I bestow my blessings upon you.
Francis Casey
Cardinal
Archdiocese of Boston
THE SAINT MATTHEW INSTITUTE
Sachem Pike, Maryland November 1995
Transcription of Interview #45 Between
Patient No. 3643 and Doctor Canice Conroy,
with the Assistance of
Doctor Anthony Fowler and Sahler Fanabarzra
Dr. Conroy: Hello, Victor. May we enter?
No. 3643: Certainly, Doctor. It’s your clinic.
Dr. Conroy: It’s your room.
No. 3643: Come in, please, come in.
Dr. Conroy: I see that you are in a very good mood today. Do you feel well?
No. 3643: Stupendous.
Dr. Conroy: I’m happy to see that there have been no violent incidents since your departure from the infirmary. You are taking your medications on schedule, you are participating in the group sessions . . . You are making progress, Victor.
No. 3643: Thank you, Doctor. I do what I can.
Dr. Conroy: Fine. As we discussed earlier, today is the day that we begin your regression therapy. This is Mr. Fanabarzra. He is a therapist from India, a specialist in hypnosis.
No. 3643: Doctor, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the idea of participating in this experiment.
Dr. Conroy: It’s important, Victor. We spoke about it last week, do you remember?
No. 3643: Yes, I remember.
Dr. Conroy: Then we are in agreement. Mr. Fanabarzra, where do you want the patient to sit?
Fanabarzra: He will be most comfortable in bed. It’s important for him to be as relaxed as possible.
Dr. Conroy: He’ll lie on the bed, then. Lie down, Victor.
No. 3643: As you wish.
Fanabarzra: Very well, Victor. I am going to show you a pendulum. Could you lower the blind a little, Doctor? That’s enough. Victor, watch the pendulum, if you would be so kind.
[Transcription omits Fanabarzra’s process of hypnosis, at his request. Pauses between responses have also been eliminated for the sake of brevity.]
Fanabarzra: All right then . . . it is 1972. What do you remember from this period?
No. 3643: My father . . . He was never at home. Sometimes the whole family went to wait for him at the factory on Friday afternoon. Mother said he was a good-for-nothing and if we could find him we’d stop him from spending our money in the bars. It was cold outside. One day we waited and waited. We stamped our feet on the ground to keep our toes from freezing. Emil asked me for my scarf because he was cold. I didn’t give it to him. My mother rapped me on the head and told me to give it to him. Finally we got tired of waiting and we left.
Dr. Conroy: Ask him where his father was.
Fanabarzra: Do you know where your father was?
No. 3643: He was fired from his job. He came back home two days later in very bad shape. Mother said he had been drinking and sleeping with strangers. They gave him a check but there wasn’t much left. We would go to Social Security to get Dad’s check but sometimes he got there first and he drank it. Emil didn’t understand how someone could drink a piece of paper.
Fanabarzra: Did you ask for help?
No. 3643: Sometimes the parish gave us clothes. Other kids got their clothes at the Salvation Army, because they had better clothes there. But Mother said that they were heretics and pagans and it was better to wear decent Christian clothes. Beria said that his decent Christian clothes were full of holes. That’s why he hated them.
Fanabarzra: Were you happy when Beria left?
No. 3643: I was in bed. I saw him walk across the bedroom in the dark, carrying his boots in one hand. He gave me his key chain with a silver bear on it and he told me that I could put the right keys in it. In the morning Emil was crying because he hadn’t said goodbye to Beria, so I gave him the key chain. Emil kept crying and threw the key chain away. He cried all day. I tore up a comic book he was reading, just to shut him up. I cut it into pieces with a pair of scissors. My father locked me in his room.
Fanabarzra: Where was your mother?
No. 3643: Playing bingo at the parish hall. It was Tuesday, she always played bingo on Tuesdays. Each playing card cost a penny.
Fanabarzra: What happened in your father’s room?
No. 3643: Nothing. I sat around.
Fanabarzra: Victor, you have to tell me.
No. 3643: Nothing happened. Do you understand, sir? NOTHING.
Fanabarzra: Victor, you have to tell me. Your father locked you in his room and he did something to you. Correct?
No. 3643: You don’t understand. I deserved it.
Fanabarzra: What did you deserve?
No. 3643: To be punished. Punished. I had to be punished so many times so I would repent for all the bad things I did.
Fanabarzra: What bad things?
No. 3643: So many bad things. The bad person I was. The things I did to the cat. I threw a cat into a garbage can full of old newspapers all crumpled up and set the paper on fire. The cat howled. It howled with a human voice. And for what I did to the book of stories.
Fanabarzra: What was the punishment, Victor?
No. 3643: Hurt. He hurt me. And he liked it, I know that. He told me that it hurt him too, but that was a lie. He said it in Polish. He didn’t know how to lie in English, he got the words all mixed up. He always spoke in Polish when he was punishing me.
Fanabarzra: He touched you?
No. 3643: He gave it to me in the rear end. He kept me from turning around. And he put something in me, something hot that hurt.
Fanabarzra: Did these punishments happen frequently?
No. 3643: Every Tuesday. When Mother wasn’t around. Sometimes, when he was finished, he just lay there, sleeping on top of me. As if he were dead. At times he couldn’t punish me and he hit me instead.
Fanabarzra: How did he hit you?
No. 3643: He spanked me until he was tired. Sometimes after he hit me he could punish me and sometimes not.
Fanabarzra: And your brothers, Victor? Did your father punish them?
No. 3643: I think he punished Beria. Emil never. Emil was the good one. That’s why he died.
Fanabarzra: Only the good die, Victor?
No. 3643: Only the good. Bad people never do.
PALAZZO DEL GOVERNATORATO
Vatican City Wednesday, April 6, 2005, 10:34 A.M.
Pacing back and forth with short, nervous steps on the rug in the hallway, Paola waited for Dante. The day had started out badly. She had barely slept a wink, and when she arrived at her office she ran smack into a pile of insufferable paperwork and obligations. The man in charge of Civil Defense, Guido Bertolano, was throwing a fit over the ever-larger number of pilgrims who were starting to inundate the city. By now the sports stadiums, universities, and any municipal institutions with space to spare were full to the rafters. People were sleeping in the streets, the doorways, the plazas, even the vestibules of the ATMs. Dicanti had gotten in touch with Bertolano to ask for help in searching for and capturing a suspicious person, and he just short of laughed in her face.
“My dear ispettore, even if your suspect were Osama himself, there is very little we could do. It will have to wait until after this whole madhouse dies down.”
“I don’t know if you are aware that—”
“Ispettore—you said your name was Dicanti, right?—Air Force One is parked at Fiumicino. There isn’t a single five-star hotel that doesn’t have a monarch ensconced in its presidential suite. Can you imagine what sort of nightmare it is to protect these people? There are reports of possible terrorist attacks and phony bomb threats every fifteen minutes. I’m in touch with the carabinieri in towns two hundred kilometers around. Believe me, your problem has to wait. And now please stop tying up my line,” he said, hanging up without another word.
Dammit! Why didn’t anyone take her seriously? This case was an absolute killer headache. The silence it dictated, inherent in the nature of the beast, on
ly contributed to the collision between what she was trying to do and the indifference everyone else felt for it. She wasted a long amount of time on the phone without finding out anything. Between the various calls, she asked Pontiero to go round to talk to the old Carmelite at Santa Maria in Traspontina while she headed off for her meeting with Cardinal Samalo, the pope’s chamberlain, or il Camerlengo as he was known in Italian. And there she was, at the doors to the camerlengo’s office, pacing like a tiger with a bellyful of black coffee.
Fowler, meanwhile, relaxed on an luxurious bench of dark red wood. He was reading his breviary.
“It is moments like this that I regret giving up smoking.”
“A little bit nervous, Padre?”
“No. But you’re making it hard not to follow in your footsteps.”
Paola took the priest’s hint, stopped walking in circles, and sat down next to him. She pretended to read Dante’s report on the first murder, while thinking about the strange look that the deputy inspector had given Fowler when she had introduced them at UACV headquarters that morning. Dante had taken Paola aside and said tersely, “Don’t trust him.” She was worried, intrigued. She decided that the first chance she got, she would ask Dante exactly what he meant.
She turned her attention back to the report. A complete disaster. It was clear Dante didn’t take assignments like this very often, which was, on the other hand, lucky for him. They would have to conscientiously go over the scene where Cardinal Portini died, with the hope of turning up some other piece of evidence. This afternoon, no later. The photographs in any case weren’t so bad. She slammed the folder shut. She could not concentrate.
Paola found it difficult to admit she was frightened. There she was in the very heart of the Vatican, in a building set apart in the center of the City. A building with more than fifteen hundred offices, the Supreme Pontiff’s not least among them. To Paola, the mere profusion of statues and paintings that filled the hallways was unsettling, distracting. And for the Vatican’s statesmen over the course of the centuries, that was the desired result; they were well aware of the effect their city produced in visitors. Yet Paola was not about to allow herself even the slightest distraction from the task at hand.
“Padre Fowler?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“This is the first time I am going to see a cardinal.”
“Not so.”
Paola thought for a moment.
“I meant to say, alive.”
“And what is your question?”
“How do you address a cardinal?”
“Typically as Your Eminence.” Fowler closed his book and looked her in the eyes. “Relax. He is only a person, like yourself or me. And you are the inspector running the investigation. You are a professional. Act as you would under normal circumstances.”
Dicanti smiled gratefully. Dante at last opened the door to the office’s waiting room.
“Please come in.”
There were two desks in the waiting room, with two young priests seated next to the telephone and the computer. They greeted the visitors with well-mannered nods of the head, and the small party continued on into the chamberlain’s office. It was an ascetic room, without paintings or carpets. There was a library on one side and a sofa with small tables on the other. A wooden crucifix was the only decoration on the walls.
Unlike the empty walls, the desk of Eduardo González Samalo, the man who held the reins of the Church until the election of the next pope, was crammed with papers. Samalo, in dark red robes, got up from the sofa to greet them. Fowler kneeled and kissed the cardinal’s ring in a sign of respect and obedience, something every Catholic does when meeting a cardinal. Paola hung back, hoping to be discreet. She bowed her head just a little, perhaps out of shame. She hadn’t regarded herself as a Catholic for many years.
Samalo took Dicanti’s rudeness gracefully. Exhaustion and regret were clearly visible on both his face and in his slumped shoulders. He was the ultimate authority in the Vatican for the next several days but judging from appearances he was not enjoying the role.
“Forgive me for making you wait. I was on the phone just now with a representative from the German delegation. They are extremely out of sorts. There are no hotel rooms to be found anywhere and the city is veritable chaos. And the whole wide world wants to be in the front row at tomorrow morning’s funeral.”
Paola nodded her head courteously.
“I imagine this whole commotion must be tremendously trying.”
Samalo merely let out a long, injured sigh in response.
“Have you been informed about what is happening, Your Eminence?”
“Of course. Camilo Cirin has punctually kept me informed of the events as they have taken place. It’s a horrible disgrace, all of it. I suppose that in other circumstances I would have reacted much more strongly to these nefarious crimes, but I must tell you in all sincerity, I just have not had the time to be horrified.”
“As you know, we have to think about the security of the other cardinals, Your Eminence.”
Samalo gestured in Dante’s direction.
“The Vigilanza has made a special effort to gather all of them together in the Domus Sanctae Marthae ahead of time, in order to maintain the building’s security.
“La Domus Sanctae Marthae?”
