The American Page 18

  Nothing has changed at all, not since the early market, the early fairs and circus. There is even a soldier of fortune mingling in the crowds of the Piazza del Duomo. He is not en route for the Holy Land, not one of an order of military monks. He buys only the few items he might need for his voyage towards tomorrow, for tomorrow is his goal. Or the next day. For him, the future is immediate, can be counted on a station clock or one of the cheap watches. He does not know where his road leads nor what it passes by on its way to his ultimate destination: he knows what that is; it is death. The hydraulic buffers at the end of every line. He simply follows the way, watching the shadows ahead for bandits, cautious of the charlatans, wary of the sin-eaters and forgivers of men, suspicious of the way the dice roll.

  Watch him. He buys a thin salami, accepting a slice to taste before choosing. He smiles politely to the crone in the orange head-scarf with her sharp knife and greasy hands, bobbing under the salamis hanging from the roof of her stall like obscene fruit. He does not haggle. A man with no determined future has no need of bargaining. He saves his skills in that arena for the last great bargain of them all. To die quickly or slowly, with or without pain, humiliation, suffering or sufferance. He purchases a length of small bore lead-water piping from one of the hardware merchants. He tests the ripeness of the artichokes, the apricots and peaches, the peppers and the cucumbers. He sniffs the clean leaves of the lettuce as if they were the petals of an exotic jungle flower. Whatever he purchases, he pays for it with cash, low denomination notes, and waives his right to loose change. He has no use for coins or brass telephone tokens. They are an encumbrance, a weight to slow him down.

  He crosses the Corso Federico II and disappears down the shadowed gully of a side street.

  Who is this enigmatic person, this invisibility, this cryptically quiet smiler, this secretive man?

  It is me. Yet it might just as readily be you.

  The sun is high. Father Benedetto has placed an umbrella over the table in his garden. It is blue and white and has the logo of a national bank printed on alternate panels. A long shoot from the grapevine on the north wall of the garden has reached out to it and is trying to twist tendrils round the rim.

  He has been to Rome, to the Vatican. He has attended Mass in St. Peter’s with the Holy Father, returned with his soul purified and two bottles of La Vie, Grand Armagnac.

  The peaches being finished now and the tree bare save for the scatter of late fruit which will not ripen now, we have before us half a kilogram of prosciutto sliced as thin as tissue paper. It comes from the stock of two dozen hams he has cured himself, suspended like the corpses of gross dead bats in the cellar. He smokes them, too: there is a smoke oven down there. It is against the law to cure one’s own hams with smoke within the town boundaries. He does the work at night, dousing the embers and glowing wood-chips at dawn, or when there is a high wind. The law has nothing to do with pollution control: it has existed for centuries, to protect the monopoly of the burgesses and guild of prosciutto smokers.

  ‘Americans are uncivilized,’ he says, out of the blue.

  We have not spoken for a quarter of an hour. This does not matter. We are not so unfamiliar with each other that we have to chatter all the time like popinjays.

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘In a cantina off the Piazza Navona, I saw two Americans drinking cognac—and ginger ale! Such a blasphemy against Bacchus.’

  ‘And you a Catholic Father!’

  ‘Yes . . . Well,’ he defends himself, ‘one has to keep standards. Regardless of faith.’

  He glances momentarily upward at the sky for forgiveness but the bank umbrella gets in the way. Not that it matters: I am sure, had I mentioned it, he would have reminded me that Our Lord can see through an umbrella.

  ‘When I was in Rome, I dined at the Venerabile Collegio Inglese. Do you know it?’

  I shake my head. I have always avoided the narrow Via di Monserrato off the Piazza Farnese. The brothers in my public school were forever speaking its praises, telling us boys of its beauty, of its tranquillity in the chaotic heart of Rome. Every anecdote they told seemed to begin, ‘When I was at the English College . . .’ Some of the boys eventually trod their way there, became seminarians and fathers to perpetuate the stories. I determined at a young age never to set foot near it. It was as much an anathema to me as the gates of Hell. I envisioned it populated with brothers in soutanes, devils in disguise who, like the music master, patted boys on their buttocks as they filed out of the choir stalls.

