"Of course," she said, a little distracted as Celestina left the guinea-pig cage and moved off toward the photonics. "Don’t touch, cara! Scuzi, Don Emilio. You were saying? Levi’s?"
"Yes. Two pair, if you please. Perhaps three shirts? It is a very small pension." He cleared his throat. "I have no idea what the fashions or prices are now and I will rely on your judgment, but I’d prefer you didn’t select anything terribly—"
"I understand. Nothing extravagant." She was touched that he would ask her to do this for him, but kept her face businesslike, running her eyes over him with a tailorly efficiency, as though she did this kind of thing for priests all the time.
"One pullover sweater, I think—"
"No good," she said, shaking her head. "The braces will snag the knitting. But I know a man who makes wonderful suede jackets—" It was his turn to look doubtful, and she guessed at his objection. "Classic design in a durable material is never an extravagance," she told him firmly. "Besides, I can get you a good price. Anything else?" she asked. "I am a married woman, Don Emilio. I have purchased men’s underwear before."
He coughed and flushed, eyes sliding away. "Not at the present time, thank you."
"I am a little confused," she said then. "Even retired, don’t the Jesuits provide you with—"
"I am not just retiring from a corporation, signora. I am leaving the priesthood." There was an awkward pause. "The details have not been worked out. I will stay on here, as a contractor perhaps. I am a linguist by trade and there is work for me to do."
She knew a little of what he had been through; the Father General had prepared the family before bringing Sandoz to the christening. Still, she was surprised and saddened by the laying aside of vows, whatever the cause. "I sorry," she said. "I know how difficult a decision like that can be. Celestina!" she called, rising and gathering her daughter to her side. "Well," she said, smiling again, "we won’t trouble you any longer, Don Emilio. We’ve interrupted your work long enough."
Celestina stood looking up at the two adults, dark and light, and thought of the paintings in the church, ignorant of the iconography that made them such a mismatch, thinking only that they looked pretty together. "Don Emilio isn’t too old for you, Mammina," she observed with a child’s rash acuity. "Why don’t you marry him?"
"Hush, cara! What an idea. I am sorry, Don Emilio. Children!" Gina Giuliani cried, mortified. "Carlo—my husband-doesn’t live with us any longer. Celestina, as you may have noticed, is a woman of action and—"
He held up a braced hand. "No explanations are necessary, signora," he assured her and, face unreadable, helped shepherd the child down the stairs and out the door.
They walked down the driveway together, the adults’ silence decently covered by the little girl’s prattle, until they reached the car. There, ciaos and grazies were exchanged as he opened doors for the ladies with the deliberate and stately dexterity the braces permitted and enforced. As they drove away, he yelled, "No black! Don’t buy anything black, okay?" Gina laughed and waved an arm out the window, without looking back.
"You, madam, are married to a fool," he said softly, and turned toward the garage, where his work was waiting.
HE SETTLED INTO A ROUTINE AS THE MILD NEAPOLITAN AUTUMN SET IN and the rains became more frequent. As promised, Elizabeth was an un-demanding companion who quickly took on the size and proportions of a hairy brick and greeted his morning stirring with cheerful whistling. Never good company at dawn, he would call from his bed, "You’re vermin. Your parents were vermin. If you have babies, they’ll be vermin, too." But he took her out to eat a carrot on his lap while he drank his coffee and, after a while, hardly felt foolish at all when he talked to her.
Guinea pigs were, he discovered, crepuscular: quiet at night and during the day, active at dawn and dusk. The pattern suited him. He often worked nonstop from eight until past five, unwilling to pause until the pig whistled quitting time as the light diminished. He was aware, always, that his progress could be interrupted by the debilities he’d accumulated on Rakhat and in the months of malnutrition during the solitary voyage home. So he concentrated as long as he could and then made himself a supper of red beans and rice, which he ate with Elizabeth’s beady eyes on him. Afterward, he would take her out and sit with her, numbed fingertips idly stroking her back as the little animal nestled down and slept the brief, uneasy sleep of prey.
And then he went back to work, often until past midnight, the overarching structure of K’San—the language of the Jana’ata — becoming plain to him now, and increasingly beautiful: no longer solely the instrument of terror and degradation. Hour after hour, the rhythm of search and comparison, the patient accretion of pattern pulled him along, its inherent fascination sufficient to defend against both memory and anticipation.
In late October, John tactfully informed him of the impending arrival of the other priests who were to be trained for the second Jesuit mission to Rakhat. They had all read the first mission’s written reports and scientific papers, John said, and they’d already worked through Sofia Mendes’s introductory AI language-instruction system and had begun studying Ruanja on their own. And each had been thoroughly briefed about Sandoz’s experiences by the Father General, and by John himself. John didn’t say it in so many words, but Emilio understood that the new men had been warned: Don’t touch him, don’t mother him, don’t play therapist. Just follow his lead and get on with the work.
Emilio made little effort to get to know the new men, preferring to confer in cyberspace, buffered by machinery, or in the library, which he could leave when he needed to. But he broke his self-imposed solitude with trips to the kitchen to collect vegetable parings from Brother Cosimo for Elizabeth. And Gina Giuliani stopped by on Fridays, always with Celestina, to drop off pig supplies and sometimes other small items he could bring himself to ask for. She and John Candotti had a knack for helping him without making him feel helpless, and for this he was grateful beyond words. Heads together over lunch one Friday afternoon, the three of them had analyzed the apartment and Emilio’s daily tasks. When Gina couldn’t find ready-made items that suited his disabilities, John would make them: counterweights for things he needed to lift, utensils with broad handles, plumbing and door hardware that was simpler to operate, clothing that was easier to manage.
On November 5, 2060, which was—as far as he knew—more or less the occasion of his forty-seventh birthday, Emilio Sandoz poured himself a glass of Ronrico after his usual dinner of beans and rice. "Elizabeth," he announced, glass held high, "I am the absolute monarch of my domain, which stretches from that staircase to this desk."
He went back to work, his mind occupied with a K’San semantic field having to do with river systems that the Basque ecologist had suggested might be related to words used in reference to ranked political alliances. Like a series of tributaries! Emilio thought, and felt once more the strangely visceral thrill of trying to disprove a hypothesis he suspected was robust.