side. She had told her mother ahead of time that she would die that Friday. Somehow the Lord gave her that knowledge. She attributed it to Saint Therese de Lisieux, whom Nennolina had asked for more time on earth, but who had told her she would not live past that Friday. For most of my life I would have doubted such an apparition, but I have learned that miracles are ubiquitous and happen every day. As some wise man once said, the person who does not believe in miracles is not a realist. I know every day is a miracle for me. I have lived with mild dementia for years, but somehow have managed – through my prayers – to avoid lapsing into severe dementia. That means that I can reason and hold ordinary conversations with people, that I’m not a constant burden to others, that I can even write. The nuns at the home for the aged treat me with great care, unlike Zoraya, who had been let go after my son Carlo learned of her abuse. And the greatest gift of all? Although I may forget what I’ve had this morning for breakfast, I haven’t lost the memory of my dear Elena. I remember our glorious wedding day, the marvelous day our son was born, our voyages to distant places like Morocco and New York City. In a word, my dearest recollections are largely intact. I don’t know when I’ll turn into a doddering fool, but this I know for sure: when all is done, the love of my life will be waiting for me. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) God Alone Suffices (Fiction, June 2023) Salvifici Dolores (Fiction, July 2023) By Sandro F. Piedrahita Ad maiorem Dei gloriam “For man, in his suffering, remains an intangible mystery.” Salvifici Doloris, Saint John Paul the Great “Cast me not off in old age, as my strength fails, forsake me not...now that I am old and gray, O God, forsake me not.” Psalm 71 For years, the old man had been tyrannized by his body. The truth is that old age had come upon him like a bulldozer, razing everything in its wake: his capacity to walk, the control of his trembling hands, the power of his once-stentorian voice. But now it was worse, much worse. He was losing even the ability to utter a simple sentence. What could be a greater trial for a man with his special, God-given mission? What personal affliction could render his papacy more useless? The old man offered his infirmities to Christ, as a means to carry His heavy Cross, and yet he still asked the Lord for healing. “If it is possible," the old man prayed, “let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet your will be done, not mine.” The old man tried to assuage his deep fear by recalling the words said to Saint Paul by Jesus: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” But the old man could not ignore the horror of what was happening. Suddenly he realized that perhaps it would soon no longer be possible for him to communicate with his flock, that it would become impossible even to lead them in prayer. At first, everyone thought it was a simple case of influenza. The old man was delivering his daily Angelus address from the papal apartment window and found it very difficult to recite the prayers as he felt a sudden sense of suffocating. As the day wore on, it was clear that something was deeply wrong. The old man felt an increasing difficulty breathing and as a result could only communicate in short, slurred sentences. By the next morning, the old man was barely able to speak at all. When his chief of staff, Archbishop Sandri, told the old man he had summoned a doctor and thought perhaps the old man should go to Gemelli Hospital, the old man waved his hand in the air dismissively and said in a halting voice, “It will get better, Leonardo. It always gets better.” But then the old man suddenly pressed his hands against his chest, gasping for air. He could not understand what was happening. He tried to inhale, but it was nearly impossible. “Please, please,” the old man cried. “Please help me breathe!” When the physician called by Archbishop Sandri examined the old man, he said the old man was suffering from a dangerous throat infection and recommended immediate transfer to the hospital. He advised Archbishop Sandri that the old man’s condition was life-threatening, that he could suffocate to death. Given his deep faith, the old man took it in stride. He did not fear death. What he feared most was that his message to the masses would be silenced. Before boarding the ambulance, Archbishop Sandri asked him for his blessing. Unable to say anything, the old man blessed the archbishop in silence, using only his shaking hands. The Archbishop looked at the old man intently and said three words: “Be not afraid.” The old man, many years earlier, had penned an encyclical which he proclaimed to be a meditation on human suffering. He reflected on it as he thought of his own condition while the ambulance made its way to the hospital, as he began what would be his long Via Crucis. In Salvifici Doloris – Redemptive Suffering – the old man had explained that suffering refers to different states of the spirit – pain, sadness, disappointment, discouragement, or, at its worst, despair. He had attempted to address the persistent and nagging question of the meaning of suffering. At the time he wrote the encyclical, he had not yet experienced suffering in the flesh, other than a would-be assassin’s bullets, but thanks to the Virgin Mary he had spent no more than three weeks at the hospital that time. Yes, he had lost both his parents and had lived in a country occupied first by the Germans and then the Russians, but his own body had remained relatively unscathed. When he wrote Salvifici Doloris, he was a strong and robust man writing about long-lasting suffering, an affliction he had not experienced himself. It was only in his later years that he experienced constant suffering firsthand, when his body was ravaged by Parkinson’s disease. The symptoms emerged slowly, but as his disease progressed, he suffered tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement, and difficulty walking. He also experienced involuntary muscle movements and knew there was no cure. The ailment was not only a source of severe joint pain, but also an affront to his modesty, since the old man habitually drooled in public as a result of the disease. More than one prelate had advised him to resign the papacy rather than have his multiple infirmities on full display, but the old man had remained steadfast. “I will teach all men and women what the Cross means,” he had responded more than once. “They shall see the suffering of Christ in my own aging body, in their Pope’s public humiliation. Seeing me suffer will make their own sufferings easier. If I collapse, I collapse.” As a result of Parkinson’s disease, the trembling of his hands was so great that he found it difficult to celebrate the Eucharist or to move without a wheelchair. Soon he had difficulties with everyday tasks such as dressing, feeding, and bathing. The realization that he was a burden on others was deeply grating, and he did not like the fact that nuns had to attend to him constantly. Eventually, he let the public see him only when seated, but it was not to hide his infirmity. It was simply because he had no other option. The old man had written that suffering is something which is wider than sickness, more complex and at the same time still more rooted in humanity itself. As he sat in the back of the ambulance, he realized the prescience of his words. His suffering was not just a reaction to his difficulty breathing, to the pain in his chest. No, his suffering was mostly spiritual, the recognition that if things worsened, he would be unable to lead the Church in such trying times. The twentieth century had been defined by the actions of a few bloodthirsty tyrants – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao – but the new century had come with its own atrocities, its own harvest of death. It came with unrelenting war and the immolations of millions in the womb. Surely there was still much left to do, and that racked the mind of the old man. Perhaps he would have to resign, even though doing so would be completely inimical to his nature. Faced with challenges, his instinct had always been to plod on, placing his trust in Christ and Mary. Hadn’t he attended a secret seminary in Krakow when he was in his twenties and the Nazis occupied Poland? Hadn’t he faced down international Communism itself, not through the use of armies as Stalin had joked, but through the power of his words? It was moral suffering more than physical suffering which most tormented him as he made his way to Gemelli Hospital in the ambulance. It was the “pain of the soul,” to use the words used in his 1984 encyclical, a pain of a decidedly “spiritual nature.” When he arrived at the hospital, he was ushered to a room on the tenth floor which was especially reserved for him and asked to undress and put on a hospital gown. That is the first indignity every patient faces, having to put on a gown open at the back, such that the person’s backside cannot always be concealed. There is a certain vulnerability in nakedness, a certain embarrassment and affront to modesty. But the old man did not complain. He had been at Gemelli Hospital before as a result of complications from Parkinson’s, and he knew the routine well. Soon he was subjected to a battery of tests, many of them causing great discomfort. He was instructed to keep his mouth open for more than an hour as Doctor Renato Buzzonetti probed the old man’s throat with his physician’s lighted instruments. After that, the doctor rubbed a sterile swab over the back of the old man’s throat to get a sample of secretions, then sent the sample to a lab for testing. Then there were the tests of his cardiovascular system and a CAT scan. The old man followed his physician’s instructions to the letter, obeying the doctor blindly without fully understanding the purpose of all the interventions. The doctor prescribed a full course of antibiotics and said that the worst was behind him. But the physician was wrong. Lord, how he was wrong! The worst was not behind him. The worst was right in front of him. As he was taken on an elevator to the hospital’s fourth story, a woman recognized him. He was sitting on his wheelchair, dressed only in his hospital gown, his head hunched over such that his chin was buried in his chest, with saliva spilling from his mouth. “Oh my God!” said the woman. “It’s you, the Pope. I knew you were in the hospital but didn’t expect to see you.” The old man waved one of his trembling hands weakly in the air as a sign of salutation. Then he extended his hand close to the woman’s mouth. “He wants you to kiss his ring,” said the nun attending to the old man. “It’s the fisherman’s ring he’s wearing.” “Sure, sure,” said the woman as she pressed her lips against the ring. “Thank you, your Holiness, for such a gift.” The old man did not respond. “He’s not doing very well, is he?” the woman asked the nun. “Can he even speak? Can I ask him for his blessing?” The old man uttered a monosyllabic response. “Come.” “He’s going to bless you,” said the nun. With his hand still shaking, the old man made the sign of the cross on the woman’s forehead. He made an effort to say something else, but it was impossible. “Can I ask you for a favor?” asked the woman. “My daughter is undergoing an operation on the third floor. They have to remove a tumor. Can you please say a prayer for her, even a silent prayer?” “Name,” gurgled the old man. The woman did not understand him. “Name,” he repeated in a monotonous tone. “What?” asked the woman. “He wants you to tell him the name of your daughter,” said the nun. “He needs to know her name so he can pray for her.” “Her name is Georgina,” the woman stated. “She’s only sixteen years old. You don’t know how happy I am knowing that you will pray for her.” “You too,” mumbled the old man. He paused and then tried to sit up on his wheelchair. “You too. Pray for me.” “He wants you to say a prayer for him also,” explained the nun at his side. “I already have. The entire nation is praying for you, your Holiness. The whole world remembers you in their prayers. And I shall certainly pray a Rosary for you tonight. You’ll see. Things will get better.” “Things – things – always get better,” the old man managed to reply in a whisper. “They always do. I bless you. Pray.” Within a week, the old man appeared at the window in his room at the hospital. His doctors concluded that he was doing much better and could possibly return to the Vatican soon, even though he was still suffering from a fever. From the hospital window, the old man sent a blessing to the crowds. But try as he might, he could say no more than a few garbled words, so the message which the old man had prepared was delivered by Archbishop Sandri. The old man directed the Argentine archbishop to quote certain passages from Salvifici Doloris to the crowds assembled outside, to teach them how to be strong in the face of adversity. He also asked Archbishop Sandri to quote a brief excerpt from the book of Job, to show that suffering on earth is not a punishment, but rather something that can lead to the greater good and can join the ordinary man in the suffering of Jesus. Job was a man who had lost everything – his health, his family, his fortune – and yet kept praising God. “His suffering,” the old man had written, “is the suffering of someone who is innocent, and it must be accepted as a mystery which the individual is unable to penetrate completely.” But the Pope did not want to convey the idea that human suffering was meaningless. The message then went on to quote reassuring words from the encyclical: “Looking at Christ and following Him with patient trust, we succeed in understanding that every human form of pain contains in itself a divine promise of salvation and joy.” The old man realized that his own suffering was a powerful message to his people about the importance of the Cross. At the end of the blessing written by the old man, the text ended with his frequent admonition, “Be not afraid!” The old man then made a sign of the Cross and returned to his quarters at the hospital. Meanwhile the adoring masses outside the hospital erupted in cheers and began to pray the Te Deum together. Three days later, the old man was released from Gemelli. His bouts of asphyxiation were gone, but he still found it difficult to speak. The old man returned to the Vatican in his Mercedes-Benz popemobile, dressed in his white cassock as always, with the pallium about his shoulders, a white zucchetto on his head, the elbow-long cape known as the mozzetta over his arms, and a crucifix hanging from his neck. He regretted having used an ambulance when he first went to the hospital, thinking his condition should not be hidden from the masses. Hadn’t he preached in Saint Peter’s Square, thanking Christ and Mary for the Gospel of suffering? Hadn’t he written Salvifici Doloris, linking human suffering to the crucifixion? Why hide from the masses the mysterious fact that undeserved suffering comes also to the good? The old man had never hidden his suffering before, even accepting the scandal of drooling in public, so he saw no purpose in hiding his tribulations now. Soon the word that the old man was leaving the hospital spread, and everyone rejoiced. Crowds began to assemble along the streets leading from Gemelli Hospital to Saint Peter’s Square, many people holding rosaries and the yellow-and-white flags of the Vatican. The old man waved at the loving throngs and offered them a blessing with his shaking right hand, all the while remaining silent. At an intersection, the Mercedes-Benz stopped, and an adolescent approached the vehicle, begging the old man to say something to his people. The old man turned to Archbishop Sandri seeking reassurance, unsure if his voice would fail him. He then looked at the adolescent – the old man had always felt a special love for the youth of the world – and mumbled two simple words, “Totus tuus,” which everyone understood, as it was the old man’s mantra. “I am all yours,” the old man had said constantly throughout his papacy, expressing total devotion to Jesus through Mary. It was Mary who had saved him from the would-be assassin’s bullet in 1981, and the old man was sure it was Mary who had accompanied him on this latest test. She had helped him cope with the ever-worsening depredations of Parkinson’s disease for years and certainly would not abandon him now. In his heart of hearts, the old man had no doubt about it. In Mary he would find comfort for all of his afflictions, those of the body as well as those of the spirit. Hadn’t the Virgin Mary spared him from his greatest fear, the possibility of developing Parkinson’s-related dementia, such a common symptom among elderly victims of the disease? The old man did not want to share the fate of his onetime anti-Communist ally Ronald Reagan, whose Alzheimer’s eventually led him to forget his very name. Three days after the old man’s arrival at the Vatican, he insisted on delivering the Angelus prayer to the great crowds assembled in the enormous plaza. He knew that they were there for him, to share in his pain and celebrate his return to health, and he did not want to disappoint them. A number of his aides counseled against it, saying he was still not well enough to appear in public, saying his speech difficulties would terrorize the faithful. But the old man had never been one to be silenced, so he appeared at his apartment window overlooking the vast Saint Peter’s Square, now full of pilgrims, and he tried to deliver a simple message. However, it was not to be. He was only able to utter a few brief words before being forced to leave the rest to Archbishop Sandri, since the old man once again had the sense of suffocating as he tried to speak. And he once again recalled the words of his encyclical on suffering. The old man had written that suffering is not necessarily a punishment, but as in the case of the just man Job, sometimes suffering has the nature of a test. He also remembered the words from Maccabees: that some punishments are designed not to destroy, but to discipline and teach the people. And of course he remembered Jesus Himself, who had announced that the Cross was the only ladder to heaven. The next week the old man once again tried to deliver the Angelus message from the window of his Vatican apartment. He had read certain newspaper articles speaking of his imminent resignation and would have nothing of it. So he was ushered to the balcony in his wheelchair, a decrepit man whose movements were slow and weak and whose voice was slurred. Once again, he was only able to say a few words and bless the teeming crowds with his trembling hands before Archbishop Sandri intervened, but that was sufficient to him. He was beginning to accept that perhaps he would lose his capacity to preach forever, and he wanted to be an example to his people. No matter what the trial, no matter what the sickness, no matter the extent of the despair, he wanted to remind them now and always: Be not afraid! The old man would not resign, but he would let the Good Lord decide when his papacy would end. “Totus tuus!” he managed to say one last time before disappearing into the darkness of his apartment. “I’m all yours, my Mary!” Within a few days, the old man suffered through a full-blown crisis. He had been feeling relatively better during the afternoon, but in the early evening he began to violently convulse. “I am dying,” he cried out as he brought both hands to his chest. The pain was inexpressible, and he felt it was impossible to inhale. It was worse than all his previous crises. This time he was sure the Good Lord was calling him to Heaven, but he could barely think, such was his mounting desperation. “Please, please!” he cried out as he made a valiant effort to breathe. “Somebody help me! I need some air!” Archbishop Sandri immediately called an ambulance, and Cardinal Adrian Jaworski gave the old man the last rites, as he thought the old man was on the door of death. But the old man did not die. The doctors arrived and inserted a breathing tube into his nose. That evening the old man was able to pray the Rosary silently as he lay in his bed at the Gemelli Hospital once again. And he prayed not for himself but for the future of the Church. For the first time, the old man was certain that one way or another, his papacy would end. He prayed that the Church would thereafter find a pastor commensurate with the monumental task at hand. The Church of the twenty-first century faced multiple challenges and would need a shepherd of Christ inspired by the Holy Spirit. Within two days of his arrival at Gemelli Hospital, the old man went through a tracheotomy. He felt it was the continuation of his Passion, the next step on his ascent to Calvary. His physicians surgically created an opening through his neck into his windpipe to allow air to fill his lungs. After creating the opening in his neck, the surgeons inserted a tube through it to provide an airway and remove secretions from the lungs. After the operation, the old man could no longer breathe through his nose and mouth, but only through the tracheotomy tube. It was a further indignity, evidence that he had become a complete invalid, but he felt no rancor in his heart. He accepted everything as the will of God. He asked Archbishop Sandri to bring him a Bible and a copy of Salvifici Doloris. When he saw Doctor Buzzonetti, the old man scribbled a note on a sheet of paper with great difficulty. “You never told me this operation would render me completely mute. Had I known that, I would never have consented.” “The alternative was a slow and grueling death through suffocation,” responded the physician. “The tracheotomy was a medical necessity.” Two days after the operation, the old man once again appeared at the window of his room at Gemelli Hospital. His blessing was meant to comfort the faithful in their fears, but it had the opposite effect. It had gotten to the point where the old man was completely unable to speak. He stood at the side of Archbishop Sandri, saying nothing. His followers could not fail to realize that now he was breathing through a hole in his neck and not his nose. It was as if the old man was purposefully putting all his infirmities on display, telling them, “Be not afraid.” Soon the old man had an idea which intrigued him. Why not film his blessing from the hospital and broadcast it live on three screens at Saint Peter’s Square? He wanted to reward all the faithful who were keeping vigil for him. On the appointed day, the image of the old man at his hospital window was broadcast live in the great Vatican plaza. But the old man was disappointed, as his voice failed him again. He was once again forced to allow Archbishop Sandri to deliver most of the message he had penned for the crowds. Archbishop Sandri for the first time saw the old man express frustration at his condition. “Maybe it is better – better, aagh – for the Lord to take me,” the old man said in a tortured whisper, “as I am unable – unable – to practice my heavy pastoral duties – my duties – and don’t believe I am able to resign.” At some point, the old man decided to communicate with Archbishop Sandri in writing, as he could not say anything meaningful in his garbled speech. “Surely I am a victim soul,” the old man had written slowly, for it was hard to write with his trembling hands, “and I say that without complaint or grievance. Perhaps as with the great stigmatists of the Catholic Church, I am to suffer to expiate the sins of others. But let me tell you it is a heavy Cross, my friend. Most of the great stigmatists suffer the five wounds of Jesus sporadically. I am crucified by the relentless deterioration of my own body and suffer a daily public martyrdom. And it is getting worse, as I have lost the faculty of speech. But don’t believe I am whining. I believe in brighter days ahead. There are always better days ahead. Totus tuus!” The old man had been reading Salvifici Doloris and deriving comfort from the encyclical he had written himself. He knew that he had merely been a pencil in the hands of God while he had been writing it, that the Holy Spirit had spoken through him. He realized now more than ever that he also was the recipient of that message, the destinataire as they say in French. He pondered what he had written in the encyclical, given his recent suffering, and saw everything in a new light. “The world of suffering,” he had written, “possesses as it were its own solidarity. People who suffer become similar to one another through the analogy of their situation.” It was true that first with Parkinson’s disease and now with this new struggle, the old man could better empathize with those who suffer. He could feel a real solidarity, thinking of all those men and women with tubes in their noses whom he had been asked to bless, all those burdened with colostomy bags, all those elderly betrayed by their own bodies in a myriad of ways. In some strange and mysterious way known only to God, the old man’s pain could make him a better pastor. The encyclical tackled the first question people ask about suffering, the question of why. Why is there suffering in a world created by a God who is good? Why do so many innocents suffer to the point where they collapse? At bottom, the encyclical sought to explain the meaning of suffering at its most fundamental level. The old man had written that no one should interpret all suffering as a punishment: “It is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of a punishment.” But then what is its purpose? In Salvifici Doloris, the young pope attempted to answer the question. First and foremost, stated the encyclical, suffering happens “because it creates the possibility of rebuilding goodness in the subject who suffers.” Reading the encyclical written so long ago gave the old man a measure of solace, as it reinforced something he had believed for years: that sickness and frailty are not a penalty from God – far from it – but rather a manifestation of God’s grace, an invitation to trust God and God alone. That knowledge, thought the old man, should allow him to face his own suffering with courage and conviction. He determined that he would continue to wave to the crowds from the hospital window and bless them at the Angelus hour, even if he could not say a word. There was a holy stubbornness in his nature. Archbishop Sandri would continue to be his voice, and the Holy Spirit would continue to inspire the old man’s words as he guided his flock in this most trying of times. The old man did not question his suffering, certainly did not question his God, and yet he derived great consolation from reading the words he had written as a younger man. It was as if the strong and robust man he had once been had prepared a missive to the disabled man he would become. “Love,” he had written, “is also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the Cross of Jesus Christ.” The old man well understood what the younger man had written. Although Christ’s Cross and Resurrection do not abolish temporal suffering from human life, they nevertheless throw a new light upon every suffering: the light of salvation. There was a reason why the encyclical was titled Redemptive Suffering. In light of the promise of eternal life, what did a few months of temporal suffering mean, especially when joined with Jesus’ suffering on the Cross? What did a few years of suffering mean? What did an entire lifetime of suffering mean? Absolutely nothing. Christ had conquered the sting of suffering and death through His Crucifixion and Resurrection, promising that every earthly pain would end. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee,” said the Lord in the book of Isaiah, “but with great mercies will I gather thee.” At some point, a cleaning woman knocked on the door of the old man’s room. At the time he was being visited by Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, a fellow Pole who had known the old man for decades and had even replaced him as Archbishop of Krakow. When the woman entered the room, the old man was surprised that she addressed him in Polish. “Papiez Jan Pawel,” she said. “What an honor it is to be in your presence. You are truly a giant in Poland’s quest for liberation. Had you not visited Poland in 1979, telling the people not to be afraid of their Communist masters, I am sure Poland would still be behind the Iron Curtain. I was in Poland at the time and well remember being among the three million people who welcomed you to Warsaw.” The old man made a great effort to sit up on his bed and then muttered almost in a whisper, “I am not a giant.” “You may not realize it,” replied the Polish woman, “but you are one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.” “Look at me now,” the old man managed to respond. “Sic transit gloria mundi.” And then he asked Archbishop Dziwisz for a pen and paper. He began to scribble a few notes in Polish, but the truth was that writing was almost as difficult as speaking. He found it inordinately difficult just to hold the pen in his unsteady hands. He wrote his message laboriously, writing each letter at a time with great care. With the progression of Parkinson’s disease, his handwriting had become smaller and smaller. Then he handed the note to the Archbishop, who promptly read it to the Polish woman. “I was not responsible for the fall of Communism either in Poland or anywhere else. I was merely an instrument of the Holy Spirit. And I think what led to the liberation of Poland had less to do with my visit than the fact that millions of Poles were praying the Rosary every night to Our Lady of Czestochowa.” The old man then added a few words in his gravelly voice. “They prayed to our Black Madonna.” “You’re underestimating yourself,” said the Polish woman. “Without your exhortations to the Polish people, liberty would still be no more than a dream. You told them not to be afraid of tyrants, and they listened to you.” “The victory came through Mary,” the old man said with great effort. After eighteen days at the hospital, the old man was allowed to return to the Apostolic Palace according to his wishes. There was not much more the physicians could do for him. He still had a high temperature and had not recovered his ability to speak. And yet the old man felt it was best for him to return to Saint Peter’s Square. He didn’t want to die in the hospital. He wanted to die in a place where he could sense the loving fervor of the faithful masses praying for him with all their might. Even though the doctors had said nothing about his impending death, the old man somehow knew. As he boarded the vehicle that would return him to the Vatican, the old man was sure he was close to the end of his earthly journey. And he was fully prepared for that moment. He did not face death with fear or trepidation, but with a joyful serenity. He viewed death simply as the passage from one room to another room which was infinitely better. On Easter Sunday, following the noontime Mass, the old man made an appearance at the balcony of his room facing the great plaza. He had prayed hard to be able to say Mass on such a special day, but his continuing inability to speak rendered it impossible. He wrote a brief Apostolic Blessing to be read after the Mass, but given the failure of his voice, it was read by Angelo Cardinal Sordano. The old man – silent witness to his own relentless decline – stood beside the Cardinal, trying not to look defeated. He did nothing to hide his pain from all the faithful, however, since he continued to think that his suffering – his ongoing deterioration – was imparting a message to the world. And yet how much the old man would have wanted to give his people a last goodbye, to say something to lift their spirits! But try as he might, he could not speak. He was a living example of redemptive pain. The crowd began to weep when they saw the crumbling man unable to even mutter a few words and repeatedly chanted, as if trying to give the old man courage: “Be not afraid! Be not afraid! Be not afraid!” Humbled by the cheers of all the faithful, the old man waved his hand in the air with difficulty, for he felt a heaviness in all his limbs, and he sent them his blessing with the glimmer of a smile. For some reason, everyone in the crowd knew that the old man would never be seen in public again. Nobody was able to understand his few parting words, as they were impossible to decipher. But the multitudinous crowds applauded nonetheless. Four days later, the moment came. Suddenly the old man’s whole body was in revolt against him. The monster which had begun as a throat infection had somehow morphed into an infection of the urinary tract. In turn, the urinary tract infection had led to the injury of various organs. His cardiovascular system collapsed. His kidneys were failing. His temperature reached alarming rates. His doctors spoke of multiple organ failure. It was clear to his physicians that the old man had developed septic shock as a result of the infection, and there was very little that could be done about it. At some point, the doctors inserted a feeding tube into the old man, but he declined kidney dialysis, for he thought it would be useless, and he wanted to die at the Vatican close to his people. By then, thousands of pilgrims were congregated in Saint Peter’s Square day and night in order to pray for him and stand in solidarity with him. “Totus tuus!” they cried out in unison, remembering the old man’s slogan. He wanted to go to the balcony on his wheelchair one last time but did not have the strength even to do that. He couldn’t get up from his bed, and he was shivering uncontrollably. Surely he was in the throes of death, and everyone around him knew it. On Saturday evening, the Mass for Divine Mercy Sunday was officiated in his room by Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz. The old man, lying on his bed with a thick pillow beneath him, collaborated in a simple manner, by raising his hand to consecrate the holy host at the appropriate time. Shortly thereafter, the Polish Archbishop delivered the last rites to the old man, rubbing holy oil on his forehead, for the Archbishop knew that the old man’s death was certain. Outside his window, the crowds of pilgrims were praying the Rosary and chanting without cease, and that gave a certain comfort to the old man, since it meant he would not enter his final journey alone. “You would not be alone anywhere,” Archbishop Dziwisz told him after the old man managed to convey his thoughts to him. “People are praying for you in every nook and corner of the planet, in every land and in every continent.” “And please give me your blessing,” the Archbishop pleaded as he kissed the old man’s hands. The old man said, “Thank you,” and blessed the Archbishop by putting both hands upon his head and muttering the briefest of prayers. “Please read the Gospel of John,” the old man whispered, and the priests at his bedside complied. When they reached a certain line, the old man asked them to repeat it. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, when you were young you girded yourself and walked wherever you wished; but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands and another shall gird you.” The old man then reclined silently on his pillow and shut his eyes. His breaths became weaker and weaker as many came to kiss him on the forehead – Cardinals from various countries, young priests studying in Italy, friends from an entire lifetime. Sister Tobiana, who had attended to him for years, and Francesco, the faithful employee in charge of keeping the old man’s quarters tidy, were also present. Finally his breath was the most silent of whispers. He opened his eyes starkly and said, “Let me go to the House of the Father.” And then he breathed no more. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) God Alone Suffices (Fiction, June 2023) By Sandro F. Piedrahita Ad maiorem Dei gloriam “Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.” - Saint Teresa of Avila I have been praying without ceasing at the shrine to Fra Giacomo in the church of San Francesco in Citta di Castello since this morning. My parents heard that many people were visiting the shrine to ask for miracles and that many pilgrims had in fact been cured. According to my mother, people had been traveling to the church of San Francesco from all over Italy, even from as far as Germany, seeking Fra Giacomo’s intercession to rid themselves of all sorts of maladies. There were reports of the blind men seeing, the lame men walking, and the paralytics being healed. A deaf–mute girl was able to speak and hear. A woman with a hideous skin condition suddenly was cured. A man with a deadly tumor was no longer ill. My parents Parisio and Emilia della Metola were never particularly Catholic and seldom attended Mass, but somehow they decided that it was worth a try to visit Fra Giacomo’s shrine to demand a miracle. God knows how joyous they would be if instead of a disfigured hunchbacked dwarf they had a lovely princess for a daughter! But I know the Lord formed my inward parts and knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, just as the psalm reminds us. The truth is, my parents know how devoted I am to Christ and think I am somehow entitled to a miracle. If not you, they said when they announced our trip to Castello, who else deserves a cure? Don’t you spend your whole day praying? My father and mother – he so handsome, she so lovely, both patricians of noble lineage – were shocked on the day of my birth in 1287. I am blind, lame, a dwarf and hunchbacked. One of my legs is longer than the other, and I have a deformed arm and a misshapen face. Instead of the blessing they had expected on the day of my birth, when my parents saw me they felt cursed by what they considered a monster. And so early this morning they brought me to this shrine, to see if their unwelcome freak could somehow be restored through a fabulous miracle. For years they have tried to hide me, to pretend I do not exist. They told everyone I was dead. Since I was a six-year-old they have kept me hidden in a small stone cell without a door, attached to the chapel of Saint Mary in Metola, a place where nobody could see me, other than Fra Cappellano, who taught me about the Lord and gave me Holy Communion through a small square window. Later, in my sixteenth year, they transferred me to a secret underground vault in the palace at Mercatello, which was even worse, for I was not close to the house of God and could not listen to Mass or receive the Sacraments. But yesterday they decided for the first time in thirteen years to take me out of my prison cell. My parents desperately wanted to see if God would do something to rid them of a cross they felt they had unjustly borne for far too long. Of course they made sure I was heavily veiled, so that no one could see my face, and we left under cover of darkness. When we arrived at the shrine, I asked for a miracle mostly because it would please my parents. As for me, I long ago made peace with my deformity. To quote Saint Paul, I will boast gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. I think that when we initially arrived, my father and mother had some hope of a miracle, but as the hours passed and nothing happened, they became gradually less enthused. Soon my father went back to the inn – not being a man of faith himself, he had thought the idea of asking for a cure for so many disabilities was doomed to fail from the beginning – and as the hours passed and there was no miracle my mother too became increasingly desperate. “Pray hard and loud,” my mother ordered me, “so that God can hear your voice above that of all the rabble.” “God can hear me,” I told her. “There is no need to shout.” “Well, pray, pray!” she beseeched me. “Tell the God you pray to that it is unjust for Him to have given you such a punishment.” “I have not been punished by God,” I gently rebuked my mother. “Each person has a different cross to bear. God knows why I have been born this way. One should never question the designs of our Almighty God.” “Just pray,” my mother insisted. “Never mind whether or not you have been punished. I know that your father and I have certainly been punished. What great sin have we committed, that we should have deserved such a terrible blight?” “Please, Lord,” I said to satisfy my mother. “Heal me of my deformity. Restore my vision. Rid me of this disfiguring hunchback. Fix my legs and make my face beautiful like that of my mother. Make me the daughter my parents have always wanted.” And then I added, as I had been taught by Fra Cappellano, “But not according to my will, but yours be done, my Lord.” “Don’t say that!” my mother cried excitedly. “Don’t give Him the option of denying your request. You make it sound as if you didn’t care much either way. Demand a miracle, demand it urgently, Margherita. You always pray so much, He has to listen to you.” “We can’t demand anything from God,” I responded in an even voice. “God will do whatever is best for my soul and for His greater glory.” “Oh, you’re hopeless,” my mother cried. “Maybe your father is right. Maybe even God can’t help you.” “For God nothing is impossible,” I replied. “Well, then pray,” my mother repeated. “If He is so powerful, let Him show His power.” Although I could not see anything, I could get a sense of who else was at the church based on my mother’s apparent disgust at the sight of the other pilgrims, which she made no effort to conceal. She complained about the “foul, pestilent odor of the crowds” and told me that but for her desire to see me healed, she would never have endured it. And it was true that the stench of sweat and dirt was everywhere, the smell of working men and women, many of them suffering from one illness or another, but I did not think of the malodor of the pilgrims but of their great faith and devotion, which I could hear all about me. “You should be thankful that I’m at your side, Margherita,” said my mother. “Realize that I’m doing this only for you. This place is full of hideous creatures, a parade of horribles, a lot of them filthy and disheveled. Many of them are visibly diseased, and I dread the possibility of contagion. There’s a woman whose face and arms are covered by red bleeding pustules, a man defaced by enormous black warts as big as eggs, another with repellent boils, and all you do is say, ‘Lord, do whatever you will.’ If you’re not going to put your heart into your requests, just let me know, Margherita, and we can put an end to all this praying.” “All right, I shall begin to pray the Rosary,” I said. “I shall pray to Mary as hard as I can. Mary is the most powerful of intercessors.” “Fine,” my mother said. “You’ve spent thirteen years doing nothing but praying. And today of all days you seem so hesitant.” “I have never really prayed for a cure,” I explained to my mother. “I don’t know if a cure is necessary. I have prayed for the power to accept my limitations, as a way of sharing Christ’s cross.” At various times, we heard people exclaiming thanks to the Lord for prayers that had been answered. There was one woman who was practically wailing, praising God because her son, who had been beset by maniacal hallucinations and delusions and whom she called a demoniac, had been completely cured. I know that she approached my mother and think she even hugged her, because my mother immediately exclaimed, “Don’t touch me, you dirty peasant woman! Don’t you know who you are dealing with?” Still, my mother turned to me and said I should redouble my prayers. “If such a lowly, common woman has been granted such a miracle, surely God can do no less for you. Ask God for what you deserve, you, the daughter of Parisio and Emilia della Metola.” But after a few hours of listening to me pray the Rosary, with no change in my condition, my mother simply disappeared. I assumed she had gone to the back of the church, to get away from the sickest supplicants, and I continued praying. Soon I found myself moving to and fro among the persons begging for miracles. There was barely any breathing room. Some people were rough, pushing me forward forcefully as they tried to approach the tomb of Fra Giacomo. At one moment I was knocked down onto the floor and the crowds simply walked over me until, with the assistance of my cane and a kindly man, I was able to get back on my feet. There were so many people at the church that it became unbearably hot, and my forehead started to sweat profusely under the mantilla veil my parents had told me to wear in order to hide my face. “Please heal my son’s clubfoot,” one woman cried. Another exclaimed, “Please let my daughter hear again.” And yet another prayed, “I need a cure for this terrible affliction of the lungs.” “Where’s the crucifix?” I asked in my blindness, and a man took me by the hand and led me through the crowds to a place where I could kneel. When I had been locked up for eleven years in the cell next to the chapel in Metola, I had at least that solace: the window of my room directly faced the chancel of the church, and I could hear the benediction and knew the image of Christ on His cross was only a few meters away from me. And despite my blindness, I imagined, somehow, I could see Jesus in His agony on that crucifix perched high above the altar as Fra Cappellano elevated the Host during the Eucharist. At any event, today, in the Church of San Francesco, I found myself kneeling at the foot of the crucified Jesus. I said, again, “If it is your will, my Lord, please cure me of my disfigurements and let me see. It is hard to be dwarfed, humpbacked, lame and blind. I am fatigued by my condition, but it is especially fatiguing to my parents.” And then I added, as always, “Not according to my will, but yours be done, my Lord.” I prayed fervently – no one could doubt that – I sincerely wanted a cure. But I trusted that, no matter what happened, God’s decision would be the best one for both myself and my parents. The hours passed, and I continued praying. I prayed the Rosary ceaselessly, but there was no change in my condition. Then I finished praying, and amid the crowds, I searched for my mother. I called out her name and heard nothing in response. I had been locked up for years with scarcely any human contact – at first just Fra Cappellano teaching me about the faith when I lived in a cell next to the chapel at Metola and later, when I was moved to Mercatello, only the servants bringing me food. So I was wholly unaccustomed to being in such a large and boisterous crowd, with everybody moving in different directions, not knowing exactly where I was, whether I was close to the altar or to the exit. Somehow I managed to make it to the back of the church, where I thought my mother would be waiting, but still I couldn’t find her. I took hold of a woman by the arm and asked her if she could help me, told her that my mother was named Emilia. The woman, realizing that I was blind, agreed to help me, and asked among the crowds for my mother. But my mother was not there, and eventually the woman stopped looking for her. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said in a kind voice. “But your mother is nowhere to be found.” I kept searching for hours, making my way with difficulty among the throngs. Finally the sexton tapped me on the shoulder and told me it was time to leave, that I could return the next morning. I left the church and walked out into the rain, not knowing what had happened to my mother. On the wagon as we traveled to Castello, my father Parisio had warned that there were outlaws who preyed upon the pilgrims, and my father had even enlisted an escort of twelve guards to protect our carriage. For the first time in my life, I felt absolute terror. Perhaps my parents had suffered an accident in the city. Perhaps they had been killed by bandits. I made the sign of the cross and said a prayer for their safety. Surely the Lord would not let anything happen to them, since they were all I had in this world. So I sat down on the steps of the church and waited for hours, never stopping my prayers – not for a cure to my deformity, but for the healthy return of those I loved so much. At some point the sexton appeared again and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was waiting for my parents and asked him if he could direct me to the Avellino Inn, where my parents and I had been staying. I remembered that my father Parisio had said it was the best inn in all of Castello – fitting a man of his stature, a hero against Metola’s enemies. The sexton told me the inn was not too far away, perhaps two kilometers, and that all I needed to do was follow the street of San Provolo directly until I heard the noise coming from the inn. The sexton added that many people gathered to drink at night on Saturdays at the Avellino Inn, and that I couldn’t miss it even if I tried. I don’t know if he realized that I was blind. But then he warned me, “It is dangerous for a woman such as you to travel the streets of Citta di Castello by herself so late at night. A bandit may appear, and you might be ravished.” I uncovered my face and told him there was no such danger. “Have you seen my face, how hideous it is to mortal eyes?” I asked him. “Have you seen the curvature of my spine? The unevenness of my legs? I am in no danger of losing my chastity.” So I started on my journey, for the first time making my way through the roads of a city, blind, lame and completely alone. Although I wrapped a shawl about my head, it did nothing to protect me from the rain. The streets were barren, probably because of the weather, and I couldn’t find anyone to give me further directions. I noticed there were structures on either side of the road, what I imagined to be houses, and I walked with one hand on the walls and another on my cane. Surely this way I wouldn’t get lost, if I simply followed the houses on what I imagined was the street of San Provolo. But it was hard to walk on the uneven, muddy road, and I stumbled and fell several times, just like the Christ had fallen as He carried His Cross on the way to Calvary. Every time I fell, my garments got covered in more and more mud. In all my years on this earth, I had never realized how challenging it was to be lame and blind at the same time. But the hours passed, and at some point, I concluded that I had taken the wrong course. There were no longer any houses, only what seemed to be empty fields. I kept walking anyway, but in the opposite direction, trying to return to the place where I had come from, until I ran into a pack of dogs. I had never heard a dog bark before, let alone seen one, but Fra Cappellano had instructed me about the animals in God’s creation and had told me about dogs, cats, cows, and so many other creatures. I did not know what to do when faced with all those dogs – there must have been about a dozen of them – and I was afraid that if I moved, they would pounce upon me. And indeed when I made the slightest movement, I heard more than one of the dogs starting to growl quite fiercely. I imagined them shredding me to pieces, biting my legs, my face, my head, and there was nothing I could do to protect myself, no human to rescue me. I was completely alone. And then I said a small prayer to the Lord, and the animals ceased their barking and growling, starting to sniff me with curiosity instead. Suddenly I knew I was safe. I even dared to caress one of the dogs, with woolly hair and floppy ears, and he was gentle as could be, wet and shivering just like I was. I sat on a rock in the rain and decided to wait for dawn, when the people would fill the streets again and I could be told how to make my way to the Avellino Inn to find my parents. I tried to wipe off the mud from my skirt and blouse, but it was useless. Finally day broke and shortly thereafter I heard a group of women walking together. I told them, “I am blind. Please help me. I need to find the Avellino Inn. Somehow I got lost last night.” “Well, you’re nowhere near it, but it just so happens we’re going in that direction. You can walk with us. You just have to follow the river for a couple of kilometers and then walk south for another kilometer.” “Are we close to a river?” I inquired. “Yes,” one of the women told me. “It is the Tiber River. You can’t hear it because it’s raining. But if you prick your ears, you will sense its movement.” Finally, soaking wet and muddied, I arrived at the Avellino Inn. I said to the concierge, “I am looking for my parents, Parisio and Emilia della Metola. Can you please tell them I am here?” “Well, I’m sorry,” the woman answered in a curt tone, and then she hurled out a few words that hurt like knives. “They left yesterday afternoon. Apparently they left without you. Although they did leave a message for you.” She handed me a piece of paper. “I can’t see,” I said. “Can you tell me what it says?” The woman began reading. “Since you have not made the slightest effort to demand a miracle and you are so happy in your condition, we have decided that it is best for you to face your perils with God alone. We are done with worrying about you and will leave everything in His hands. Find a church or convent where they will take you in and feed you. Or learn to beg if you must. Please do not look for us again. Parisio and Emilia.” I started weeping. I began reeling. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked the innkeeper. “I can’t see. I can barely walk. I’ve been locked up in a room for years, never having to make my way around a city. How am I supposed to keep on living?” “I’m sorry,” the innkeeper responded. “You can’t stay here. I am not running a charity. In any case, there is no room at the inn at the moment. Perhaps you should just walk to the cathedral in the center of town. That is where all the beggars go to ask for alms. I am sure that seeing your condition, many people will give you something. Enough to eat at least. Few people are as cursed as you appear to be, my dear.” I responded, amid my tears, “I am a temple of the Holy Ghost, made in His image and likeness. My condition is not a curse but a gift from God.” And with that, alone and blind, I began to brave the streets of Citta di Castello, unable to cease weeping. With the passing of the years, I would learn to navigate those streets, from east to west, from north to south, as if I could see them with the eyes of God Himself. I mouthed another prayer to Jesus – not a desperate prayer, for I confided in Him – and then I started to walk. Eventually I asked a man I found on the street for directions to the Cathedral. “As you can see, I am blind and crippled,” I told him. “My name is Margherita. I need to find the Cathedral to see if someone will take pity on me and at least give me enough so that I may eat. I ate nothing yesterday, since I prayed all day and night. God knows that I am hungry. Even a loaf of bread and cheese would do.” “I, too, am a beggar,” the man volunteered in a tone that can only be described as cheerful. “My name is Giuseppe, and I am on my way to the cathedral. You can walk with me. You are new in town. What brings you here?” “My parents live in a castle on top of a mountain in Metola. They are very wealthy, noble people. They came to Citta di Castello on a horse and wagon to ask for a miracle from Fra Giacomo, and when I wasn’t healed, they simply left me, as if I were an animal to be cast away and forgotten. Frankly I am worried about their state in the eyes of God. To leave me alone under such conditions is surely the gravest of sins. I shall spend whatever is left of my life praying for their souls.” “That is the least of your worries,” Giuseppe told me. “You are in peril in this city, some bandit might try to assault you to see if you have anything worth stealing. Better not to walk alone in this town.” I told Giuseppe I was sure God would protect me and quoted from the twenty-third psalm. “Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For God is near me, His rod and staff, they comfort me.” Then I remembered another psalm that Fra Cappellano had repeated to me constantly over the years, probably because he was furious about what my proud parents had done to me when I was a child. “My father and my mother have forsaken me,” I quoted Fra Cappellano, “but the Lord has taken me up.” “So you are a pious woman,” Giuseppe said. “And you know your Scriptures.” “The Lord has always protected me, and I trust He will continue to do so. He is my refuge and my strength, even when the people I most love have failed me.” “Well, you certainly need strength. Being crippled like you isn’t easy, especially since you’re also blind. And I assume your parents didn’t leave you any money. But you’re lucky it’s Sunday. I will take you to the Cathedral, on the Piazza Gabriotti, where you can meet the other beggars and join us in begging for alms after each of the Masses.” “Are there a lot of beggars?” I asked. “Quite a few, especially now that so many crippled people have come to town to ask for a miracle from Fra Giacomo. The great majority have not been cured. We have a group of regulars who hang together and help each other out. Pool together our resources. Maybe you can join our group.” “That would be nice,” I said. “I feel so alone in this big city.” “During the rainy season, we sleep under bridges or sometimes go to an abandoned house on the outskirts of town, but it is pretty distant, and some of the beggars are too lame to go that far. Giovanni has no arms and legs, so he has to be carried. Elena is hopelessly crippled, even worse than you are. And Gianna is too old to walk very far. I myself am pretty disfigured, although of course you can’t tell. I am missing a leg and can barely walk with my crutches, Margherita. And my arms are so withered that it is impossible for me to work. I can barely feed myself with both hands.” “I can see your heart, which is what’s important,” I said. “I can sense a kind and loving soul, lovely in the sight of God.” “And when it is not raining,” Giuseppe continued, “we sleep wherever God finds us.” “Can we please slow down?” I said. “I am not used to walking, and last night I walked for hours. Both my legs are aching horribly, as my unused muscles must have been terribly strained. So we shall have to take it a little slow. I hope you don’t mind, Giuseppe.” “Not in the least,” Giuseppe answered. “I don’t walk that quickly either, Margherita,” he added with a laugh. After a long, slow walk, Giuseppe took me to the steps of the cathedral. “I would like to go inside,” I said. “I heard so much about the marvelous Cathedral of Citta di Castello from Fra Cappellano. He described the vaulted arches, how high the ceiling is, the marvelous stained glass panels showing the Stations of the Cross. I want to enter and feel the sense of wonder, even though I cannot see anything. I would like to attend Mass, Giuseppe, to receive the Holy Eucharist. After what I went through last night, I have so much to be thankful for today.” “Thankful?” Giuseppe echoed. “You’ve just been abandoned by your parents, crippled, penniless and blind in a strange town. What do you have to be thankful for?” “I found you, didn’t I?” I replied. “And at least I know my parents are safe. For the first time in my life, I feel the warmth of the sun upon my cheeks. I’m so used to being cloistered in a small cell that even something as simple as that fills my heart with joy. To breathe the open air, to hear the clop-clop of horses on the open roads, to smell the flowers that I could only imagine when I was being hidden away, to listen to the cries of children being tugged at by their mothers, the slow murmur of the river, the grinding sound of the wagons transporting beautiful ladies and men of import on their way about town. What reason is there not to be thankful to the Lord, Giuseppe?” “You’re an odd bird, aren’t you, Margherita? Nothing seems to affect you.” “God alone suffices,” I answered. “Why shouldn’t we all be thankful?” As the two of us walked up the steps leading to the cathedral, which was quite a challenge for me, even with my cane, Giuseppe asked me to move a little bit to the right, as we were approaching Lucia with her paralytic son. “She always appears before the others and begs from the steps leading to the cathedral, unlike the rest of the beggars, who congregate at the piazza at the bottom of the stairs. That is because few people give her alms, as they blame her for her son’s condition. The rumor that has spread about town is that Lucia’s son was born healthy, but his own mother severed his spine in order to cripple him, to receive more money when she was begging. But if she is guilty of such a monstrous action, it has had the contrary effect. Not many people feel like rewarding her for such a crime, and so she receives less than any of the other beggars. Sometimes I think she leaves with nothing.” “I understand,” I said, as I continued clambering up the steps in silence. When we finally entered the cathedral, I asked Giuseppe to guide me to the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I extended my hand and felt the bearded face of the Christ, thinking it was exquisite. So similar to the face on the statuette of Jesus that I had always kept with me at Metola and Mercatello. Then I touched the Lord’s left hand, rubbing the scar where He had been crucified, then the right hand, wounded too and pointing to His heart, which I pressed gently with my fingers, imagining that I could see it, the red heart surrounded by a crown of thorns and from which a flame emerged. I had heard Fra Cappellano describe it in detail so many times, and touching it ignited my heart with the sweetest of recollections. “Oh, Giuseppe,” I cried out. “What a joy it is to be so close to Jesus! To be in this wondrous, holy place dedicated to His praise and exaltation!” After attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist, Giuseppe instructed me in how to beg. I should stand upright, he told me, so that those exiting the church would realize the enormity of my disability. And when people approached me, I should tell them, in my most insistent voice, “Please give whatever you can afford. I am blind, dwarfed, hunchbacked and crippled. The Lord will repay you in spades in Heaven. Remember that the Good Lord said, ‘Whatever you did to the least of these, you did for Me.’” And the people gave. They gave and gave. I collected many coins in a jar that another beggar, a friend of Giuseppe, had given me to keep the money I received. But as soon as the crowds dissipated, I asked Giuseppe to take me to where Lucia and her paralytic boy were begging. “Have you collected much?” I asked Lucia. “No, not much,” the woman responded. “Maybe two or three coins, you must have heard that the people all say that I am an unnatural mother. But I have confessed all my crimes, have thrown my sins at the feet of God’s mercy.” “Well, if the Lord has forgiven you, who am I to judge you?” And with those words I proceeded to give Lucia everything I had collected after the Mass. “Thank you,” Lucia whispered. “Surely one day you will be with God in Heaven.” “Go to the shrine of Fra Giacomo with your crippled boy this afternoon,” I advised her. “And he will be healed. I can assure you of that.” Giuseppe berated me. “What are you doing? Have you lost your senses? How are you going to eat today?” “That woman needs the money more than I do,” I explained. “I do not have a paralytic son to take care of. And the Lord will provide. There will be more Masses today. I promise you we will have our fill tonight, that we will feast like rich men.” “And why did you tell that poor woman that her paralytic son will be healed? Why make her hope for something that won’t happen?” “I know he will be cured, Giuseppe. Deep down, the Lord has given me that knowledge. If you only knew what I have in my heart...” “How can you believe that, given that you yourself were not blessed with a miracle?” “Ah, but I was!” I responded. “I have been incarcerated my whole life, and now I have the liberty of the streets. I am free, Giuseppe! I am completely free! How can you say that is not a miracle? When I was living in a dungeon, with only a pallet and an old bench to sit in, unable to attend Mass, unable to receive the Eucharist…If my parents had not abandoned me, I would have had to return to my prison. Now I am liberated so that I can fulfill whatever plans the Lord still has for me, and I believe He has wonderful plans. So don’t pity me, Giuseppe. As one of the glorious psalms says, ‘Out of my distress I called on the Lord, the Lord answered and set me free.’” And with that, I returned to the plaza at the foot of the cathedral, and I continued to beg before the second Mass. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) By Bryant Burroughs The man squatted three rows deep in the olive trees on the slopes above the village. He scanned a small circle of women gathered at the well. Where is she? he fretted, squinting in the early morning sun. The dawn mist offered hope to the land and trees and villagers, but none to the crouching man. Pain and loneliness had invaded his days, and hope had fled far away. We were supposed to be Aaron and Anna, Anna and Aaron for a lifetime. How can I live cut in half? The red sores and splotches had attacked the day after Anna had held his face in both hands and whispered, “I’m pregnant.” It was the last time she had touched him. The splotches of unclean terror spread rapidly. A taut swath of red scored across his forehead and forked to scar his left cheek and behind his ear. His hands – the hands that had caressed Anna – the hands that would have comforted his baby – would never touch Anna or the child. He was banned, forced from home as polluted. Anna had wept bitterly when the village leaders drove him away, shoving him with shepherds’ staffs all the way to the olive grove in which he now crouched. They hurled stones and threats until he retreated at a run, away from the woman he loved. Now he was alone, empty, cut off from love. The scars of leprosy marred more than skin. They marred the heart. Suddenly the branches above shook from side to side, pelting him with a rain of olives. Pitching forward with his face and arms flung to the ground, he shouted, “The day will come when God will shake the nations,” calling up words placed in his heart by the long-ago prophet Haggai. And heal me, he added. Please heal me so that I can go home to Anna. “Quiet, Aaron, you fool!” a voice behind him urged. “You know you’re forbidden to be here.” That’s not the voice of God, Aaron thought as he turned over. It’s Simon. Another tree two rows away shook. “Get back here!” the urgent voice ordered. “If anyone sees you, you’ll have more to worry about than those scars of yours!” Aaron hopped to his feet. “Simon? Is that you?” “Of course it is!” responded the voice. “Who else would be watching out for you? Who else would be this near to you?” Aaron crept toward the shaking leaves. Although Aaron and Simon were neighbors and best friends, they did not embrace. They could not. The Law was clear. Lepers – even childhood best friends – were to be driven away, never to be seen or touched again. “Here, friend,” Simon said, pointing to a bowl of soup and a crust of bread on the ground. The pock-marked man glanced at his friend, then threw himself at the food. “I have water there, too.” He watched as Aaron devoured the bread and tipped the bowl to drink in gulps. Simon wished he had brought more. “Do you get much food?” he asked. Aaron shook his head. He couldn’t begin to answer such a question. How could I possibly describe life as a leper? he thought. It’s a living death. “Sometimes good people leave food at the edge of a village or farm,“ he answered, leaving out that often he ate after foxes and rats had scavenged. If was good enough for rats, then it was good enough for lepers. Simon cleared his throat. “I have news, Aaron.” “Is it Anna?” reacted the red-scarred man, dropping the empty bowl. “Tell me! Is it Anna?” “No, no, my friend, Anna is well.” He wasn’t sure how to say the rest. “I’ve seen something. Something that may be good news, hopeful news.” Simon began pacing between the trees. “It began when I heard rumors – fanciful tales, really – about a healer who walks around the whole of Galilee. A healer who cures everyone he touches.” He glanced at Aaron. “Even lepers, Aaron, even lepers. “I had to see for myself. I walked down toward Capernaum, stopping in every village to ask how I could find the healer I had heard about. People told me stories about the healer, and some claimed to have been cured by him.” Simon paused, remembering their stories. “How could I ever forget those people? The father with an arm around a son who had been mute and afflicted for years. A widow who clasped her only son and wept, describing the moment the healer had returned him from death.” Aaron’s anxious voice interrupted. “Simon, what happened? Did you find this healer? Did you?” Simon gazed at his friend. “Yes, I did,” he whispered. The more he told his story, the more he felt he was describing a dream. After a few hours’ walk that day, hours filled with unbelievable stories of an indescribable healer, he had stood on a ridge overlooking a wide valley. Below him, two crowds of a hundred or more people had walked toward each other on the valley’s sandy road. The crowd moving from his left had been composed of adults, mostly men, but also a surprising number of women. It had been the other crowd that caught his attention. It had moved in a strange way – slow and halting. He slid down the hill through the scrub brush for a closer look at the slower crowd. It was an astonishing sight: parents carrying infants and toddlers; people of all ages who could walk only with a limp or supported on the shoulder of a loved one; litters carrying those debilitated by some sickness; the blind being led by the hand. It was a band of the afflicted. Yet there was something else. The crowd radiated a joyous hopefulness, as if anticipating good things about to happen. In fact, the crowd was singing! The lame and blind and sick were singing in hope. Simon paused in his story. Aaron stood transfixed, barely remembering to breathe. “Then the two crowds stood in front of each other,” Simon continued slowly. How could he possibly describe what he saw next? How could he describe the indescribable? “Then a man stepped into the singing crowd. He went from person to person and touched them. And he healed every one. No matter the sickness, all were healed.” Aaron couldn’t help himself. He burst out: “Did you see any lepers in this singing crowd? Did you see any lepers healed?” I have to tell my friend the truth, Simon thought. False hope is worse than no hope. “I don’t know. Perhaps. There was a small group of men clustered at the edge of the crowd. They were all wearing rags. Maybe they were lepers.” He saw his friend grimace darkly. “But this I know, Aaron,” he firmly continued. “The healer touched all those rag-clothed men, too, and immediately each man began leaping in the air and clutching each other, their heads thrown back to the heavens.” What had to be said had been said. It was a wild story, Simon admitted to himself. But no wilder than the stories he’d heard in Nain and Cana and nearby hamlets, wild stories about a man who healed everyone he touched. The mist had evaporated in the sun. The women had returned home from the well. The two friends were alone. It was Aaron’s turn to speak. “This healer, this man who with a touch cures any ill, in which direction was he walking?” His words were so quietly uttered that the breeze rustling through olive leaves nearly blew them away. “He was walking away from the sea. Perhaps toward Cana. I heard he has family there.” “So near,” Aaron mused. Three miles. Four steep ridges. He made his decision. “Tell Anna I was here. Tell her that I hope to return whole. And, Simon, if I am not made whole, I will not come back.” “Go find the healer, friend,” was all Simon could say. God, please help this man, he prayed silently. Aaron set off at a run up the slope. Driven by hurt and hope, he vowed that when his bursting lungs yelled “stop!”, then he would walk. He vowed that when his blistered feet yelled “no more!”, then he would crawl. He vowed that if he couldn’t crawl, then he would wait beside the road and hope that the healer walked that way. Two ridges were behind him when his lungs demanded air, and he slowed to a labored walk. His mind raced faster than his feet. How will I find the healer if he is in a crowd? Simon said that nothing stood out about the healer’s appearance. Who should I ask for? I don’t know his name. Will he be disgusted by me? Will the crowd throw stones to keep me away? The sun was high when he saw a crowd moving toward him. It took only a glance to spot the man who was his only hope. Of course! The healer had to be the man surrounded by waves of children. He summoned his breath, roused his legs, and sprinted straight toward the man. The crowd was spooked by the sight of a scar-faced man clad in rags spurring full-tilt toward them. Many people stepped back while others fled for safety. Aaron threw himself to the ground, raining tears on the healer’s feet as if hope were washing from his soul all the hurt he had endured. “I know you are the healer,” he cried out. “I know you can heal me. If you would heal even a leper, please heal me!” He felt the grip of the healer’s hands on his shoulders, lifting him to his feet. Waves of energy seemed to course through his body at this first human touch since he had been driven away from home. The healer fixed Aaron’s gaze on him and moved a hand to Aaron’s chest. “I bring you good news. I have come to heal more than affliction. I have come to cure souls, for everyone – everyone – is a leper in their souls.” At these words, a force rushed through Aaron’s body a second time, as if a violent windstorm had blown him about and then dumped him into an icy river. The jolt shocked his heart and every bone, muscle and nerve. He would have collapsed were the healer not holding him. The crowd gasped. Aaron slowly raised both hands to his face. His skin felt smooth – no ridges of scars, no hills of sores. His skin was smooth! As smooth as he remembered Anna’s to be. The healer moved both hands to Aaron’s arms. There were light outlines in the skin on both forearms. “I leave you these shadow-scars for the sake of your soul. Remember this day,” he said. “Now go to the temple, and show yourself to the priest. And then go home to your Anna,” he smiled. “If you run fast, you will be home by sunset.” Bryant Burroughs is a writer and lives with his wife Ruth in Upstate South Carolina with their three cats. His work has appeared in online literary sites such as Agape Review, Clayjar Review, Pure in Heart Stories and Faith, Hope & Fiction.
