She left a generous tip, swept out to the street again, passing festive Christmas streamers which seemed strung up in her honour. The air was now much warmer, old stone glowing golden, glints of dazzling sunlight flickering on the cobblestones. A withered cringing gypsy came hobbling up beside her, holding out her hand. She’d used all her change on candles, so she filled the dirty paw with crisp new banknotes. She could afford to be magnanimous now she’d be saving James a fortune every month. No need to continue her sessions with John-Paul, when she had him deep inside her and was cured in any case. She’d first sought his help for coldness, sexual prudery, then become his torrid mistress, avid and awakened. She would replace his shrine in the spare room with an exquisite wooden cradle, hand-carved from precious wood, lined and ruched with silk. It would no longer be a ‘spare’ room, and she no longer spare – her life’s work now to nurture John-Paul’s child.
She could see babies everywhere, in prams and pushchairs on the streets, in posters and advertisements, in the straw-and-plaster mangers set up in the windows of several shops and cafés. She stopped at one such crib, glanced at the Madonna kneeling by the Christchild – a princess, not a peasant, robed in real blue velvet. She touched her sapphire ring, the same vibrant shade of blue, slipped it off her finger. It was no longer hers to wear, belonged to the Madonna in the church of Sant’ Agostino, the all-merciful Madonna of Childbirth. She must return there right away, beg the powerful Virgin for one last grace and favour as she offered her the ring: John-Paul’s child – and hers – must be a girl.
SHOPPING LIST
wicker cradle
nappies
vitamins and iron pills
babygros (all pink)
check bottles, bath and pram
Rome in Pictures, Pop-Up Rome, A Children’s Guide to
Ancient Romecurrency converter
Italian dictionary
Diacalm (for Harry)
binoculars
pink lion
Chapter Thirty Five
I’m bored, completely bored. Yes, I know this is meant to be a fucking papal audience, my first glimpse of Sua Santità in the living breathing flesh. The trouble is I’ve been sitting in this huge oppressive hall for an hour and twenty minutes (having queued outside another hour with the rudest so-called Christians I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet, who’d kick you on the shins or tug your hair out by its roots, if it would help them push in faster) and not a sign of the Great Man yet. We’ve had hymns from Negro choirs, carols from a shrill of nuns, and some rather schmaltzy warbling from a troupe of hateful children, all kitted out in frilly shirts and braided scarlet waistcoats. They sang in every tongue but English, and the babel all around me is equally confusing. I’m surrounded by foreigners, a good six or seven thousand of them, gabbling on all sides, with not one mate to talk to in a lingo I can grasp.
I saw a picture of the Tower of Babel in a gallery in Greenwich once – a gloomy pile lost in cloud, while further down the canvas the gang of navvies building it had dropped their tools, confounded, or were shown writhing on the ground in what looked like frothing fits. The tale is most depressing, as I remember from my Bible, and means the peoples of this wretched earth can’t understand each other, are divided by their different tongues, which prevent any basic harmony, any sense of unity, make them mutual aliens. I feel that way right now. There’s a couple on one side of me who keep flirting in Italian, little whispered intimacies which shut me out twice over, and on the other side is an obese and raucous woman who’s yakking to her neighbour in a language so obscure it could be Serbo-Croat or Tibetan. Even with our so-called gang I’m the odd man out, since they can all communicate, while I’m restricted to my dozen words of primary-school Italian, which hardly cover all the vagaries of human feeling and experience.
I crane my neck, to see if I can spot them amongst the rows and rows of heads – dark heads, greyheads, baldies, berets, school-hats, veils and wimples. It’s totally impossible. They’re right down near the front, while I’m stuck here at the back; so far away, in fact, the proceedings on the stage look as if I’m viewing them from the wrong end of a telescope. I’m not sure why we’re parted, except Seton insisted that we enter through different doors and be searched by different security men, as part of what he calls his recce. I wasn’t turned away myself, though I’m lumbered with a large umbrella which doubles as a shooting stick (and which Seton plans on using later, to secrete a sawn-off shotgun). The police didn’t even check it, just rummaged through my handbag and ran their metal-detector up and down my body. This is all just a rehearsal, a testing out the ground, an improvement and refinement of techniques.
Seton tried a second ruse. He’s carrying a camera-case with a concealed compartment at the bottom, which he’ll use to hold a smaller gun. Today he put a small bronze statuette inside, merely to see if it was spotted, picked up by the metal-detectors. I presume it wasn’t, since he’s still carrying the case, and gave me the thumbs-up sign when he first came in, climbing on a chair-seat to locate me at the back – which wasn’t quite so difficult, since the crowds were far less dense then; have been building up each minute ever since. I was scared to death they’d stop him, confiscate that camera-case, but he’s told me twice already that though the searches appear thorough, the officers are often lax, in fact; worn down by the sheer mass and press of numbers, the rude bad-tempered crowds. Apparently, the police force here is not exactly renowned for its efficiency, but is pretty damn disorganised, like so much else in Rome. There’ve been some recent scandals about lapses in security at both the airport and the Senate (which Seton read with pleasure), and I’ve seen several carabinieri smoking quite openly on duty. Mind you, I’d probably smoke myself if I had to cope with hordes like this each week – seven thousand ruffians, disguised as papal groupies, threatening law and order. They hold these general audiences almost every Wednesday of the year – servile Catholics swarming from all corners of the globe, to toady to their Tyrant, grovel at his feet. When we first joined the jostling queue, it was more like Wembley Stadium than St Peter’s solemn Square – tourist coaches parked in droves, disgorging eager fans; swarthy souvenir-sellers closing in with their hideous papal knick-knacks, their tea towels of the Vatican and John Paul coffee mugs.
A pity they weren’t selling John Paul guns, or I’d have bought one with his name on, shot those six smug bigwigs strutting up and down the stage in their preening prelates’ purple. All that male pomp riles me – all that wasted cock. Celibates should be officially castrated, their flaccid pricks donated to normal but unfortunate men, who have suffered in bad accidents or got entangled in machinery and would love a working penis. I look round in surprise, jolted by a sudden storm of riotous applause. At first, I think my thoughts have been picked up by some Orwellian mind-machine, and they’ve awarded me a medal for the best idea since heart transplants, then I realise the acclaim is for the Pope. Yes, II Tiranno is here.
All the lights snap on as a tiny white-robed figure enters from a side door on the stage, glides slowly to his ritzy golden throne. The hordes are going wild – clapping, shouting, stamping, unfurling flags and banners – but as far as I’m concerned, the moment is a definite anticlimax. So this is Sua Santità – the Prince of the Apostles, the Successor to Saint Peter, the Primate of all Italy, the Patriarch of the West, the so-called Vicar of Jesus Christ Himself, who’s been seen in person by more gawping cheering millions than any other single individual in the whole course of human history; the High and Holy Autocrat who rules nine hundred million. Admittedly, I can’t see very clearly from this fag end of the hall, but the guy looks old and past it, a peasant with a weight problem, and not much left of his hair. He doesn’t even greet us – well, not with any passion or panache, just a few brief nods, a wave or two, before he plumps down in his chair and starts maundering in Italian, droning on and on, reading from a sheaf of notes in a soporific monotone.
I fidget in my seat (which is naked wood with no arms or
kindly padding, and probably meant as penance); glance around the hall. It seems slightly less oppressive with the lights on, the two hideous stained-glass windows glowing neon-bright, but it’s still quite the ugliest place I’ve ever seen (and that includes the Millbank Tower and Brent Cross shopping centre). The ceiling looks like polystyrene concrete, with the worst features of both, and is dimpled with small padded indentations in a dreary (dirty?) white, like the inside of an egg-box – the cheapo cardboard sort. Yet they boast it cost a bomb – money probably all extorted from the poor and shabby faithful, including those starving in squalid Third World slums.
