Brother's Keeper

“Please sit Mr. Denton,” the man behind the desk said, gesturing at the chair. “I am Inspector Russo. I have read my officer’s report and your statement of the incident at Santa Pudenziana. It is a disturbing case of desecration of one of Rome’s most holy sites.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Denton said. “I was returning a lost artifact.”

“Are you a finder of lost artifacts, Mr. Denton, an Indiana Jones?” Russo said, with mocking emphasis. He flipped through some papers on his desk and continued. “It looks like you work in the accounting department for a metal fastener company in Duluth, Minnesota. A useful profession no doubt, but unless you have been dispatched here by God or the Pope, I fail to see why you were attempting to place,what you claim was a religious artifact on the altar of one of our churches.”

“I can explain.”

“Please do, Mr. Denton,” Russo turned and pointed to a crucifix that hung on the wall behind his desk, “here, in front of god.”

***

Ciao Roma! The piazza bustled with an afternoon crowd attracted by the warm fall weather. Waiters scurried from table to table, taking orders, cleaning tables, and delivering food and drinks with detached efficiency. The clinking of cups, scootching of chair legs, and the chatter of different languages created a pleasant thrum of background noise. A scooter zipped out from a narrow side street, a reminder of the how the old and new coexist Rome. I was overcome with a sense of belonging.

I sat alone at a small table under the canopy of one of the many café’s that lined the piazza, taking it all in. My cappuccino had just arrived as I was taking a long and satisfying drag on my hand-rolled cigarette. I don’t smoke back home, but when in Rome! I had practiced rolling cigarettes in my hotel room until I was confident enough to do it in public. This was the life. It was the first week of my vacation and I basked in the postcard setting. And there was wine, bountiful wine you could drink almost any time of day. I imagined moving to Italy. I thought about my great grandfather who had immigrated to the U.S from Italy and made a mental note to see if there was a way I could parlay that into dual citizenship.

Despite having no interest in religion, I considered that if I moved here, I might even become a Catholic to better integrate with the locals. One didn’t really need to believe in all that religious mumbo jumbo to enjoy the ritual and beauty of Italy’s churches. The Catholic Jesus seemed to have a lot more gravitas than the one they worshipped at the big evangelical church in my neighborhood back home. That church looked like a building supply company and was next door to a strip mall where you could get a pedicure, shop at the Dollar Store, or get your vacuum cleaner repaired, which were all useful things mind you, but it seemed disrespectful for a religion that worshipped a guy who rose from the dead to put its church next to a strip mall.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” a woman’s voice floated over my shoulder, with a lilting Italian accent.

I turned to see if they were talking to me and there before me stood what I can only describe as a dark haired angel. She was of such magnificent beauty that my mouth drooped open, leaving my cigarette hanging from my lower lip, precariously glued there with a bit of saliva. Her long black hair hung in languid waves about her face and I imagined deep brown eyes behind her sunglasses.

“Are you taking to me?”, I said, removing the cigarette from my mouth.

“Si signore,”, she said.

I regained my composure and mustered my innate charm. My crash course in Italian was about to pay off.

“Prego,” I said, gesturing to the empty chair at my table.

“Grazie. You speak Italian?” she said.

 “Parlo un po’,” I gestured with my thumb and forefinger. “But your English is very good, so maybe we go with that?”

“Of course,” she said, and with the grace of a dancer she stepped around the table and floated into the chair as a feather comes to rest on the ground.

The arrival of this vision came just as the caffeine and nicotine were hitting my brain, triggering a surge of endorphins. I began to feel warm and felt sweat beading up under my shirt. I feared I was losing the cool demeanor I was trying so hard to convey. I eased back in my chair and assumed a more relaxed position. With extreme concentration, I picked up my cigarette again and inhaled deeply, then tilted my head back and exhaled with an air of nonchalance, the way they do in the movies.

“May I know your name?” I said, opting for something more intimate than, What is your name?

“Adriana,” she said.

The word issued forth from her lips as pollen is liberated from a flower on a spring breeze. It carried with it the smell of an intoxicating perfume and I fell deeper into her spell.

“That is a beautiful name. I’m Robert, friends call my Rob,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, Rob,” she said.

“To what do I owe the great fortune that of all the open seats, you chose this one?”

“Does a woman need to have a reason to sit next to a handsome man? Here in Italy women are bold.”

