“He means to … Oh, Jesu, gather me now!” the old woman cried out.
“It was not here, Salvestro,” said Groot.
“How did it feel?” asked Salvestro, getting up to take the man by the neck and drag him to the window. “How did it feel!” He began cuffing the man about the head. “How was it, watching her die down there! Watching me finish her, eh? How was that!”
The man began to cry out that he had no daughter, but Salvestro only grew more furious at that, shouting, “Why don’t you fight! Why don’t any of you fight!” beating the man with his fists now, the two women howling and not daring to move. Groot pulled him off and wrestled him to the floor, holding him down until he calmed himself. “Silence,” Salvestro said softly.
“I’m still hungry,” said Bernardo. “I think I’m going to die.”
They ate everything in the house. Salvestro did not speak again that day.
He remembered sleeping in odd snatches, a few minutes on the steps of San Giovanni and waking to dazzling sunshine or propped in the corner of a high barn somewhere while men rolled barrels around him, a sound such as wooden bells might make, a silvery rumble. Someone said, “That’s nothing. Look here,” throwing up a trapdoor and faces staring up at him out of the darkness, then the screaming that started up when the trapdoor was closed. Braziers were set up in some of the squares, the instruments stacked against the walls. The worst of it happened out of sight, in the dyeing sheds that backed onto the river. The Pratesi were marched down in little groups. Some of them vomited as they were led down there. The smell stayed in his nostrils: scorched hair and skin. Once Bernardo was chasing some children about and Groot grasped him by the arm. “Watch him. Don’t let him … You know what I’m talking about.” He nodded dumbly, not knowing. Groot went off somewhere.
The days fell into each other. He could not stay awake. Someone took his pike while he dozed one day, and Bernardo grew worried about it, repeating the tag that had been dinned into their brains by the sergeants at Bologna, “A good pikeman is never without his pike,” and drilling himself there in the street: One, lower the pike; two, step forward; three, thrust. … One, two, three. One, two, three. He turned away from his friend’s display and tried to go back to sleep. The other two marched him about, brought him food, or perhaps he found it for himself. The other soldiers looked at him curiously. He ignored them. They spent some time with the Sicilians, but he unnerved them somehow, breaking into laughter for no reason or drumming on a tabletop for hour after hour, talking in his forest-language or what he thought of as that. Bernardo turned up with a tiny corpse in his arms, exclaiming, “I didn’t do anything!” when Groot began shouting at him, then wandering off again to get rid of it. “I told you!” Groot hissed in his ear, but he didn’t understand. “Remember the boy at Marne? Remember Proztorf? I told you to watch him!” And then the day came when Groot returned and shook him awake to tell him, “Come on, come with me. I’ve got us a way out. Come on, we have to talk to him. …”
He was led around the back of San Stefano, through a little door, across a courtyard, through a long succession of empty rooms. A finely dressed sergeant eyed them from behind a table. “Are you the Colonel’s men? I have a task for you. …”
An unfamiliar sound now, here in Rome. His memories are silent, or overlaid with silence. The voices rumbling together in Prato are not distant but smothered, and the noise that takes their place is cloistered and pent-up as a madman swinging at phantoms that dissolve beneath his frustrated fists. He dangles above the silenced street, a hapless stage-angel clawing at the ground where Cippi kneels, his hand tightening over the girl’s mouth. His disowned carcass couples with hers, and the quiet of the scene is cankered. The Pratesi cowering behind their doors choke back their shouts of outrage, the watching men chew on their tongues, the hand over the girl’s face forces her cries back down her throat. …
All tears come too late. It was a saltless sea that carried him away, watching a thin white ghost as she wrestled with her tormentors. Hold her now. … Her weirdly framed eyes roll in her head, or did he imagine that later? The boat pulls away from the shore, but not quickly enough, no, never quickly enough. Her bent body jerks about like a puppet’s—did he see that? The water folded her shrieks in its custodial silence. The dulled drumbeat of his blood drowned her out as the weight of the Achter-Wasser pushed in on him. Is that what she heard, too? As they picked her up, one on each side, as they pushed her head forward? As they drowned her there, that night, in a barrel of rainwater?
Silence upon soiled silence; Prato’s smothered quiet upon that night’s complicit hush. Bernardo pulls him whimpering off the dying woman. He lies bruised and wakeful amidst the softly breathing bodies. Some rustling, the odd cough. Anything else?
It begins quietly, growing slowly in definition: a mucal mewling or snorty snuffly-sound. The monks sleep soundly. Bernardo snores on. Only Salvestro is awake, alone in the chamber, in the hostel, in the Borgo. In Ro-ma. No one hears and no one cares. Little liquid hiccups and half-stifled sobs erupt unvigorously and sink swiftly in the night’s tarry silence. It’s too late. It always is. Salvestro is crying for his mother.
Reveille, breakfast, the pot, a Mass.
“Otiurn, negotium.” hums the Pope, sweeping briskly out of the chapel into the sala beyond, farcing the o’s into antiphonal neumes, o-oo-o, stopping to glance out of a window at the loggia overlooking the courtyard, deeply shaded, noisy with the shouts of today’s jostling petitioners. He considers showing himself, taking a turn around the gallery.
“Holiness, the Bishop of Spezia has been waiting three days already,” murmurs Ghiberti. “There is an audience after that. …”
The Sala di Constantino is loud with chatter that falls silent as he passes through, the painters and paint-mixers high on their scaffolds peering down at him, the air heavy with oily and metallic vapors. Chatter again as he exits and finds himself in the Eliodoro. Through the windows to his right the Belvedere gardens sweep up the hill, part-shadowed by the palace, then glorious in the morning’s sunshine beyond. The Vatican hogs the Borgo’s light. Ghiberti coughs, or sniffs, prompting him again. The ledger is clasped to his chest. Leo sees the Bishop standing alone in the Sala di Segnatura. “Otiurn, negotium …”
A dolphin, he thinks a few minutes later, because of the lips. The gulping, too, great roomfuls of air swallowed and belched up in droning periods. The dolphin-like Bishop of Spezia squints inflexibly at a point three feet in front of his nose, turning his head from side to side in slow quarter rotations as Leo paces before him. The monologue began as he entered.
And continues now, interspersed with ill-rehearsed urbanities, each of these prefaced alternately by “If I might be so bold” or “How should I put it to Your Holiness?”: locutions Leo detests, and three of each so far. He listens with diminishing attention, recalling Spezia as swampy and uninteresting; by the sea. A softly spewed fog of rhetoric is clouding his cloudless morning. Bulky entities float shapelessly within it: the objects of the Bishop’s lament. Pay attention, he upbraids himself. Ask a question. Concern yourself with the sadnesses of Spezia. He could inquire if Turkish corsairs were a danger, baffling the thick-lipped Bishop. Or ask after the quality of the hunting.
“… and as to her origins, all profess the completest ignorance; she herself will say nothing except that she was saved and brought to Spezia by one who came and left in the night, who will come back one day to take her away—you can imagine what the simpler folk make of that—that she is waiting now, and any who wish to wait with her may do so. …” The Bishop has a minor saliva problem and sucks noisily from time to time, perhaps for emphasis.
Certain facts begin recurring, sifted dutifully by the Pope. It seems an eight-year-old child arrived in Spezia two years ago. It seems a prayer-house has since gathered about her. It seems grants of money have been removed from the diocese and reassigned to said prayer-house. The benefice of Spezia is not a rich one. It seems its Bishop is in Rome. The Pope arranges
and rearranges these bland counters. He smiles placidly at the Bishop from time to time, encouraging him to go on. It is useful to be thought stupid.
Ghiberti, standing quietly near the back wall of the sala, steps forward discreetly, looking sideways with the odd nose-wiping gesture he has adopted lately. A hum of conversation penetrates from the Sala d’ Incendio next door, rises and falls in the high spaces of the ceiling.
“Her influence, you see, is spreading,” the Bishop says. “There are women amongst her followers who are, how should I put it to your Holiness, who are ill thought of in Spezia. And it is not only the common people. The diocese relies on its patrons, who have fallen under her influence, my own sister amongst them, Violetta. She has taken an interest in this Amalia, the girl, I mean. And, Your Holiness will understand, it is difficult for me to move against the sect directly, my sister, you understand. … She owns much of the land in Spezia, and two other estates besides. She can be very headstrong, my sister.”
Leo nods sympathetically. He has sisters himself.
