The Pope spoke: “Ipso Deo in illis operante. With insturmentality there is miraculum. In the book of Daniel three children were lifted from the fiery furnace; in Acts Saint Peter was delivered from his prison. The holy relics, the mantle of Elias, the body of Eliseus, the handkerchiefs of Saint Paul, are miraculous as are the places, the Temple of Jerusalem, the waters of the Jordan, the Pool of Bethsaida.”
A woman shouted out from the crowd: “Heal me! – Oh heal me precious Lando!”
She flailed herself madly forward, with wild, untame eyes, apparently unaware of her surroundings.
“Let her through,” the Pope cried.
O’Malley rose from his seat, swept forward, plucked the woman from the crowd and led her to the stage. It now became manifest that she was blind. O’Malley winked at the Pope as he set the woman before him.
“What troubles you my child?” the Pope asked solemnly.
“I am blind,” she sobbed.
“Such is the fate of man, as it is for the mole of the hill.”
“Heal me!” she cried frantically. “I have been blind for ten years. I have spent all my money on doctors, but without it doing any good! Please heal me!”
The Pope replied: “If you had given to the poor what you have wasted on physicians, the true physician would have cured you.”
“Oh please Holy Father,” she shrieked. “Pity me; pity me! Heal me!”
The crowd joined in. “Heal her! Heal her!” it shouted frenetically.
The Pope raised his hand. The crowd was silent. The sky grumbled.
“I, as the Successor to Saint Peter, have a duty to go into the whole world and preach the truth to all creation. He that believes will be saved; he that does not believe will be condemned.”
“I believe in you Sir, – I believe!”
The Vicar of Christ Upon Earth bent forward and spat into her eyes. She swooned back and was caught in O’Malley’s arms. O’Malley chuckled, his thin Irish lips pressed together in a grin. The woman trembled and then, rousing herself, found her feet. She put her hand to her forehead and blinked, rapidly bat her eyelashes.
“I can see! I can see!” she shouted hysterically, flailing her arms in the air. “I can see the light! I can see it clearly now!”
Zuccarelli twisted uncomfortably in his seat. He was suspicious of the proceedings but also touched by the woman’s zest. He however, as a highly suppressed individual, did not care for the public display of emotions. He watched as O’Malley led a young, long haired man, impaired with crutches, onto the stage. Tears flowed over his cheeks and, in a choked voice with a heavy Sicilian accent, he told of his infirmity and begged the Pope to interfere for him – to speak to the higher powers on his behalf and beg for their kindness.
The Pope turned towards the crowd, raised his hands in the air, and spoke in a commanding voice:
“All holy martyrs, Saint Sylvester, Saint Gregory, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Martin, Saint Nicholas; all holy bishops and confessors; all holy doctors, Saint Anthony, Saint Benedict; all holy priests and levites; all holy monks and hermits, Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Agatha; all holy virgins and widows; all holy saints of God, intercede for us. Be merciful.”
He touched the young man and he fell back. The crutches fell away. He rose, brushing his hair from before his eyes, and began to jump up and down, wildly upon the stage like a pathetic, disturbed child.
“I’m free!” he cried, leaping. “I am free of sin!”
Gonzales averted his gaze in disgust. He had seen similar scenes in America and Africa and to him it stunk of fanaticism. Certainly it attracted one desperate portion of the populace, but, in general, it scared the better sort of people away. He pursed his lips together and watched O’Malley snatch another case from the crowd.
This time it was a woman, with a nest of salt and pepper hair done up in a bun on her head, and a young man. The woman prowled up to the stage, dragging the young man behind her. He was a lumbering, oafish sort of fellow, probably around sixteen years old. His body was enormous and his neck as thick as a woman’s waist. He stared around him with the wild, dumb eyes of an animal.
“He has the devil in him!” the woman shouted. “My son has the devil in him!”
