The phone was set down with a clatter.
I waited through a painful minute until I heard the receiver being scraped up again.
“Everyone is dead,” Monika said.
“What? No!”
“I asked Heinz, and he says everyone is dead.”
“But I was told the theater was empty!”
I heard her say “Here!” and another voice came on the line—Heinz’s.
“What do you want?” he said. “All are dead.”
“No! Heinz, I was told the theater was empty.”
“Who tells you this?”
“I was told this in the hospital. They said no one was looking for bodies because the theater was empty.”
“Ja, so. They tell you.”
“Do you know that Shirin was there?”
I heard a muffled exchange between the two.
“I hang up now,” Heinz said.
“No, wait! Can you tell me Shirin’s last name? Her surname?”
Heinz thought for a moment before saying, “You should be there too.”
Then he hung up.
Afternoon
I spent the next three hours in bed, and the thoughts I thought don’t need to be recorded here.
Around four o’clock some being knocked and made his way in and introduced himself chummily as Fr. Joe. He wanted to know if he should schedule a spot for me in the chapel.
I said, “What?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Father,” he said to me. “I assume you’ll be saying Mass.”
“I will not be saying Mass,” I told him.
Fr. Joe disappeared as if whisked offstage like a puppet on strings.
So at least that much has been settled. I’ve reached and passed the fiftieth degree of losing my faith.
Evening
Tim, my middle-of-the-night confidant, is a Native American, built along the lines of a sumo wrestler. This is a summer job for him. During the school year he’s a student at junior college in a town nearby. Not having eaten all day, I was starved, and he directed me to the dining room, which I took one look at and decided I couldn’t stand right now—too bright and too much conversation that people would want to include me in.
I went back and asked Tim if I could get a tray sent over, and he said sure, nothing easier.
I told him I was expecting a visitor from St. Jerome’s University by the name of Fr. Lulfre, and he asked how he’d be arriving. I told him I supposed by car.