The Cross of Lazzaro

by John Harris

  He had slipped over the side of the boat into the water now, with an American student from Oxford who’d told Henry his name was Frank Maggs, and they were swimming round the base of the cross. Then a girl appeared on deck, small and slender in a yellow bathing costume, her hair long and wet on her shoulders, and Caporelli sighed as she jumped into the water alongside them.

  ‘I wish I were an archaeologist,’ he said, kissing his fingertips in mock ecstasy. ‘The Signorina Daniells makes a good swimming companion.’

  The girl had been with Stettner the night before, standing with the other archaeologists, the only woman in the party. She had the room next to Henry’s and he’d heard her several times moving about and singing to herself in a croaky voice. She was a dark girl with the burning look of a Ban-the-Bomb marcher and as they’d been introduced at the bar the first thing he’d noticed was that she might have been pretty if she hadn’t insisted on wearing heavy sun spectacles all the time. Like most of her generation, she favoured dark clothes, mostly black – and an ugly diminutive of her name. All the archaeologists seemed to have short blunt labels like Joe or Sam, and Henry sadly put it down as a sign of age that he still called himself by his full Christian name.

  Caporelli was watching the manoeuvring and splashing round the cross with black nostalgic eyes.

  ‘She looks even better in a bathing costume,’ he said sadly, ‘than she does fully clothed. I must get her to pose like that on the lawn of the Stettnerhof and use it in next season’s brochure.’

  The cross had been moved alongside Father Anselmo’s boat now and the three swimmers had climbed out. Stettner was first and he yanked the other two up with a quick heave of a muscular arm, then he grinned and slapped Maggie Daniells’ behind as she reached for a towel hanging on the compressor they used to fill their aqualung bottles.

  ‘He likes girls.’ Caporelli frowned. ‘There’s a woman over at Trepizano and another up the mountain. Just below the dam. Dieter Oswino’s wife. He’s always up there on some business or other. She’s from Innsbruck. He goes up on his scooter when the husband’s away. I don’t like to see young girls get into the hands of Alois.’

  The boat containing Father Anselmo was close alongside the cross now and the men on board appeared to he shouting instructions to one another. There was still a marked trepidation in their manner, however, as they felt that, at the first touch, the mouldering wood would simply fall to dust beneath their fingers and the miracle they themselves had brought about would no longer exist.

  As Father Anselmo’s boat edged closer, the bigger boat drew back, as though Father Anselmo was warning it to take care. Gingerly a rope was passed round the cross, below the cross-member, and there was an awed gasp from the crowd, as though they expected some fresh miracle to take place.

  Then, with the cross secured alongside the boat, wrapped around with canvas and old clothes to prevent it rubbing against the hard gunwhale, the bigger boat slowly drew alongside and Henry saw them manoeuvre the boom into position. A strop wrapped in sacking was put in place, then the hook of the boom came down to it. The winch began to turn and they could hear the thud as puffs of steam came from the smoke stack, and the cross rose higher and higher until it was clear of the water, huge and magnificent, demonstrating, it seemed, the vitality of Christ and the triviality of man – sharp against the mountains and the misty pines on the far side of the lake.

  Immediately, women all round them began to fall to their knees. There was a deep and immediate silence. Above it, Henry could hear someone behind him muttering quietly, and even the cameras seemed to have stopped clicking. A fat German woman in hipster trousers that showed a brown loose stomach like a punctured balloon was praying softly, her hands together in front of her face.

  As the cross rose higher and hung above the water, they saw what had been keeping it upright – heavy rusty strops of iron or bronze which originally must have held it to the bow of the bishop’s barge and now served as sinkers to keep the base down in the water. It was no miracle that it had floated upright. Any wooden object so weighted would have done the same.

  They were lowering it now on to the stern of Father Anselmo’s boat and the other boats were moving into position to help, and Stettner and the girl were in the water again, collecting the fragments of blackened wood that had come up with the cross and passing them to the others on the boat.

  Caporelli was standing over the water and, unbeliever though he seemed to be, he was obviously impressed. His eyes glittered as they heard the engine of Father Anselmo’s boat start up. Then, as the bow came round and it swung towards the shore, he slapped Henry’s shoulder.

  ‘They’re going to bring it in,’ he said. ‘They’re bringing it ashore near the boat station. It’s a good job there are plenty of policemen about.’

  The black-and-red-garbed carabinieri, who until that moment had been occupied with making enquiries about the explosion on the railway line and the plastic missing from the quarry on the Via Colleno, had begun to move through the crowd, which was breaking up now as men and women started to move towards the boat station and the white-painted kiosk that acted as a ticket-office. Several children broke into a run shouting with excitement, then a man with a camera; then finally the whole colourful summer-garbed crowd of them, streaming towards the tree-shaded jetty.

  Caporelli stared after them and at the police trying to retain their dignity as they struggled to break through in order to get there first.

  ‘They’ll never bring it ashore yet,’ he said. ‘There’d be thousands killed in the rush. Father Anselmo’s got more sense than that. He’s got a sure-as-hell miracle there on his boat and he’s going to get it to his church if it kills him.’ He stared at the lake, where the patch of sunshine was widening, as though the cross which had emerged in its centre had brought glory with it, too.

  ‘We were going to have a beer,’ he reminded Henry. ‘I’d forgotten. Come on. Let’s go.’

  Henry had forgotten all about the beer they were going to have and the plans they’d made to drain the dam. The arrival of Bishop Lazzaro’s cross had knocked everything out of his mind. And, with the rain clouds miraculously backing away, against all the expert advice of the weather forecasters on the radio and the television, it suddenly didn’t seem important about the dam any longer.

  But Caporelli was walking across the cobbles towards the nearest bar in long strides that were un-Italian but somehow typical of him. There was no one in the bar, not even the owner. There was no one in the shop next door, either, where they sold maps and souvenirs and headscarves and Tyrolean hats. Or in the wood-carving shops in the Vogelweidestrasse opposite, or in the wine cellars or the little shops where cuckoo clocks filled the air with the murmur of machinery. They were all outside in the increasing sunshine, staring down towards the lake, and in the end Caporelli went round the back of the counter himself and extracted two bottles of beer from the cold cupboard. By the time the proprietor arrived they’d drunk half of it. Caporelli indicated the coins on the table and the proprietor picked them up, his mind not on the job.

  ‘Signor Caporelli,’ he said, his voice breathless with wonder. ‘It’s the cross of Bishop Lazzaro! You must have seen! It’s a miracle!’

  ‘There are no such things as miracles, padrone,’ Caporeili said firmly. He lit a cigarette and began making notes on the back of an envelope, tossing comments all the time across the table to Henry as he did so.

  At first Henry didn’t realize what he was talking about. He was still thinking about the cross and found it hard to appreciate that Caporelli’s single-mindedness did not allow him ever to forget why Henry was there.

  ‘The dam, Dottore, the dam!’ Caporelli gestured irritably. ‘We still have to convince them it needs draining and you’re the man to do it!’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Henry observed.

  ‘I am right! You have Birmingham, Aberdeen and London universities behind you. You’re known here in Italy. You worked in Florence and i
n Rome. There’s Wiesbaden and the Alexandria breakwater behind you, and the Canabral rocket site, and the bridge at Pontemorvo. What you said about them has been read by engineers all over the world. Even our own. They’re bound to take notice of what you say.’

  ‘I’ll let you have the report as soon as I can.’

  Caporelli shook his head and smiled. ‘That would be too late,’ he said. ‘You will fly home. You will write the report and forward it to me. And I will request an interview with the civic engineer. And Mornaghini, who’s so old he doesn’t know what day it is, will be rather busy. He’ll suggest next week. And next week, because he’s Mornaghini and an ex-soldier and not used to hurrying, and has a title of some sort somewhere in the background and therefore has too many friends to lose, and hasn’t the courage of a mouse, he’ll request a little more time to consider it. And then he’ll suggest that we put it before someone else. Then the Council will consider it and pass it to the Province, and the Province to Rome. By the time anything is done the winter’s rains will have arrived and the danger will be greater than ever. You must come with me yourself to see them. Let’s go and have a word with him now. Not when you have seen the dam and prepared your report. Now.’

