There was a cold breeze in the air that afternoon. Light fog mixed with the smoke coming out of the crematory chimney, giving form to a heavy mass that seemed to float forever before vanishing up in the sky. “Some days the smoke is darker, only God knows why”, it was what she said, but every single one of us knew what she meant. She meant that a thicker soul was leaving the funeral ash, darkened by deep thoughts, tightly holding on to the meaning of earthly things all the way to heaven. She believed in stuff like heaven. He did too. He used to say that “the first thing God will do when I die is apologize to me for the people who pamper his name around”. Strange words indeed for a priest. But quite effective for an ordinary man. It was as if we could still see him, being greeted by the shameful face of a divinity too small for the high amplitude of his being. When it was all over, she took me by the arm she said “you know, the first thing I ever noticed about him was that ugly hump. I remember I called him the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He laughed and said it was appropriate, him being a priest and all.” “You must miss him very much, Emile”, I replied, confident of the answer. “Only as much as you can miss a man who turned your life around. Only as much as you.”
Emile was, of course, being modest. On the subject of lives that were shaken to their core, she could teach more than be taught. She was, after all, just a girl who threw a funny comment at him while waiting tables at a bistro in Paris where he used to sit when on vacation. Without his collar. And still, she kind of nailed him on who he was. Not the priest thing – that didn’t interest him much. The hunchback, now that was a different story. He was kind of proud of the hump on his back. He told me so himself, one night, in the midst of some abstract conversation on life choices. I can still see him, sitting on the floor, with a cup of tea, which I guess is the substitute for when you don’t drink or smoke and still want to look cool as you talk with something on your hands other than a glass or a cigar. He told me, “you know something, people are always saying you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Well, maybe that’s true. But you should definitely judge the person reading the book by the book’s cover”. I was intrigued. “How’s so?”, I asked. “Well, books should not be kept immaculate. They are supposed to look used: pages should be folded, and scratched, with little notes on the side. That’s how you know you have really read and understood it. There is no knowledge you can obtain from something you don’t feel. Books, much like life, are not understandable just from intellectual contemplation of words and symbols. You must take a hands-on approach to life. Or else life will just be immaculately pure while sitting on the shelf. Clean, but useless. That’s why I am going away, you know? This hump on my back is here because I keep limiting myself, so much that I can’t even walk up straight. I want it to be different. You see, I met this French girl in Paris and I’m quitting Rome and moving there. You see, this is all wrong, this stern contemplation and preaching from priests who know nothing about life because they haven’t felt it. I think now I will really do God’s work.”
I don’t know about God’s work. But he did feel life. That was the last time I saw him before Emile called me about the funeral. “Please, come with me to our house. There is something there that he would like you to have. And I would like you to see the place where we lived after he quit Rome and came here to Paris”, she said, still holding my arm. And so the high security car took me to this small apartment in Montparnasse. I could only go because no one knew I was here, otherwise it would seem a scandal. The house had a very nice view of the city. I could picture him, hands behind his back, staring out the window, and thinking what to do next. He quit Paris with Emile soon after arriving. Their whereabouts was undetermined for a while. He would send me postcards featuring short telegraphic messages from faraway places. Then, he started sending me just the postcard. He had become a professional photographer, from what he said, and was selling his pictures to postcard makers. He got a ton of them free, so sometimes I even received more than one at the same time, and then I had to wait another month until they brought me the next postcard package together with the rest of my mail. It was sad for me. I had never been without him for so long, ever since he was a little boy entering the seminar full of bright ideas. “You and me, we can turn this thing around, we’ll be rebels inside the Church”, he told me all the time. “Do you know what they will say when they find out about us? Imagine the headlines!” I never thought he would leave the church to travel the world doing odd jobs with a French girl. But then again, he was never predictable, or stable. He was just always brilliant.
“Here it is”, she said, as she brought a small package while I was staring out the window, with my hands behind my back. “Thank you. Do you know what it is?”, I stupidly asked, and she sensed my fear. I did not know what I was going to find inside. I did not want to. “Sorry, you’ll have to open it.” And open it, I did. Inside, there was a little toy unicorn, similar to the ones little girls play with. It had a note attached to its leg. It read “you can still show them that they exist”. I knew what he meant. I can still picture him, lying naked in my bed, speaking very fast, and smiling, all excited about the World and the million chances that we should create. He would tell me, “you, imagine you, such an important man. Millions of people will follow your every word. Imagine how liberating it will be when they make you Pope and you show up there, by the window, holding my hand and kissing me on the lips. Just imagine it. A non-celibate gay Pope. To the mob down there, it will be just like finding out that unicorns exist”. Of course, at the time, I was just an influential Cardinal in the Vatican, and him a young British priest born in London, not even half my age. Look at me now, boy. Part of our dream is done. They have made me Pope. But you betrayed our dream with Emile. And now, I have betrayed it with a silly hat and a name in history.
