The room swims in a watery heat. A thin tatter of cloud flies from one alp. Ice crystals. Hot as it is, though, and bad as I feel, my eye wanders around the room appraising its construction. The rectory was built, I remember, early in the Ecuadorian wars, when there were bomb scares and a lot of talk about shelters. The rectory was to serve as a bomb shelter in case of attack. It is windowless and double-walled and equipped with back-up electrical systems. Yes, I recall some restiveness in the congregation about the cost of the generator, which was the latest type and heaviest duty — the sort that could run indefinitely without a human soul to service it. Samantha liked to imagine it humming away for thirty years after everyone was dead. Yes, I remember the sight of Monsignor Schleifkopf presiding over the control panel with that special proprietorship priests develop for things they don’t own. Here was an oddity: that in the latter days when laymen owned everything they didn’t care much for anything, yet some priests who owned little or nothing developed ferocious attachments for ordinary objects — I once knew a monk who owned nothing, had given it all away for Christ, yet coveted the monastery typewriter with a jealous love, flew into rages when another monk touched it.
The Alps swim in the heat. My tongue swells and cleaves to my palate. Stale hot bourbon breath whistles in my nose.
Monsignor Schleifkopf used to hover over the panel, one hand caressing the metal, the other snapping switches like a bomber pilot….
The control panel. Wait. I close my eyes and try to think. Sweat begins to drip through my eyebrows. I remember. It is in the walk-in vault behind me. Here Monsignor Schleifkopf kept the valuables, gold chalices, patens, the Sunday collection, bingo money, and yes, even the daily gleanings of the poor box after the drugheads from the swamp began to break into it.
I feel my way inside. The vault door is open but it opens toward the glass bricks and it is dark inside. The panel was in the tiny foyer, wasn’t it? I stumble over a bingo squirrel-cage. Feel the walls. Yes, here it is: rows of switches in a console of satiny metal, switches for lights, air-conditioning, electronic carillon. Some are up, some are down. Is up on? I close my eyes and try to remember (I was on the Building Committee). What time of day was the rectory evacuated? The Christmas Eve riots started in the afternoon and the Monsignor barely got away with his skin — that night.
Panting and sweating in the dark. Somewhere in my head two ideas grope for each other but it is too hot to … I return to the chair and look at the alp and the banner of ice crystals. The panorama of the high alpine valley is spoiled by a large metal grill set in the wall beside the roadside crucifix. It is the main intake vent of the air-conditioner.
I look at it, sweat, pant, and sock my forehead, trying to think what it is I already know.
Well but of course.
At least it is a chance. And the chance must be taken. I’ve got to get out of here.
Think.
The compressor is in the garage. The return duct therefore must run along the wall past the vault, past the kitchen whose inside wall is, must be, continuous with the back wall of the garage. Yes. I was on the Building Committee.
Sitting on the floor. A bit cooler here. I feel the metal frame of the grill. Phillips screws. Hm, a dime is no good. Look around. Yonder is Saint Michael on a pedestal, a somewhat prissy bronze archangel dressed to the nines, berobed like Queen Victoria but holding a proper bronze sword. Which I know is loose in his hand because I used to fiddle with it during the Holy Name meetings.
Slide it out of the bronze hand, a foot-long papercutter and, as I had recalled, dull. Dull enough to turn a Phillips screw.
The grill out and set down carefully on the rug, I stick my head in the duct. Plenty of room to crawl. Close my eyes and try to remember whether the compressor stands against the back wall of the garage or a ways out. It better be the latter. Also: does the jut of the garage from the side of the rectory clear the corner so that it is visible from the front of the church, where, behind the concrete screen, a guard is almost certain to be stationed? I can’t remember.
Back to the console in the vestibule of the vault. The problem is to create a diversion, sufficient noise to cover my exit in the garage, where I’ll have to kick out a panel and make a racket. The trouble is I don’t know how many Bantu guards are here or where they’re stationed. Is there only the one in front?
Feel the switches again. Some are up, some down, but which position is on? Here’s the emergency starter button. Monsignor Schleifkopf — God bless him for his love of manufactured things, their gear and tackle and trim, good Buicks, Arnold Palmer irons — bought the best nickel-cadmium battery money could buy, a $500 job with a self-charging feature guaranteed for ten years.
The four speaker electronic carillon sits atop the silo tower a good two hundred yards from here and even farther from the garage. If I could start the carillon, it would create a commotion and the guards would, surely, look for the trouble where the sound was and not here. But which is the carillon switch? No telling. The only thing to do is take a chance and throw all switches up — surely up is on — and turn all knobs to the right.
Flip all switches up.
Hit the starter button for a second just for the feel of it. Urr, it goes, the very sound of an old Dodge starting up on a winter morning.
Get ready then. Resisting an impulse to cross myself, I press the button.
Urr-urr-urr and then BRRRRRROOM.
On goes the twelve-cylinder motor, God bless General Motors.
On goes the light.
On goes the air-conditioner compressor and blower.
On goes the carillon—
— a shriek of sound. The carillon resumes in the middle of the phrase of O Little Town of Bethlehem it left off five years ago on Christmas Eve:
… how still I see thee lie.
I find myself running around the office with Saint Michael’s sword, heart thumping wildly. The sound and the lights are panicking. The sound is an alarm, up go the lights and here’s the burglar, me, caught in the act. The thing to do is get out of here, I tell myself, loping around the Alps. The hot air is moving out.
Thinking now: do this, pocket the screws, hop into the intake vent and pull the grill into place after me. If they see no screws, they won’t notice.
It’s tight in here, but a few feet along and I’m in a cloaca of ducts converging from the church. The air, thundering toward the 100-ton Frigiking (I was on the Building Committee), is already cooler.
Suddenly it comes over me that I am, for the moment, completely safe. Why not lie down in this dark cool place, an alpine pass howling with mountain gales, and take a little nap? Indulgeas locum refrigerii: refrigeration must be one of the attributes of heaven.
Now forty or fifty feet along and able to stand up. A cave of winds, black as the womb, but I’m against the unit, a great purring beast encased in metal filter mesh.
Press the panel to my right. Here I calculate is the garage. Metal bends and a chink of light opens. Daylight, moreover. At least the garage door is open. Try to see something. Cannot. Try to hear something. Nothing but the roar of the blower and compressor and soaring above, the piercing obligato of White Christmas:
May your days be merry and bright …
Feel along the edge of the panel. It is fastened by sheet-metal screws, one every three or four inches and screwed in from the outside. Discard Saint Michael’s sword. Try pushing one corner loose. No good.