They’re still extremely faithful, though, judging by the reverent hush which greets the pontiff’s words; then more rapturous applause when he finally lets up, and another portly celibate in a long black buttoned frock starts spouting in a different language, which I recognise as German – thanks to Wilhelm – though it’s prayer and priests and pilgrims, rather than fellatio or death-camps. The Germans in the hall go more or less hysterical and start leaping to their feet, or breaking into neo-Nazi hymns, as their various different groups are introduced – high-school kids from Munich, seminarians from Hamburg, a youth brigade from Ludenscheid, and several (boring) others I can’t quite understand. Then it’s II Papa’s turn again, this time speaking German, though I hardly grasp a word of it since he enunciates less clearly than the priest, and sounds distinctly weary. Join the club, John Paul. I had two hours’ sleep last night and would gladly doze off here and now, if these penitential seats allowed.
Another aching hour drags by, as we move from German into Spanish, from Spanish into French (both Frogs and Spaniards cheering as they’re introduced by group), and then a couple more weird languages which prove the curse of Babel and could be gibberish. I feel shut out and excluded, and also pretty dense – the alien, the moron, who hasn’t bothered with her Linguaphone. There’s just one welcome respite when a priest from Dallas, Texas, in a stylish purple dressing gown introduces the English-speaking pilgrims, who include Japanese, Australians, swarms of charismatic Yanks (with a squad of female choristers whose dress outswanks the bishops’), and an embarrassingly jolly contingent from Old England, whom I haven’t even noticed since they’re mostly at the front. There’s a lot of talk about the Blessed Edwin Somebody, and then an old bag in a kilt whom the Texan priest calls ‘Phyllis’ stands up and sings a solo in an ardent baritone. And once everybody’s recovered from the shock of her low G, the Pope tries out his English, which is halting, slow and guttural, and centres mainly on the Blessed E., who sounds a cross between a sadist and a screwball.
I still don’t understand. Oh, I grasp the actual words this time, but I can’t fathom for the life of me why a sixteenth-century schizophrenic who sounds in need of daily sessions with John-Paul, and used to share his bed and broth with seven devils (whom he cast out of a bishop, but who stayed to take revenge) should be the toast of all those pious worthy matrons. If they met him in the flesh, they’d probably run a mile, or start drawing up petitions to have him put away, as a danger to their daughters or the peace.
I’m really quite relieved when he’s consigned to his coffin in 1588, though according to the Pope, he refused to rot or decompose like any normal corpse, and is apparently still pink and plump, despite his grisly martyrdom. It all sounds most grotesque – and an obvious downright lie – so I’m glad when the Pope decides to leave him underground. (He’s been exhumed three times, in fact, which must be quite disorientating for a man of unsound mind who assumed he was terminally dead), and move on to something else. His Holiness starts talking about suffering, and time: how the old year’s creaking to its close with its sadnesses, its losses, its sense of disappointment, and how even a New Year may not bring us what we crave. I sit up and take notice, not just of what he’s saying, but the tone in which he’s saying it. I can actually hear the suffering in his voice, which has suddenly clouded over, seems to darken, falter, as if he’s remembering some personal loss which he’s experienced first-hand.
My thoughts shift to John-Paul – my own John-Paul, the elusive one, whom I’ve still not glimpsed at all. I flogged back to his hotel again, was told that he was out; not expected back till midnight, and would I kindly leave myself. Yes, the receptionist spoke English, but still we couldn’t communicate. There was no sense of fellow feeling, no basic human sympathy. Even John-Paul’s name divided us. Her accent made it comic, as her manner made it casual – just a scrawled line in the register, another routine visitor; whereas it’s branded through my flesh with molten iron.
I dragged Seton with me next day, lured him there on some deceitful pretext, hoping his snazzy clothes and silver-tongued Italian might impress the girl and conjure up John-Paul. Perhaps it was just as well they didn’t, since Seton might have bashed him, or started paying off old scores, but he did succeed in wangling a copy of the conference programme. God! It made me sick – John-Paul’s name still swanking with those deceitful strings of letters, and all that pompous empty jargon inflating him to king-size – lectures on Narcissistic Introjective Denial, or the Role of Illusion in Symbol Formation, and other equally riveting subjects; while his patients die, despair. It’s like the Vatican again – power through pomp and posturing, keeping normal people out because they don’t understand the concepts or speak that arcane language; haven’t wrapped the world up in one closed and biased system which brooks no opposition. Both John-Pauls lay down the law, follow rigid rules, insist on fixed procedures, live life by their bibles. They’re also both Big Shams, offering hope and comfort, which never actually materialises; proclaiming cure, salvation, when there’s neither health nor God. We’re all panting for a saviour, but that doesn’t mean there is one.
My shrink’s a double sham – if Zack was lying and Seton speaking truthfully, which I suspect now was the case – a bad artist and a plumber’s son, gatecrashing a congress where he’s no real right at all; deceiving not just patients, but all those bona fide doctors and genuine conference members. He breaks all the rules himself, yet insists on patients keeping them – more rules than back at school: arrive on time, depart on time, and not a second later; don’t dare be ill or cancel any sessions; don’t make demands, don’t phone, accept his interpretations as God’s Holy Law which cannot be denied; no silly chat, no shirking, no invasive personal questions, and most important, pay all bills by return. Yet some people say it’s rules like that which can actually make you a patient in the first place – domineering parent-figures insisting on a compliant child who’s allowed no space nor freedom, but dragooned into obedience and neurosis.
I’m beginning to feel quite wretched, as if the sudden change of weather which taunted us with clouds this morning, instead of jaunty sun, has affected my own mood. It’s a heavy day outside, the Tiber rippling sluggishly, St Peter’s usual blazing dome lost in sullen mist. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a glimpse of cloud or water, however dull or grey. It’s so claustrophobic in this hall it’s like being underground; the outside world completely barred, no view at all, no air. I keep groping for my cigarettes, then remembering I can’t smoke here. The Pope has probably banned it not only in this audience-hall, but totally, infallibly, for all Roman Catholics everywhere, as he’s banned divorce and contraception, even masturbation.
He’s prosing on and on still. I’m trapped in words, foreign words, which make me feel totally alone – alone among six or seven thousand – as if I’ve landed on a planet where I don’t belong at all, and where people’s mouths and larynxes are shaped differently from mine. He’s switched from halting English to what I guess is Polish, judging by the speed with which he rattles through his notes. I hate those notes – they’re so unspontaneous. (I wonder if John-Paul makes notes – notes on all his patients, and whether he’s chucked all mine away, or marked them ‘Case Concluded’?)
I peer along the row to check if anyone is smoking, and whether you’re skewered on those Swiss Guards’ lethal halberds if you dare to disobey. No one�
��s even chewing gum or fingers. The lovey couple next to me are joined at hand and knee; the stout woman on the other side has linked arms with her crony. My own arm fidgets to my bag, hand closing round my pack of boring Rothmans (I couldn’t find Capstans – or Chesterfields – in Rome), turns it into a gun, a small but lethal Mauser, fumbles for the trigger. Bang-bang, John Paul, you’re dead. It would be a relief to shoot him, actually. I’ve been sitting here so long I’m dying for some action, need to use my restless hands, which are cold and all but trembling without their fix of nicotine. And it would force my own John-Paul to turn his mind to Nial, remember who she is, even if he only saw her picture in the paper – a picture of a heroine-assassin. It would also shut His Endless up, and I doubt if anything else will. I suppose that’s part of being an autocrat – he pontificates, we listen.
I’m wrong – he’s stopped – spontaneously, without a bomb or bullet. At least he’s praying now, not preaching, and everyone is standing up, so I presume we’re near the end. Yes – he gives his final blessing and all the pilgrims thresh and writhe and wave their flags or banners, then half the hall starts swarming out, stampeding for the exits. I’m about to join the scrimmage when I see the other eager half surging towards the centre of the hall; packing close against the barriers which line the middle aisle, leaping up on chairs with cameras poised. Although I’m stuck right at the back, I actually chose a seat smack-bang in the centre, adjoining that wide aisle – simply because it seemed less claustrophobic. Now I realise that position is like gold dust, and several hundred pilgrims are intent on ousting me and stealing it, even at the cost of a dislocated shoulder or painful trampled foot. I’ve no idea what’s going in, but I stick fast in my seat, refuse to give it up, and it’s only when I eventually jump up on it (copying my neighbours), that I realise what I’ve battled for – access to the Pope.
Fifty-Minute Hour Page 40