Jacob Atabet (2 page)

“Push him?” I murmured. “Did you see it?”

”I didn’t see it,” he muttered. “But you saw the Father fall over.”

“Who was he?” someone hissed. “People like that should be shot.”

There were more whispers as I went out to the street. But no one else, it seemed, had seen a light around the stranger.

Some were saying that Zimbardo had stumbled, bumping the man as he fell. That was the reason the man had been bleeding. “Did anyone see that flash of light?” I asked out loud, and a young woman nodded. But before I could ask her another question, an old Italian lady said loudly that something should be done about the man, that he should be arrested or put into a mental ward.

The crowd was dispersing and I looked for someone to talk to. The young woman who had seen the flash of light was walking across Washington Square. Should I chase her? But then I had a better thought: I would go back in the church and find out from the priests what had happened.

I moved in a daze as I found the door leading off the sanctuary. Father Zimbardo was sitting in a chair talking to the second priest. They looked startled when I entered.

Apologizing for this sudden entrance, I asked them what had happened.

“Why do you want to know?” Zimbardo squinted at me.

“Because something incredible happened and I think I can help you understand it. Do you know who that man was?”

Zimbardo slumped forward, as if he were suffering from shock. “We know him,” he whispered. “We know him. He belongs to the church here.”

A third priest came into the room and took his hand. All of them turned away from me.

“Can you tell me his name?” I insisted, but no one answered.

The newcomer was older than the others. After trading looks with Zimbardo, he asked me to leave. When I tried to persuade him to talk, he pushed me politely but firmly toward the door. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Sometime tomorrow maybe,” he said with a heavy Italian accent. “You come back later. Please.”

Walking through the church, I felt my spirit sink. Everyone, it seemed, was rationalizing their perceptions of what happened.

It was hot outside on the church steps, maybe ninety degrees on this June day. Suddenly I felt dizzy. An image of light from the chalice was swimming in and out of focus, and I leaned on a car for support. “You all right?” someone asked. “Why don’t you sit down here.”

“It’ll pass,” I murmured. “It’s just the heat.” I crossed the street and lay down on the grass. With eyes closed I let the sunlight warm me. Gradually I sank into darkness . . .

There was a tunnel to another world now, at the axis of a turning wheel. My body turned slowly above me. I looked up at the church for support. But the church was turning too, and slowly undulating . . . .

Then there were forms in the air—seahorses bobbing, jellyfish a foot from my nose, and strands of human cells around them. For weeks they had flickered at the edges of awareness like this and it had taken all my strength to suppress them.

“What holds them?” asked a tiny voice. “What is the membrane you see through?”

They took up a definite space just above me to the left, as if they were held in a watery balloon. “What will happen if it bursts?” the voice asked.

I tried to sit up, but my movement made the vision tremble. Everything was stretched to breaking . . .

Then the membrane burst. Strings of cells were floating all around me. I stood and walked up the street, struggling to find a new focus. Running and jogging, I went up the hill toward my place. For the last block I sprinted and came up panting to the door. The sea of forms had vanished.

Running had steadied the world, as it had all week, pulling me back from the stuff breaking loose in my mind. Breathing heavily, I went into the apartment and looked out at the Bay. A white passenger ship had berthed at the pier below and I picked up the binoculars to see it.
The Royal Viking
, a ship I had seen here before. Turning the binoculars to look through the larger end, I watched the ship recede. Reversing them, I brought it close. This had become a ritual these last several days, altering the vista at will, putting it at the distance I wanted. For five or ten minutes I turned the glasses back and forth, enlarging the ship, then shrinking it to the size of a toy. The act brought increasing relief. Controlling my perceptions this way had always brought a sense of confidence. The ritual had felt good for as long as I could remember, even when I was a child and tried to imitate this effect with my eyes closed. If only I could control my mind this easily.

I crossed the sparsely furnished room. A portrait hung on the wall that I sometimes looked at in these states, of my great grandfather Charles Fall. He stared out at me now with his silvery mane and starched Victorian collar, his stalwart face aglow. There was not a trace of fear in him, I thought. It seemed inconceivable that he had suffered from these psychic hemorrhages. And yet, like his friend the elder Henry James, he had struggled with an affliction of visions through much of his life. His triumphant clear-eyed look had been won through a struggle like mine. If I had inherited his unpredictable genes, could I appropriate some of his strength? I stared back at the portrait, opening myself to the poise it contained. But in the covering glass my reflection wavered like a shadow self. The image was overweight and discolored, a poor offspring from the grand old man beneath it. What would he tell me to do? What advice for a descendant who seemed so weak? At least part of the answer was obvious. According to family tradition, he had made his best inventions in conditions like mine. It was almost certain he would let his visions deliver their message while he kept on working. No institutions or therapists for him! Nor for me. That was the way I would fight it. Relief would have to come through my project.

As if to confirm my resolution, the church bells sounded from the Square. I found copies of the articles I had written about Bernardine Neri, put them in a briefcase and started back to the church. In the nine years I had studied such cases, most had slipped out of my grasp because I had not pursued them as they happened. Something prodigious had occurred during that communion service and I would track it down before it disappeared completely.

A Chinese boy answered the bell at the parish house. Father Zimbardo was resting, he said, but I could talk to another priest. A moment later the second priest at the Mass appeared, a young Italian with a thin dark face. He sat down with an impatient air. “I’m Father Bello,” he nodded. “What is the problem?”

I introduced myself, thumbing through the papers in my briefcase. “I’m working with some priests in Rome. Whatever happened in the church this noon is like the kind of thing we’re looking into. You’ve heard about Bernardine Neri? Here are some articles I’ve written about her.”

“You’re not a reporter?” he said, squinting suspiciously.

“I publish books for a living. You know the Greenwich Press? We have our offices on Grant Avenue, just around the corner. But this kind of thing is what I’m really doing—studying this kind of event. Those articles will tell you what my project’s about.”

“The man’s name is Jacob Atabet,” he said abruptly. “Zimbardo has known him for years. But what happened, don’t ask me. Zimbardo might’ve had an epileptic attack. At least that’s what the doctor just said.”

“An epileptic attack? And get right up like that to finish the service?”

“Who can tell?” he shrugged. “Do you really think it’s something to get excited about? What do
you
think happened?”

I briefly described my experience and told him about the reactions of the people around me.

”So some of them thought Atabet pushed Zimbardo over!” he exclaimed. “That’s absurd. Zimbardo was ten feet away. And someone else saw a light like you did? Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe this is something to study.” But I could see the veil in his eyes. Like the priests in Italy I had talked to about Bernardine Neri, he was filtering the experience to fit his normal perceptions. “But there’s a problem,” he went on. “We don’t know where Atabet lives. Zimbardo told me that. Even though he sometimes goes to church—he even taught a class here I think—no one has his address. I don’t know how you’ll find him.” He smiled faintly as if he were secretly pleased. “So how can we pursue this?”

“We can talk to some of the other people who were there. What about the altar boys? Did they see anything strange?”

“No. At least neither of them has said so.”

“Can I talk to Father Zimbardo?”

“No. I’m sorry. The doctor said he should rest. But why don’t you come back tomorrow or the next day? He should be up by then.”

“How long do you think you were standing there after Zimbardo fell down?” I persisted. “It seemed like two or three minutes.”

“Oh no.” He made a sour look. “It couldn’t’ve been more than a couple of seconds. I picked him up at once.”

“And you didn’t feel anything strange?”

“Just the shock of seeing him on the floor there. That made me jump. But no light. No strange sounds. No nothing. So you study these things?” He smiled urbanely. “Have you written a book?”

I said I was working on one, and we talked for a few minutes more. But I felt an impatience building. Would he help me find Atabet’s address? He said that he would, and stood with a look of relief. As I left he said he would try to find it from people who were friends of Atabet’s landlord.

Outside, the church doors seemed to beckon. I stopped abruptly. The woman who had seen a light around the chalice was coming down the steps.

“I was looking for you,” she said. “I want to talk about that thing in the church. To prove I’m not the only crazy.” We crossed to the Square and sat on a bench. A moment later she was talking to me freely. She was a dark attractive woman in her thirties, who had come into the church on a whim. The event had shaken her badly. “The same kind of thing happened to me once in high school,” she said. “Just like this—hard as it is to believe. Yes, just like this. Both times there was a light in the chalice. I was looking directly at it when it happened. And then the light from that man’s body. Right from him. God! It seemed to pulse.” She clenched and unclenched her fist to suggest a throbbing. “Then it was gone, and no one else had seen it. Everyone seemed stunned.”

