A LIGHT BECKONED but it took him some time to become orientated. Where was he? What had happened? Then he remembered! He found that he was unable to stand up because the alcove was too small but it didn’t matter because the bookcase was swung open and he crawled out. The light he had seen was from the moonlight bathing the room in which he found himself. The lunar light streaming through the large leaded panes of the windows provided him with sufficient light to see the inert figure stretched out on the floor. Instinctively, he bunched himself and then relaxed as he recognized the man lying there. Bending down, he saw that Monsignor Michael Cronin was clad in just his pyjamas. Lechaim checked his pulse, strong enough! Must be drugged, Lechaim concluded but what was he doing lying on the floor? Who had put him there?
It suddenly dawned on Lechaim as he felt the breeze from the open windows playing on his body that he was naked and he tried to think. However, he found it difficult because he felt dizzy and there seemed to be no strength in his body. They had obviously given him something but what?
Whatever, he had to get the Monsignor out of there! Under normal circumstances, he would have lifted the Monsignor easily. Now he struggled to put the priest over his shoulder. The house was deathly silent as Lechaim carried the Monsignor out onto the patio skirting the house! It was strange, he thought, that there was no security in evidence. It all seemed so easy! He wasn’t about to linger and find out why though. Quickly, he made his way through the gardens but began to tire long before he found the road skirting the estate. What was wrong with him, he wondered? He had never felt this tired or weak before. With every step, he was becoming more and more disorientated until he was functioning purely on instinct. He started down the road skirting the estate knowing that he could not continue for too much longer.
Some distance away, on that same road, an old man, sitting in the back of a car, was listening to a married couple arguing. “I tell you it’s this way!” Giovanni insisted
“I tell you it's not!” Luisa said defiantly.
The old man smiled and glanced out at the darkened countryside but his mind was far away with the fish off the coast of his homeland. He swayed on the deck of the fishing boat as it chugged back into its home port in the Algarve. Never again, he knew, would he work in the blue waters and catch the mighty tuna. Strong hands were needed for that and his were gnarled from age and weathering, and so too, for that matter, was his body.
“What do you think, Grandpa? Is this the way home?” Giovanni asked.
“Leave him be and let him sleep!” Luisa replied and then turning to the old man in the back, she asked, “Are you all right, Grandpa?”
He smiled in acknowledgment and patted the black Labrador dog that was lying next to him with its snout in his lap. Luisa smiled in return and then turned back satisfied.
“See! We passed that church this morning!” Giovanni insisted as he pointed to the building that flashed by on his right side
“For goodness sake!” Luisa retorted angrily. “Give it a rest!” She was tired and wanted to get home by the shortest route possible. Giovanni, she knew from past experience, had a penchant for getting lost.
Her sharp response caused him concern. The baby was due in a few weeks and he wanted to keep her happy. Yet, she was as stubborn as he and they both hated admitting they were wrong!
There was a period of quiet while they both brooded.
He eventually broke the silence, changing the subject to pacify her. “What did you make of those lights in the sky earlier on?”
“Weird!” she replied. “UFO's perhaps?”
“Could be!” Giovanni agreed.
“What do you think Grandpa?”
There he goes again, she sighed, asking the old man what he thought. He was a nice old man, but he was, after all her great grandfather, being over ninety and very feeble-minded. Did Giovanni really expect to get a sensible answer out of him?
The old man smiled benignly and didn't answer. He found that it was best that way.
Luisa smiled at the old man again and asked, “All right, Grandpa?”
This standard question was her only real acknowledgment of him these days.
He nodded and smiled back again, his standard response to such a banal question, before turning his attention once again to the blackness outside. He too had wondered at the strange lights in the night sky which he saw well enough for, despite his age, he still had perfect eyesight. Most thought it remarkable but he knew the truth.
The lights that had darted to and throw in the night sky earlier reminded him of a time long ago when the sun had danced. His mind went back, as it often did, to his youth when a similar phenomenon had occurred. He had not seen it himself but his good friend had described it to him.
“What's happening, Manuel?”
“The sun! The sun is spinning!”
“Rommy was acting very odd earlier! Do you think he's all right?” Luisa asked as she glanced back at the dog lying content with its head burrowed in the old man's lap.
The dog’s ears pricked up at the sound of its name and it raised its head briefly.
Giovanni had noticed it also. Romulus, who was always so playful, had been trembling and kept nuzzling up to them as if he were afraid to be alone. Ever since they saw the lights, in fact.
“He seems all right now! I expect he's eaten something that didn't agree with him!” Giovanni replied.
Then again, Giovanni thought, the birds were not acting as they normally did either. The old man had brought some bread with him, as he always did, to feed the local birdlife but, for once, they were no birds to be seen. Her voice interrupted his contemplation.