Bryant's other work on Foreshadow: The Widow Whose Son Lived (Fiction, July 2022) The Youngest Day (Poetry, November 2022) The Widow's Psalm (Poetry, February 2023) By Adrian David A priest wrestles between vengeance and forgiveness upon hearing a murderer's tragic confession. Turin, Italy – 1995 The church bell rang out as the morning sun arched over the horizon. Standing at the side of the gate, Cesare stubbed out his cigarette and peered up at the tall, white spire adorning the church. He took a deep, pained breath and entered the house of worship. He yearned for the calm within its walls, his tortured soul aching for comfort. The church was empty except for the lone figure of a priest kneeling before the altar. Sunlight penetrated the blues, reds, greens, and yellows of the stained-glass windows, forming the shape of a large dove upon the floor of the nave. Clouds of smoke wafted from candles throughout the sacred space. Cesare dragged his feet up the aisle, passing the polished wooden pews. His chest tightened; his steps faltered. Painful memories flooded in despite his efforts to suppress them. He froze in his tracks, crippled by his swirling thoughts and tortured conscience. He clutched his chest and collapsed into the nearest pew. * * * Giovanni made the sign of the cross and stood. Adjusting his cassock, he turned from the altar and headed to the rectory. He slowed his pace upon seeing a scrawny, forlorn man. The stranger looked out of place in the pristine church. His receding grey hairline, shabby beard, unkempt clothes, and worn-out bag told a story of strife. The wrinkles on his tanned face exuded misery, and the dark circles under his eyes betrayed his distress. Driven by curiosity and his vocation to help, Giovanni approached the lost soul. “Buongiorno. Is everything alright?” The stranger remained frozen, seemingly unaware of what was happening around him. Giovanni leaned against the pew and cleared his throat, drawing the man’s bloodshot eyes to his face. * * * Cesare scanned the bespectacled priest from head to toe. Dressed in an immaculate white cassock, the thirty-something priest had a pleasant, clean-shaven face that radiated calm. “Did you say something, Padre?” Cesare croaked, licking his dry, cracked lips. “I was just checking if you were alright.” The priest smiled. “Have I seen you here before?” “This is my first visit to your church, Padre.” “That’s good to know. It’s only been a couple of months since my ordination and assignment here. Welcome.” The priest extended his hand. “I’m Giovanni.” “Cesare.” He clasped Giovanni’s hand in his own, offering a feeble handshake. “If you don’t mind me asking,” Giovanni continued. “Your accent… You’re from Sicily, right?” “Si, I… er… just finished my prison sentence.” Cesare bit his lower lip, trying to cloak his guilt. “I came to Turin to meet my cellmate’s family and give them some money. I thought of spending some time in this church before leaving.” With a disarming smile, Giovanni flung his arm around Cesare’s shoulder. “Come, let me show you around.” Incredulous, Cesare stared at the priest, whose friendliness and courtesy didn’t fade even after hearing about his circumstances. “No, Padre.” He shook his head. “I can’t stay here any longer. A sinner like me doesn’t deserve to be here.” “There are no saints or sinners here.” Giovanni’s eyes sparkled. “We are all children of God.” “But…” Cesare raised his palms to his face. “I have done terrible things.” “Would you like to make a confession and clear your mind?” Giovanni adjusted his round glasses. “I am not ready.” Cesare slumped his shoulders and hung his head in shame. “Remember,” the priest said, holding Cesare’s arm. “Whatever you confide in me is between you and God alone.” “I am sorry.” Cesare got to his feet. “I can’t. I have to leave.” Giovanni stood, towering above Cesare. “My seal of confession prohibits me from uttering a word to anyone.” He looked right into his eyes. “Whatever your sins are, I will take them to my grave. A burden shared is a burden halved. Pour out your heart to the Lord, and he will give you rest.” Cesare’s reluctance subsided. The time was ripe to get the burden off his chest. A chance at redemption was knocking at his door, and only a fool would refuse it. He gave a slight nod. “Fine, Padre.” As Giovanni led him to the confessional chamber, Cesare prepared to spill the emotions he had repressed for many years. * * * A grille separated the two halves of the wooden confessional. Lamplight filtered through the grille, scattering bright dots across the walls and illuminating the small metallic crucifix. Giovanni perched on his seat on one side and straightened the purple stole around his neck. He heard Cesare kneel on the other side of the confessional, knees pressing on the cushion. Giovanni turned the pages of his gilded Bible to the third chapter of Colossians. With a gentle voice, he put his finger to the page and tracked as he read the passage: “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” He brought his ear closer to the grille, ready to listen to Cesare’s sins. Cesare said faintly, “Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned.” “How long has it been since your last confession?” “Years. Decades. I don’t know. The last time I made a confession was when I was young.” “What happened after that?” “Life turned miserable. My babbo left our family for another woman. This broke my mamma’s heart, and she became ill.” Cesare choked, his voice breaking. “Everything changed after she died. I ran away from my home and started doing all kinds of dirty jobs to survive — selling drugs, counterfeiting banknotes, pimping out whores. Out of desperation, I indulged in all kinds of evils. Before long, I targeted rich families and robbed their houses while they were away. “That was when…” He paused and groaned. “I did a terrible thing. It has haunted me for the past fifteen years. A memory I can’t escape.” Giovanni leaned forward, listening intently. This wasn’t the first crime to be confessed to him. He had been taught not to be affected by the confessions of his congregation, ensuring he didn’t react to even the worst of transgressions. It was not his place to judge; only God had the right to do that. Giovanni said in a soothing tone, “Do not fear. No matter how great your sin is, God is always here to forgive.” Troubled words spilled from Cesare’s mouth. “Fifteen years ago, I was robbing houses in Sicily. I reached the town of Salemi and targeted a vacant mansion. After hearing that the owner was away on vacation, I broke into the house at midnight and hunted for valuables. I didn’t realize my mistake until it was too late. I was in the wrong house... and I wasn’t alone.” Pulse racing, Giovanni furrowed his eyebrows. “As I was breaking the safe open, a man caught me red-handed. I pulled out my knife, only to intimidate him.” Cesare cleared his throat. “He kept fighting me, and the next thing I knew, there was blood everywhere. I stabbed him in the heat of the moment. I swear I didn’t mean to do that. His wife came running up the stairs, carrying a baby. Her eyes bulged when she saw her husband lying dead. I’ll never forget the look on her face. I tried to muffle her screams with my hands, but she bit me. In a fit of rage, I grabbed her throat and strangled her. The baby fell from her arms to the floor. The cries grew louder, and I was afraid of waking the neighbours. I took a pillow from the bed and…” He hit his head against the grille. His voice trembled. “I smothered the baby to death. Even now, I can hear the child crying. It torments me in my nightmares.” Giovanni swallowed, struggling to keep his breath even. A sudden coldness hit him at the core. “I picked up whatever valuables I could lay my hands on and fled the town. I later learned that the murder remained unsolved.” Cesare coughed. “Three years later, I started working for a mob boss, and soon I was arrested for smuggling drugs and imprisoned. Throughout my days in prison, I never stopped regretting my crime in Salemi. I couldn’t sleep at night; I couldn’t eat. Whenever I heard a baby crying, I covered my ears. Whenever I looked into the mirror, I saw a monster.” Giovanni gritted his teeth. Icy tendrils robbed him of action, freezing him in place. He could do nothing but listen, paralyzed with shock. His focus on the confession wavered. A tidal wave of tragic memories washed over him. Fifteen Years Earlier Standing near the phone in his boarding school dormitory, Giovanni excitedly waited to hear the sweet voices of his parents. They called Saturday mornings at ten without fail. They had called him the previous week for his fifteenth birthday. His eagerness was cut short when one of his teachers stepped into the room and beckoned him to follow. “Gio, the headmaster wants to see you.” Giovanni’s stomach twisted at the urgency in his teacher’s voice. According to his classmates, the headmaster only summoned bad students to his office. Giovanni strived to be first in his class, a model student. He aspired to follow in the footsteps of his father — a self-made businessman who worked hard and built his wealth from the ground up to ensure his family’s well-being. Giovanni trailed behind his teacher. What could it be? Why is he calling me? What have I done wrong? On entering the headmaster’s office, a sense of dread enveloped Giovanni. The headmaster paced the length of his office, pausing as soon as he saw him. “Please sit down, Gio. Have some water.” He motioned to the chair and handed him a glass. Giovanni gave him a nervous smile. “You must be wondering why I called you.” The headmaster gestured to the trunks and bags in the corner. “Your teacher packed your belongings. He will accompany you home. From now on, you must be brave. Braver than you think you can be.” Giovanni straightened his round glasses and blinked like a confused owl. The headmaster tapped his shoulder and let out a deep sigh. “You need to go home to Salemi, son. Something terrible has happened.” The glass of water fell to the floor and shattered. Giovanni’s head spun as the headmaster told him of his family’s fates. The walls closed in on him, and he struggled to breathe. A stream of hot tears rolled down his cheeks, blurring the world around him. He collapsed on the floor and fainted. After he recovered consciousness, Giovanni moved as if through a dream. It was a traumatic memory, one that would follow him throughout his lifetime — the parish priest uttering the final prayers as his father, mother, and baby sister were laid to rest in the town cemetery. His sanity was buried alongside them. The darkness of no one left to call family, of being rendered an orphan, engulfed Giovanni. A walking corpse, he was as dead inside as his family was in the ground. The parish priest took Giovanni under his wing and enrolled him in the Don Bosco Seminary. After several years of rigorous study and devout adherence, Giovanni found his calling. Soon, he was ordained a priest. Despite learning to forgive and forget, bitterness still festered within him like a gaping wound. * * * The terrible truth was too much for Giovanni’s soul to bear. The man he long abhorred was seeking absolution. From him. For the merciless killing of his family. The reminder of his family’s death tore at his insides. So many things ran through his mind. If only Cesare hadn’t broken into his house that uneventful day. If only he hadn’t killed his parents. If only his baby sister had survived. His heart hammered in his chest; his knuckles knotted. As a man of God, Giovanni knew what was demanded of him, but his vision was streaked with red. All the pain he’d locked away had culminated into a ticking bomb, waiting to explode. Cesare cried out in anguish. “I want redemption, Padre. Will God have mercy on a wretched sinner like me?” Hate was an ugly thing, and on a priest, doubly so. Fists clenched in fury, Giovanni levelled his gaze on the sharp edge of the metallic crucifix in front of him. He imagined ramming it right into Cesare’s throat, just as the deranged animal had killed his father. The jaws of hate gnawed on Giovanni’s last nerve. The road of retribution led him to the slopes of madness. Revenge was the only thing the raw wound of his heart demanded. He yearned to kill Cesare. To make him suffer a torturous death would be the sweetest wine. Voices inside Giovanni’s head challenged his sanity. His tormented brain screamed with shrill cries. Kill that bastard! Make him pay! No, forgive him. If you kill him, you’d be no different from him. Listen to me! I said, kill him. Do it for your father, your mother, your baby sister. What will that make you? No better than him. You are God’s servant on earth. Forgiveness is for the weak. Monsters like him don’t deserve to live. Spare his soul! Remember, those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Heaven and hell twisted together in his mind like a storm. The contradicting voices grew louder. Kill him! Forgive him! Regaining his senses, Giovanni took quick, short breaths. He bit his fist, trying to muffle his inner agony. Help me, Lord. He squeezed his eyes shut. His moral compass wavered; the demons pounding in his mind raged. Yet, in all the darkness, Giovanni saw a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel. The hope that love could transcend all. The forgiveness that Christ offered to the world. The grace that redeemed even the worst of sinners, the redeeming grace. It dawned on Giovanni that salvation was not a reward for the righteous; it was a gift for the guilty. Killing Cesare would not bring back his family. His parents would never wish for him to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Retribution would not ultimately bring him peace. Forgiveness was the most fitting thing he could offer to someone who had wounded him. Giovanni took a deep breath and decided to follow his conscience. “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to Himself and” — Giovanni gulped down his sobs and brushed his tears — “sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Cesare rested his head against the grille and feebly muttered, “Amen.” Giovanni bit his lower lip. “The Lord has heard your confession today. For your penance, you must vow to commit your life to one of goodwill and charity. I have forgiven… er…” he stuttered. “God has forgiven your sins. Go forth and spread the mercy He has granted you. Go in peace.” * * * After all these years, the caged bird was set free. At long last. Rising from the kneeler, Cesare crossed himself and left without saying another word. He retraced his steps toward the gate. He heaved a sigh of relief and glanced at his reflection in a nearby puddle. A new man stared back at him. One redeemed from the unforgiving clutches of sin. A man smiling for the first time in decades. A man who was born again. * * * Back in the chamber, Giovanni slammed his fists into his temples. Misery broke through his fragile control. His throat closed in grief. Waves of despair washed over him, drowning him in the dark days of his family’s demise. Deep down, he was sure his parents would be proud of him from above. No matter how much his soul screamed in anguish, he had done the right thing — the difficult thing. Giovanni struggled to his feet and dragged his weary self out of the chamber. He fell to his knees in front of the altar. The candles cast a flickering red glow upon him. With tears in his eyes, Giovanni lifted his gaze toward Christ on His cross. Mercy had triumphed over vengeance; love had overcome hate. Adrian David writes advertisements by day and short fiction by night. His stories explore themes like faith, love, hope and everything in between, from the mundane to the sublime.
