She wishes a moment to be back again with the girls in Houston. To conjure a safe place out of nothing. To return to the known, the benign, the easy. To stand with them at the back entrance. Sister Stretch. Perching on the back steps, smoking. Kneeling in the small basement chapel alongside her Sisters. Or even the simplicity of the convent house on Long Island. To walk along the beach and watch the gulls drawn through the dawn. Sister Anne. Sister Camille. The other Sister, the Argentinian, she cannot recall her name, what was it?
At the traffic light on Vauxhall Bridge Road, she pauses. It catches then, and she remembers: John Islip Street.
—
HE HAS GAINED A small paunch and his eyes are puffy as if sleep has eluded him for a while now, but he is still tall and elegant and silver-haired, the sort of man who insists on a tie even while alone in the late afternoon.
—Bev, he says.
Her childhood name. It reminds her of the stone bridge over the river in Oughterard, the water running quick and shallow and light-veined beneath her.
—What in the world are you doing here?
He reaches immediately for her suitcase. She stands a moment on the precipice of the apartment. The river ran swiftly west. Copper-colored in summertime. Fly-fishermen stood at the bend where the oak trees bowed. A low plain of red sky cupped over them.
He takes her arm and guides her toward the living room. An ancient coat of books on the walls: novels, photography collections, advance reading copies, poetry. Stacks of them piled every which way on the floor.
He sweeps five or six books from the lumpy brown couch. They skitter across the carpet to meet their fellows.
—Collision, she says.
Ian takes her hand. His fingers feel cold to the touch. What is it that he fills his days with now? What gives him pause? What, apart from books, jostles his mind? Even from a young age he never really believed in God, or ideas of poverty, purity, piety. There were times, in recent years, on the phone, that he railed against the Catholic Church. The abuse. The scandals. The Magdalene Laundries. The deceitful morass of bureaucracy. The lives bought, he said, on the condition of the buyer’s ignorance. She knew the flaws, the awful shame, the flagrant greed. She had no need to defend it, to protest. She, too, had doubted the Church—more deeply, perhaps, than her brother could ever have known. Not so much in the jungle, but afterward, in the crisp sheets of the Saint Louis hospital, where she admitted the terror, as if it had been set on delay. What was it that she herself had desired? What mirror had He thrust at her? There were days that the blame hit her with such force she could hardly stand. She told herself it was her fault: her body, her mind, her failure. She had enticed him. Asked for it. Deserved it. The days withheld their light. Her mind was an empty seed. The despair swelled in the husk of dark.
—Are you okay? What happened? Bev? You said collision.
—I did?
—I’ll make tea. I’ll get you a cup of tea.
—I’d like that, yes.
The rattle of teacups. He pokes his head around the corner.
—I’ll be right there, he says, don’t fall asleep.
She hears, then, the high whistle of the kettle and the soft sigh of the fridge door.
On one bookshelf stands a photograph of their parents sitting on the front bumper of an ancient motorcar, the large white headlights, the curved panels, the air horn. An impossible era. They stand remote from her, more photograph than memory. Somewhere, deep in the apartment, she hears a voice, and then a burst of classical music. A radio piano.
Ian enters the room and carefully places the tray down on the table. Two china cups, a plate of biscuits, a teapot in a cozy. He is still a man of the ancient ways. He was married once, long ago, to a woman from Scotland, but they never had children. A woman of short hair and spectacles. A psycholinguist. They divorced. Ian had been afraid to tell Beverly at first. What was her name again? These words escaping, like slow punctured air from her lungs.
He pours the tea through a small metal strainer and holds the jug of milk up as if to measure not just her preference, but her demeanor.
—I think I might be forgetting things, Ian.
—Oh, God, no.
—It’s not Alzheimer’s, not that.
She pauses with the teacup at her mouth: Or, rather, not forgetting. I’m not sure what to say. It’s a sort of remembering, I suppose.
—Whatever do you mean?
—He came back, you know.
—Who came back, Bev?
A curtain opens up on her brother’s face, then, when she tells him: the exhaustion in Houston, the move to Long Island, the appearance on the television, the confusion, the doubt, the night on the stairs with Sister Anne, the constant return of Carlos’s face as she walked along the beach, how he was a man of peace now, it rattled her, she could not shake it, she had to come see him, she had to see if perhaps it was true, is it possible to find peace when all along you have sought to destroy it, how is it that a man can change so entirely, where did the shift within him occur, what was the word she was looking for, reconciliation?
—And now he’s at some peace conference?
—An institute, yes.
—And you want to see him?
—I don’t even know for sure if it’s him.
The quick flit of Ian’s eyes: green, same as her own. A brother, then. Perhaps that is it? Perhaps Carlos had a brother? A cousin? She has never even entertained the notion. A twin even. The panic claws her throat. What if it’s the simplest error of all and there is someone identical? An exact duplicate who is, in fact, the opposite?
Ian picks a biscuit from the plate, bites down softly, and lets it dissolve on his tongue.
—What day is it today?
—Sunday of course.
A sharp breath escapes her: Oh, I missed mass. The first time in my life. I missed mass, Ian. I can’t believe I missed it.
