The Delight of Being Ordinary

by Roland Merullo

  “Tenzin pointed out that detail,” my cousin went on, “and together we studied the painting. In fact, both of us left our seats and went to the side aisle and stood before it. I was mesmerized, cousin. Why? Because the genius of that artist was that with one tiny gesture, he had rescued the Blessed Mother and the Baby Jesus from cliché. He had made them real. Human. Alive. Believable. The baby was crying, or fussing; the mother had wanted to soothe him and had used her finger. I can’t begin to tell you how moving it was to me. The love between them. The divine humanity!”

  Another pause. He fingered the ring—not his own, of course (that one had been left behind in his Vatican office), but a brass band and seal that had come with the outfit. Mazzo, it seemed, had thought of everything. He’d thought of everything, yes, though he seemed blind to the notion that certain objects—a nun’s habit, for example—should remain sacred.

  Then the blazing eye contact again. “But what I have to tell you goes beyond that. What I’ve been worried about telling you…is…at that moment in the cathedral, the Dalai Lama confided in me that he’s been having unusual dreams, too.”

  “Not more Mussolini, I hope.”

  A shake of the head, a sad smile.

  “He’s been having dreams, or perhaps we should call them ‘visions’—three of them, to be precise—informing him that what he calls ‘a great spirit’ has been born at some point in the past few years. Here, in Italy, somewhere in the mountains, he said. He was quite sure of that. Naturally enough, he believes it is a great Buddhist spirit. Perhaps the next Dalai Lama, or Panchen Lama, he isn’t sure. The dreams are a bit vague.”

  “As dreams tend to be,” I said.

  “Yes. He also confided in me that he’d had the first of these dream-visions on the night before he visited the Vatican, and that he agreed to join us on this trip only because he felt it was somehow connected to the appearance of this spirit. He was slightly hesitant, embarrassed even. He said he’s been wanting to tell me about this since our first dinner, but he wasn’t sure what my reaction would be. When he saw that painting, the Blessed Mother’s humanity moved him to the point where he decided he should take me into his confidence.”

  “Interesting,” I said, though I didn’t think it was particularly interesting. The Buddhists, it seemed to me, were far too open to the weirder aspects of religious practice. I’d heard, or read, or perhaps Anna Lisa had told me, that in 1959 the young Dalai Lama had consulted an oracle to decide on the optimal day to flee the Potala Palace as the Chinese army approached. I couldn’t imagine any Pope doing such a thing. And the way the Dalai Lama himself had been chosen—more dreams, oracles, a kind of test to see if the child knew of his previous incarnation—there was nothing Christian about it. Nothing of the Western world. Not logical, not scientific. In my case, not even believable.

  I was on the verge of saying all that, or something like it, to the Holy Father when he coughed, averted and returned his eyes one final time, and spoke these memorable words. “And I told him I’ve been having almost the identical dream.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve been having the same dream, Paolo! I believe now, my dear cousin, that a special spirit has been born to us. Now, at a point when the entire world seems mired in violence and cynicism, when the Church is shrinking, the environment being poisoned, when good souls are giving up hope, when greed and bitterness seem to be gaining at the expense of kindness and compassion—now, I believe, we have been given a bit of divine help. A saint, perhaps. Or perhaps a prophet. For a while today, when Anna Lisa told us her wonderful news, I thought she might be carrying this special being in her womb. But the dreams—mine and Tenzin’s both—seem to indicate that the child has already been born. I’ve been seeing this again and again in dreams—sometimes it’s a little boy and sometimes a little girl—and have told no one, because I worried it might be some kind of temptation, a spiritual dead end, an offshoot of my sinfulness. But when the Dalai Lama mentioned it to me, that doubt was washed away.”

  “I thought you were dreaming about Mussolini, women, helicopters, soccer balls?”

  “All those things, yes. And a sacred spirit besides. I was embarrassed to tell you that part, forgive me. I believe now that all those images are somehow connected, strange as that might sound. I’ve been praying for guidance, and I believe—and Tenzin believes, also—that there is some connection between the two of us, that we were destined to take this trip together, that we are being asked to witness something. Very soon. All four of us are destined for it, perhaps.”

