The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [125]
He wanted to go. His hands felt scalded, and it was getting harder to push the morning’s news out of his mind. It had helped to have something impersonal to talk about, to give a lecture, but they’d been at this now for three hours, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate ...
The trouble with illusions, he thought, is that you aren’t aware you have any until they are taken from you. There had been a new doctor, several hours of tests. The hands, he was told, could be improved cosmetically but not functionally; the nerves had been severed too long ago to be repaired, the destruction of muscle was too extensive and complete. The burning sensation, which he was experiencing now and which came and went unpredictably, was probably similar to that endured by amputees, a sort of phantom-limb phenomenon. He could straighten the digits almost normally and he had some useful hook grip in two fingers of each hand. That was it. That was how it was going to be—
He realized then that Johannes Voelker had spoken and a denser silence had fallen on the room. How long have I been sitting like this? he wondered. Emilio reached for the coffee cup again, stalling for time. "I’m sorry," he apologized, looking at Voelker after a few moments. "Did you say something?"
"Yes. I said it was interesting how often you change the subject from the child you killed. And I wondered if you were developing another convenient headache."
The cup shattered in Emilio’s hand. There was a small fuss as Edward Behr brought a cloth to soak up the spilled coffee and John Candotti collected the broken china. Voelker simply sat and stared at Sandoz, who might have been carved from rock.
They are so different, Vincenzo Giuliani thought, looking at the two men seated across the table from one another: the one, obsidian and silver; the other, butter and sand. He wondered if Emilio had any idea how much Voelker envied him. He wondered if Voelker knew.
"... power surge," Felipe Reyes was saying, explaining Emilio’s lapse to them, covering the embarrassment. "You can get erratic electric potentials when your muscles are tired. This kind of thing used to happen to me all the time—"
"If I keep my feet, Felipe," Sandoz said with soft venom, "who are you to crawl for me?"
"Emilio, I just—"
There was a brief ugly exchange in gutter Spanish. "I think that will be enough for today, gentlemen," the Father General broke in lightly. "Emilio, a word with you, please. The rest of you may go."
Sandoz remained in his seat and waited impassively as Voelker, Candotti and a white-faced Felipe Reyes left. Edward Behr hesitated by the door and gave the Father General a small warning look, which went unacknowledged.
When they were alone, Giuliani spoke again. "You appear to be in pain. Is it a headache?"
"No. Sir." The black eyes turned to him, cold as stone.
"Would you tell me if it were?" A pointless question. Giuliani knew before it was out of his mouth that Sandoz would never admit it, not after what Voelker had just implied.
"Your carpets are in no danger," Emilio assured him with undisguised insolence.
"I’m glad to hear it," Giuliani said pleasantly. "The table suffered. You are hard on decor. And you were hard on Reyes."
"He had no right to speak for me," Sandoz snapped, the anger visibly flooding back.
"He’s trying to help you, Emilio."
"When I want help, I’ll ask for it."
"Will you? Or will you simply go on night after night, eating yourself alive?" Sandoz blinked. "I spoke to Dr. Kaufmann this morning. It must have been upsetting to hear her prognosis. She doesn’t understand why you have tolerated these braces for so long. They are too heavy, and poorly designed, she tells me. Why haven’t you asked for improvements? A tender concern for Father Singh’s feelings," Giuliani suggested, "or some kind of misbegotten Latino pride?"
It was subtle, but you could