By Sandro F. Piedrahita Based on the life of Edith Stein, a German Jewish philosopher and Christian nun martyred in an Auschwitz gas chamber. Read the first part of this story here. -- At some point – Sister Teresa has lost track of the hours – the guards announce that all the passengers will be moved to another train once they reach the city of Breslau, the town where Sister Teresa was born, the town where she went to synagogue with her mother so many years earlier. By then, a group of around sixty Catholic Jews is congregated around her, listening to her speak and joining her in prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows. It seems that all the Catholic Jews of Holland are being deported to Auschwitz, probably more than a thousand. And Sister Teresa thanks her God because He has allowed her to speak to the people in simple terms which they can understand and which somehow make their journey less fraught. She thinks it is analogous to the gift given to Saint Peter and the other apostles on Pentecost, when they were blessed with the ability to speak in tongues. Sister Teresa, the brilliant phenomenologist who has penned complicated philosophical works like Philosophy and Psychology of the Humanities and Finite and Eternal Being, can suddenly explain deep truths about the Faith in words comprehensible even to a child. She reassures them that there is meaning in life, that they are not hopeless, that the Christ is with them always. And in so doing – in preaching hope – she is dissipating her own doubts. She is strengthening herself as much as those around her. “Do not be afraid, little flock,” she tells them, “for it is God’s pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” “Thank you, rebbe,” one of the passengers tells her, probably a Yiddish-speaking German like herself, “for I was on the verge of despair, and you’ve lifted me with your words.” When they arrive at the railroad depot in Breslau, Sister Teresa is filled with ancient memories: the sound of her mother repeating the psalms in her earnest voice at night, playing hide-and-go-seek with her sisters on days off from school, the scent of the mulberry trees in spring. It was a different world, a world now irrevocably gone. Nothing could be more different from the Breslau of her childhood than the Breslau of the present day – the train station where anxious crowds wonder where they will be taken next, the dust-covered children on the verge of being starved, the gaunt faces of old women and young men sharing the same deep, primal and existential fear. And yet Sister Teresa feels an odd delight in being back in Breslau. She is home again, if only for an instant. She is no longer locked up on the train. She can feel the lambent sunlight upon her cheeks and the soft wind that somehow startles her because after so many hours in a stifling train, the breeze has become something strange and unexpected. Then Johannes recognizes her, after all these years, even though she is wearing the habit of a Carmelite. He is a man in his sixties, rotund and obese, dressed in an orange uniform. Sister Teresa assumes he works sweeping the train depot and wonders if that, too, somehow involves him in the great sin committed there. “Edith!” he cries out. “It must be more than twenty-five years since I last saw you. And you’re a nun! I thought you were Jewish.” “I am,” responds Sister Teresa. “But I’m also a professed Catholic nun. I don’t see a contradiction.” “What brings you here? As far as I know, your sisters have left for America. And your mother passed away years ago.” “I’m going East. I’m on my route to death. The train I’ll board will take me to Auschwitz.” “Oh, you’re on one of those trains, huh? I try not to think about it when I see all the folks heading to the camps.” “Try to get another job,” counsels Sister Teresa. “You should do nothing – nothing – to allow others to perpetrate such a crime. Not even sweep the floors for them.” “Listen,” says Johannes. “I think I may be able to help you. There’s a tool shed some sixty feet away where I keep my brooms and other items. You can hide there, and in the night, I can take you to my home. Nobody will suspect it.” “I don’t know,” responds Sister Teresa, suddenly pensive. “What if the guards catch you?” “I’ll smite them with all my fury. I keep a gun in my tool shed. There aren’t that many Nazi guards.” “That wouldn’t be right. Jesus didn’t allow Peter to kill the men who were about to apprehend Him. And my people need me to be with them. To take them by the hand on this horrible journey.” “So you’d rather die?” “I’d rather live. Life is such a precious gift. But I can’t leave those souls alone. I shall be with them as they walk into the gas chambers. Otherwise they might despair and not carry their Cross as willingly as they should.” “Let me at least give you a little food for your journey.” “No, thank you. We accept nothing.” And then the nun bids Johannes adieu and, after finding her sister, boards the train that is to take them on their final leg to Auschwitz. * * * The Gestapo men who arrived at the Carmelite convent in Echt on a Sunday morning in August 1942 were exceedingly polite and professional in their demeanor. They did not come with guns drawn or break down the door. When Mother Superior Carmen responded to their knocks, they informed her in a cool voice that they were there to apprehend two Jews, Edith and Rosa Stein, who were hiding with the nuns. “Why do you want to arrest them?” the nun asked. “They are both devout Christians.” “If your bishops hadn’t meddled, this wouldn’t be necessary,” one of the Germans responded. “But a couple of weeks ago, all your priests preached from their pulpits at all their Masses that the Nazi treatment of the Jews was immoral and ungodly. So the order has been given. All the Jewish converts must be taken to the camps, especially the religious.” “Well, I won’t allow it. This is a house of God. I demand that you immediately depart.” “You don’t seem to understand,” one of the Gestapo officers replied. He spoke in a serene voice, not animated, knowing he was in a position of power. “The Third Reich does not respect nunneries.” “Tell us where they are,” the other officer commanded, speaking in a louder voice. “Otherwise we’ll just arrest each and every one of you. God knows the concentration camps are full of recalcitrant priests and nuns. We’ll take you, too, if you want to join your Jewish sisters.” “They’re in the chapel,” Mother Carmen responded in a tremulous voice. “You’ll find them praying.” The Gestapo men entered the chapel and found Sister Teresa and Rosa kneeling in front of a great crucifix. Sister Teresa was particularly drawn to the representation of Christ on that crucifix: a masculine Christ, a manly Christ, well-muscled and heavily bearded, with a square jaw, thick eyebrows and a sharp nose, not a lovely, quasi-feminine Jesus as in so many other depictions. And Christ was clearly suffering on that crucifix in the convent at Echt. You could see the pain etched on his face, how the thorns punctured his forehead, how his body was bloodied, spent and tyrannized. Sister Teresa felt that crucifixes should make manifest the horror of the Passion, its sheer brutality, to remind the onlookers of the monstrous agony the Christ was willing to endure for the sake of sinners. As her namesake Saint Teresa of Avila said, there is no affliction too difficult to endure when we consider the torments suffered by the Christ on His Cross at Calvary. Sister Teresa had long understood that contemplating the Cross is not for the faint of heart. And she would soon learn how unfathomably painful it is to be crucified on that Cross. The two Gestapo officers violently interrupted the prayers of the two women. One of the men took a hold of Sister Teresa by the shoulders as she was kneeling and asked her point-blank, “Are you Edith Stein, the converted Jew?” “I am,” the nun answered. “And who are you?” Without answering, the man pulled at her by the hair and threw her on the ground, where he proceeded to handcuff her. “You dirty Jew!” he cried out as he kicked her in the stomach. “Soon you will learn you can’t hide by disguising yourself as a Christian.” “You are the one who disguises himself as a Christian,” she retorted from the ground. “You are an enemy of the Cross. Praised be Jesus Christ!” And then she looked at her sister Rosa, cringing in fear as the other officer approached her with a baton in his hand. “Don’t attempt to resist him,” Sister Teresa said. “Come, Rosa, we are going to join our people.” * * * The train arrives at the outskirts of the Auschwitz concentration camp around ten o’clock in the evening, and soon the guards arrive to tell the passengers to disembark. Folks are wary and do not move quickly, afraid of what their new destination portends. Sister Teresa sees people lingering in the compartment, relatives looking at each other with anxious eyes, not knowing what to do. But soon the guards come with their billy clubs and tell the people to move along. Sister Teresa and her sister take their single valise and begin to march with the rest of the crowd to the exit, shuffling along slowly, prodded forward like sheep by the Nazis wielding their batons. Outside there is already a throng, everyone looking at the ground and at the road before them, following orders like automatons. But Sister Teresa sees a young girl – she must not be older than seventeen – clinging to the door of one of the compartments, refusing to move. A young guard seems to be making a lackluster effort to force her to let go of the door, but there is no anger in his face, only something akin to confusion. “I’m not a Jew!” she cries out. “I am not a convert! I was baptized as a child, and I have always been a Christian!” The young guard pulls at her by the arms somewhat reluctantly, but she continues to resist. “Come on,” he pleads. “Otherwise the others will come, and they’ll beat you. It’s only a short walk to the camp.” “I don’t want to go!” she wails. “I am not a Jew! I hate the Jews!” Then another guard approaches. “What is going on?” he asks in a gruff voice. The girls starts to bawl and repeat again and again: “I am not a Jew! I am not a Jew! I am not a Jew!” Sister Teresa quickly moves ahead of the guard and puts her arms around her. “Do not be afraid, child,” she says. “Come with me. We’ll walk together.” “I know what they do to the Jews!” the girl cries out. “It’s not a secret. They beat them, and they kill them! I have heard that they are gassed to death.” “Come,” the nun says gently, and she takes the girl by the hand. “What is your name?” “My name is Anika.” “That name means ‘grace,’” Sister Teresa responds. “Trust in God’s grace. Do you want to say a prayer with me?” The girl, slowly starting to walk forward with the nun, says, “Yes.” “Come, we’ll pray the Te Deum. O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage. Govern them and lift them up forever. Day by day we magnify Thee...” And the girl continues. “O Lord, have Mercy upon us. O Lord, let Thy Mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in Thee…” They all walk to the valley of murder on a gravel road flanked on either side by trees until they reach the bunkers at the concentration camp. It is a long trail, and it takes the men and women more than two hours to arrive. More than five hundred are placed into what seems like a huge cottage or a large hall where they must stand because there simply isn’t enough space to sit or sleep. Not that many would be able to sleep, thinks Sister Teresa. The guards have announced that at six o’clock in the morning, they will be taken to showers where they will be “de-loused,” and many know exactly what that means. Anika instinctively stays close to the fifty-year-old nun that has given her some semblance of hope. Sister Teresa gently caresses her and repeatedly tells her the words that Jesus had so often imparted to His followers and disciples in their moments of crisis and despair: Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Anika clutches the nun’s hand and asks for reassurance. “Everything is going to be all right, isn’t it, Sister Teresa?” “Yes,” answers the nun, as she presses the girl’s hand to give her comfort. Then Sister Teresa quotes the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah. “For the Lord has great plans for you. Plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” “So I will not die tomorrow?” Anika asks. “Perhaps that future promised to you by the Lord is in Heaven, my little girl. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. You only need to pray for strength.” At six o’clock in the morning exactly, the Nazi guards appear and open the doors of the bunker, demanding that all the prisoners undress so they can be taken to the “showers.” Sister Teresa thinks it is one final indignity, completely unnecessary, but remembers that the Good Lord was nearly naked, too, when He was on His road to the Cross at Golgotha. The Jews obey the Nazis’ orders without objection or complaint, knowing that any protests would be useless, and they place their clothes on the ground as they begin to follow the guards. Sister Teresa, walking with Anika and Rosa arm-in-arm, heads to the front of the crowd and begins to sing ancient Jewish hymns. Those who follow her soon begin to do the same, and the guards are surprised by the loud, boisterous chants of the doomed Jews heading to their deaths. As they enter the gas chamber, Sister Teresa looks at the frightened girl at her side and tells her in a triumphant voice, “I say to you today, Anika, you will be with me in Paradise.” Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023) By Sandro F. Piedrahita Based on the life of Edith Stein, a German Jewish philosopher and Christian nun martyred in an Auschwitz gas chamber -- Dedicated to my daughter Sofia's grandfather George Nemes, a Catholic Jew who survived the Shoah “But those whom you have chosen for companions above the fence at Auschwitz… They here must stand with you beneath the Cross…” Edith Stein, Prayer to Mary The train is crowded with people, sweaty, dirty, disheveled, with fear and despair painted on their faces. They come in all ages and from all stages in life: doctors, lawyers, poets, plumbers, carpenters and even the occasional religious. Sister Teresa Blessed by the Cross looks at the crammed multitude inside the train – there is barely any space to move – and feels a deep sorrow. She had tried to help them, even sent a letter to the Pope seeking his intervention, wanted to be a modern Esther delivering the Jews from the hands of the Antichrist, but it had been to no avail. Now she sees how some huddle in groups, those who are fortunate enough to be with their families, and how others stand alone in the crowded train leading each and every one of them to their deaths. And yet in some of their faces she sees courage, strength, resilience. They are the people of God, and they have not forgotten. “Where are they taking us?” her sister Rosa asks. “To Auschwitz,” Sister Teresa responds. “To the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. But not everybody knows it.” “Aren’t you terrified?” inquires Rosa. “You seem so calm.” “I’m deathly afraid. I cannot deny it. But we must not be tempted to despair.” Sister Teresa is still dressed in her black Carmelite’s habit, with a white cornette on her head. A young guard approaches her, probably no older than twenty, and cries out at her with a voice full of an intense and inexplicable hatred. “Who are you pretending to be, you filthy Jew?” he asks. “Dressed like a nun in an effort to escape the fate you deserve as a judin.” “I’m a Catholic and have dedicated my life to Christ,” Sister Teresa responds calmly. “But don’t believe for a moment that I’m trying to conceal that I’m also a Jew. I’m a Catholic by decision, a Jew by race and history. I’m prepared to share in the fate of my Jewish brothers and sisters, regardless of what you intend.” “You’ll soon see what that is,” the young guard snarls at her. “You’ll see what fate awaits you.” And then the young guard leaves her, moving across the crowds angrily, making his way forcefully pushing those in his path as if they were not humans but cattle. “Do you think it will be painful? Being gassed I mean.” Rosa asks her sister the question as if she wants a comforting answer, but doesn’t expect it. “I have no idea,” answers Sister Teresa. “But I don’t think it should last too long.” “Do you think we’ll be killed immediately? Or will they keep us locked up in the concentration camp for a while?” “I don’t know. Oh my Rosa! Stop killing yourself with worry! Put yourself in the hands of God. Abandon yourself to His Mercy.” “How can you continue to believe? In the God of the Jews or that of the Christians? How could a just and loving God allow all the Jews to be murdered – the old, the women, little babes in arms – and in such a horrible way?” “That is not the handiwork of God,” Sister Teresa responds. “It’s the handiwork of Satan. For some reason – for some inscrutable reason – God is allowing the Jewish people to bear Christ’s heavy Cross in this moment of history.” At some point the train stops. Suddenly the doors are opened and a breeze of fresh air fills the compartment where Sister Teresa and her sister are trapped. At first, it is an unexpected relief – the stifling train is so full of people that it is difficult even to breathe – but soon they notice that the purpose of the stop is to cram even more people onto the train. Sister Teresa has lost her bearings, it has been several hours since they left the Netherlands, but she has no idea where they are. She doesn’t know how much time they have before they reach the horrors of Auschwitz. A young woman enters the compartment, trying hard to carry three young children in her arms. She is alone, doesn’t seem to be with a husband, and her face is sweaty even as she enters the train. Like all of the other prisoners, like Sister Teresa herself, the woman has a yellow star of David sewn onto her chest. As she walks through the crowded, stench-filled compartment, she begins to beg in a muffled wail. “Please,” she cries out at the others huddled in the train. “My babies need some food and more than that, something to drink. The Nazis have kept us locked up for hours, and I’m afraid my children might soon die.” Most of the people avert their eyes when she crosses their path. Sister Teresa knows that most of them don’t have anything to share, and that those who do are unwilling to give up the little that they have. As the young woman repeating her plea in a plaintive wail walks past Sister Teresa, the Carmelite nun turns to her sister. “What do we have?” she asks Rosa. “Didn’t the nuns at the convent give us a small bag filled with food when the Gestapo arrived?” “Only a loaf of bread, a little cheese, and a bottle of water.” “Well, give it to her,” Sister Teresa commands. “We’ll be left with nothing,” says Rosa. “Not even anything to drink. And who knows how many hours we’ll be on this train.” “We’ll manage,” says Sister Teresa. “If you say so, Yitschel.” Rosa is using the name she used to refer to Sister Teresa when they were both children. “Thank you so much!” the woman with the three children says to Sister Teresa when she receives the food and the bottle of water. “The infant has a fever, and I don’t know what to do.” “Oh, Lord!” cries out Sister Teresa when she puts the palm of her right hand on the child’s forehead. “The fever is very high. How long has she been in this condition?” “For hours,” the woman replies. “The Nazis have taken over the Netherlands, and they have decided to punish the Catholic authorities of Holland for their protests against the violence visited upon the Jews. They’ve decided to imprison all the Jews who have converted to Christianity. And they’ve kept us locked up for hours.” “So you’re a Catholic?” asks Sister Teresa. “Yes,” says the woman. “But before I converted I was a Jew. And I am still a Jew. That is why they murdered my husband. That’s why they’ll probably kill me too.” The heat inside the compartment is suffocating. There is no room to move. Some are praying, others are silently weeping, and Sister Teresa knows many have lapsed into despair and have renounced their God. As time passes, the little girl’s fever increases, and it is clear to all that the child will die. “Is she baptized?” asks the nun. “No, I haven’t had time. We’ve been in hiding.” “Well, let’s do it right now,” says Sister Teresa. “In extreme conditions, the Church allows persons who are not priests to administer the sacrament.” Soon after the baptism, the infant expires. Her mother is forced to carry the dead child in her arms throughout the rest of the journey. “In a way, it’s a blessing,” says Sister Teresa. “She will be spared the torture of being gassed.” Rosa listens to her sister and shivers, recognizing the prescience and gravity of her words. * * * When Edith told her mother she had converted to Catholicism, it was a bigger blow than when, at the age of fifteen, Edith had advised her that she would no longer pray to the Jewish God because she had become an atheist. But what stung the most was when Edith announced to her mother that she had decided to become a Carmelite nun in 1934. By then, the Nazi oppressor had begun to persecute the Jewish people, and Auguste Stein saw her daughter’s decision as a religious betrayal, a repudiation of her people, a brutal choice. “How can you do such a thing, especially at this point, when the baptized Christians have begun to manifest their hatred for the sons of Jacob? Christianity is the religion of our persecutors. Haven’t they organized violent and bloody attacks against the Jews of Germany? Aren’t our businesses being closed or burnt down? Aren’t they discriminating against the Jews in a myriad of ways?” “Those aren’t Christians,” Edith replied. “They are about as far from Christ as anyone could be.” “Where did I go wrong?” her mother pleaded. “You were born on Yom Kippur, the greatest day of the Jewish calendar. And I taught you the psalms, took you to synagogue. Why oh why did you abandon the faith of your forebears? And now this decision!” “That is something you don’t seem to understand. By becoming a Catholic, I did not forsake Judaism. The Cross and resurrection are