Father Panic's Opera Macabre (5 page)

Marisa smiled brightly, her body resting against his, her head on his chest. God, her hair felt so good on his cheek. He felt her hand on the small of his back. She looked up at him again and opened her mouth as he leaned forward to kiss her. Marisa's tongue met his aggressively, her arm tightened across his back and pulled him closer. Neil could feel the same anxious desire and tension in her body that simmered within him. Their kiss was long and deep, lingering. Finally, Marisa pulled her head back a couple of inches. Now her smile was intimate, complicitous. She slowly ran the tip of her finger along her wet lips.

"Well, hello."

"Hi..."

"We'd better go in now," she said.

"Mmm?" Neil kissed her neck and throat. Marisa sighed with pleasure, but then gently put her hands on his chest.

"Really. My uncle is a priest. If he were to walk in and find us like this, I'd never hear the end of it."

Neil must have frowned or pouted. Marisa kissed him consolingly, her tongue teasing him.

"Be patient," she said. "We must."

"Okay," he said, smiling. "Let's go."

Marisa took his hand and led him through a doorway into an empty enclosed passage that led to another door. When she opened it, the first thing Neil heard was the familiar sound of metal scraping on metal.

Gastronomico

There were six people already in the dining room when Marisa and Neil entered. They were seated at one end of a table that could hold twelve or fourteen. They were all elderly and they looked half-asleep, propped up in their chairs, barely moving until Marisa approached and spoke to them or touched them on the shoulder. Neil held back a few steps. He couldn't understand what Marisa was saying but the gentle affection in her voice was clear enough. There were three men and three women-Marisa's parents and grandparents, he learned. Neil stepped forward and smiled and nodded to each of them when Marisa gestured toward him. They glanced briefly and vacantly at him, but none of them nodded or said anything. Handshakes were obviously not on.

One of the grandmothers had several small spoons on the table beside her plate, and she was sharpening them with a metal file. Neil stared at this curious spectacle for a few seconds before the old woman suddenly grinned at him and made a crisp scooping motion with the spoon she held.

"Fruit spoons," Marisa explained with a laugh. "You know, like for eating grapefruit with?"

"Oh, yes." Neil still couldn't imagine how he had been able to hear this persistent but not loud sound all the way upstairs. Yet he had no doubt that it was indeed the very same sound.

"Grandmother sharpens them every evening," Marisa explained, as if it were a perfectly normal activity. "It's one of the few things she can still do around the house, so I suppose it makes her feel a little bit useful."

"That's good for her, then." And perhaps it was, but Neil had never heard of anyone sharpening fruit spoons before. He took it to be an unusual but harmless display of eccentricity.

"Yes, it is." Marisa smiled gratefully.

The room was large, but aside from the table and chairs the only other furniture was a sideboard adjacent to the other door, which apparently led to the kitchen. The two long walls were hung with tapestries so faded and dusty that it was impossible for Neil to make out the scenes depicted on them. The room was lit only by candles, which didn't help. The wooden floor was bare and it sagged or tilted in places, just as it did elsewhere in the house.

The same two women who had served them on the patio now came into the room with bowls and platters of food. Marisa asked Neil to help her pour the wine, and he was grateful to have something to do. The men, who wore stiff, old-fashioned suits that almost resembled uniforms, exchanged a few quiet words with each other and then laughed briefly. Neil sensed that it was at his expense-perhaps they thought it absurd or humiliating that he let himself do a servant's work. And at a woman's bidding, no less. Not that he cared in the least about such a silly, antiquated attitude. He also noticed the women casting gnomic glances at him, but they remained silent.

A place had been set at the head of the table, though no one occupied that chair. Neil hesitated, uncertain whether he should pour wine in the glass there too, but then Marisa nodded yes.

"My uncle-ah, here he is."

The priest came in through the doorway from the billiards room-Neil noted-and walked briskly to the table. He had wiry grey hair that was cut short. Although he looked nearly seventy he stood tall and straight and he had a sturdy, muscular build that conveyed strength and energy. The standard collar and black jacket made him look like just another diocesan priest, but he also wore a purple sash across his tunic, a medallion of the Virgin Mary, and there were several small pins and medals affixed to his lapels and breast pocket. He smiled and kissed Marisa lightly on the cheek.

"Father Anton, this is my friend Neil O'Netty from America," Marisa said, introducing them. "Neil, this is my uncle, Anton Panic."

"I'm very pleased to meet you," Neil said.

"Thank you, thank you. So nice." The priest's head bobbed several times and he clasped Neil's hand tightly. "So nice. Thank you."

Father Anton's eyes danced behind thick lenses, and Neil wondered if the frames could actually be genuine bakelite.

"Thank you, and your family, for your hospitality," Neil said to the priest, sensing that Father Anton was the decisive figure in the household. "I'm very grateful."

"No, please. Our pleasure to have a guest."

Neil and Marisa sat opposite each other, in the eighth and ninth places at the table. One of the servant women carefully set down a large covered porcelain tureen on the table between Neil and Marisa, and then left. Neil bowed his head slightly when he saw everyone else do that, and Father Anton said Grace in Latin, adding a few more words at the end in the family's other language. The old men chorused "Amen" loudly, and then laughed again, as if at a private joke.

Food was passed around. Neil loaded up on bread and salad, as Marisa had suggested. The bread was coarse and crusty, with a fresh yeasty smell. The salad contained various greens, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and chunks of cold meat sausage. Neil drizzled dark olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it. He also took a helping of a soupy rice dish.

