Souvenir

Hour after hour, as the blocks-long, four-abreast line of patient, pious Mexicans inched forward, a squat, swarthy man moved stolidly along with it. It was worth the trouble, he reflected. It was not every day that a Mexican could see so holy a relic with his own eyes. It was not every day that a Belgian monk, trying to promote peace in the Holy Land, arrived on a world tour with a splinter from Jesucristo's own cross. Dios, what excitement! Red Cross ambulances screamed up & down, carting off women & children trampled in the crush.

At long last, the squat man was inside the elaborate baroque doors of the San Francisco church. Over the rebozo-covered heads of the women ahead of him, he could actually see the ten-foot cross with its glass box containing the holy splinter mounted at its center. His pulse beat faster. Finally, as he came abreast of the cross, his pocket knife flashed. Shrilly, the woman behind him screamed. "Virgen santisima! A sacrilege! This man has cut a piece of the Holy Cross!"

The crowd turned in horror. The man nervously protested his innocence. A church attendant searched him, found a piece of the cross-shaped mounting in his pocket. An angry knot closed in around him. He screamed for help as a dozen women ripped off their shoes and began beating him and clawing at his clothes. By the time the police had pushed through the mob, he was ragged and bleeding.

At the police station he identified himself as an elementary-school teacher, 45 years old. He had thought only to bring home a tiny chip of the mounting for his family to see. When no one appeared to press charges against him, he was released. "Senor," said a wondering desk sergeant, "you would have risked less by jumping off the top of the cathedral."

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