“There was someone like this man involved the first time?”

“No, wait.” She shook her head. “There
wasn’t
another person the first time—just the priest. It was another priest. The two experiences weren’t exactly alike. But there was that noise both times. That crack of electricity. Did you hear it?”

I said that I hadn’t.

“No one else I talked to did. It was like some kind of short circuit in the wires. The other time something like this happened, when I was in high school, no one else heard it either. It was at the church here, the very same place. Can you believe it? Maybe there’s some kind of defect in the wiring!” She smiled, as if she were finally getting distance from it. “Yes, maybe that’s what it was. Bad wiring . . .”

“And no one else was involved?”

“No, just the priest that time. Just the priest. You don’t think I’ve got a screw loose?”

“If you do,” I said, “we both do. I didn’t hear any sounds, but I saw that light and saw the priest fall over. No, something definitely happened even though most of the others deny it.”

We talked for several minutes more, but she couldn’t remember anything else that seemed significant. She had never seen Atabet in the church or neighborhood, but that was not surprising. She lived in a different part of the city and rarely came to Sts. Peter and Paul’s. There was no reason she would have seen him. We traded addresses and she promised to let me know if she recalled anything else unusual.

A man with a doctor’s bag was coming down the steps of the parish house. If it was the doctor, I thought, Zimbardo might be alone. Crossing the street, I went into the house without knocking. The Chinese boy was standing in the hallway. “The doctor asked me to take this to Father Zimbardo,” I said, taking a paper from my pocket. “Where’s his room?”

“At the end of the hall.” He pointed up the stairs. “On the left.”

I went up to the second floor and found the door. Zimbardo answered hoarsely when I knocked. “Come in,” he said. “It’s unlocked.”

He was sitting on his bed with pillows stacked behind him. He looked startled as I came through the door. “I’m sorry to bust in here like this,” I said. “My name’s Darwin Fall and I own the Greenwich Press around the corner. I think I can help you understand that thing in the church. Something happened there that people are brushing off too easily.”

“Yes, they are brushing it off too easily,” he said weakly. “You’re right.”

I could see that he was still suffering from shock. “Yes, you’re right.” He gestured toward a chair. “Aren’t you the man who came into the sacristy after the Mass?”

I said that I was.

“Are you a detective?” he smiled. “You certainly stay on the job.”

We both smiled, and there was silence while he studied my face. “Believe it or not,” I said, “but I’m doing research on things like this with the Catholic office in Rome that was started by Cardinal Alcantara. I’ve been studying Bernardine Neri.”

“I’ve heard of Alcantara’s project. How come you’re working with them? Are you a psychologist?”

”No, I publish books. The study in Italy is part of my own project

“And what do you think is going on here?” A look of weary amusement crossed his face. “Was it an angel or the devil?”

“I think it might’ve been you and Atabet.”

“You think so? You really think so? I think you may be right.” He was a muscular man in his fifties with a square honest face. There was a stubbornness about him, I thought, that would help him hold on to these strange perceptions. “Yes, you might be right,” he said. “Though the doctor thinks I had some kind of epileptic attack. So you actually study these things? Tell me about Bernardine Neri.”

I described some accounts of the saintly woman. There were pictures of her in my briefcase and I showed them to him.

“What a face!” he softly exclaimed. “What a face! There was nothing like that here. You’ll have to explain the connection.” He paused, then slapped the bed. “But it was
not
an epileptic attack! That doctor is not very bright. I never thought he was. There was definitely something else involved!” He looked at me now as if he might have found a confidant. “For one thing, that blood on his face. You saw it. The blood all over his cheek and mouth.” He closed his eyes and leaned back on the pillows. “I’ve known Jacob for years, but what do I really know about him? What do I really know?” He shook his head slowly. “The bleeding came out on his face between the time I fell over and when he came back into focus. For a minute there I thought he disappeared. He was almost unconscious, I think. Both of us were hit by the same force, whatever it was. Yes, the doctor is wrong.” He opened his eyes and turned to see me. “There was something like lightning or fire, something
physical,
that went on between us. And no one else saw it! The other priest, Father Bello—you talked to him—didn’t feel anything. Or even see Atabet bleeding. It’s one of the strangest things that’s ever happened to me.”