A pair of fighter planes zoomed overhead, British Spitfires, twisting and turning to avoid antiaircraft fire from the ridge behind the church. Straightening, they went into a shallow dive, racing across the city, their machine guns chattering at some target along the road. We couldn't see anything but the two fighters pulling up and away, arcing in the sky, gleaming in the sunlight over the Mediterranean. A puff of smoke appeared where they had strafed. This far away, it seemed inconsequential, like it must to those pilots, so high in the air. I wondered if they had ever killed a man up close, felt his blood on their hands. Or did they dream of blood at night, safe in comfortable beds?
I went into the church, glad to leave the ringside view. I didn't like the view up close, and I didn't like it from a distance either. There was too much dead and empty air, too much of everything between the living and the dead. Distance, memories, dreams, desires. Soldiers and civilians were losing their dreams of life down there in those little puffs of smoke, losing everything to the distant rat-tat-tat that almost sounded like a woodpecker at work on the old dead tree near the bird feeder in our backyard. They were dying amid screams and terror and noise so loud the ears of the living would ring for hours after.
There was so much space between us, so much of nothing, that there was room enough for the memory of my mother feeding birds, and how happy the sound of the woodpecker's beak against dead wood made her. She'd stand at the kitchen window, up on her tiptoes, straining to see that tree. Tat-tat-tat.
I couldn't look. Instead, I went to find happiness, following Sciafani into the church. He seemed more troubled by the children than the battle. Then again, the kids were right here.
"Look, a Caravaggio," he said, pointing to a painting. It was of a baby, but the canvas was so dark I couldn't tell anything more. The church door shut behind me, the distant sounds of battle muffled by the ancient wood.
"Is he famous, like Michelangelo?"
"Yes, my friend," Sciafani said, laughing. "He is famous. There would be carne for all the beggar children of Agrigento if the church sold that one! But don't worry, priests will feast their eyes on it over the centuries while the bambini starve. They always have."
"So it's been a while since you've been to services?" I said, trying to joke him out of his foul mood.
"Not since my parents…" He let the sentence drift off. "Not since my parents," he said more firmly.
We walked to the ornate altar, tiers of rose-colored marble rising to support a statue of Mary holding her baby.
"See, Billy? We Sicilians worship the Mother of Christ, the mother of us all. But we do not pay so much attention to her son. He should have respected her more and not drawn all that trouble down on the family. As soon as he was born, they had to flee to Egypt!" He shook his head dismissively.
Sciafani wandered off to look at the other paintings along the main wall. I was glad not to have to listen to him rant and rave about the church and paintings and mothers. Something was eating at him and it was ready to boil over, which would have been fine, except I couldn't afford to have him go off his rocker right here, right now, while I was searching for happiness. Where would Saint Felice be, and what would happen when I found him? I peered down the corridor that led off to each side of the altar. The transept, I thought, remembering my brief career as an altar boy back in Boston. It was an honor, my mom kept telling me, and I guess it was, but one I'd been eager to pass up. Getting up earlier than everyone else to prepare for Sunday services wasn't high on my list at that age. Every once in a while, though, as the organ played and I felt the eyes of the congregation following me as I carried the heavy candle to the altar, I had felt holy, deep inside. There was something about being up on the chancel, dressed in my small black cassock, that set me apart from everyday life, and I'd liked that. I would forget about my alarm clock and the lonely early morning walk to church, and I'd feel sorry for all those poor people in the pews who weren't part of what we were doing, who had to follow along as I alone carried the gifts of bread and wine for the priest to work his magic on. I guess the church knew what Mussolini knew, that blood alone moves the wheels, even if the blood was made miraculously from wine every Sunday.
I never would have admitted it to Dad, but that experience had a lot to do with my becoming a cop. It gave me a feeling of separateness, a holy isolation from the day-to-day drudgery of life. And it gave me a chance to set things right, the way they should be, which is what I always thought the best part of religion was about. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But I liked the blue coat better than the cassock, and the police revolver far better than the heavy candlestick.
I looked at the flickering votive candles along each wall. Some were about to go out, while others looked like they had recently been lit. For the first time it hit me that there was no one in the church. Where were the people who'd lit those candles? Where were the old women who came every day to pray? No priest listening to confession? No one taking refuge from the battle inching toward the city?
I saw a man at the far end of the transept. He hadn't been there a second ago, but now he stood square in the middle of the tiled floor, hands folded behind his black robe. He didn't move. He looked straight at me. I walked away from the altar in his direction.
He was gray haired but stood straight, the robe showing only a slight bulge around his middle. His nose was bent, broken once, maybe twice. His eyes stayed on me, tracking me as I came closer, sizing me up. He looked to me like a man whose business was firmly rooted in this world, not the next. Before I could get close enough to speak, he turned sharply on his heel and strode to a narrow wooden door. He opened it and stooped to enter, leaving it ajar. The entrance led to a small landing and a circular staircase made from the same soft stone as the building itself. I grasped the iron rail and walked down the steps, the faint glow of candlelight beckoning me below. I thought about calling to Sciafani, but didn't want to risk him saying something to offend Cristu himself in the bowels of a cathedral.
At the bottom of the stairs, low arched ceilings ran to the left and right. Stone beams supported the arches, and between them were dusty carved caskets, some of shiny marble, others of dull stone. Crosses and bishops' miters adorned the caskets, the dates on them hundreds of years old. Candles fixed to the arches were the only light in this graveyard of priests and bishops. I followed the echo of clacking heels to a pool of golden light that bathed the cold stone. Inside a small chapel, rows of tall white candles lit the room, casting shadows in every direction and drawing sparkling reflections from the polished gold that decorated an open casket. Inside I could see mummified remains, dressed in chain mail and a faded blue cloak. Next to the casket, as still as the ancient corpse, stood the black-robed man.
" Buon giorno, Padre," I said, using up a good portion of the Italian I could speak in a church.
"I'm not a priest, kid." He spoke in low growl, his accent as much Brooklyn as Italian.
"Who are you?" I said.
He answered with a little gesture, a tip of the head, eyebrows up and mouth turned down. A very Italian response. Who 's to say, it all depends, who's asking, all rolled up into the twitch of a few facial muscles.
"Who are you looking for?"
"I've passed through purgatory twice, and I've come to find happiness," I said, looking at the figure laid out in the open casket.
"Ah, yes, San Felice. So, you have found him. Is this what you imagined happiness to be?" He raised one hand, palm out, inviting me to step closer. I did.