Florian's Gate (41 page)

Jeffrey forced himself to concentrate on what the priest was saying, although his eyes were continually being pulled back toward the article in the far corner. The priest had waved at it as they entered, said a parishioner had given it after a miraculous cure of his son, and they were going to use the proceeds to equip a modern surgical clinic. After that he
had dismissed it as of no consequence, and Jeffrey had been forced to sit on his hands and wait for a chance to examine it.

It was a medieval chest, most probably intended for a palace chapel. It was perhaps four feet high, three feet deep, and seven feet long. Its curved roof and sides were carved with a variety of royal shields. The front was embossed with a painting of ladies-in-waiting serving men-at-arms. All but the painting had been covered with a layer of fine gold flake, then lacquered for protection.

“There is another group within the Polish church, however,” the priest went on, intruding into Jeffrey's thoughts. “And this group is growing in strength every day. Their first concern is the Kingdom of God, and this is what they are called. They are a charismatic renewal group, who see a very real need to return to the basic elements of faith in Christ.

“This group is pushing hard for contact with Protestant mission groups,” the priest continued. “Their concern is not church membership, but faith renewal. They fear that what communism has not done, secularism and capitalism may achieve. Now that our enemy of the past forty years is defeated, another more silent and pervasive enemy may gradually erode church attendance. These priests and their followers believe that there must be a vocal declaration made of the importance of salvation, a concentration on this very first point above all else.

“There is a problem, however. If the evangelical arm manages to dominate, and if political involvement is limited, a vacuum may appear. This is a very real fear within the church just now. Democracy requires pressure to operate, as you in the West well know. Here in Poland, you must remember, there is
no other organized moral voice
. There are no groups to push the government to remember the sick, the infirm, the needy—you have a word for this in the West, I believe.”

“Lobbyists,” Jeffrey offered.

“Exactly. There is no one here to apply this pressure in the name of God and service except the church. Two months
before the last election, for example, in the midst of massive price rises on everything from bread to milk to bus tickets, the government decided they had to cut social security payments—the same payments that had not risen since the Communists were defeated. Retired people who were unable to fight for themselves had seen their purchasing power reduced by over half when the new regime deregulated prices. And now what was to happen but a second reduction of over thirty percent. There was only one voice organized to fight against this measure. The Polish Catholic Church.”

The priest stripped off his glasses and began polishing them with a pocket handkerchief. “The evangelists point to another area where the church has tried to apply pressure, and failed miserably. I refer to abortion. Because this is very important to many of us, we have studied what is happening in your country, and we have made a very important discovery. In America, opposition has come from a groundswell of individuals, all joined together to combat it. In Poland, it was very different. Here the church tried to
order
the government to outlaw this. The result was disastrous.

“People who might otherwise have been behind such a measure have not only opposed the proposal to ban abortions, but also opposed the church. Why? Because it represents to them the same dictatorial demands as they knew under the Communists. They had no voice in this decision; it was ordered from above. The result has been, as I said, a very real calamity. The evangelists are saying that so long as the church tries to involve itself in politics, the danger of this schism deepening will continue.

“The fact is, church attendance is falling. The question is, how many of those who have stopped coming have lost a living faith, rejecting this new group that is attempting to become another authority over their lives, and how many came to church simply to escape the storm of life under Communist rule?”

That afternoon Jeffrey returned from a second meeting with Mr. Henryk to find Katya in her room surrounded by government forms, handwritten lists, and a Polish-English dictionary. He sat down on the floor beside her and began helping her with the tedious business of making a complete inventory for the export forms.

Once the forms were completed, they went downstairs for dinner, then returned and gathered up the papers, content to sit together and enjoy the feeling of a shared intimacy.

“This is the way I always thought a confessional would feel,” he told her. “Quiet and intimate and protected. As though I could say anything I wanted and it would be all right.”

“We all need a place where secrets can be revealed,” she replied, setting aside her papers.

“We're not talking about the same thing, though, are we.”

Katya shook her head. “I carry my place with me. Wherever I go, wherever I am, whatever happens.”

“I used to feel that way.”

“I know.”

He leaned back. “That reminds me of something I haven't thought of in years. Back then, the greatest part of being religious for me was this feeling I had. I had a friend, somebody I could talk with about anything. I would talk with God and tell Him
everything
and He would always be there and everything would always be okay. He was my perfect friend.”

She gazed at him with eyes more open than he had ever seen. “You really miss Him, don't you?”

Katya was too close to him for there to be any room for a lie. “I don't know if I really believe God exists. I miss the feeling, though. I see what I used to have there in your eyes, and I miss that.”

She watched him, her eyes two gray-violet pools where he could lose himself for all his days. Jeffrey whispered, “I really love you, Katya.”

She did not flinch, she did not draw back, she did not
belittle his confession with indifference. Instead, she cradled his hand in both of hers, bent down, and kissed it with the soft caress of butterfly wings.

Katya stroked his hand and murmured, “I've been so afraid.”

“Of what?”

She kept her eyes on his hand. “Of falling in love. Afraid because it had already happened, afraid because . . .”

There was no longer enough room in Jeffrey's chest for his heart. “Because why?”

She turned to him in mute appeal, a yearning gaze that beckoned and pleaded for he knew not what. Slowly, very slowly she shook her head.

“Why won't you tell me, Katya?”

Her gaze did not waver as she asked, “What pushed you away from faith, Jeffrey?”

At that moment, in an instant of realization, he knew that the entire journey had been leading up to this question. Not just the evening. The thread leading to this had been woven into their relationship from the very first moment of their meeting. Some hidden part of him had been waiting for this, waiting and knowing that when the question came, he would tell her.

