Chapter 6 of the R.M. Dolin novel, "Trophic Cascade"
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Jake and Armando know they need to be careful, Padre’s discerning grin and eerie propensity to know way more about everything going on in the valley than anyone should, causes them to over-censor anything they might say. Given the questions Padre’s probing, what if he already knows about the ANA? How could he? Yet why else would he take their talk about politics and turn it into something that can’t be talked about? “We can argue all kinds of scenario answers to your question.” Jake says in an effort to deflect. “What I don’t get, is the Salsa band. How does a Parish Priest wind up with that gig?”
“I believe brother Mandy’s already answered that question,” Padre toasts his companions with his newest bourbon cocktail. “Salsa’s in my blood as much as kielbasa’s in yours. You think because I’m a Priest I don’t enjoy getting down with some soul music?”
“I think Priests shouldn’t be hanging around gin joints talking about communist dictators in a way that causes others to think you admire them.”
“This is a cerveza bar, Cabron. If I start serving gin, before ya know it, trust-funders will be hanging out here.”
Padre considers his response, on the one hand, he enjoys debating Jake on international politics and would very much like to continue; On the other hand, he needs to be careful not to reveal too much regarding the real reason he’s in Northern New Mexico. “I like this joint,” he decides smiling sardonically at Armando, “even if the cocktails are marginal?”
“Hey!” Armando says pretending to be offended.
“I mean night clubs.” Jake re-qualifies. “Especially the kind of places you play. I’d be afraid to go into some of those dives with two Dario’s backing me up.”
“That’s because you’re not a homie; not down with the struggle, if you know what I mean.”
“I wouldn’t go in those places either.” Armando confesses.
“They are rough, I’ll give you that, but it’s where God sends me. Ya gotta go where the sinners go, so I go unafraid. I am always doing God’s work, que no, Cabron?” Armando nods still smarting from what just happened. “Whether I’m in church preaching, on stage performing, or at some political rally, my mission is to bring people closer to God one soul at a time; even if it is often in unconventional ways.”
“I hope at least for the safety of those poor sinners you’re not as rough on them as you were on me?” Armando scoffs.
“Brother Mandy,” Padre laughs. “You’re my special long-term project needing, shall we say, a unique approach?”
“Eee Cabron!”
“Does that mean you also belong to the Order of Salsa Playing Priests?” Jake teases.
“No,” Padre shoots back. “When I first came to the Santa Fe archdiocese, Bishop Abbadelli forbade me from playing.”
“But yet you do, Cabron?”
“I convinced him to change his mind.” Padre answers with a sly smile.
“From everything I’ve heard about our beloved Bishop,” Armando assesses, “that couldn’t have been easy.”
“I couldn’t simply accept his edict,” Padre expands. “Playing music means too much to me. So, I did some research and then, even though it was a long shot, made an appointment to see if I could persuade him to reverse his decision.”
“What could you possibly say to get that stubborn old fart to change his mind?” Jake implores.
“I could tell you,” Padre grins. “But it’s way better if I show you.” With eager fluidity Padre hops out of his chair and quickly darts out of the bar.
“What do you think he’s getting?” Jake asks.
“Whatever he used to blackmail our poor bishop,” Armando concludes. “Against Padre, our beloved Bishop Abbadelli never had a chance.”
Before they can finish speculating on the diabolical means Padre employed to compel the righteous Bishop Abbadelli to allow one of his Priests to play in a sinful Salsa band, the old man who recently moved into the Valdez house up the road walks in, his limp more pronounced than usual on account of the recent rain. Rather oddly, he stops just inside the door.
“Nine o’clock came early,” Armando whispers getting up to fix the old man his beer and bump. Jake checks the status of things at home using his new home security App and is relieved not only that everything’s okay, but that Dario and Chance seem to be getting along. Armando notices the old man oddly fidgeting at the entryway. His first thought is he forgot where he is or why he’s here, but as he watches he sees it’s something else. “Yo Jake,” Armando calls out from behind the bar. Jake looks up. “You’re in his chair, Cabron,” Armando whispers.
“What?” Jake asks, unaware the old man’s still at the doorway.
“You’re in his chair!” Armando shouts while gesturing toward the door.
