Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

There was no one inside. More candles in dark-red glass containers wavering gently; padded kneelers, an empty cistern. The stained-glass window was taller by half than I, yet seemed tiny compared to the Crucifixion window. It depicted Mary holding the dead Jesus in her lap, her eyes and face filled with grief—as moving in its own, intimate way as the Crucifixion window was on its more cosmic scale. I understood why someone would want to come here and pray.

I left the galilee and started back toward the main cathedral, still keeping to the shadows along the wall. It was a long walk, and the tension was wearing on me. I even searched the darkness of the vaulting high above me, expecting something to come swooping down. By the time I returned to the maintenance door, I was sweating heavily and breathing hard, although I had hardly exerted myself.

I continued a bit farther until I reached the back pews. Then, deciding I had to bring things to a head one way or another, I stepped away from the wall.

“Father Veronica?” I called out quietly.

I thought I heard a slight rustling, but it stopped immediately and I couldn’t be sure. I also began to feel a strange vibration in my chest and belly, a thrumming, queasy sensation.

“Father Veronica?” I called again. Then, louder: “Father Veronica!”

“I’m right here, Bartolomeo.”

Her voice startled me, kicking up my heartbeat and stopping my breath. Her head and body rose to a sitting position on one of the pews just seven or eight meters away.

“I was sleeping,” she said. She brushed her hair away from her eyes.

The fear and panic were replaced by an almost electric sense of relief spreading through me. It was a purging, or cleansing. I took a deep breath. She was here. She had sent the message to me.

“Do you feel that?” she asked.

I nodded. The thrumming was still there, deeper now and more persistent.

Was it the aliens? Were they here? Were they finally attacking?

The vibration strengthened, working its way down through my legs and up my neck.

“What is it?” Father Veronica asked. She pulled herself up to her feet and, like me, looked around the cathedral. There was nothing to see.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it can’t be good.”

She turned back to me. “What are you doing here, Bartolomeo? The cathedral is supposed to be closed.”

I stared at her, my fear returning. But before I could answer, the vibration stepped up again. The queasiness intensified, and I felt dizzy. I reached out to the back of the nearest pew for support, trying desperately to maintain my balance.

The cathedral was spinning all around me. Suddenly everything turned, and the gravity in the cathedral rotated 90 degrees. The floor had become a wall, the Crucifixion window the ceiling, and the galilee, so far away, was now the floor.

My feet dropped and pulled out from under me and I started to fall sideways. But I had one hand on the pew, and by instinct I managed to grab the pew with my other. A shower of candles and other objects fell and bounced past us, banging and shattering.

Above me, Father Veronica cried out as she lost her balance and began to fall toward me. Her hands and feet scrambled for a secure hold on the pews, and for a moment I thought she was going to be safe. One hand gripped the back of a pew, the other swung about for something to hold onto, and one shoe seemed to find support on another pew. I hung from the back of the last pew, looking up and watching her, unable to help, unable to do a thing.

Her foot slipped, and she was hanging by only one hand. And it was a hand of flesh and blood, not artificial like my own which tightly gripped the dark wood above me.

“Bartolomeo,” she whispered.

“Hold on,” I said, wondering what I could do, how I could reach her. “Just…”

“I can’t…”

Her fingers slipped from the wood, and she fell.

She struck another pew no more then a meter away, then bounced away from it and plummeted past me.

“VERONICA!”

I craned my head around between my arms and watched her plunge the entire length of the cathedral, cassock whipping about her body, hands and arms outstretched, long seconds of free fall until at last she fell through the open doors of the galilee and crashed into the stained glass window.

“VERONICA!” I cried out again. “VERONICA!”

I knew she couldn’t hear me. I knew she couldn’t respond. There was no way anyone could survive such a fall. I stared down at her small, crumpled body, my heart exploding. “VERONICA!!”

I looked away and stared at the floor in front of me. Tears tried to come, but I wouldn’t let them. I hung there, and for a brief moment thought about letting go, but that innate, stubborn human drive to live would not allow me to release my grip.

I hung there a long time. If my hands and arms had been normal, I wouldn’t have lasted. But they weren’t normal, and although my shoulder began to ache, I had no real difficulty maintaining my grip on the pew. I had more trouble maintaining a grip on my emotions, which threatened to burst out of me in screams.

Time? I lost all sense of it. Did I hang there for an hour? Or was it only one minute? I remember looking down at her once, but I couldn’t look again. If I didn’t see her body, maybe it hadn’t happened to her.

I swung and hooked one leg up onto the pew, then pulled myself up into it, using it like a ledge. For extra support, I grabbed onto a kneeler with one hand.

The vibration, now only a barely perceptible thrum, strengthened once again. I hung on tightly to the pew and kneeler, and the gravity rotated another 90 degrees. The cathedral ceiling was now the floor, the floor the ceiling; my legs swung out and I was hanging again.

More breaking glass, sliding and cracking sounds. I twisted my head around to look down at the galilee. I couldn’t see her body any longer. Better that way, I thought.

The gravity shifted ninety degrees once more. My legs swung out, slamming my body across the back of a pew, legs trying to drop now toward the Crucifixion stained glass. I kept my grip.

I heard more sliding, looked up toward the galilee. Another shower of glass, bits of metal, stone, books with pages tearing and fluttering. No, I silently pleaded, please let the walls or something catch her, please, please don’t let her…

The sliding continued, and Father Veronica’s body tumbled out of the galilee and plummeted again.

I closed my eyes. I could not watch this, I would not watch it… but I felt the breeze as she hurtled past me, and heard the sickening crunch as she hit the Crucifixion stained glass.

At least this time she wouldn’t have felt any pain, I thought. Even so, at that moment I came the closest to opening my hands, releasing my grip, and falling to her side. Instead, I pulled my legs up and over the pew and lay there, both arms wrapped around the padded kneeler, my eyes closed.

Again I lost all sense of time. I hardly knew who or where I was. Veronica… Veronica… I pleaded desperately for this to be some drug-induced dream or hallucination, but I knew I would not be waking up from this nightmare.

Everything inside me seemed to be coming apart. No matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around the kneeler, pressing myself against the cold floor, I thought that at any moment I was going to completely shatter, and the pieces of my body and spirit would rain down upon her.

How could I stand this? I wondered. How does anyone stand it?

Finally, after what seemed like days, the gravity shifted one final time, back to its original orientation, and the thrumming vibration disappeared completely. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Barely aware of my own existence, I hung onto the kneeler without moving until six o’clock arrived and Father George opened the doors of the cathedral.