Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (2 page)

They didn’t know how or why a girl would come to be carrying thousands of dollars of cash in her purse in a subway late at night. And they didn’t care. The important thing now was to move quickly, before she could call the police. Once again, in unspoken unity, the boys wheeled away from the door—their astonishment already forgotten in the hurry to get to a safe place to gloat over their treasure.

The church stood a silent soldier against the slow destruction of the night.

II

Brother Leon whistled softly to himself as he strode down the corridor in his bare feet after morning Mass. It was Sunday, and today it was his job to make breakfast for the six other hungry men in the friary, who would soon be finishing morning prayers.

Swinging the heavy knotted rope he wore as a belt, he loped into the kitchen with an easy stride and swung the refrigerator door open. Out on one hand came a box of cracked eggs, on the other dangled half a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. Sliding them all onto the chipped linoleum counter, he flipped open the freezer door and flung out a squashed frozen orange juice, catching it in his other hand as though it were a basketball.

Still whistling that morning’s hymn, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” he twisted the dial on the stove to “medium-high,” slid the frying pan from the shelf to the burner, daubed in a hunk of margarine, and began cracking the eggs into the soon-sizzling pan and tossing the shells into the sink in syncopation, so that the hymn sounded like the bridge to a rap song.

Brother Leon’s eyes and hair were dark; his skin was a warm brown, the result of a happy marriage between a Puerto Rican and a Jamaican. He was short and wiry. Like the other friars of the community, he kept his head shaved Marine recruit style, but he wasn’t able to match their full beards. As he scratched the itchy fuzz that was all the beard he had been able to grow, he discarded the last shell, chucking it over his shoulder from halfway across the kitchen as he went to get a lid. He knew, without looking, that he had made it. Years of basketball gave you that sort of intuition.

Speeding up the rhythm of his whistling, he scrambled the eggs till they were fluffy. Stove off. Lid on top. Pam! OJ in the pitcher, water on. Stir. Sloshing orange juice and water until the liquid deepened to a golden whirlpool, he ended the vigorous exercise with a tap of the wooden spoon on the counter and tossed it over his back into the sink. This time, his throw was off. He heard the spoon glance from the counter to the floor and sighed.

Shrugging, he headed for the refectory with the breakfast. From the corridor came the slap of bare feet and sandals and the vocalizations of six men hoping for coffee and eggs.

Coffee! Leon slapped himself on the forehead as he set down the food on the pine plywood refectory table.
Leon, how could you forget again?
Groaning, he turned back to the kitchen, only to see the ancient coffee maker sputtering out a stream of brown brew. Brother Matt, glass coffeepot in hand, was gathering the precious drops in a mug.

“What the—” Leon shook his head, bewildered. “I could have sworn I forgot to do that!”

“You did,” Matt set the pot down calmly, smiling through his curly blond beard. “Typically, morning people like yourself who don’t need a drug to wake them up forget about making coffee.”

“Whew!” Leon heaved a sigh. “Well, thanks—you saved my skin. If I forget again, I’m sure Father Francis is going to write flogging back into the Franciscan constitutions!”

“Probably,” Matt grinned, his blue eyes snapping. The head of the order was notably short-tempered where his coffee was concerned. “I have to admit there was a less charitable motive behind my making coffee for you.”

“What’s that?” Leon rummaged through the drawers, piling spoons, forks, knives, and plates into his arms.

“There are two kinds of religious brothers in the world, Leon. Those who can make coffee, and those who can’t. I’m sorry to have to tell you which category you’re in.”

“Hey, I haven’t attained my earthly perfection yet. That’s why I’m here. But thanks all the same, Matt.”

“Any time,” Brother Matt looped his cord over his arm and carried the coffeepot and his own share out to the refectory where the other brothers were taking their seats.

Leon halted in the doorway as Father Bernard, the lithe dark-haired friar who was the resident mystic, murmured a blessing over the meal and the cook. After the fervent “Amens,” Leon stepped forward and began hurriedly to pass out the plates and silverware.

