The Lost Cathedral Page 14

  So for three days Franz Kleimer-Schmidt committedly walked south. And on the third day he finally crossed the border into Italy where he walked until the soles of his shoes had worn holes at the bottoms. So he continued his journey until his legs felt like rubber at times, sure that he would find salvation—wherever that would be.

  During the nights he slept beneath the stars wrapped up in his Nazi-issued long-coat, marveling at the pinpricks of light with wonderment. Then come morning, with the grass frosted with dew, he would continue south.

  The landscape was beautiful, he thought. The area was filled with trees, brush and deep-green grasses. Wild flowers bloomed in full riot. And the fruits and grapes he found within the orchards curbed his starvation.

  By noon, as he was walking along a well-worn path, he could hear the distant peal of a bell. It tolled a dozen times, marking the time of day. It also provided him with a direction to turn to. Within the hour he came upon a small village that appeared untouched by the war. Buildings still stood, cattle remained behind fences in husbandry, and people tilled the land.

  And at the end of the road was a church with its doors opened wide in invitation. Its bell tower was tall, and the symbol of the cross stood at the steeple’s apex as the building’s highest point.

  Franz was enamored by the gravitation of the church’s pull the closer he got.

  People turned to look at this boy, an obvious waif whose face was smudged with filth. His Nazi gray jacket was dust-laden and soiled with patches of dried mud. And a sole from a boot had partially torn away, the loose flap slapping the ground with every step.

  When he stepped inside the church he saw a few worshippers kneeling on padded rails. They were praying as they fingered the beads of a rosary before a magnificent statue of a man hanging in crucifixion. His eyes were looking skyward. His forehead bled from wearing a crown of thorns. Yet there was an indescribable harmony that was carved into the features of his face, brilliant strokes from a carver’s tool. How could someone suffer so much pain but appear to be at peace?

  Franz stepped inside the church, feeling a wonderful sense of tranquility wash over him. His eyes fixed on the statue and wondered who He was. Why were people in worship of such a symbol, that of a man in torture?

  He stepped to the front by the altar, taking pleasure of its constructed beauty. He noted the polished brass cups and candlesticks; the floor-to-ceiling tapestries; and the stunning displays of stained-glass windows that spelled out the story of the Twelve Stations of the Cross.

  “Are you alone?” a woman asked Franz in Italian.

  Franz pointed to his mouth and nodded. He was incapable of speaking the language.

  When the woman flipped a veil up over her hat, Franz noted her refined appearance. She was in her fifties with dark hair and cocoa-colored eyes. Her face was angular, the cheeks elegant and sleek, and her lips were naturally swollen and sensually thick.

  The woman quickly analyzed his wear and noted the small Nazi insignias on the shoulders of his jacket where epaulets would be. “I see,” she finally said in Italian. She then sat him down on a pew and spoke fluent German in hushed tones. “You’re from Germany, yes?” She pointed to his jacket. “Or did you find this coat that fits you so well to keep you warm?”

  “Both?” he answered.

  “Hitler’s Youth?”

  “No. The Jungvolk.”

  Then as a sad statement, she said, “Just a child.”

  He turned to stare at the statue of Christ, then pointed. “Why do people worship such a symbol?” he asked her.

  “Do you not know the Savior?”

  “The Savior?”

  “Man has sinned greatly. And that man you see up there on that cross has died for our wickedness. He died for the absolution of all people.”

  “Absolution?”

  “Forgiveness.”

  “I see. So they don’t worship this?” He pointed to the swastika emblem on his shoulder.

  The woman looked at him sadly. “No, dear. That’s the crooked cross. Something horribly twisted.” She pointed to the statue of Christ. “Do you see the cross for which that man lies upon?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is the symbol of Light. Do you know what I mean about the Light?”

  He nodded. “It means something good, right?”

