The digital clocks at the bottom corners of the computer screens on the laps of the monks of Cudi Dagh all display 4:02:34 a.m., 10/17/94. The screens flicker brightly, as if they are bursting into flame, then they show me holding Sarah, bloodied and lifeless, in the dim light of the mushroom house. I am screaming without sound, as if in a silent movie. The gun drops from my fingers. Ott Bowles, with a bullet hole in his leg, slides across the floor toward the gun.
The computer screens cannot show what Ott Bowles is thinking at that moment, but I know. His soul is mine now, and we are forever one. He is thinking about Amina, Barratte, and the Rabuns of Kamenz; he is thinking about the Schriebergs and how they have been ungrateful; he is thinking about the world and how it has been merciless; he is thinking about Holden Hurley and Sam Mansour and how my husband has destroyed them; he is thinking about Tim Shelly and how I have killed him and my own child; he is thinking about how he rushed forward to help us out of the mushroom house but how I shot him down in cold blood; he is thinking about how unjust and unfair life has been.
Most of all, Otto Rabun Bowles is thinking about justice.
He knows now the documentary will never be aired, and that he will be forever misunderstood, blamed, and convicted for Tim’s and Sarah’s deaths. The Rabuns have always been misunderstood, blamed, convicted for things they did not do.
The computer screens on the laps of the monks finally show what I have been unable to accept from the moment of my arrival in Shemaya. Ott Bowles raises the gun and fires three silent shots into my chest. I slump over on top of Sarah. Moments later, police officers storm the mushroom house. They had been able to trace the e-mails after all. The computer screens go blank.
41
The giant fist of the storm pounds the roof of the monastery of Cudi Dagh, demanding that the guilty appear for sentencing. When the storm is not appeased, the mountain itself begins to quake, and the sea overtakes the summit, bursting through the door of the monastery. The one-armed Savior on the menorah breaks free from his nails and tumbles head over heels into the water, but none of the monks dare to retrieve him-and it might be that none of them care-for he alone would spare the condemned, and there is no room left in the monastery of Cudi Dagh for forgiveness.
“Find him!” I scream, but I am not searching for the fallen Savior. I am hunting for the sinner, Otto Rabun Bowles, and I burn with the desire to become the instrument of his torture and within earshot of his shrieks. The thunderclap of electricity that too gently ended his life is only the beginning of what I have planned for him.
Holden Hurley leaps from his stool in a blind panic, believing it is his soul the storm hounds; and perhaps it is, for when he reaches the door of the monastery he is vaporized instantly by a bolt of lightning, leaving behind only the shape of his silhouette burned into the wood. Barratte Rabun, Albrecht Bosch, and Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson look after him in horror but decide to follow him, if for no other reason than that it spares them the difficulty of deciding what to do for themselves. They, too, are disintegrated immediately by three more bolts of lightning.
The water is now up to my knees, and, for the first time, I see Bo and my Grandpa Cuttler sitting in a corner of the monastery, oblivious to the waters rising around them, staring at a single computer held between them. Grandpa Cuttler doesn’t understand computers and is perplexed by the blank screen; together they press the keys, trying desperately to restart the machine like the police officers who raided the mushroom house that morning tried desperately to restart my heart.
After photographing the crime scene at the mushroom house, the coroner took Sarah and me to the Chester County morgue. Bo called Karen and asked her to be there with him when he identified our bodies. She was the logical choice, even though he was Jewish. Karen had baptized Sarah just six months earlier over the beautiful silver font at Old Swedes’ Church-to give us options, I reasoned, and to keep peace in my family and hold theological doors open if Judaism didn’t work out and I decided not to convert. Confident that beautiful morning that Christ himself had claimed Sarah as his own, Karen lifted her high for the congregation to witness the blessed miracle of faith and water, and beaming with a mother’s own pride-because Bo and I had asked Karen to be Sarah’s godmother-she carried her new goddaughter up into the pulpit with her to deliver the sermon. Sarah listened without a sound, as if she yearned to understand.
Karen prayed hard for Christ to be with Bo and her in the morgue that day when the coroner pulled the sheets back. She prayed for Him to reclaim the child He had accepted so recently and the woman, wife, mother, and friend who had been taken away. She anointed our heads with holy oil and pleaded for our souls. But Christ did not come, at least in a form Bo could recognize, and he howled at Karen in anguish:
“Where’s your Savior, Priest? Goddamn Him, where is He?”
It was a taunt that the terrorized Jews in the death camps might have been heard to rail at the few equally terrorized Christians who shared their misery, a half-mocking, half-imploring cry.
“Where is He?” Bo’s voice cracked; and with it cracked the Reverend Busfield’s once durable faith.
A raging torrent of water fills the monastery. Cudi Dagh is being swallowed whole by the flood. Bo, my grandfather, and my parents flee in terror, but Bo sees the one-armed Christ bobbing in the water and looks back at Karen.
“There’s your Savior, Priest!” he laughs maniacally. “Justice nailed Him to the cross, and now justice is setting Him free!”
Karen splashes after the broken Christ in the same way we chased after crayfish in the Little Juniata River. She lunges, but He escapes through her fingers, disappearing beneath the water.
“I can’t find Him!” she cries. “I can’t find Him!” Twice more she sees Him, and twice more He slips through her fingers as the waters rise, carrying Him out into the storm.
Karen is the last monk to leave the monastery. On her way out she pulls off the white stole I gave her and her winged Air Force insignia, and throws them into the fire on top of the charred remains of Barratte Rabun’s computer, which is still burning. Karen does not see the rising waters quench the flames and carry the stole and the insignia back out of the hearth unharmed. They float freely together for a moment, like a dove and a raven in search of dry land. The stole spots the long branches of the menorah first, then the insignia comes, and together they cling to the branches until the waters engulf the menorah too. At the last second, as the menorah disappears beneath a whirlpool of water, the stole and the insignia take flight again, searching the waters for a sign of compassion.
The water is chest deep now. Elymas grabs my hand.
“We must reach the ark,” he shouts, “before it is too late.”
I look into his eyes, and the monastery disappears.