  ‘I know of it,’ I reply evasively.

  ‘A curious place: you know, my friend, I think the English were never meant to be adherents of our Roman church. Wherever they go—even here, in Rome, where the college has the direct patronage of our Holy Father—they keep their own particular style of . . .’ He pauses, his half open hand circling in the air as if to catch from the breeze the words he requires, ‘. . . being Roman Catholic.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Father Benedetto’s hand circles for a few moments more then settles upon the table.

  ‘In the college chapel, by the high altar, there hangs a painting. All Catholic churches have these, except the modern monstrosities.’

  He stops talking. His dislike of twentieth-century architecture is so strong it silences him. If he had his way, the mediaeval would be the norm.

  ‘The painting?’ I prompt him.

  ‘Yes. The painting. In most churches, this would be Calvary, the Crucifixion of Our Lord.’

  He speaks the capital letters: like all priests, certain words act like charms upon them and when they utter them one knows they are reading block text in their minds, seeing their speech as if it was a decoration on a twelfth-century manuscript.

  ‘This painting is of the Trinity. God is standing with the body of Christ in his hands. The Holy Blood of Our Saviour is dripping not to the ground but to a map of England. And there, on the map, kneel St. Thomas and St. Edmund. It was painted by Durante Alberti. When the Faith was proscribed in England, the seminarians would sing a Te Deum before the picture whenever a new martyr was elevated to the side of Our Lord.’

  I make no comment.

  ‘At the base of the picture are the words, Veni mittere ignem in terram.’

  ‘I have come to spread fire over the earth,’ I translate.

  It might be my own epitaph.

  I help myself to another sliver of ham. Father Benedetto’s silver forks are thin, long-pronged like elongated tridents. They remind me of the frescoes in the little church by the ruined farmhouse.

  ‘Do you know a church down the valley full of frescoes?’ I ask.

  ‘There are a number.’

  ‘This is a tiny, squalid little place, hardly bigger than a chapel. Next to a farm. Almost a part of the barn.’

  He nods and says, quietly, ‘Santa Lucia ad Cryptas. I know it.’

  ‘You are thinking of another. There is no crypt.’

  ‘There is, Signor Farfalla. A big crypt. Bigger than the church itself. It is like an oak tree of the faith. There is more below the surface than above.’

  ‘I saw no entrance.’

  ‘It is blocked now.’

  ‘But you,’ I guess, ‘have been in?’

  ‘Many years ago. Before the war. When I was a boy.’

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘You will hear many stories. Perhaps you have already?’

  I shake my head and say I stumbled upon the place whilst hunting out new butterflies.

  ‘The crypt is huge. Maybe the size of two tennis courts. It is vaulted with thick pillars. The floor is made of smooth stones. There is an altar . . .’

  He stops speaking, a faraway stare in his eyes. This is unusual. He is not a nostalgic. It disappears.

  ‘As with the church above,’ he continues, ‘the whole crypt is painted. The colours are more beautiful than in the nave. There is no light down there. No sun fades the colours and the temperature is still all year. No ma
tter what the sun or the snow.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘My father paid the priest to take us. We were the last to enter. It was sealed a few months later. The war . . . Now no one remembers it. They think the church is what they remember so they do not look for the cavern below.’

  ‘What are the frescoes?’

  He does not answer at first but sips his brandy.

  ‘It was my visit there decided me to take the priesthood. It was there I saw God.’

  I am immediately intrigued. Father Benedetto is not an impractical man, not a dream-monger. He is, within the bounds of his faith, a realist and it is for this I find his company congenial. He may revel in the magic of Mass and the mumbo-jumbo of the rituals of Rome, yet he still has his feet on the ground. His head is not entirely in the clouds of dogma and theology.

