The Delight of Being Ordinary

by Roland Merullo

  There was more light by then; we could see the two dirt tracks clearly. They curved through the dense bushes and trees like a wisp of golden dust leading toward a bright afterlife. The air was cool and fragrant, and if it hadn’t been for the thump of helicopters above the town and the whee-waw of klaxons on the lakeside road, that last walk would have been a species of perfect meditation. It would have been, for me at least, a quiet little prayer of gratitude for the gift of those days.

  The Pope put an arm around my shoulders and stopped walking. We made a small circle there in the cool morning air. He said, “Before we go down into the mad circus—and that’s surely what it will be—I want to thank you both from the marrow of my bones.” He motioned for Rosa to step closer and he held us tightly. “Few things in my life have been more helpful to me, spiritually, than this brief time as an ordinary man. Whatever happens now with those two children, whatever the consequences or rewards of our adventure, I simply want you to know that I am grateful.”

  “I also,” the Dalai Lama said. He bowed deeply to Rosa and me in turn, and for once neither my wife nor I had anything to say. We bowed awkwardly. Rosa kissed my cousin on the cheek and we started walking again. As we turned left onto the paved street, she took hold of my hand and I squeezed her fingers.

  “That boy,” the Pope said quietly, when we’d made another left turn onto a road that led steeply downhill and ran parallel to the road my parents had lived on, “was sent upstairs to wake us at four a.m. He came into the room and tickled our feet, Paolo, laughing quietly the whole time.”

  “At least he didn’t kick you.”

  “Yes, that was strange. And strange, too, that his mother would send him to wake us and not come herself, or send Agnese. I wonder how she knew, at four in the morning, that the car had been found.”

  “Maybe the boy told her,” Rosa said. “Or that wonderful girl.”

  “Possibly. After he’d finished tickling us he said, ‘I’m sorry you ever have to leave us. We like you two guys!’ And for some reason I felt he was telling me I was soon to die.”

  “Me, the same,” the Dalai Lama said.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Rosa admonished them. “Either one of you. Don’t you ever even begin to consider the possibility of dying…At least not until those children are grown and we see what becomes of them.”

  “God’s will be done,” my cousin said. “God’s will be done.”

  We went along silently after that, the sky over our heads slowly filling with light. The tarred road curved around a hillside; beyond it we could see gold-edged clouds above the mountains of the Valtellina. Below that display, gray cliffs stood like witnesses, then the dark hills, and then the lake itself, almost purple at that hour, and quiet, except for a single ferry making its way toward Menaggio from the east. You could feel the frenzy below, actually feel it, but the four of us went along in our little bubble of contentment and gratitude, approaching the end of our great adventure, step by step, half lost in dreams of a finer world, and at the same time at peace with ourselves and each other, and willing, like all the sons and daughters of God, to wait.

  Epilogue

  Well, the rest of the story—most of it, anyway—is widely known from the massive international press coverage that accompanied the safe return of the two holy men. But allow me to fill in a few blanks.

  After we left Agnese’s house and that bizarre and remarkable collection of people, we strolled down, in the early-morning Lake Como light, toward the center of the small village of Mezzegra, a place I knew like I knew my own name. It was a wild scene on that day, however, all but unrecognizable. There were police helicopters overhead, army vehicles blocking the streets, crowds of curious locals on the corners even at that early hour, and an abundance of armed men in the uniform of the state. Despite that chaos, or perhaps because of it, the four of us were able to duck into a coffee bar just uphill from the town center. The Pope and the Dalai Lama moved to a table in the back corner, Rosa and I ordered. Rather than wait for them to be recognized and risk inciting a riot about who deserved the reward, we decided to turn ourselves in to the first official-looking person we saw.

  Just as our cappuccinos were being placed on the counter, as if on some heavenly cue, a young policeman stepped through the door. I carried the coffees over to the holy men and let Rosa have the pleasure of surrender.