  “That’s right.” She then faced the altar. “A box can contain many wonderful things. Good things. And if you unfold a box in its entirety, you get the figure of the cross.” She turned back to him and pointed to the swastika. “But the symbol you wear upon your shoulders is a burden.”

  Franz remained quiet.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead,” he answered flatly.

  “And your country’s in ruins.”

  “The Red Army approaches.”

  “Which is all the more reason why you shouldn’t be wearing that coat.” She aided him by removing the mud-stained jacket, folded it, and placed it on the pew. Then: “Are you hungry?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her as he was so taken by the statue of Christ. “Did he suffer?”

  “Greatly. But he suffered for us all by taking the sins of the world upon His shoulders.”

  “Then he was a great man?”

  “Were you not taught Christianity?’

  “I was taught about the sign.”

  “The swastika?”

  He nodded.

  “You poor child,” she said, sweeping him close. “At so young they robbed you of the Light.”

  For almost an hour they spoke as he learned about the cross and the Man who was nailed to its beams. He learned about the Man’s incorruptible goodness. And the way He served His fellow citizens through faith and love, until he was beloved by all.

  Then she gave him the rosary and beads. “Keep this,” she told him. “Use it for worship. Pray to Him and He shall listen.”

  He fingered the beads. But most of all he became mesmerized by the crucifix that dangled at the end of the chain.

  That night he ate well at the kitchen table as he watched his coat burn in the fireplace, the fabric itself tainted. Her husband was warm and kind and talkative, telling Franz how they missed their sons, all three of them, who had been taken in the war under Mussolini’s regime. They called themselves Christian people. People of a faith that was not his own. Despite their losses, they appeared happy and content. This faith, Franz thought, must be very powerful. It was certainly far more powerful than Gunter Wilhelm’s, who was miserably black inside and believed the swastika to be all-powerful as he wore the emblematic flag like a security blanket.

  In the days to come he remained their guest. And in the husband’s eyes, Franz could see the man’s sense of loss for his sons and his appreciation toward Franz at how he was able to fill that void. The woman doted on him as if he was her son, feeding him until his frame filled out.

  Weeks passed and nothing was said of his leaving. And every Sunday he went to church, learning of this man called Jesus. He knelt on the pews and prayed in earnest. He lit the candles in the votive rack. And he was happier than he could ever remember, believing that he had discovered this soulful Light.

  By the end of the month and having learned passable Italian, he was asked to sit while the husband and wife took to the sofa across from him. Their faces were serious. But not in a way that cast something terribly traumatic. Instead, they appeared somewhat nervous.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Franz asked them in Italian.

  The woman took his hand into hers. “Of course not, dear.”

  “I tried to be good.”

  “You are good,” said the husband. “You’re very good, in fact.”

  “Franz,” she began, then hesitated a beat. “Franz, people are asking questions about you.”

  He looked at her steadily.

  “They want to know who you are,” she said. “Where you came from.”

  The husband said. “We’ve been telling them that you were our nep
hew. My brother’s son. We told them that he was killed, tragically, in the war and that your mother died of disease, which is what you told us happened to your parents, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Franz, you can never tell them that you were Jungvolk,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember what I said about the crooked cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, people frown upon it. They see it as a bad symbol. One of terrible memories now that the war in Europe is over.”

  Then the husband leaned forward in his chair. He was a kind and gentle man whose eyes cast these measures, like a priest giving counsel. He was the type of person you always felt comfortable around. “Franz, we’ve been candid about our lives to you. My wife and I lost everything in the war. My boys. A way of life. But we, like everyone else, are rebuilding . . . And we wanted to know, since you have no family of your own, if you would like to become a part of our family.”

  Franz’s face began to crack with emotion. He loved these people, felt their warmth and embrace, all the things that he’d been lacking his entire life, until now. “Oh, yes,” he gushed, falling forward into their embraces. Tears were shed. Happiness reigned. And the Light of their world was now the Light of his.