“He was a brilliant man, you know? His legacy will live on everywhere we went. It was funny to watch. He grew so much as a person, he took so many different jobs, had so many skills, and yet he always focused his work on helping other people. Once, I taught him to cook so he could get a job at some dictator’s palace. He ended up his political advisor. Another time, he started selling pictures to make postcards, and used that knowledge to become a war photographer and send pictures of all kinds of abuses to newspapers. We spent more than a decade going from one place to the other. We always came back to Paris. He said this house was our base. And two days ago he, the man who never stopped and did not like to rest, he was laying in bed. And his heart just stopped. I don’t understand it, his heart just stopped.” And then she started to cry. I did not make any move towards her, and did not show any intention to hug her. I felt it was not appropriate. I turned my back instead, to give her privacy, and again stared out the window. Light rain was now coming down, slightly clearing the fog. That great man we both loved had died from pure exhaustion.
“You know, Emile, it was that thing you told him in the cafe. That’s what made him leave Rome and come to you”, I said, quite sternly. “The joke about the hunchback?”, she asked, sobbing. “Yes, but not in the way you think. Well, it was better this way. I think he found the life he always wanted with you. And I am happy for him.” Indeed, she did not have the smallest idea why he left me and came to her. I did. That little comment of her about the hump made him realize he was bending down to a lesser goal. He could not stand up straight because I was his low ceiling. The funeral made me realize that. It was too lonely at the top for him, because no one could see or envision his true dream of a different World. And so he settled for the first objective he could get, which was me, me revealing to the World that the Pope can be gay. But that was a second hand objective. Notre Dame, he used to tell me, has the best view of Paris. “Why do people settle for the view from the Eiffel Tower, when here they can see the actual Eiffel Tower?”, he asked, truthfully puzzled. “Quasimodo had the most fun! Can you imagine, roaming free from tower to tower? I can only imagine what it must be to live staring straight to the horizon. Not upwards to God, but right in front, and still be on top of the World.” With me, in Rome, it was always laying low so no one would see us, and looking up fearing God. Emile was his skyline, his Notre Dame, from which he could look right in front and see all the great Towers of the World. God had nothing on him.
For a moment, Emile left me alone in the room. She excused herself and went to the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. I took my eyes off the window, made sure she had left, and put the unicorn back into the box. It was too late for little girl toys. While pulling myself together, I noticed a large bookcase, filled with scattered books. They were really messed up, in no particular order. Their covers were torn, many had some pages ripped in two, others missed some pages at all. “Are these his books, Emile?”, I shouted so she could hear me from the bathroom. “Sort of. We bought them together. I guess they are mine now. Why, do you want any?”, and her answer shocked me more than anything that day. And from the first time since I knew he had died, I cried. Poor boy, you wanted so much to be a book used up by life, that you ended up letting life take the best of you. Your heart was ripped apart like one of these books. And you wanted it to be so. And still, it was as if I heard your voice telling me “half a book destroyed by time and intense reading, is still better than any book forever sitting in a shelf”. And that is the reason why you were brilliant. Not the crazy dream you sucked me into, and not your roaming around the World. The half-torn book you wrote with your life, that is why you are brilliant, and that is why you will always be just like thick fog, forever present in my life.
Emile was, of course, being modest. On the subject of lives that were shaken to their core, she could teach more than be taught. She was, after all, just a girl who threw a funny comment at him while waiting tables at a bistro in Paris where he used to sit when on vacation. Without his collar. And still, she kind of nailed him on who he was. Not the priest thing – that didn’t interest him much. The hunchback, now that was a different story. He was kind of proud of the hump on his back. He told me so himself, one night, in the midst of some abstract conversation on life choices. I can still see him, sitting on the floor, with a cup of tea, which I guess is the substitute for when you don’t drink or smoke and still want to look cool as you talk with something on your hands other than a glass or a cigar. He told me, “you know something, people are always saying you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Well, maybe that’s true. But you should definitely judge the person reading the book by the book’s cover”. I was intrigued. “How’s so?”, I asked. “Well, books should not be kept immaculate. They are supposed to look used: pages should be folded, and scratched, with little notes on the side. That’s how you know you have really read and understood it. There is no knowledge you can obtain from something you don’t feel. Books, much like life, are not understandable just from intellectual contemplation of words and symbols. You must take a hands-on approach to life. Or else life will just be immaculately pure while sitting on the shelf. Clean, but useless. That’s why I am going away, you know? This hump on my back is here because I keep limiting myself, so much that I can’t even walk up straight. I want it to be different. You see, I met this French girl in Paris and I’m quitting Rome and moving there. You see, this is all wrong, this stern contemplation and preaching from priests who know nothing about life because they haven’t felt it. I think now I will really do God’s work.”
