Magicians and Brothers: A Novel

By Michael Gaski

It is September 1973. Brilliant young philosopher Phillip Kinsella, fleeing the political unrest of Chicagos anti-war protests and the social turbulence of racial demonstrations, arrives at the Sorbonne in Paris to begin what he believes to be a two-year postgraduate assignment. His intellectual pursuits, however, are soon disrupted by his new friends in his Latin Quarter neighborhood, and, as their mysteries are revealed, love, jealousy, and even Phillips secrets unravel in violence.

Ultimately cast adrift in Paris, a disillusioned Phillip is offered a research opportunity by an aging scientist, Professor Cortez. But the tranquility of this Navajo professors summer institute in New Mexico evaporates quickly as a mlange of science, heroism, and superstition intertwine. Inevitably drawn with Professor Cortez and his twin brother, Victor, into a vortex of violence in the dangerous mountain elevations of South America and an occluded realm where betrayal is exposed, Phillip is pushed to the limits of his faith. Now he must choose between his convictions and the Cortez brothers myth to save their lives and his own.

In this tale of adventure, the world of academic idealism collides with the human quest for earthly treasure as a philosophers beliefs are tested in ways he never could have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491750094

Michael Gaski

Michael Gaski was born in Cleveland, educated at the University of Detroit, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and The Ohio State University. He taught at Ohio State, the University of Chiang Mai, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and worked in Barcelona, Spain before returning to the United States. Michael currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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Copyright © 2014 Michael Gaski.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5010-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5009-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918581

iUniverse rev. date: 11/19/2014

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

FOR MY FAMILY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thanks to my friend, Joe Pawlosky, whose advice, careful reading, and encouragement helped to make Magicians and Brothers possible.

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday

PART ONE

T iny, graceful Nicole moved sleepily through the café doorway out into the early morning sun and directly to the nearest sidewalk table. She placed the white cup and saucer carefully in front of the grey-haired man who sat with his back to the window of Café Françoise, peering over the top of his slightly bent wire-rimmed reading glasses across the ancient rue Dante to where the rotund Monsieur Lheureux, one of the quartier’s local landlords, was ushering a young, well-dressed gentleman into the building entrance next to the Vietnamese restaurant.

Looks as if we have a new one, he said in his Corsican accent, gently setting aside the morning paper, Le Figaro, with its headline of the coup in Chile.

Nicole looked up to see Monsieur Lheureux twist his belly sideways through the doorway in order to manage the luggage he carried for his new tenant. She did not see the guest, who disappeared ahead of Lheureux into the darkened entranceway. She sighed, but before completing her task of serving Henri his coffee and small glass of anisette, Henri reached gently behind her head and her yellow headscarf and, as if by magic, produced a shiny franc. Nicole, for her part, accepted the coin nonchalantly with her right hand, wrapping it in her tiny fist and blowing softly into the crevice near her thumb and forefinger, then, opening her hand widely, revealed an empty palm and a vanished coin.

Bravo, said Henri. Then, lifting his cup and saucer to sip his coffee, discovered the missing coin beneath it.

Bravo, indeed, he repeated.

Nicole smiled slightly, sighed yet again, and returned languidly to her morning chores of preparing the sidewalk terrace for lunch.

Henri drank slowly both the bitter black coffee and the sweet clear liqueur, and before he was finished with either, Monsieur Lheureux re-emerged from the building onto the quiet sun-filled sidewalk, stood still for the time it took to light a cigarette, then marched slowly down rue Dante toward the crowding Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The apartment that Lheureux had just let was on the fourth floor of a six-story building. The student selected the place at the recommendation of a colleague who had confirmed Lheureux’s statement that decent places near the Sorbonne, particularly between the Sorbonne and the Seine, and thus near the neighborhoods of Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel, were nearly impossible to find.

Believe me, Lheureux had said to Phillip, there are more than a few dungeons here, and while this flat is not a palace, I have only to post its availability to be swamped by applicants. But I prefer your type. And the price is more than fair.

