After several minutes, when it was clear that the church had emptied, Savas stepped out of a black Lincoln Continental. His polished shoes slapped the pavement as he made his way toward the steps. He wore a black suit, formal yet unimpressive in its make. Functional. His shoes clacked up the stairs to bring him before the entrance, where he crossed himself and pushed one of the doors open slowly, peering inside. Satisfied, he stepped through completely and let the door close softly behind him.
Inside the church, a palpable stillness hung in the air along with the remaining incense. It was always like this, he thought, taking comfort from the fact. That period after the service when no other human being was around seemed to him the most holy, devoid of the voices and noises of men and women, yet still full with what he could only think of as the spirits of the worshippers, or the angels themselves still lingering. The space held a thoughtful, prayerful silence more pregnant than the chanting itself. He dropped several coins into the slot underneath the rows of beeswax candles, rows of varying lengths and thicknesses beside the icons at the front of the narthex. He took two candles and lit them from those already placed in the sand, thinking first of his son, then of his ex-wife. He crossed himself again, kissed the icon of Christ, and stepped into the nave.
The lights were very low, and the candles around the body of the church shone brightly. He could smell the incense now. Father Timothy was stowing away his vestments. He looked up, squinting at the visitor in the pews.
“John?” his voice echoed in the dim air between them. “John Savas?”
“Hello, Father.”
The priest smiled. “John! It's good to see you after all these years.”
“I wasn't sure that it would be,” he replied.
The priest frowned. “Of course it is! Let's not have any such nonsense from you about this.” The priest came forward. John Savas took his hand, kissed it, and crossed himself. The priest tried vainly to pull his hand back and wave the traditional gesture away, but he submitted to it in the end.
“Father Timothy, I've come for confession. That is, if you have the time tonight.”
The priest stood suddenly, still and serious. He gave Savas a long look. “OK, John, give me a second. I was just putting everything away. Please, wait for me in the corner, by the icon of Saint Nicholas.”
Savas nodded and walked over to the left side of the nave. There, from just above the floor to more than fifteen feet up the side of the wall, was the icon of the great ascetic from Anatolia, now western Turkey, his brown robes flowing from sandaled feet to the receding hairline at the top of his head. Savas always found it amusing how Western Christians had taken this harsh monk and dressed him up in a red suit, strapped him to a sleigh with reindeer out of the pagan Northern myths, and made him so fat it was hard to imagine him ever fasting. This was the man who had slapped a heretical bishop at the First Council of Nicea, after all! As a child, Savas never quite felt like telling his friends that underneath the icon in his church, in a golden case about the size of a breadbox, were the bones of Santa Claus himself. It was likely that any explanations of the veneration of relics would have failed to bridge this cultural divide.
Father Timothy bustled over and laid a prayer book on a marble handrail. He gestured to a chair, but Savas shook his head. He'd been sitting too much, analyzing too much, until his eyes were blurry. He'd stand for this.
“Behold, my child, Christ stands here invisibly receiving your confession. Do not be ashamed and do not fear, and do not withhold anything from me; but without doubt, tell all you have done and receive forgiveness from the Lord Jesus Christ. Lo, He is before us, and I am only a witness, bearing testimony before Him of all things which you say to me. But if you conceal anything from me, you shall have the greater sin. Take heed, therefore, lest having come to the physician, you depart unhealed.”
It was a routine Savas had known since his days as an altar boy. Yet now it was alien, because he was alien, because he had come and gone through a place that had changed him. He did not know anymore who he was, or who God was. The priest sat down in the chair. He had aged significantly since John Savas was a boy, and it showed in his movements and in his stamina.
“I'll make this short, Father. Not that I'm happy with myself or anything. But there are things that are real and important, and I need to say them. Most important, I suppose, is that I don't know anymore if I believe in God.”
The priest showed no outward sign of surprise or dismay at this admission. He merely replied after Savas's long pause, “Go on, John.”
John Savas looked up at the icon of Saint Nicholas. Who was he? Who am I?
“I'm serious about that, Father. I don't disbelieve. But I realized that the idea of God I had in my mind couldn't be real. I mean, the idea from my parents, priests, Sunday school teachers, friends, and family — the myth we were all accepting, I just can't believe in that anymore. Whatever God is, it's not this simple, orderly, Father Christmas idea so many have. I really don't know if there is a God. I certainly don't know the nature of God. I don't know how to trust any man to tell me what the truth is.”
Father Timothy gazed at him in silence, impassively. After a few more moments went by, during which time Savas had not spoken, the priest nodded slowly, as if to himself.
“John, I'm not going to tell you to make a pilgrimage to the island of Tinos and crawl up the hill on your knees to the Church of the Megalohari. I will say that you are at a most dangerous, and yet promising place. Dangerous, because your soul stands on the edge of nothingness into which it might fall, forever to be lost. Promising because only there can you truly reach out to the Mystery that is God.”
“Father, I don't feel like I'm reaching out to anything. I can't see anything leading me anywhere. If there's a cliff, I won't know it.”
“John, you are reaching out, or you would not be here tonight. I would ask you not to turn away from prayer, if you can do that. That is your link to God.”
“OK, Father. I'll try. But I don't know who or what I'm praying to.”
The old priest smiled. “None of us truly do. When we do, we are either entering sainthood or staring at a false idol.”
The priest stood up from the chair and opened the small leather-bound book he had brought. Savas was surprised, as he had not expected the priest to accept his confession. But habit was long in him, and he knelt down before Father Timothy, who placed the stole over his head.
“O God, our Savior, Who by Thy prophet Nathan granted unto repented David pardon of his transgressions, and has accepted the Manasses’ prayer of penitence, do Thou, in Thy love toward mankind, accept also Thy servant John who repents of his sins which he has committed, overlooking all that he has done, pardoning his offenses and passing by his iniquities. Unto Thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”
The priest finished reading the prayers. John Savas stood and crossed himself. Father Timothy walked him to the door of the church.
“This week's events have brought you here, haven't they?” he asked.
John Savas stared up into the night sky, hearing the rushing sounds of the subway line behind them. “They were the trigger. My life has brought me here, Father. I just don't know where it's taking me next.”