The Faces of Angels (26 page)

‘Have some of this.'

The glass of Brunello is huge and I slide it across the table towards her as I slip onto the opposite bench. She hesitates, then grabs it without looking at me and takes a greedy sip. Like a lot of very blonde people, she's frail, almost bird-like. The skin on the backs of her hands reminds me of waxed paper. Her fingers wrap around the globe of the wine glass and I see her nails are bitten to the quick. They're ragged, with angry red rims. When she finally looks up at me, her eyes are almost black, two holes in the pasty white dish of her face. ‘Thanks,' she says. ‘I'm sorry. I keep crying.'

‘It's a terrible thing. Why shouldn't you?'

She glances around and shrugs. ‘No one else is.'

We're speaking Italian, and even I can tell her accent is no more authentic than mine.

‘I can't believe it,' she says. ‘What? Two weeks ago we were sitting right here. Just like this. And now—' Her voice trails off, and she begins to drift away again, into some sealed-up world of her own.

‘Where are you from?' I ask it fast, as if I'm throwing out a baited line, trying to hook a fish before it slips back under the water.

She thinks for a second, as though this is difficult. Then she says, ‘Norway. Well, my father is, anyways. My mother's Italian. That's why I came to the university.'

This evokes another thin stream of tears, and before she can wipe her nose on the sleeve of her sweater I dig in my bag for a Kleenex.

‘Ginevra lived across the hall from me the first year I was here,' she says. ‘We agreed about everything. You know how it is when you're just the same as someone?' She takes the Kleenex out of my hand, looks at it as though she has forgotten what it might be for, then blows her nose. ‘My name is Annika,' she adds.

‘Mary.'

‘How did you know Ginevra?'

‘I didn't. I'm studying at the university too, kind of,' I say. ‘Art history. Of course.' Annika smiles weakly. ‘I heard her speak, though, once.' This is obviously completely untrue, but I want to say something nice about Ginevra, if only to make this poor girl feel better. ‘I thought she was very powerful.'

Now I'm gilding the lily, and Annika's grief is so naked I feel bad lying to her, even about this. But if I think she'll notice, I'm wrong. She's so completely absorbed in her own pain that I could tell her I was Yogi Bear and she wouldn't bat an eyelid. ‘It seems unfair she was going to be thrown out,' I add, more for something to say than anything else.

Annika shrugs, her thin shoulders rising in bony points under her sweater, and smiles. Well, not really. Actually what she does is bare her teeth, which are very white, and unpleasantly pointed. ‘She was depressed.'

‘Well, it would be depressing. To be asked to leave so close to graduating.'

‘She didn't give a shit about that.' Annika reaches for my wine glass and laughs as she says it. It's a high shrill sound, like breaking glass, and for the first time it occurs to me that she's totally wasted.

‘Hey! Are you ready?' A boy holding a sack has materialized beside our table.

Annika sucks on the rim of the glass as though she is contemplating biting through it. Then she drains the wine and reaches into the sack. ‘Sure,' she says, pulling out a candle. ‘Come on, let's go.' There is a faint purple moustache on her upper lip. She stands up, slightly unsteady, and grabs the edge of the table.

People are pouring onto the street now, and I see Billy, still flanked by the boys. She's looking for me, twisting her head back and forth so her hair bounces like a slinky.

‘Come on,' Annika grabs at my jacket, half to steady herself and half to drag me along with her, and before I can protest she's pulled me into the crowd.

People are milling everywhere, handing around lighters and matches. Someone shoves a candle into my hand and lights it, but the flame sputters and goes out, and when I look around, Annika's disappeared. The crowd swells and moves like an amoeba, inching towards the city gate where floodlights have been turned on, catching the pale stone walls and the huge iron brackets. As they pass under the cavernous archway, people's jackets and the crowns of their heads are lit up, bleached in bright white light. And that's when I see him.

This time, there's no chalky make-up, and no sign of the pirate mutt dog either, but I'm still sure. I'm absolutely certain it's the same guy, the El Greco saint from Santo Spirito, the white man from the Loggia dei Lanzi. If he looked at me, I know he'd have my husband's eyes, tawny and golden. I start forward to chase him, find out who he is. But then I stop. Because walking right beside him is Father Rinaldo.

‘ M
ARIA. MARIA, MY CHILD.'
That's what Rinaldo used to call me.

Sometimes he said it with reproach, as if he had looked into my soul and seen for himself what a sorry mess it was. And sometimes he said it with his hands outstretched, welcoming, as if God's love really did flow through them and the embrace they promised was salvation itself, something he could deliver personally, right here in San Miniato.

Seeing him last night was almost surreal, the way seeing someone in the flesh is, after they've been existing so completely in your head, and now standing outside of what I'll always think of as Rinaldo's church, I remember the last time I came here, almost two years ago. Just like this morning, it was particularly beautiful. The sky was clear, an almost translucent blue, and when I turned and looked back from the top of the pilgrims' steps, I saw the city so pristine it could have been etched on glass: the brown-red patchwork of the roofs, the creamy stucco of the villas, scattered like sugar cubes on the hills, the pale grey spans of the bridges.

San Miniato itself is just as I remember it. Still and timeless, with its ornate front and wide doors, and its Byzantine Jesus staring down, his face a little jaded, as if he's bored with the centuries of human folly he's been forced to witness from up here on his hill. Nothing has changed. Except me. Or so I tell myself. I say:
I am not who I was.
Then,
I'm not really even Catholic any more.
And,
I have nothing to be afraid of.
When that doesn't work, I try:
I have not done anything wrong, I have not sinned.
I mutter the words like a crazy person as I climb the steps and walk inside, where I know I will find Father Rinaldo.