I felt a warm flush on my cheeks and wondered if it was too early to switch to wine.

“That quite a compliment coming from a woman as beautiful as you,” I was on fire.

“Thank you, Rob, you are too kind. But I will be honest with you, I need you to do something for me. Something of great importance.”

And just like that, the spell was broken. I’d read about pickpockets and scammers in Rome that prey on unsuspecting tourists. I invited the caffeine back in and grew alert.

“Is this about money, a shakedown? Because I don’t have any money. I saved for two years so I could take this vacation and when it’s over, I go back to my shitty job in Duluth. I don’t want any trouble.”

“No, we do not want any money from you. In fact, we will pay you to do this for us.”

“You don’t even know me. How could I possibly be of any help to you.”

“We know who you are. We have been watching you.”

Watching me? We? I grew queasy, acutely aware of the crowd that had, until this moment, been little more than a backdrop for my dream vacation.

“Who is this we you’re talking about. You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else. I’m just a guy on vacation. I’ve only been here for a few days.”

“It’s okay, everything will be okay,” she said. She put her hand on mine. It was warm and soft and I felt myself once again being drawn into her spell. “It’s a little thing really, we just need you to return something for us to its rightful place. A place we cannot go.”

“What is it?” I said.

“It is,” she paused, seeming to search for the right word, “an artifact.”

“Where does it belong?”

“In a church.”

“And why can’t you return it?”

“Our faith does not permit us to enter the Catholic church. The task requires it be performed by a person of no faith. They must be,” and again she paused, “unattached.”

“And you know this about me, how?”

“Research,” she said.

“So you’ve been cyber stalking me?

“This is important Rob, we needed to find the right person.”

“Do you have the artifact with you?”

She brought her large handbag up to her lap, reached in and pulled out a small black cloth bag that appeared to hold something about the size a wine bottle. She untied the braided cord at the top of the bag and lowered the cloth. It revealed a small statue, about eight inches tall.

“What is it?”

“It is a statue of Jesus.” She turned the statue towards me. “When viewed from this side you see a typical robed Jesus with his arms at his side, palms up, wounds from the crucifixion are visible. But viewed from the other side,” she turned the statue 180 degrees, “we see a sick man with drawn features whose robes appear tattered and torn. It is two aspects of the same man.”

“And what are these protrusions on the bottom?”

She turned the statue upside down. “It is the key that secures the statue in its receptacle. It is made up of two crucifixes, one upright and one upside down.”

“It is a very peculiar item. What is the significance of it?”

“The statue is believed to have been carved from the stone that entombed Jesus following his death. It carries great power and meaning. The popular Christian myth is that Jesus was placed in that cave as a dead man and walked out a god. That story is a lie. We believe that Jesus was buried in that cave as a man, but came out was something else, something half-formed. What awoke in that cave was not one man, but two. While they were outwardly identical, they were now two men. The simplistic view is that one was good and one evil. They understood that they were being tested by God but misperceived it to be a battle between good against evil, and so they fought. They fought until the so-called evil man fell. The other walked out of the cave, leaving behind a fractured part of himself.”

Adriana looked at me, waiting for some kind of response. The sun now sat low in the sky behind me and her eyes took on an orange glow. There was beauty and longing in them.

“What was the real test?” I said.

“To understand that salvation comes from acceptance of ourselves and others for the flawed beings we are. Jesus abandon himself in that cave. The man that walked out of that cave was no more a God than you or I.”

“If true, why would was the statue allowed in the church in the first place?”

“The statue was removed from the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana in the second century AD. Historically, this is before the current myth had been widely propagated. Importantly, Santa Pudenziana is one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Rome and at the time was one of the most trusted sources of knowledge about the growth of Christianity. We believe the statue represented one of the prevailing understandings at the time.”

“You already know I’m not a religious man, but I confess, no pun intended, that I like your version better than the accepted one.”

“I appreciate your objectivity, Rob, does that mean you will help us?”

“I’m warming to the idea. Where is this church?”

“It is in the Monti District, about half and hour’s walk from here” Adriana pulled a map from her bag.

“We are here, near the Pantheon, Santa Pudenziana is here,” she said, marking both with a yellow highlighter. She flipped the map over. I’ve sketched out the floorplan of the church. The statue is to be placed in a small alcove behind the altar, here. You insert the statue into a receptacle located on the sill of the alcove, then rotate it 180 degrees to secure it in place.”

