“Andreas brought you to the monastery.”
“Amusing, isn’t it? The atheist was the instrument of my faith. He should have killed me, that would have been the sensible thing. Perhaps it was this bargain with my father that stayed him.”
“Maybe he just couldn’t do it.”
“Yes, that’s what I decided later, when I thought about it. But it is pleasant for me to know that my father bargained for my life. It is difficult to despise one’s father, but more difficult to do otherwise with mine. The icon undid him. He was that altar boy who stole the papers from the elder Müller, and he remembered what was in them. I heard him speak of it to my brother, though the memory did not come back to me until I read the pages myself. He destroyed our family, destroyed himself. This information, that he pleaded for me before he died. It’s a little gift. I thank you for it.”
“And you stayed at the monastery,” Matthew said, with some surprise, and some odd eagerness. “You became a priest, even after all that you saw.”
“What else to do after all that I saw? Go mad or find God. I was still young enough to believe in a higher purpose behind the horror I had witnessed. I had lost my mother the year before, then my father and brother together. My sisters were married and gone, there was nothing for me to return to. My soul was desolate, but my heart and mind were open. I was ready for the Word. I was very fortunate. A few years older and I would have turned to cynicism, cruelty. I would have turned my back on Christ, as your grandfather did, as many young men did during those years. By the time my sister found me in the monastery, two years later, I had no desire to leave. I was home.”
“But you did leave. I don’t know what your position is in the church, but you’re fluent in English, you get sent on sensitive assignments. Not the life of a monk.”
“More a politician, or a spy, yes? I assure you that I am ill-suited to it. I was fortunate also in my mentor. A monastery can be a hard place for a young boy, but the abbot was a kind man, and your grandfather must have told him my tale. There was no other reason he would have taken me in. He saw right away that I was unprepared for the rigors of religious discipline, and taught me slowly. I learned English, a little French. I was even allowed to read some religious philosophy when I was older. The Orthodox have always emphasized asceticism and prayer above learning. My abbot was more cosmopolitan, and must have known that monastic life was merely a stopping-off place for him. Perhaps he sensed that the same would be true for me. Or perhaps I give him too much credit. Maybe he simply needed a protégé, and there I was, clever, and young enough to be molded to his purposes.”
“What happened to him?”
“He is dead now, but first he made his way up the church hierarchy to the Holy Synod itself. I think he hoped for me to replace him there, but I was too much of a dreamer, too little of a politician. Another of his protégés was elevated, and that is the man I now serve.”
“The man who sent you here.”
The priest’s face grew troubled, and he broke eye contact with Matthew.
“He sent me, yes, because I could identify the icon, and because I have had dealings here in the past. But Tomas and your godfather were ahead of us, and more killings followed.”
“More? You mean in addition to those during the war, or have there been others since?”
“I mean throughout its existence,” hissed Ioannes, guttering the flame. “The icon carries death in its wake. We no longer know how to treat an object of such preciousness. The mind-set has been lost. It overwhelms us, possesses us, makes us mad with longing. These many days I have spent searching for it, searching for you, have given me time to think. I do believe that things happen for a reason, even terrible things. I was granted this time to know the teachings of my own spirit. My mission is no longer the one I was sent upon. Voices have spoken to me.”
The awed tone had returned. The priest had two modes-man of the world and wild-eyed believer-and they were beginning to alternate with frightening swiftness. Matthew suddenly wondered if Ioannes was not a little unbalanced.
“What have the voices told you?”
“Many things. They must be interpreted.”
“But you’ve arrived at some answer.”
“Not an absolute one. Anyway, it is not a thing you will wish to hear.”
“Tell me, Father.” But even as he spoke, Matthew realized that he already knew what the priest would say.
“I believe in my heart that this struggle will go on, the killings will go on, as long as the icon exists to tempt the weak. And we are most of us weak creatures. This object was created for another time. It can no longer exist in ours. It is too strong for our modern, godless condition. It must be returned to the power that inspired it.”
“You mean it must be destroyed.”
“Yes.”
They were both quiet while the idea took substance between them, a bridge or a barrier. Matthew wanted to remain reasonable, to assess the priest’s suggestion with cool detachment, but it was impossible. The idea was monstrous, even sacrilegious.
“I think,” he began slowly, “that you’re forgetting all the good associated with the icon, and giving too much credit to a few greedy old men. Do you give no credence to all the miraculous healings reported over the years? And even if that turns out to be just mind over body, don’t we have to respect the object which can inspire that?”
“No doubt healings have occurred. In my youth I saw women cured of their arthritis, and one man cured of his blindness, at a touch. These were mostly poor and doubting souls, always Christ’s favorites, and their contact with the work was brief. Compare this with the few who possessed it for some length of time. Ali Pasha, Müller, Kessler. Covetous souls, who may have lived long lives, but not happy ones. Strife and illness plagued them, they watched their loved ones die young. Then look at all those who tried to possess it, who came to grief somehow. My father and brother are two. Look at the lives it has used up and twisted. Your own godfather. Look what it has begun to do to you.”
“Don’t put me in that group, Father. I’ve been trying to let it all go.”
“And doing admirably, though I wonder if you can succeed. Müller and Dragoumis left the icon alone for years at a time but were always drawn back. I need someone like you, who has tasted the work’s power, to be my ally in this, to understand me. The icon carries death.”
“How can that be so if it carries the blood of Christ?”
“Where is the contradiction?” the priest demanded. “Christ was surrounded by death. Death pursued all his followers but the timid, and many millions have died in his name since then. The promise of Christ is salvation of the soul, not long life on earth.”
Matthew tried to frame a response, but his mind was alive with fear and agitation, and no logical rebuttal would come to him. The priest’s thinking was wrong. Not just wrong but dangerously simplistic, a product, no doubt, of his own brutal experience. Understandable, but somehow he had to set the man straight before Ioannes did something rash.