A Season for the Dead

Fifty-Two

Michael Denney packed his belongings into a small, expensive flight case covered in airline stickers: three shirts, three sets of trousers, a couple of jackets, underclothes. Then all the money he could persuade the Vatican Finance Department to release from his bank account in cash: fifty thousand dollars, another thirty thousand pounds in sterling and five thousand euros. It was interesting, he thought, to see how easily they relented, once he started to make the right points. Though he’d hardly touched it these past two years, he remained a man of considerable wealth. A good half was inherited from family in New England. The rest came from more unusual sources: gifts, commissions, fees. Bribes, if he were being honest with himself. The people with their hands on the purse strings knew that as well as he did.

When he pointed out the problems that could ensue were his money to remain inside the Vatican—awkward questions about hidden accounts—they were quick to sign the release. The balance of his wealth, close to twelve million dollars spread around various institutions, would be remitted to a variety of banks across the Atlantic according to his mandates. Redemption and comfort were not, he thought, incompatible. He was only reclaiming what was rightfully his and he felt happier looking into the misty times ahead with some hard cash in his pocket.

There were two passports in the case: one from the Vatican which would, they said, be confiscated once he arrived in Boston. The second had an old photograph from the days when his hair was sleek and black, one which made him look like someone completely different. The battered dark-blue passport jacket wore the familiar silver eagle.

It had been a long time since Michael Denney had felt like an American citizen. The passport was, technically, out of date but, as a precaution some months back, he had let a contact he knew work on it, changing a few details. Now it looked valid, which meant he would not have to throw himself on the mercy of the consular service pleading like an illegal immigrant. It would take him a while to get used to the idea of being American again. There was much to be learned in the months and years to come. But with money, and a U.S. passport, there would be opportunity.

He looked around the apartment, imprinting the image of it on his mind. It was memories like these that could keep you alive in the black days, knowing that some of the humiliation lay behind. Then he checked his watch. He was due at the rear entrance in thirty-five minutes. It would take a good ten minutes to walk there, through the private gardens, praying that everything he had been told about security inside the walled state was true. Denney was inclined to believe them. It would be too embarrassing to have a mishap on their own territory. The real dangers lay outside.

Denney looked at the painting that dominated the cramped main room. That was one belonging he hoped to see again. There were memories behind the original which he did not wish to lose. For a moment he was lost in its precise and savage detail, held by the monstrous, lunatic assassin raising his sword high, ready to deliver the final blow to the saint who lay dying on the floor, hand reaching upward for the palm branch of martyrdom offered by the angel. And there, in the background, Caravaggio’s concerned face.

Denney had always fancied himself as a spectator, one who looked on, caring yet detached, though never ignorant of one’s responsibilities. Both murderer and martyr were victims in this painting, he thought, and he had no great wish to fulfill either role in his life. Matthew had been chosen, had offered himself willingly. And his killer? Denney remembered the conversation that began it all thirty years ago. How he had talked with the pretty, young nun when they met in the church.

She had railed against the man’s cruelty, the savage anger in his face, asking how he could commit such a deed. He had asked the question which came into his head from nowhere: How could Matthew be what he was without his nemesis? Didn’t the murderer deserve some of the credit too for delivering to him his apostle’s fate? Wasn’t the killer just as much a part of God’s will as Matthew? Wasn’t Caravaggio’s stricken face in the background there to implicate us all in the act, and the artist in particular for his brutal imagining of it? Just as the young cop had said… This was a cruel world, one in which breath could be stripped from the living in an instant.

Recalling that moment now, he remained unable to define what prompted the thought. Yet the consequences were so profound. Everything that followed, public and personal, stemmed from that moment. It was to prove the instant the young Michael Denney had been touched by the world beyond the Vatican. It was a turning point, a step along the great journey, toward worldliness and sin.

He accepted now that he could never return to what he was. He knew too he could never leave the city without seeing the original once more, touching those memories that meant so much.

The bell rang. Denney was dismayed to find the sound made him jump. He walked to the door and squinted through the peephole. Hanrahan stood there alone.

“Come to say good-bye?” Denney said, with a degree of cheerfulness, as he let the dour Irishman into the room.