“Sorry, there’s no toast yet,” he apologized. “It’s coming.”

 “Who has the margarine?” Father Francis peered round the table over his coffee cup, his bushy grey brows twitching.

“Coming!” Leon quickly left and re-emerged with a plate piled high with toasted bread and the tub of cheap margarine. The eggs had already mostly vanished from the pan, and the toast quickly dispersed throughout the gray-robed crowd. Leon took one last look around and then pulled back his chair with a sigh. There was a sizable garbage bag on it.

“What’s this?”

Brother Herman, a portly older friar who looked like Santa Claus on vacation, wrinkled his forehead. “I forgot. Clothes donation. I meant to bring it to storage last night. Here, I’ll get it.”

Despite the twitches of irritation that ran through his innards, Leon heaved the bag on to his shoulders. “Naah, I’ll get it. I’m up.” Sighing inwardly, he heaved the bag on to his shoulders and went out the door.

 Religious life was filled with little frustrations like this one. You had to learn to live with the shortcomings of other men.
Besides
, he reflected as he ambled down the corridor,
this can be
my penance for forgetting to make coffee again
.   

Ah, who said that loving your neighbor was easy, anyhow?
He swung into the small hallway that connected their house, an old rectory, with the church. The temporary clothes storage room was the vestibule of old St. Lawrence Church. It was packed with garbage bags stuffed with coats, shoes, socks, and underwear that generous families from six parishes had donated to the homeless.
Someone ought to organize this room
, Leon scowled as he looked around in the dim light for a bare place to stick the new bag. Well, at least someone had started to sort out the men’s jackets into a pile on the floor.

Then Leon froze, his jaw dropping.

 When he recovered, he spun on his heel, and darted back into the hallway. Luckily, Father Bernard had already left the table and was in the hall, talking quietly to Brother Matt. Leon caught Father’s eye and motioned in bewilderment. Nodding to the other brother, the priest came down the hall, his gray habit billowing behind.

“What is it, Leon?” Father scrutinized Leon’s face.

Leon led him into the storage room without a word and pointed.

Brother Charley was lumbering by, having come from answering the doorbell. Big, burly, and slow, he had led a wild life long enough to have a nose for trouble. He followed the other two friars into the storage room, towering over them. “What’s up?” he asked, and then his eyes widened as he saw.

There’s something about the atmosphere of a small friary that speeds up communication. As Brother Leon hurried up the passage to get Father Francis, he nearly bumped into Brother Herman, who was apparently seized by curiosity at the furtive movements of his brothers.

“Something going on?” the older friar asked confidentially.

“Just a crisis—in the storage room,” Leon inched around him.

“Another rat colony?” Brother Herman’s face wrinkled into a grimace as he glanced at Matt. “We’ll have to get out the slingshots.” The rats of the South Bronx were legendary in size, and the friars had been waging an unsuccessful war against them for possession of the church and friary.

“Uh—Father!” Leon waved at Father Francis, who was still nursing his coffee cup at the table.

A few moments later, Leon was leading Father Francis back to the storeroom.  Charley was still there, squatting before the lump in the corner.  Herman and Matt were trying to get a better view. In front of them, Father Bernard looked clearly lost. The whole community was gathered in the vestibule now—even reclusive Brother George had left his chores to peer around the doorjamb. The silence was almost funereal.

 “All right, move aside. Who said we needed group support here?” Father Francis said, elbowing his fellow friars aside. Brother Leon saw Father Francis’s bushy white brows shoot up his wrinkled forehead as he saw the object: a slim, white ankle nestled on the sleeve of a jacket. “Heaven help us,” the community’s founder muttered, and Leon knew they were both thinking the same thing—that someone had dumped a body in their friary. He could see the headlines now: BODY OF YOUNG WOMAN FOUND IN FRIARY. POLICE FILE MURDER CHARGES. “Just what we need,” Leon murmured to himself, sweating slightly.