The boy’s hair was in disarray; his mouth dropped open and a thick, swollen tongue lolled out. He looked like a hunted animal: scared and dangerous. The Pope approached, and the boy, wheeling his tongue over his chin, backed off, cowering.
“Careful now,” O’Malley warned.
The Pope nodded.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The boy did not answer, but merely wrinkled up his nose.
“Tell me by some sign your name!”
The young man sprang up on tiptoe and craned his thick neck. The veins and tendons protruded, giving it the texture of an oak trunk. His eyes were glaring with madness. “Baahhh!” he answered in brutal cry. “Bahh-Baau! Baau zophesamin anro mainyu!”
O’Malley stepped up and cautiously hooked a microphone to the boy’s shirt.
“Baau! Baau zophesamin anro mainyu!” the boy repeated, the perfect Syriac flowing from his lips, without the absence of either sibilant or aspirate.
Whispers ran through the crowd. “He is possessed of the devil,” people said to one another. A good many shed tears. Some broke down and fell to their knees in prayer. A few old men, who stood off to one side, chuckled and nudged each other. They considered it a good show, but were pessimists at heart. The woman, the mother with her anguished face and bun of salt and pepper hair, clenched her fists and shook them in the air.
“My son has the devil in him,” she shouted. “Free him! Free him from the devil!”
The crowd took the key, especially that overwhelming section of enthusiasts, who valued the outward show of religion far more than silent sanctity. They waved their hands in the air, danced and shouted, repeating the mother’s words: “Free him! Free him from the devil!”
The sky was now thoroughly overcast, a rolling mass of black clouds, and though it was only three in the afternoon it felt like early evening. The scene was dramatic. The ocean of people swelled and pitched in the vast St. Peter’s square. The great dome, the dome of St. Peter’s Church rose up almost fiercely into the conspiring storm.
Di Quaglio hurried up to the Pope and whispered in his ear. “Summus Pontifex,” he said. “I beg you to consider your position. This is neither the time or the place to deal with this woman and her depraved son. In all probability they are both mad. You are frightening people!”
The Pope however did not heed the sub-prefect’s words. Pushing him aside he approached the boy.
Pope Lando the Second, the Vicar of Christ Upon Earth, cried out in a powerful voice: “Almighty Father, who consigned the apostate tyrant, your other son, to the flames of hell; hasten to our call for help and snatch from ruination and from the clutches of the midnight fiend this human being made in your image and likeness. Strike terror, Lord, into the beast now laying waste to your vineyard. Let my mighty hand cast him out of your servant.”
People were visibly touched; the air seemed to become suffused with a supernatural perfume; the clouds, which had been gathering overhead, rumbled. One woman, surprisingly enough the wife of the mayor, who sat in the third row, began to whine that she felt the Holy Ghost inside herself.
Pope Lando the Second, the Successor of Saint Peter, made the sign of the cross on the brow, lips and breast of the boy.
“We cast you out, you onslaught of the infernal adversary!” he said in a voice quivering with grave authority. “We command you, begone and fly far from the precious blood of the Divine Lamb. The bones of the martyrs command you. Give way to the holy apostolic Church!”
He pressed his fingers rather violently to the boy’s forehead and the boy began to shake as if he were working a jack hammer. He flailed his arms and neighed. Di Quaglio, fearing he might attack the Pope, summoned Betschart and Meier, the two Swiss guards, who ran onto th
e stage, quaintly ridiculous in their sixteenth century style outfits of black, red and yellow. The three men together, with the utmost difficulty, restrained the young man.
The Pope continued:
“May the trembling that afflicts this human frame, the fear that afflicts this image of God, descend on you. Make no resistance nor delay in departing from this young man. Use him no longer as your vessel. Do not think of despising my command because you know me to be a great sinner. It is God Himself who commands you. God the Father commands you; God the Holy Spirit commands you. The blood of the martyrs commands you. The continence of the confessors command you. Depart, then, transgressor. Depart seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent. I now and this moment adjure you, profligate dragon, in the name of the spotless Lamb, who has trodden down the asp and the basilisk, and overcome the lion and the dragon, to depart from this boy. Depart from the Church of God!” He made a sign to the crowd. “Tremble and flee, as we call on the name of the Lord, before whom the denizens of hell cower, to whom the heavenly Virtues, Powers and Dominations are subject, whom the Cherubim and Seraphim praise with unending cries as they sing: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth!”
