Florian's Gate (43 page)

He left the hospital that day absolutely certain that his mom and his dad had found a strength that he didn't have, and hoped he'd never need. Not ever. For him the best way of dealing with his brother was by continuing to deny he even had one.

Katya drew him back with, “Do your parents believe in God, Jeffrey?”

“Not before all the mess with Chuckie started. Church was a place to go and make some social contacts, you know, help us get settled in. That's how I got into faith in the first place. I was just looking for a nice group of kids. Sometimes it was easier to find people to talk to a new kid at church than at school. But then I met this Sunday-school teacher who was really on fire.

“When I started reading the Bible and going to weeknight services and talking about getting baptized, my folks treated it like just another phase I was going through. They trusted me, and even though they didn't understand what I was doing, they figured it was okay since it made me so happy.

“The co-dependency group my parents started with in Jacksonville was connected to a church. The Al-Anon support
group, too. And the more time they spent with the people in those groups, the more their conversation got sprinkled with these spiritual terms. Their new spirituality came at the same time when I was putting the lid on my box, so I made it clear that I didn't want to hear anything about faith. They still referred to it every once in a while, just letting me know it was there if I want to talk about it. But I'd just ignore it or change the subject, and that was it.”

He watched her for a moment, savoring this feeling of closeness and friendship. This is what a true love ought to be, he decided. A best friend. He asked, “What are you thinking?”

“You probably won't like it,” she replied.

“But it's something I ought to hear, right?”

“I can't decide that for you, Jeffrey.”

“I trust you,” he said. “Tell me.”

“Somewhere along the way,” she said quietly, “people have come up with the impression that if they believe in Jesus Christ, they won't have to suffer.”

Her words did not need volume to have impact. Jeffrey shifted in his chair.

“Then when something hits them,” Katya went on, “they question themselves and they question their faith: What have I done to deserve this? Has God found doubts in me, reasons to condemn me for my lack of faith, flaws in my beliefs that I have tried to hide even from myself?

“Then comes rage: I held up my part of the bargain, and look what you've done to me. But the Bible doesn't promise total protection, Jeffrey. Not even to the righteous man does it promise that. Look at Jesus Christ. Look at the apostle Paul. Look at Job. The Bible says that Job was an honorable, righteous man. A man who avoided evil. A man who honored God. And yet God allowed him to suffer terribly. There is no clearer message to me in all the Bible than this, Jeffrey. We see that even the most righteous man on earth is open to the pain of life.”

Her eyes were wide open, her gaze seeking out the deepest
wells of his heart. “Listen to me, Jeffrey. If we are faithful to Jesus Christ only when our lives are in the sunshine, then we do not truly love Him, no more than a true love on earth exists only when times are good and the couple live in harmony with each other. Genuine faith, and genuine love, does not always guarantee total protection from the risks and turmoils of life.

“Genuine faith consists of loving God
no matter
what the circumstances. We accept that our life is in His hands,
no matter
what the chaos of this world might bring,
no matter
what troubles confront us at the moment,
no matter
how we might hurt. We have placed our life in His hands and we
keep
it there.”

She sat and watched him in silence, as though sensing that he had been stripped bare and needed time to put himself back together. When his eyes turned outward once more, and he truly saw her, she asked quietly, “Will you pray with me, Jeffrey?”

“Not now, okay? I want to think about this some first. Maybe later, but not now.”

She did not try to hide her disappointment. “I will wait for that day as I have waited for nothing else in my life.”

“When you talk like this you sound a thousand years old.”

“Love is eternal, Jeffrey. Whoever loves in His name knows the gift of love's eternal wisdom. There is no other way.”

CHAPTER 23

Jeffrey was coming to love these walks alone in early-morning Cracow. His days began with a quick breakfast, a telephone call to Katya's room to outline the day, and then off to Gregor's. On pretty days he stretched the walk by a dozen or so blocks, walking and watching and thinking.

This morning, however, a mist hung heavy over the city, muting sounds and closing off vision to ten paces ahead. People appeared first as gray-black shadows, firming into living shapes at the last moment, then disappearing just as swiftly. Jeffrey examined the faces and thought of all that had filled his past weeks.

Gregor greeted him with the casual air of a dear friend. Jeffrey pulled up a chair close to his. “I've been thinking about what you said.”

“That is the best news I could possibly hear this morning,” Gregor replied. “Except for the news of Christ's return.”

“I was just wondering,” Jeffrey said, “how you came to be religious.”

“I don't know that I am what you would call religious,” Gregor told him. “Being religious is in my view an external action, something I would do for the outside world. I find myself too busy to pay such things any mind.”

He settled deeper into his pillows. “As for coming to faith, that happened in the darkness of the Nazi occupation. In those days, every Polish family had a Bible. And in almost every family, the Bible always remained on the shelf. I started reading the Bible during the war, not out of faith, but out of the need for distraction.

“I stayed in Cracow during the war. Our own house, quite a beautiful place, was taken over by the Nazis for use as a local office. We took what we could carry and moved to our cleaning lady's flat nearby.”

“What happened to the cleaning lady?”

“She was there with us. She had two sons who were missing. Many young men simply disappeared during those dark times. We were all the family she knew, and when we lost everything, she simply took us in. She was embarrassed to have us stay there—after all, she had been the one who had scrubbed our floors. She treated us like privileged guests for more than three years. That was an eternally long period to a young teenager full of life and energy.

“I was fifteen when the Germans invaded, and it was dangerous to go out with the curfews and the uncertainty. Because all the schools had been closed by the Nazis, I finished high school by taking private lessons in a small group that met at the local seamstress' house. I felt a constant restlessness then, a frustration over not being old enough to fight, and not being well enough to rebel against my parents' wishes and fight anyway. Even then I had this problem with my joints. I would have liked to die fighting for my country, especially after Alexander was taken. It was very hard to stay home and hide and do nothing to bring Alexander back.

