Now he saw them all. The kneeling women, the children staring with bulging eyes, the soldiers. The commander looked up at him and smiled. He was breathing heavily; his gray eyes were bloodshot. A long thin trail of spittle ran down his chin and hung suspended from a wet chin. He was certifiably mad, this one. Mad or possessed.
The lunatic turned back to the women. “One of you. That's all! One, one, one! A single stray sheep. If
one
of you will renounce Christ, I will leave you all!”
Father Michael felt his heart swell in his chest. He looked at the women and silently pleaded for them to remain quiet, yet he doubted his dismay showedâhis muscles had lost most of their control.
Do not renounce our Lord! Don't you dare speak out for me! You cannot take this from me!
He tried to speak, but only a faint groan came out. That and a string of saliva, which dripped to his chest. He moved his eyes to Ivena.
Don't let them, Ivena. I beg you!
“What's wrong with you? You can't hear? I said
one
of you! Surely you have a sinner in your pretty little town, willing to speak out to save your precious priest's miserable neck! Speak!”
Bright light filled Michael's mind, blinding him to the cemetery.
The field! But something had changed. Silence!
Absolute silence.
The man had stopped, thirty meters off, legs planted in the flowers, hands on his hips, dressed in a robe like a monk. Above his head the light still streaked in from the horizon. And silence.
Michael blinked. What . . .
Sing O son of Zion; Shout O child of mine
Rejoice with all your heart and soul and mind
The man's words echoed over the field.
Child of mine! Michael's lips twitched to a slight grin. Rejoice with all . . .
The man suddenly threw his arms out to either side lifted his head to the sky and sang.
Every tear you cried dried in the palm of my hand
Every lonely hour was by my side
Every loved one lost, every river crossed
Every moment, every hour was pointing to this day
Longing for this day . . .
For you are finally home
Michael felt as though he might faint for the sheer power of the melody. He wanted to run to the man. He wanted to throw out his own arms and tilt his head back and wail the same song from the bottom of his chest. A few notes dribbled past Michael's lips, uncontrolled. La da da da la . . .
A faint giggling sound came from his left. He turned.
She was skipping toward him in long bounds. Michael caught his breath. He could not see her face because the girl's chin was tilted back so that she stared at the sky. She leaped through the air, landing barefoot on the white petals every ten yards, her fists pumping with each footfall. Her pink dress fluttered in the wind.
She was echoing the man's melody now, not like Michael had done, but perfectly in tune and then in harmony.
Father Michael knew then that this girl hurtling toward him was Nadia. And in her wake followed a thousand others, bubbling with a laughter that swelled with the music.
The song swallowed him whole now. They were all singing it, led by the man. It was impossible to discern the laughter from the musicâthey were one and the same.
Nadia lowered her head and shot him a piercing stare as she flew by. Her blue eyes sparkled mischievously, as though daring him to give chase.
But there was a difference about Nadia. Something so startling that Michael's heart skipped a beat.
Nadia was beautiful!
She looked exactly as she had before her death. Same freckles, same pigtails, same plump facial features. But in this reality he found that those freckles and that thick face and all that had made her homely before, now looked . . .
Beautiful. Nearly intoxicating. His own perspective had changed!
He took an involuntary step forward, dumbfounded. And he knew in that moment that his pity for both Nadia's appearance and her death had been badly misplaced.
Nadia was beautiful all along. Physically beautiful. And her death held its own beauty as well.
Oh death, where is thy sting?
For the first time his eyes saw her as she truly was. Before, his sight had been masked by a preoccupation for the reality that now seemed foolish and distant by comparison. Like mud pies next to delicious mounds of ice cream.
A wind rushed by, filled with the laughter of a thousand souls. The white flower petals swirled in their wake. Michael couldn't hold back his chuckles now. They shook his chest.
“Nadia!” he called. “Nadia.”
She disappeared over the horizon. He looked out to the man.
Gone!
