Sanctuary
by Angela
My first awareness of Ash was of
warmth. It came through me slowly,
expanding to fill the places my blanket didn’t cover. His hand on my head. His breath on my cheek. His thigh pressed against the small of my
back. I opened my eyes.
It was snowing. Dark shadows slid down the walls and across
Ash’s face as the heavy snowflakes blotted the light from the lamppost
outside. “Snow?”
I asked. In the whole time I’d been in
He nodded shortly. “Merry Christmas. I want to show you something.” I noticed he had my jacket draped across his
lap, and he wore the heavy wool coat he’d bought to fool the police.
I slid out from beneath the covers,
cringing in the cold, unmoving air. For
once I was glad for the habit of sleeping in my clothes; I pulled my jacket
over my arms and jammed my feet into a pair of shoes. “All right,” I whispered, unwilling to break
the still night with my voice. “What
time is it?”
Ash tossed me a stocking cap. “After two,” he answered softly.
I crammed the hat over my uncombed
hair and followed him out the door. The
snow was falling slowly, fat flakes visible in the night sky. The sidewalks were already dusted, and we
left twin trails of footprints on the concrete.
“Where are we going?” I asked him,
walking quickly to keep up.
We paused at a crosswalk, waiting
for the intersection--still somehow heavy with traffic--to clear. A neon light splashed orange and Ash looked
fierce beneath its glow. “I want to show
you something,” he repeated. The light
changed and we walked.
Clearly, this wasn’t going to be one
of our more social outings. I followed
doggedly in his footsteps, my hands buried deep in my pockets. It was Christmas morning, if barely, and the
night was appropriately silent. Even the
traffic noises seemed muffled under the growing blanket of snow, and holiday
lights blinked their tiny pinpricks around fire escapes and windows.
It was nothing like Christmas in
I don’t know how many blocks we
walked or how many words we exchanged.
Ash’s face wore a faraway expression and I didn’t want to intrude. I wondered what he wanted to show me at two
in the morning, what could possibly mean so much to him that he wouldn’t talk
about it.
When he stopped in front of a
church, I was surprised.
“You’re a Christian?” I asked,
forgetting that so many Americans were.
Ash laughed, his mouth twisting into
a grimace. “Not exactly, but I used to
be. My mother was Catholic.”
He tugged on the sleeve of my jacket
and started up the stairs. I followed
after a moment. I’d never been to a
church before. Ash held the huge wooden
door open for me. I stepped inside.
It smelled like wood polish and
candles. We stood in the small entryway,
brushing snow from each other, and I was trying to see whatever I could in the
dim light.
“Aslan!” An old man hobbled in from a nearby
doorway. “You haven’t been back since
last Christmas! I was worried.”
Ash’s stern face melted into an
affectionate smile. “I couldn’t stay
away forever, Father O’Brien,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
The priest put his hand on Ash’s
shoulder. “You’re here now, my son,” he
said, smiling. “That’s what truly
matters.” He glanced over Ash’s shoulder
at me, including me in his smile. “And
who is your friend?”
Before Ash could speak, I stepped
around him, offering my hand to the father.
“My name is Okimura Ei--er, Eiji Okimura. Good
to meet you.”
“Aslan has never brought anyone
before. Welcome, Eiji.” Even in the dimness I could tell that his
eyes were blue and shining. They looked
much younger than the rest of his face, which to me
seemed ancient.
“Come in, come in.” Father O’Brien ushered us from the vestibule
and into a huge chapel. “You boys have
missed
I watched Ash dip his fingers in a
basin of water near the door. He made
the sign of the cross with his wet hand; I wasn’t sure of the significance, but
it seemed that Ash was barely aware he did it.
It seemed to me that this place had some sway over him, whether he
considered himself a Christian or not.
I fell behind as we walked, my eyes
drawn to the vaulted ceiling and huge stained glass windows. They were dark with the night behind them,
but where street lamps shined I could make out figures, as though the windows
themselves told stories. In the front,
upon a dais and beneath an arch painted in silver stars, was an altar clothed
in deep red fabric. The candles
surrounding it flickered, their light glinting on gold candlesticks.
It was like nothing I’d seen. Even the rich colors of a Shinto shrine seemed
to pale beside the opulence of this church.