  ‘You saw God? You mean there is a wonderful painting down there? A portrait? The frescoes above are pre-Giotto, I am sure. Is this even earlier?’

  ‘About the same. But . . .’ He is serious, suddenly very serious. ‘I can tell you only if you swear to secrecy.’

  I laugh. How Italian, I think: only in Italy can one be sworn to secrecy over the contents of a church. This is a Byzantine plot in the hatching. I have enough of that sort of thing for real in my life. It is only a day or two to the delivery of the doctored Socimi.

  ‘How can you trust me? I am not a Catholic.’

  ‘For that reason, I can trust you. A Catholic would want to open the place up, put a turngate at the door. Charge the tourists. Encourage pilgrims. They would hold services. The colours would fade. The whole business . . .’ He still holds his glass but does not put it to his lips. ‘So I can trust you? Not to tell a living soul?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘When you go in—I went with a candle, like a monk of old—there is no Christ. There is no benediction. There is no altar. It is not a holy place as we think of them now . . . What you see is the Love of Christ.’

  I am slightly puzzled. Love is an abstract unless translated into action: Clara’s breasts, Dindina’s urgent wriggling. These are love of a sort.

  ‘More precisely, you see what the Love of Christ can do for you.’

  I am none the wiser for Christ has never shown me any love. Of that I can be sure. And I do not blame him.

  ‘Tell me, Signor Farfalla,’ Father Benedetto asks, ‘do you ever think of hell?’

  ‘Yes, all the time.’

  This is only a half untruth.

  ‘And what do you see?’

  I shrug.

  ‘I see nothing. I just sense an ill-ease. Like the first twinges of influenza coming on.’

  ‘But in the soul!’

  I have no soul. Of that, there is no question. Souls are for saints and pious fools. I do not want to argue this one through: we have already stumbled along this rocky theological track together.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What is hell? Eternal damnation? The pit and the flames? Like the pictures you have seen in the church above?’

  ‘I suppose so. I have not tried to visualise it.’

  Standing, he turns the nut on the umbrella, tilting it to keep the sun off the prosciutto. I think maybe he is also doing this to have an uninterrupted view of the sky over his head. Just in case.

  ‘Hell,’ I say, ‘is like your cellar: dank, musty, dark with a fire in one corner and dead flesh suspended from the ceiling.’

  He smiles ironically as he sits down.

  ‘Hell is to be without love. To be without hope. Hell is to be alone in a place where time never ends, the clock never stops ticking but the hands never move. Do you know the writing of Antonio Machado?’ He wets his lips with the armagnac. ‘ “Hell is the blood-souring palace of time, in whose most profound ring the Devil himself is waiting, winding a Promethean watch in his hand.” ’

  ‘Bearing in mind this house of yours is off the Via dell’ Orologio,’ I remind him, ‘and has a hellish cellar—and was once the abode of a watchmaker—I should suggest you might seek another lodging. This cannot be a healthy place for a priest.’

  This supposition amuses him. I help myself to the bottle.

  ‘I like to be alone,’ I go on. ‘There is nothing I prefer more. To be alone in the mountains with my paints . . .’

  ‘That is not alone!’ Father Benedetto interrupts. ‘You are merely without human company. But the butterflies you paint are with you, the trees and insects, the birds. God. Whether you acknowledge Him or not. No! To be alone is to be in a void. Without even memory. Memories are a great weapon against solitude. Even the memory of love can be salvation.’

  ‘So what do the frescoes depict,’ I ask, ‘that they can remind you of hell?’

  He makes no answer. Instead, he forks some ham into his mouth and chews slowly upon it, savouring the flavour. This is one of the best hams he has produced in a decade of illicit stoking his private inferno.

  ‘The frescoes—yes! They depict hell as men see it. Flames and demons, Satan in all his corruption. The three gates are open—lust, anger and greed. The dead are being punished for this. But . . .’ He sighs. ‘Their faces. They are blank. They show no emotion. They do not grimace at the fire, do not fight the heat. They have no memory of love, have no love to stave off the horrors, to strengthen them in their trials. To save them.’