“Oh!” Jake jumps up. “I had no idea,” he apologetically says to the old man while picking up his drink, as well as Padre’s, and taking them to their usual spot at the poker table. As soon as he vacates the table, the old man moves in and immediately takes out his journal and number two pencil.
“Here you go,” Armando says as he approaches the old man’s table. “One beer with a bump.” He puts the drinks down and looks the two fives and two ones for a tip the old man’s placed on the table. “This round’s on the house, and I used that rapscallion’s bourbon.” He gestures toward Jake. “On account of him homesteading in your chair. We need to forgive him for squatting, the poor bastard’s poco loco.”
Armando picks up his mostly empty beer can and Pardre’s cocktail not seeming to realize he’s just as guilty for sitting at the old man’s table as Jake. Just as he reaches the poker table, Padre returns carrying a well-worn instrument case. On his way past the old man, Padre makes eye contact and smiles warmly but doesn’t say anything. After clearing a spot on the poker table, Padre puts the music case down and opens it to reveal a lush ruby red velvet lining that encases a highly polished brass trumpet with silver inlays and pearl topped valve buttons.
The faux alligator skin outer case with its lush red velvet interior set atop the poker table’s emerald green felt, frames the trumpet in Middle Age chivalry, as if Merlin himself used it to cast spells and Lancelot to slay dragons. From the reverent way Padre handles the instrument as he removes it from its lush velvet hold, you know he knows the instruments magical history. He gently slides the silver mouthpiece into the brass insert with surgical precision and pumps the valves to loosen them up.
“So, you auditioned for the bishop?” Jake assumes unimpressed.
“I did more than that,” Padre proudly smiles. “Bishop Abbadelli has very strong views about Priests doing much of anything outside of their parish duties and I understand to persuade him to change his mind will require something far more compelling. We start our meeting with him giving me a long lecture about the role of Parish Priests and it’s pretty clear that role doesn’t involve playing in a Salsa band.”
“You blackmailed him, didn’t you?” Armando inserts eager to be the first to guess the right answer.
“No!” Padre fires back insulted Armando would even suggest he’d resort to blackmail or that Bishop Abbadelli could be so corrupted.
“So did you offer him a cut of the action?” Armando files his second option with tenuous surety. “I understand that can buy you a lot of absolution.”
“You gonna let me tell this story?” Padre grouses as much offended as he is impatient. Armando submissively nods. “As I was saying, it’s not looking good for the home team as Bishop Abbadelli has no intention of yielding. As a last resort, I challenge him to a wager. You see,” Padre adds with a devilish grin, “My research revealed that our beloved Bishop has a thing for the ponies. So, gambling on the fact he’s a gambling man, I propose playing a simple song.”
“What kind of wager is that?” Jake scorns, earning him an infamous annoyed stare from Padre. Jake looks at Armando who grins back glad to not be the only one getting skewed by a Padre scowl.
Padre takes an entertaining pause to impress upon his audience their need to understand this is his story to tell. “I bet the bishop I could play a song that would make him cry.” Padre reveals before again taking a professional pause to drive up the drama and drive home his point. “If I do, then he must agree to let me play in the Salsa band. If I can’t make him cry, I agree to stop pestering him about my music.”
“That’s a helluva sided bet,” Jake interjects. “Pot odds alone says he has to accept.”
“Exactly,” Padre concurs. “If the pot odds, as you call them, are not significantly in his favor he’ll never take the bet. But even with pot odds, the bishop thinks long and hard before finally deciding there’s no way a trumpeter can make him cry and it’s probably the only way to get me out of his office.”
“A little Latin serenade to torch poor bishop’s soul, eh Cabron?” Armando seductively speculates barely containing his excitement.
“No one cries listening to Latin.” Padre forcefully answers while showering Armando with another scowl for attempting to intrude on his story. “Even our sad songs fill the soul with joy.”
“What then?” Armando asks; forgetting in his perplexed state he’s not supposed to interject.
“A simple five note song I learned in seminary,” Padre triumphantly sings while raising the trumpet to his lips. With slow and deliberate flare, he begins a deep mournful ode.
