The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [109]
"Can I sit on the other side of this thing?" Felipe asked. "This arm’s getting tired."
"Sure. You want me to take it? I sail alone quite a bit when I get the chance. "
Felipe was surprised to find he didn’t want to give the tiller up. "No. Actually, if I can just switch sides, I’ll be fine," he said and gingerly stood to move. He sat down rather abruptly, the slap of the waves pushing him off balance, but settled into the tiller again. "I’m beginning to see the attraction of this sailing business," he admitted. "This is my first time in a boat, you know. When did you start sailing?"
"When I was a kid. My family had a thirty-two-foot cutter. My dad had me working out celestial navigation problems when I was eight."
"Father General, may I speak frankly?"
There was a silence. "You know, Reyes," Giuliani said at last, squinting at the horizon, "one thing I hate about this job is that everyone always asks permission to speak frankly. Say whatever you want. And call me Vince, okay?"
Taken aback, Felipe gave a short laugh, knowing himself to be utterly incapable of calling this man Vince, but then he asked, "When did you get your first pair of shoes?"
It was Giuliani’s turn to be taken aback. "I have no idea. When I was a toddler, I suppose."
"I got my first pair of shoes when I was ten. Father Sandoz got them for me. When you were growing up, was there ever any question about your going to school? I don’t mean college. I mean, did anyone ever imagine that you wouldn’t go to high school?"
"I see what you’re driving at," Giuliani said quietly. "No. There was no question at all. It was absolutely assumed that I would be educated."
"Of course," Felipe said, shrugging good-naturedly, accepting the naturalness of such an attitude for families like Giuliani’s. He didn’t have to say, You had a mother who knew who your father was, you had educated parents, money for a sailboat, a house, cars. "I mean, if you hadn’t gone into the priesthood, you’d have been a banker or a hospital administrator or something, right?"
"Yes. Possibly. Something like that, perhaps. The import business or finance would have come pretty easily."
"And you’d feel perfectly entitled to be whatever you wanted to be, right? You’re smart, you’re educated, you work hard. You deserve to be who you are, what you are, where you are." The Father General didn’t reply, but he didn’t deny the observation’s truth. "You know what I’d be, if I weren’t a priest? A thief. Or worse. I was already stealing when Emilio took an interest in me. He knew about some of it, but he didn’t know I was already busting into cars. Nine years old. I would have graduated to grand theft auto before I was thirteen."
"And if D. W. Yarbrough hadn’t taken an interest in Emilio Sandoz?" Giuliani asked quietly. "What would Emilio have been?"
"A salesman," Reyes said, watching to see if Giuliani knew the code. "Black tar heroin, out of Mexico via Haiti. Family tradition. They all did time. His grandfather was assassinated in prison. His father’s death touched off a minor gang war. His brother was killed for skimming profits."
Felipe paused and wondered if he had any right to tell Giuliani this. Some of it was a matter of public record; Emilio’s file probably contained at least this much information and perhaps a great deal more.
"Look," Felipe said, caught up now in the stark contrast between his life, Emilio’s life, and the lives of men like Vincenzo Giuliani, who were born to money and position and security, "there are still times when the thief I started out to be feels more authentic to me than the priest I’ve been for decades. To be pulled out of a slum and educated is to be an outsider forever—" He stopped talking, deeply embarrassed. Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid