The Translation of Father Torturo (2 page)

“Or the Buddhists.”

“Indeed the Buddhists. Orientals will stop at nothing. They are quiet, but their very silence makes them all the more ominous.”

“Well, at least the jaw was not taken,” Vivan said presently.

“True, but the tongue is what people come to see. For some reason it is the tongue that fascinates, not the jaw.”

The two men walked through the Prato della Valle, along one of the two straight paths that cut through the quadri-triangular landmark. Statues encircled the zone, adding an extreme measure of elegance to the scene, with their manneristic gestures and antique solemnity, that seemed to rub off on the holy pair as they strolled along, gracing the ground with their feet.

Cardinal Zuccarelli was the older of the two; a man fifty-four years of age, tall and thin, with an aquiline nose and penetrating eyes. His features were stiff and his flesh almost grey in tone. His bearing was serious and imposing. He had the elongated, severe look of a painting by El Greco. By his supreme gravity, it was obvious that he took himself and his office very seriously.

Vivan, the Bishop of Padua, was quite young for the position he held. He was forty-two. However, he looked even younger: his hair, which he wore just long enough to cover his ears, was full and black. His face was round and lively, the skin smooth and fresh as a boy’s. Though he was not a fat man, he did have a delicate paunch which he stuck forward as he walked, or rather minced along. He had the elastic, red mouth of a sensualist and the sparkling eyes of a lively fellow.

The two men, as they walked side by side, gave a picture of two extremes in ecclesiastic behaviour.

A figure approached them from the far end of the path, tonsured head bent, the very muscles of the legs becoming obvious as they stretched out the fibre of his cassock in their advance, with steps long and brisk.

“It is Father Torturo,” said Bishop Vivan.

“Yes, I have seen him before,” said Cardinal Zuccarelli, peering forward with his keen black eyes. “I have seen him before, but I must say have had nothing to do with him. I suppose he is one of those inoffensive shadows which decorate the musty corners of our churches.”

“Oh, he is as inoffensive as a fly – but he is far from being a fool. He is deliciously brilliant.”

“Well, that is comforting. Inoffensive brilliance has a tendency to be far more useful than belligerent genius. Mousy men who know their grammar generally make good priests.”

“Yes; he is an ideal priest.”

“He appears to be hurt; – a bandaged head and hand. How extraordinary!”

“I believe he must have had an accident while doing gymnastics. A similar thing happened to him last year when he was showing the choirboys how to do some kind of special hand-stand he called ‘the scorpion.’”

“So we have a priest who does gymnastics?”

“Yes,” Bishop Vivan simpered; “the man is athletic to a remarkable degree. Though, in our line of work, callisthenics are not an exactly orthodox, I cannot help but admire him, for a good physique is a beautiful thing.”

Father Torturo by this time was quite near. The two ecclesiastics stopped, one tall, thin and somewhat grave, the other shorter, somewhat stouter, with a clear, effeminate, almost boyish face and a bow-like grace to his posture.

“How do you do father?” Cardinal Zuccarelli condescended to ask, as the other passed them, gaze still set on the ground, apparently unaware of their presence. Father Torturo looked up for an instant, nodded his head curtly, and then continued, moving away with his long, virile strides.

“The nerve!” Cardinal Zuccarelli gasped, his normally bloodless cheeks turning plum coloured. “The loathsome man hardly acknowledged my presence.”

“I am afraid you will have to excuse him,” the bishop said, touching the other’s hand lightly. “I believe the poor fellow is overwrought over the loss of the tongue of the blessed St. Anthony. To my understanding, he has taken a temporary vow of silence.”

“Has he taken a vow of pertness as well?”

“Oh, he is an odd fellow, I’ll admit that,” Vivan replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “But your Emminency would be hard pressed to find a more devoted servant.”

“That may very well be,” Zuccarelli said, slipping his arm through that of the younger man and resuming the stroll forward, “but we must remember that He most appreciates the humble servant. The proud servant often disdains those dirty little tasks which make up his daily duty. One day you find that he has been sweeping all the dust under the rug instead of doing things proper, and you say to yourself, ‘Oh so that is why I have been sneezing so much!’ Indeed, it is the humble servant He most appreciates.” The mouse peeped out of his pocket and chirped. “Yes Picolito,” he said, stroking its little white head with his thumb. “Papa knows you’re a wee-wee-humble servant.”

The two men slowly moved through the Prato della Valle, and on towards Il Santo, the Cathedral of St. Anthony, their figures swaying slightly from side to side with each advancing step.

Chapter Three

The parents of Xaverio Torturo were liquidated, due to a vendetta, when he was a boy of six. Found in the back bedroom of their palazzo, bodies chastised with more bullet holes then there are days in a week, and then severed into as many pieces as there are weeks in a year, they were the victims of a kind of crime which, to this day, is not uncommon in Italy. Undoubtedly he would have met the same fate, such revenges usually extending to the second and third generations, if he had not at the time been at his uncle Guido’s house, playing at marbles with his cousin Marco, who was but a year younger than himself. When the news came that young Xaverio’s house was wet with blood, he remained at his uncle’s. Guido, according to the laws of vengeance, rooted out the murderers and did them one worse than was done to his own brother and sister in law. The uncle, adopting Xaverio into his household, became more like a father than an uncle; Marco more like a brother than a cousin.

“There is something funny about this boy,” Guido’s wife Bruna said to her husband one night. “I am afraid he will bring us trouble.”

“Oh, I admit he is a bit naughty,” Guido said with a shrug of his shoulders, “but that just proves that he has blood and not water in his veins. Frankly I am more worried about Marco; he is obedient at school, never complains and has yet to be caught stealing so much as an apple from the neighbour’s tree.”

“
Caro figliuolo
,” Bruna sighed, thinking of her son.

Xaverio was certainly considered a wicked child. After class, he often beat the smaller boys mercilessly. The larger boys, those closer to his own size, he generally refrained from fighting. Instead, he simply humiliated them by time and again bettering them at sports and thrusting the knife of his tongue into their sides. No one dared cross him at school because it was known that his uncle was
un
assassino
, and his nephew therefore, if not demanding the utmost respect, was certainly not a boy to have as an enemy.

“You have to be careful,” Bruna told him one day, upon catching him beating the neighbour’s dog with a stick. “The witches like little boys like you. They like to eat little boys like you and send them to the devil.”

Far from scaring Xaverio however, this comment quite fascinated him. To be eaten by a witch and sent to the devil sounded, to his ears, like jolly fun.

Luckily for his teachers he was a brilliant child, and they could give him passing grades without in the least fudging it. It was true that he often made sarcastic remarks that made the class giggle and themselves look like fools, but the boy was marvelous in Italian grammar and, when asked a question concerning history or mathematics he was rarely wrong.

“He is intelligent,” Bruna said, “but not half so sweet as Marco.”

These words, though casually spoken, put a good deal of consternation into Guido’s heart. He sincerely wished his son was not quite so sweet. He wanted him to be a bit rougher, a bit more like himself and less like his mother, whose qualities, though exemplary in womanhood, were not those he desired to see in a male, – particularly his own offspring.

“What did you do after school today?” he would ask.

“Played ball.”

“With sides?”

“Yes. My side lost.”

“Lost?”

“The other side cheated.”

“But you didn’t cheat?”

“No. Professor Lorenzo says that—”

“
Per la miseria
!”
Guido interrupted, pinching the five fingers of his right hand together and waving them in front of his chin. “You need a real education. Get in a few fights. Fists are the best professors.”

Meanwhile, he looked at his nephew, Xaverio, with a kind of awe. The boy was athletic, quick witted, and as naughty as could very well be wished.

“Listen
figlio mio
,” his uncle once told him, taking him on his lap. “It is obvious that, with your intelligence and spirit, a boy like you can grow up to be whatever he wants, either a criminal or a cardinal. In the history of our family we have many criminals, but not as yet a single cardinal. My confessor, Father Falzon, has agreed to tutor you and see if you are fit for the calling. By the Madonna, I hope that you are. If you lead a religious life it might help to exonerate me from some of my sins.”

Father Falzon, a crusty old priest with a reputation for misanthropy, somehow found the boy to his liking. Unlike other children, Xaverio did not talk much. He also brought his tutor contraband tobacco with every visit and this, for a man who often had to resort to smoking stale cigarette butts for lack of funds, was like a gift from heaven.

“Let me take a few puffs of this Saint Luis Rey,” said the priest, his eyes emitting a dull lustre, “and then we will pray to the Christ, there above my bed, before having our lesson.”

Father Falzon instilled in the child the habit of prayer, the habit of attempted communion with God. From his tattered brevrey he began to teach Xaverio Latin, and was amazed with the rapid accomplishments of his student.

“I have never seen anyone pick up the Latin tongue so quickly,” he told Guido. “A year ago he did not know the most basic elements of the language, and now he has already memorised the book of Genesis by heart.”

What was even more amazing, was that, over the subsequent fourteen months, young Torturo memorised the entire rest of the Holy Bible, word for word, from Exodus all the way through Revelations. In less than two and a half years time, before he was yet a teen ager, he had become as good of a Latin scholar as Father Falzon himself, who was certainly one of the few priests in the city who could genuinely understand the dead language.

In his own way, Xaverio became quite fond of the old priest.

Father Falzon, in his youth, had written a book of poetry titled
Un Cuore delle Erbe
. The book had been much acclaimed, and had won several noteworthy prizes. It was his first and only published work, yet it was a minor classic.

Now, as chance would have it, Xaverio’s school teacher, Professor Lorenzo, one day assigned the students to memorise one of the poems,
Amato Basilico
. Several boys gave vent to muffled laughter, and winked at each other.

“What is it you find so humorous Romeo?” the professor asked seriously.

“We know who wrote this,” Romeo replied. “It’s that old priest, Father Falzon. Me and Arnoldo—”

“Arnoldo and I,” the professor corrected.

“Arnoldo and I passed by the church the other evening and saw him naked; we saw the old priest naked, drunk and sitting up in a pine tree.”

That day, after school, Xaverio pummelled both boys vigorously, and advised them to watch their tongues.

Firmly established on the path of scholarship and entering his teenage years, when a keen and original intellect naturally finds itself drawn to the arcane, Xaverio proceeded to work his way through the old priest’s entire library of texts, reading such books as the
Sermones Vulgares
and
Tractus de diversis materiss praedicabilibus
of Jacques de Vitry, the
Cisterciensis Dialogus Miraculroum
of Caesar of Heisterbach and the
Exuviae Constantinopolitanae
of Count de Riant.

“Oh, that’s a fine book,” the old priest grimaced, coming upon Xaverio reading the
De fabulo equestris ordinis cosantiniani
of Marchese Scipione Maffei. “When you finish with that I will loan you his
Arte magica dileguata
and the
Arte magica annichilata
. These are hardly children’s books and, unfortunately, many of my colleagues would say I am poisoning a young mind, but you are intelligent and will surely make your way through the classical writings without doing too much damage to your soul.” (Here his top lip curled back, revealing a strip of pink, receding gums.) “To properly understand them though, I must say that a bit of knowledge of the Greek authors would do you good. I have a lovely Latin
Parua Naturia
of Aristotele Stagirita and—”