Authors: Gene Wolfe
“That’s good, because you’re going to have to. If you don’t, you’ll go back here—or maybe to someplace worse. If you do, I may be able to get you back to America.”
She just stared.
“You could go back home. Are your folks still alive?”
That got another nod.
“You could see them. Home cooking and hugs from your mother. All that stuff. I want you to keep it in mind.”
We took her back to the sewing barn, checked in at the warden’s office to tell her we were going, and left. I had an idea that the archbishop’s palace was going to be a long way from the women’s prison. I was dead right about that, but it turned out to work in my favor. It was so far that we went to a police station instead and got a car. I was happy enough to—well, you know.
It was a quiet ride. I knew it was too soon for me to start talking up Rosalee to Naala, and Naala did not want to say much of anything that would be overheard by the cop driving. So we kept pretty quiet. I looked at the city, mostly, trying to make mental notes about buildings that might make good landmarks.
One of those was the cathedral, which looked like it was about five hundred years old and had not been kept up too well for the past couple of centuries. Another, not quite so good, was the bishop’s palace, a big stone house that had been the work of at least three architects. I thought the rococo part was definitely overdone, and I suspected that if the stones were to get sandblasted it would be even worse.
Naala looked at her watch. “Four forty it is. That is perfect.”
I got out, went around to the other side, and held the door for her. The cop gave a little snort at that, which was as close to talking as he ever came.
A priest, young, thin, and hollow chested, opened the door for us. “We must see His Excellency at once,” Naala snapped. “Show us in.”
“I’ll have to speak to His Excellency.” The priest looked apologetic.
“We, too,” Naala told him. We were right at his heels, and when we got to what turned out to be the archbishop’s study we pushed past.
He stood up, smiling, as if our busting in on him was just what he had been expecting, which it probably was. “Welcome!” Old as he was, he still had one of those golden voices that are exactly right for public speaking. “You will always be welcome here, my children.”
“Thank you,” Naala said, and sat down. I took my cue from her and sat, too.
“I trust you had a pleasant walk?” The archbishop sat quite a bit more slowly.
“We did not walk. A police car. We have been at the women’s prison, you see. Even with the car we are late, for which you must forgive us.”
“As I do, and gladly.” His smile had not lost a single kilowatt. I decided it would take a lot to ruffle him.
Naala turned to me. “What is the name of the priest from Puraustays?”
I told her Papa Zenon.
“He is here now in the capital. Summoned by you?”
The archbishop nodded.
“An important matter, since he has a parish there he must neglect while he is here.”
“His parish is in excellent condition,” the archbishop murmured, “and he leaves three assistants. I feel sure it will survive without its shepherd for a few weeks.”
“That long?”
“I hope not, but…” His shoulders rose a quarter inch, and subsided one at a time.
“The police there speak well of him.”
Well, well, well,
I said to myself.
Those phones on the light poles are pretty useful.
“I would expect them to.” The archbishop smiled again.
Naala said, “May I ask why you have brought him here?”
“You may, of course. The question, I fear, is whether you will credit my answer. Papa Zenon is an experienced exorcist.” He cleared his throat. “Every parish has an exorcist. I see you know it.”
“I do,” Naala told him.
“Most never perform an exorcism. Those who do…” The archbishop left it hanging.
I decided I had been quiet long enough, and asked, “Who’s possessed?”
“You will not believe me, young man, when I say we do not know. You do not, yet it is the truth.”
Naala leaned forward. “That someone is you know.”
“I do not know it. I feel it.” The archbishop picked a pen up from his desk, fiddled with it, and put it down again. “I may be mistaken, but I do not believe I am.”
“You have no evidence?”
“You wish me to take something from a drawer of my desk and show it to you.”
Naala said, “Which you cannot do. I understand.”
“There are rumors. There are reports I have received from good, reliable priests. The tower of my cathedral is very tall.”
Naala waited, and so did I.
“You will not credit that a man of my age climbs, every day, to the top of that tower.”
“It seems unlikely,” she said. “Do you?”