  “Oh, yes,” he repeated, his words muffled as he pressed his face against the man’s chest, who was now his surrogate father.

  Oh, yes.

  And for the next ten minutes they shed tears, believing that God had sent little Franz Kleimer-Schmidt to them as salvation to fill a terrible emptiness that had plagued them for so long. Their sons were gone. Killed in the war. But Franz was a light that shined brightly, filling their souls of any absence.

  When emotions finally calmed, after tears had been swept away by the brush of their forearms, they sat Franz down on the small seat in front of them

  “Your Italian is coming along nicely,” she told him. “Stay indoors, learn our language, and never speak German outside these walls. People aren’t ready for that yet. The war is still too fresh on the memories of some people.”

  The husband nodded. “You will take my last name,” he said. “The last name of my brother as well—a good man.”

  “OK.”

  The husband reached his hand out to Franz and placed it gently on the boy’s head as if he was about to anoint him. “You’re my nephew. But you’re also my son. So call me Father. Call her Mother. And we’ll both call you Son.”

  Franz smiled at this.

  “You’re no longer Franz Kleimer-Schmidt,” he added. “From this day forward you’ll be known as Bonasero Vessucci. Can you say that?”

  The boy nodded. “Bonasero . . . Vessucci.”

  The man smiled. “Very good. Now say it again. What’s your name?”

  “My name . . . is Bonasero Vessucci.”

  Everyone inside the room smiled.

  PART THREE

  The Lost Cathedral

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Apostolic Palace

  Vatican City

  Bonasero Vessucci was awake and alert, though feeble. And when he spoke he did so with a cracked voice.

  Isaiah stood alongside the bed and held Bonasero’s hand, which felt cool to the touch.

  “Towards the end of the war,” the pope said through a parched throat, “when the Nazi lines began to lose their hold, joining Hitler’s Youth and the Jungvolk became mandatory. We, as children, were forced into these organizations against our will. When Nazi forces began to lose ground against the Russians, the two organizations—once strictly divided—were joined. At first we were sent to protect the cities, like Berlin and Düsseldorf. But as the manpower along the Russian Front thinned, we were ordered to provide support. So we were sent to battle, me as a boy of thirteen.” The pope’s face seemed to war with several sentiments working at once. When he composed himself, he continued.

  “The horrible things I saw,” he said. “The horrible things people did to others with so little remorse . . . The Germans against the Russians, the Russians against the Germans—all mayhem and slaughter.”

  Isaiah cupped the pontiff’s hand as if to warm it. More so, he listened closely as if the moment was one of catharsis, a confession.

  “I was ordered to fire against the enemy. But I refused. Not because I was a coward, Isaiah. I refused because the enemy abroad was no enemy of mine. I was never one to raise a hand in battle or quick to anger.”

  “You’re a good man, Your Holiness. Always were.”

  “There are no sins to confess here,” he told Isaiah. “My situation was forced upon me. I guess in my way I rebelled when I refused to fire a weapon, with the exception of one time.”

  “It was war.”

  Bonasero shook his head. “Not in this case. I did it in self-preservation. It was a moment I will never forget. When you said the name of Gunter Wilhelm, memories flashed into my head. Horrible images.”

  “You know this Gunter Wilhelm?”

  Bonasero gave a marginal nod. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “A little too well, I’m afraid.” He turned his head so that he was looking directly into Isaiah’s eyes. “He was a boy of sixteen who had been completely delivered into the beliefs of the Nazi ideology, until he became a child of zero tolerance for anything but the Reich. He was sickly obsessive and ruled by fear. He became as twisted as the symbol of the swastika, always believing that the Reich would one day rise and become this dark utopia.”

  The pontiff hesitated, as if to get his second wind.

