The Deliverance of Evil Read Online Free Page B

minute.”
    He picked up the telephone and spoke in perfect English.
    “You can tell His Holiness that, with all due humility, I do not agree. There’s no violence. It’s a bloodless coup. The fact that they’re not Catholics is another matter, but we can find a way to have a dialogue.”
    He came back, pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his hooked nose.
    “The current Vatican hierarchy has no love for communists, exactly the same as you.”
    I looked at Angelo, who shook his head. No, he definitely wasn’t the type to gossip about me with the cardinal. Either the cardinal could read in my face what I was thinking or he had looked into my background because I hung out with his niece’s future husband. I didn’t care.
    “I don’t agree with the Vatican on any subject. Not even on communists.”
    The Cardinal ignored my comment and led us to the only corner of the living room not taken over by noisy young Africans.
    “Your Eminence, we have some problems,” Angelo said. “We can’t manage to find places for all of them in our housing and the hotels are booked with tourists. We’re looking for about twenty beds.”
    This was a different Angelo Dioguardi than the one I knew. He was awkward and insecure. The cardinal was too important for him.
    Alessandrini laughed. “My poor Angelo, I see you can’t multiply beds like Our Lord did with the fishes! But it’s no problem. The priests will stay with me. Naturally, you’ll have to accommodate all the sisters. You can never be sure . . .”
    “Your Eminence, this is a big apartment, but there aren’t enough beds. We’re talking about twenty priests. Where will you put them all?”
    The cardinal pointed to the terrace. “I slept out there last night to keep cool. It’ll be no problem for them—they’re used to it in Africa. I’ve already sent Paul to get some sleeping bags from San Valente.”
    Angelo relaxed and the cardinal turned to me. “So, you’re a policeman?” I had heard the word spoken with a thousand different shades of meaning: often ironic, sometimes even offensive. But Alessandrini said it with pure curiosity. At the same time, he was telling me that he knew all about me. In that residential complex, you entered only on foot and after all your details had been checked.
    “I wanted to be a policeman when I grew up, but the Lord had plans for me to serve a different kind of justice,” he said.
    I had my own opinions about the conflict between earthly and divine justice, but I figured it wasn’t the right time to discuss Nietzsche and the Gospels. This powerful and friendly man may have been admirable, but I didn’t find him likable. He was a priest and, after years of religious schooling, I knew that a pleasant manner could merely be ash over hot coals. I had learned to be wary even as a young child, from the moment in the fifth year of primary school when a soft hand infiltrated my shorts while I was being told about the goodness of Our Lord.
    He read my thoughts. “Yes, I know, you’re very much the layperson and opposed to the Church, or perhaps even opposed to religion. Look, I respect justice on earth, but I also recognize its tragic errors. In this world, justice is often in the wrong hands.”
    I was losing patience. “If we waited for the next life, we’d be living in tears, tormenting ourselves with our sins. When remorse turns to penitence and absolution, it’s only a way of avoiding life.”
    Seeing Angelo’s look of alarm, I stopped, but the Cardinal wasn’t the type to be offended by an insignificant nonbeliever like me.
    “Mr. Balistreri, I realize that the only sin you recognize is what we call crime. And punishment is meted out on earth, possibly in prison. But it was the justice of the Enlightenment, not faith, that instigated the guillotine of the revolutionaries, and they didn’t only decapitate the guilty.”
    “While no mistakes were made under the Inquisition, is that it?”
    “The Inquisition is