The Medusa Amulet (15 page)

There, David knew, he was right. It only made sense for him to leave immediately especially as he had begun to entertain—against his own better judgment—the nagging, and utterly irrational, notion that Mrs. Van Owen’s claims weren’t as impossible as they seemed. For one thing, he was beginning to believe that someone else took them seriously. Why else had he nearly been run down in the street? He glanced down at his knuckles, scraped raw from plunging into the snow and ice. Determined as Mrs. Van Owen was, was there some rival out there, equally determined to thwart her?

And for another—and this was the part that troubled him even more deeply—right after she had driven away from the Newberry, he had returned to the book silo and, slumping in his seat, turned the next leaf of
The Key to Life Eternal
. A sketch, one that he had barely paid attention to on his first reading, jumped out at him like an acrobat.

It was clearly an early rendering of the figure of Athena, destined for one of the panels making up the base of the great statue of Perseus. And the likeness to Kathryn Van Owen was startling—the imperious gaze, the haughty posture, the rich mane of dark hair. The words,
Quo Vincas / Clypeum Do Tibi / Casta Sosor
, were faintly legible below it; “I, thy chaste sister, give thee the shield with which thou wilt conquer.” Athena was the goddess who had provided the advice, and shield, that allowed the hero Perseus to slay the Medusa. And though David recognized that the woman who had just left the library could not possibly have been the artist’s model—that this had to be a mere coincidence, maybe even a trick of his own imagining—there was another part of him that said,
Believe it
. Because at this point, a belief in miracles, in the long-lost secret of immortality, might be his sister’s best—and only—hope. How could he dismiss it?

Chapter 10

Father DiGennaro yawned widely and checked his watch again. It was almost midnight, and after that he could lock the massive bronze doors of the Holy Name Cathedral—seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago—and go to bed. The younger priests would still be celebrating Christmas Eve, with spiked eggnog and pizzas, but all Father DiGennaro wanted was a shot of Maalox and a good night’s sleep. At seventy-three, he’d ushered in more than enough holidays.

And the one piece of pizza he’d had was already giving him heartburn.

The archbishop liked to keep the cathedral open late on Christmas Eve, as it was a time when some parishioners came in to quietly reaffirm their faith. And perhaps a dozen or so people had already done that. But Father DiGennaro was alone now, and the interior of the vast Gothic church echoed with his footsteps as he made the rounds. Built in 1874 to replace the previous cathedral, destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871, Holy Name was large enough to seat two thousand worshippers at one time, and it was richly decorated with red Rocco Alicante marble and a massive granite altarpiece, weighing six tons. The wall sconces and votive candles lent a warm glow to the lower regions of the interior, but the ceiling, 150 feet high, was barely visible. Some work was being done up there, and plywood
sheets and tarps were stretched across a portion of the apse. But the red hats of the previous Chicago cardinals—Meyer, Bernardin, Mundelein, Cody, and Stritch—were still hanging, as tradition dictated, until they were reduced to dust … a reminder to all that earthly glory is passing.

Father DiGennaro burped, holding his closed hand to his lips, and shuffled slowly toward the double doors, decorated, like the rest of the church, with motifs meant to suggest the biblical “Tree of Life.” He was fishing in his trouser pocket for the key ring, when he saw, to his surprise—and if the truth be told, to his chagrin—the doors opening, and a slender woman, in a veiled hat and long fur coat, entering the glass-enclosed vestibule.

Oh, Lord
, he thought,
please let her just light a candle and be gone
. The corns on his feet were killing him, too.

But once inside, she stood, as if a stranger, looking all around and hesitant to enter any farther. He had the sense that she was coming to some decision, which did not bode well for him. People in the throes of a spiritual crisis seldom found quick release or comfort.

Approaching her slowly enough not to startle her, he said, “Merry Christmas … and welcome to Holy Name.”

As he emerged from the shadows of the nave, she took off her gloves, crossed herself, and with a sudden determination, said, “I’m sorry to trouble you at this hour, but I wish to make my confession. Can you do that for me?”

This was going to be worse than he thought. “I was just about to lockup,” he replied, slowly, hoping she would take the hint and come back the next day, but she didn’t move from the spot. He quickly sensed something else about this woman, too—that she was used to getting what she wanted, when she wanted it.

He let the key ring drop back to the bottom of his pocket.

“Where would we go?” she said, looking around nervously.

The old priest gestured toward several carved wooden booths, with thick red curtains, that stood between banks of flickering candles.

The woman strode off, her heels clicking on the floor, as if she were eager to get this thing over with, and Father DiGennaro wearily followed. Parting the curtains of a booth, she disappeared inside, and he went into the other side, settling into the cushioned chair and folding his cold hands in his lap. Why, he thought, hadn’t he just cheated by five minutes and locked the doors early? Right now, he could be taking his shoes off and rubbing the life back into his sore feet.

The woman was kneeling on the other side of the screen, her veil removed—he certainly didn’t see many of those anymore—and from what he could tell, a cascade of black hair had washed down onto the shoulders of her fur collar. Her face was lowered as she mumbled, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit … My last confession was … a long time ago.”

A lapsed Catholic, he thought. He could be here all night. And then he chided himself for his uncharitable attitude. This is what he was here for, what he’d been doing for well on fifty years. He recited several brief verses from Romans—“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”—as this sometimes seemed to help the penitents unburden themselves, then he waited.

But there was silence … except for the very distant sound of some revelers caroling on State Street. He stifled another burp.

