Tim looked through his papers and asked if he’d be spending the night.
I assume so.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They’re pretty careful about letting us know this stuff, and there’s no Fr. Lulfre down here.”
“He’s expected for dinner.”
Tim shrugged and repeated that he didn’t think so.
I went back to my room and, with nothing better to do till my tray arrived, decided to take stock and see how many of my belongings had gone south while I was going west. Amazingly, except for my billfold, with all my cash and credit cards, every last thing seemed to be there, including my passport. I called Tim, and he confirmed my suspicion that the billfold was under lock and key in the office, “for safekeeping.”
The item of greatest interest was the tape recorder, which had a tape in it that had been run forward an hour or so. After I’d eaten and returned the tray, I rewound the tape and hit the play button, mentally crossing my fingers and holding my breath. The first second confirmed my hopes: It was a tape of Shirin’s speech at the theater on May 25. I stopped the tape to consider the fact that, if Heinz Teitel was right, these would be the last words I’d ever hear from her. The thought did me no good one way or another. I pushed the play button and listened.*
Following my usual practice of letting review material go by unrecorded, I had evidently turned the tape on in the middle of the speech. It’s not easy to summarize what I felt on hearing what she had to say. She put it all together at last. I had no idea what the talk was “officially” called. I knew it could only be called “The Great Remembering.” This was it, the fulfillment of the promise—and it left me with only about a million questions.
But there was one thing I finally understood beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that was why both Charles and Shirin declined to formulate a defense against the charge of being the Antichrist. I was disappointed in myself that I’d been so dense about it, that I’d failed to hear what they were telling me and what Fr. Lulfre was telling me. At any rate, I finally understood why, when I said that B seemed harmless, Fr. Lulfre’s reply was, “That can’t be right.”
Indeed, it wasn’t right.
I’ve made a written copy of the speech. In these uncertain circumstances no precautions are excessive.
Obviously Fr. Lulfre didn’t turn up here tonight—or if he did he’s been asleep for hours.
Three A.M.
I finally figured out why I can’t get to sleep. I’m going to have to learn to think more like a fugitive. I’m too used to being passive and trusting. It took me two hours of tossing and turning to get the point, which is that this is a potentially disastrous situation for me.
I don’t know why Fr. Lulfre failed to show up tonight, but I’m damned glad he didn’t, because there couldn’t possibly be a worse place for me to confront him. If he wanted to, he could lock me up here and throw away the key. I’ve got to get out of here right now and hope to intercept him on more favorable ground. Luckily, if there’s a wing of this place that’s high security, this isn’t it. I think I could make my way out with nothing but the essentials (recorder, notebooks, tapes, and passport), but a hundred-mile trip with nothing but lint in my pockets is not an appealing prospect. I should at least make a try at persuading Tim to liberate just one credit card from my billfold in the safe.
* The text of this speech will be found in Chapter 29–The Great Remembering.
Monday, June 3
The fugitive at 35,000 feet
So that’s that. Between now and Hamburg I’ve got a lovely bunch of hours ahead of me in which to sleep and bring this journal up to date—and in a nice, roomy first-class seat, since no other was available on this flight. The Laurentians won’t notice the difference, and surely they must expect to send off their apostates with a little Visa Golden handshake.
Though it took the better part of two hours, Tim was persuadable. I may be dumb, but nobody ever said I didn’t know how to make myself understood. I made a stab at getting him to throw in the keys to his car, but no, he wouldn’t go that far. It took a couple more hours, but I did finally manage to hitch a ride. Priests have to cultivate an innocent, harmless look, which comes in handy on the road (as every serial killer knows). Once I got to an automatic teller machine, I was home free.
I reached Fr. Lulfre’s office at eleven o’clock in the morning, and by God, there he was, just where I’d left him almost a month ago—something I hadn’t exactly counted on, since it was Sunday.
He looked up at me from behind his desk, plainly astounded, and said, “You didn’t have to do this, Jared. I was planning to come see you today.”
He actually didn’t get it; he thought I’d jumped the wall out of mere impatience to be near him.
“I’m here for a reckoning, Fr. Lulfre.”
He capped his pen and set it aside—nice, well-thought-out moves.
“A reckoning, eh? You sound like the staunch hero of some turn-of-the-century melodrama.”
“Different century,” I said, sitting down, “but that’s the idea.”
“What is it you want reckoned?”
“I’ll tell you what I remember, then you can tell me the rest.”
“All rig