“Since she abandoned the Church, we hardly have two cantors to rub together, if I might be so bold. …”
Two cantors to rub together? Julius appointed this weak and stupid man. Perhaps because of his sister. There would have been a reason; there always was with Julius. To do with the Genoese to the north, or the marble quarries at Carrara, or even the French. Julius couldn’t belch without thinking of the French. His appointment would have been calculated, weighed, Perhaps not today, not this morning, but Spezia must once have been of interest. It is a place, by the Bishop’s account, where churches teeter on the brink of collapse and the host molders in its pyx. Where priests go hungry and their bishops starve. The Prelate is coming to the meat of the matter, although Leo is there already, and already weary of understanding this Bishop of Spezia, and why he is here, and what he will ask for in the next minute, and why he has heard this particular complaint amongst all the thousands of others that he will never hear.
“And for all these reasons, and others I have not said in deference to my sister, I petition Your Holiness to examine the child Amalia for heresy here in Rome, for I believe she is as injurious to the church in Spezia as Savonarola was in Florence, the very town where you were born.” The Bishop delivers this sentence in one breath and falls silent. There is a long pause. Ghiberti moves toward the far door.
“When you say ‘examine this child for heresy here in Rome,’ do you mean that she should be examined here in Rome, or that her heresy was committed here in Rome, or both?” asks the Pope.
The question travels slowly to the Bishop, extending tendrils that wrap themselves about him. His head wobbles gently. The face remains complacent, telling Leo that his ire remains unnoticed. But he would like a little more time. To mention Savonarola, to him. To bandy that name about in here, before himself, before a Medici. The man’s clumsiness. And then, the very town where you were born. … The insolence! This must not cloud his judgment; he needs to be calm. “I presume you mean her to be examined here in Rome?” he hazards. The Bishop nods gratefully. “Let us walk,” he suggests, and takes the Bishop by the arm, leading him toward the door Ghiberti has now opened to reveal the sala beyond, crowded with gowned and robed figures. Suddenly hushed.
The two men pause, standing arm in arm. Leo’s smile administers a vacant balm to the attentive assemblage. One of his minor talents is finding usefulness in the apparently useless. The Bishop at his side has a function now, though he is ignorant of it. They advance into the Sala d’Incendio, Leo nodding slowly, head turning about, conferring silent benediction over the heads whose bodies move backward before his own. The Bishop of Spezia smiles broadly. A little circle forms about them.
“I think it would be best,” the Pope says pleasantly, “if I deprived you of your benefice.” The Bishop stops smiling.
Minor princes, their manservants, priests, hangers-on, higher-placed members of his famiglia, clerks of the Camera, bureaucrats and functionaries of Rome’s communes, pay polite attention. A discreet cluster forms about the scarlet of his mozzetta, emanating hope. They are here to be noticed.
To be witnesses, thinks Leo, then corrects himself. Gossips.
He says, “A young orphan is taken in by your sister, whose charity extends to reforming the Magdalens of Spezia, but not so far as lining her brother’s pockets. In return, her brother neglects his offices, allows his churches to tumble into ruin, squanders the scant revenues of his diocese, and mismanages its lands; then, finding the cup half-empty instead of half-full, he comes to Rome and asks the Pope to have the orphan girl burned in the Campo de’ Fiori. Now tell me: what am I to think of this?”
By tonight there will be so many chastised bishops being sent back to Spezia: on the back of a mule; impoverished; struck to the floor and tongue-lashed till they miraculously bled; clapped in chains and hauled off for questioning in Sant’Angelo. A cloud of little orphans will attend them, and a whole gallery of elder sisters. Mugs will be raised to him in the inns of Rome. Jokes cracked. He looks about him as though helplessly, as though he takes no pleasure in these displays. Concerned faces peer back at him. The Bishop has started gulping again but says nothing, which is wise. “I hardly know what to think,” says the Pope.
A minute later Ghiberti is hurrying along beside him, back through the Segnatura. He stops abruptly in the Sala d’Eliodoro.
“What are the revenues of Spezia?” Leo demands.
“Small, Around four hundred ducats. He holds Pontano, too, though, which yields a further three.”
“Have him know my pleasure consists in his granting the latter to his sister’s hospice.”
“The revenue or the sum?” asks Ghiberti.