The Hejnal Mariacki, pronounced, ‘hey-now Mahr-yahts-kee’ is both the Polish and Krakow anthems whose origins go all the way back to the 1200’s when Krakow was a walled city. Trumpeters would play the song in the morning to announce the gates being opened for the day and in the evening to summon workers home ahead of the gates closing for the night. The Hejnal Mariacki, is named after the Hungarian born Jadwiga who from 1384 until 1399 was Queen of Poland. The literal translation of the song, is “Saint Mary’s Dawn.”
Each time the Hejnal is played, a lone trumpeter climbs the tall tower of Saint Mary’s Church in the center of old Krakow allowing him to see every corner of the stone wall protecting the city, as well as far into the surrounding countryside. The Poles who work outside the city walls during the day are trained to drop whatever they’re doing when the evening Hejnal plays because failure to get inside before the gates close means you spend the night on your own dealing with uncompromising elements, wild animals, and marauding barbarians.
The prominence of the Henjal began in 1241 during one of several Mongol invasions. As legend has it, the Mongols are attempting to put a sneak on Krakow late one afternoon. Their plan is to work up close while the gates are still open and then storm the entrance overwhelming surprised guards before the gates can be closed. Once inside, the many terrible and horrific things the Mongols are notorious for will ravage unabated. If past behavior is any indication of what to expect should they be successful, Krakow will cease to exist. The Mongol General Subutai thinks he’s devised a pretty good plan. However, things went awry when a sentry in the tower of Saint Mary’s spots the Mongols hiding in the perimeter forest and begins playing the Henjal to warn the guards and workers to get the gates closed in advance of their assault.
As a precursor to their attack, the Mongols have disguised and pre-positioned their best archers within the city walls. By the time the Polish sentry alone in Saint Mary’s tower begins his fourth repetition of the five-note Hejnal a skilled Mongol archer was at the base of the tower, with a single arrow, shoots the trumpeter in the throat, instantly killing him and causing an abrupt halt to the song.
The Polish sentry’s sacrifice saves Krakow because the city gates are closed before the Mongol army can storm inside. To this day, the Hejnal is played at noon every day on Polish National Radio where the song abruptly ends in the middle of the fourth repetition. It’s also played every hour from Saint Mary’s tower in old Krakow in the exact same way it was that fate filled day. The song is a reminder to the proud people of Poland not only of the sacrifice the Sentry made in 1241 to save Krakow, but of the countless sacrifices Polish men and women have made for centuries to preserve and protect their blessed motherland.
The prominence of the legend of the Hejnal Mariacki grew in World War II during the repatriation of Italy. The Italian campaign was perhaps the hardest fought and most difficult of the European theater. In the winter of 1944, the Battle of Monte Cassino begins. This pivotal engagement is also referred to as the Battle for Rome. Three times Allied forces attempted to capture Monte Cassino and each time the Germans repel their attack. The high cost in Allied casualties exceeded sixteen thousand. On the fourth assault, the Polish army, bent on wrenching Rome away from the evil Nazi scourge, surge through the German defensives after an intense and prolonged assault up the mountain. To mark their profound victory for both the Allied forces and the Polish Army, and to honor the many who sacrificed so much to defeat evil, a trumpeter from the 2nd Polish Corps stands on the rubble of what was once the Monte Cassino Abbey at the top of the mountain and plays the Hejnal Mariacki. He abruptly ends his tribute in the middle of the fourth repetition.
Jake recalls the legend of the Hejnal as easily as any Pole who grew up listening to it played every day on Polish National Radio. As Padre works through the first repetition, Jake proudly recounts the many times his ancestor’s bravery saved not only Poland, but all of Europe; proud of himself to currently be carrying on their traditions in his own way. He feels a lump in his throat as Padre plays. Polish children are not trained to be proud of their country, it’s just ingrained in their DNA; even third generation Poles living in America retain that instinct.
During Padre’s second stanza, Jake’s mind floods with memories of the Polish traditions his parents taught him while growing up in South Dakota. There weren’t any other Polish families within a two-hundred-mile radius which made the foods they prepared and the celebrations they shared even more special. Traditions like the Christmas Oplatek and Easter Agnuszek (lamb cake). By the time Padre completes his second pass through the five-note Hejnal, the lump in Jake’s throat has grown harder to ignore.
