The Sparrow

Jimmy Quinn is being pestered by his ex-girlfriend, Peggy Soong, about the fact that he has been assigned a “vulture.” In later chapters, it will be revealed that a vulture is a computer programmer who’s hired to metaphorically pick the brains of a worker to create a program that can do the job more efficiently, and for cheaper, than the worker. Peggy and Jimmy both work at Arecibo, a radio telescope that scans the airwaves for alien activity. Like most people, Peggy is upset about the vulture coming because it means that lower-tier workers like her and Jimmy could be out of a job. However, Jimmy, who has a “habit of obedience” when under authority, is optimistic about the outcome (16).

Jimmy is so tall that he had to have the middle drawers of his desk removed to avoid banging his knees, and he attributes this to “Father Emilio Sandoz, a Puerto Rican Jesuit he’d met through George Edwards” (17). George volunteers at Arecibo, giving tours to school children, and his wife, Anne, works at a Jesuit clinic as a doctor in La Perla, a slum outside of Old San Juan. Jimmy is invited over to dinner at George and Anne’s, which is where he meets Emilio, and the three become close friends.

Jimmy visits a bar with Emilio in La Perla and asks his advice about working with a vulture. Emilio says it’s not so bad and that he once worked with a vulture named Sofia Mendes. Emilio falls asleep, and Jimmy secretly pays for Emilio’s meals for the upcoming week. Jimmy thinks about how he once considered becoming a Jesuit priest himself, having been raised in a Jesuit school. He is described as having “a generous soul, with an impulse to heal hurts and lighten loads, who could not stand idly while men like Emilio Sandoz poured out their lives and energy for others” (21).

Emilio is a Puerto Rico native who speaks many languages and received his doctorate in linguistics. After becoming a Jesuit priest, he was sent on various brief mission trips around the world, which allowed him to grow “accustomed to feeling inexpert and out of his depth” (23). However, at the end of the chapter, time jumps to the present, and Emilio thinks about his time on Rakhat and how he had “discovered the outermost limit of faith and, in doing so, had located the exact boundary of despair” (24). It wasn’t during his Earthly missions but rather during his time on Rakhat that he learned to truly fear God.

The chapter opens with John Candotti on his way to see Emilio because “[s]omebody needed to let the guy know exactly which rock and what kind of hard place he was between. If Sandoz was unwilling to talk about the mission, the crew of the ship that had sent him back, against all odds, had suffered from no such reticence” (26).

Since news of the mission reached Earth long before Emilio did, he has no idea that everyone on Earth thinks he killed a child and engaged in sex work while on Rakhat. John decides that “[n]o matter how badly Sandoz stumbled on Rakhat […] he needs a friend now, so what the hell?” (27).

Emilio is hungry, but his remaining teeth are loose in his gums from the scurvy. Father Edward cuts up Emilio’s toast, thinking about how he needs careful handling because “[h]is physical condition [i]s so distressing and his political position so difficult that it was easy to forget how many friends this man had lost on Rakhat, how quickly the mission had gone from promise to ruin, how recent it all was for him” (28). Edward leaves Emilio to eat in peace. Johannes Voelker appears.

It’s clear that Johannes doesn’t like Emilio and hopes that he will resign from his position as a priest. Johannes exits the room, leaving John and Emilio alone. Emilio’s hands are horribly disfigured from something that happened to him on Rakhat, leaving him unable to “[c]ut his toenails, shave, [or] go to the can alone” (30). John notes that the “muscles of the palms had been carefully cut from the bones, doubling the length of the fingers, and Sandoz’s hands [remind] John of childhood Halloween skeletons” (30).

John wonders why they did this to Emilio. In an act of friendship, John gives Emilio a custom pair of gloves that he hopes will hold his hands together. This makes Emilio cry. He says that if he ever desires a confessor, he will ask John.

While shaving one evening, Jimmy thinks of a way to appease Peggy and make his boss happy regarding the vulture. Jimmy meets with his boss, Masao Yanoguchi, and makes a proposition. Jimmy says that he realizes his job is “pretty mechanical,” adding, “I understand that it makes good business sense to automate what I do, so I’ve begun thinking about going back to school for a Ph.D., and it occurred to me that you and ISAS might be interested in the topic I hope to use for my thesis” (35).

Jimmy wants to attempt a pilot project that compares an AI astronomy program with the “human subject it was based on” (35). He would then do a side-by-side comparison of the program’s data and his own over the course of a year. He would use the data for his thesis, but it would also benefit Masao because he would know if AI programs were really worth the money, based on how accurate they are compared to their human counterpart programs. Masao says he will think about it but seems pleased with the idea.

Emilio has returned from his mission trip in Sudan and meets Sofia Mendes for the first time. He is feeling culture shock, having:

moved from a war zone in the Horn of Africa to the suburban campus of John Carroll University, set in the placid peace of a pretty neighborhood of old and well-kept houses, where the children screamed and ran but in play, laughing and robust, not stunned or desperate or starving or terrified (38).

The two meet in a coffee shop three days out of every week. Sofia relentlessly interrogates Emilio concerning his process of learning languages from scratch, and Emilio is consistently blown away by her beauty and his inability to read her.