The old man beside Neil nudged him in the arm. Neil assumed this was Marisa's father, though in fact he looked only marginally younger than the two grandfathers. He must have been in his early fifties when Marisa was born, but late births were probably not unusual on remote farms. It was clear that the man wanted Neil to help himself from the tureen now. He glanced at Marisa, who nodded reluctantly.

"But we can skip it," she said quickly.

"Oh. Well, let's see."

"You can just pass it along to them."

"That's all right."

Neil didn't want to appear rude. Even as Marisa was speaking to the others, apparently explaining how much she and Neil had eaten just a little while ago on the patio, he lifted the lid of the tureen. It appeared to be some kind of stew, brownish in color. Neil took the iron ladle and swirled it once through the liquid, stirring up small bits of meat, potatoes and-skulls. Tiny skulls that must have been very young birds, probably baby chickens. There were scores of them in the stew, each one roughly the size of a misshapen marble. O-kay. Neil smiled wanly at Marisa.

"I think you were right."

As soon as Neil lifted the heavy tureen and passed it along the table, the others broke into jolly laughter, and it felt as if some tension went out of the air. They were all fully awake now.

"I'm sorry, I warned you," Marisa said. "I wasn't sure, but I thought it might be something like that. Old tastes. It's an old recipe."

"That's okay," Neil assured her. "It's probably quite good, but I think I'd have to get myself in the right state of mind to try it."

"Mr. O'Netty," the priest spoke up. "Zuzu informed me that you have written a book about the case of Beatrice Cenci. Yes?"

"Zuzu is a family nickname for me," Marisa told him. "Don't ask me what it means, but it goes back to when I was a baby."

"I like it." Then he turned toward Father Anton. "Yes, that's right, my last novel was about the Cencis."

"Aha."

The priest spoke English slowly and with difficulty, but he was eager to hear about Neil's version of the story. He seemed particularly concerned that Neil might have been critical of Pope Clement VIII, for refusing to spare young Beatrice's life. Neil babbled on about what a thorny moral problem that was, even in today's world, and how he tried not to take one side or the other. A novel was not a debate, et cetera-the usual points he had made in numerous interviews. It was strange, speaking past six people who couldn't understand a word he was saying and ignored him. But Father Anton nodded every few seconds and appeared to be listening carefully.

Neil thought he was probably speaking for too long, but he couldn't focus his mind. His words seemed to vanish immediately in the air, and the only thing he could hear-on and on-was the muffled crunching sound of all those little bird skulls being eaten.

Billiards at Half-Past Ten

To Neil's relief, dinner in that house was a functional matter, not a social event. Marisa's parents and grandparents ate energetically and loudly, but surprisingly quickly. They drank one large glass of wine each, and when they were finished they shuffled off out of the room, scarcely even glancing at him as they left. It was probably his fault, Neil thought. If he weren't there, they would chat and linger at the table as families do-or did.

Though somehow he doubted that. The priest, Marisa and Hugo were the practical, capable ones who kept things going here. Without their efforts, the farm would be sold and the old folks packed off to a nursing home. Not that they seemed to appreciate it. Neil thought they acted as if they took all this for granted, which amounted to a terrible ingratitude. But-old people, old ways. They weren't going to change now.

When the others left, Father Anton came and sat beside Neil. He had a few more questions to raise and points to make about history and literature, which was apparently a matter of some real interest to him. Neil did his best to speak sensibly and not get carried away. He had no special theories or insights. History was interesting, it provided useful plots and frameworks as well as a magical sense of distance, of stepping into another world, another time and place. He felt very comfortable with it.

But all Neil really wanted to do was write tales that were like operas-gaudy, full of intensity, screaming emotion, high drama, sudden action, and troubled characters driven by primal human desires. That was the big stuff, as he thought of it. History itself wasn't the point. The critics had seen much more in La Petrella than Neil thought was there, including a few mysterious literary techniques he didn't even understand. Which made him feel kind of like a secret phony at times, but that was their business.

Father Anton was polite and intelligent, and after ten minutes he got up, clasped Neil's hand again, and said good night. He went around the table to kiss "Zuzu" on the forehead, and then left the room.

"He likes you," Marisa said. "I can tell."

"He seems very nice. But why is he living here? I mean, priests are usually assigned to parishes or schools," Neil added.

"He could be retired if he wanted, at his age. But he is on a kind of sabbatical instead. He is working on a paper for the Pope."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. Father Anton has known every pope, going back to Pius. He found a place at the Vatican early in his priesthood, and ever since then he has been very, you know what I mean, well-connected."

"Wow. What is his paper about?"

Marisa shrugged. "I'm not sure. Something to do with the history of conversions in Christianity. That's why he was so keen to hear what you had to say about how you make use of history in your books."

"Ah, I see."

The two servant women entered the room then and began to gather up the dishes and utensils. Neil thought he saw a sudden darkening of Marisa's expression. Then she turned to him, and smiled again. She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up.

"Shall we get out of the way?"

"Absolutely."

They went back into the billiards room. Marisa asked Neil to pour some more wine for both of them. She turned on the television and fiddled with the rabbit ears until she got a reasonably stable picture. It looked like some awful game show, but she turned the volume off. Then Marisa went to a shelf and picked up a pocket transistor radio that looked about forty years old. She rolled the little tuning wheel until she found a station playing some Abba-like Europop. The relentlessly cheerful tinny sound hung in the air like a bouquet of desiccated flowers.

"They aren't necessary for me," Neil said, nodding toward the radio and the television as he handed Marisa a glass of wine.

"I know, but it looks good. In case."

"In case?"

"You know. If someone comes in on us."

"You really think they would?"

"It's possible." Marisa shrugged, her eyes sad. "Better to give them a little while to get to bed."