“What would you like to tell me?” he finally prompted, and it was then he gathered that the woman was so distraught that she had been silently crying. He saw her lift a handkerchief to her eyes, and he caught the scent of perfume wafting off the fabric.

“I have sinned,” she said, before stopping again.

“So have we all,” he said, consolingly.

“In a way that no one has sinned before.”

He’d even heard that before, too. “I doubt you have broken new ground,” he said, hoping to ease her strain with a tiny touch of levity. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s troubling you and we’ll see what’s to be done?”

“It’s not something you’d ever understand.”

“Try me.”

“It’s not something God would ever understand.”

He began to wonder if he had more on his hands than a lonely woman seeking absolution on a lonely Christmas Eve. There was always the chance that this might be someone in need of clinical attention. For just such emergencies, he carried, as did all the confessors, a cell phone in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Now why would you say that?” he replied as soothingly as possible. “God forgives everyone. If you are truly sorry for your sin, and offer it up to God, He will take that burden from your heart. That’s what the holy sacrament of confession is all about.”

“But what if you have transgressed against His will? What if you have transgressed against Nature?”

He also wondered if perhaps she might not be a little bit drunk. Maybe she’d come here straight from some holiday bash, tipsy and suddenly overcome by remorse for some youthful crime. An abortion, perhaps? He’d heard that sad story too many times to count.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, and though he leaned close to see if he could smell the scent of alcohol, all he got instead was another whiff of the cologne from the handkerchief … but with something underneath it.

“The church? You shouldn’t be in the church?”

“Alive,” she said. “Alive.”

Now he knew that this was a deeply troubled woman, not just some conscience-stricken partygoer, and he had to be very careful and alert in what he said. He felt another pang of the heartburn, and sat up straighter in his chair. The air in the close confines of the booth was growing warmer and more redolent of her perfume. He wanted to sneeze but squeezed the tip of his nose to stop it.

“That’s a very grave thing to say,” he said, “and a very sad thing to be convinced of. I’m quite sure that it’s wrong, too. How long have you felt that way?”

At times like this, the line between priest and therapist became perilously thin.

She laughed, a bitter hard laugh, and this time the scent of her breath—cloves and spearmint—did come through the screen, but again it commingled with that same troubling note from before. Was it hers, or his own? He felt himself sweating, and another hot gust of indigestion burbled up in his throat. He longed to open his half of the booth and let some fresh air in.

“How long? I can’t tell you
that
,” she said, in an oddly coquettish tone, like a woman who’d been asked her age at a dinner party. “I just need to know what happens to people who have committed grievous sins. Is Hell real? Do you really go there? Is it for eternity? Is there any way out?”

“Now, now,” Father DiGennaro said, “you’re jumping the gun here. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Let’s leave Hell out of the picture altogether and let’s just talk about—”

“Why can’t you give me a straight answer?” she demanded. “Why can’t anyone
ever
give me a straight answer?”

He remained silent, not wanting to throw any potential fuel on the fire. He took the cell phone from his pocket and held it low, so that she wouldn’t see its glow.

“I can’t go on like this,” she said, her face just inches from the screen that divided them. “Don’t you understand that? Life is just a … a dead tree, with dead leaves that fall forever. They fall and fall and fall, and there’s nothing but more dead leaves to fall after that.”

Father DiGennaro could not help but be reminded of the Tree of Life motif with which the cathedral was imbued, from its doors made to look like overlapping planks of wood to its two-hundred-foot-tall spire. Was she reacting on some level to that? He would have to tread with extreme caution.

“I’d get out if I could,” the woman was saying, “but I don’t know how. I don’t want to go from bad to worse. You can certainly see why I wouldn’t want to do that, can’t you?”

“Of course I can,” he said, his finger hovering over the phone, not wanting to break the seal or the sacrament of the confessional but wondering if it wasn’t time to call 911. “Of course I can.” The air in
the booth had become cloying. He felt a sheen of sweat forming under his clerical collar, and he hastily undid the top button on his shirt. How he wished he had that Maalox with him now.

“Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato,”
she suddenly recited,
“quando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco, che da neun sentiero era segnato.”

Father DiGennaro, who had spent several years in Rome, knew a perfect accent when he heard one.

“Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; no rami schietti, ma nadosi e ’nvolti; non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tosco.”

And he also knew his Dante. She was reciting from the
Inferno
, the lines describing the wood of the self-murderers, where the damned souls were tortured forever, bound into gnarled tree limbs studded with poisonous thorns. A chill ran down his spine.
“Non han si aspri sterpi né si folti quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno, tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti.”

There was no better indication of her intentions, or her state of mind, than this—she was contemplating suicide. But when he tried to punch the tiny buttons on his phone, his thick fingers, damp with perspiration, misdialed. His left arm tingled.

And the booth, it seemed, had become darker.

He had to get out, and rising from his chair, he was almost overcome by dizziness. He swept the curtain of the confessional aside, and stumbled out into the dimly lighted cathedral. A sudden draft extinguished a bank of candles, and glancing up, he saw a plastic tarp drifting down from the gloom of the apse … trailed by the cardinal’s red hats, like so many dead leaves.

A rivulet of sweat ran down his back, and he felt himself in the grip of something strange. His left arm was aching, and his breath was coming in short, shallow bursts.

He took hold of the curtain on the penitent’s side of the booth, and yanked it open. He had never done such a thing in his life.