The American (8 page)

The dining room in Father Benedetto’s house is as sombre as an advocate’s office. No paintings hang in there save a dusty oil in a chipped, gold-lacquer frame, of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ almost at arm’s length. It is as if the baby Jesus was not her own offspring: perhaps he smelled as babies always do, from a soiled diaper or the cloying stink of soured milk. The walls are panelled in dark wood stained by centuries of polish, smoke from the baronial fireplace and previous incumbents’ cigarettes and soot from paraffin lamps. Upon the sideboard stand two such lamps, their funnels of clear glass protruding from frosted orbs upon which are exquisitely engraved scenes from the life of Our Lord.

The room is mostly filled by the dining table, a massive edifice of oak, black as ebony and five inches thick, with six legs carved like the fluted pillars of a grotesque cathedral. Up these clamber fertile vines bearing little smirking demons.

The priest’s best crockery is antique, fine porcelain and china edged with maroon and gold, big dinner plates and neat finger bowls which ring to the flick of a fingernail, solid soup dishes and oval platters for fish. Each serving dish could hold an entire meal for a peasant family of four. The vegetable dishes and soup tureen could contain sufficient to feed a small hamlet in the mountains. In the centre of each piece is a crest, a coat of arms surrounded by three golden birds, each with its head thrown back and its beak open in song.

Father Benedetto comes from a well-to-do background. His father was a merchant in Genova, his mother a noted beauty of her time, courted by many and famously flirtatious but cautious: like all the wise women of her day, she guarded her virginity until she could trade it in wedlock to a wealthy man. I have never discovered in what line the priest’s father was a merchant. He has hinted at chemicals, which could be a euphemism for armaments, but I have heard rumours he made a fortune after the war by the illegal excavation and exportation of antiquities rifled by peasants from Etruscan tombs. He died before he could fully enjoy his riches, his eight children – Father Benedetto is quick to point out his father was a good Catholic – inheriting what the government allowed them after taxation.

Now, the wealth and opulence of Father Benedetto’s youth have faded into a shabby and dusty decay, like the cuffs of his canonicals.

When I first sat at this table, I admired the crockery.

‘The crest is that of the family of my father,’ he explained. ‘The birds are Guazzo’s.’

‘Guazzo’s?’ I asked.

‘His
Compendium Maleficarum
,’ he replied, as if I should know of it. ‘My family were Crusaders. A long time ago, you understand,’ he added, should I think this to be a recent calling, a contemporary crusade. ‘They fought for death and the remission of their sins. Guazzo wrote in his book of the wonders of the East, of the golden singing birds belonging to the Emperor Leo. My family owned one once, so it is said . . .’

He spoke with a sudden, deep sorrow.

Tonight we are dining together, just the two of us. Father Benedetto has an old woman who keeps house for him, a crone from the town. She does not live in, and every Wednesday, unless it is a feast day in the Catholic calendar, he gives her the afternoon and evening off. It is then he cooks his meal.

Cooking is an art with him. He relishes it, enjoys the intricacies of transforming raw flesh into meat, dough into bread, hard earth nuggets into succulent vegetables. He spends the whole afternoon preparing the meal, humming operatic arias to himself in the high-ceilinged kitchen, hung about with tarnished copper pans and old-fashioned, redundant utensils which look more like instruments of torture than culinary tools.

I always arrive an hour early, talk to him as he busies himself at his play.

‘You only do this because it is an evilness you can allow yourself to indulge in,’ I tell him. ‘This is the nearest you can get to alchemical practices without jeopardizing your soul.’

‘If only alchemy were possible,’ he muses. ‘If it were, I should change these copper pots to gold and sell them for the poor.’

‘You should not keep some for yourself?’

‘No,’ he answers emphatically. ‘But I should give some to Our Lord for his glorification. A new vestment for the cardinal, a gift to our Holy Father in Rome . . .’

He potters about the stove. It is wood-fired and he stokes the flames with a brass poker. The pans are simmering on the hotplates.

‘Cooking is good. I sublimate my want for sex in here. Instead of stroking a woman, shaping her into an object of desire, I form food into . . .’

‘Objects of desire?’

‘Quite so!’

He pours another glass of wine and hands it to me. He has his own which he sips as he works between bouts of humming.

After some time, we go to the table. I sit at one side, he the other. He mutters a grace in Latin, speaking the words so quickly they form one long incantation, as if he is in a hurry to begin. This may be the case, for he does not want the main course to spoil.

His soups are always chilled. Tonight, we have carrot and sorrel soup. It is both sweet and tart and whets the palate. We do not talk during this first course. This is customary. As soon as his bowl is empty, he invites me to help myself to more from the tureen. He bustles out to the kitchen, humming once more.

The soup ladle is made of silver and is, I should guess, about three hundred years old. Decades of ardent polishing have all but erased the crest and three birds. The assay marks are invisible. The place cutlery comes from several sets: the forks are silver, the soup spoons silver-plated and the knives Sheffield steel with serrated blades and rounded ivory handles the colour of a corpse’s teeth.

‘
Ecco!
’ he exclaims, returning with a silver dish upon which sit two plump poultry carcasses covered in sauce and steaming into his face.

‘What is it?’

‘
Fagiano
– wild roast pheasant with oranges. The birds come from Umbria. A friend . . .’

He puts the dish carefully on the table and rushes out to return balancing three bowls upon his arms like an experienced waiter: one contains salsify soaked in garlic butter, another mangetout peas and the third fried button mushrooms with shreds of truffle mixed with them. He pours a white wine into our glasses and serves each of us with a complete bird.

‘The sauce is orange juice, rind, garlic, chestnuts, Marsala and
brodo di pollo
. How do you say it in English?’ His hands supplicate and he looks up to the lofty ceiling for a translation: God gives him one. ‘Chicken broth, of bones.’

I help myself to vegetables and we eat. The meat is sweet yet gamey, the salsify soft and delicious. The wine is dry but bland and the bottle bears no label. He must have purchased it locally, from an acquaintance with a few hectares of vines on the sides of the valley.

‘This is sinful,’ I declare, indicating the food with my fork. ‘Decadent. Hedonistic. We should be living a thousand years ago to eat so.’

He nods but makes no answer.

‘At least,’ I continue, ‘we have the table for it. Laden with a repast fit for a pope.’

‘The Holy Father eats better than this,’ Father Benedetto declares, swilling the wine around his mouth. ‘And this is the correct table. It is said it was once the property of Aldebert.’

He rightly interprets my silence as ignorance and goes on, laying down his knife and fork.

‘Aldebert was an Antichrist. French.’ He shrugs as if to imply this was an inevitability. ‘He was a Frankish bishop who abandoned his see and preached to peasants near Soissons. San Bonifacio – the English one – had much trouble with him. Aldebert practised apostolic poverty, was able to cure the sick and claimed he was born of a virgin. He was born by the Caesarean method. At a synod in the year of Our Lord 744, he was excommunicated. Yet he continued to preach and was never arrested.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died,’ Father Benedetto says with finality. ‘Who knows how?’ He picks up his knife and fork again. ‘The French have never been good Catholics. Consider this recent schism, this . . .’ again he looks up for divine translation but this time without receiving assistance ‘. . .
buffone
who wants to keep to the old ways. He is French. He causes much trouble for the Holy Father.’

‘But do you not adore history, my friend?’ I interject. ‘Is not such tradition the stuff of life, the blood of the continuity of the Church? Did you not say a Latin grace before we ate?’

He sticks his fork into the breast of his pheasant as if it was a French priest of dubious piety and does not reply. He just grins.

After a few more mouthfuls, I ask, ‘How can you dine at the table of the Antichrist? And was he not a Frenchman . . . ?’

He smiles and excuses himself. ‘He was a bishop when he owned the table. Also, he was not Antichrist. I think this. He was a man of God. He cured the sick. Even today, there is the charismatic Catholic Church. I do not . . .’ He lifts his fork, burdened with flesh. ‘But it exists. Often Jesuits.’

I cannot tell if he is in favour of the Society or against it.

We finish the meat and I help him clear the plates away. He produces nuts and cognac. We sit again at the table.

‘Did you never want to be other than a priest?’ I ask.

‘No.’

He splits an almond with the pair of silver-plated nutcrackers.

‘Not a doctor or teacher or something else you could do within the Church?’

‘No. And how about you, Signor Farfalla?’

He almost smirks. He must know I receive mail in the name of Clarke, Clark, Leclerc and Giddings. He is certain to have asked Signora Prasca and she, a good and God-fearing woman, will have told him, for he is her priest and she an elderly lady with a devout faith in such men. I do not share this unquestioning trust.

‘Have you never wanted to be other than an artist?’ he enquires.

‘I have not considered it.’

‘You should do so. I am sure you have other talents. Other than with the brush and the paper, the aquatints and the pencil. Perhaps you should do something else also. You have the hands of a craftsman, not an artist.’

I do not show my unease. He is treading too close to my path.

‘Perhaps you should also make other things. Things of beauty . . . Things to bring you greater wealth than little pictures of insects. This cannot make you a rich man.’

‘No, it cannot.’

‘Perhaps you are rich already?’ he suggests.

‘As rich as you are, my friend.’

He laughs lightly.

‘I am very rich. I have God in my vaults.’

‘Then I am not so affluent as you,’ I allow, ‘for that is one valuable I do not possess.’

I sip my cognac.

‘You could . . .’ he begins, but then he stops. He knows better than to try and gain a convert over the pheasant and brandy.

‘What do you suggest I do or make?’

‘Fine jewellery. You should be a goldsmith. Make plenty of money. With your drawing skill . . . Maybe you should make banknotes.’

He is looking at me shrewdly. I imagine, should the mesh be removed from the wall of the confessional, this is how he would regard the sinners who come to him for release and a penance. Years of experience have given him the knack of looking through dissemblance.

‘That would indeed be sinful.’ I attempt to make light of his subtle probing. ‘Even more so than eating a sensualistic meal at the table of an Antichrist.’

I sense he knows something is not right. He knows I have money. He knows I cannot subsist on the portraits of swallowtails. I must be careful.

‘I am not a young man. I have my savings. From past work.’

‘And what was your work?’

He is quite forthright with his question. There is no subterfuge in the man, yet I do not feel I want to trust him. He would surely not betray me but it is still for the best he should not know, have so much as an inkling.

‘This and that. I owned a tailor’s shop for a while . . .’

I lie. He is fooled, for I have seemingly given in to him.

‘I knew this!’ He is triumphant at his skilful piece of detection. ‘You have the hands of a master needle-craftsman. Perhaps you should do this again. There is much prosperity in designing clothes.’

He smiles broadly and raises his cognac in a mute toast, either to my proficiency as a tailor or his as a detective. I cannot tell which and follow suit.

As I leave, bid him goodnight and walk through the shadows down the alleyway to the Via dell’ Orologio, I consider our conversation. I like this priest a good deal but I must keep him at bay. He must not uncover the truth.

There are almost as many saints in Italy as churches dedicated to them. At the birthplace of the Venerated One, at the site of his or her miracles, monastic home or hermit’s cave, the place of death or martyrdom, there is a church. Some are grandiose edifices with lofty bell towers, imposing façades and spacious quadrangles of flagstones before them: others are, as religious houses go, hovels of the meanest sort. Yet even the very rudest has at least a piazza.

If you go down the
vialetto
, turn left on the Via Ceresio and then left again at the Via de’ Bardi, you will come to the foot of a long flight of marble steps. They are but a metre or two wide at the base but, halfway up the hill, they widen until, at the piazza at the top, they are perhaps fifteen metres wide. The steps are worn smooth with age and the tread of pilgrims. Today, however, only shoppers struggle up or down them, lovers with their arms about each other’s waist, tourists with cameras and video camcorders. Sparse wisps of grass grow between the stones and litter blows over them. Of late, and in the early hours, the steps have become the haunt of addicts. Several times recently, I have noted discarded hypodermic needles lying against the side walls.

The marble is of poor quality, chosen for durability rather than colour. It is veined with dark, sooty stains like the forearms of the addicts.

Traffic zips by the top of the steps. The pavement is very wide there and a number of street entertainers and vendors gather at this spot in the tourist season. One is a flautist. He has his stand under an umbrella tied to a no-parking sign upon which a frustrated driver has spray-painted a derisive
non sempre
.