  Three

  The Municipio had originally been the summer palace of the Von Benedikts, and the long shabby corridors, with their hacked plaster and dog-eared notices, were full of officials, most of them hurrying for the door. The steps and the entrance, which overlooked the lakeside and the statue of Andreas Hofer, were as crowded with people as the Piazza san Marco in Venice with pigeons.

  Caporelli thrust through the crowds angrily, and made his way to the offices of the Engineering Department. But the door was wide open and there was no one there, only a pile of scattered papers on the floor and a telephone that rang persistently.

  For some time he leaned on the counter, tapping with his fingers against the woodwork, then the telephone stopped and he turned and stamped outside into the corridor and returned leading a scared-looking girl by the arm.

  ‘Where is the staff of Ingegnere Mornaghini?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t know, Signore,’ she said. ‘I work in Accounts.’

  ‘Well, where is someone who can tell us where they all are?’

  ‘I don’t know, Signore. I expect they’re all outside.’ She gestured so violently that a lock of her piled hair fell down. ‘Signore, there’s been a miracle!’ she said, her voice high and excited. ‘The Cross of Bishop Lazzaro has appeared!’

  ‘I know,’ Caporelli said. ‘I saw it. It came up like a jack-in-a-box.’

  ‘But, Signore, it’s a manifestation!’

  ‘It’s nothing of the sort,’ Caporelli snorted. ‘In fact it’s becoming a nuisance. Especially if everyone’s outside watching them bringing it ashore. Where is Major Mornaghini? Is he outside watching them bring it ashore also?’

  ‘I expect so, Signore.’

  Caporelli released the girl’s arm and, giving him a scared look, she shot off like a frightened mouse.

  ‘Watching them bring the miracle ashore!’ he said bitterly.

  By the time they reached the square again the whole police force was out there, it seemed, together with ropes and crush barriers. And they were all needed. It was as though the news had sped round the lake already and people were coming in from miles around. They could see cars stopping along the fringes of the crowd, and people jumping out and running to the water’s edge. More were climbing on the Hoferdenkmal now and the steps of the war memorial, with its top-heavy column weighted with sorrow and broken swords. There were also the black soutanes and shovel hats of several priests and someone had backed up a great dark pantechnicon to carry the cross to the church.

  Caporelli was standing on the crumbling steps of the Municipio staring at the crowd on the jetty where the archaeologists’ boat now lay. Judging by the noise and the crowd down there, they had obviously landed the cross or were just about to do so. They could still see people heading there from all the streets around the Piazza della Citta and the noise seemed to indicate that it was Bishop Lazzaro himself who had risen from the depths of the lake, not his cross.

  ‘Did you see the size of it, man?’ Caporelli said slowly. ‘Madonna, no wonder the barge capsized with a goddam’ thing like that attached to the bow.’

  Henry could see he was angry. The arrival of the cross didn’t seem to have moved him in the slightest, but it didn’t seem to be because he was unimpressed. It was simply that the cross was distracting everyone from what he considered a more important emergency. The cross had waited fifteen hundred years, and he felt it could well wait a little longer. He had been struggling now to bring the dam to everyone’s notice long enough and unsuccessfully enough to feel frustrated by any delay. There was a file in his office six inches thick with the work he had put in, in an effort to draw attention to that great, ugly, unsafe edifice above the town.

  ‘The dam started deteriorating the day it was first built…’ ‘The stability of the dam can only be measured by a thorough overhauling…’ ‘The dam has been neglected for twenty years…’ ‘The old dam is an inferior piece of work…’ ‘Techniques of dam building have so improved in recent years as to render this work as archaic as the dodo…’

  Henry had seen all the comments in the file, most of them in Caporelli’s vitriolic sarcasm, but some of them the sober effort of working engineers and designers, men whose books Henry had read as a student, men whose structures he’d examined as an expert.

