"How many fingers is that?" Celestina asked. Holding up four of her own, she said, "I’m this many."
Sandoz held up both hands and slowly opened and closed them eight times, counting for the child in tens as the braces whirred.
"That’s a lot of fingers," said Celestina, impressed.
"It is indeed, cara. A multitude. A plethora. A whole bunch."
Celestina mulled this over, twisting a handful of hair around delicate fingers, small wrist braceleted with the last vestiges of baby fat. "You can still have the guinea pig," she decided finally.
He laughed with genuine warmth, but then looked up at Gina Giuliani, the reluctance plain on his face, and shook his head slightly.
"Oh, but you would be doing me a great favor, Don Emilio!" Gina pleaded, embarrassed but determined, for the Father General had encouraged Celestina’s notion of giving Sandoz a pig on the grounds that caring for the animal would provide a certain amount of physical and emotional therapy. Besides…. "We have three others at home. The whole family has been mobbed by the creatures ever since my sister-in-law brought the first one home from the pet shop. Carmella didn’t realize it was already pregnant."
"Truly, signora, I have no way to keep or feed a pet—" He stopped. A classic blunder! he thought, remembering George Edwards’s advice to Jimmy Quinn at his wedding: Never give a woman reasons that can be argued with. Say no, or prepare for defeat.
"We brought a cage," said Celestina, who, at four, already understood the principle. "And food. And a water bottle."
"They are very nice pets," Gina Giuliani assured him earnestly, her hands on Celestina’s shoulders, holding the child near. "No trouble at all, as long as they don’t multiply beyond all reason. This one is quite young and innocent, but she won’t remain that way long." Seeing Sandoz’s resolve weaken, she pressed her attack with merciless melodrama. "If you don’t take her, Don Emilio, she will surely be subject to unspeakable acts—by her own brothers!"
There was a silence one was tempted to call pregnant. "You, signora, are ruthless," Sandoz said at last, eyes narrow. "I am fortunate to escape having you as my mother-in-law."
Laughing and victorious, Gina led Sandoz to her car, Celestina skipping beside them. Opening the back door, Gina reached in and passed the priest a bag of kibble, heedless of his hands, which she had decided to ignore. He juggled the bag ineptly for a moment, but managed to get a secure grip on it as Celestina chattered about how to hold and feed and water the animal, and told him that its mother was Cleopatra.
"Named in a salute to the Egyptian custom of royal incest," Gina remarked very quietly, so Celestina wouldn’t hear and demand an explanation. She lifted the cage out of the back seat.
"Ah," Sandoz said, equally quiet for the same reason, as they began the short walk back to his apartment. "Then this one shall be named Elizabeth, in the hope that she has followed in the footsteps of the Virgin Queen." Gina laughed, but he warned her, "If she is with child, signora, I shall not hesitate to have the entire dynasty returned to your doorstep."
They went upstairs and settled Elizabeth into her new home. The pig enclosure was a simple affair of lath and chicken wire, made to fit around a plastic orange crate. There was an overturned vegetable bin for the little animal to hide in. The cage was open at the top.
"Won’t she climb out?" Sandoz asked, sitting down and peering at the pig: an oblong lump of golden hair, with a white saddle and blaze, the size and approximate shape of a cobblestone. Its front end, he observed, was distinguished from the back mainly by two wary eyes, bright as jet beads.
"You will find that guinea pigs are not a mountaineering race," Gina said as she knelt to attach a filled water bottle to the cage. She lifted the animal momentarily so he could inspect the absurd little legs that supported the pig’s solid bulk and then she went to his kitchen for a dishcloth. "You will also find that a towel over your lap is a sensible precaution," she said, handing him the cloth.
"She’ll make peepee on you," Celestina told him as he accepted the animal from her mother. "And she’ll—"
"Thank you, cara. I’m sure Don Emilio can deduce the rest," Gina said smoothly, sitting in the other chair.
"It looks like little raisins," Celestina told him, relentless.
"And is quite inoffensive, unlike my daughter," Gina said. "Guinea pigs do enjoy being petted, but this one is still a little shy about being handled. Take her out for five or ten minutes now and then. Celestina is correct, if indelicate. Don’t rely upon a guinea pig’s continence. If you keep Elizabeth Regina in your lap for much longer than that, she is likely to take you for a Anglican convert and baptize you."
He looked down at the animal, which was instinctively trying to appear rocklike and decidedly inedible, in case an eagle flew overhead. There was a little V of black marking her forehead between silly folded-over ears the shape of scallop shells. "I’ve never had a pet," he said quietly. He retained feeling in the outer edges of his hands, where the nerves had not been severed, and now used an exposed section of his smallest finger to stroke the pig’s back from blunt head to tailless behind, a short but silken distance. "All right. I will accept your gift, Celestina, on one condition," he said severely, looking at the mother. "I find, signora, that I require a purchasing agent."
"I understand," Gina said hurriedly. "I’ll bring food and fresh bedding every week. At my own expense, naturally. I am very grateful that you’ll take her, Don Emilio."
"Well, yes, that too. But also some other things. If it will not inconvenience you too much, I need some clothes. I have no established credit and there are certain… practicalities I cannot manage yet." He carefully lifted the pig from his lap and put her back into the enclosure on the floor. The animal shot under the vegetable bin and remained there, motionless. "I don’t need you to pay for anything, signora," he said, straightening. "I have a small pension."
She looked surprised. "A disability pension? But you’re still working," she said, gesturing at the sound equipment.
"A retirement pension, signora. I myself find the legalities of this situation mystifying," he admitted, "but I was informed last week that Loyola’s Company is, in fact, operating in some regions as a multinational corporation these days, complete with health benefits and pension plans."
"And branch offices, instead of provinces!" Gina rolled her eyes, still amazed herself that the dispute had come to this. "The fault line was there for nearly a hundred years, of course, but it is remarkable how much damage can be done by two stubborn, uncompromising old men—both dead now, and not a moment too soon, in my opinion."
Sandoz grimaced. "Well, it’s not the first time the Jesuits have gotten too far out in front of the Vatican. It’s not even the first time the Society has been disbanded."
"But it was even messier this time," Gina told him. "About a third of the bishops declined to read the Bull of Suppression, and there are hundreds of civil suits over property still being litigated. I don’t think anyone really understands the legal status of the Society of Jesus right now!"
He shook his head and shrugged. "Well, John Candotti tells me that negotiations have reopened. He thinks there is room for movement on both sides, and there may be some sort of settlement soon —»
Gina smiled, her eyes amused. "Don Emilio, anyone in Naples will tell you that there are very few political puzzles a Giuliani cannot either finesse or bludgeon into resolution. The new Pope is wonderful, and just as wily as Don Vincenzo. Be assured: those two will work it out."
"I hope so. In any case," Emilio said, coming back to the more immediate problem, "there is no provision in the articles of incorporation allowing for the contraction of time that occurs when someone travels near light speed. As I am nearly eighty by the calendar, I find that I am legally due a pension from what used to be the Antilles province." Johannes Voelker, the Father General’s private secretary, had brought this to everyone’s attention. The Father General was intensely annoyed by the reasoning but Voelker, a man of rigid principle, had insisted on Sandoz’s right to the income. "So. Do they still make Levi’s?"