“I have climbed it every day for the past fifteen years, always early in the morning. Often before sunrise, in winter. There are three staircases. All are steep, and all are high. I pray as I climb, a prayer for every step, and a longer prayer at the landings. At the top, I stand among the bells and listen for the voice of God.”
“What has He told you?”
“Many things, though He is often silent. When I can no longer climb to the top of my tower, I will retire. He has told me to do this, and I will not disobey.”
“It may be that your successor will keep better to the point,” Naala said. “We search for one Russell Rathaus, an escaped prisoner. Your exorcist has involved himself in our investigation. Why is this?”
The archbishop chuckled, which surprised the hell out of me. “We must find out. It may be that Papa Zenon would say you have involved yourselves in his. As I listen for the voice of God, I look out over this city. In winter the sky is dark, but there are many lights. It is summer and we know God’s own clear sunlight, but the city is wrapped in darkness. I sense it and, almost, I see it.”
“There are always evil men,” Naala murmured.
The archbishop nodded. “Evil women as well. As for the rest, our entire race is corrupted by original sin. This is something more. This is Satanism, the worship of evil. I have learned that these Satanists call themselves the Unholy Way.”
When Naala did not speak, the archbishop looked at me. “I once encountered an old woman who had been visited by an angel. You will not believe it.”
“You’re right, Your Excellency. I don’t.”
“I never saw it, for it had gone by the time I met her. This was when I was a young priest. But she talked of it and named it, and told me things it had told her that would unravel the tangles of certain theologians—if they could be persuaded to believe them.” The archbishop opened a little box on his desk and took out a key. For a few seconds he looked at it.
He laid it down. “One thing she told me has remained with me to this day. She said that she was the only one who ever saw the angel. It was always in another room when visitors came. She would ask it where it had been, and it would explain that it had been in the attic, or in the spring house, or in the root cellar, or in the kitchen. Nevertheless, her visitors always commented favorably on her house. How bright and smiling all her rooms were, how clean everything was, how good the air smelled there.”
It seemed like Naala was not going to say anything then, either. To fill in I said, “Why are you telling us this?”
“It is not so for my city—for our city. There is a darkness now that the sun cannot drive out, and its air is close and fetid. It is possessed.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“I do not know how to exorcise a city. Neither does Papa Zenon. We must get closer. We must find the right room. Can you help us, young man?”
I said, “I will if I can.”
“I will not,” Naala told him. “I will not, because I do not believe you. We ask an explanation, and you give us a bogey tale.”
The archbishop nodded as though he had expected it. “You want evidence, and I have no evidence. I have only this.”
He picked up the key again and unlocked a drawer of his desk. For just a second I thought the thing he took out might be a dead tarantula. When he laid it on his desk, I saw it was somebody’s hand, dried and shriveled up.
I heard Naala’s breath, a hiss like a snake’s.
“One of my priests brought this to me yesterday,” the archbishop explained. “He told me the woman who had given it to him said she had found it. He did not say where. What do you think of it?”
Naala picked it up. “It—the purple color.”
“Those are tattoos.” The archbishop had taken a big magnifying glass from another drawer. “You will wish to read them, but you will find it difficult. They are old, and the ink has blurred. Some are blasphemous. I take it that will not trouble you.”
Naala shook her head. I was surprised that she had even heard him.
I asked, “Did you say you just got this yesterday, Your Excellency?”
He nodded.
“You seem to have gone over it pretty thoroughly.”
He nodded again. “I did, this morning. It interests me, and I was looking at it when my secretary informed me that you would be here at three. You have not looked at it.”
“Not very much, Your Excellency. I’ll have a look when Naala’s through with it.”
She glanced up. “Who told you about tattoos?”
“That the ink blurs? No one.” The archbishop smiled. “I happen to know something about them. The blurring takes place only very slowly, you understand. Years must pass. Decades.”
“These are terribly dim.”
“Yes, they are. If you desire to read them, you will require my lens. Would you like it?” He held it up, and passed it to Naala when she reached for it.
