Gospel (40 page)

O'Hanrahan continued: “The Venerable Bede told of the trade in St. Chad's relics in Litchfield where the pilgrim was allowed to mix Chad's dust in a brew, or soak a bone in a broth for its healing medicine. Charles VI of Spain was so ill that the incorrupt body of a saint was fetched and nestled beside him in his sickbed. A miraculous recovery.”

“Yeah, I'd wannna get out of that bed too.”

For centuries, O'Hanrahan explained, pilgrims also made their way to the Capella di Sant'Agata in Sicily to behold the saint's sheared-off breasts preserved under glass. Cruel man, imitated O'Hanrahan in the role of Agatha pleading with her Roman torturer, have you forgotten your mother and the breasts that nourished you? But mind you, Lucy, those severed breasts were inlaid with jewels and precious stones, and pilgrims by the thousands came to drink from her scorched relic … that supreme seepage.”

Lucy wondered if silence would prove contagious.

“Can you see them now, Lucy? The sick and terminally ill, with trembling, palsied hand, eyes closed in devotion, taking from the priest the goblet containing the thick black extract of her centuries-old corpse. How much were the wealthy willing to pay to Rome for such an invaluable sip?”

(The Arabs, My blessed children of Ishmael, upon conquering Sicily fortunately shut down that little operation.)

“You,” said Lucy to the professor simply, “traffic in the most disgusting stories around.”

“Aren't you proud of your fine ecclesiastic heritage?”

“Where's Oliver Cromwell when you need him?”

“Sicily's full of good things, Lucia. In Palermo, there's the Convent dei Cappuccini.”

“Speaking of, can we have some
cappuccini?
”

Her merest whim, O'Hanrahan's duty today. Coffees were ordered, and to finish, O'Hanrahan ordered himself a Benedictine—would Lucy join him? No, she hadn't even gotten through her one paltry glass of chianti.

“Go ahead, Dr. O'Hanrahan. The Convent of the Cappuccinoes.”

Believing quite literally in a bodily resurrection, he explained, as well as the efficacy of
memento mori,
in their elaborate system of caves and catacombs the monks have preserved the bodies of all that petition there. Rooms and chambers by the scores open before the visitor featuring
thousands
of embalmed corpses, lined on the walls, row upon row. Some are preserved adequately, some are rotting quite openly; all are brown and mummified, and all are dressed in the clothes of the period—here is 19th-Century Neapolitan splendor, here is 18th-Century minor aristocracy, here is a fresh one from the '30s. Of most interest to the unfailing contingent of weeping, black-clad Sicilian women are the children, who mummify less unnaturally. The “brown little ones” seem to be sleeping, curled up next to their toys, simple flowers on their chests held by their tiny little hands. The women desire to place a blessed kiss on such a beautiful slumbering
bambino
 …

“A stuffed baby, taxidermed centuries ago!”

“Yep,” said Lucy, deciding it was time to make her break, “shame about missing out on that place. Well,” she sighed as she gathered her things, “the churches will be opening again soon. The tourist is called to action.”

“Oh. Going already?”

(What's the matter, Patrick? Are you remembering what it is to be warm to someone? Did this brief experiment in human relations disturb your years of gruff solitude? Tell Lucy that you wish she would stay and she will spend the afternoon with you.)

Lucy stood now, soliciting O'Hanrahan for suggestions of beautiful churches. “No leaking corpses, please.”

“Hm. That narrows it down drastically in Italy. Have you seen the finest church in Florence? San Miniato al Monte?”

“Where's that?”

The professor matched his directions with elaborate gestures, across the Ponte Vecchio, up the big hill, etc. As for himself, he grimly thought about going back to the
pensione.
“I think the afternoon demands a siesta,” he said of his own plans.

“I thought that was Spanish, not Italian.”

The professor poured her undrunk chianti into his glass. “I get by,” he said, “on a technicality. The Spanish and Charles V overran Florence in, uh, 1521.”

(Charles V in 1529, in collusion with the Medicis from 1531.)

“A big nap for
il professore,
” he said, anticipating a yawn. “Then, this evening I'm back to the Franciscan library, so I can intimidate our brethren down in Assisi tomorrow. You know, down in Naples, they call the siesta the
controra.
Napolitano for ‘against the clock,' but then they had their share of Spanish influence as well. Remind me to tell you of the Golden Age of Spanish Catholicism—”

“Right, well, I better get started.” Lucy made a gesture to contribute money.