Dante broke in. “Saint Martha’s House. A building which was re-modeled at the direct request of John Paul II, who wanted it to serve as the principal residence for the cardinals during the conclave.”
“A very particular use for a whole building, wouldn’t you say?”
“When it isn’t hosting a conclave, it is used as lodging for prominent visitors,” said Cardinal Samalo. “Unless I am mistaken, Padre Fowler, even you stayed there once. Isn’t that so?”
Fowler looked very uneasy. For a few moments it seemed as if there would be a short confrontation, one without blood but a battle of wills nonetheless. It was Fowler who lowered his head.
“Indeed, Your Eminence. I was invited to the Holy See once.”
“I believe you had a problem with the Sant’Uffizio, the Holy Office.”
“I was called to an inquiry regarding activities in which I had taken part, that much is true. Nothing more.”
The cardinal seemed to be satisfied with the priest’s visible discomfort.
“Ah, but of course, Padre Fowler. . . . There’s no need to give me any sort of explanation. Your reputation precedes you. As I was saying, Ispettore Dicanti, I am at peace in regard to the safety of my fellow cardinals, thanks to the good efforts of the Vigilanza. Nearly all of them are accounted for and out of danger, here inside the Vatican. A few have yet to arrive. In principle, residing at the Domus was optional until April 15. Many of the cardinals are spread out in various congregations or priestly residences. But we are in the process of letting them know that they have to stay together.”
“How many are at Saint Martha’s House right now?”
“Eighty-four. The others, up to the hundred fifteenth, will arrive in the next few hours. We’ve made an attempt to contact all of them to have them send us their itinerary in order to supplement security. They are the ones most on our minds. But as I’ve told you, Inspector General Cirin is in charge of everything. Don’t worry yourself about it, dear child.”
“Does that number of one hundred and fifteen include Robayra and Portini?” Bothered by the chamberlain’s condescension, Dicanti dug in.
“Well, I suppose that in reality I should say one hundred and thirteen cardinals,” Samalo responded resentfully. A proud man, he took no pleasure in being corrected by a woman.
“I am sure Your Eminence has already settled on a plan in that regard,” Fowler added, making an attempt to mediate between the two.
“Indeed. We are sending the rumor around that Portini has taken ill at his family’s country home, in Corsica. The illness will unfortunately end on a tragic note. With re
spect to Robayra, matters relating to his pastoral mission will prevent him from attending the conclave, although he certainly plans to travel to Rome to render his obedience to the new supreme pontiff. Sadly, he will die in a tragic car accident, something that the police will be able to thoroughly document. These stories will pass to the press only after the conclave, not before.”
Paola’s astonishment was more than she could bear.
“I see that Your Eminence has everything very well in hand.”
The chamberlain cleared his throat before answering.
“It’s one version among many. And it is one which causes no harm to anyone.”
“Only to the truth.”
“This is the Catholic Church, Ispettore. The inspiration and light that illuminates the way for millions of people. We cannot allow ourselves any further scandals. From that point of view, what exactly is the truth?”
Dicanti had a doubtful look on her face, even though she recognized the logic implicit in the old man’s words. She thought of the many ways she might reply to him but understood that it wouldn’t prove a thing. She preferred to return to the interview.
“I suppose the motive for their premature gathering won’t be communicated to the cardinals.”
“Absolutely not. I have expressly asked them not to leave the city without the company of the Vigilanza or the Swiss Guard, with the excuse that a radical group inside the city has made threats against the Catholic hierarchy. I believe they all understand.”
“Did you know the victims personally?”
The cardinal’s face darkened for a moment.
“Good heavens, yes. With Cardinal Portini I had less in common despite the fact that he was Italian. My work has always been very centered around the internal organization of the Vatican, and he dedicated his life to doctrine. He was always writing and traveling. He was a great man. Personally I did not agree with his politics, which were so open and revolutionary.”