the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. Jesus was a Jew, as was Saint Paul, as was Saint Peter. By joining the Carmelite order, I am simply following the path that God has traced for me, the same God of the Jewish people. Didn’t Jesus remind the crowds that the Father had said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” “You know nothing about God!” her mother spat out. “You have become deluded by the deceit of a false prophet, by your beloved Yoshke. And you are abandoning your Jewish brothers and sisters in their moment of greatest tribulation. I’m sure some are going to think that’s why you’ve decided to become a Catholic nun. They’ll say you’re doing it to escape the stigma of being a Jew in modern-day Germany. And maybe they would be right. Maybe you’re seeking to find safety in the cloister.” “You don’t believe that,” Edith said. “I know you don’t.” “To think that so many Jews have died to avoid the choice you’re making so easily!” “It wasn’t an easy choice. I spent years searching. My longing for truth was a single prayer. I read all the philosophers, modern and ancient. Until I read the words of Saint Teresa of Avila and was suddenly converted.” “I’ve never heard of the woman,” Auguste replied. “She was a Spanish mystic, a descendant of Jews herself. I started reading her book, and I couldn’t put it down. I spent the whole night reading it. The truth is the Cross, and the Cross the truth. I was Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, blinded by the light of faith, by its bright shining dazzle. After I finished reading the work of Saint Teresa of Avila, I said to myself, ‘This is the truth!’” “Well, if she was a descendant of Spanish Jews, I’m sure she was the granddaughter of those forcibly converted to Christianity on the pain of death. You are an apostate, there is no way to deny it, and for no good reason. Your decision makes you the very essence of treason and desertion from your persecuted people. In my eyes, you are dead. Dead. Do you understand it?” And then the old woman started to cry, buried her face in Edith’s chest. After Edith left Breslau, she sent her mother letters every week, but Auguste never responded. Some three years later, Edith received news that the old woman had died, and Edith wept, wishing that her mother had accepted her existential choice or at a very minimum had attempted to understand it. * * * The afternoon on the train is much worse than the morning. Sister Teresa feels keenly that her faith is being tested, and she does not know whether she will survive the test. There are only five bucket latrines for more than a hundred people, and many have been forced to defecate on the ground in front of them, filling the compartment with a horrible stench that Sister Teresa can barely tolerate. Her sister Rosa has already vomited as a result. And everywhere there is the sound of children crying and women praying. Sister Teresa has the sense that for some reason the women appear to be stronger in their faith. Most of the men, except a few, seem to be done with praying. Perhaps the women are closer to God, thinks Sister Teresa. And then there is the question of hunger and thirst, especially thirst. You can’t spend so many hours without any liquid, and a few old women have already died due to dehydration, since even on the days while they were locked up in the Westerbork Transit Camp before boarding the train, the passengers have been largely deprived of water. The view of the corpses scattered on the ground makes the experience all the more bleak, all the more surreal and dark. At times, the guards come to the wagon and take the cadavers away, and Sister Teresa wonders what they’ll do with them. At some point a young boy – he must be no older than sixteen – enters the compartment with a large plastic bag full of bottles of water. Apparently the conductor of the train, an ordinary man complicit in a monstrous crime, perhaps unwittingly, has felt pity for them and has realized the extent of their suffering and thirst. The boy, dressed in a military uniform, shows both kindness and power in his white angular face – a rare kindness that shows he is conscious of the prisoners’ pain and at the same time a proud realization that he has the power to dispense death and life to the thirsty Juden. As soon as the people realize he is bringing water, they rush toward him. Many violently push away those in their way and some even resort to fisticuffs. Only the strongest seem to be rewarded, though the German boy tries hard to distribute water bottles to the women, especially those with children. Sister Teresa admires the young boy – an Aryan, blonde-haired and blue-eyed – who is in an impossible situation. He must comply with the orders of his führer and yet somehow finds an opportunity to do good. The nun thinks the boy is blessed, has seen such kindness in other Germans, even in the worst of circumstances, and that renews her faith in the human spirit. This horror is the tunnel, she thinks, a long and dark tunnel, but this tunnel will someday end. The wholesale destruction of the Jews will not succeed. The Cross ended with the Resurrection. At some point, Sister Teresa feels the urge to go to the bathroom, although of course that is only a metaphor. There are no bathrooms anywhere on the train, which had once been used to transport cattle. Sister Teresa manages to get a hold of one of the buckets – it is already half-filled with excrement – and tries to do her business as privately as possible. It is these small indignities that seem to be the most grating, for they confirm that the Nazis see the doomed Jews as little more than animals. For a nun used to covering her entire body, to the greatest modesty, it causes her a great embarrassment to have to lift her skirt and expose her inward parts to the crowds. She uses an old newspaper to wipe her buttocks swiftly and then hands the bucket to Rosa, who also needs to defecate. The foul odor of her own excrement stays with Sister Teresa, like a gross perfume that has seeped into her very person, a reminder of where she is and where she is heading. And she cannot help but see it as a symbol of the state of the souls of her persecutors. During the afternoon, Sister Teresa does not rest or sleep. Indeed, it has been days since she has rested or had a full night’s sleep, since she was unable to do so when they were first incarcerated at the barracks of Westerbork before boarding the death train. Instead, she helps tend to the women with infants who desperately need a break from their children so they can lay down their heads on the train’s filthy floor, if only for an hour. Sister Teresa knows that the women have also not slept for days, since the beds in the barracks were made of iron frames without mattresses and the guards sadistically kept the lights on during the night. After she tends to the children throughout the day, her sister asks her why she doesn’t rest for a while, and Sister Teresa replies emphatically, quoting Saint Teresa of Avila, “Rest, indeed! I need no rest. What I need is crosses!” “You need more crosses?” Rosa asks incredulously. “Yes, I must bear them for my people.” And then Sister Teresa quotes her namesake once again. “Think of these women, the scant sleep they get, nothing but trials, nothing but crosses!” The truth is that by keeping herself busy, Sister Teresa tries to avoid a recurring thought: how could God be allowing this to happen to His chosen people? Suddenly, as Sister Teresa and her sister are speaking, something happens that remains on the nun’s mind throughout the rest of their journey to Auschwitz. A young Jew, swarthy and sweaty, pulls a pack of cigarettes from the left pocket of his shirt. As he does so, another Jew approaches, dressed in the garb of the Hasidim, a black suit and a black hat above his head, with a full beard and long sidelocks, and asks for a cigarette. The other man refuses, tells him this is all he has for the trip, and suddenly the Hasidic Jew violently rips the pack of cigarettes from the other man’s hands and extracts a cigarette from the pack. Before he has a chance to light it, the other man punches him straight in the jaw with a fierce fury, extracting the blood of the Hasidic man, who falls upon the ground and then rises to lunge at the other Jew. Then they are both on the ground exchanging blows as if they detested each other with a limitless passion. One plunges his nails into the eyes of the other, the other responds by using his head as a weapon against his rival’s face. They seem possessed by a primal anger, a bottomless hatred that knows no bounds. They are both Jews, both destined for the same death camp, and yet they hit each other as if they were pummeling the monstrous Aryan who has brought them together in this train full of doom. Two Nazi guards suddenly appear with billy clubs and administer equal justice, beating the two men mercilessly and hitting one of the Jews so hard on the head that he collapses on the floor and dies. When Sister Teresa sees the wife of the dead Hasidic man caressing him on her lap, his bearded face bloodied and swollen, his arms listless at each side, she thinks of the image of La Pieta, the Virgin Mary with her dead Jewish son cradled in her arms. * * * When Kristallnacht happened, the nuns at the Carmelite convent in Cologne, Germany became extremely worried about Sister Teresa’s safety. The persecution of the Jews was no longer merely theoretical or abstract, no longer just economic or political. It became increasingly clear that Adolf Hitler and his acolytes meant to hunt down the Jewish people. Kristallnacht was a tipping point in the life of Sister Teresa and in the history of the Jews of Europe. Like with all tipping points, the before and the after were violently riven asunder in a single moment. Before that night, it was still possible for folks to think they could be both Germans and Jewish at once. After Kristallnacht, it was out of the question. The Kristallacht – the night of shattered glass – was brutal and conclusive: the Jews were the hated “other,” and they could do nothing about it except perhaps to groan like the prophet Jeremiah had done because of the destruction of Israel and the holy temple. “Woe is me!” Jeremiah had said. “For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.” Sister Teresa had heard the grim news. Overnight, thousands of Jewish businesses had been destroyed, homes burnt down, temples desecrated. Many Jews had immediately escaped with whatever they could take, and more than a few had ended their own lives in a moment of despair. Thousands upon thousands had been thrown into trains of doom, destined for faraway concentration camps where the worst of fates awaited them. The German people – heirs to Beethoven, Bach, and Goethe – had become a pack of dogs, thirsty for Jewish blood, hungry for Jewish treasure. Sister Teresa prayed for all of them, Jews as well as Germans, for she was a German and a Jew, and she understood that the Germans were in the greatest need of prayer. Not the Jewish sacrificial lambs who would ultimately find their peace in God but the ravenous German wolf who was unwittingly destroying his own soul. And the worst of all, thought Sister Teresa, is that Hitler and the Nazis were making millions of ordinary Germans complicit in the hatred, the devastation, the holocaust. God have mercy on their souls, she prayed, for they do not know what they are doing. Mother Superior Agnes of the Trinity told her she had to leave, since all the Jews in Germany were in danger. There was a Carmelite convent in Echt, Holland, which would accept her as one of their own. And wearing the Carmelite habit, the guards at the border would not suspect she was a Jew, especially in the dark of night when they could not distinguish her Jewish features. But Sister Teresa balked at the idea. She felt it was her duty to remain with her Jewish brethren and to actively resist the German onslaught. Perhaps as a Catholic religious who understood the Cross, it was her burden to bear the Cross on behalf of others. And she was repulsed by the idea that her nun’s attire – symbol of her Catholic faith – would allow her to flee when other Jews could not. What if her mother had been right? What if by taking the vows of a discalced Carmelite she had abandoned the Jews in their worst moment? “No,” she told her Mother Superior. “I think it is my duty to stay in Germany, come what may, to suffer as a Jew if I must.” “I think you’re forgetting something,” the older woman replied. “You have made a vow of obedience, and I have decided that you must leave. God does not require you to consent to evil. You have no obligation to die in a concentration camp.” “Perhaps,” Sister Teresa objected, “if I were in a camp with my brothers and sisters, I could help them climb the ladder of the Cross. Show them how to do it. I could teach them that there is always a way out of the horror through a total surrender to the will of Christ.” “What you must do now is pray,” Mother Superior Agnes responded. “I do so constantly,” Sister Teresa answered. “I was born on the Jewish Day of Atonement. I have pleaded with the Lord to take me in sacrifice, to atone for the crimes of the Germans and the doubts of my own people. To take up the Cross of Christ in the name of all. To put an end to the hatred and the radical sin of disbelief wherever it is found. I would like my request to be granted this very day because I’m afraid the twelfth hour has arrived.” “You must continue to pray. The Lord answers prayers in unexpected ways. And you must also write. God has given you a great gift which you must use to glorify Him. Have you made much progress with The Science of the Cross?” “Not much. I have just begun to write it.” “Well, don’t you think that is what the world needs at this moment? I am not a learned woman, certainly not as learned as you. But I know enough to understand the word ‘science’ comes from the Latin verb ‘to know.’ Don’t you think you would be serving the Lord more by helping people know the Cross than by languishing in a concentration camp?” “It is true that few understand the meaning of the Cross,” Sister Teresa answered. “I find that even many Catholics have no idea what it means. To take up one’s Cross means actively to enter into the dark night of the soul. And it is so essential to embrace the Cross today. I fear that the events of last night are only the beginning, that much worse is in store for the Jewish people, perhaps for the world itself.” “You must go to the Netherlands,” Mother Agnes stated emphatically. “And do so immediately. I have the sense that God still isn’t done with using you to help humanity bear the Cross that it will have to bear in the coming years.” -- Read the second half of this story here. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) By Sandro F. Piedrahita Torn between allegiance to his parents and the demands of his conscience, the son of two ruthless guerrillas makes a dangerous pilgrimage to become a peaceful soldier for Christ. Read the first half of this story here. -- One month after the death of Comrade Carlos At some point, Comrade Juana announces to the young Abimael that he will be sent to an “education” camp for young guerrillas located in an occupied territory somewhere in the province of Ayacucho. She tells him that at his age, he should already be thinking of his revolutionary future and that he must learn Gonzalo Thought and train in the use of weapons. “It is an axiom of Gonzalo Thought,” she tells him, sounding as robotic as all the senderistas, “that children must be encouraged to participate in the popular war.” Soon she dyes his hair, since he would stand out in the indoctrination camp if he went as a blond boy. Despite having light hair, he has the Amerindian features and color of his dead father, and so he will be able to fit right in with the other young recruits once his hair is black. On the day when two men arrive in a pickup truck to take him to the camp, his mother also announces that he should not expect Winnie to be in the home when he comes back. “You’re at an age where you no longer need a nanny. Comrade Barbara and I have decided that she should be let go.” “Why?” asks Abimael. “I love her so.” “The decision has already been made.” “Can I at least say goodbye to her?” asks the young Abimael. “Can I at least give her a last hug?” “I suppose,” replies Comrade Juana. “But make it snappy.” Soon Winnie appears in the living room, her eyes red and swollen from recent tears. “I am leaving for Ayacucho,” he tells her. “To a training camp.” “I know,” says Winnie, trying to avoid crying in order not to upset the boy. “And I’ve been told you won’t be here when I come back,” he adds. “You have to go, Abimael!” Comrade Juana cries out. “Come on, the men are waiting for you.” Then Winnie puts something in Abimael’s hands. On the front, there is a depiction of El Señor de los Milagros – the Christ of Miracles – and on the back a portrait of Saint Martin de Porres. The young Abimael looks at the image of the crucified Christ, with His mother Mary at His right, a sword piercing her heart, and Mary Magdalene sitting at His feet. The Holy Spirit is depicted above him, all with a purple background. Abimael knows the image was painted by an Angolan slave in a small adobe church in Pachacamilla many centuries earlier. During a great earthquake, the entire church had collapsed, except for the wall where the “dark Christ” had been painted. Thereafter, the wall where the crucified Christ was worshipped had withstood a number of other earthquakes. The image came to be venerated by all Peru, culminating with a multitudinous procession in Lima every October. “Don’t forget everything I’ve taught you,” says Winnie. “Your faith is going to be tested. Remember what the good Lord said in Genesis: ‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you may go.’ Don’t do anything that will stain your soul. And in the most difficult moments, know that God is with you, know that God is still with you, know that God is always with you.” Abimael gets into the pickup truck with the two men, and they drive several hours before they abandon the car and tell him they’ll have to make the rest of the trek on foot. After two more hours traversing the verdant mountains, even crossing rivers, they finally arrive at the hamlet of Urubamba, controlled by the Shining Path. A tall indigenous man awaits Abimael in the largest house in the village and greets him warmly, knowing he is the son of Comrades Carlos and Juana. “You have great shoes to fill,” the man tells him. “Your father was a relentless warrior, and your mother has done great things in Lima. I expect you to shine among the brave ‘pioneers’ of the camp. Tell me by what name you want to be addressed. You can’t be a comrade at your age, but still you must choose a nom de guerre.” “You can call me Martin,” Abimael answers, without giving it a second thought. “Yes, Martin is my name.” There are about fifty other “pioneers” in the camp, none older than about fourteen and most of them sons of peasants who speak no Spanish. The thin man who initially greeted Abimael – his name is Comrade Jose – addresses them as “seedlings of the revolution” in Quechua and tells them a brilliant future awaits them. Then he tells them what their daily schedule will be: breakfast at six in the morning, classes on the teachings of Mariategui, Lenin, Mao and Gonzalo Thought from eight to noon, lunch at one, and training in the use of weapons, dynamite and explosives in the afternoon. Near the end of the course, some of the “pioneers” – the ones who prove the most adept – will be allowed to join older senderistas in occupying a nearby village or looting a mine for dynamite. He then addresses Abimael directly: “And I am sure you will be among them, Martin, for the armed struggle is in your veins. You imbibed it in your mother’s milk.” At first, Abimael understands nothing of the Communist philosophy he is forced to study every day. Among these, it is Presidente Gonzalo’s statements about the necessity for violence that befuddle him the most. He is simply perplexed when he learns that Presidente Gonzalo had written that “violence without remorse” is necessary to liberate the peasantry from capitalism and feudalism. And the more Abimael understands the message beneath the philosophical gibberish, the more he is astounded by its meaning. How could anyone possibly defend Presidente Gonzalo’s statement that political executions used as terror tactics were comparable to “killing weeds”? How to justify the claim that negotiating with the government instead of using selective and extreme violence was akin to eating “chocolate with poison inside”? How to approve Presidente Gonzalo’s maxim that you “kill one and influence a thousand”? And there is one thing also: what Presidente Gonzalo has said about religion. Religion is a “social phenomena,” he wrote, “the product of exploitation that will end with the end of exploitation, to be swept aside as a new society arises.” To the extent Abimael understands what Presidente Gonzalo says about religion, he finds himself in profound disagreement, even at his young age, and he finds his stomach itself rebelling. So, gradually, the more he learns, the more he discovers that everything he is being taught is contrary to what he has learned at church during Father Robles’ sermons. The senderistas are simply trying to teach him how to hate and how to kill. He engages in training in the use of arms reluctantly, wondering if it might not be a sin merely to participate in such practices. And yet he excels in the use of weapons. He learns how to discharge pistols and rifles, how to use pineapple grenades, how to wrap dynamite in balls of mud and launch them with a huaranco, the traditional llama-skin sling invented by the Incas. He knows the only reason he is being given these lessons is so that in the future he might use his weapons to kill actual humans, and he winces at the idea. He begins to pray relentlessly, prays in the morning and in the evening and whenever he has a moment by himself. He certainly has no interest in contributing to the “all-consuming river of blood” proclaimed as the supreme goal by his instructors. He is appalled at the senderista anthems