The boy lapped frantically at the air. His eyes were bloodshot. The mother, several strands of her salt and pepper hair now disengaged from the bun, clenched her fists before her eyes and moaned with savage emotion.
The Pope’s voice trembled with an oratory flourish, “It is hard for you to kick against the goad. The longer you delay, the heavier your punishment shall be; for it is not men you are condemning, but rather Him who rules the living and the dead, who is coming to judge both the living and the dead and the world by fire. Give place to the Holy Spirit, who by His blessed apostle Peter openly struck you down in the person of Simon Magus; who cursed your lies in Annas and Saphira; who smote you in King Herod because he had not given honour to God; who by his apostle Paul afflicted you with the night of blindness in the magician Elyma, and by the mouth of the same apostle bade you to go out of Pythonissa, the soothsayer.”
The boy, still shaking violently, fell to the ground where he writhed for a few moments and then threw up a sticky, brightly hued and unpleasant substance, his face pale and eyes blazing.
“Mama,” he said, tears flowing from his eyes. “Mama!”
“It’s gone, it’s gone!” the woman shouted in a frenzy. “The devil is gone from my boy!”
She grasped the arm of the massive, ape like child and helped him up. His face was white, but he smiled. He scratched himself and waved to the audience.
A thrill ran through them.
The entire crowd was ecstatic, those in the VIP section certainly no less so than the others. Women, well positioned in society, rose from their chairs and shouted praises to God, Lando the Second and the Church, though in varying order. They cared not if they compromised themselves by their unseemly behaviour: the Spirit was in them and they could not help but let it manifest in gyrations of their hips and untame, hyena like cries.
The Pope, the Vicar of Christ Upon Earth, gazed gravely over his flock. He stepped forward, his finely wrought features distinct, even from a distance. A rumbling came from the darkened sky and wind swept through St. Peter’s Square.
He spoke:
“You wanted divine mysteries, now smell their incense; you want divine union: have it! – Hear my Bull and be baptised in its blood! – Feel the Holy Ghost!”
He flashed his hands forward, rapidly opening the fingers as if flecking the audience with water. They surged back, as if struck by a powerful wave. The first three or four rows of people fell to the ground, in a simultaneous swoon, where they quivered and shook with spasms.
“The Holy Ghost has me! The Holy Ghost has me!” one man shouted at the top of his voice. A woman writhed wildly on the ground like a severed worm.
“I feel His Love!” she shrieked. “He is giving me His Love!”
At this point it began to rain; first just a few drops came down, large and scattered. People raised their hands up towards the heavens as if they were receiving a blessing. The fanatical youth turned back their heads and stretched forth their tongues, as if for the sacrament. The drops fell more briskly. The old men ran for shelter. The rain thickened, grew to a torrent and began to soak and partially disperse the crowd.
“It is a baptism,” some said in reverent voices. “It is a Holy Baptism!”
Gonzales stalked away to his chambers, thoroughly sickened by this ostentatious display of religion. If ever there was a false prophet, he told himself, Lando the Second was it.
“The man seems to be a specialist at mass hypnotism,” the old cardinal hissed between his teeth.
There was no question in his mind that the face of the church was changing, changing rapidly and for the worse.
The next day, the majority of news services exaggerated rather than reported the events. One Catholic paper said that, previous to the storm, the sun had appeared to be suffused with blood, and many stars were visible in the daylight. Another boldly asserted that orange flavoured rain had fallen from the sky, while a third spoke of ‘a shower of pearly golden corpuscles.’ In general, the consensus was that there had been an unexplainable atmospheric phenomena.
