Adeyemi threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘But I have no relationship with her! I hadn’t set eyes on her for thirty years – not until last night, when she turned up outside my room! I didn’t even recognise her. Surely you can see what’s happening here?’
‘The circumstances are curious, I grant you, but let’s put that aside for now. It’s the condition of your soul that concerns me more.’
‘My soul?’ Adeyemi spun on the ball of his foot. He brought his face up very close to Lomeli’s. His breath was sweet-smelling. ‘My soul is full of love for God and His Church. I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit this morning – you must have felt it too – and I am ready to take on this burden. Does a single lapse thirty years ago disqualify me? Or does it make me stronger? Allow me to quote your own homily from yesterday: “Let God grant us a Pope who sins, and asks forgiveness, and carries on.” ’
‘And have you asked forgiveness? Have you confessed your sin?’
‘Yes! Yes, I confessed my sin at the time, and my bishop moved me to a different parish, and I never lapsed again. Such relationships were not uncommon in those days. Celibacy has always been culturally alien in Africa – you know that.’
‘And the child?’
‘The child?’ Adeyemi flinched, faltered. ‘The child was brought up in a Christian household, and to this day he has no idea who his father is – if indeed it is me. That is the child.’
He recovered his equilibrium sufficiently to glare at Lomeli, and for one moment longer the edifice remained in place – defiant, wounded, magnificent: he would have made a tremendous figurehead for the Church, Lomeli thought. Then something seemed to give way and he sat down abruptly on the edge of his bed and clasped his hands on the top of his head. He reminded Lomeli of a photograph he had once seen of a prisoner poised on the edge of a pit waiting his turn to be shot.
What an appalling mess it all was! Lomeli could not recall a more exquisitely painful hour in his life than the one he had just spent listening to the confession of Sister Shanumi. By her account, she had not even been a novitiate when the thing began but a mere postulant, a child, whereas Adeyemi had been the community’s priest. If it had not been statutory rape, it had not been far off it. What sin therefore did she have to confess? Where was her guilt? And yet carrying the burden of it had been the ruin of her life. Worst of all for Lomeli had been the moment when she had produced the photograph, folded up to the size of a postage stamp. It showed a boy of six or seven in a sleeveless Aertex shirt, grinning at the camera: a good Catholic school photograph, with a crucifix on the wall behind him. The creases where she had folded and refolded it over the past quarter-century had cracked the glossy surface so deeply it looked as if he were staring out from behind a latticework of bars.
The Church had arranged the adoption. After the birth she had wanted nothing from Adeyemi except some sort of acknowledgement of what had happened, but he had been transferred to a parish in Lagos and her letters had all been returned unopened. Seeing him in the Casa Santa Marta, she had not been able to help herself. That was why she had visited him in his room. He had told her they must forget about the whole thing. And when he had refused in the dining room even to look at her, and when one of the other sisters had whispered that he was about to be elected Pope, she had been unable to control herself any longer. She was guilty of so many sins, she insisted, she barely knew where to begin – lust, anger, pride, deceit.
She had sunk to her knees and made the Act of Contrition: ‘O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all because I have offended You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.’
Lomeli had raised her to her feet and absolved her. ‘It is not you who has sinned, my child, it is the Church.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.’
‘For His mercy endures forever.’
After a while, Adeyemi said in a low voice, ‘We were both very young.’
‘No, Your Eminence, she was young; you were thirty.’
‘You want to destroy my reputation so that you can be Pope!’
‘Don’t be absurd. Even the thought of it is unworthy of you.’
Adeyemi’s shoulders had begun to shake with sobs. Lomeli sat down on the bed next to him. ‘Compose yourself, Joshua,’ he said kindly. ‘The only reason I know any of this is because I heard the poor woman’s confession, and she won’t ever speak of it in public, I’m sure, if only to protect the boy. As for me, I’m bound by the vows of the confessional never to repeat what I’ve heard.’
Adeyemi gave him a sideways look. His eyes were glistening. Even now, he could not quite accept his dream was over. ‘Are you saying I still have a hope?’
‘No, none whatever.’ Lomeli was appalled. He managed to control himself and went on in a more reasonable tone, ‘After such a public scene, I’m afraid there are bound to be rumours. You know what the Curia is like.’
‘Yes, but rumours are not the same as facts.’
‘In this case they are. You know as well as I do that if there is one thing that terrifies our colleagues above all others, it is the thought of yet more sexual scandals.’
‘So that is it? I can never be Pope?’
‘Your Eminence, you cannot be anything.’
Adeyemi seemed unable to raise his gaze from the floor. ‘What shall I do, Jacopo?’
‘You are a good man. You will find some way to atone. God will know if you are truly penitent, and He will decide what is to happen to you.’
‘And the Conclave?’
‘Leave them to me.’
They sat without speaking. Lomeli could not bear to imagine his agony. God forgive me for what I have had to do. Eventually Adeyemi said, ‘Would you pray with me for a moment?’
‘Of course.’
And so the two men got down on their knees under the electric light in the sealed room that was sweet with the scent of aftershave – got down easily in Adeyemi’s case, stiffly in Lomeli’s – and prayed together side by side.
Lomeli would have liked to have walked to the Sistine again – to have inhaled some cool fresh air and turned his face to the mild November sun. But it was too late for that. By the time he reached the lobby, the cardinals were already boarding the minibuses, and Nakitanda was waiting for him by the reception desk.
‘Well?’
‘He will have to resign all his offices.’
Nakitanda’s head dropped in dismay. ‘Oh no!’
‘Not immediately – I hope we may avoid a humiliation – but certainly in a year or so. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you tell the others. I have spoken to both parties and I am bound by vows. I cannot say any more.’
On the minibus he sat at the very back with his eyes closed, his biretta on the seat next to him to discourage company. Every part of this business sickened him, but one aspect in particular had started to niggle away in his mind. It was the first thing Adeyemi had brought up: the timing. According to Sister Shanumi, her work in Nigeria for the past twenty years had been at the Iwaro Oko community in Ondo province, helping women suffering from HIV/AIDs.
‘Were you happy there?’
‘Very much so, Your Eminence.’
‘Your work must have been somewhat different from what you have to do here, I would imagine?’
‘Oh yes. There I was a nurse. Here I am a maid.’
‘So what made you want to come to Rome?’
‘I never wanted to come to Rome!’