The Second Messiah

Anna Kubel was an undeniably attractive woman: buxom, middle-aged, her blond hair piled high in a bun. She tossed another log in the woodstove in the kitchen and wiped her hands on her apron. Everything comes to an end, she told herself. And the end was close now, she could sense it.

Anna wiped a tear from her eye and went to fill a cup of freshly brewed coffee from a pot on the hotplate, and then sat in front of the stove. The centuries-old house, like so many in Rome, was drafty and crumbling. It lacked a proper heating system and at 6 A.M. the tiled floors made the room feel as chilly as in winter.

Not that she was complaining. She had lived happily in this house for seventeen years since she had first come to Rome from Vienna as her brother’s housekeeper. Sipping her coffee, Anna heard a wheezing intake of breath, followed by a familiar groan of pain.

She turned her head toward the room next door, the noise sending a rapier-sharp stab of anguish through her heart. She put down her cup and saucer, blessed herself, and hurried into the next room.

It was a cramped study-bedroom, the shelves lined with books on archaeology, religion, and history, and cluttered with old photographs. An untidy pile of newspapers lay scattered on a bedside table. It was in this room where her beloved elder brother Franz liked her to read to him from his favorite books and newspapers. It was also where he had chosen to die.

She felt moved to pity as she looked down at his sleeping form under the bedcovers, an oxygen bottle and mask by the bed. A wooden crucifix was clutched in Franz’s bony, nicotine-stained fingers and his eyes were shut.

His once-strong, sculpted face was sunken, his cheeks hollow. The skin of his small, wasted body was the same color as the ancient parchments he had spent his life studying, and his sparse red hair—what few wisps were left after the chemotherapy—was plastered across his skull. Her brother would have been sixty-five next birthday if the cancer hadn’t riddled his flesh.

A chain-smoker all his life, now Franz wheezed with every breath. He had endured another difficult night, Anna could tell, sweat drenching his brow. The pained look on her beloved brother’s face was almost too much to bear. As she wiped away another tear, her eyes were drawn to the framed photographs on the walls.

Here was the other Franz she had known. The committed priest whom she and her Viennese parents had been so proud of. Snapshots of Franz as an altar boy and later as a young priest in the seminary at Graz. Images of him in Rome with at least two former popes and three eminent cardinals. Franz’s religious zeal had from time to time led him to move in the Vatican’s more rarefied circles.

Her brother had lived for the priesthood, and nothing had pleased him more than the praise or approval of his superiors.

There were also several pictures of her brother in Jerusalem, and on the archaeological digs that he loved so much—“tracing the blessed footsteps of Jesus,” as he liked to call his many visits to Israel. At least one of the photographs was of Franz and John Becket on a dig, smiling, their arms fondly around each other’s shoulders.

As Anna Kubel’s proud gaze swept over the familiar images she felt a stab of sadness. The photographs were all taken a time long ago. Now Franz was nearing his end. On the nightstand by the bed was a small enamel bowl filled with melting ice cubes. Anna dabbed a flannel facecloth in the bowl, wet her brother’s parched lips, then folded the icy cloth and placed it on his fevered brow. “Dearest Franz, can you hear me? Would you like a glass of water to cool you?”

He wheezed another breath and his eyelids fluttered. The feeble spark in his glassy eyes told her he was truly a man living on borrowed time. But then without warning he reached out and clutched Anna’s wrist, his fingers clawing her flesh with surprising ferocity. “Remember, Anna? No—no more morphine,” his rasping voice reminded her.

Anna gently eased Franz’s grasp and stroked his clubbed fingers. “Yes, dear brother, I remember.”

His head sank back and he erupted in a violent fit of coughing. When it finally ceased, Anna wiped phlegm from her brother’s lips, then placed the oxygen mask over his face. She heard the steady flow of rich air soothe Franz’s wheezing lungs. She knew for certain his time couldn’t be long now. Her brother’s pain had to be excruciating, but Franz had insisted on not taking painkillers. He wanted his senses to remain clear until he spoke with John Becket.

Out in the street Anna heard a violent screech of brakes. She peered past the lace curtain and saw the absurd sight of John Becket’s tall figure clutching a black bag as he pried himself out of a cramped old red Fiat 500. He strode toward the front door. A second later she heard the doorbell buzz, at least a half-dozen sharp, urgent bursts.