Chapter Eighteen
“No I have not seen him. Did you check the Sala degli Arazzi?”
“I have checked everywhere. The Pope is now utilising Di Quaglio as his secretary, but I cannot get any information from the latter as to how he arrived at the situation, whether it is permanent or merely temporary. No one has seen or heard of Vivan for the past week. He has simply disappeared. It is as if someone had kidnapped or done away with him.”
“Yes, I can understand how you might think it a bit queer,” O’Malley said with a somewhat forced smile. “But things have changed since Alexander VI’s time. We don’t go in for heavy intrigues these days.”
“But the last he was heard of was when he was lunching with the Pope,” Zuccarelli pointed out.
“Oh, come now Cardinal,” O’Malley laughed, putting his hand on the other’s elbow. “The lad is probably simply visiting his mother and doesn’t want to be bothered. He was always one for his mother and, if I were a betting man, that’s where my money would lie, – on him sitting around at his mother’s place for a spell and fattening up on her fine cooking.”
Half satisfied with this explanation, Zuccarelli nodded his head, expressing his hopes that the case were thus as well as his intention to investigate and determine if it were so.
“Well, give the lad my regards when you see him,” O’Malley said. “Tell him he’s missed at Vatican City.”
Zuccarelli, in an extremely pensive state of mind, made his way back to his own chambers, through the Portone di Bronzo and along the Scala Pia. He took the key from his pocket, opened the large oak door to his sanctuary and stepped in. The first room was an outer office. He sat down at his desk and called the telephone information operator in Padua.
“I want the number for Signora Vivan – Yes, as it is the only one listed it is bound to be right. Thank you.”
He called the number and asked the old woman if her son was at home.
“At home, here?” she cried. “I have not heard from him for nine days! And he usually calls me every Friday, Sunday and Wednesday! He is such a good boy; he simply cannot have forgotten me.”
She then went on to explain that she herself had been to the police, but they swore they could do nothing unless he had been missing for a longer period of time. She had called the Vatican and numerous officials, but always with unsatisfactory results. She had even tried to contact the Pope, but without luck.
“Please, see if you can find him,” she begged. “The shear worry is breaking my heart!”
“Yes, certainly,” Zuccarelli replied, in agitation. “I will do everything I can to locate him.”
He lay down the receiver.
“Fava della Madonna!” he murmured. “This is no g
ood!”
That his destiny was somehow linked with Vivan’s was a fact he readily acknowledged. As dominant ecclesiastics they had lived in Padua, often strolling and dining together; mutually targeted by Torturo, they had risen in unison. Torturo, as Pope Lando the Second, was capable of anything – Zuccarelli was sure on that score. If Vivan was damned would he, Zuccarelli, be?
He thought not.
“I believe it is time to put a little distance between myself and Rome,” he said to himself. “There is no reason why necessity cannot impel me to make a sudden trip to Austria – or Sweden let’s say . . . I will pack my bags and be off. If Vivan turns up and the whole thing is a false alarm, then I can always return; – But if not, if my suspicions are correct . . .”
Without giving himself time to finish the thought, he swept into his bed chamber. – In half an hour he could have his bags packed and be on his way to the train station. – He stepped to the maple dresser, opened it and removed his white linen suit, deciding it would be best to travel incognito. He sat down on the antique, four-post bed which was placed square in the centre of the room, the walls of which were frescoed entirely red, with black trees upon which hung numerous fruits in the shape of naked men and women, twisted in immodest postures. He bent down and began to unlace his shoes.
“Do you have a rendezvous somewhere?”
The cardinal looked up. Clara was standing at the sitting room entrance. She was dressed in a tuxedo top, black shorts and black fishnet stockings, her feet sheathed in black, high-heeled leather boots. A large snakeskin purse hung from her shoulder.
“Yes. I was getting ready to go out. – How did you get here?”
The Translation of Father Torturo Page 14