The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [68]
For a few moments, they stood and looked at each other in wonderment, taking in the changes, visible and implied. Then Felipe broke the spell. Waiting for Emilio to appear, he had drawn a couple of chairs to either side of a small table near a window in the large open room and, laughing again, he motioned Emilio across and pulled out a chair for him. "Sit down, sit down. You’re too thin, Father! I feel like I should order you a sandwich or something. Don’t they feed you here?" Felipe almost said something about Jimmy Quinn but thought better of it. Instead, he fell quiet as they sat together, beaming at Sandoz, giving him time to get over the shock.
Emilio finally burst out, "I thought you were a rabbi!"
"Thank you," Felipe said comfortably. "As a matter of fact, you made a priest out of me. I am a Jesuit, old friend, but I teach at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. Me! A professor of comparative religion!" And he laughed delightedly at Emilio’s amazement.
For the next hour, in the language of childhood, they reminisced about La Perla. It was only five or six years ago for Emilio and he found to his surprise that he could recall more names than Felipe, but Reyes knew what had happened to everyone and had a hundred stories, some funny, some sad. Of course, it had been almost forty years since Emilio had left; he shouldn’t have been surprised that so much of the narrative came down to a litany of deaths, and yet ...
His parents were long gone but there was his brother to find out about. "Antonio Luis died a couple of years after you left, Father," Felipe told him.
"How?" he made himself ask.
"Just like you’d expect." Felipe shrugged and shook his head. "He was using product, man. Always screws them up in the end. He had no judgment. He was skimming cash and the Haitians laid him down."
His left hand hurt like hell and the headache was making it hard to concentrate. So many dead, he thought. So many dead ...
"... so Claudio sold the restaurant to Rosa, but she married this pendejo who drove the place into the ground. They lost it a few years later. She divorced him. Never got back on her feet again, really. But remember Maria Lopez? Who worked for Dr. Edwards? Father? Do you remember Maria Lopez?"
"Yes. Sure." Squinting now against the light, Emilio asked, "Did Maria end up going to medical school?"
"No way." Felipe paused to smile thanks at a brother who brought them both cups of tea, unasked for. Neither drank. Hands in his lap, Felipe continued, "But she got out. Dr. Edwards left her a pile of money, did you know that? Maria went to the University of Krakow Business School and ended up making an even bigger pile of money. Married a Polish guy. They never had children. But Maria set up a scholarship fund for La Perla kids. Your work is still bearing fruit, Father."
"That wasn’t my doing, Felipe. That was Anne." It came to him that it must have been Anne and George who’d bought out Sofia’s contract. He remembered Anne laughing about how much fun it was to give away money they’d saved for retirement. He remembered Anne laughing. He wanted Felipe to leave.
Felipe saw the distress but went on, voice quiet, insistent on the good that Sandoz had done. The trees planted on Chuuk Island had matured; a man who’d learned to read and write as a teenager in the Jesuit literacy program became a revered poet, his work illuminated by Arctic beauty and the souls of his people. "And remember Julio Mondragón? That kid you got to quit defacing buildings and paint the chapel? He is a tremendous big deal now! His stuff goes for amazing prices and it is so beautiful, sometimes even I think it’s worth the money. People come to the chapel to see his early work, can you imagine?"
Emilio sat, eyes closed, unable to look at the man he had inspired to take up the burdens of priesthood. That of all things he did not wish responsibility for. The words of Jeremiah came to him: "I will not mention God or speak anymore in his