“The sum! I am not about to assign church revenues to a houseful of retired whores. And hint at a legate to check that he complies. His sister and this barefoot child of heaven can wait for a stranger from Rome alongside their ‘stranger from the sea.’ Why not?” Ghiberti makes a note in his ledger. “And now? Whom else must I see?”
“The common petitioners. At least four or five of them. …” Ghiberti begins to read from his ledger, “‘Marten of Bisenzio, Iacopo of Trastevere, Joanna of Citatorio, a Johannes Tiburtinus, Giancarlo of Pontormo, Giancarlo of Volterra …’”
The names soothe him, gazing out of the casement over the gardens below. The curtain of shade has drawn closer to the palace, a mere strip now. From far over on the west side come vague crashings. Hanno is destroying trees again. The garden is wilder over there, invisible from here. He thinks of yesterday’s antics, Vich’s histrionic fury, Faria’s marble calm. They do not fool him, either one. He turns away.
“‘… Matthaus of Roos, three women—unnamed—Robert Marck, gentleman, Paulo of Viterbo, Brother Jörg of Joosdom, Aldo of Pisa, Antonio of Parione, Hubertus of Parione, Salvatore of Parione—they are together, I believe—Philip of Savoy, the Prior of Minervino—’”
“He is not,” Leo breaks in sharply. “I deprived him, and refuse leave to appeal. He knows why. Continue.”
“’Father Pietro of Gravina, Cosmas of Melfi, Bartolomeo of San Bartolomeo in Galdo, Rodolfo of Fiefencastel, Maximilian of Chur, Signora Jadranka of Sebenico, Jacob of Ragusa, Adolphus of Freiburg …’ Ah, greetings, Cardinal Bibbiena.”
A bearlike man capped in green and cloaked in red is striding briskly toward them—albeit backward—through the Sala di Constantino. “Good day, Gian Matteo Ghiberti!” he replies, head angled up at the green-and-yellow splotches on the ceiling. He makes a half pirouette as he enters, smiling at Leo, who embraces him. “Holiness”—he steps back to make an elaborate bow—“Optimus et Maximus.” Two more bows follow, increasingly elaborate. Leo smiles.
“Dovizio is downstairs; I saw him as—”
“Dovizio! Then why is he not here?” Leo exclaims. The clouds are beginning to lift.
“He has no invitation,” replies Bibbiena.
“But neither do you!”
“Sack the guar
ds!” shouts Bibbiena. “Then promote them! We were talking, Dovizio and I, making jokes about you behind your back. It is so much more interesting than talking to you in person.”
“Why? Have I grown dull?” This day needed Bibbiena.
“Deadly. But you are Pope and can be as dull as you please. I saw Leno as I came in, in a state of most oily excitement. He has news from the Colonna Mass for you.” Leo’s light spirits evaporate at the mention of Leno. “Cheer up,” Bibbiena admonishes, “it could be much worse. His master, for instance.”
“Now, now!” Leo protests. “Cardinal Armellini is my loyal and obliging servant.”
“Agreed, and a hypocritical extortionist. …”
“You cannot use such language!” Leo is laughing.
“Agreed again. The last time I described him as such, a mob of true hypocritical extortionists laid siege to my palazzo, demanding my head for the slander. Granted, a mob of four men and a dog more or less fills the current Palazzo Bibbiena, but even so. … My hands still shake to think of it. Look.” Leo takes the proffered hand. “Come,” says Bibbiena.
“The petitioners?” says Ghiberti.
Otium, negotium …
“Very restive as I came in,” says Bibbiena. “They want their Pope.”
“Do this for me, Gian Matteo,” Leo asks his secretary. “Take four or five. Hear them out and … Do as you think best. On my authority.” Ghiberti nods impassively. “And give my blessing to my brother when you see him.”
He is turning away, walking back through the Sala di Constantino with Bibbiena on his arm. Bibbiena is saying, “Now there is a dreadful slander running through the corridors of your palace, and it is not one of mine. I heard it as I came in. Now tell me, is it true or is it not that you forced the Bishop of Spezia to eat a toad this morning?” Ghiberti listens to the Pope’s silvery laughter, rising and falling, until the two men glide away and the sound is replaced by another. A murmuring or whispering, a rumbling susurration. It never stops, this sound, which is of hushed voices behind doors, of anxieties in rooms other than this one, in places other than here. Ghiberti closes the ledger.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 32