“When I was driving with Gregor the other day,” Jeffrey began, “I was listening to him talk about faith and suffering, and at the same time I was going back over what happened to me. It was like being able to see it through his eyes and his perspective, which was totally different from how I felt about it at the time.”

“How long ago was it? I mean, whatever happened to you.”

“Hang on a minute, I'll tell you, I promise. But I want to tell you about this first.” He related what Gregor had told him, then said, “As I was listening to him, I kept seeing things about myself I've never really understood before. Back when the problems all started, I'd get really mad and scream at God in my head, saying, you let my brother go through this and you let him hurt and
you let him degrade himself, so to heck with you. But I was
really
thinking, you said I was special because I believed and I got baptized, but since you came into my life, it's been worse than it ever has before. That was why I left God behind, Katya—because He didn't do anything but make things worse for
me
, not for my brother or my parents or anybody else. I cared about them only after I'd finished caring about myself. He'd let
me
down. I didn't want to have anything more to do with Him.”

The drawing away that he half expected didn't come. Katya's gaze remained open, her look filled with love. She said, “Tell me about your brother, Jeffrey.”

“My brother. Yeah. The brother I don't have.” The pressure in his chest built to an enormous bubble that
demanded
to be released.

“What was his name?”

“Is. What
is
his name. Charles. Chuckie was the kid; I don't know what he wants to be called anymore. My parents call him Charles. I guess they figure he's outgrown Chuckie. Either that, or they want to keep some kind of barrier between who Chuckie was and who this Charles is that he's become.”

Katya's only movement was a soft caressing of his hand, one finger gently stroking out a reminder that he was not alone, that someone was there and listening and caring.

“Chuckie was a great kid. He was two years younger and I always felt like he was the kid for both of us. My mother used to say that I was born old, and that's the way I've felt. She has this picture of me, it was always the first thing she'd unpack whenever we arrived in a new home. My dad is sitting in his living-room chair, his slippers are on and he's got the paper spread all around him with the front section spread open and just low enough so you can see him frowning as he reads. And there I am, about four years old, sitting in this tiny little chair. I've got my bunny slippers on and I've got my legs crossed like Dad and I've got the funny papers spread all over me and I'm wearing an identical frown.”

“It sounds adorable,” Katya said.

“I guess so. Mom sure thinks it is. But that's the way I was. Chuckie, though, was always into everything. There was never anything steady or ‘normal' about Chuckie. If he was happy you could hear him shouting and singing and laughing a block away. It was the same if he was sad. He
hated
being sad. When he was down he'd become just as mad as he could, and let the whole world know it.

“Chuckie didn't get on well with all the relocations my dad's company put us through. When he was still little, he'd get sick—real sick. His favorite was bronchial pneumonia, but he pretty much covered the range from appendicitis to the bubonic plague. A lot of my first memories of a new place were of Mom dragging us around to different hospitals and doctors' offices—I was still too little to be left at home. And Chuckie was not exactly what you'd call an ideal patient. He didn't like the move, he didn't like the new home, he didn't like being sick, and he wanted the whole world to be angry with him. It was tough.

“Right after his fourteenth birthday we moved again. All I can remember about that first couple of weeks was unconsciously waiting for Chuckie to get sick, and then somehow not being happy when it didn't happen. Instead of getting sick, Chuckie sort of went away.

“The move was to Phoenix. I had just turned sixteen, and my dad gave me this clunker of an Olds, so what I really thought about was getting out and stretching my wings. So while Chuckie started fading into the shadows, I was busy being a teenager.”

“You were a Christian then, isn't that right?”

“Yeah. I got baptized on my fifteenth birthday. I know, I know, a Christian's not supposed to be so selfish about himself, right?”

“That's not at all what I was thinking. Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you're all of a sudden going to be made perfect. It just means you're called to work toward
certain standards. Meeting these standards is a goal you'll be working for all your life.”

“I like the way you say that.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. You make it sound, well, approachable, as if I'm not being asked for the impossible.”

She squeezed his hand. “Go on with the story.”

“Mom was busy unpacking and getting us settled, and I was busy with this new school and new freedom, and Dad was busy with his new job. Nobody really seemed to notice that Chuckie had disappeared. His body was there, but he wasn't. He just left.

“We moved again at the end of the school year, and about that time we finally started noticing things—well, we finally started
talking
about things that we'd all been noticing for quite a while. Money was missing. Silver, too. And other things, little things like Dad's gold cufflinks that he wore only when he and Mom went out on special nights, and one of Mom's necklaces, and my new camera, and some other stuff.

“And the liquor was going down a lot faster than ever before, or so my Mom thought. They'd never really been big drinkers, but it was always there, and the bottles never seemed to be full anymore.

“First it was Dad who talked to Chuckie. Then Mom. Then Dad and Mom. Then me. Then all of us. It didn't do any good, though. Nothing at all. You can't imagine how sincere that kid was when he denied it. His pupils would be dilated to the size of bullet holes, and he'd be so sincere denying he was on anything that I'd go away believing him. Denial is the name of the game with somebody like that. They deny it to you, to themselves, to everybody who tries to get underneath the shell and make them face up to what they're doing. You don't know what lying is until you've tried to talk to an addict about his habit.”

“Chuckie was on drugs?”

“Drugs, booze, anything he could buy or steal to stick
down his throat or up his nose. It was like a metamorphosis in reverse. When we moved to Phoenix I had a colorful little butterfly for a kid brother. When we left there and moved to Philadelphia I had a worm.