  ‘They had an inadequate artist paint their picture,’ I reply.

  ‘This may be so. But they are still without a past. A past of love. God has not touched them with love. His love saves us from hell. The memory of love can save us all from hell.’

  I drain my brandy. It is time to go. I do not want to become embroiled again in the historical argument we always have. History simply exists. It is best to forget it, live for the future.

  ‘You know,’ I comment, ‘the good thing about Muhammad is that when he invented Islam, he forged a religion with no inferno.’

  ‘Perhaps this is why,’ Father Benedetto replies with uncharacteristic wit, ‘the Moslems eat no pork. They cannot smoke it without an inferno in their hell. When you eat prosciutto you are eating the fruits of Hell. To devour them is to destroy them.’

  He forks a large slice of cured ham into his mouth and grins. He is eating the devil and all his works, he thinks, rending the evil one with his own teeth, savaging him. Later, the devil will pass the way of all filth and the concept of this is immensely pleasing to him.

  ‘Two hundred years ago, my friend,’ I advise, ‘you would be accused of devilry, taking the hellish into yourself just as you take the flesh of Christ in the sacrament. It is just as well the Inquisition is over.’

  ‘Then you should see me burn in the Piazza Campo de’ Fiori. Like Giordano Bruno.’

  ‘I should not attend. I have no wish to see you enter the flames of hell.’

  ‘For me, there is no hell. I have the memory of the Love of Christ.’

  ‘I shall let myself out,’ I say. ‘Do not get up.’

  We shake hands.

  ‘Come again, Signor Farfalla. Next week. Early.’ He lifts his index finger in self-admonishment. ‘No! On Monday I go to Firenze. I return on Wednesday. After that . . .’

  As I leave the garden, I look back. It is a little Eden in which he is seated, pouring out another brandy under the shade of a beneficial bank. I pause momentarily. He is a good man and I like him despite his underhand attempts to drag me back into the smothering folds of his belief. I shall remember him always like this: the plate of prosciutto, a good armagnac and the blue and white umbrella over his head.

  I park the Citroën by the end of the row of trees in Mopolino, stepping cautiously out to avoid the projecting roots and a fresh pile of dog turds covered with bluebottles. My feet grind on the gravel. The flies buzz obscenely in the air, hover about and return to their banquet. The door to the village post office has been fitted with a garish, red-and-yellow plastic strip curtain to keep insects out and the coolness in.

  There is not one customer
at either of the bars. I sit at the usual table, order an espresso and a glass of iced water and unfold the day’s edition of La Repubblica.

  For thirty minutes or so, I sip my coffee, glance through the newspaper and survey the piazza. I am particularly careful to observe the shadows. The sun is high and the doorways dark, the alleyways in deep shade—there are two leading off the piazza, one in the direction of the little church and the other leading out of the village towards a channel cut in the mountainside behind to divert either avalanches or meltwater away from the settlement.

  The farmer with the cart and rotund pony arrives, the wheels squeaking. He halts by the other bar and offloads a sack of nondescript vegetables, gossiping for a few moments with the patron who has come out to pass the time of day with him. He departs and, shortly afterwards, a truck arrives and collects the sack. One of the two pretty girls walks past me and goes into the general store down the street leading from the main road. She smiles sweetly at me as she goes by.

  As I drain my coffee, one of the dogs lying asleep by the trees sits up and barks. Another takes up the call with a staccato refrain of yaps. They are not barking at each other, squabbling as village dogs do the world over. This is not usual. I look up to see the shadow-dweller standing some ten metres from my car. He is wearing the same clothes as when I last saw him, only he is now also wearing a straw hat shaped a little like a trilby. It has a brown band around the crown.

  He has seen me, is suddenly flummoxed, like a wild animal caught in the open by the hunter. He did not expect to find me also in the open, apparently at ease and taking a coffee.