I don’t know about God’s work. But he did feel life. That was the last time I saw him before Emile called me about the funeral. “Please, come with me to our house. There is something there that he would like you to have. And I would like you to see the place where we lived after he quit Rome and came here to Paris”, she said, still holding my arm. And so the high security car took me to this small apartment in Montparnasse. I could only go because no one knew I was here, otherwise it would seem a scandal. The house had a very nice view of the city. I could picture him, hands behind his back, staring out the window, and thinking what to do next. He quit Paris with Emile soon after arriving. Their whereabouts was undetermined for a while. He would send me postcards featuring short telegraphic messages from faraway places. Then, he started sending me just the postcard. He had become a professional photographer, from what he said, and was selling his pictures to postcard makers. He got a ton of them free, so sometimes I even received more than one at the same time, and then I had to wait another month until they brought me the next postcard package together with the rest of my mail. It was sad for me. I had never been without him for so long, ever since he was a little boy entering the seminar full of bright ideas. “You and me, we can turn this thing around, we’ll be rebels inside the Church”, he told me all the time. “Do you know what they will say when they find out about us? Imagine the headlines!” I never thought he would leave the church to travel the world doing odd jobs with a French girl. But then again, he was never predictable, or stable. He was just always brilliant.
“Here it is”, she said, as she brought a small package while I was staring out the window, with my hands behind my back. “Thank you. Do you know what it is?”, I stupidly asked, and she sensed my fear. I did not know what I was going to find inside. I did not want to. “Sorry, you’ll have to open it.” And open it, I did. Inside, there was a little toy unicorn, similar to the ones little girls play with. It had a note attached to its leg. It read “you can still show them that they exist”. I knew what he meant. I can still picture him, lying naked in my bed, speaking very fast, and smiling, all excited about the World and the million chances that we should create. He would tell me, “you, imagine you, such an important man. Millions of people will follow your every word. Imagine how liberating it will be when they make you Pope and you show up there, by the window, holding my hand and kissing me on the lips. Just imagine it. A non-celibate gay Pope. To the mob down there, it will be just like finding out that unicorns exist”. Of course, at the time, I was just an influential Cardinal in the Vatican, and him a young British priest born in London, not even half my age. Look at me now, boy. Part of our dream is done. They have made me Pope. But you betrayed our dream with Emile. And now, I have betrayed it with a silly hat and a name in history.
“He was a brilliant man, you know? His legacy will live on everywhere we went. It was funny to watch. He grew so much as a person, he took so many different jobs, had so many skills, and yet he always focused his work on helping other people. Once, I taught him to cook so he could get a job at some dictator’s palace. He ended up his political advisor. Another time, he started selling pictures to make postcards, and used that knowledge to become a war photographer and send pictures of all kinds of abuses to newspapers. We spent more than a decade going from one place to the other. We always came back to Paris. He said this house was our base. And two days ago he, the man who never stopped and did not like to rest, he was laying in bed. And his heart just stopped. I don’t understand it, his heart just stopped.” And then she started to cry. I did not make any move towards her, and did not show any intention to hug her. I felt it was not appropriate. I turned my back instead, to give her privacy, and again stared out the window. Light rain was now coming down, slightly clearing the fog. That great man we both loved had died from pure exhaustion.
“You know, Emile, it was that thing you told him in the cafe. That’s what made him leave Rome and come to you”, I said, quite sternly. “The joke about the hunchback?”, she asked, sobbing. “Yes, but not in the way you think. Well, it was better this way. I think he found the life he always wanted with you. And I am happy for him.” Indeed, she did not have the smallest idea why he left me and came to her. I did. That little comment of her about the hump made him realize he was bending down to a lesser goal. He could not stand up straight because I was his low ceiling. The funeral made me realize that. It was too lonely at the top for him, because no one could see or envision his true dream of a different World. And so he settled for the first objective he could get, which was me, me revealing to the World that the Pope can be gay. But that was a second hand objective. Notre Dame, he used to tell me, has the best view of Paris. “Why do people settle for the view from the Eiffel Tower, when here they can see the actual Eiffel Tower?”, he asked, truthfully puzzled. “Quasimodo had the most fun! Can you imagine, roaming free from tower to tower? I can only imagine what it must be to live staring straight to the horizon. Not upwards to God, but right in front, and still be on top of the World.” With me, in Rome, it was always laying low so no one would see us, and looking up fearing God. Emile was his skyline, his Notre Dame, from which he could look right in front and see all the great Towers of the World. God had nothing on him.
For a moment, Emile left me alone in the room. She excused herself and went to the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. I took my eyes off the window, made sure she had left, and put the unicorn back into the box. It was too late for little girl toys. While pulling myself together, I noticed a large bookcase, filled with scattered books. They were really messed up, in no particular order. Their covers were torn, many had some pages ripped in two, others missed some pages at all. “Are these his books, Emile?”, I shouted so she could hear me from the bathroom. “Sort of. We bought them together. I guess they are mine now. Why, do you want any?”, and her answer shocked me more than anything that day. And from the first time since I knew he had died, I cried. Poor boy, you wanted so much to be a book used up by life, that you ended up letting life take the best of you. Your heart was ripped apart like one of these books. And you wanted it to be so. And still, it was as if I heard your voice telling me “half a book destroyed by time and intense reading, is still better than any book forever sitting in a shelf”. And that is the reason why you were brilliant. Not the crazy dream you sucked me into, and not your roaming around the World. The half-torn book you wrote with your life, that is why you are brilliant, and that is why you will always be just like thick fog, forever present in my life.
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