chanting that “the blood of the people has a rich perfume, it smells like jasmine, violets, geraniums and daisies…” Why this emphasis on spilling blood? Finally, the day comes, the day Abimael has been dreading. Comrade Jose approaches him and has nothing but compliments for him, saying he had received excellent marks in all the classes on Communist philosophy, that he had excelled in the use of firearms and explosives, and that he was ready to take the next step. There is a mine not too far from Urubamba, about three days away walking on foot through twisting dirt roads which wound around the side of the mountains. The mine has dynamite, necessary to continue training the “pioneers.” About fifteen battle-hardened senderistas are to launch the mission, but Comrade Jose has decided that Abimael and another boy should go along to learn firsthand about the armed struggle and experience real conflict. “There’s only so much you can learn from books,” Comrade Jose says to Abimael. “Only so much you can learn on the firing range.” Abimael does not know how to respond. An attack on a mine would certainly result in deaths. He cannot contemplate the idea of actually killing a human being, or even of assisting others in doing so. But he cannot say “No.” One of the “pioneers” had done so when offered the chance to participate in the stabbing of a local varayoc suspected of collaborating with the Sinchi Battalions, and his punishment had been swift and decisive. He was left naked in the mountains, tied up so that he could not escape, and left to die for his infidelity. Of course, the doomed thirteen-year-old was not the son of Comrade Carlos and Comrade Juana, which gave Abimael certain perquisites. Abimael, unlike the others, is not expected to fight in the highlands but to aid in his mother’s activities in Lima. Still, there are no guarantees, and Abimael feels deathly afraid that his punishment will be severe. For the first time in his young life, he has to think of the possibility of his own death. What if the senderistas decide to stone or hang him for his cowardice? What if they use him as an example for the rest? And yet something deep inside him tells him it would be sheer evil to kill any of the men guarding the mines or any of the miners. What can he do? What recourse does he have? His first instinct is to pray. He takes out of his pocket the image of el Señor de los Milagros that Winnie had given to him on the day of his departure and pleads with the crucified Christ. “Lord, guide me,” he says. “If you want me to tell Comrade Jose that I shall not go on the expedition at the mine under any circumstances, please give me a sign. And if you allow me to go, please don’t let there be any casualties. I’ve heard that some of the Shining Path missions don’t result in any deaths. Grant me this favor, and I shall consecrate my whole life to you. But not my will, but Thine be done.” On the day of the expedition to the mine, Abimael rises early in the morning, with renewed vigor. Since the Christ has not given him a sign, he thinks of it as permission to go, is certain there will be no deaths. Comrade Jose appears a few hours later and tells him it is time to go. “I’m glad you’re going on this mission, Martin. It will make a man of you,” he says. “And if this expedition requires you to kill for the first time, it should be a great source of pride, not only for you but also for your mother. That would mean that, young as you are, you could be addressed as ‘comrade.’ Usually that only happens when a ‘pioneer’ kills a policeman and brings back his revolver. But killing a guard at a mine would be just the same.” The trek is long and hard. Finally, almost at nightfall, they appear at the mine, known as the Cienfuegos Mine. “Viva Presidente Gonzalo!” cry out the Shining Path guerrillas, already unholstering their weapons. But there are only two guards protecting the mine, and they raise their arms in the air as soon as they hear the senderista chants. “You can take all the dynamite you want,” says one of the guards. “We won’t stop you.” “Just leave us with our lives,” says the other. “All the miners are deep underground, and they won’t bother you.” “Do you want to shoot one of them?” Comrade Jose asks the young Abimael as if he were asking him if he wanted a cup of hot chocolate. “His death would be a trophy for your mother and would make you a ‘comrade’ immediately.” Abimael says a very quick and silent prayer to the Lord of Miracles before he responds. “No, I’d rather not,” he says. “I think I should receive the title of ‘comrade’ like all the others do.” “You’re a little squeamish, aren’t you?” Comrade Carlos laughs. “The first death is always the hardest. But don’t worry. You’ll have more than enough time to earn your stripes, particularly given that your mother is Comrade Juana. Come, let us collect the dynamite.” And with that, the night ends. It is Pentecost Sunday, and God has granted him a small miracle. Abimael will spend three more months at the guerrilla camp, but he will never again be asked to go on a mission. He redoubles his prayers and reaffirms his promise to consecrate himself to Christ. * * * One year after the death of Comrade Carlos Soon after the young Abimael returns from the training camp, the older Abimael – Presidente Gonzalo – appears and begins to sleep in the room vacated by Winnie. The young Abimael is sure that her mother has asked Winnie to leave under pressure from Comrade Barbara, who disliked the nanny with a passionate intensity. Of course the feeling was reciprocated. Comrade Barbara was in the habit of parading buck naked through the apartment, and Winnie was scandalized by her conduct. Abimael Guzman, a.k.a. Presidente Gonzalo, is a stout man, weighing almost three-hundred pounds, but he speaks with a soft voice that is almost like a whisper. Unlike Comrade Barbara, he is very gentle when dealing with the young Abimael. The young Abimael somehow knows that everything this man says has to be followed, that he is the grand puppet master over the lives of Comrade Barbara and his mother, as well as in the lives of many others. Unlike the late Carlos, neither Comrade Barbara nor the older Abimael care if the young Abimael overhears their conversations. Now that Winnie is gone, there is no longer a danger that the boy will report what he hears to his intrusive nanny. So the young Abimael figures out that his older namesake has come to Lima with a special purpose, a unique mission having to do with a black woman named Maria Elena Moyano, a person simply called “la perra” by Comrade Barbara and “la revisionista” by the older Abimael. Based upon what he hears, the young Abimael deduces that la perra is distributing milk to the children of a place called Villa El Salvador through public kitchens, and that somehow, that act of kindness is an unpardonable crime. “She is a traitor to the revolution, recalcitrant and counterrevolutionary,” says the older Abimael as if he were stating gospel doctrine, “and there is no alternative but to end her life. After all, we have warned her. Programs directed to ease the plight of the poor like the milk program diminish grievances against the government and lessen the revolutionary fervor of the masses.” The young Abimael tells himself perhaps he is misunderstanding, perhaps Maria Elena Moyano had committed other crimes, not just instituting the Glass of Milk program for the children of Villa El Salvador. But the more he learns about the doomed zamba, the more senseless the older Abimael’s plans appear to be. And now the young Abimael has no one with whom to share his anxieties. His father Carlos is dead and his nanny vanished, his mother fully co-opted by the words of Comrade Barbara and the man hailed as Presidente Gonzalo. And the young Abimael, as usual, seeks solace in prayer. One bright morning a group of armed men appears at the apartment building bringing with them a man in handcuffs. Comrade Juana immediately ushers them into a room next to the young Abimael’s bedroom. Everything is done in a hurry, and the young Abimael sees through the passageway that the men tie the hostage to a chair as they scream at him. “Capitalist pig! Now we shall see if you ever again write your bourgeois propaganda against Presidente Gonzalo and the revolution! Know that you won’t escape from this situation with your life, you revisionist worm.” The man – a thin, slight creature in horn-rimmed glasses – has a red handkerchief in his mouth and can say nothing. But his eyes alone tell the young Abimael that he is terrified. Later the young Abimael learns that his name is Guillermo Townsend and that he is a reporter with the magazine Caretas. Apparently he has written a number of negative stories about the Shining Path’s incursion into the towns of the Andean highlands in the province of Cajamarca. The young Abimael gathers from conversations that the Shining Path is seeking a ransom in exchange for the life of the journalist, but that Presidente Gonzalo has no intention of releasing him alive. The months draw out. His mother, Comrade Barbara and the older Abimael continue to revise their plans with respect to the retaliatory assassination of Maria Elena Moyano, the black woman who distributes milk in the shantytowns of Lima. At some point, a group of young men – none of them Amerindians – begin to join in the discussions. The young Abimael is beginning to get a fuller picture of why they plan to kill the Afro-Peruvian community organizer. He figures out that they resent anything done to help the poor outside of the “revolution” – it is a word repeated again and again by the older Abimael – so they decide to punish her for the Glass of Milk program which she has instituted. Then the day comes. The older Abimael, Comrade Barbara and his mother are glued to the television set. They don’t mind that the younger Abimael is sitting with them. At around one o’clock in the afternoon, the first reports begin to come in. Maria Elena Moyano, the black feminist and community organizer, has been shot dead in front of her family as she attended a community event organized by the Glass of Milk committee. Then the television announcer states that afterward her assailants dynamited her corpse, whereupon the older Abimael, Comrade Barbara and his mother all erupt in cheers. The young Abimael sees Maria Elena Moyano’s two children on the screen – their faces full of shock and a limitless sorrow – and he begins to cry. The older Abimael appears surprised by the boy’s tears. “I promise you,” he says. “Once we seize power, the deaths will cease.” “Go to your room right now,” Comrade Barbara orders, in the presence of his mother. Comrade Juana says nothing as her son leaves the living room still weeping. * * * Comrade Juana, Comrade Barbara and Presidente Gonzalo often disappear during the day, leaving the young Abimael alone with Guillermo Townsend. His mother leaves TV dinners in the refrigerator for the young Abimael and the kidnapped journalist, with instructions for her son to feed him, but to never, ever untie the ropes that bind him. “If he ever escapes,” she warns her neglected son, “the police will come after me. You wouldn’t want to live alone with Comrade Barbara.” But slowly the journalist begins to befriend the young Abimael as he is being fed. When Townsend learns that the young Abimael’s mother is an American, he starts to tell the boy wonderful stories about the United States, about Hollywood and Miami and the Florida Keys, about the skyscrapers of New York City and the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi River and America’s great baseball and football teams. “I like to play soccer,” the boy confides. “I love soccer too,” Townsend replies. “Are you an incha of Alianza Lima or Sporting Cristal?” “Alianza Lima,” responds the young Abimael. “I think they have the best goalkeeper.” “What’s your name?” Townsend asks. “Some people call me Abimael. But you can call me Martin. Martin is my baptized name. I’m named after Saint Martin de Porres.” “So you’re a Catholic?” Townsend queries. “I guess,” responds the young Abimael. “But I never get to go to Mass. I used to sometimes, when my nanny Winnie lived with us. But my mother doesn’t believe so we never go anymore. One October, Winnie even took me to a procession in honor of El Señor de los Milagros when my parents weren’t in town.” “I, too, have participated in the procession of Our Lord of Miracles,” Townsend replies. “I’m a Catholic just like you. And what a wondrous sight it was! Hundreds of thousands of the faithful, all the women in their purple habits with a white rope about their waists, the men in purple frocks carrying the heavy altar bearing the Dark Christ’s image, everywhere the purple and white balloons…” After some time passes, the journalist asks the young Abimael for a favor. “Couldn’t you unfasten the ropes, Martin, so that I can escape? I have a son about your age. His name is Claudio, and I’m sure he would love to see me.” “I’m sorry,” responds the young Abimael. “If I let you go, my mother will be arrested or maybe worse. I don’t want to have to live with Comrade Barbara.” “Comrade Barbara?” Townsend repeats. “She’s a very mean woman, the one with the twin braids. She’s the one who puts all the bad ideas in my mother’s mind.” “What if I don’t tell anybody? What if you just unfasten the ropes and we keep your mother’s involvement a secret?” “I don’t believe it. I’m not a baby, you know.” But a few days later, the young Abimael learns something dark and terrible from the older Abimael. Guillermo Townsend’s family has paid a ransom, and there is no longer any reason to keep the journalist alive. The young Abimael remembers what happened to Maria Elena Moyano. He faces the toughest dilemma of his young life, a tipping point unlike any other. To release the kind reporter knowing it might lead to his mother’s imprisonment? Or to let his mother kill him? The young Abimael decides to unfasten the ropes binding Guillermo Townsend. He knows his mother will probably be arrested, but he cannot allow a man to be killed merely because he is a journalist. The young Abimael wishes he could have saved the life of Maria Elena Moyano too, as well as the man who was stoned in Huanca Sancos, but he could not have done anything for them. But he can do something for the skeletal Townsend and after some initial hesitation decides to set him free. The journalist kisses the hands of the young Abimael before he swiftly departs. “You’re a saint,” he says. “You’re an absolute saint.” * * * Twenty years after the incarceration of Comrade Juana “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.” The woman’s face is covered by a black mantilla veil, but the priest can still see the tears running down her face. “What do you have to confess, Margaret? When was your last Confession?” “About six months ago, Father Martin. It’s just that – well – I had nothing to confess.” “And now you do?” “It’s just that – well – it happened again. I’m sorry, Father, but Gregory is so handsome, and I let him have his way with me. I cheated on my husband once again.” “Are you seriously contrite?” “Yes, Father Martin. But I don’t know if the Lord can forgive me so many times for the same sin.” “Not seven times, not seventy times, more like seventy times seven. God will always forgive you if you sincerely repent and have the firm resolve never to sin again.” “That is my resolve, father, but I’m so weak. I dream about him sometimes, think about him when I am with my husband. I can’t – honestly – I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again.” “Be patient with all things,” Father Martin says, quoting Saint Francis de Sales, “but first of all yourself. And pray to God for strength.” “I just think that I’m a miserable person in the eyes of the Lord. How can I receive His mercy when I sin and sin again?” “Your misery does not hinder His mercy, Margaret. That is the way of the Christian. We fall, we rise, we fall again. But we never tire in seeking God’s mercy. I still pray for my mother, who has been incarcerated in the Yanamayo Prison in southern Peru for the last twenty years. And she is guilty of sins far worse than marital infidelity. I still dream of her redemption.” “You don’t speak with an accent, Father Martin. Are you a South American?” “My father was, but my mother was born and raised right here in Los Angeles, before she moved to Peru. After my mother was imprisoned, my grandparents brought me to California.” “Your mother is in prison, Father Martin? What did she do?” “She was a terrorist, Margaret, guilty of murder, bombings, kidnapping, you name it.” “Your mother?” “Yes, it’s true.” “So how did you end up becoming a priest?” “Because of the mercy and grace of God. Also an angel named Winnie, who died a holy death, surrounded by her children. I myself was responsible for my mother’s incarceration, something that pains me even today. But the alternative was to let an innocent man be killed.” “That sounds much worse than committing adultery.” “Yes, but don’t forget that small sins can lead to greater sins. My mother started her descent bombing electric transmission towers. And look where that led her, to bigger and bigger crimes.” “I’ll try not to sin again, Father Martin.” “Good!” says the priest. “I am hereby giving you absolution. The Lord declares you righteous, forgiven! Just remember that we are all beset by temptations. Don’t be mortified merely because you are tempted, for you have Christ and the Virgin Mary in your corner. Every time you are tempted, say the Lord’s prayer, and ask the Father to deliver you from temptation. And invoke the name of the Virgin Mary, a powerful intercessor when the evil of lust assaults you. With such powerful soldiers behind you, you are certain to prevail in your struggle against temptation.” The woman makes the sign of the cross and leaves the confessional. Father Martin is an excellent confessor, for over the years, he has learned to understand the great weaknesses of the human heart. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) By Sandro F. Piedrahita Torn between allegiance to his parents and the demands of his conscience, the son of two ruthless guerrillas makes a dangerous pilgrimage to become a peaceful soldier for Christ. -- “The loss of Eden is experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood.” Dennis Potter When Abimael Jones meets Abimael Guzman, his namesake and the head of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla movement, the young Abimael is surprised by how ordinary and undistinguished the older man looks. Abimael Guzman, a.k.a. Presidente Gonzalo, is a short, rotund figure with squinting eyes that look through bottle-bottom glasses and a thin scraggly beard. He looks so different from the poster above Abimael’s parents’ bed, the place where a crucifix or an image of the Sacred Heart would ordinarily go. In the poster, the older Abimael is fully bearded, robust but not obese, with dark, penetrating eyes and stripes of red and yellow emanating from his person, as if he were the sun itself. Not surprising that his followers hail him as “Puka Inti,” Quechua for “red sun.” Behind him are the figures of at least two dozen Amerindians bearing clubs, rifles and swords, marching as if they were in a parade and following a shining path. “I want you to meet someone,” Karen Jones, now known as Comrade Juana, says to her blond son as she moves him toward the older Abimael. The man is dancing in the living room with his arms up in the air, his fingers snapping. There are more than forty people in the living room, celebrating as if it were someone’s birthday or the twenty-eighth day of July, Peru’s fiestas patrias. As soon as Comrade Juana introduces her son to his older namesake, the obese man stops dancing, hugs the younger Abimael and gives him a wet kiss on the cheek. The older Abimael, despite the images of swords and guns in his posters, despite his history of ruthlessness, despite his reputation for calm, intellectual cruelty, is said to love children like the Christ. Sometimes – before he went completely underground – after a village was “occupied” by his men, he would sit surrounded by children in the center of the town plaza and preach to them about the wonders of the revolution. The older Abimael tells the younger one, “You should be proud of your father. Comrade Carlos was a great man, a hero in the struggle to oust the white oppressor from power in the land of the Incas.” The young Abimael does not understand why the older Abimael is speaking of his father in the past tense. Comrade Carlos has been missing from the house for about a week, but that is nothing unusual. The young Abimael is used to his father’s frequent absences. “Why do you talk about my father as if he were dead?” the young Abimael asks. The older Abimael looks askance at the boy’s mother, as if he doesn’t know what to say. Tears begin to well up in the eyes of the younger Abimael. “Your father has died, Abimael,” says Comrade Juana. “That is why we’re all celebrating his life. All these people have come to pay their last respects. Even Presidente Gonzalo, who is such an important man, fourth sword of international Communism, after Marx, Lenin and Mao.” “That shouldn’t make you feel sad,” the older Abimael intervenes. “Your father was one of the most valiant warriors in the fight to liberate the peasants of Peru. And he died as a martyr, at the hands of the police.” “So you’re telling me that someone has killed my father?” The older Abimael inanely quotes the last Inca, Atahualpa. “Such are the laws of war,” he says, “to defeat or be defeated.” The younger Abimael collapses at the feet of the older Abimael and begins to sob. “Why did he have to be in a war?” cries out the young Abimael. “Why couldn’t he be like the fathers of all the other children and be a carpenter or a butcher?” Suddenly, out of the shadows, Comrade Barbara appears. She is a stout Amerindian woman, olive-skinned, her hair cropped short, wearing olive-green pants and an alpaca sweater. Comrade Barbara has been living with the family of Abimael Jones ever since her own husband was killed by the military in the Andean town of Cajabamba. “I think you should leave Presidente Gonzalo alone,” Comrade Barbara says starkly, addressing the young Abimael. “You