“No, it's on me.” He held up a finger of warning. “Remember though: it's back to normal tomorrow.”

“Aye aye, sir. San Miniato,” she added, checking the church name.

“Beheaded in the main square near the Duomo, in the Third Century by the Romans. After they beheaded him, Miniato picked up his head and walked to the mountaintop outside of town. There they built his church.” O'Hanrahan exhaled deeply. Why, this had been the longest conversation he'd had with anyone in months. What a waste all his storytelling talents had been for him this last decade. No one to appreciate him. No audience to entertain, and O'Hanrahan prided himself on being good entertainment. But he surrendered, saying, “Seeya later.”

O'Hanrahan watched Lucy depart and finished up her glass of wine, which left him sentimental and sad. Sometimes, he reflected, in still moments, with the remains of lunch before me, a little wine in me: I find myself desolate.

(You have only to ask Lucy to be your assistant. Lucy, who longs to be a faithful servant.)

Naaah, thought O'Hanrahan, inventing negative reasons. I know what type of woman Lucy is—Beatrice was that type, my sister Catherine was that type. A little Puritan soul who knows nothing of life, who as she gets older turns judge and puritan, a complainer …

(You don't think you could help her find another life?)

I've got missions enough, he concluded, reaching for his wallet.

*   *   *

Lucy had spotted O'Hanrahan's recommended church and now was in midstaircase, halfway up the mountain, winded and baking hot. The miracle wasn't San Miniato walking around with his severed head, thought Lucy, it was San Miniato climbing these stairs in one go … She noticed some of the tourists she'd been seeing all day long. On the discouragingly long stairway before San Miniato itself, she passed the couple who had offered fashion advice that morning, Steve and—what was it?—Donna?

“Hello again,” they said.

“Doing the circuit, huh?” said Lucy, short of breath.

“Yeah, the great thing,” said Donna, “is that from this church it's downhill all the way, no matter where you go.”

Mild laughter as everyone continued in his own direction.

O'Hanrahan was right, thought Lucy before the door of the church, this was the church the other churches were imitating. Each square or archway of white marble was filled with inlaid designs of dark green marble, boxes within circles, trinities of patterns under the archways, and as one's eyes moved upward, one saw the Byzantine mosaic of gold set under the point of the roof and the surrounding flurry of green-white zigzags and checkerboards, a facade simultaneously amateurish and sophisticated, like the 13th Century that produced it.

The interior was geometry run wild, verdant squares within diamonds within circles within archways, on the floor, on the walls, and leading to the apse above the altar. The church was dark and chilly and Lucy pressed her cheek against the smooth marble of a column as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Then some tourist near the front slipped a coin into a box and for thirty seconds the spotlight illumined the mosaic in the apse, golden and incandescent. Christ enthroned appeared, gazing down on the penitent with ageless Byzantine eyes, staring with wise sympathy into the heart of the sinner. It was a Christ of love, but also of judgment and sadness.
Thou alone, O Lord, knowest my heart.

“Nice, isn't it?”

It was the farmboy. Lucy ended her reverie. “It's Farley, right?”

“Farley, that's right,” he said. “Sure is pretty.”

Then the allotted time for the coin ran out and the church returned to cool shadow.

“There's just too much to see in this town, Lucy,” said Farley, lifting briefly a
Let's Go
guidebook in evidence. “Take nearly a month to get it all seen, I figure. I'll give the Catholics this, they could build 'em some nice churches.”

“You're not Roman Catholic, Farley?”

“No ma'am, Pentecostal. And proud of it.”

Proud of what? Lucy wondered. Speaking in tongues, rolling on the floor led by some untutored redneck minister on TV, building ugly warehouse-churches until the congregation is broke or the minister gets caught with some choirboy or teenage prostitute or married lady?

(Think of St. Clare's gallstones, My child. Have any of Our children resisted turning Faith into a sideshow?)

“Well,” Lucy told Farley, “not much in the way of Pentecostalism down here.”

“Nope. My daddy says there needs to be a Holy Ghost Revival, in Europe. He says the whole continent needs to be born again.”

Lucy suggested politely, “Florence
was
born again: the Renaissance.”