—You’ve been traveling.
—I’m tired, Ian. So very, very tired.
She lifts the saucer toward the teacup to calm the shake in her hands.
—I’m sure there’s some sort of dispensation, isn’t there? Isn’t there some sort of Catholic word?
He toes around in his books as if he might find the word in the mess on the floor.
—Indulgence, he says, snapping his fingers. Isn’t that it? Indulgence?
—
SHE WAKES IN HIS BED: she has never once slept in a double bed before. An indulgence, yes. She stumbles, fully clothed, to the window, parts the blinds to the yellow streetlight. A sheen of wet on the ground. The light skids in patches along the footpath. She hears the laughter of two young women, tottering arm in arm down the street. A black taxi cab trawls slowly through the rain. Monday morning. A plenary indulgence.
In the corridor she hears the whirr of a computer printer. A light leaks out from a gap in the living-room door. Through the gap she sees Ian caught in a blue light, books scattered around him, bent into whatever work is at hand.
She returns to her room, kneels at the bed for her morning lauds. For the needs of those who are confused. For the needs of those who are without hope. For the needs of those who have no one to pray for them.
It is still dark when she hears the clatter of cutlery and the whistle of the kettle. He sits bleary-eyed at the breakfast table.
—For you, he says, guiding a file across the Formica table.
She fingers the sharp edge of the folder, then turns to the first page. Ian has printed out all the information he can find from the Internet. Three pictures of Carlos, one a headshot, one with government ministers, one taken outside the Institute for Peace.
—His name is Euclides Largo. I mean, that’s what he calls himself.
—Euclides.
—Fifty-nine years old. He’s with a small left-wing party.
—That can’t be.
—I’ve been researching all night. They’ve a lot of support in the countryside, it seems. They’re left wing.
—But he’s right wing. I mean that’s…
—Go figure.
—Are they Catholic, his party?
—They don’t seem—I don’t know, I don’t think so. Who knows? I’m sorry, Bev. All I can tell is that he’s moved up through the ranks over the years.
A surge of bitterness at the base of her spine.
—He was a lawyer before he got into politics. His main thrust is coal mining. He represents the miners. Copper deposits, corporate access to the mines, that sort of thing. He makes his argument for peace on the basis of economics.
She drags the file a little closer and runs her fingers along the edge of his photograph. She has a sudden urge for a cigarette: she has not craved one in days.
To smoke, to cough, to burn and disappear.
—It’s him.
—Are you sure?
She is pierced by the thought that it is all a delusion stacked against her faith, a test of her ability to believe.
—Sure as God, she says.
—You could go to the newspapers.
—And what?
—I can call some friends at the radio station. The embassy. You should call the embassy—
—And say what?
—He raped you, Bev.
—Thirty-seven years ago.
A trapezoid of morning light crosses the kitchen floor. She hears a shout from farther along the street and a blast of laughter, then the smash of a bottle on the pavement: so early, so late.
Ian rises to the kitchen window to part the curtains to look down the length of the street.
—Hooligans, he says.
He waits at the curtains, opening and closing them as if there is some Morse code that he might reveal to the street below.
—You don’t still smoke, do you? she asks.
He shuffles into the living room, returns moments later with a small blue bag of tobacco and rolling papers. He fumbles with the paper, licks the edge, smooths it down, passes her the roll-up, takes a box of matches from the kitchen drawer. The smell of sulfur jags her awake.
—
IT IS A FOUR-STORY townhouse fronted by a black ironwork fence, on the eastern side of the river. The walls of the Institute look recently painted, perfectly white. Flowerpots in the windowsills with red flowers, hydrangeas. A large brass plate on the wall. She had expected something grander, more surprising. Nobody gathered outside. No mothers with placards. No cameras or waiting limousines.
A feeble rain drizzles down. She stands at the curb and looks up to see the dark outline of a lamp in the front window. The vague shadows of figures crossing and recrossing the room. It strikes her as a place more of silence than peace. She is at the door before she even catches herself. Her hand on the intercom button. The buzzer sounds. She glances up at the security camera. A silence and then a second buzzing. Longer, more insistent, impatient even.
—Can I help you?
What vanity brought me here, what conceit? She sees a shape in the window, someone looking out at her.
—Sorry, she says into the intercom.
She turns her face into her damp headscarf, descends the steps, walks quickly away, an old woman, the cost weighed in every tendon.
At a corner sandwich shop, she stops. Newspapers on a rack outside. An Irish paper too: she has not seen one in many years. The red light of a camera blinks as she steps inside. She buys the paper and a coffee, sits at the counter to read.
From a distance she watches the front of the Institute, the quiet comings and goings, the shapes of shapes.
The hours drift. The shop is quiet. She scans the paper, even the sports pages, but cannot recall a single word of what she has read.
In the late afternoon she stops at the church in Westminster. From his accent the priest is young, African. Formal. Correct. Mannered. Even in the darkness she can tell he is one who stiffens his collar. She has, she says, failed in the most ordinary way to embrace forgiveness. She has lied about her whereabouts to others. She has failed His grace. She has spent her time in sloth. She has not sought out her fellow Sisters in London, nor any solace from her family within the Church. She has missed her duties: mass, prayer, the holy sacrament. She is unsure now if any of her service is toward the Lord.