should just go to your room and let us be.” The boy does not like Comrade Barbara. She is bossy and once called him an “imbecile” when he opened the door to the bathroom when she was using it. Another time she called him a “rubio desdichado,” an unfortunate blond boy, when he complained of the meager food she had served him for dinner on a rare day when his nanny Winnie was absent. The young Abimael wondered if Comrade Barbara disliked him precisely because he was blond. The young Abimael does what he always does when he wants to circumvent Comrade Barbara: he speaks to his mother in English. The English language is his secret weapon, a connection to his mother with which nobody can interfere, the language she first spoke, before the American Karen Jones became the Peruvian Comrade Juana. Just like Quechua was once his secret link to his father, for his father proudly taught him the language and the history of the Amerindian. “I don’t want to be alone,” he tells his mother in English. “I shall miss my father. What does it mean to be dead?” “Leave your mother in peace,” Comrade Barbara again interrupts. And the young Abimael wonders what Comrade Barbara means when she uses the word “peace.” Is it peace to be drinking and eating, dancing and carousing, all because his father is dead? The boy looks to his mother, searching for consolation, but as usual she agrees with whatever Comrade Barbara says. “I think you should go to your room now,” says his mother. “We can talk about all of this later.” And the young Abimael does what he always does when his mother rejects him. He goes outside, into the garden, where his beloved Winnie has a room of her own. Winnie is what they call a zamba in Peru, of mixed Amerindian and African blood. Her tawny hair is curly, her skin a soft brown color, and she has soft hands that the young Abimael likes to feel on the surface of his skin. Ever since he was about three years old, she has helped to raise him and filled the void left by his mother’s indifference and her overriding dedication to “the armed struggle.” “Mama Winnie,” he cries out to her as he knocks on her door. The woman greets him with a hug and asks him what is wrong when she sees his face. “They say my father is dead,” he tells her. Winnie knows that Comrade Carlos had been a kind father, despite the extremity of his views and his role in the Shining Path’s millenarian war. But while the young Abimael’s mother had hardened with the years, Carlos had softened instead. Not that Winnie was ever told exactly what Abimael’s parents were doing. But sometimes they were absent from Lima for weeks. Indeed, that is why Winnie had first been hired, to take care of the young Abimael when his parents left Lima in one of their “expeditions.” Soon she became a permanent presence in their home and even traveled with them when they left Lima for Andean towns. Winnie always told the young Abimael wonderful stories, tales about Saint Martin de Porres, a man of African blood just like Winnie, about Saint Rose of Lima and how roses fell from the sky on the day of her death, about Jesus the Lord and Mary His mother. In his earliest childhood, she told him stories about Sinbad the sailor, Snow White, and all sorts of fairy tales. Winnie listens when the young Abimael tells her, “I guess my father is now with the Lord in Heaven.” Winnie has been expecting this moment, ever since she learned that Comrade Carlos had been shot by a policeman. “I’m sorry, Martin,” she says. “But I’m sure he is with the Lord now. Do you want to say a prayer for him?” And the young Abimael nods and says, “Yes, the Hail Mary.” He knows that she calls him Martin when they are alone. It is a secret between them, that when he was about six years old she had taken him to a priest in Magdalena Nueva and had him baptized as Martin, in honor of the saint to whom they sometimes pray at night when nobody sees them. Winnie didn’t like the fact that the young Abimael’s parents had named him after an unrepentant killer. “We can pray the Rosary,” Winnie tells him. She begins the first half of the Our Father, then Abimael completes it. They do the same with all the Hail Marys. Winnie mouths the beginning, the salutation, and Abimael says the rest of the prayer, “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he intones as he bows his head down devoutly, “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.” Then he adds some words of his own: “Also pray for the soul of my father in Heaven.” * * * Eighteen months before the death of Comrade Carlos The young Abimael is used to moving from apartment to apartment, often without much notice from his parents. But this time he is roused in the middle of the night as his mother cries out at him with urgency. “Hurry, hurry,” says his mother. “We have to leave this apartment now!” “What about my clothes?” asks Abimael. “Do I get to take my bicycle with me?” “Just put on a jacket,” his mother orders. “Snap to it!” she commands in English. When they go outside, his father is already waiting for them. Abimael notices that in addition to a single valise, his father is loading several rifles into the trunk of the vehicle. Winnie is already sitting silently in the back of the white Chevy Impala, holding a small bag of clothing. “Where are we going?” the young Abimael asks once the car is running. “And what is Papi doing with all those guns?” His mother is nervously looking out the window as his father drives with great speed, not stopping for any red lights. “Don’t worry about it,” she says to her son. “Just sit tight.” They continue to drive until they reach a small apartment. A woman is waiting for them outside. All the young Abimael sees is a shadow. “Just wait till I speak with Comrade Barbara,” his father says, and after a quick conversation, he comes back into the car. “I have the money now,” he tells Abimael’s mother. “That will be enough for a month in Huanca Sancos.” “How did they find out about us?” Comrade Juana asks. “I have no idea,” responds Comrade Carlos. “Duermete, mi niñito,” Winnie says as she caresses the young Abimael’s hair. Sleep, my child. “Aren’t you scared too?” the child asks Winnie. “Just place your faith in Saint Martin de Porres,” she whispers in Abimael’s ear. He knows she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. After about an hour, Abimael’s father finally speaks. He is already on the Panamericana, the highway that will take them all the way to the province of Ayacucho. He looks behind him to see if his son is asleep and thinks he is. Winnie is certainly asleep. But the young boy hears everything. “How they figured out we had anything to do with the bombing of the Banco Wiese, I will never understand,” says Comrade Carlos to Comrade Juana. “There must have been an informant. I don’t trust that new fellow, Castelblanco. I’m going to ask Presidente Gonzalo to launch an investigation. If Castelblanco’s guilty, I shall demand revolutionary justice. According to Gonzalo Thought, all traitors must be hanged.” “Still, it’s a good thing we were forewarned. Now I see the value of having spies within the government. Presidente Gonzalo is a genius.” At some point, the young Abimael falls asleep, unsure of what he has heard. Even at his young age, there are things that intrigue him. Why would anyone bomb a bank? And what did that have to do with escaping in the night? Why does his mother call Presidente Gonzalo a genius? Who is this strange man who is venerated like a god? Abimael sleeps for about six hours, cradled in Winnie’s lap. When he wakes, his father is still talking, but the boy remains silent. His parents have never before discussed their business in front of him, and now he has a morbid curiosity about it, drawn to his parents’ words like a moth to the heat of a lightbulb. So he feigns that he is still asleep even as Winnie seems to move restlessly. “You know what awaits us in Huanca Sanco,” his father says. “They will be stoning the mayor, a fellow named Rodrigo Huaman.” “I can tell he’s an Indian by his name,” says the mother of the young Abimael. “That is the worst kind of revisionist. The natives who side with the oligarchy are the greatest enemies of the revolution. And I’ll be the first to throw a stone.” There are a lot of words Abimael does not understand. Revisionist. Oligarchy. Revolution. And yet he realizes they are talking about stoning an Indian man to death. He’d like to think he’s just dreaming, going through a nightmare, but he knows that he isn’t. There’s a world beyond the confines of his home, far from the prayers he and his Winnie pray whenever they can, and it is a world where killing men is possible. It is a place where his own mother would help stone a man because he is – what were his mother’s words? – “a traitorous revisionist.” “They should just make it easy and shoot him,” says the father of the young Abimael as he continues to drive, his car hugging the mountains. “No sense in torturing the man.” “Since when have you had scruples?” asks the boy’s mother. “What difference does it make?” “I’m an old revolutionary by now,” responds his father. “I’m no longer given to the excesses of youth. Revisionists must be killed – it is the law of Gonzalo Thought – but there is no reason for human beings to be tortured.” “You’re forgetting something,” Comrade Juana responds. “By forcing the people to participate in the stoning, we’re leading them forward in their movement toward the armed struggle. That is why women are often asked to fire the final shot in an execution. Once they participate in their first homicide, the rest is easy. And they can then follow the shining path toward liberation without a second thought.” Suddenly Winnie has had enough. “Must you speak of such things in front of the child? Don’t you realize he can hear everything? Can’t you talk about movies or about the beauty of the Andean highlands instead? Why must you speak of revolution, bloodshed and war? You are going to destroy his childhood.” “Don’t act so surprised,” says Abimael’s mother. “You’ve known for a long time that Carlos and I are disciples of Presidente Gonzalo.” “You know I only stay with you because I love your son. I know your activities all too well. And your words about violence and immorality will only startle him. At some point, of course, he will know, but you should preserve his innocence as long as possible.” “Don’t get sassy with me,” cries out Comrade Juana, turning her face toward Winnie. “Don’t forget your only role is to take care of Abimael, not to give me advice about what you consider morality.” “Please,” interrupts Abimael, no longer pretending to sleep. “Please stop fighting over me.” He’s deathly afraid that Winnie might be fired. But Winnie continues, perhaps too angry to control her words. “I am but a humble, penniless zamba, but I know the difference between right and wrong. And stoning a man merely because he does not follow your demented faith is wrong itself.” “All right, let’s change the subject,” interjects the boy’s father. “I didn’t realize you or the boy were awake, Winnie. I’m truly sorry. And I’m sure Juana doesn’t mean to offend you. She’s just a little hot under the collar, given everything that’s happened over the last twenty-four hours.” * * * The following Monday the young Abimael hears a commotion coming from the plaza, which is just below the apartment his parents have rented in the Andean town of Huanca Sancos. His parents left early in the morning and he’s alone with Winnie. When Winnie realizes he is going toward the window, she tries to stop him. “Don’t look outside,” she tells him, but it is too late. He has already seen the crowds congregating in the plaza. “What are so many people doing outside?” he asks Winnie. “Martin, don’t worry about it. Come with me to the kitchen and we’ll make some picarones.” “No, I want to see,” responds the young Abimael. “Is it a celebration? Or is it some important man giving a speech?” Suddenly the young Abimael notices that the people in the plaza are casting stones at a man tied to a tree. From the window, he cannot see the face of the doomed revisionist, but he can definitely see he is the object of the crowd’s fury. And sometimes amid the clamor, he can hear the man’s wails. “What are they doing?” he asks, terrified by the man’s cries. “Is that the stoning my father spoke about last week while we were driving in the mountains? Are they really doing it?” “Yes,” Winnie assents, shaking her head in disbelief. “Are my parents among them?” asks the young Abimael. “I pray they’re not among the killers.” “I’m sure they’re not there, Martin,” Winnie lies. “Where else could they be? They talked about it in the car.” “They might be,” Winnie replies. She doesn’t know what else to say. And then they hear once again the man shrieking in the distance. “Wouldn’t they be guilty of a great sin?” ask the young Abimael. “You’ve taught me about all the Commandments, and I remember the commandment not to kill.” Winnie responds, in a thoughtful voice. “Yes, the stoning of that man is not pleasing in the eyes of God. Come, Martin, let’s say a prayer for the man being stoned and another for the conversion of both your parents.” “What do you mean by ‘conversion,’ Winnie?” Abimael asks. “Are we praying to deliver them from evil, as it says in the prayer which you have taught me?” “Conversion means that they will repent of – I don’t know what word to use, Martin – that they will repent of their extreme conduct. I don’t want to alarm you. Let’s just say we should pray that your parents get closer to God, that they abandon the wrong path.” “Are they on the wrong path, Winnie? Do you mean the stoning of that man?” “A long time ago there was a man named Saint Paul, Martin, and he participated in the stoning of a man called Stephen. Paul persecuted the followers of God and even consented to their killing. But through the actions of the Lord, he converted and recanted his wicked ways. So never stop praying for your parents.” “Why do they want to kill him, Winnie? Do they think he is a bad man?” “Let’s just say, Martin, that your parents are staunch followers of an ideology that is extreme. How can I put it? They’re so interested in saving the poor people of Peru that sometimes they do bad things.” And the doomed man wails again. After hearing the tumult of the death of the man in the plaza, the young Abimael returns to his room and waits for the return of his parents. When he hears the door of the living room opening, he sees that it is only his father returning, but that is just as well. It is his father with whom he wishes to speak. “I saw something from the window early this afternoon, and I didn’t like it, Papi. People throwing rocks at a man tied to a tree. I heard him cry. I think it really hurt him.” “Oh, you saw that, huh? I thought you might.” “Papi, tell me you didn’t have anything to do with it.” Comrade Carlos lights a cigarette, weighing the words he will say. “I don’t want to lie to you. You’re no longer an infant. I was there this afternoon, as was your mother.” “Did you throw a rock at him?” “You have to understand it’s all part of a great war. Haven’t you heard in school about the heroes Bolognesi and Miguel Grau, about the martyrs Tupac Amaru and Atahualpa? They had to do stuff they didn’t like. Your mother and I are involved in a war now, and to win a war, sometimes you have to do ugly things.” “But I don’t think the Lord Jesus would like it.” “Who has taught you about Jesus? Did you hear about Him at school? Or was it Winnie?” “Don’t get mad at her. Sometimes she tells me stories.” “You love her, don’t you?” Comrade Carlos asks. “As much as I love you, Papi. As much as I love my mother.” “Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind her telling you stories. If only reality were as simple as Winnie’s tales.” “Why did you hurt him? I mean – the man…” “Have you noticed while walking close to the Plaza de Armas in Lima that there are sometimes women on the ground, dressed in rags, begging for help? Have you seen their skinny children?” “Yes.” “And have you noticed that others – very few – go about town in fancy new cars, driven by chauffeurs?” “I have.” “Well, your mother and I believe that is unjust. We’re fighting for a world where man’s exploitation of man will be a thing of the past. Do you understand me?” “I don’t understand the word ‘exploitation.’” “How shall I put it? That means when a person takes advantage of another. Like the way rich white Peruvians abuse the Indians and let them live in poverty when it doesn’t have to be that way. We want a government run by the peasants.” “And you need a war to fix that?” asks the young Abimael. “I don’t think the Lord would like it. If war means throwing rocks at a naked man until he dies...” “Jesus was a great man. I won’t disagree with that. But He was also the first true Communist. Just like Presidente Gonzalo is a true Communist. In the first Christian communities, everything was shared. The rich Christians gave their wealth to the poor, and the poor gave to those who were poorer.” “So why not just do it that way?” “Over the years, people forgot His true message, son. Many Christians follow the letter of the law, but not its spirit. And it’s gotten so bad that it’s not enough just to ask people to give alms to the poor. We need a world where there are no longer a few rich people on the one hand and millions of desperately poor on the other. With time, you will understand. Is that enough for today, my son?” “I love you, Papi.” As the young Abimael is leaving, Comrade Carlos calls him back. “Son,” he says. “What?” responds Abimael. “Don’t talk about all this with your mother. And please never tell her that Winnie has been teaching you about Jesus or about religion in general. I know how important Winnie is in your life.” “Why would it make a difference?” “Well, your mother at some point in her life was very Catholic. And she’s sort of rejected all of that. Now she has very strong feelings against religion. So she might tell Winnie to leave if she hears that she’s been teaching you anything about Jesus. Sometimes it’s best just to keep mum.” * * * If anything, the young Abimael is more loving toward his parents in the week after his father’s explanation of the stoning than he has ever been before. He gets up early and sometimes serves them breakfast in bed, and when they come back home at night, he’s usually waiting for them, ready to give them a hug. His father responds in kind and tells him, “What’s up, champion?” His mother, on the other hand, averts her face as the young Abimael attempts to kiss it. “You don’t need to slobber all over me,” she tells him, surprised by the sudden new display of affection. “It’s not as if I’ve just come back from a long trip or been killed or something. And you don’t have to call me Mami. You can just call me Juana, as you always do.” And the young Abimael is surly when he interacts with Winnie. He refuses to speak with her as they share lunch and dinner, no longer sits with her as in the past when she watched her telenovelas on television. Finally, one day after she has served him a plate of aji de gallina – one of his favorites – he explodes in anger. “I don’t want to eat,” he cries out. “You know I hate your chicken dishes and everything else you cook!” “What’s wrong?” Winnie asks him. “Sit down and eat your dinner. You’ve already missed lunch this morning.” The young Abimael takes the plate of aji de gallina and throws it against a window. The yellow stew drips slowly down the glass as Winnie shakes her head, not knowing what is happening. “Now why did you do that, Martin? You’ve never behaved this way before.” “I did it because I felt like it. I’m not hungry. And don’t call me Martin. My name is Abimael, and it always will be. It is the name of a great man.” “Eat your dinner right now! Let me serve you another plate. Sit down, young Martin.” “Get away from me, you dirty zamba!” he says with pent-up rage. Winnie pulls him by the ear and forces him to sit at the table. “Where have you learned to be so disrespectful?” “Leave me alone!” he cries out as he begins to bawl. “You think God hates my parents!” “Where have you gotten such an idea? I’ve never said anything like that. Of course God loves both your mother and your father.” “Don’t you understand they’re in a war? That is why they have to do mean things. Haven’t you told me the story of Tupac Amaru, how his arms and legs were attached to four horses in order to kill him? All because he had killed some Spaniards. Didn’t he also do mean things because he was in a war?” “It’s complicated, Martin. Come, sit on my lap. You don’t need to cry. I see why you are so perturbed.” “Didn’t you tell me Tupac Amaru was a hero? My father says he is like Tupac Amaru, that all he wants to do is help the poor people. That is why he threw a stone against that naked man in the plaza.” And with those words, the young Abimael buries his head in Winnie’s chest and begins to cry. “Tell me about Saint Paul,” Abimael says, “how he stoned a man, and God still loved him. How he was blinded on his horse because God wanted to convert him.” “That’s right,” Winnie responds, caressing the boy’s blond hair. “Saint Paul was blinded on his way to Damascus. God wanted Saint Paul to see how much He cared for him. And by making him blind, the Lord made him see for the first time, not with the eyes of his face, but with the eyes of his soul.” “Do you think God is going to blind my parents, to make them see it was mean to throw rocks against that naked man in the plaza?” “I don’t know, Martin. God makes His presence known in people’s lives in different ways. With Saint Paul, it was blindness. With others, it’s the birth of a child or a cure for cancer. All you can do is pray for your parents, that they recognize the Lord when He appears before them.” “I pray for them every night,” the young Abimael responds. “Even this week when I haven’t been praying with you.” “You have to be stubborn. Don’t ever give up on prayer. Ask Jesus to enlighten your parents. And perhaps God will respond with a miracle.” -- Read the second half of this story here. Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Sandro's other work on Foreshadow: The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022) |
Categories
All
ForecastSupport Us
Archives
September 2023
|
RSS Feed