Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  “The Vatican Council?” I asked.

  “No, before,” Giuseppe answered. “In 1959 or 1960.” It looked as though Schellenberg had been a trusted adviser well before the Council was convened. He had the appearance of a café intellectual then, hair quite long and brushed back from his forehead, black-rimmed glasses, and a short, trim beard.

  “Brother Giuseppe, is there anything you can tell us about what may have led to Father Schellenberg’s murder?”

  No. He had no idea.

  Guiseppe escorted us out, then asked us to wait a minute while he went to get something. He came back and handed us two bottles of the liqueurs made by the monks. I had the Elixir di Saint Bernardo, and Brennan had Gran Liquore Certosa. We thanked him, and he invited us to take a look around. After stowing the boxes in the car, we walked around the monastery, stopping in the chapel, where Brennan knelt and seemed to get lost in prayer. The silence was so profound and the place so peaceful I had no desire to leave.

  But soon enough we were on the highway and headed northeast. We had reservations for the night in Fiesole, a town on a hill that rises over Florence. “I don’t see any signs. How big is this place, Brennan?”

  “Not all that big, but it’s well known. There ought to be a sign, I’m thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, we’d better find it before we end up in Bologna.”

  “Did you know they had a law school in Bologna in the thirteenth century?”

  “I wonder if they taught the lawyers to sue over badly marked highways. Damages for lost time and gas money. And mental anguish.” I consulted my map and pointed to a turnoff. “We’re beyond Fiesole now. Take that exit marked Barberino, and we’ll work our way back.”

  We found ourselves skirting the Tuscan hills as we gained altitude, careening along a narrow mountain road with barely enough room to get by the cars that emerged suddenly from the blind turns ahead. It seemed we were mere inches from the precipice. Burke was unconcerned.

  “The view here is brilliant, isn’t it? These hills —”

  “Keep your eyes on the road, Brennan, will you? And gear down. I wouldn’t trust that guardrail to keep us from plunging to our deaths.”

  “Oh ye of little faith.”

  At that point I’d have preferred to be the wheelman myself but I had to admit he was a skilful driver.

  Fiesole was a stunningly beautiful town, with crenellated medieval towers and extremely narrow winding one-lane streets — only to be expected, given the age of the settlement, which was noted for its Etruscan and Roman ruins. Mirrors were affixed to buildings on the corners; it was the only way to see whether another car was coming. We found a tiny hotel with cream stucco walls and green shutters on the windows; a white cat peered down at us from a windowsill. We registered and headed out immediately for dinner. It was the first time all day I could think of food without feeling queasy; now I was famished.

  La Reggia degli Etruschi was, interestingly, a former monastery; it afforded us a panoramic view of Florence below us as the sun went down. Our six-course meal included such delights as noodles in black truffle sauce, beef filet flavoured with grapes, and mascarpone cheese cream with coffee-flavoured biscuits and chocolate. And then there were the Tuscan wines, which happened to be specialties of the house. Although by unspoken agreement we eschewed hard liquor for the evening, the wine selection was so spectacular we were both crocked by the time the dolci arrived. We yakked about our various travels in Europe and one-upped each other with war stories and mishaps. The brooding look returned to Brennan’s face as the night wore on.

  “Troubled by doubts again, about your vocation?” I ventured to ask.

  “I have no doubts about my vocation,” he replied with a certain tartness in his voice. Then, more quietly: “I just don’t know if I’m able for it.”

  “You’re able. You’re having a dark night of the soul. It happens. Look at me. I’m a family man without my family. I don’t know how long I’ll be able for that.” He looked at me for a long moment. In normal times, he would have started in on me by now: Get it together, reconcile with Maura, don’t be such a bonehead. Obviously he didn’t have it in him tonight. I drained my glass and signalled for the bill. Burke snatched it from the waiter and fumbled for his wallet. We stumbled back to the hotel with the enchanting lights of Florence beneath us at the bottom of the hill.

  The next day brought us to yet another complex of magnificent buildings. The Benedictine abbey at Praglia, with its cloisters and Romanesque bell tower, was built between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We walked through the loggia with a black-robed monk by the name of Brother Rodrigo. I understood much of what he said; Brennan filled me in later on the rest. There was not a lot he could, or would, tell us about Brother Robin Gadkin-Falkes. He knew Robin was in Canada, and we told him Robin had been ill, had perhaps suffered a breakdown. We said nothing about the murder and, if Brother Rodrigo knew what had happened, he did not let on. He seemed to accept that Father Burke and his friend were concerned about Robin and were looking for information that might help him. But all he could tell us was that Robin lived the life of work and prayer required of a monk. He particularly liked to toil in the gardens, and he loved the canonical hours, when the men gathered several times daily for prayer and the reading of Scripture. His was the voice with which the others sought to blend when the ancient plainchant was sung in choir. Did he ever speak of the death of his sister? The community was aware of it, and prayed for her soul.