I don't know if he saw me at Ginevra's vigil last night or not, but I do know he's expecting me. I can sense him like a vapour, a shadow drifting around behind me, coming to my apartment, following me in the streets, willing me up here, as if I am a stray dog that will return to a place where it once found food. I realize now that I should have come right away, as soon as I got back to Florence, and put an end to this.

Inside, the floor is cold, I can feel the chill reaching up to finger my body, as if the stones themselves are hungry for the warmth of human flesh. The nave is empty, the walls shadowed by Uccello's faded saints. Nothing moves but the dust motes spiralling down the thin shafts of light that fall through the high windows and pick out the painted rafters, the dragons and the griffins that creep along the green and crimson beams.

Shadows drift in the corners, and for half a second I think I see Ty's unhappy wife there, my own reflection bouncing back through time. I reach automatically for the edge of the font, as if I'm confronting vampires instead of myself, and need holy water to ward them off, but it's empty. There's nothing but a greenish rime halfway down the bowl. Still, I dip my knee and make the sign of the cross. Call it superstition. Or habit. I like to think I do it for Mamaw's sake; touch my forehead, my chest, my shoulders. Mutter God's name before I turn away from the altar, skirt the pews and move towards the steps that lead to the sacristy.

This is the room I need to see again, the place where the Opus members gathered to pray. It's odd, this laying of ghosts, but I am discovering that it has rituals, certain steps that must be observed. At the door I rest my hand on the iron handle and listen, certain that this is where I'll find him, but when I push it open the room is empty. There is not so much as the whisper of a prayer. Arentino's scenes from the life of St Benedict float on the walls above me. The saint stands barefoot in a translucent stream. Devils tumble the church, crushing a monk under stones, and Benedict builds it up again. In one corner angels and demons fly across the sky, interchangeable as they battle for the realms of heaven.

Back in the main church, I feel slightly foolish. What did I expect to see? The shadow of myself again, that girl with her blonde hair and pretty summer dresses? The El Greco saint? Rinaldo's angels? Ty himself? I turn and start down the steps. I don't know what time it is, but I'm sure the bells will ring soon for early Mass and that, even before that, the women who make up most of the congregation here will begin to arrive. Young and old, tall and bent, they'll cross the line of light in the nave, their shoes making squeaking sounds on the stone as they come down to the crypt, where Rinaldo must be waiting to hear confession before the morning services.

The steps down are broad and worn, and the crypt below nothing but a hollowed circle of dark. At evensong, the monks chant plainsong here, hands folded in their sleeves, heads bowed in their cowls. The echo of their voices hangs in the damp cold air, the litany as much a part of this place as the stones themselves.

When my eyes adjust to the gloom, I make out lines of pews. A stack of canvas chairs is piled beside one of the columns. I used to know this place well, and now I breathe in the familiar chilly smell and feel time fall away like petals drifting from a dead flower. One red candle flutters beside the altar as the air stirs, a sigh coming from deep within the church.

My eyes wander back and forth across the dark space. They touch the coffin-like confessionals and brush the well of shadows behind the statue of the Virgin and the offering boxes, skim over the altar with its dull gold cross, and stop, drawn to the semicircle of monks' chairs carved into the back wall. The shadows are deepest back there, as if they've been accumulating for centuries, so it takes a second before I see him. His cowl is raised, and he's sitting so still he's just a thickening of the darkness.

As he begins to rise, his black cassock looks like one of the columns that has come loose and now moves of its own accord. Without a sound he detaches himself from the darkness and glides to the front of the altar. Transfixed, I watch as he kneels to perform obedience, then turns to face me.

‘Maria. My child. I hoped you would come.'

The words sound like wind whistling in the vault, and at first I'm not even sure I've heard them. Then the red flicker of the votive candle dances over white skin, and a hand, as round and soft as a baby's, emerges from the long sleeve.

Rinaldo glides towards me and, although the features of his face are hidden, I can feel his eyes on me, sense that pitying, half-excited look: the shepherd who's found a wandering lamb.

I open my mouth
. Just say what you have to say,
I think.
Don't let him start. Just say it, and get out.

‘How did you know where my apartment was? What do you want?'

I find it harder to speak to him than I'd expected, and my voice sounds disturbingly childish.

‘I want you to leave me alone. I've left the church, so it doesn't mean anything to me any more. Do you understand?' I ask. ‘I want you to leave me alone!'

Rinaldo's hands are still outstretched, he's still beckoning me into his arms, but my words seem to make him sad. I've been a big disappointment. Again.

‘One cannot leave one's children, Mary,' he says in his low whispery voice.

This is classic priest-speak—never dignify a question with an answer, or address a point, especially one from a potentially hysterical woman—and I have to resist the temptation to shriek at him, to shatter this still air by screaming that he has no children, and that even if he does I was never one, and certainly am not one now. I feel myself quivering with anger, a rage I've stored up for over two years.

‘Ginevra Montelleone,' I spit. ‘Was she one of your children? Is that why you were there last night? Or were you following me? Again?'

Now Rinaldo does drop his hands. He turns them palm up, pink and pudgy, in the eternal profession of innocence.

‘Ginevra worshipped here when she was a baby,' he says, shaking his head. ‘With her family, before they moved out of the city. Her mother is distraught, naturally. The loss is terrible. Although,' Rinaldo adds, his voice heavy with its familiar disappointment, ‘they feared Ginevra was already lost to them.'

‘Because of her politics?'

Rinaldo ignores the question, but I have the distinct impression he's smiling.

‘I have missed you, Maria,' he says. ‘I always knew you would come back. God's love is like that. We think we have left it, but that is only because we are deluded into believing we have that choice.'