Chapter Text
The afternoon had fallen with a suffocating slowness over the corridors of the Vatican, covering them with that thick silence that only ancient buildings can contain. Ray walked quickly, yet hesitantly, toward Aldo’s office. He felt as if every meter that brought him closer to that door tore a layer of skin from him, as if his body, his faith, his role, were about to be exposed with unbearable rawness.
A week. A week had passed since that dream, and he still could not free himself from it. What disturbed him most was not the vividness of the images, but what he had felt. It was not an ordinary dream, but one in which Thomas, his superior, his mentor, had touched him with brutal tenderness. Thomas’s hand had slid slowly down to his groin, not with urgency, but with restrained devotion, as if he were discovering him. His lips said nothing, but kissed with an intensity that allowed no doubt. The heat he felt was not only physical: it was as if his soul burned. And Ray, who had learned to control even the smallest gesture for years, had woken up gasping, with tears in his eyes and Thomas’s name trembling on his lips.
Since then, nothing had been in its place. He forgot important meetings in the agenda, handed in unsigned documents, confused dates. Thomas looked at him in silence each time he made a mistake, with that mixture of patience and bewilderment that destroyed him more than any reprimand. Once he even called him by his name in a low voice, as if he did not quite recognize him: “Ray… are you all right?” Ray did not know what to answer. How to explain that the problem was himself? That he had fallen in love without permission and without salvation.
He knocked on Aldo’s door with his heart in his throat. When he entered, the cardinal was reading some reports, with a cup of coffee beside him, his glasses slightly slipping down his nose. When he saw him, he smiled with that warmth that had always distinguished him from the others.
—Ray, what a pleasure to see you. Please, come in.
Ray barely nodded, his shoulders hunched under the weight of his own silence. He sat on the edge of the armchair, not knowing what to do with his hands, nor with his eyes, with a muffled sigh, he murmured:
—I need advice… I don’t know who else to talk to.
Aldo put the papers aside and looked at him with serene attention. It was not the inquisitive gaze of a superior, but that of a man who knew how to recognize another’s burden.
—I’m here. Tell me.
Ray swallowed. He felt like a traitor, an impostor. But when he finally spoke, there was no way to stop what came out.
—I am in love.
Aldo did not even blink.
—That’s normal, Ray, you know that despite our vows… we are not made of stone.
Ray shook his head.
—It’s not that, I… I am… I am in love with a man.
Aldo smiled with a sweetness that was almost melancholic.
—It’s still the same. There is no sin in love.
Ray clenched his hands, trembling. The true weight had yet to be spoken.
—I am in love with a consecrated man —he confessed at last, in a whisper.
Aldo fell silent. He looked at him gently, but with seriousness too. His eyes, dark and deep, seemed to read beyond the words.
—It’s… Thomas. Isn’t it?
Ray lifted his head, surprised. For a second, it seemed that all the air in the room froze.
—How… how did you know?
—Thomas is many things. Intelligent, wise, meticulous. But when it comes to matters of the heart… he’s not exactly the most perceptive. You, on the other hand, don’t hide as much as you think. I’ve seen you look at him, Ray.
Ray lowered his head in shame, feeling vulnerable.
—I shouldn’t feel this… I can’t go on like this. Everything hurts. Every time I hear him say my name, every time his hand brushes mine when he passes me a document… it’s as if my heart were about to burst out of my chest. But this is wrong. I am failing as his assistant, as a priest.
—You are not failing —said Aldo firmly, as he rose from his seat and came around his desk—. You are only loving. And that, Ray… that is not a sin.
Ray put his hands to his face. He was about to cry. Aldo leaned toward him, without invading, only offering presence.
—Would it help you to say it out loud?
Ray looked at him in horror.
—To confess…?
—I propose something —said Aldo, standing up—. It is not a formal confession, but it may help you. Imagine you are speaking to him. Say aloud what you cannot say to him. Sometimes the soul only needs to hear itself.
Ray hesitated, the fear he felt was abysmal. But then, he closed his eyes, and if perhaps he pretended that the person in front of him was Thomas, maybe he could tell him everything without collapsing, so he imagined him.
And when he opened his eyes, there he was. Thomas. Standing in front of him. Not in his cardinal’s cassock, but as in his dream: with warm eyes, with his hand extended. Ray clung to that vision, as if it were his only refuge. His lips trembled… and then he spoke.
—I love him, Eminence —Ray said at last. His voice was not trembling, but tired. As if he had been pronouncing that phrase inside himself for weeks without finding whom to tell it to.—I don’t know when it began —he continued—. I think it was little by little. Like the rain that starts with just one drop. At first admiration, then tenderness, and before I realized it… love. A forbidden, silent, irrepressible love. Sometimes I think I was born to follow you, that my life took on meaning the day you first asked me for help, that everything in me… my mind, my hands, even my faith… everything was built to serve you.
—Ray? —a soft voice asked. It was not Aldo. No, at that moment it was Thomas. His Thomas. The Thomas that only lived in his chest.
Ray sighed. And with that sigh, he gave himself up completely.
