“You know, Hilda, I was of course talking too loudly, but I could see he was smiling. He said, ‘How many parishioners do you have?’ ‘Fifty or sixty. Maybe one hundred …’ He nodded. He realized he had not beaten me, but he also knew that few people were listening to me. We talked for another hour or so, and it was an interesting conversation. He was a profound and highly educated man. All in all, we parted on good terms.
“Hilda, I left the Congregation, I went to St. Peter’s Cathedral, got down on my knees, and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rejoice, Peter. We are back! It has been a long time, but here we are again!’
“It seems to me I had the right to say that. Our little church is Jewish and Christian. That is so, Hilda, is it not?
“I went from Peter and sat on the steps in the sun and saw Father Stanisław, the Pope’s secretary, coming straight toward me. The last time, three years ago, when I wanted an audience with the Pope, he did not grant me access. Perhaps it’s unfair to say that, it’s just how it felt. Now, however, he suddenly came over to me and said, ‘His Holiness was talking about you recently. Wait here. I’ll come back out in a minute.’ I sat. It’s a strange story. Fifteen minutes later Father Stanisław came running back and invited me to supper the day after tomorrow.
“For two days I walked around Rome. I like walking, as you know. Rome is a big city. I walked and thought about what I should say to the Pope that nobody else would say to him, and which I might never have another opportunity to say. I must not forget any of the important things. I felt I was back at school and about to take an exam.
“It didn’t stop raining. Drizzle at times, heavier rain at other times, and then there was a really torrential downpour. My clothing was soaked and I could feel drops of water running down my back. I was walking along a broad deserted street with walls to left and right, wet trees, it was getting dark. In the distance I could see the skeleton of the Colosseum, and nothing else. Well, fine, I would walk to the Colosseum and get a bus there, I decided. I had just come right up to a telephone kiosk. The door opened a little and a wet girl shouted to me in English, ‘Father, come in here with us!’
“I peeped into the kiosk. There were two of them in there, very young hippies, a boy and a girl, festooned with necklaces and bracelets of seashells and colored stones. They were such sweet children. They were having supper. There was a large bottle of water in the corner and in their hands they had a split baguette and some tomatoes. I squeezed in. There was room for three.
“They were from Birmingham. The girl looked very much like you, and so did the boy. They asked where I had come from and I said I was from Israel. They were terribly pleased and immediately asked if they could come and visit me. I invited them to do so. They are hitchhiking, but when I said it wasn’t possible to hitchhike to Israel because they would have to cross the sea, they laughed at me. What was wrong with going through the Balkans, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Syria?
“So look out, my dear. They’ll be here soon. The girl’s name was Patricia, and the boy’s … now I’ve forgotten.
“We ate their bread and tomatoes, talked about this and that, I left them in the telephone kiosk and went to the bus. The monastery hostel where I was staying was damp and cold and my clothes did not dry overnight, so I went to see Karol very well washed but also very damp.
“I was met by Stanisław on the same stairs where we had seen each other before and he invited me to the papal chambers, next to the cathedral. A door opened and he took me along a corridor to a room. I waited there. I looked and saw bookshelves, a library. A long table. It was fairly gloomy. A door opened to one side and the Pope emerged. He was dressed simply in a white soutane, soft slippers on his feet, leather, with holes. I saw they were from Kraków. His stockings were white and thick. He embraced me, and poked me fairly hard in the stomach.
“‘Hey, you’re getting fat! Are they feeding you well?’
“‘Not badly. Come and see us, Holy Father, we will treat you to some Middle Eastern food!’
“‘Brother Daniel,’ he said, ‘we have known each other for more than forty years and all that time ago we were already on familiar terms and you called me by a different name.’
“‘Of course, Lolek, we all had different names.’
“‘Yes, Dieter,’ he smiled, and it was like a permission to return to the past, an invitation to a frank conversation. Hilda, I was so glad for him. I liked him even more. When a man rises so high he usually loses a lot, but Lolek has lost nothing.
“That is how it was, Hilda. What are you gaping at? I have known the Pope since 1945. He’s from Kraków, for heaven’s sake! I was a novice there, then I studied there. We served in the same diocese. We were friends. We traveled to give sermons. He didn’t like traveling at that time, so sometimes I stood in for him. That’s how things were.
“The secretary was with us, standing alongside, but it was as if he wasn’t there. We went to the chapel, a small chapel with benches with cushions for kneeling on.”
“Velvet cushions?” Hilda could not help asking.
“Yes, velvet, and with crests. A lot of doors. A server entered one and brought out the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan. We knelt and prayed silently. Then the Pope got up and took me to the dining room.
“A long table, for twelve people or so, three settings. I thought there would be a supper of one hundred people, but there was nobody.
“He went on to say that he had been wanting to talk to me for a long time, that he knew how difficult the situation of a Catholic priest and monk was in the Holy Land in our days. At that I got a little irate. ‘In Israel,’ I said.
“He is a clever man and immediately saw what I was getting at. The Vatican State does not recognize the existence of the State of Israel! He guided the conversation very carefully but not disingenuously.
“‘Of course,’ I said, ‘the position of a Christian has never been easy, and the position of a Jew is also far from easy, as Peter testifies. But how about being a Jewish Christian in Israel in the twentieth century? That really is something. There are such people, however, and it gladdens me because it is not so important how many people there are in the Jewish Church—ten, one hundred, or one thousand—but that they exist, and that testifies to the fact that Jews have accepted Christ. This is the Church in Israel, but the Vatican does not recognize Israel.’
“‘Daniel, I know. We have our Christians there, and we are in some sense hostages. Politics has to be carefully balanced in order not to irritate the Arabs, or the Muslims, or our brother Christians. There are no theological reasons, but there are political reasons. You understand that better than I do.’ He seemed to be waiting for me to sympathize, but I could not. ‘I would not like to be in your position,’ I said. ‘Where there is politics, there is disgrace.’
“‘Wait. Wait a little. Even so, we are moving very quickly. People cannot keep up with us. Their ideas change slowly.’
“‘But if you don’t have time to change them, your successor may not wish to.’ I said everything that was on my mind. At that. the server brought the meal. It was not Italian, but Polish: a dish of zakuski—cheese, Kraków sausage. Matka Boska! I hadn’t seen sausage like that since I left Poland. Also a bottle of water and a decanter of wine. They brought soup, then bigos. I couldn’t tell whether it was in my honor or whether the Pontiff retains old habits.