  Then: “When the Red Army began its push west of their territory and into Germany, the lines broke and the Germans scattered. We knew the war was over. We knew that everything was lost. But no one wanted to fall victim of the Russians wrath, so we headed south toward Italy. But Gunter led the unit because he was the commander of his Youth squad. All he did was parrot what had been hammered into his head by the Nazis since he was a boy. His mind was not his own, but theirs. He was an extension of them—of their ideas, and he continued to promote them by way of a Luger.”

  Isaiah could see that Bonasero was starting to get agitated. “It’s all right,” he told him. “Time to rest.”

  But the pontiff would have none of it. “Please, Isaiah, I need to speak. This, at least for me, is good.”

  “Of course, Your Holiness.”

  “We moved south—a ragtag team of boys wanting to go home to find our loved ones. But Gunter refused us that right, saying we were at war and that the Reich would rise once again. He was sick. Even as boys we saw this. They were thugs who ruled because they were empowered by dark disciplines for which summary executions became an acceptable tool to train others, that killing was fine as long as it made a point.” He closed his eyes, took a moment, then he opened them until they stared directly at the ornate ceiling.

  “One day,” he began, “two boys, both cousins to one another, tried to abscond. They were caught by Gunter’s lieutenants and executed. They were my age. But that didn’t matter as long as Gunter made his point, which he did. No one absconded thereafter.

  “Then another boy—Karl was his name—became ill. Gunter saw him as a liability, a weakness in the chain of the Aryan race. So he ordered him executed. And never once did I see remorse in Gunter’s eyes. In fact, he relished the moment of the kill and the power to command another to take one’s life as if he were a God. At that moment I couldn’t image what it was they were teaching the boys in the Youth. But to see Gunter and his lieutenants command with such wickedness led me to a path of saving myself and those left of the Jungvolk boys.

  “One night, as we took refuge inside this house, his lieutenants had fallen asleep. I took to the stairs and entered Gunter’s room. I was never so scared in my life, Isaiah. Never.”

  A quick moment of silence passed between them. The pontiff’s hand was starting to warm within Isaiah’s.

  “When I reached the bed I saw this glow, this white glow, with a black emblem centered within its ring. When I mov
ed closer I saw it was a Nazi flag—it must have been in one of the drawers—which he used as a blanket. So I lifted it, an edge, and exposed the firearm. And then I took it, Isaiah. I took the Luger and the power passed to me. And I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t feel good to have. It did. Because in my hand was the means to escape. It was the answer to escape all the Darkness that we’d been steeped in for far too long by Gunter and his lieutenants.

  “So I left the room feeling like I was the hope for the Jungvolk boys. Their salvation. But Gunter and his lieutenants were quick to respond. He wanted his scepter back. He wanted his Luger. When I refused, he made the mistake of believing that I was a coward, so he approached me.”

  “And that’s when the gun went off?”

  Bonasero nodded. “I shot him in the leg. I had no choice. I knew if he commandeered the Luger he would have killed all of us. Though I still remember the moment, it was never as clear as it was when you mentioned Gunter’s name.” He closed his eyes and tried to swallow, though his throat remained parched. “Then by the grace of God I met a family who fell victim to the conflict, losing three sons. And since people were less than sympathetic to Nazi causes so fresh from the war, they stripped me of my German persona to protect me and provided me with the name of Bonasero Vessucci, after loved ones. In time I was convinced I would never see Gunter Wilhelm again.”

  “Rest,” said Isaiah, patting the old man’s hand.

  “And now,” the pope said, “after all these years, he has found me.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Isaiah told him. “Kimball is following a lead.”

  “Gunter Wilhelm is an old man but rules many, I’m sure. Kimball may be walking right into the lion’s den. Look what happened to Phinehas. To Mordecai. Both men of strong fortitude and good moral compasses. Gunter destroyed them with a wave of his dark wand.”

  “Kimball’s different. You know that.”

  “No man is truly beyond the Darkness. Kimball was once there. He lived within its shadows and basked within the absence of Light. And that is why I’m afraid he’ll go back to it if the pull is too great.”