—I love you —he repeated, this time more firmly, and then lowered his voice, as if confessing something that should be buried among marble and secrets—. I love you as one loves the impossible. I love you with fear, with anger, with tenderness. I love you in my routine, in my prayer, in my silences. I love you in the way I smooth your cassock over your shoulders without you noticing, or in how I check documents twice to save you a hard time. I love you when I hear you speak in synods and it seems to me that each of your words is held up by a flame. I love you because you exist, because you are alive, and because I cannot not love you.
His voice trembled, but he did not stop.
—Your closeness was enough for me, the brush of your fingers when you pass me some documents or your voice in the morning. I was sure I needed nothing more, wanted nothing more. But each day I realize that I do want more. That I long…
—What do you long for? —Thomas asked softly, in his mind, he was approaching. He held out his hand.
—I want to know what your embrace feels like, what it feels like when you look at me and don’t just see your assistant. I want to know if you ever thought of me when you closed your eyes. If you ever desired me as I do you. Not with impurity… not just with desire… but with love, with tenderness. With that kind of love that is never spoken aloud because it is known to be impossible.
And Thomas, that imaginary Thomas, barely smiled. A faint, restrained gesture. Like him.
—Go on, Ray —whispered that voice. Not from Aldo’s mouth, but from the center of his mind. Like an echo that he recognized.
Ray took a step forward.
—Sometimes I think it’s a punishment, I feel that this love takes me away from God. But other times… it seems to me that only in this love do I begin to understand what God is. —he said—. That loving you like this is a way in which God reminds me that not everything must be touched. That there is beauty destined only to be contemplated. But I deceive myself, because I do not only contemplate you. I desire you. Not as one desires a body, although yes. But above all I desire your company, your approval, your light. I want you to look at me and see me, I want you to know that I am here, that I am not just your shadow.
Ray came closer. He extended a trembling hand, as if he could reach him.
—You are everything to me, my guide, my faith, my guilt, my desire… my love…
The Thomas of his mind looked at him in silence, listening to everything. He held out his hand, invisible, but tangible in his imagination.
—Why didn’t you tell me before? —that voice asked. Not defiant, only hurt. Soft, painfully soft.
Ray knelt trembling.
—Because I couldn’t. Because if I dared to speak it, I feared it would disappear. That this love would dissolve like smoke before the truth. And because I knew that even if you did return my feelings, that would change nothing. We are still us, we are still God’s, we still have our cassocks, our promises, our chains…
His hands lifted, trembling, as if to touch a face that was not there.
—But still… —he whispered, now with lips barely parted—. If for a moment… if only for a second I could touch you, know what your skin feels like beneath my fingers, if I could say your name and hear it back, if I could kiss you without guilt… I… I…
Thomas looked at him and let him come closer. His eyes held no judgment, only tenderness.
Ray lifted a hand, trembling, as if he could touch him. The emptiness answered with silence. But for an instant, the silence seemed like understanding.
—Thomas…
—What?
A real voice interrupted and like a sword cut the moment.
Ray turned around with wide eyes, his body paralyzed.
There was Thomas. The real one. Standing in the doorway. He said nothing more, not a word, he just looked at him fixedly, without even acknowledging Aldo at his side. It was a gaze filled with confusion, with something that Ray could not decipher. Astonishment, pain, compassion?
Aldo reacted with a quickness that Ray never would have expected from him.
—Ah, Thomas! How timely you are —he exclaimed, raising his eyebrows with a forced smile that, under another light, might have seemed genuine—. We were just talking about… the liturgical celebrations of next month. Have you considered if Cardinal Manetti should give the sermon at the Vigil?
Thomas did not avert his eyes. He did not answer, he did not even seem to have heard. His attention was anchored on Ray as if it had been caught in the last breath of an unfinished prayer.
Ray felt like he was suffocating. It was no longer just the hot flush rising up his neck, nor the shame that had paralyzed him after the confession spoken like a feverish prayer, with a trembling voice and a naked soul. No. It was something deeper, more devastating. It was panic.
The Thomas who had been before him, the one he had imagined, the one who had urged him to keep speaking, to pour himself out, to tell the truth… had disappeared. He was nothing more than an echo. A mirage that had vanished with the brutality of the real world.
And in his place was him, Thomas in a spotless cassock, with a serious face, with absorbed eyes, searching for him among the whirlwind of words that still seemed to float in the room.
Ray took a step back.
Aldo noticed. He took a step forward, perhaps to stop him, to cover him, to do something, anything to prevent the inevitable. But it was already too late.
—Ray… —Thomas insisted, barely a murmur this time, with a note of uncertainty that tore Ray apart more than any shout.
—I’m sorry —Ray whispered, almost voiceless.
And then he fled.
He did not think. He did not stop. He left through the door as if the air on the other side could save him. As if the empty corridors of the apostolic palace were more merciful than that room where love and guilt had fused into one impossible thing.
His cassock slapped against his ankles as he ran, the air was colder outside, but it didn’t matter. He only wanted to escape that gaze. From Aldo’s silent compassion, from the question suspended on Thomas’s lips. From himself.