It is, in the end, she thinks, the shallowest of confessions: all of the truth, none of the honesty.
After penance, she wanders out into the city, along the Thames. The river sweeps by, turbulent and bulging, but without sound.
In Ian’s apartment she moves out from his room, allows him his double bed. She takes a blanket to the couch. She sleeps, surrounded by books.
—
BEVERLY REPEATS THE RITUAL three days in a row, standing outside the Institute, waiting, watching, shuffling away, her headscarf pulled tight. In the sandwich shop she sits on a swivel stool at the counter, from which she can see through the window the length of the street. Always a flurry of activity in the morning. Black cars. A series of shapes hustling up the steps. The lights inside flickering on and off. At lunchtime, too, the men and women coming down the steps. From a distance any number of them could be him. In the evening, when the dark descends, it is harder to tell, the street shiny with rain, the lamplight carrying the shapes away.
It seems to her that she could sit here for seasons on end: watching the street leaf and unleaf itself.
Decades ago, in Bogotá, there had been a time when she waited for a bus to return her to the village. She remained in the station for two and a half days. Diesel fumes. The screech of brakes. She sat on a wooden bench, clutching her ticket. She had not eaten and carried only a small flask of water. She read from the scriptures. Peter the Apostle. Manacled to that same post. The Mamertine.
On the fifth day she sees him.
It is late afternoon. She sits in the corner of the shop, her hands curled around a cold coffee cup. The newspaper is spread out in front of her. The headlines of a foreign country. The shop is quiet, monitored by the series of cameras set up high around the corners.
She is about to finish her coffee and return to Ian’s apartment when the bell sounds out on the door.
A gust of cold wind. The small hint of a cough. She bends forward and grips the counter. He glides past her. It takes a moment to even realize that it is him. The back of his hair is perfectly combed. His suit is rumpled but smart. There is a click from the heels of his shoes. At the fridge he takes out a cold coffee drink. He has, under his arm, a Spanish-language paper. Why did she not see him walking along the street? Where has he appeared from? He says something, she is sure, to the Pakistani shopkeeper: she cannot quite hear. He drops a coin in the small tray at the side of the register.
She removes her dark cardigan, folds it in her lap, swivels on the chair, places her hands in the well of her skirt, watches him in the shop-window reflection, all of him reversed, right to left.
A smell of aftershave rolls from him as he passes. Is it enough to have seen him? To just be here? I should allow myself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Make of myself a prayerful absence.
She reaches out to tug the side of his jacket. The flap end, close to his hip. The cloth feels so terribly expensive.
He turns. A surge of heat pulses through her. A bristling of the hair on her arms. World without end. The mole on his cheek. The tilt of his eye.
—Euclides Largo?
—Yes?
She can tell straight away that he has become the sort of man who is happy to be recognized. His skin has grown lighter, as if he has come indoors, drawn the curtains on that other life. He arches an eyebrow, reaches out a political hand. She does not take it. She grips her cardigan instead. No language at all. To bless him now, to forgive him, to let him go on his way?
—You’re at the Institute?
—Yes.
—I saw you on television. Spanish language. In New York.
—A wonderful city.
He favors the door a moment, glances outside, but then turns: And you are…
?
—I’m just—an interested observer.
He leans back as if to put her in focus.
—Journalist?
—I’m far too old to be interested in journalism. I’m just watching from a distance, Mr. Largo.
—But you speak Spanish?
—Just a little.
He peels back the cellophane tab from the lid of the drink, taps the bottom of the container against the heel of his hand. It strikes her that he wears no rings on his fingers. No marriage, then, no children.
A tightness cramps her chest when he brings the coffee to his mouth. She lets out a small sound: something trapped, hidden. He nods as if about to leave, but she leans forward on the stool. Am I supposed to directly bestow my forgiveness, Lord? Am I to reconcile with evil? Is that what is being asked of me? Is that what You demand after all these years? Apokatastasis panton. The restoral of all things. To what, then, shall I be restored? Is there no wisdom? Is that what I have to learn? That there is finally none at all?
It has, she notices, begun to rain outside, a steady patter against the window.
She speaks slowly, the words emerging, small stones of sound: The television said you’re working at the draft of a treaty?
—We are.
—You’re aligned with the miners?
—And their families, sí. We’re struggling, but we are, how you say, we are getting along, bit and bit. We’ll have a statement—
—Poco a poco.
—So, you do speak Spanish?
—It’s coming back to me. And your English? It’s good now.
—Excuse me?
—Your English is good now, Carlos.
She stands. She is a full head taller than him. Still she does not offer her hand.
—Excuse me?
—It’s good, Carlos. Your English.
—Euclides, he says. Largo.
—Sister Beverly Clarke, she says.
He glances over his shoulder toward a waiting car outside, a small fan of smoke rising from its exhaust, the rain bouncing off the roof. Two young boys enter the shop: when they remove their hoods one of them looks remarkably to her like the boy who played the piano in Victoria Station.