“Your tour here almost over then?” asked an American voice.
Kate snapped upright. The bearded priest was still seated on the couch, his blue jeans, gray sweatshirt, and Reeboks looking incongruous and a bit absurd. Kate formed a snappish reply and then let it slide away. “Yes,” she said. “Another week and I'm gone no matter what.”
The priest nodded, finished his tea, and set the chipped mug away. “I've been watching you,” he said softly.
Kate glared at him. She'd never liked religious people very much and celibate clerics grated on her more than most. Priests seemed like a useless anachronism to herwitch doctors who had exchanged their fright masks for Roman collars, dispensers of false care, carrion crows hovering around the sick and dying.
Kate realized how tired she was. “I haven't been watching you,” she said softly. “But I have noticed you with the new children and working in the wards. The children like you.”
The priest nodded. “And you save their lives.” He went over to the window and shoved back thick drapes. Rich evening sunlight flooded the room, possibly for the first time in decades.
Kate blinked arid rubbed her eyes.
“It's time to call it a day, Doctor Neuman,” said the priest. “I'd like to walk with you.”
“There's no need . . .” began Kate, trying to feel anger again at the man's presumption, but mustering nothing. She felt her emotions grinding like a dead battery. “All right,” she said.
He walked with her out of the hospital and into the Bucharest evening.
Chapter Eight
Usually Kate had a cab take her home to her apartment in the dark, but this evening they walked. Kate blinked at the thick evening light painted on the sides of buildings. It was as if she had never seen Bucharest before.
“So you're not staying at one of the hotels?” said the priest.
Kate shook herself out of her reverie. “No, the Foundation rented a small apartment for me on Stirbei Voda.” She gave the address.
“Ah,” said Father O'Rourke, “that's right near Cismigiu. “
“Near what?” said Kate. The last word had sounded much like a sneeze.
“Cismigiu Gardens. One of my favorite places in the city. “
Kate shook her head. “I haven't seen it.” She twitched a smile. “I haven't seen much since I got here. I've had three days off from the hospital, but I slept those away.”
“When did you get here?” he asked. Kate noticed his limp as they hurried across busy Balcescu Boulevard. Here on the side-streets by the university, the shade was deeper, the air cooler.
“Hmmm . . . April four. God.”
“I know,” said Father O'Rourke. “A day seems like a week at the hospital. A week is an eternity.”
They had just reached the large plaza on Calea Victoriei when Kate stopped and frowned. “What's the date today?”
“May fifteenth,” said the priest. “Wednesday.”
Kate rubbed her face and blinked. Her skin felt anaesthetized. “I'd promised CDC that I'd be back by the twentieth. They sent me tickets. I'd sort of forgotten just how close . . .” She shook her head again and looked around at the plaza, still busy with evening traffic. Behind them, Cretulescu Church was a mass of scaffolding, but the bullet holes were still visible on the sooty facade. The Palace of the Republic across the piata had been even more heavily damaged. Long red and white banners hung over the columned entrance, but the doors and shattered windows were boarded up. To their right, the Athenee Palace Hotel was open but with vacant windows and stitcheries of bullet holes like fresh scars on a heroin addict's skin.
“CDC,” said Father O'Rourke. “You're out of Atlanta?”
“Boulder, Colorado,” said Kate. “The big brass still hang out in Atlanta, but it's been the Centers for Disease Control for several years. The Boulder facility's fairly new.”
They crossed Calea Victoriei at the light and headed down Strada Stirbei Voda, but not before three Gypsy beggars in front of the Hotel Bucuresti saw them and came swooping toward them, thrusting babies at them, kissing their own hands, tapping Kate's shoulders, and saying, “Por la bambinu . . . por la bambina . . .”
Kate raised a tired hand but Father O'Rourke dug out change for each of them. The Gypsy women grimaced at the coins, snapped something in dialect, and hurried back to their places in front of the hotel. The bluejeaned and leather-coated money changers in front of the hotel watched impassively.
Stirbei Voda was a narrower street but still busy with cheap Dacias and the moneychangers' Mercedes and BMWs rumbling past over brick and worn asphalt. Kate noticed the priest's slight limp again but decided not to ask him about it. Instead, she said, “Where do you call home base?” She had considered adding the Father, but it did not come naturally to her.
The priest was smiling slightly. “Well, the order I work for is based in Chicago, and on this trip I take my instructions from the Chicago Archdiocese, but it's been awhile since I was there. In recent years I've spent a lot of time in South and Central America. Before that, Africa.”
Kate glanced to her left, recognized the street called 13 Decembrie, and knew that she was just a block or two from her apartment. The avenue seemed different in daylight, and on foot. “So you're sort of a Third World expert,” she said, too tired to concentrate on the conversation but enjoying the sound of English.
“Sort of,” said Father O'Rourke.
“And do you specialize in orphanages around the world?”
“Not really. If I have a specialty, it's children. One just tends to find them in orphanages and hospitals. “
Kate made a noise of agreement. A few chestnut trees along the avenue here caught the last reflected light from the buildings on the east side of the street and seemed to glow with a goldorange corona. The air was thick with the smells of any Eastern European cityundiluted car exhausts, raw sewage, rotting garbagebut there was also a scent of greenery and fresh blooms on the soft evening breeze.
“Has it been this pleasant the whole time I've been here? I seem to remember it being cold and rainy,” Kate said softly.
Father O'Rourke smiled. “It's been like summer since the first of May,” he said. “The trees along the avenues north of here are fantastic.”
Kate stopped. “Number five,” she said. “This is my apartment complex.” She extended her hand. “Well, thanks for the walk and the conversation . . . uh, Father.”
The priest looked at her without shaking her hand. His expression seemed a bit quizzical, not directed at her but almost as if he were debating something with himself. Kate noticed for the first time how strikingly clear his gray eyes were.
“The park is right there,” said Father O'Rourke, pointing down Stirbei Voda. “Less than a block away. The entrance is sort of hard to notice if you're not aware of it already. I know you're exhausted, but . . .”
Kate was exhausted and in a lousy mood and not the least bit tempted by this celibate cleric in Reeboks, despite his startlingly beautiful eyes. Still, this was the first nonmedical conversation she'd had in weeks and she was surprised to find herself reluctant to end it. “Sure,” she said. “Show me.”
Cismigiu Gardens reminded Kate of what she had imagined New York's Central Park to have been like decades ago, before it surrendered its nights to violence and its days to noise: Cismigiu was a true urban oasis, a hidden vale of trees and water and leaf shade and flowers.
They entered through a narrow gate in a high fence that Kate had never noticed, descended stairs between tall boulders, and emerged into a maze of paved paths and stone walkways. The park was large, but all of its vistas were intimate: a waterway here threading its way under an arched stone bridge to widen into a shaded lagoon there, a long meadowunkempt and seemingly untouched by a gardener's blade or shearsbut strewn with a riot of wild flowers, a playground abuzz with children still dressed for the winter just past, long benches filled with grandparents watching the children play, stone tables and benches where huddles of men watched other men play chess, an island restaurant bedecked with colored lights, the sound of laughter across water.