I said, “That’s a woman’s hand.”
“I agree, although we may both be wrong. There were traces of wax under the nails. Does that mean anything to you?”
I shook my head. The nails were long, and some of them were broken or split.
“Some superstitious people believe that the hand of a corpse can be made to reveal the location of treasure. There is a ceremony, dark invocations, and so on. Those vary with the magician. The key points are that the hand is laid on its back and candles of corpse fat are placed upon its fingers. Five candles. They are lit with more ceremony, of course. After that, the hand is said to point to the treasure. It’s nonsense, but the wax suggests that someone tried it.”
“It doesn’t seem like corpse fat would make very good candles,” I said.
“I agree, young man.” The archbishop was smiling a little. “What I found was wax, as I told you.”
Naala laid the magnifying glass on his desk. “I must take this.” She seemed to hesitate. “I will require a bag for it. A bag or a box. Tell your secretary to bring me one.”
There was a little bell on the desk. The archbishop picked it up and rang it. It was just a little glass bell, but for some reason I did not like the sound it made.
“The hand will be returned to you when we are through with it,” Naala told him.
“You are most gracious.” He looked quite happy.
“A priest, you said. A priest gave it to you. You did not give us his name. It was Zenon!”
The archbishop stopped smiling. “No, it was not.”
“I must have the name, and it must be the correct one. We will investigate this, I think. It is with this priest that we begin. Give me his name.”
“I will, if you wish it. You would seem to think the hand involved with your search.”
Naala shrugged. “The black magicians you fear freed Rathaus. This I think. Why should your priest be given such a thing?”
“One of his parishioners brought it to him, I believe. May I ask why you believe the Satanists are involved in your case?”
I said, “I don’t think they are. Naala does, probably because a big doll with a face like Russ Rathaus’s was left in his bunk.”
The archbishop’s eyes went wide, and he leaned forward.
“I guess you know about the dolls. Only I don’t think Satanists made that one. Russ made dolls and sold them, on the outside.”
“I see.” The archbishop leaned back, smiling. “I no longer wonder, madame, why the hand interests you. Or why the presence here of Papa Zenon does, for that matter. You wish the name of the priest who brought me the hand?”
Naala nodded. “I do. The hand itself I also wish.”
“You will have it. The priest is Papa Iason. His parish is Saint Isidore’s, near the canal. I trust that you will respect his person. He is a priest of God.”
The secretary came in about then, and the archbishop asked him to find a stout box large enough to hold the hand. You could tell he was curious, but he did not ask any questions. He just hurried away.
“I have cooperated fully with you,” the archbishop told Naala. “Will you concede that?”
She nodded again, still looking at the hand.
“That being the case, will you promise me that there will be no torture of Papa Iason?”
“I cannot bind my superiors,” Naala told him.
“I ask only that you bind yourself and this young man.”
“You have cooperated with me,” Naala told him. “You say this, but I have no way of verifying it. You may be holding something back. I will now demonstrate my charity, which is very great. You have my word that if Papa Iason cooperates fully with me, I will not order him tortured. Papa Zenon is investigating for you? Investigating the bad magic?”
The archbishop hesitated before he nodded.
“I assumed, though you did not say it. My charity, the charity of the JAKA, is such that I give you, unasked, the same guarantee concerning him. If he cooperates, I will not order him tortured. You may rejoice.”
The secretary came back with a wooden box big enough to hold the hand. There were pictures on it, carved and painted, that looked pretty old. As we left, I told Naala that Papa Zenon had been a good friend to me and I hoped she would really take it easy on him.
She laughed. “We of the JAKA do not torture, but for us it is useful that others think we do. Your Papa Zenon is quite safe.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Where are we going now? To see this other priest?”
“Of course no. We go to fetch the woman from prison, the Rosalee.”
That surprised me so much I did not say anything more for a long time. But when we were back in the police car and it was turning and turning through the crooked streets and scaring horses with its flashing light, Naala told me, “We never torture unless torture is absolutely necessary.”