While his meetings with Sofia drain him, he finds solace in a bright Latin 101 student named Anne, who is in her “late fifties, fine white hair drawn into a neat French braid […] compact, quick, and intellectually fearless, with a lovely pealing laugh she made frequent use of in class” (41). Anne invites Emilio over for dinner one evening, and he quickly becomes close friends with Anne and her husband, George.

Emilio finds out that George is a retired engineer and Anne was a biological anthropologist who switched to emergency medicine later in life. Emilio appreciates and trusts Anne and seeks her counsel regarding his feelings for Sofia. Emilio explains how he is warm with Sofia, but she is constantly cold in return. Anne, using her anthropologic skills, hypothesizes that Sofia is probably a Sephardic Jew, given her looks and hard-to-place accent, and that Emilio’s ties to Catholicism are most likely off-putting to her.

After many meetings, Sofia finally opens up slightly to Emilio, revealing that the bracelet she always wears is an identification bracelet belonging to her broker. She says that at the age of 15, a man contracted her services. She was “educated at his expense and until [she repays] his investment, it is illegal to employ [her] directly” (49). In this way, she is basically an indentured servant. The profit she makes from each job goes directly to her broker, and he in turn pays her a living wage.

In March, a reporter breaks into Emilio’s room:

[The] intrusion was a setback for Sandoz, for whom the incident had been literally nightmarish. But even before the break in, it was clear that he wasn’t improving much mentally, despite the fact that his physical condition had stabilized (51).

Dental implants are impossible, and Emilio’s hands are too fragile to receive surgery. As such, the Society hires an Indian craftsman, Father Singh, to make braces that will strengthen Emilio’s hands and give him some mobility.

After another reporter tries to break into Emilio’s room, Father Voelker suggests that Emilio might benefit from a retreat in a more secluded area. The Father General agrees and says that the Jesuit retreat house north of Naples would be more fitting. On Easter weekend, while the Vatican is crammed with over 250,000 faithful tourists, Emilio is put in a disguise and driven out of the city to the retreat house.

Once there, Emilio asks John if he experiences God. The question makes John feel uncomfortable, and he replies, “Not directly, not as a friend or a personality, I suppose […] I would have to say that I find God in serving his children” (59). Sandoz replies, “Don’t hope for more than that, John […] God will break your heart” (59).

Emilio goes back to his room and finds a memo that says, “[T]here has been a reconsideration of Mary Magdalene in the years of your absence. Perhaps you will be interested in the new thinking” (60). This fills Emilio with rage, and he begins to vomit. While not directly stated, it’s implied that Johannes left this note to purposefully make Emilio upset, most likely because Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and Emilio has been accused of doing sex work on Rakhat. 

After finishing his work with Sofia, Emilio asks to be transferred back to La Perla in Puerto Rico. Shortly after the request, he receives a call from Dallas Wesley “D.W.” Yarbrough, who tells him his hometown won’t give him a welcome-home party. Emilio agrees but says, “That’s why I should go back. I need to put some ghosts to rest” (61). D.W. is the man responsible for pulling teenage Emilio from the slum he grew up in. As hesitant as he is to see him go back, he grants Emilio’s request.

Once in San Juan, Emilio calls Anne and George and tells them all about La Perla. He says that the clinic is losing its doctor, and there’s no one to replace him. He asks Anne to take his place, and she accepts. She and George move to La Perla, and she thinks about her patients, their “[b]acks and shoulders wrenched, wrists damaged, knees torn at the kapok factory. Hands opaline with infected cuts, gone bad from the bacteria and toxins in the offal at the fish-processing plant” (63). It will be a world she isn’t used to, but she is happy to take on the new position rather than sit around in the comfort of retirement.

Emilio begins his mission in La Perla by doing community service projects, such as cleaning up the mission’s physical plant and working with after-school activities. He comes across “a little horror named Felipe Reyes who hawked stolen goods right outside the clinic, a boy with the foulest mouth the widely experienced Anne Edwards had ever encountered” (64). Emilio takes him under his wing, much like D.W. did for him. George makes himself useful by servicing the clinic, and he eventually volunteers at the Arecibo Radio Telescope. This is how he meets Jimmy Quinn, the man “who would lead them all to Rakhat” (64).

Anne finds it strange that Emilio has never mentioned his family, but she doesn’t push him to talk about his past. She notes that many people in the neighborhood are still distant with the clinic, so she decides to throw a party, hoping that it will break the ice. Emilio does magic tricks at the party to impress the children. The party is such a hit that they throw larger, subsequent fiestas.

One night, Emilio calls Anne. His speech is slurred, and he asks her to meet him at the clinic. When she arrives, she finds Emilio has been badly beaten. He doesn’t want to tell Anne what happened, but he finally admits that he went to see his brother, and this was the result. Emilio sleeps in Anne and George’s guest room that night.

The next morning, Anne stares at herself naked in the bathroom mirror, inspecting “the results of a lifetime of disciplined diet and decades of rigorous ballet classes. Her body had never been thickened by childbearing” (71). She’s happy with her appearance, and she “force[s] herself to imagine Emilio’s eyes on her, to work through in thought any conceivable scenario in which he could come to her as she was now. She did not look away from the mirror: an act of will” (71). She feels torn between her attraction to Emilio and realizing that she is more of a mother to him than a romantic interest.