Brother Herman was frowning. He had edged closer to the pile of coats and was leaning his chubby frame over the body; turning his red, round face this way and that. Finally, he leaned back heavily with a sigh. “I think she’s just sleeping,” he said in a stage whisper to Father Francis.

There was an almost audible group sigh. “Well, that’s something to be thankful for,” said Father Francis briskly, in a soft voice. “But why should she be sleeping here?” His blue eyes traveled over the somber, bemused faces of his brothers. “Did anyone let her in?”

Six bearded friars shook their heads. Brother George’s face was quite red.

“Well, I suppose we should wake her up,” Father Francis straightened, and then, for once, looked uncertain. Nobody seemed inclined to disturb the owner of the white foot.

Leon, who had grown up with three sisters, swallowed and put out a hand to touch the coat-covered body. But before his hand touched the coats, the sleeper moved.

III

There are many beautiful churches in Italy, and even the tourists who walk in and out of them become pilgrims, of a sort. Bear tried to figure out, as he sat in the church of Santa Cecilia in Rome, whether he could classify himself as a particularly devout tourist or a rather casual pilgrim. He had been sitting there for a good forty-five minutes in the nave of the church lit by the natural light coming from the dome above. In the beginning, he had been consciously praying, but his stream of meditation had dissipated into random thoughts in the haven of the ancient stone structure. The last Sunday Mass had ended some time ago, his brother had gone back to the hotel, and now he was mostly alone, studying the ceiling structure and support pillars of the church, trying to picture how the building process had transpired. The thought of building a church like this one was fascinating to him.

 Just across from him was the hallmark statue of Saint Cecilia. Despite the fact that he had now seen thousands of souvenir replicas of it on the street for sale, it had not lost its ability to move him. Father Raymond, his late mentor, had once told him the story. The statue had been carved in 1599, when Cecelia’s tomb had been discovered, and her body found to be miraculously incorrupt. She had been the victim of a botched beheading around the third century.

The statue below the altar showed the slim body of a young girl lying face down on her side, her veil swept gracefully back, her head barely attached to her body. But despite the grisly detail, her form lay curled up as serenely as though asleep, her arms, carelessly thrown to one side. Her pose was deceptively accidental, for her fingers were curled in two deliberate symbols. On one hand, one finger points out, and on the other, three, proclaiming One God, Who is Father, Son and Spirit.

Despite his fascination with the architecture, Bear found his eyes drawn repeatedly to the smooth white form of the statue. It was mysterious to him. He wondered with bemusement what it could really mean. A girl. Death. Witness. Beauty. How they could all go together at once.

And as usual, his thoughts went from the statue of a girl to the real girl waiting for him on the other side of a stormy ocean, and he pondered again if it was time.

He had come to Europe to escape some problems and to find some answers. About a year ago, his life circumstances had changed drastically—he and his brother had been cleared of a crime they hadn’t committed, and because of this, the substantial inheritance they had received when their mother had died had been restored to them, somewhat grudgingly, by their father. Bear’s father had made it clear in his communications that he still wanted nothing more to do with his crazy religious sons, but the brothers’ financial difficulties were taken care of, at least for the next few years.

But the sorting-out period had been difficult and prolonged, with legal proceedings and at least two court cases to get through before his life could be called “normal.” After a while, Bear had felt the intense need to escape, and had arranged a long trip to Europe. He had spent most of his time wandering in and out of churches and other buildings like this one, looking at the bones of the architecture and wondering if he could become a stonemason or a sculptor. It had given him a long-needed rest after the stress, uncertainty, and danger of the past few years, but it had taken him away from her.

He thought of Blanche, a slender girl with white skin and black, black hair, long and shining like a dark wet rope down her shoulders. Blue eyes. Deep eyes, which said, even though she still might look like a child, she was almost a woman.