But the voice still filled the sky. Michael's bones felt like putty. Nothing else mattered now. Nothing.
They suddenly came at him again, streaking in from the left, led by this beautiful child he'd once thought was ugly. This time she had her head down. She drilled him with sparkling, mischievous eyes while she was still far off.
He wanted to join her train this time. To leap out in its wake and fly with her. He was planning to do just that. His whole body was quivering for this intoxicating ride that she was daring him to take. The desire flooded his veins and he staggered forward a step.
He staggered! He did not fly as she flew!
Nadia rushed up to him, then veered skyward with a single leap. His mouth dropped open. She shot for the streaking light above. Her giggles rose to a shrieking laughter and he heard her call, crystal clear.
“Come on, Father Michael! Come on! You think this is neat? This is
nothing!”
It reverberated across the desert.
This is nothing!
Nothing!
Desperation filled Michael. He took another step forward, but his foot seemed filled with lead. His heart slammed in his chest, flooding his veins with fear. “Nadia! Nadia!”
The white field turned off as if someone had pulled a plug.
Michael realized that he was crying. He was back in the village, hanging on a cross before his parishioners . . . crying like a baby.
JANJIC WATCHED the priest's body heaving with sobs up on that cross, and he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. Nothing mattered to him now except that the priest be set free. If need be, he would die or kill or renounce Christ himself.
But with a single look into the priest's eyes, Janjic knew the priest wanted to die now. He'd found something of greater value than life. He had found this love for Christ.
Karadzic was shaking his gun at the priest, glaring at the villagers, trying to force apostasy and carrying on as if he thought the whole thing was some delicious joke. But the priest had led his flock well. They didn't seem capable of speaking out against their Christ, regardless of what it meant to the priest.
“Speak now or I'll kill him!” Karadzic screamed.
“I will speak.”
Janjic lifted his head. Who'd said that? A man. The priest? No, the priest did not possess the strength.
“I will speak for my children.” It
was
the priest! It was the priest, lifting his head and looking squarely at Karadzic, as if he'd received a transfusion of energy.
“Your threat of death doesn't frighten us, soldier.” He spoke gently, without anger, through tears that still ran down his face. “We've been purchased by blood, we live by the power of that blood, we will die for that blood. And we would never, never, renounce our beloved Christ.” His voice croaked. “He is our Creator, sir.”
The priest turned his eyes to the women, and slowly a smile formed on his lips. “My children, please. Please . . .” His face wrinkled with despair. His beard was matted with blood and he could hardly speak for all the tears now.
“Please.” The priest's voice came soft now. “Let me go. Don't hold me back . . . Love all those who cross your path, they are all beautiful. So . . . so very beautiful.”
Not a soul moved.
A cockeyed, distant smile crossed the priest's lips. He lowered his head, exhausted. A flutter of wings beat through the air. It was the white dove, flapping toward them. It hovered above the father, then settled quietly to the cross, eyeing the bloodied man three feet under its stick feet.
The sound came quiet at first, like a distant train struggling up a hill. But it was no locomotive; it was the priest and he was laughing. His head hung and his body shook.
Janjic instinctively took a step backward.
The sound grew louder. Maybe the man had gone mad. But Janjic knew that nothing could be further from the truth. The priest was perhaps the sanest man he had ever known.
He suddenly lifted his head and spoke . . . no, he didn't speak, he sang. With mucus leaking from his nostrils and tears wetting his bloodied cheeks, wearing a face of unearthly delight, he threw his head back and sang in a rough, strained voice.
“Sing, o child of mine . . . ”
And then he began to laugh.
The picture of contrasts slammed into Janjic's chest and took his breath away. Heat broke over his skull and swept down his back.
The laughter echoed over the graveyard now. Karadzic trembled, rooted to the earth. Ivena was looking up at the priest, weeping with the rest of the women. But it was not terror or even sorrow that gripped her; it was something else entirely. Something akin to desire. Something . . .