  I could hear more cars in the driveway below, a drunken curse, and then the kind of laughter that makes a decent person cringe. Through the window floated these words: “dolce come un sogno impossibile!”

  Sweet as an impossible dream.

  The Pope heard that comment, too, and smiled. He was looking at me with an expression of great compassion. “I can see that I’ve upset you,” he said. “This idea of a sacred child, it bothers you, cousin, I can see it. It will bother a great many other Christians, I’m afraid, as if the era of saints and miracles must belong only to the past.”

  “It’s a lot to digest,” I said. “That’s all. The false reports we heard about me on the radio, this party, your costume, my daughter the practicing Buddhist, pregnant, engaged…Now this dream idea…it’s been a difficult day.”

  “Capito,” he said kindly. Understood. “But Tenzin put it in a very interesting way during that same conversation. He said, ‘All difficulties in this life, every moment of difficulty, come from the distance between what is and what we want to be.’ ”

  “That seems obvious, doesn’t it?” I told my cousin a bit crankily. “We don’t want to be ill. We don’t want to be in pain. We don’t want to grow old, or die. We don’t want to be accused of something we didn’t do, and go to jail for it. We don’t want our beloved, pregnant, engaged-to-be-married daughters to embrace a religion that is not our own.”

  “We want predictability and comfort,” he said, as if agreeing with me.

  “Exactly.”

  “And God gives us a world of continual unpredictability and periodic discomfort.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Almost as if it were a challenge. A lesson. A puzzle.”

  “Right. Yes. Exactly.”

  “A party we’re invited to unexpectedly,” he went on. “A costume we don’t want to put on. Madmen who come to power and poison our nations—Italy, Tibet, Argentina—with violence and hatred. I agree with you, of course. But at the same time, it seems to me that if we somehow find the courage to go directly into that discomfort—even the discomfort of illness, pain, old age and death—we might discover something unexpected there.”

  “But what?”

  “A courage, a resilience. Possibly an identity that transcends that of this painful life. Mary, remember, said, ‘Let it be done to me according to thy will,’ and it seems to me sometimes that Christ’s message, the message of the Cross, was a kind of supreme acceptance of all that it means to be alive in a human body. All of it. The good, the bad, and the hideous. He stretched out his hands for the nails, remember?”

  “So we shouldn’t take medicine when we’re sick? We should find new ways to cause ourselves pain? Like the monks of the Middle Ages who used to flog themselves? We should put on whatever ridiculous costume Giacomo tells us to put on? We should let the Mussolinis of this world take over?”

  He shook his head in gentle movements. “We don’t abandon our will, cousin,” he said after a moment. “We temper it.”

  “Temper it how?”

  “There is an ideal balance between our small will and God’s larger will, and it’s our task to discover and refine that balance. It is a balance as delicate as the balance of power in a marriage. There are times when we must act to change a situation, yes, of course. But there are also times when we must yield, accept the unexpected, the unwanted, even the apparently unbearable. The world is bursting with neurosis, and i
t seems to me that the source of this neurosis is a lack of appropriate acceptance, an urge to control everything, to resist God’s divine guidance in whatever surprising or difficult form it takes.”

  “And the form you think his guidance is taking now is your dreams? This party?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, in a tone of such humility that I felt suddenly like an inflated doll there in the room with him. A puffed-up, cranky man. An egotist. A sinner of the first order. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But for another little while, at least, in the time remaining with His Holiness, with you and your blessed wife, I wish to explore that possibility, and I want you to help me explore it, in a spirit of love.”

  Before I could tell him that I’d help in any way I could, that I was at his service, as always, that I would try with every ounce of courage and strength I possessed to do what he asked me to do, a pair of sharp knocks sounded, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo stood there, pointing impatiently at his watch. In the hallway behind him I could see a nun and a policeman, and for a tenth of a second I had the sense that the forces of this world—spiritual and temporal both—had come to have me arrested for kidnapping on the one hand and moral weakness on the other. Clearly I was being asked to say yes to something I wanted to say no to. Wasn’t life always doing that?