“If you like, Michael. To be honest, I want to make sure you’re gone.”

Denney nodded at the canvas on the wall. “When I’m settled, Brendan, I’ll be on the phone to you. There are things of mine here. You’ll send them on. I’ll pay for storage. You’ll put that in good care.”

Hanrahan looked at it and sniffed. “You think it’s worth it?”

“I believe so.”

“It’s in this church of yours, Michael. Is that correct?”

“The first church I ever worked in Rome. I never told that young policeman but it’s true. The place is full of memories.”

“And now you expect us to leave you there for a few minutes, on your way to the airport?”

Denney stared into Hanrahan’s gray face. He would not be cowed by this man. “I won’t run, Brendan. You’ll make sure of that.”

“Oh, yes. But why go there now?”

There was a light in Denney’s eyes. Something Hanrahan hadn’t seen in a long time. “For my own sake.”

“It’s the woman,” Hanrahan answered. “That nun from Paris, Sister Annette. I read your files. You followed her there for a little while. Just for some bedtime games. All for a nun?”

Denney hesitated before replying. Just the thought of her painted such pictures in his head. “She was the most beautiful woman I ever met. We opened each other’s eyes for a little while. Life requires a few mysteries. Otherwise why would we need a God at all?”

The Irishman scowled. “Abelard and Héloise is a pretty story but what a price they paid.”

“Still, they were alive, Brendan. You can’t begin to imagine how these things happen, can you? I pity you for that. It makes you a small man.”

Denney closed his eyes. The memories were so vivid he felt he could touch her still. “I made love to her for the first time in that place. First time I made love to a woman at all. I was a late starter. It was in a small storeroom off the nave. You could lock the door, do whatever you wanted. No one ever knew. We’d go there five, six times a week, take off the clothes they made us wear, become something else. What we were meant to be.”

Hanrahan’s chill stare said it all.

“Don’t look at me like that, Brendan. This is something you can’t understand, because it’s something you’ve never experienced. When we were in each other’s arms there I swear we were in Paradise. I felt closer to God than I’ve ever been in my life and there’s no blasphemy in saying it. I never wanted that to end. Then…”

“Then you followed her to Paris and she got pregnant. You could have left the Church, Michael. You could have been with her. The coward in you always comes out in the end.”

Denney refused to rise to the bait. “I was a coward, but not in the way you think. I wanted to do just that. She couldn’t face the ordeal we both knew that would entail. The wrath of our families. Being cast out as sinners. I was a coward because, when the Church found out, as they were bound to, I acceded to them without a fight. I let them rule us both.”

A picture entered his head, of Annette naked, lying back on the old cushions of a battered sofa, removing the crucifix from her neck, a shaft of light cutting through stained glass into the dusty hot air of the storeroom, her face full of anticipation and joy. “What happened in that room was no sin, Brendan. It was a holy thing. It was what was supposed to happen. If only you could understand it.”

His gray face winced at the remembered pain. “They let her keep one child provided she pretended it belonged to someone else, someone who didn’t care a damn. Imagine having to face that decision and I was nowhere in sight, I was banished. Do you take the girl? Do you take the boy? None of that was my doing. Those were the cruel ways of the Church. Sometimes they make my sins seem like mere transgressions. And then…”

He recalled the last time he visited them both and the way the sickness was dragging the light from her eyes.

“My family had influence. I was saved for greater things. They put my worldliness to other uses.” He took one last look at the apartment. “Sometimes these past few days I’ve wondered. How much are we born to be what we become and how much are we made that way? What would have happened if we’d said to hell with them and got married? Would I have made a loyal husband? A good father? Or would I have become what I am now? A devious old fraud desperate to save his own skin? You see, Brendan. I don’t need you to judge me. I can do that for myself, better than any save one.”

Denney noted the Irishman’s embarrassment with amusement. “And now I’ve made you my confessor. How very awkward for you.”

Hanrahan coughed into his hand. “We’ve twenty minutes to wait, Michael. When the time comes I’ll carry your bag and you can follow me.”

Denney stood his ground. “And the painting?”

“I’ll keep it till I hear.”