The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [7]
“Thank God, somebody else who speaks French. I was getting tired of being the sole recipient of Albert’s confidences. His conversational style has its points, though; he gets the information. A librarian! I wouldn’t have figured it.”
“You wouldn’t?” Dana didn’t bother to lower her voice. “Men are so unobservant. I spotted her at once. Dull, dreary, and middle-class.”
“Unlike you,” said Andy. “A model of courtesy; that’s our Dana.”
Dana subsided. Andy was the only one who could squelch her effectively.
Albert was now in full spate. He was speaking English; apparently Jacqueline’s “little” French had failed her. Conversation died in Albert’s presence; his loud tones overwhelmed other voices, and his remarks were so outrageous that they held his auditors in a spell of unwilling fascination.
“I am Christian, you understand,” he explained to an incredulous Jacqueline. “You think me dirty Moslem, perhaps. But I am—”
“No,” Jacqueline said. “Not exactly.”
The sarcasm was lost on Albert.
“Not a dirty Moslem,” he repeated, lingering pleasurably on the word. “Good Christian, true Christian. I love Holy Mother of God, all the saints. I come here, I work, I study, for the blessed saints. The Church not good Christian. No good now. Need good Christian like me to make better.”
Jacqueline glanced at José, but got no support from that source; the priest’s eyes looked glazed.
“You are going to improve the Church?” Jacqueline repeated. “In what way?”
Albert patted her approvingly on the knee. He clearly had a fetish about that part of the female anatomy.
“Save saints,” Albert explained. “The Church say not—she say—à renoncer les saints. Mais les histoires des saints sont incontestables. Les saints—”
“It is the bee in his bonnet,” said José, no longer able to restrain himself. He spoke directly to Jacqueline, as if he were trying to deny Albert’s existence. “He refers to the revision of the calendar of saints several years ago; and I cannot seem to make him understand that there is no rejection of those saints who were removed. They may still be venerated, still receive devotions. But the legends—”
“No, no, you are wrong,” said Albert, with his usual tact—and with a command of English which increased miraculously whenever he wished to voice a direct insult or contradiction. “You are stupid. The Church deny—that is right word, deny—older saints. Saint Christopher, Saint Barbara, les autres. All true. All real. I prove. The Pope is wrong, stupid, like you.”
“I hate to agree, but I never did forgive the Holy Father for dumping Christopher.” Michael looked up from his drawing. He had a disconcerting habit of reentering a conversation after a long silence, with a remark that proved he had been paying attention after all. “The week after he was kicked out, I ran my cycle into a tree.”
The comment struck the right note. José grinned unwillingly and relaxed.
“I grant that you on a motorcycle need all the help you can get, Michael. But the legends of such saints were long overdue for reappraisal. It is not heretical to question such stories, the Church itself does so. Early theologians were untrained in historical method; they misinterpreted—”
“No, no, no,” said Albert. “No misinterpret. All true. Truth comes from God, only God. We know truth already. But heretics need proof. I find.”
“Albert,” said Andy, “why don’t you shut up?”
Albert beamed at him.
“I find proof. Seven virgin saints—”
José put both hands on the table, as if he were trying to keep them in sight so they wouldn’t get away from him and commit violence.
“There are not seven virgin saints,” he said, between his beautiful white teeth. “There are hundreds of virgin saints. Or forty-two, or nine, or none at all. But not seven. It is a magic number, a relic of paganism—”
“Seven,” said Albert obdurately. “I prove.”
He dragged the bulging briefcase out from under his chair and began fumbling with the catch.
Andy stood up.
“I’m copping out,” he announced. “I have