  The Holy Father stood up, the folds of his purple, red, and white robe falling into place around his ankles. “Come with me, cousin,” he said. “If someone does recognize me, then we shall accept that as God’s will. Let us go to this party and see what we can learn about ourselves.”

  Who could say no to that?

  33

  In my long and varied life I have never seen anything like the party that was held that night at Antonio Mazzo’s villa. And I hope I never see anything like it again. Giacomo led the four of us along a carpeted corridor—marble everywhere, side tables holding vases of fresh lilies, expensive-looking oil paintings on the walls—then down a flight of stairs to a marble-floored, high-ceilinged lobby that was crowded with northern Italy’s richest, most celebrated, and, in some cases, most beautiful people. The costumes were beyond elaborate. In one quick sweep of the crowd I saw a man dressed as a medieval knight; he was clanking about—already drunk—in full armor. Another guest had arrived in the costume of an astronaut, complete with space suit and bubble helmet. Two women were dressed up as high-class prostitutes, clad in the flimsiest of short skirts with mouths and eyes made gigantic by an overdose of lipstick and raccoon mascara. Soldiers, pirates, belly dancers, an elderly woman—she must have been eighty—pretending to be pregnant. One Elvis Presley with gray hair. Two Berlusconis. A diminutive Margaret Thatcher. Young, shapely men and women dressed in what appeared to be the outfits of Roman slaves wound their way through the elegant crowd carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres. A bar had been set up at one end of the lobby, and it was presided over by big-breasted females in tight black vests. Already a knot of drinkers had assembled there. And this was just a first glance. A first, quick glance, because Giacomo was pressing forward toward a door covered in shiny gold paper, waving for us to follow in his wake.

  Just as we reached it, the door was flung open. Antonio Mazzo stood there in a pale blue tuxedo with dark blue satin trim at the lapels and cuffs, his face partially hidden by one of the white plastic half masks favored by Venetian carnival-goers. A slim woman with gorgeous red hair piled up on her head stood close against him, her left elbow hooked inside his right. She appeared to be in her twenties, and her torso was covered by an exceedingly strange, diamond-shaped light-blue dress, on the fabric of which had been embroidered the name of a medication known to be used primarily by aging men who wish to remain sexually active. Mazzo was holding an ivory-handled cane. He had to tap it against the door frame only once before the crowd’s languid babbling was silenced and, as if belonging to one body, the hundred or so guests turned to face him. Our host lifted his chin, ran his glance over the four of us, raised the cane above his head and announced, “Cari ospiti, s’incomincia la festa!” Dear guests, let the festivities begin!

  He and the woman stepped to either side. The partygoers rushed the door, jostling each other and pushing the four of us into an enormous ballroom with square, gilded columns around its edges, a glistening parquet floor, and red velvet drapes adorning a row of six floor-to-ceiling windows. The air was artificially cooled to a perfect temperature; there were bars at each end, with bare-chested male models serving drinks; and two chandeliers that had been turned on to their lowest setting, so that the ballroom was cast in the light of a bordello. As we entered, a six-piece band launched into a sporty rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

  I felt Rosa squeeze my arm and press herself against me nervously. I turned to say a word to her, to check on the Pope and the Dalai Lama, to plan our escape at the earliest possible opportunity, to apologize, to beg forgiveness. But it was too late. A couple dressed as Indian rajas pressed between Rosa and me, separating us without the smallest apology, headed for the bar. The holy men had been spirited off, or had drifted off, or had slipped into a side room to hide and pray for this world. Giacomo took hold of my elbow, gently but firmly, and tugged me across the floor. Near the wall on the window side I noticed a simple table and two chairs, and as I drew closer I saw that a neatly lettered sign had been placed on the table. Terapia Gratuita, it read. Free Therapy.

  “Il suo posto.” Giacomo indicated the chair with a sweep of his arm. “Your place, signore. At least until the dancing begins, at which point please enjoy yourself with the others. Please put on your glasses and pretend to smoke your pipe, so the effect will be maximized.”