  Caporelli was frowning at the mass of people under the chestnuts and the acacias by the edge of the lake. ‘You can’t go home now,’ he said to Henry. ‘With this miracle on us, no one will ever have time for reports. Doubtless they’ve got Major Mornaghini down there advising them how to erect the cross in the church and what sort of lighting to use. You’ve got to give your report to him and to the Mayor in person. This is going to occupy their attention for the rest of the summer.’

  Henry looked at him and he shrugged. ‘The newspapers’ll be here soon,’ he said. ‘They’ll know already. Tomorrow – or even tonight – they’ll be swarming round the place like vultures, their faces full of sanctity and their mouths full of soft words, and their minds thinking of their circulations. This’ll bring the tourists here in thousands, and Cadivescovo lives on tourists these days. Big business, the Chamber of Commerce, they’ll all he in on the act, and every god-damned archaeologist in Europe will want to see it, as well, especially as I expect they’ll now find the rest of Arcuneum. Doubtless the Church will arrive in droves, too, and there’ll be talk of sanctifying Bishop Lazzaro.’ He glanced at Henry. ‘You’ve got to force your way through that lot, Dr Cappell, and make your voice heard above the tumult.’

  They were still standing there when they saw Father Anselmo go hurrying past, clutching his soutane out of the way of his flickering rusty boots, and, following him, Father Gianpiero, one of his curates, holding on his shovel hat with one hand, both of them tense and urgent.

  ‘Off to report a miracle,’ Caporelli said shortly. ‘Tomorrow there’ll be a bishop here to make a report and then all that talk of sanctification will start again. They’ve been at it for years without success. I don’t see how they can refuse now. If this isn’t a sign, nothing is. The place will be full of cardinals from the Vatican Library before long, all making enquiries and writing notes.’

  The Stettnerhof was full of people when they returned and the atmosphere had changed abruptly to one of blazing excitement. Everyone could see money in the arrival of the cross.

  The previous night, when Henry had sat in the bar to drink his coffee, there’d been nothing but tension and anxiety in the air. The papers had been full of the blown bridge near Bolzano and the political arguments that had arisen from it, and everyone was on edge at the knowledge that more explosives had been stolen from the quarry on the Trepizano road. There’d been photographs in the newspapers of startled-looking quarry officials pointing fingers at the ope
n door of the explosive store, and close-ups of the note that had been left behind by the thieves – ‘Dankeschön, Andreas Hofer’ – in German, like all the other notes that had been found on damaged hydro-electrical installations and railway bridges and in station luggage rooms where suitcase bombs had gone off.

  Police had been stopping students in the streets and searching their pockets; and hatred – one against another, Italians against Austrians, Northerners against Southerners, everyone against the Montanari – had been in everybody’s eyes. The Sudtyrol Volkspartei, the minority group in the Dolomites, had been the centre of every controversy, the object of accusation and the subject of pride at the same time. There had been an edginess that showed in the muttered conversations and stiff greetings between acquaintances in the bar, and the sudden explosive arguments that kept breaking out; and the abrupt silence, thick enough to cut with a knife, that had fallen over the room at the appearance in the hall of a couple of policemen on a routine check-up.

  And all the time, throughout the evening, Henry had been aware of a strange alertness in the air, and it wasn’t until Caporelli, his face drawn and strained like the rest, had explained that he had understood. Everybody had been listening, sitting with their ears cocked, waiting for the crash of an explosion. Explosives stolen by the Montanari always meant explosions and trouble, somewhere. for someone, and they’d all been waiting for the bang and the clatter of tiles and broken glass, and wondering where it was going to be. But now, with the arrival of the cross, the sullen resentment against the terrorists – even from people with the German names that had brought on angry arguments with the hardcore Italians in the town – had given way to infectious effervescence.

  Alois Stettner was shouting across the room to a crony and waving a beer stein, a noisy handsome man with gold teeth and heavy German jewellery, and Caporelli gave him a bitter look.

  ‘During the summer he is a guide or a skin-diver,’ he said. ‘And during the winter he is a ski-instructor at Cortina. Everybody is a ski-instructor round here. Dittli, the waiter. Franco, the porter. Even the girl who washes up is a ski-instructor. She’s so god-damn’ strong she breaks all the plates.’