Phillip took no offense at Lheureux’s inference of his being a quiet cleric pursuing the rigors of post-doctoral work. His only concern was to find a clean, respectable place near the Sorbonne where he could easily attend his lectures and seminars, meet with his advisor Carl Shea for occasional conferences, and work in the library when necessary. His friends who had been here told him about other, modern apartments on the north side and some of the large older ones near Avenue Émile Zola, but this was the quartier of the Sorbonne, and it was where Phillip wanted to be.

He had spent his last winter term in Chicago, commuting some forty-five minutes every day through the worst weather and traffic he could imagine just to get to a lecture or the library, and vowed never again to suffer such self-inflicted turmoil or to waste so much time. Here, in Paris, he would be close to his work.

There were two or three parish rectories that would have welcomed Phillip into their community, and while he appreciated and understood the benefits of community life, he preferred the extended isolation for his research, even if it meant preparing a meal or cleaning an occasional toilet. He lived simply, ate little, as evidenced by his slender frame, and the stipend he received was more than sufficient to pay Lheureux a deposit and one month’s rent in advance for a furnished apartment. His resolve to live here was heartened even further when Monsieur Lheureux introduced him to Lin Duc, the owner of the Vietnamese restaurant below and the maintenance man for the building. Lin Duc could fix anything, and he and his son were available twenty-four hours a day.

Phillip’s first thought after Lheureux had departed was to follow him out the door and begin a careful exploration of the environs, as well as visit Notre-Dame and a few other sites. But Phillip was not, nor had he ever been, a man of impulse. His was not an impetuous soul, but rather a slow, thoughtful, deliberate, though not a ponderous or calculating, spirit, developed and strengthened even further by his formal education as a theologian, a philosopher, and above all, a Jesuit. No, his scholastic habits for exactness and preparedness precluded any such trip just now. Instead, he set about to unpack his bags, remembering as he moved between closet and dresser drawers that several more boxes, mostly books that he felt he could not live without, would be arriving for him at the university.

He emptied his carry-on bag last. It had been stuffed with papers, including the first set of galleys from the publisher, his resurrected Rahner project from Yale, and a thick manila folder held together with a rubber band and containing several early essays, including one of his first attempts. As he stacked the contents into separate piles on the table he removed the rubber band and opened the folder. The essay on top, a dismal failure from his class in spirituality, was a brief ten-page comparison of apophatic and kataphatic prayer. The professor of theology, an acerbic, intense—even if aging—Jesuit, had written his commentary in a long flowing cursive diagonally across the back page. Phillip had read it so many times he knew it by heart.

"Coherent and competent, but a bit disappointing. (Something cogent, or even disquieting, might at least provoke a conversation from this somnolent group). The tone is uncomfortably detached, even your phrase ‘faith act’ seems clinical in context. The choice of Cloud of Unknowing is appropriate, though predictable, to illustrate apophatic prayer, but the comparison is all very encyclopedic. What is your ‘discovery’? What are we to learn from your comparison to the Spiritual Exercises? Do you, perhaps, believe kataphatic prayer leads to apophatic prayer? Proving something like that would be problematic, but isn’t that what you should be about? Do you think it is a theologian’s role to simply restate? What about enlighten? Elucidate? Illuminate? Are you reluctant to address a mystery such as ‘praying in tongues’ in an intellectual arena? What will you do when you are face to face with dogmatic mystery or THE mystery of faith? If the tomb is empty, then how do you cross the next bridge? The essay is meant to be a canvas; you should take advantage of that open-ended opportunity."

He replaced the essay and began to rearrange some of the simple furniture in the living room by switching the armchair and the sofa so that the chair would be near the ceiling light fixture, allowing him to read there in the evening. He then found some abrasive cleaner under the kitchen sink and scrubbed down the bathroom, the toilet, the bidet, the tub, and he had just begun to wipe off the kitchen counter when Lin Duc arrived with several boxes of dishes, cups, glasses, and silverware.

The two men talked for some time. When Lin Duc learned that Phillip had grown up in Cleveland, he asked him about the magical burning river. He said that all the magazines and newspapers in Paris had printed pictures. Only bad news was more popular than strange news. Phillip explained it wasn’t the first time that the Cuyahoga River had caught fire, nor was it very magical, and, he quietly realized, it wasn’t all that strange to him either.

Lin Duc’s son arrived with some hot tea and another box filled with linen, towels and bed sheets. They left when the tea was finished to prepare for the midday meal. Phillip made the bed and then showered, using the hand hose in the tub. He decided to lunch across the street at the café he had seen when he first arrived, and from there go to his meeting with Carl Shea.

The café’s sidewalk terrace was half-filled when Phillip arrived and sat down at an open table with his back to the window. A young pretty girl with smooth skin, friendly dark brown eyes, and a short boyish haircut, which Phillip thought as very French-looking, was serving the patrons on the terrace. She was pleasant and smiled nicely at Phillip, as if she knew him from many times before. But the service itself was casual, and Phillip concluded that no one who stopped to lunch at such a café on a gloriously sunny September afternoon could be in a hurry. And if anyone felt otherwise, he had only to catch a glimpse of Nicole’s face or a waft of her perfume as she moved easily from table to kitchen, never much in a hurry, and always willing to dawdle at a table here or there to chat with the customers. The men, both young and old, found her especially charming. And though she wore a loose-fitting, fluffy yellow blouse and batik printed skirt, she could not hide her slender hips or large, firm breasts, which brought whispered gibes and embarrassing leers. Neither the taunts nor the passes were lost on the smiling Nicole.

She spent a few extra minutes with an older man only two tables removed from Phillip’s. He reminded Phillip a little of his own father—the closely-cropped grey hair, the reading glasses, a cigarette nearby. And, likewise, alone now too, since his mother had lost her battle with lung cancer. Alone and aging more quickly, beaten down after almost thirty years in the Cleveland steel mills, tired and broken-hearted, and sternly steadfast in his determination to be left alone.

Two young men began calling for Nicole. They pledged themselves to her, forsaking their fortunes, their wives, and their careers for just one touch, one night of bliss. She told them both that they had neither wealth nor careers to forsake, and besides that, one night, at least for her, was not enough. Everyone on the terrace laughed, especially the two would-be Casanovas.

It was a pleasant place, made even more so by the sudden appearance of the owner herself, one Madame Françoise. She arrived carrying parcels, perhaps from some errands around the city, and now entering her café, though quite flushed and seemingly tired from her morning, stopped and chatted with many of the customers. The years had not yet betrayed her beauty. Her physical charms and wide grey-blue eyes brought immediate smiles to the patrons. She seemed to know everyone by name and had a clever remark or greeting for each one. She complimented several ladies, one for her hairstyle, another for her lovely blouse, and still another for the striking piece of jewelry which hung elegantly around her neck. She removed the silk, lilac scarf from around her shoulders and waved at the grey-haired man who sat near Phillip, and nodded at Phillip, who caught a softly spoken "bonjour" on her lips. Before she disappeared into the café proper, she spoke a few words quietly to Nicole. The young girl nodded solemnly, momentarily losing that provocative sensuality she had only moments before exuded throughout the terrace, and then she, too, disappeared inside.

Nicole soon brought Phillip his lunch, the plat du jour featuring sole meunière and pommes de terre bouillies. He ate it slowly, savoring the delicate buttery lemon sauce and pausing now and then to observe the pedestrians crisscrossing up and down the narrow rue Dante, dodging cars, motorcycles, even bicycles, from both directions. An occasional horn raised almost everyone’s eyes. A large man, well-dressed in a black suit, crisp white shirt, and a stylish black fedora, passed by on the sidewalk and, recognizing the grey-haired man near Phillip, exchanged pleasantries in Italian, scarcely breaking his stride as he hurried down the street.

The Vietnamese restaurant across the street and another restaurant down the block, both without sidewalk terraces, seemed to be doing a brisk lunchtime business, and, situated between the two, Phillip identified a coiffure, a pâtisserie, a pharmacie, and another store he was unable to discern because of the smallness of the printed sign.

He looked up at the fourth floor of the apartment building. He could not see his place, which was between the front apartment that had two windows looking down onto rue Dante, and the back apartment, which actually ran the entire width of the building. It was a good place he decided. Both Monsieur Lheureux and Lin Duc attested that it was the only apartment from which a glimpse of the Seine could be had, and the quietness of the building and this entire block was unmatched in the arrondissement. Three blocks over, and even two blocks to the north, by the river, Lheureux explained, was quite a different story, especially on spring and summer evenings. This neighborhood was serene and perfect for his work.

And Phillip’s work, more than anything else, required solitude and intense concentration. He needed to read and to take extensive notes with a logic and argument notebook beside him, in which he could pose immediate arguments, counter-arguments, ethical considerations, and moral questions. Continuity during such an enterprise was critical. Paris, he thought, should not be as demanding as those last years in Chicago and the one at Yale when he was finishing his book of essays. This Sorbonne fellowship was meant to be a reward of sorts, a chance to meet a few of the people with whom he had corresponded, to share ideas personally with some of Europe’s foremost scholars and theologians, perhaps to meet some thinkers from other parts of the world, from South America, the Far East, who likewise were working at or visiting the Sorbonne.

The stipend was surprisingly comfortable, and the stay of two years was unusual, but he welcomed it eagerly. He had grown tired of Chicago, the sword-blade frost from that winter lake and the insidious effluvium rising from the congested and suffocating summer streets. The trouble, so much trouble.

He saw Lin Duc come out of the apartment building and enter his restaurant. What chaos his people had caused! Were still causing! Phillip had buried himself in the library through the late sixties while in Chicago. He felt guilty because he had not become involved in something, in anything. But there wasn’t enough time, he had decided. He couldn’t write, study philosophy, create arguments, and understand all that he needed to learn, and still worry about the Chicago Seven or Eight, presidential elections, anti-war movements, or the war itself.

He was even scorned by a few of his peers and classmates who spent their most valuable hours, their precious days, the energy of their youth, trying to carry out the ideals of non-violence. But the tactics of political revolution were changing, and even priests like the Berrigans were moving closer to violent protests. The young underclassmen struck him as followers, freaks, and pot heads, but his friends, like Hart and Blackwell and Jones—how he wanted to consider them friends!—who sat with him in Loyola Hall in forums conducted twice a week by McGovern, the McGovern, not George, but Professor Samuel A. McGovern, and with whom he argued Logics, Ethics, Morality, and the Time and Place for Violence in the Politics of Revolution—these were the real leaders. They all read Marx, Sartre, Hegel, and Thoreau, but these men also acted, they marched, they demonstrated, they sat, and they wrote intelligently and passionately in magazines, newspapers, flyers, anything that was printed or published. They said that it matters who dies, where they die, how they die, why they die.

But it was all too much for him. He wrote to his closest friend and fellow Jesuit, Stephen, about it. He sometimes wondered what it would have been like, and where it might have led him, if his work had been drastically different, if he hadn’t pursued philosophy, but something more dramatic. But each time he tried to conjure an image of himself with those others, he failed. He knew them, but he wasn’t like them.

He tried to explain all this to Stephen, and Stephen, who had already embraced the Jesuit renewal to social justice, answered him.

You can’t have it all, Phillip. You can’t have it both ways. No one can. You’ll get your chance when the time is right. Everyone gets at least one chance. For you, this isn’t it; you are not an activist, so forget it. You can’t let it bother you.

But it did. He knew there were more than a few who trivialized his pursuits, even questioned his presence in a course such as McGovern’s. If academia doesn’t breed activism then what good is it?

So when Hart, a non-cleric and one of the more outspoken members of the class, pressed him to partner on a semester-ending project for McGovern’s course, he saw it as an opportunity to not only draw nearer to his contemporaries, but also to close that gap of misperception, to demonstrate that thought is not veiled in its own penumbra, but is inextricably connected to action.

What do you say, Father Philosopher? Time for you and me to connect and shake them up?

Phillip was planning to address a less volatile issue and said as much, but Hart said it was time for Phillip to quit hiding in the library, let some of these people see what’s under that robe.

Let’s put some of that sapience and sagacity to work, smirked Hart, his pale blue eyes severe and magnetic.

It was a simple proposition—defend the morality of violent protest. Phillip would write the essay and Hart would handle the oratory. Hart loved the microphone.

The disquisition itself was relatively brief by Phillip’s standards, barely more than ten pages, but, like his nascent work, compelling. And Hart’s eloquence was memorable, his polemics stirring, with a voice most singular—deep and resonant, narcissistic. His abridged version of Phillip’s arguments stayed within the required four-minute limit, but the debate that ensued rocked the classroom for the remainder of the hour, and McGovern was quite pleased.

Hart, however, wanted to go beyond the academic milieu, and the very next day pressed Phillip to publish the paper in a radical journal sponsored by the interfaith coalition against the war.

I’ve talked to my friends, said Hart. They read the essay and want to publish it. What do you think?

No, thanks, replied Phillip. I am not interested. It’s flattering, but I don’t think so.

C’mon, Phillip. What’s the problem?

There is no problem. I am just not interested in carrying it any further. It’s too radical and controversial. You saw what happened in the class.

Be serious. That’s what happens when you shake ’em up.

That doesn’t make it right. McGovern wanted us to look at radical polarizing positions. We did that. End of course. End of issue.

"Look, Phillip. This is important stuff. We are at a real turning point in history. Lots of people don’t see it yet, but we are changing the world."

I’m sorry, said Phillip.

The last thing he wanted was the notoriety that came with changing the world.

Still, Hart was not to be deterred; he knew he had something special in the essay, and, believing that at least some part of the project belonged to him, presumed to publish the article under his own name.

Phillip was incensed, and confronted Hart upon the discovery.

It was meant to be an academic exercise, said Phillip. His soft voice now raised and quaking in rage, his fist choking a rolled-up copy of the paper in which the essay was published.

It was brilliant, replied Hart.

But I don’t believe it. I told you before … I don’t believe even half of what’s in there.

So what? I do … and so do others! And if you don’t have the courage to fight, that’s your problem, not mine.

Phillip was red-faced, apoplectic, choking for words.

People will find out … you had no right … no right to publish it without my permission … sooner or later they will discover the truth … they will find out that you never wrote a word of it.

So?

Hart was unapologetic, even smug in his arrogation, deception, and betrayal. Phillip had never been more upset. He threw the paper at Hart’s feet. The iniquity was limitless. Hart was shouting at Phillip as he stormed away.

"What do you want me to do? Confess? Announce the truth? Tell the world that you are the author … go ahead … tell the world Father Philosopher wrote it. Let the FBI put you on their watch list."

Such a thought was unimaginable. Phillip was disheartened, defeated, and cowered in shame, not only for his lack of courage, as Hart called it, but also for his inability to rectify the wrong. He had been manipulated; he felt used and helpless.

But his own strident reaction and confrontation with Hart left Phillip even more disquieted and alarmed. Hart’s transgression had pushed Phillip himself to the brink of violent behavior. His own moral code had been imperiled. An unfamiliar but profound malevolence surfaced from an unknown aphotic region of his soul, revealing an insidious capacity for violence. He shuddered, reflecting on how close he had come to actually striking Hart.

He had hoped to be accepted by people like Hart. Weren’t they supposed to be colleagues? Peers? Perhaps even collaborators from time to time. Never co-conspirators or revolutionaries.

Blackwell and Jones tried to get Phillip to let it go. Hart, they said, was on a high. He had gained prominence with the interfaith coalition against the war and had even joined the protest with Native American Indians at Wrigley Field, of all places, for better housing.

The article, meanwhile, gained traction, passages were subsequently lifted out of context and used by others in publications and speeches. Even William Kunstler used an excerpt in one of his sensational pre-trial interviews. Phillip’s angst grew. He knew it was only a matter of time.

No, he did not expect Paris to be salvific, nor did he believe it would present him with his chance, as Stephen called it, but at least being in Paris removed him from the mire of his present torment.

A warm sun suffused the terrace, tempering and rearranging Phillip’s thoughts, and the affable chatter of the café patrons muted the din of Chicago. Another table server, a waiter with a clean crisp white shirt and equally crisp and efficient serving manners, had taken over most of the terrace by the time Phillip finished his meal. The winsome Nicole appeared either to be taking a break or just flirting, because she was sitting down with a young man in dark sunglasses at the table directly next to Phillip’s. He was a traveler, an American. He spoke terrible French, but Nicole knew some English, and was providing directions, tracing her finger across a map of Paris spread out on the table between a bottle of Perrier and an unfinished sandwich. She hadn’t been there for more than a few moments, though, when a blustering fellow stumbled through the doorway into the swell of the daylight. He was unshaven and disheveled. He staggered through the tables, bumping guests, breathing shallowly, and making an awful snorting sound. One eye was swollen shut, and he squinted through his other bloodshot eye at Phillip. Finally, he saw Nicole and began a frightful tirade against her.

Phillip’s French language skills were by all accounts very good; not only could he function smoothly in all normal social situations, but, coupled with his Latin and Spanish studies, his vocabulary was expansive enough to allow him to discuss such difficult subjects as philosophy and theology. If he lacked any element at all it was in the particular nuances which one picks up while living with native speakers in their environment and culture, like certain vituperative phrases and obscenities, which now filled the air.

Nicole did not cringe at this grotesque exhibition. She appeared neither intimidated nor offended. Instead, she immediately stood and, leaning across Phillip’s shoulder, told the wretched Claude that no one, least of all him, owned her or could tell her what to do. She continued to inform Claude of some other activities that he should consider, using what Phillip decided was a patois customary for such French squabbles.

Claude pushed past Phillip, knocking over his half-filled bottle of water, and grabbed her brutally by both shoulders. He lifted her off the ground with such frightening ease that Phillip was certain serious harm would soon follow. But the scene ended almost immediately, as Madame Françoise appeared and cuffed the young, obstreperous animal on the back of his head and then grabbed him by the collar as he replaced Nicole to the ground. He turned quickly in marked defiance, but when he saw the glare in the eyes of Françoise, he did little more than scowl once more at Nicole. Obeying Françoise’s orders, he returned inside. Françoise turned to one of her customer friends and remarked at her own surprise that the beast had escaped so early in the day.

Hungry for a feeding, no doubt, Françoise said, and she began immediately to dry Phillip’s table.

Checking that Phillip had not been hurt in the fracas, Françoise apologized quietly to Phillip and, touching him gently on the shoulder, whispered that his lunch today was gratis.

Nicole, meanwhile, kissed the cheek of the young traveler in the dark sunglasses with whom she had been flirting and returned to her work, and everyone at the café returned to their food, drink, and conversation, as if the appearance of the unruly creature was as commonplace as the traffic that regularly passed by.

Phillip was finished. As he reached for his wallet to leave Nicole a tip, he paused, trying to steady his trembling hand, and suddenly realized how visibly shaken he was in the wake of this last incident, this unforeseen maelstrom of violence. And yet, somehow, it did not diminish his appreciation for the café. In a bizarre way, it might have enhanced it. Françoise, he decided, had to be a remarkable person. Her firm hand, yet gentle affectionateness, even as she defused the lovers’ spat, was apparent. Paris was living up to its reputation for love and jealousy, and Françoise demonstrated that kindness could still prevail. He placed the gratuity on the table and started to leave.

As he navigated around the tables, Phillip saw a blonde woman with sunglasses resting on the top of her head enter the café terrace. He assumed that she, too, was an American, arriving perhaps to rendezvous with her two-timing traveling friend. Phillip could not guess why he thought she was an American, something in her manner, her dress, or maybe just the perch of her dark sunglasses. He passed close by her and, urged by that peculiar affinity that strangers have when they recognize another of their own kind in a foreign country, began to greet her. But then suddenly he wasn’t certain, something was different, and with a panicked thought of embarrassment, the greeting was lost in translation in his dry throat.

She passed silently by Phillip, as well as the young man in the dark sunglasses, and sat instead with the grey-haired Frenchman whom Phillip had noticed earlier. As Phillip walked away, he heard them speaking beautiful French, and was relieved that he had not embarrassed himself on his first day in the Quartier in front of this lovely girl and her father.

O nly once did Phillip have to stop and ask for directions on his way to the Sorbonne. The excitement at the café had quickened his step, and now arriving outside the grey-stone building that housed the Department of Philosophy he found himself early for his appointment. Images of Nicole and Claude—his dark face and powerful arms, her petite fearless posture—lingered with him. Could he have been wrong, he wondered, about the quietness and serenity of the neighborhood, but then dismissed the incident as just one of those stormy lovers’ quarrels one sometimes reads about. He settled himself on a bench in the shade opposite the entranceway to the building with its weathered oversized wooden doors, clearing his mind, as best one could on his first day in Paris, for his initial encounter with the storied Carl Shea.

Father Shea, he imagined, was no doubt steeped in some scholarly task, so for Phillip to arrive at any but the appointed time would not only be discourteous, but an imprudent start to what he hoped would be a rewarding relationship. His mentor in Chicago, Horace Silver, had said that Shea was a bit eccentric, but he attributed it to the vast amount of time Shea had spent in the Far East, particularly Japan. Shea’s book on Zen and Christianity, published in the mid-sixties, had met with ecumenical praise. The timing of its release coincided with the Second Vatican Council and in no small way contributed to its acceptance. Ten years earlier and he may have been reprimanded, or even censured. Phillip had, of course, read the book and was familiar with Shea’s main premise—the search for truth, by all men, was the same search. The banner on the cover proclaimed, We are all climbing the same mountain.

How fortunate it was for Phillip to not only be at the Sorbonne, but to have someone of Shea’s stature as his guide up the mountain! Yes, it was pointing to a promising time. Free of political strife and social discord, Phillip could again fully immerse himself in study. It was time to begin a new journey.

He climbed the stairs, entered the solemn atmosphere of the second-floor hallway of the Department of Philosophy, and, passing the empty office of the department secretary, found his way to the corner office of the Reverend Carl T. Shea, S.J.

Before knocking on the door, Phillip paused to adjust his powder-blue dress shirt neatly into the waistband of his grey trousers and steady his breath. He doubted that Shea was likely to comment on his opting to forgo the traditional Roman collar and to dress like most modern day clerics, but Phillip did brace himself for yet another remark about his youthful appearance. Too often he had heard that he looked more like an altar boy than a published philosopher-theologian. His soft face with scarcely a whisker even prompted a former mentor at Yale occasionally to refer to him as the Cherub, such quips ever so slightly nettling Phillip, who did not regard them as the compliment they were intended to be.

But concerns for own appearance were instantly forgotten, for when Phillip entered the office he was taken aback by the exuberant greeting of his host, who, despite wearing a sling around his neck to cradle the white cast that protruded through the sleeve of his black cassock, bounded from his chair, circled the cluttered desk, and awkwardly extended his left hand in greeting to Phillip’s outstretched right, explaining immediately, without