  And then he was gone, off to other devilish errands in other corners of the grand room.

  I sat. A coal-colored cat tiptoed behind me, rubbing its arched back once against my ankles. I put on my tortoiseshell glasses and, through the clear lenses, ran my gaze around the room. Even in their disguises—Cleopatra, Indira Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe—the women were weighed down with strings of pearls and glittering earrings large enough to use in bludgeoning to death any stray snake that might happen to slither into the room. There was an abundance of bare skin. Here and there, on the faces of males and females alike, one could detect the work of cosmetic surgeons—the swollen lips, the shining cheeks—as if age were a disease that, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, had finally been cured. Among the men we had the following: one Robin Hood complete with bow and arrow; a Gorbachev with a red birthmark on a high, pale forehead; a bare-chested young fellow with taut stomach muscles, boxing gloves on each hand, and a pretend cut on his face. Around them the Roman-slave servants maneuvered like ballet dancers gliding through the crowd en pointe, holding trays of what appeared to be oysters, caviar on crackers, cheese, fruit, chocolate, glasses of champagne. In one way, I decided, we were safe: no one in his or her right mind would imagine this as the destination of two holy men.

  I sat there, an awkward teenage boy at his first dance, pretending to smoke my pipe and feeling spectacularly ill at ease. In the minutes before anyone sought my professional advice, I could sense the increase in volume against my skin, a raucous hilarity, the onset of mayhem. At least a third of the guests were already drunk, or high, or they’d arrived in that condition and were enhancing it with glasses of champagne from the dancing Roman slaves or harder liquor from the models at the bar. Drinks were spilled as if it were all just part of the fun, and a trio of maids in black mesh stockings hurried around with dainty mops, cleaning up. I looked for Rosa, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Mazzo and his Viagric girlfriend, and saw none of them.

  After ten long minutes a stunningly beautiful woman with medium-brown skin stepped over to the table and pulled out the second chair. “May I?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. Please. How can I help you?”

  She sat straight-spined, her back not touching the chair, and I realized she was dressed as an African princess, replete with long, flowing orange gown and a flowered headdress. She
met my eyes so directly that her gaze might have been a laser beam designed to cut through the syrupy excess surrounding us. “I feel alienated,” she said, in clipped, perfect Italian. “Fuori posto. Out of place, things, the edge of humanity, in fact. I don’t know why I came. It’s a famous party, you know. It’s considered a social honor to be invited. I work in film. I thought I’d enjoy it. But almost from the minute I stepped out of the car I’ve felt like I’m not just of a different race, but of a different species…” She kept her eyes fixed on me, as if looking for someone—an unwelcome Libyan, perhaps—who understood the language she was speaking. “That’s how I feel,” she said, “and I’d like some advice about what to do with that feeling.”

  She was a beautiful actress playing a role, I assumed. But just as I was about to spout some stupid joke I thought might fit in with the mood of the evening, she added, almost fiercely, “And I want a real answer from you, signore, not a party answer.”

  For five or six seconds I could only look at her. Next to her naked sincerity I felt ashamed, of course, there in my false skin. I wanted to explain the situation, tell her the truth, but I had the sense that she was looking for guidance, not apologies. Here, of all places, in the midst of this circus of decadence, she wanted a true word. I looked over her head, hoping I might see the Dalai Lama, someone actually qualified to help her, at which point the woman said, “Look at me, please,” and I did. “Please give me some actual advice.”

  “You are,” I began, voice wobbling, “you are, in fact, a child of God, an actual child of God. You are a princess, even without the disguise. I can see it in your bearing. Every princess, every great artist, every saint, every person like you, must always feel on the fringes of society, because most people have forgotten the spiritual royalty that was bequeathed to them at birth. The edge of society, in fact, is the place you belong. Especially”—I waved my arm at the people behind her—“in a society like this.” I had no idea where these words were coming from. The woman had cast a spell on me; by her simple presence she’d lifted me up and out of myself.