From Armando’s perspective, the song Padre plays is mournful but doesn’t make his heart feel heavy and his thoughts deep. Certainly not in any kind of way that could bring someone to tears. Yet there is a ping to his past that makes him awkwardly uncomfortable; he’d never admit it, and really doesn’t even realize it, but it’s like his ancestors are telling him how proud they are for the role he’s playing in the things he’s doing.
Padre’s never able to play the Hejnal without recalling his youth and his constant struggles for social justice; first standing shoulder to shoulder with his dad, then on his own. His Dad was a committed Communist who believed the only way to effect change was through mass worker movements. Padre doesn’t necessarily disagree, he just prefers to focus on activities that are, to use the words he chose when explaining himself to his father, “more profound.” In his clerical role Padre is concerned with the soul and its journey to heaven. In his socially conscience role, he’s focused on the day-to-day struggle for justice and for equitable distribution of opportunity, natural resources, and prosperity.
The Hejnal always prompts Padre to renew his vows to God and recommit to doing God’s work in both small and large measures; in a conflicting way, it also causes him to question whether God is not better served by devoting himself to the more earthly missions of his youth? After all, why do the spiritual and earthy have to be mutually exclusive as Bishop Abbadelli unyieldingly professes? The internal turmoil brought to the surface by this simple five note song tears at the core of Padre’s soul and brings him to tears as he physically feels his soul being pulled in two compelling directions.
The third run through the Hejnal lofts Jake back to his wedding day. He’d dated Emelia for just over a year even though it was clear they were meant to be together much earlier. They decide on a simple wedding in Emelia’s small village chapel followed by a reception at her parent’s farm. It’s the first and only time his parents visit Europe. He never before felt such a sense of belonging as he did that afternoon standing beside Emelia vowing to love and cherish her forever. He spends the rest of his life marveling at the way Emelia grows more beautiful every day even though it is not possible for anyone to be as beautiful as his bride on her wedding day.
Jake’s about to spiral into dark canyons of grief overcome by the gravity when Padre abruptly stops playing part way through the fourth run through the Hejnal leaving Jake suddenly lost somewhere between Saint Mary’s Church in Krakow, a small chapel in the French countryside, and the night he began his long goodbye. He starts to cry, he doesn’t know why, he just does.
“Cabron!” Armando teases Jake. “Tell me you’re not crying?”
“What can I say?” Jake answers unashamed, wiping tears from his face. “That song has that affect.”
“Check your man-card at the door on your way out, Cabron.” Armando stares at his friend inclined to pounce but profoundly can’t. Turning his attention to Padre, least he gets caught in emotions he suspects he has but can’t acknowledge, he redirects his inquisition. “I can sort of get him,” Armando pumps his thumb at Jake. “But I don’t get how you knew our bishop would cry?”
Padre pulls the mouthpiece from the trumpet and puts both gently in their hold. He keeps his head down to conceal any tears that may have escaped. “I knew the bishop was a boy in Rome when the Polish army rescued his family from the Germans. The people of Rome who survived the Nazis horror feel same profound emotions for the Hejnal as the people of Poland. You saw how he reacted.” Padre gestures toward Jake. “I knew that song would have the same effect on Bishop Abbadelli.”
“To wager so much Cabron, no one can know for certain.”
“Well said,” Padre softly smiles. “I went all in with the bishop, just as Jake did for Sympatico; and from the rumors running around the valley, like you and the other rapscallions who patronize this gin joint have been doing lately. People of faith allow the invisible hand to guide them.” Padre snaps shut the case and lifts it from the poker table. He walks past the old man on his way out the bar.
Had Padre stopped to visit with the old man on his way out, he would have noticed tear stains on the old man’s journal smearing a crudely drawn image of a lone Polish soldier from the 2nd Corps standing atop a pile of rubble proudly playing a battered trumpet. Off to the side of the rubble the old man drew a wounded American GI leaning on his crutches holding his helmet over his heart. On the wounded GI’s shoulder, drawn in a way most couldn’t discern, is the insignia of the US Army Rangers. On further study Padre would have discovered lost in the details of the old man’s sketch, vague similarities between the wounded GI in the drawing and the old man who limps into the Al Azar each night alone with his memories for a beer and a bump.