***

I descended the steps into the courtyard of Santa Pudenziana and found myself in a scene of quietude. The noise of the city was muffled by the surrounding buildings, and other than an occasional pigeon, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

I entered the church and was met with the familiar smell of old stone, Frankincense and myrrh. I stepped a few feet beyond the door and took stock of my surroundings. The next mass was not for another few hours and the church was deserted save for one elderly man who sat in the back row of the church, head bowed in recitation in a language I took to be Latin.

I walked to the left and made my way along the inner passage between the columns and wall. I stopped when I reached the point where the passage opened up to the altar. From there, I could see the alcove where the statue was to be placed. I pulled phone out and began taking picture, like a tourist. If I could get close enough taking pictures, I figured I’d be able to quickly pull the statue from my knapsack and place it as Adriana had described.

I took the two steps up to the altar and walked to the alcove. The alcove was about one foot across, two feet high, and eight inches deep. I checked again to see if anyone was watching me but saw no one. The man who had been sitting in the back of the church was gone. In the center of the alcove sat a candle holder with a base of three of about four inches. There was no recess for the statue. I grew uneasy began to regret my decision to help. What was I doing here? How did I let that woman talk me into doing this? I was played for a fool.

I was about to turn and leave then had an idea. I carefully moved the candle holder over about six inches and there it was. A rectangular slot in the ledge of the same width as the dual crucifixes. I set my knapsack on the ground and pulled out the statue. It felt heavier now in my hands than when it was in my knapsack. I raised the statue, turned it so the haggard-faced Jesus poited outward, and slid the crucifix key into the slot. It fit perfectly. With the base of the statue now sitting flush on the ledge, I grasped the statue to carry out the rotation that would lock it into place. What happened next defies rational explanation.

The statue, which had been but an inert piece of cold stone, grew steadily warmer, and began to emanate an orange glow. A gust of wind rose and extinguished the candle. The air became and damp and cold – it smelled musty, like a cave. The room darkened. I hesitated, unsure what to do. I thought again about running out but had come this far already and decided to complete the task. I began to rotate the statue, when, as from thin air, the man from the back of the church appeared, and with strength I would not have imagined him to have, he pulled my hands from the statue and pushed me to the ground. He withdrew the statue from the receptacle and ran out a door behind the altar. The room returned immediately to its former aspect.

For a moment, I sat stunned on the cold stone floor, disoriented and confused. I regained my bearings, stood up, and grabbed my knapsack to leave. I walked briskly to the exit, out of the church, and into the hands of two policeman.

***

“That is quite a story Mr. Denton. To summarize, you were seduced by a woman who convinced you to deliver what you believed was a religious artifact into a sacred church, then you forcefully attempted to install it into the altar of that church. Do I have that right”

“It’s true, I got caught up in something I didn’t understand, but the things I saw and felt in that church were real. Have you talked with the old man who was there, did you find the statue?” Denton said.

“We have the security footage, Mr. Denton. There was no old man, there was no statue. There was only you attempting to steal a candle holder. You are either lying or imagining things, it matters little which it is. I can only conclude that your infatuation with that woman compelled you to act irrationally.”

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“What is it about you Americans Mr. Denton? You come to our country like blind babies with no understanding of the world. Your cruise ships unload on our shores and you go forth like the plague. You commit sacrilege on our holy sites so you can post selfies portraying you as world travelers.”

“I’m not…,”

“Do you believe in god Mr. Denton? Do you believe in right and wrong, good and evil? I’ve been to your country. It is a vast and soulless place. Your cities are extractive, leaving the visitor more drained than when they arrived. I don’t blame you for coming here, you are seeking something your country does not give you, meaning and connection. Such promise you held. Over a hundred years ago, many of my countrymen left this country to seek a better life in the United States. For a time, many of them found it. But they are coming home now. You go home, Mr. Denton, your country needs you now more than ever. Our little amusement park will be here when you get your collective shit together. And who knows, when you do, maybe I’ll come visit and we can have a glass of your bourbon and get to know one another.”

Russo got up, signaling an end to the interrogation.

“My officer will see you out.”

Denton turned and walked out into the hallway. As he left the building he saw Adriana, cuffed and being escorted by two policemen towards a black limousine. Behind them followed a priest in a cassock, and the old man from the church. The old man was carrying a black cloth bag about the size of a wine bottle.