It was amazing, right down to the carpet: though worn down the center of
the aisle, it was still vivid scarlet.
“Do you like it?” Ash leaned against me as he whispered. “When I was little, my Mom used to bring me
and Griff to a church like this one.”
I was overwhelmed. There was no question that the church was
beautiful, but its silence was heavy, like the snow outside.
A balcony spanned about a third of
the chapel, held up by carved wooden columns.
There seemed to be more seats up there, and I wondered if the view from
above could be any more fantastic.
Handmade tapestries hung on the walls near the altar--I tried to read
them but didn’t recognize the words.
“They’re in Latin,” Ash explained when he noticed me trying to sound
them out.
Ash
and Father O’Brien paused, taking seats on one of the long, wooden benches that
filled the room. They talked softly,
their heads bent close together, and I knew I was free to explore.
There was a nativity scene set up in
front of the altar, complete with angels and shepherds and the baby in the
manger. It wasn’t something I’d seen
often in
The pictures were marked with Roman
numerals, thirteen in all, and seemed to depict a story. I studied them for a long time, searching my
mind for a tale that could correspond. I
didn’t really know anything about Christianity, so I wasn’t surprised to draw a
blank.
I was distracted by the sound of Ash
mumbling. His voice was quiet,
wavering. I’d never heard him sound like
that before.
“So you seek absolution?” The priest’s voice sounded troubled. I tried not to notice them in what could only
be a private discussion, but I’d strayed too close to miss the hushed tones of
their voices.
“No.” Ash shook his head, his eyes downcast. “No, I don’t expect that. I only wanted someone else to know--to know
all of this.”
I looked away, refocusing my
attention on the picture-story. I was
embarrassed to have witnessed a private moment; I wondered if Ash would regret
bringing me if he thought I overheard.
In one of the paintings a man--I
assumed he was Jesus Christ--had stumbled beneath the weight of the cross he
carried, and another man came from the crowd to help him. It was beautiful, the way Jesus looked up at
this man, his expression a mixture of gratitude and sadness. I stared at that picture until their faces
deteriorated into brushstrokes and pigments.
“Simon.” Father O’Brien stood behind me, though I
hadn’t heard his approach. “He carries
the cross when Jesus falters.”
I wanted to touch the canvas, but
kept my hands in my pockets. “He cares
for him. It is good that Jesus has a
friend to help him.” I felt a little
foolish for this observation. My cheeks
flushed.
Father O’Brien shook his head. “No.
Jesus asks Simon to give it back.
It is his cross to bear.”
I looked again at the faces in the
painting. Suddenly the sadness seemed to
outweigh the gratitude. Somehow that
didn’t seem quite right.
“Don’t bear Aslan’s crosses for him,
Eiji Okimura.” The priest lowered his
voice a quiet rasp. “They are too heavy
for you.” He glanced over his shoulder
to where Ash lit candles at the feet of a female statue. His face looked very old and very tired. “I’m afraid they’ll be too heavy even for
Aslan, in the end.”
I understood the old man’s
compassion and his motives. He was
trying to help, trying to protect me from the very things that kept me awake in
the middle of the night. “Unlike your
Jesus,” I responded slowly, “Ash is no god.
When his crosses become too heavy, he’ll need me.”
I left Father O’Brien standing
there; I felt his sad gaze on me as I walked away. Not wanting to bother Ash in his quiet candle-lighting
ritual, I climbed the stairs to the balcony and found a seat near the
railing. The church was even more
magnificent from above, but I had lost my wonder. I knew that Ash’s burdens were too heavy--I
knew they would be too heavy for both of us eventually, but I’d hoped that an
end would come to this before then.
It seemed that Christmas was the
only reprieve he would get.
I’d been staring at the candles for
a long time when Ash finally came up the steps and slid onto the hard wooden
bench beside me. He leaned his arms over
the rail and gazed at the silver stars, eye-level on the ceiling. “Thanks for coming with me,” he said quietly. He jostled my leg with his knee in an awkward
caress. “Every time I come, I light a
candle for my mother. Tonight I lit one
for Griff, too. And
Skip, and Shorter.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I’d been partially responsible for all three
of those deaths. “I’m sorry,” I said for
the millionth time, knowing that it’d never be enough.