  Could we see his room? Brother Rodrigo hesitated, then seemed to find no harm in that, so he went to get the key and led us to the small, tidy room occupied by Brother Robin Gadkin-Falkes. But the room had little to say to us. There was a bed, a desk and chair, a bookshelf that did not contain anything unusual. Tacked to a bulletin board were some devotional pictures and prayers relating to Saint Charles Borromeo. Burke opened the door of a plain wooden wardrobe, and we saw nothing but robes and a couple of sets of civilian clothing. Three drawers contained underwear, socks, and toiletries. Brother Rodrigo looked as if he wanted to protest when the visiting priest yanked open the desk drawers and rummaged around. There were pens, pencils, writing paper, the usual things, and a photo of his sister, Louisa. Brennan drew out a few sheets of paper and spread them over the desk. They were cartoons in black ink, well drawn, depicting Borromeo bowing low before a high altar; he was billed as the “Apostle of the Council of Trent.” Another drawing lampooned Pope John XXIII as the “Apostate of the Council of Vatican II.” The final cartoon depicted Pope Paul VI as a waiter, with a white cloth draped over his arm and a large menu in his hand, about to serve a motley group of people talking and laughing around a rectangular table. The menu said “Novus Ordo.” The cartoon was a reference to the new Mass as a meal around a table, rather than the re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice at the altar.

  That was it for Brother Robin’s room. We thanked Rodrigo and stayed on for nones, the three o’clock prayer service. The chanting was ethereal. Brennan took part and he seemed, at least for those few minutes, to lose the careworn, hungover look that had marked him during our Italian road trip. When we came out of the church, Brennan tossed me the car keys, and I got into the driver’s seat. We left the ancient monastery for the twentieth-century autostrada, where we merged with the traffic roaring along at one hundred thirty kilometres an hour.

  “So,” I said, “unflattering portrayals of Popes John and Paul. Did they deserve that sort of contempt?”

  “Of course not. Anyone who grew up with ‘Tantum Ergo’ and now has to sit through ‘They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love’ in the wake of the Second Vatican Council might cast a disapproving eye on Pope John. But to most people, he was a saintly and beloved man. He was in fact a funny, self-deprecating, sweet man. And the goofiness that infected the church after Vatican II is not his fault. As for Pope Paul, he was an intellectual and a profoundly spiritual priest.”

  “Next item of business,” I said, “do we go on to Treviso,
or back to Rome? I have to call Moody Walker from somewhere to see if he managed to set anything up for us in Frankfurt tomorrow.”

  “I’m thinking we won’t learn much from the fact that there’s a St. Philomena Oratorio in Treviso. We haven’t done the rounds of St. Cecilia churches, because we’re not likely to learn anything from those either. But Treviso is a lovely town. I’m happy to go along if you’ve a mind to check it out. It’s not all that far, and we have another night before we fly out. But I’ll probably sleep through it all.”

  “Let’s go. We’ll get a room, I’ll give Walker a call, and we’ll see if Saint Philomena speaks to us in a voice we can understand.”

  When we got to the outskirts of Treviso we stopped and procured a little map, and the man who sold it to us pointed to the Via S. Bona Vecchia as the street where we would find the oratorio. We made our turn and cruised along looking for the church.

  “It should be just along here on the right.”

  We passed a food shop, a hotel, a tiny religious building of some sort, and then we were into a neighbourhood of white stucco houses with red or black scalloped roof tiles. “I don’t know, Brennan. I don’t see anything that looks like an oratorio.”

  “What? Pull over.” He rolled down his window and called to an elderly woman going by on a bicycle. “Scusi, signora, come si fa per andare all’Oratorio di Santa Filomena?”

  Her directions had us backtracking to the unlikely-looking structure we had just passed: a little cream-coloured octagonal building with two small spires and a red tiled roof. The tiny building, behind a wrought-iron gate, was virtually in the parking lot of the hotel next door, a building several storeys in height with a tiled roof like that of the oratorio. The Ca’ del Galletto looked like a nice enough hotel, so the first thing we did was book a big room with two beds, an elegant bathroom and, to Brennan’s delight, a trouser press in the corner. He flopped down on one of the beds and closed his eyes. I left him there and went outside.

  I walked around the tiny church, and noticed what appeared to be bullet holes in one of the walls. Somebody had strong feelings about this place, I thought. There was a large plaque on the site, giving a detailed history of the oratorio. It was too much for me to translate, so I decided to snap a picture in case it contained anything of interest. If Burke did not get around to reading it during our visit, I could enlarge the photo and he could read that.

  The man at the desk greeted me when I returned to the hotel, and I asked him about the oratorio. I began in his native tongue, but his English was much better than my Italian.

  “Somebody doesn’t like the oratorio, or the saint it was built for?” I asked.

  He laughed. “It was nothing personal.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It happened in the First War. An Austrian grenade from across the Piave. It exploded close to the oratorio.”

  “Battle of the Piave River, 1918.”

  “Yes. You know history.”

  “I’m a bit of a history buff.” But not such a good detective; the flak damage did not reflect an attack on Saint Philomena. “Thanks for the information. I have to go see a sick friend.”

  “Your friend is in his room. I think he has maybe …” The man mimed a glass being lifted to his lips.

  “Yeah, he needs to sleep it off.”

  I let the invalid nap for an hour, then shook him awake. We walked from the hotel into the medieval town centre, with its crenellated clock tower, arcaded streets, and shuttered stucco houses, which cast shimmering reflections in the water of the canals. The streets were narrow and winding, the crosswalks marked with white marble blocks. Burke had cheered up; he was clearly in his element.

  “You’re a man born out of time, Brennan.” “There’s much to be said for the medieval world,” he acknowledged.

  Our Italian sojourn ended the following day when we drove back to Rome and caught our flight to Frankfurt. Our first encounter in that city was with the world’s most belligerent cab driver, who berated us for our inability to give him directions from the airport to our hotel, strangely named the Albatros. We tuned the cabbie out, and he finally located the hotel. We checked in and hired another taxi to take us to the Altstadt, the old town of Frankfurt. Luckily, this driver was much friendlier than the first one, so we asked him to give us a few minutes to walk through the old city. The town square was lined with tall, half-timbered houses that had been obliterated by Allied bombers during World War II, and rebuilt in exacting detail afterwards; even the original builders’ mistakes were replicated. I snapped a couple of photos for Normie who, I knew, would love the fairy-tale houses, then we hopped back in the cab for the drive to Sachsenhausen, the apple wine district. Moody Walker’s contact in Hamburg had set up a meeting for us with Helmut Oster, a retired police officer from the former East Berlin.

  We got out of the cab and walked along the cobblestoned streets to a very Germanic-looking establishment called Zum Stern. Next to it was the Anglo-Irish Pub, which attracted a longing gaze from Burke on the way by. He told me the bar was a regular haunt of his brother Terry, an airline pilot who frequently flew the New York–Frankfurt route. Oster was waiting for us in Zum Stern. He was tall and broad and had very short bristly salt and pepper hair. German was one of the handful of languages Burke could speak, and I had taken a couple of courses back in my university days, so we were able to exchange a few pleasantries with the policeman in that language before he switched to heavily accented English.

  Speaking of heavy, I looked at the menu offering — bratwurst, schnitzel, and hackfleisch — and wondered whether my tender stomach could take it. As if he had read my mind, Burke folded his menu, put it down, and said: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” His stomach was in better shape than mine — no, apparently not. “Romans eat Italian food. I’ll have the pizza Margherita.” I had a salad. Oster laughed and ordered the hackfleisch.

  Helmut Oster had been something of a dissident, at least to the limited extent possible for a police officer in East Berlin. He greeted with relief the disintegration of the Honecker regime in the German Democratic Republic, and did nothing to arrest its decline. He was of particular interest to us because, as Sergeant Walker had ascertained, he had been on duty for the state visit of Soviet President Leonid Ilich Brezhnev in 1971.

  “Was Reinhold Schellenberg present at a demonstration against Brezhnev?” I asked him.

  “Reinhold Schellenberg was shot and wounded at the demonstration.”

  “What?” Burke and I exclaimed.

  “He was shot by the Stasi and taken into custody.”

  “What brought this about?”

  “It is my understanding that he had been warned, and failed to heed the warning.”

  “Warned not to take part in the protest?”

  “Yes. The authorities were anxious to avoid unrest and political embarrassment during the leader’s visit.”

  “Who warned him off?”

  “It was one of us, one of the Volkspolizei. As you may know, members of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, the secret police, worked closely at times with the VoPos, who were organized under the Ministry of the Interior. I believe it was Kurt Bleier who issued the warning. Bleier was involved in the operations surrounding the visit.”

  “Was Schellenberg known to Bleier before these events took place?”

  “I do not know. What I do know is that the Stasi had been watching Schellenberg. He was a theologian. He had worked in the Vatican and was thought to be influential with certain liberal elements in the church. He was a priest in Magdeburg at the time, at St. Sebastian Cathedral. When it became known that he would be travelling to Berlin, at a time which coincided with Brezhnev, he was watched more closely. And, as I say, he received a visit from one of the VoPos, and I think it was Bleier. Then he turned up at the demonstration anyway. Someone rushed in the direction of the reviewing stand; it may have been Schellenberg and some others, it is not clear. But it was Schellenberg who received a b
ullet in his arm. He was detained for several days after that. His wound was treated; he was eventually released.”

  “What happened to him while he was in custody?” “I do not know. I suspect he faced some rough treatment. He returned to his church in Magdeburg. He later became a professor and taught in several universities. Then he went to work in the Vatican again, and was quite an important man there.”

  “What can you tell us about Bleier?”

  “I was not acquainted with him personally but what I know is that he was a dedicated socialist. He married a Polish girl, the daughter of a concert violinist. The family lived in Berlin. They were strong Catholics and were not in favour with the Party. The Silkowski home was known as a place of music and culture. The way I heard it, Bleier met the girl after going to the house to question the father. Perhaps he was seduced as much by the music and the spirit of the family as by the daughter!”

  We were winding up our lunch and I asked Helmut: “Can you think of any reason why Kurt Bleier would want Schellenberg dead after all these years?”

  He shook his head as he balled his napkin up and placed it on the table. “If there is a reason, it is unknown to me.”