Assault Force. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ to watch your tongue, Andres. You were once a believer.”

      The priest fell silent, weighing his next words carefully, wondering if he should just get up and leave, stung to near outrage as he was by his brother’s mocking. No, too easy, he thought, it was what his brother probably wanted. Further, there was his own accountability to consider, if he didn’t harness the strength to persevere.

      Andres, clearing his throat—was that shame flashing through his eyes?—inquired if he wanted something to drink. Oh, how he did, more than ever. He felt every flaming inch of his broken heart, the terrible burning ache with each awful pounding. He was tempted but declined.

      Briefly Gadiz recalled the period where he’d indulged what had proved a near-fatal weakness in more ways than one. It had been so close, his own journey toward the abyss, teetering at the edge, so many nights wasted in an alcohol haze, questioning to near despair his own faith, his commitment to souls and to God. The young woman, restless and yearning to leave the village and her husband for the big city, had come almost weekly for confession. At her urging he began private counseling.

      Where the Devil, he was certain, had conspired against him.

      The woman had agonized over her habitual adultery, he remembered, but blamed her husband for the hateful trap her life had become. He had so despised his own thoughts toward her. He was wracked, worst of all, by such guilt and shame over his own lust, the bottle seemed his only relief from torment. Only the more he sought to drown the voice—the dark half of his own conscience, he believed—the more it urged him on, so persistent he thought he would go mad. He prayed almost nonstop for relief. He did not cave in nor pursue his desire, his only saving grace he was sure. But only when he stopped drinking for good, made his own confession, were his prayers answered. The taunting voice faded to nothing, the urge gradually died altogether.

      “Your wife, she prays, but not for your return, Andres,” he said, and saw his brother flinch, no doubt all that monstrous vanity shouting to him that such a thing was preposterous beyond all reason. “Isadora is a woman strong of faith. She is at Mass every day. She lights candles. She says the rosary. Where you live in lavish luxury, indulge all the pleasures of the good life you have acquired through your club or whatever else…she barely has bread and water to sustain her life.”

      Scowling, Andres broke eye contact. “What would you have me do? If it’s money—”

      “You foolish stupid man,” Gadiz said, jolting his brother with the sudden anger in his voice. “She does not want your money.”

      Andres spread his arms, truly baffled. “Then, what?”

      Father Gadiz sighed, shook his head, but pushed on, saying, “I know you can see her, even if you have not thought of her in years. Picture her, kneeling before the crucifix or the Virgin Mother, praying for her own soul, but also that your heart will change, that you will renounce your ways and put them behind before it is too late.”

      He thought he saw something change in his brother’s eyes, as his body went utterly still. “To her, Andres, your soul is the only important thing. That is how much she loves you. Your return to your wife, of course, would depend on you. But do it, I should warn you, only if your heart is right in the eyes of God.”

      He watched as his brother’s features seemed to shrivel, eyes dropping toward his next drink. Were those tears he fought to hold back?

      Andres swallowed more whiskey. He quickly hardened back to anger.

      Shocked by the depth of his sudden bitter disappointment, the priest stood to leave, then Andres, almost in a panic, said, “Wait. Please, don’t go. I don’t know how to live.”

      Gadiz stared at his brother. “What did you say?”

      Andres cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, eyes cast down. “Will you sit with me? Please, brother.”

      Watching Andres closely, the priest sensed the torment. He sat.

      Andres fiddled with his bottle of beer. “Do you know how much I hated him? How much the mere memory of the man makes me hate him? If I could dig him up…oh, but I’m sure you will tell me you pray for his soul to rest in peace, that God’s mercy knows no limits.”

      “I understand your feelings, Andres. I was there. You mention infinite mercy, but likewise God’s justice knows no limits. It’s out of our hands, try to come to peace with at least that much. Are you so dead inside that you can’t even hear yourself? That what you so hate you have now become.”

      “Which is what? A drunkard, a philanderer, a hedonistic scoundrel?”

      “Yes,” Gadiz replied.

      “I never beat Isadora within an inch of her life like he did our mother—or us for that matter. I never even cursed my wife! Yes, I know how that sounds, me trying to justify both my hatred for him and how I am living.”

      “That is exactly how it sounds.”

      In a harsh whisper, Andres said, “I tried…I wanted only a family. Two…we had two sons.”

      “And I have taken that into account, but that does not excuse you.”

      Andres stared off into the distance. There was fire in his eyes when looked back. “Why? Tell me, what did they ever do to be taken, and so young, to die so terribly…and from an illness that to this day no doctor can name? And does she, for all her virtue and noble poverty, ever for even one minute feel the kind of anger toward God that I feel?”

      “If she did, I am unaware of it, and certainly her actions speak for how she feels in her heart,” the priest replied.

      “Which is what? That it was God’s will our sons were taken from us and that she was left barren? That it’s God’s will I have become so wretched? Do you have an answer for me?”

      Gadiz did, but he wasn’t sure his brother would listen, much less accept it.

      “Tell me, Jose. I need an answer.”

      “I cannot sit here and claim I know God’s will for your life. I know only what it isn’t. It takes courage to do what is right, Andres, that much I know. Evil is easy. It is a broad path of unrestrained laughter and song and pleasure. Evil is a coward and a liar. Evil is an illusion that will grant you what you think it is you so desire, but the price the soul has to pay is beyond the worst of any and all horrors on Earth.” He paused, wondering how to proceed. “Is there anything you wish for me to tell Isadora?”

      Andres swallowed another drink, scowled, turned sullen. “Tell her whatever you wish.”

      The priest stood. “Goodbye, Andres.”

      “Wait!”

      “What is it now? You wish to know about our village?” Gadiz asked, growing exasperated.

      “Perhaps.”

      “It is dying like all villages and hamlets across Spain. Only the elderly and the widows remain—”

      “And the few faithful.”

      “Yes, the few faithful it would seem. Most of the young, they have run off to the cities to chase, I fear, whatever their own illusions.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