Ash looked at me, startled. His green eyes were troubled. “I don’t think I would’ve made it without
you,” he said seriously.
I don’t know how we came to that
moment of staring into one another’s eyes, but I suddenly realized that if Ash
had been a girl, I would’ve kissed him.
If I had been a girl, I would’ve been kissed. And yet, neither of us moved, and I wondered
why.
Still, when we finally looked away,
my mind buzzed as if we had kissed. I
dropped my head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his neck against my forehead. I wanted to tell him that I’d protect him,
but it felt foolish even in my head. So
far I’d never had much opportunity to do much more than hide behind his broad
shoulders and semiautomatic weapons.
“I told Father O’Brien about
you--about us being friends.” I could
feel the words rumble in his throat. “He
asked if we were lovers.”
Lovers. There were so many different meanings wrapped
up in that one little word. Some of them
seemed to apply to us, but others were so far off that it made me blush to
think of them. “What did you tell him?”
For a moment his breathing stopped
and he made a tiny sound in his throat.
Then he sighed, leaning his head so it brushed against mine. “The truth.”
I spent a long time wondering which
truth he meant. There was truth in our
not-kissing, an awareness that not kissing can be a
choice only when kissing is also an option.
But there was another truth, probably a greater one. This was the truth of our friendship, of
knowing that our sanity and sometimes our very lives depended on the presence
of the other. It was what kept me up
nights, waiting until I knew with sight and sound and touch that he was still
alive.
Ash left me to my thoughts and after
a while we trudged downstairs to say goodnight to Father O’Brien.
“I’m sorry we kept you up,” I said
as we were leaving, embarrassed that the old man had been forced to wait for
us.
He laughed. “Oh, no. It seems the older I get, the less I
sleep. By the time I’m ninety I won’t
need to sleep at all.” He clapped us
each on one shoulder, smiling. “You boys
be careful, and don’t wait for another holiday before you come back to visit
me.”
Ash promised and we were outside
again, buttoned and zipped up against the cold.
It was still snowing, and somehow the night was even more still than it
had been just an hour or so before. I
glanced at Ash as we walked--his eyes were forward and his face as stoic as it
had been on the way there. Snow clung to
his hair--almost white on white in the washed-out color scheme of night.
He was beautiful, and I felt my face
go hot with the flush of things I knew too little about.
“What is ‘absolution’?” I stumbled over the word, having never heard
it until that night. The priest had
offered it to Ash and he had declined.
Ash glanced at me and then
away. “It means forgiveness. It means that all the bad stuff I’ve done
just sort of goes away, like it never happened.”
My mind unwillingly leaped to that
night at Golzine’s mansion, when Ash mowed so many people down with a machine
gun. They had been bad guys, but still,
they were people he had killed. “How is
that possible?” I asked.
“It’s not. At least, not the way he meant it.” He shoved his hands more deeply into his
pockets. “My only absolution comes from
knowing it’s them or me, from protecting my friends.” He shrugged and looked up at the sky. “Maybe I’m going to hell, but at least I’ll go knowing that I kept you safe.”
It seemed to me that Ash’s
absolution was a poor substitute for what Father O’Brien offered, but that was
what made it real. I knew Ash would
never forgive himself for the things he’d been forced to do, and that it
wouldn’t do him any good to hear that I forgave him and believed in him.
I stopped walking and put a hand on
Ash’s arm. He looked into me,
waiting. “Thank you,” I whispered, aware
that there weren’t really words--in English or Japanese--to explain what I
really meant, what I really felt.
He understood. His mouth pulled into a ghost of a smile and
his eyes softened. Before I could react,
he yanked him against him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. I fumbled awkwardly for a place to put my
hands, and wound up sliding them around his waist.
I leaned my head against his chest. It was strange for me to be so near to
anyone, and yet it felt natural for it to be Ash. He squeezed me tightly and I found myself
hugging him back.
We walked the rest of our journey
home in contented silence, and even after we’d shed our coats and climbed into
our respective beds, I felt the warmth of him against me in the snow, heard the
tremble in his voice when he talked about forgiveness. The church was a beautiful place--one I’d
remember forever--but I think we were both aware of the true sanctuary that we
had in each other.