“Slow down! You'll have an accident. You have a family now to consider!”
He looked lovingly at his pregnant wife as he said, “Sorry!” and slowed the car down till it was barely moving along!”
“Not that slow you fool!” she laughed and slapped him on the arm in fun.
“Stop!” the old man in the back yelled out, his voice demanding and forceful. Giovanni reacted immediately, slamming his foot on the foot brake and the car slithered to a stop. The dog fell forward banging its head on the back of Giovanni's seat and then started barking furiously.
“There!” the old man cried pointing ahead.
They looked and saw the reason for the old man’s excitement, a naked man walking along the road carrying someone in his arms.
Giovanni's heart raced as he realized that if the old man had not warned him when he did, he would have certainly hit the man. Thank God, he thought, for the old man's wonderful eyes.
“Quite, Rommy!” Giovanni ordered and the dog let out a few more barks in protest and then just growled. The old man's soothing touch on it gave the animal the reassurance it needed and it settled again beside him.
“Be careful!” Luisa warned as her husband released the brakes and drove slowly up to the man walking ahead. Giovanni could see that he was a big man and very muscular. Giovanni had once seen Michelangelo's “David” in Florence and this man could have posed for it. Stopping the car, he turned off the ignition and got out.
“Are you all right?” he asked hesitantly for he could see that the man was staggering. Big as the man was, he did not seem to pose a threat, Giovanni decided.
The man turned towards him and spoke but Giovanni did not understand him, because he spoke in a foreign language. Giovanni spoke but the man didn’t understand Italian or, at least, didn’t appear to do so. As Giovanni was trying to think of some way to make himself understood, the other, who was clearly exhausted, placed the man he had in his arms down on the grass verge at the side of the road. Giovanni watched as the man then lowered himself wearily to the ground.
Giovanni cautiously made his way over to the two men lying on the grass. They both appeared to be unconscious and he wondered what he should do. He knew it would be impossible to lift the large man into the car by himself. Luiza could not help because of her condition and the old man could not help himself, let alone Giovanni.
Luisa got out of the car but hung back, a little afraid. She had been watching the big man, and could not help but admire the perfection of his body. She could see the Saint Christopher medal hanging around the big man’s neck, and she was reassured by it. It was comforting, somehow, to know that he was a Christian because it seemed to make him less threatening to her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked her husband.
“Better cover them up, I guess! Then I’ll phone for an ambulance!” Giovanni replied as he went to the back of the car and opened the boot. Finding two blankets he always kept there for their many forays into the countryside, he returned. The older man, he noted, was still breathing but the big man did not appear to be. Giovanni bent over him and placed his hand on the man’s forehead and found that his skin was cold. It reminded Giovanni of the way his grandmother had felt when he kissed her goodbye as she lay in her coffin.
Satisfying himself that he had done all he could, Giovanni decided to drive down the road in search of a telephone. He glanced at the old man in the back of his car who now had his eyes closed and was laying with his head back on the seat, Romulus‘ head buried once again in his lap.
Giovanni patted the old man on the knee affectionately. “Thank you, Grandpa!” he muttered.
The old man was never complaining and in his more lucid moments had captivated Giovanni with tales of his life in Portugal. Now, the old man had probably saved him from hitting the two men on the road.
The old man opened his eyes at that moment and looked at him.
“What’s that Granddad?” he asked leaning closer as the old man started to mumble something!”
“Her message was for all mankind!” he whispered and then he closed his eyes again and his sigh was audible.
“You rest Granddad! You’ve had a busy day!”
The old man could not hear him, however. For that matter, he would never hear Giovanni again. His journey done, Sancho was returning to the house in Portugal where his sweet mother, Maria, and his good friend, Manuel Braga were waiting for him.
Lying at the side of the road, Lechaim’s journey was also nearing its end. He could hear a familiar drumming in his ears, soft at first, then becoming louder until it could no longer be ignored. It took his muddled brain a while to work out what it was - the sound a horse makes when it’s being ridden at a steady gallop. He opened his eyes but all he could see at first was a kaleidoscope of colours before him, while every now and then an image filtered through. A doctor bending over his bed, his mother crying, nurses, a hospital. Then he saw her with her arms outstretched and her red hair blowing about her face. Those green eyes of hers were full of the love she bore him. She was speaking to him now, that soft lilting voice of hers carrying on the wind.
“Sinead” he whispered.
“Yes, darling! I’m here!”
Then his spirit, no longer earthbound, was soaring up and up, and the stars filled his eyes. She clung to him and he knew he had the world in his arms - he was home.