“Our cleaning lady, Pani Basha, was not an educated woman. In her house were only three books—the first and last volumes of Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, which is a sort of novelized summary of Polish heritage, and a leather-bound Bible. I turned to that book not out of faith, certainly not seeking guidance. What on earth could a book written two thousand years ago teach a young boy who was bored and distracted and worried and hungry and afraid? No, I turned to it out of restlessness.

“I read it like a novel, beginning with Genesis and finishing with Revelation. Then I read it more slowly. Then I began reading books out of sequence, and gradually I found myself absorbing different messages. The sheer
complexity
of the book astounded me. No matter how much I studied it, nor how often I read and reread a passage, there was always
something which I had missed before. Another lesson. A deeper meaning that I only then was beginning to understand.

“When you have troubles, especially troubles which are so big that you know before you begin that you cannot conquer them, you feel as though you are the only one. No moment could be darker than the present moment. But I found the Bible to be full of war and destruction and hunger and suffering. And as I burrowed deeper and deeper into its pages, I also found that there were answers—not just to their pain and their distress and their distant troubles, but to
mine
.

“These men cried out to God, ‘Father, do not forsake me.' And so, in my own small way, as a restless teenager caught up in a crisis not of my making and certainly out of my control, I too cried out. And God listened.”

Gregor pointed toward his empty glass. “Do you think you might make me another tea?”

“Sure,” Jeffrey said, rising to his feet.

“You are a good and honest man,” Gregor said. “Alexander is fortunate to have you as an assistant, and a friend, if I may add.”

“He is my friend,” Jeffrey replied, hiding his embarrassment behind the alcove curtain. “Besides Katya, maybe my best friend.”

“How wonderful for him. This makes what I am about to say all the more easy. I would like to lay my own responsibility upon you, if you will allow it.” Gregor waited until Jeffrey reappeared. “You may call it a duty of our own partnership, if you will.”

Jeffrey returned and set down the steaming glass. “Fire away.”

“I want you to promise me that each and every day you will pray for Alexander's salvation.”

Jeffrey hesitated. “After all these years, I would have thought you'd have given up by now.”

“One never gives up. One never loses hope. One continues
to petition the Maker of all miracles, and one hopes for those who have not yet learned how to hope for themselves.”

“After all that he's been through, I'm not surprised that he doesn't believe.”

“That is indeed true,” Gregor replied. “There are many people such as our Alexander, who have felt the need to cast away all semblance of faith in order to survive their ordeals. They have managed to survive where all but a handful were crushed and killed—or worse—because of simple strength of will. There is no denying the power and the self-confidence that they have earned. Yet I have also seen such people reach a crossroads where they come to recognize a need for power greater than what they themselves hold.”

Gregor's eyes held a luminous quality. “There is always hope, my dear boy. Always. So long as there is life and the presence of the Lord in your heart, there is always hope. I am called to remain here with my arms outstretched, just as Christ did throughout His life and on unto death, and hope. And pray. Yes, that most of all.”

Jeffrey found his eyes drawn to the simple crucifix hanging from the wall. “I've never thought of it in that way before.”

“There are an infinite number of lessons to be drawn from the cross, my boy. Just as there are an infinite number of paths that lead man toward salvation.” Gregor himself turned to face the crucifix. “All human hope lies at the foot of the cross. In the two thousand years since it first rose in a dark and gloomy sky, it has lost none of its luster, none of its power, none of its divine promise.”

Jeffrey turned back to Gregor. “All right. I'll do it.”

“Think carefully on this, my dear boy. This is a vital decision. You are accepting a duty that you will carry with you for as long as you or Alexander lives.”

He nodded his understanding. “It's okay. I accept.”

“Excellent.” Gregor positively beamed. “I feel most reassured by your help.”

Jeffrey rose to his feet. “I've got to meet our painter Mr.
Henryk again. He's supposed to get me some information Rokovski needs. When Katya gets here, tell her I should be back in an hour. We'll need to go straight on to our next buy.”

“I will do so, my dear boy. And know that you go forth with my prayers accompanying you.”

It was a moderate palace, as palaces went. The cream-and-white exterior gave it a fairy-tale lightness, accented by vast sweeps of windows. Dual exterior staircases with curving balustrades led around the ground-floor ballroom to a porticoed and pillared entrance on the second floor. The grounds were unkempt and barely a step away from forest, save for one sweep of still-green lawn directly in front of the palace.

Katya and Jeffrey entered through gates so rusted and decrepit that no amount of effort could close them. Jeffrey tried to focus his mind on the business at hand, but found it next to impossible. The information he had received from Mr. Henryk was nowhere near as complete as he had hoped.

“Gregor told me a little about this place while you were meeting with your mystery man,” Katya told him. “He said it once belonged to an adviser to the king. After the Soviets installed the Communist regime it became an institute.”

The closer they came to the palace, the more cracked and faded became the building's exterior. “An institute? For some disease, you mean?”

Katya shook her head. “Bunnies.”

“What, raising rabbits for labs?”

“No, just to study.” She smiled at him. “The National Communist Institute for Bunny Research.”

“In a palace?”

“Don't expect Communism to make sense, Jeffrey. It will drive you to madness trying to apply logic to an illogical system. Just accept it. The former palace of a royal adviser is now a bunny farm.”

“That's incredible.”

“There were a lot of incredibles under Communism.”
Katya was no longer smiling. “The count who lived here was exiled to Siberia, and his children fled to Paris with the family jewels sewn into their clothes.”

“But they could come back and reclaim the place now, isn't that right?”