A gunshot boomed around Janjic's ears and he jumped. A coil of smoke rose from Karadzic's waving pistol.
The resounding report left absolute silence in its wake, snuffing out the laughter. Father Michael slumped on the cross. If he wasn't dead, he would be soon enough.
Then Janjic ran. He whirled around, aware only of the heat crashing through his body. He did not think to run, he just ran. On legs no stronger than puffs of cotton, he fled the village.
When his mind caught up to him, it told him that he also had just died.
JANJIC DIDN'T know how long he ran, only that the horizon had already dimmed when he fell to the ground, wasted, nearly dead. When moments of clarity came to him, he reminded himself that his flight from the village would mean his death. The Partisans did not deal kindly with deserters and Karadzic would take pleasure in enforcing the point. He had drawn a line in the sand back there with the commander. There was no avoiding Karadzic's wrath.
But then he remembered that he was already deadâa walking ghost. That was what he had learned in the village watching the priest laughing on the cross.
And what about the fact that his heart was pumping blood through his veins? What about these thoughts, bouncing around his skull like ricocheting pellets? Didn't they avow life? In some mundane, banal reality perhaps. But not in the same way he'd just witnessed. Not like the life that belonged to the villagers. In spite of the child cut down in cold blood; in spite of the priest's martyrdom, the villagers possessed life. Perhaps because of it. And what life! Laughing in the face of death. He had never even heard of such faith! Never!
Which was why he had to go back there.
Janjic spent the night huddled in the cold without a fire. His neck throbbed where Karadzic's pistol had cut a deep gash from a spot just behind his right ear to his shoulder. Images of the village came at him from the dark, whispers from the other side. A young girl in a pink dress falling to the concrete, wearing yellow hair clips and a neat little hole through her temple. A priest suspended from a cement cross, laughing. Did you hear me laughing? the girl had asked the priest. Laughter. It seemed to have possessed them both. The currency of life beyond. It was the laughter that had made the killing a truly horrifying event.
Face it, Jan, you have seen worse before and left with a shrug.
But this. This had reached into his chest and set off a grenade!
He had a dream in his drifting. He was in a dark dungeon, strapped to a beam. Perhaps a cross. He could see nothing, but his own breathing echoed about him, impossibly loud in the black space. It terrified him. And then the world lit with a flash and he stared at a great white field.
He'd awoken then, sweating and panting.
Sometime past midnight, Janjic stood and headed the way he'd come. He had no idea what he would do once there, but he knew that in fleeing he had committed himself to returning.
He reached the village at daybreak, stumbling over the same hill from which they had first gazed into this tranquil valley. He pulled up, breathing steadily through his nostrils. High above, gray clouds ran to the horizon, an unbroken blanket. The air lay still and silent except for the twittering of a sparrow nearby. The church rose like a huge tombstone below, surrounded by carefully placed houses. A thin fog drifted through the northern perimeter. Several homes spawned trails of smoke from their chimneys. On any other day Janjic might have come upon the scene and imagined the warmth of the fires that crackled in the bosom of those houses.
But today Janjic could not imagine fire. Today he thought only of cold death. A knot rose to his throat. The cemetery was shrouded by a dozen large poplars. Behind those drooping leaves stood a tall cross. And on that cross . . .
Janjic descended the hill, his heart beating like a tom. Now the unseen forces that had driven him from the village reached into his bones, raising gooseflesh along his arms. He'd heard an Orthodox priest pray for protection once. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Janjic whispered the prayer three times as he approached the tall trees.
Then he was beside them, and he stopped.
The gray cross stood tall beyond dozens of smaller crosses. A black dog nuzzled the earth at its base. But the body . . . The body was gone. Of course. What had he expected? Certainly they would not have left his body for the birds. But then where had they laid his body? And the child's?
Janjic stumbled forward, suddenly eager to find the priest. Tears blurred his vision and he ran his wrists across his eyes.
Where are you, Father? Where are you, my priest?