Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

Pearse stopped. A son.

The Croat continued on, Pearse unable to follow.

Nigel Harris sat in the breakfast nook of his penthouse suite atop London’s Claridges Hotel, fifteen newspapers piled on a small table in front of him. Nestled in among them stood a cup of weak tea, a plate with two hard-boiled eggs, no yolks, and a bowl of piping hot oatmeal-the same breakfast he’d had every morning for the past twelve years, save, of course, for his recent meeting in Spain. Not that he didn’t enjoy fruits and jams and countless other savories, but the bland diet was all his stomach could abide. His eyes weren’t the only casualties of a military career.

The brief meal with the contessa was still having its residual effects. So be it. He’d hardly been in a position to refuse, the contessa famous for her strict adherence to the rules of hospitality. How and what he had eaten had been as important as what he had said. He’d known that going in. More than that, he truly believed she would have taken a weak stomach for a weak character, and he couldn’t have her thinking that. Thus far, the results of their meeting had more than made up for the few days of discomfort.

Bringing the cup to his lips, he took a sip of the tea, the first always eliciting a momentary twinge in the hollow of his gut. Something to do with acids, the doctors had explained. The sickly sweet taste of bile constricted in his throat, a compression of liquid and air, nauseous tightening gripping at the base of his tongue. He swallowed several times, the saliva only adding to the swell of gastric insurgence. He waited, then took a bite of the first egg. He had trained himself to visualize its path, the malleable white adapting to the contours of his esophagus, down through the center of his chest, every toxin absorbed within its spongy skin. The burning began to dissipate. He ate the second egg. Routine. It had gotten to the point where he almost wasn’t aware of it. Almost.

He pulled the last of the papers from the table and flipped to the end of the A section, the op-ed pieces, with no hint of yesterday’s events. Instead, they offered the usual New York Times fare: a Hoover Institution expert on U.S. policy in Kosovo; Safire on Clinton (one more chance to paint Nixon in a softer hue); the mayor on tax restructuring. No doubt tomorrow, things would be different. For now, though, he’d have to settle for the editorials. He’d already made it through fifteen of the world’s leading papers, a mixed bag of responses to the Faith Alliance’s mission statement. He’d saved the Times for last. Best to build up his stamina.

The title of the first piece said it all: “Savonarola in a Suit.”

He sat back and read:

Yesterday, Nigel Harris, former executive director of the Testament Council, began his latest campaign to assert himself as moral beacon of the West. His most recent attempt comes in the form of the loosely defined Faith Alliance, a group that boasts a following from as far afield as Hollywood and academe, Wall Street and the church. A broad base, to be sure. With a set of Twelve Guiding Principles (the number only fitting), the new apostles of ethical probity have decided the time is ripe to confront those elements within society that threaten the basic tenets of decency. Their answer: a cross-cultural, multifaith incentive “devoid of political ambition.”

While on an abstract level we applaud Mr. Harris and his colleagues for their concerns, we find enough in the alliance’s mission statement to raise serious questions. Although never pinpointing the focus of the campaign, Mr. Harris does hint at where we might expect to find his alliance making its presence known: rap music, the Internet, single-sex marriages, prayer in the schools, etc. It seems somewhat disingenuous to dive into these hotly debated issues while claiming to have no political agenda.

More troubling, though, is the ambiguous definition he gives for an “alliance of faith,” one in which “religious differences fade in favor of a wider spiritual commitment.” That Mr. Harris champions tolerance is commendable, especially given the history of his former associates at the Testament Council, who shied away from such inclusiveness. That he chooses to characterize that coherence, however, as a response to “a threat from those who understand holy war as a form of diplomacy” paints a far more divisive picture. Islam as straw man hardly seems the best way to foster decency.

For the fifteenth-century Savonarola, the scourge …

Harris glanced at the final paragraph, the historical tie-in something of a stretch, though amusing, a stern reminder of the fate the Florentine preacher had met at the hands of his own followers. Given the response from the majority of papers, however, Harris had little reason to heed the warning. Overwhelming approval. Confirmation of the fifty thousand E-mails that had arrived just in the last two hours.

Not bad for quarter to eight in the morning.

Pearse sat on a slab of rock, the mountainside strewn with countless such mounds, the camp some two hundred yards below. To the east, an artificial lake-courtesy of the Fierza hydropower station-spread out like a wide pancake, serenely smooth within a curve of mountains, the water long ago contaminated, unfit for drinking or bathing, according to the latest Red Cross bulletin. It didn’t seem to matter. The refugees continued to put it to use, dysentery, diarrhea, and fungus acceptable tradeoffs when pitted against their own squalor. He could just make out a small group of women huddled by the shore, too far, though, to see what they were doing. Still, from this distance, it looked quite tranquil, his perch a temporary refuge from the chaos below.

Mendravic sat at his side, silently waiting. They’d been here for over an hour, sitting, staring. Finally, Pearse spoke.

“She should have told me.”

Mendravic said nothing.

“Does he know about me?”

Mendravic started to answer, then stopped. “An hour ago, I would have said yes. Now …” He let the thought trail off. “I thought she’d told you. I haven’t seen them in months.”

Pearse nodded and continued to stare out. His eyes fixed on a clump of burned grass, a spray of blackened roots, only the tips still green. He had no idea what had caused its singular presence. Nothing other than to stare blankly into the charred wound.

At some point-not quite remembering when-he’d reached up and pulled the collar from his shirt. Seeing it in his hand now, he turned to Mendravic.

“Still think it suits me?”

Mendravic waited, then answered. “What are you really doing here, Ian?”

“That’s a very good question.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Whatever Mendravic had meant, Pearse had been asking himself the same question for the last hour, his only answer one that seemed to define the past eight years of his life.

Running.

Not that he’d known about Petra and the boy, not that he could have known. But whatever he thought he’d find in the church hadn’t really been there. Not for a long time now. Granted, he’d never lost his faith in the Word, in its power-he did have that-but it didn’t make much sense to be a servant of the church when the church itself was causing all the misgivings. He couldn’t help but wonder: Except for a collar and an address at the Vatican, how different had he really turned out from his dad? Priest or not, he’d made a habit of keeping everything at a distance. He’d abandoned Bosnia and Petra to become a priest. He’d abandoned Boston to become a scholar. He’d abandoned Cecilia Angeli … What reason this time? Kukes was simply one more noble distraction in an all-too-predictable pattern. And one that rang equally hollow.