“Huh?”

“Renaissance. Means Rebirth.”

Farley nodded blankly.

“Oh well,” she sighed, looking to the door. “I better be going—”

“Wanna walk back to the city with me?”

“Uh, that's not … I mean, I sort of was going to watch the sunset from Piazza Michelangelo.”

Farley brightened. “That sounds good. I sort of wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?” asked Lucy grimly.

“Well … I'm sort of on a mission for my Bible College and my church. My daddy told me to…” He was having trouble getting his words out. “Well, first, let me ask you one thing,” he said suddenly. “Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?”

Oh boy. Just what she needed today. “Yep,” she said, “I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I'm a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Department of Theology. My specialty is New Testament Greek, I'm fluent in Latin, can fake Aramaic, read a mean Hebrew and all so I can read the sacred texts, Farley.”

“Wow! Maybe you oughta come down to Louisiana and teach us all that.”

“You never know,” said Lucy, noticing this farmboy had a pretty sturdy build under his Myrtle Beach, S.C., windsurfing T-shirt. “I gotta be going, so, uh, seeya around.”

“You got any plans for tonight?”

“Yes,” she said, overly formal, “I'm going to pack since I'm leaving for Assisi tomorrow.”

“Oh. That's a shame, 'cause I was hoping we could, maybe, you know, hang out.”

Lucy tried another angle: “Look, Farley, you can't convert me, because I'm already on your side. There's tons of tourists here who don't know Jesus as their personal savior.”

“Yeah,” he said glumly.

“Well, bye-bye.”

She stepped out into the sun, now dulled and yellow as it prepared to sink in the direction of Pisa. From the front porch of the church there was the grandest view of Florence, like the one from Piazzale Michelangelo a few hundred yards to the north, but this view allowed one to see the old city wall, the villas up on the neighboring hills. So little had changed from Late Roman times, the wealth amid the sartorial cedars, a sprawling eucalyptus over a red-tiled mansion, terraces of sandy-colored stone, urns upon graceful balconies, the cypresses the lone verticals on the mellowed hillsides. Beyond the villas, rows of vines arrayed on the steep hills, stopping only at a country lane—

“Sure would be great to live in one a them houses, huh?” asked Farley, appearing at her side.

“Blessed are the poor,” reminded Lucy. “Well, one more time, Farley, seeya around.”

“That's not really why I wanted to do something with you,” he added, as she walked on. “Being born again, I mean.”

Lucy pretended not to hear as she made her way down the steps and through the park toward the Piazzale Michelangelo with its view of the city … When it dawned on her: Lucy, that guy, with the pathetic are-you-saved routine was
trying to pick you up!

See what a new outfit will do for you? That and pink shoulders, which she was vaguely aware of now. Poor guy, using Jesus as a pickup line! After Ireland and David, Lucy's taste in redheads had been upgraded, having seen the first-rate goods. All right, maybe Farley was cute in a goofy sort of puppy-dog way, but who could take that accent seriously?

Maybe she should have met him for a drink tonight.

Of course, she told herself, he probably doesn't drink any more than I do. I could have walked with him for a while and ditched him if he was awful … He
is
awful, I know that already. But then Lucy thought: I should fantasize and create an entire romance and write Judy about it, tell her he's a Southern gentleman, antebellum money—it would kill her. It would destroy her to think I had some kind of fling in Europe. She'd never get over it. I'll write her tonight.

More stairs, this time in the right direction, down.

Lucy strolled beside the Arno, across the Ponte Vecchio, and down the familiar streets to the hotel again. She arrived with hot, sore feet and longed to take off her shoes and walk up the glacial white-marble stairs barefooted. She took a cursory look at the man loitering in the lobby—

Uh-oh.

It was the man on the train yesterday. The man who stuck his head in their compartment and ran away when the ticket collector arrived. The swarthy man was hounding the teenage boy at the desk, who was distracted by a soccer match on his miniature TV. The boy glanced up to acknowledge Lucy and slipped her her room key. The man turned to look at Lucy, squinting, looked at the room number on her key, and looked back at Lucy as if he was trying to decide something. She studied him in a second as well: a formidable five o'clock shadow, dark, ill-fitting suit, a garish patterned tie, a movie gangster. Damn it, she didn't understand their Italian: