Acts of Faith (54 page)

Perhaps half a dozen other houses had a generator like Hardt’s. The only water supply for the whole village came from two communal pumps. As Tim stared Hardt read his mind.

“Yes, Dom Timóteo. It is polluted. And yes again, everything we served you was thoroughly boiled first. This is actually where my brothers and I have made some progress. We’ve taught some elementary hygiene here and dramatically reduced the dysentery rate.”

Beyond the suffocating cluster of houses they reached a sodden field where Alberto and two dozen or so others like him were engaged in a spirited soccer match, the goals on either side marked by two empty oil drums.

Even as they played, members of both teams managed a friendly wave to their resident priest.

“
Oi
, Dom Ernesto.
Como vai?
”

“Bem, bem,”
Hardt answered as he waved back.

“They look like they’re having fun,” Tim remarked. “What other activities do they have?”

“None,” his Brazilian host replied. “Besides, we’re too busy to pay much attention to the healthy ones. Let’s go.”

As he led Tim back through the narrow streets of the town, Hardt continued his commentary. “As you might imagine, here in what you North Americans call the Third World we have a very high birthrate.”

“Yes,” said Tim quietly. “I imagine you do.”

“But what keeps our burgeoning population in check,” Hardt went on ironically, “is one of the highest infant-mortality rates in the world. A baby born here is ten times more likely to die in its first months of life than one in, say, Ohio.

“At the other end of life—if we’re willing to stretch that definition to describe a person inhabiting a
favela
—the average Brazilian will die ten years sooner than his gringo cousin in the States.”

They walked several muddy paces in silence until something occurred to Tim. “I hope I don’t sound paranoid, Dom Ernesto. But every so often we pass a group of rather muscular residents who seem to be—I don’t know—sizing me up.”

“Don’t worry,” Hardt answered. “They won’t bother you.

“But who are they—some sort of gang?”

“That’s such a pejorative term, Your Grace. They’re not only outstanding citizens of this
favela
, but they’re members of the
associacão dos moradores.
You might say they’re our ‘residents’ association.’ In short, they look after things and do for us what the government doesn’t.”

At that moment, the two men reached a large building that seemed out of place in these surroundings. It was a long, white, barnlike structure with what appeared to be two floors.

“This skyscraper is our hospital,” Dom Ernesto explained.

“And are those men sitting in front
moradores
or doctors?”

“Neither,” he replied tonelessly. “They’re undertakers.”

Hardt looked soberly at Tim. “You don’t have to go in. Some of the diseases are quite contagious.”

“That’s all right,” Tim said, shoring up his courage.

He could never have been prepared for what he saw. Though he had visited the sick and dying in many hospitals, he had never attended terminally ill people who were not receiving any medical care.

The huge dormitory echoed with the wails of the young and groans of the old. Suddenly, Tim felt Hardt’s hand affectionately on his shoulder. Ernesto spoke gently.

“I understand, brother. I’ve come here every day for the past ten years, and I still can’t get used to it.”

“Aren’t there any doctors?” Tim asked, his stomach in knots.

“Of course,” Hardt replied. “They come, they make rounds, they go. Sometimes if a big drug company has been munificent, they leave pain-killers or some very avant-garde medicines.”

“Well, at least that’s a consolation,” Tim remarked.

“Ah,” Hardt said. “You must understand that for all the generosity of the world’s pharmaceutical companies, they prefer to sell rather than donate. This means we get drugs that for one reason or another have been declared unsuitable for ‘civilized’ consumption.” He added, “I don’t have to tell you how much Thalidomide we got free.

“We do have nurses. One or two of them are fully qualified. Most are
moradoras
who just give injections, carry off the dead, and change the bedclothes.” He sighed heavily. “This is the one time I wish I were a doctor. All a priest can do is give last rites and try to offer some explanation for why God is taking them so young.”

Tim looked around him at the patients on their low beds, some writhing, some spasmodic, most of them inert.
Surely, he said to himself, this must be what Dante’s inferno looked like. Gradually a sound reached his consciousness, rising above the moans of the dying.

“I can hear children.”

“Yes.” Hardt locked him with his gaze, this time his gray eyes emanating sympathy for Tim. “They’re on the second floor. If I told you it was ten times worse than what you’re seeing now, I wouldn’t be exaggerating. Are you sure you can take it?”

The fervor in Tim’s own eyes answered Hardt even before his words.

“Didn’t our Lord say, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God’?”

“Good, my brother,” Hardt remarked, gripping his upper arm affectionately. “You have all my admiration.”

Hardt led the way up a creaking, makeshift wooden staircase to the second story.

Tim was sickened by the sight and smell of what was before him. Wretched little children, pale and scrawny, some with distended bellies, lay passively whimpering on mattresses, the smaller ones cradled in their mothers’ arms … dying.

“Tell me,” Tim asked hoarsely. “How many of these kids will ever leave here alive?”

For all Hardt’s penchant for polemics, this time he was unwilling even to talk.

“How many, Dom Ernesto?” Tim persisted.

“Sometimes,” Hardt began, “sometimes, God sends a miracle.” He paused again and in a lowered voice added, “But not very often.”

Tim felt helpless and angry.

“What are they suffering from?”

“The usual infant scourges—dysentery, typhus, malaria, and of course, since disease is the only area in which we’re up to date, we’re starting to see cases of AIDS.”

“This is inhuman!” Tim exploded. “There are supposed to be six major hospitals in Brasilia.”

Hardt nodded. “There are—but we’re somewhat out of their district.”

Struck by a sudden notion, Tim turned and appealed to Hardt.

“Can you take me to my hotel and back?”

“Certainly,” his host replied, sounding confused. “But why?”

“Don’t ask. Let’s just say I want to do something special for these children.”

“In that case,” Hardt responded, “you’d be better off helping some of the guys downstairs hammer little coffins.”

Tim lost his temper. “For once, Dom Ernesto, I’m talking to you as an archbishop. Now do what I say!”

Surprised, Hardt merely shrugged his shoulders and started downstairs ahead of Tim.

At the sight of Hardt’s mud-caked Land Rover, the doorman at the Nacional made haste to direct it as quickly as possible toward the parking lot until he saw the driver.

“
Bom dia, padre.
May I take your car?”

“Thanks, but we’ll only be a second.”

“In that case, leave your vehicle right here. I’ll guard it like a lion.”

Hardt winked at Tim as if to say, You see who’s boss around here.

Minutes later Tim was back in the car, this time carrying his black valise.

“May I ask what you’ve got there?” said Hardt as he gunned away from the curb.

“No, brother,” Tim replied. “It’s official church business.”

For the rest of the journey they listened to a feverish soccer game on the radio.

When they reached the village, Timothy excused himself and went into Hardt’s office. As he quickly changed his clothes he could hear Isabella and Ernesto expressing their curiosity in rapid dialect.

When he emerged moments later, the sight of him
took their breath away. He was wearing the full purple regalia of a Roman Catholic bishop.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Hardt remarked sarcastically. “It’s at least two months until carnival.”

Tim was not amused. “I’m going to the hospital again. You don’t have to take me. I know the way.”

Without waiting, he strode swiftly out of the house. Bemused, Ernesto and Isabella followed him through the mire.

Twenty minutes later they discovered that not all of Heaven and Earth was dreamt of in Liberation Theology. As Tim knelt by the side of the children one by one, chatting with them, each in a language the other could not understand, and, most of all,
touching
them, the Hardts could see from afar how Tim made the children laugh and the mothers cry. Each time he formed the sign of the cross and moved on to the next patient, the tearful mothers would bless him and instinctively grasp his hand to kiss it.

When he reached the far end of the dormitory, Tim looked back across the sea of children and saw Ernesto and Isabella smiling. He had just performed his most meaningful service since he had entered the priesthood.

When they were back in Dom Ernesto’s house, Isabella poured the coffee as Hardt commented.

“Was that supposed to be a lesson to me in pastoral healing?”

“Dom Ernesto,” Tim replied, “if you found something that enlightened you, please take it with my compliments. As far as I was concerned, I wanted to prove for myself and to you that there is something good in the power of Holy Mother Church.”

But Hardt was not convinced.

“Tim,” he began, “with your purity of spirit, you would have moved those poor children if you’d been dressed as Santa Claus.”

“I don’t agree,” said Isabella. “These people know that all bishops wear purple. They’ve just never seen
one.” Turning to their guest, she reiterated, “You’re right, Dom Timóteo.”

“Thank you,” Tim replied. “And if it will mean anything, I’d like to celebrate Mass there tomorrow. Once on each floor.”

Hardt made a surprising request. “Would you allow me to assist you, Dom Timóteo?”

As the weeks of Tim’s “visit” grew into months, the two men’s conversations grew more intimate. Tim came to prefer the warmth of the Brazilian’s household to the luxury of his hotel. They often spent entire nights discussing Scripture … and their innermost feelings.

One evening Hardt, as ever puffing on a cigarette, asked his guest, “Tell me, my young friend. Have you never loved a woman?”

Tim hesitated for a moment, not knowing how to react. Even in this remote and alien place, visions of Deborah had continued to surface in his subconscious. Still, he had never talked about her to anyone except his confessor, and even then he had not pronounced Deborah’s name nor described what it felt like to love her. He had spoken only of sin but never joy. Now he wanted to open his heart to this man he so admired.

The Brazilian priest listened intently and did not interrupt Tim even when his narrative became elliptical and some details were jumbled.

When Tim had concluded, Hardt said gently, “I think you should have married her.” He inhaled deeply, then asked, “Don’t you?”

“I had made a commitment. I was marrying the Church, Dom Ernesto.”

“And in so doing you were perpetuating a false dogma. Of all the scriptural passages I could adduce, there is nothing more ironic—nor appropriate—than chapter three of the First Epistle to Timothy. You of course recall that here St. Paul himself sets out the requirements for a good bishop, insisting that he must be ‘blameless, vigilant, sober—’ ”

The reflexive scholar in Timothy filled in the missing part of the quotation. “… And ‘the husband of one wife.’ ”

“Can you tell me truthfully, do you still think of her?”

Tim let his eyes blur so that he would not have to see the older man’s reaction.

“Yes, Ernesto. Every now and then I see her face.”

“I feel sorry for you,” Hardt said with compassion. “For you’ll never know the very special love I share with my Alberto and Anita.”

Tim shrugged.

“Would you know how to find her?” his Brazilian friend inquired.

Tim hesitated, then at last allowed, “It wouldn’t be impossible.”

They sat silently for a moment. At last Hardt spoke.

“I’ll pray for you, my brother.”

“For what, exactly?”

“For you to find the courage,” he replied affectionately.

I
t was like entering a time warp. One minute I was walking the sophisticated streets of Gallic Montreal; a few blocks later I found myself in a neighborhood that could have been New York’s Lower East Side a hundred years ago.

The streets were elegant enough—St. Urbain, Boulevard St. Laurent. But that was the extent of the area’s Canadian character. All along the Boulevard, which the locals refer to as “the Main,” the shop names were in Yiddish—the language I heard everywhere in the loud negotiations between the pushcart vendors and their black-coated, bearded clients.

After working in rural New England for nearly six years, I missed these sights and sounds of my childhood.

I confess that “the Main” made me nostalgic. Except for one thing.
I
was no longer wearing the team uniform. My garb was in no way Jewish enough for the denizens of this area. They stared at me as if I had two heads—neither of which wore a skullcap.

Nonetheless, the only way I could recharge my ethnic batteries was by going to St. Urbain Street, and I did so as frequently as possible.

Whenever I needed a new Jewish book—or a rare old one—the closest city to which I could go to browse was
Montreal. So every few months I would make a bibliophile’s journey for the sheer pleasure of holding new books and leafing through them.

On this fateful Sunday, I fortified myself with two really good hot pastrami sandwiches—a kind of ambrosia impossible to find in northern New England. Then, I headed for my destination, the Eternal Light Bookshop on Park Avenue.

I always called ahead to say I was coming so that Reb Vidal, the learned proprietor, would be sure to be there. I had come to rely on him to keep me up to date with what was new in the Old Testament, but on this particular day when I entered the shop he was nowhere in sight, and an ancient, stoop-shouldered clerk was off in a corner chatting in Yiddish with some customers.