  If we could have chosen someone to receive the news that the missing men were safe, we could hardly have done better than this young policeman. Deeply tanned, with an innocent expression in his dark, handsome eyes, and a beak of a nose leading him wherever he went, he looked to have been raised in one of the poor southern provinces—Sicily, Calabria, perhaps Basilicata. My guess was that he felt grateful to have landed a secure, decent-paying job, but that he wasn’t so happy to have been pressed into service up north, among a people who didn’t speak his dialect, didn’t like his accent, and possibly didn’t think much of the place where he’d been raised. Even as I sat with the Pope and Dalai and watched my wife speaking to this man, I thought there was a kind of perfection to the moment. Hadn’t Christ spoken for the poor and outcast? Wasn’t this better than making an army general the hero of the hour?

  But the young man’s heroism was brief; the generals appeared soon enough. Summoned by radio, one of them strode into the place, a steel rod up his spine, an elaborately decorated uniform covering his broad shoulders, a look of great self-seriousness on his face, while the truly important men in the room sat in a dark corner, spooning steamed milk into their mouths and watching the gathering crowd with quiet amusement.

  An argument ensued. The general, soon joined by a regional police commissioner—with members of the press clamoring at the door and the barista and early-morning customers staring—insisted on taking Rosa and me into custody and flying the kidnapped holy men back to Rome in a helicopter. The Pope would have none of it. “There will be no arrests,” he said, in the calm voice of authority I’d heard from him many times. “Nothing improper or illegal was done. The four of us will be driving back to Vatican City in our borrowed car. You and your colleagues are perfectly welcome to provide an escort, but we shall be returning by road, not by air.”

  What a final leg of the journey that was! I’m told the whole seven hours of the trip were broadcast live on televisions around Europe, filmed from the press helicopter that hovered above us, and from the TV trucks that rumbled along behind. I’ve never watched the video myself, but I can say that, from inside the Maserati, with blue lights and sirens going all around us, that ride felt like a victory parade. Mazzo, it turned out, had been correct: once the true story got out, people loved the idea of the Pope and the Dalai Lama taking a vacation as ordinary men. By the time we reached the outskirts of Rome, thousands of other ordinary men, women, and children were standing along the roadside and crowding the bridges. They waved Italian and Tibetan flags and plastic crucifixes. They cheered. They sang hymns. They wept. Some of them held up signs: THE PEOPLE’S POPE! WE LOVE YOU BOTH! I even saw one that said: WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?!

  Inside the car, we said little. The Pope and Dalai waved out the windows. Rosa turned on the radio and adjusted the dial. I guided the Maserati along the fast lane of the Autostrada, following a phalanx of police cruisers. My wife and I were happy to hear the news of our exoneration, happy not to have to worry about being torn to shreds by angry mobs, happy at the new feelings between us—spawned, perhaps, by the touch of two miraculous children. Somewhere near Milano, Rosa put her hand on my leg, and, except for one, brief, bathroom-and-espresso stop, she left it there all the way to the gates of Rome.

  Preceded by our police escort, we turned into St. Peter’s Square. I pulled up near the obelisk, officers forming a perimeter around us, pilgrims shouting welcome in twenty languages. Just before the holy men were taken away by their frowning security forces, Tenzin and Giorgio held Rosa and me in warm embraces and thanked us three more times.

  “Cousin,” the Pope sai
d, meeting my eyes and keeping his hands on my shoulders, “breakfast in the morning, as always. Bring your beautiful wife.”

  The only shadow on this happy scene—in addition to the debriefing Rosa and I were forced to undergo before being released (and the fact that Tara, who had, in fact, led police to the car, did not claim the reward and was never heard from again)—occurred in the weeks after our return, when the frenzy had died down, when all of us had gone back to our usual business. My enemies among the Holy Father’s advisors had put so much pressure on him during that time, made him so miserable, argued so persistently, so forcefully, that his negligent cousin had put him in danger that at last he was forced to relieve me of my duties as First Assistant. Yes, he apologized profusely. And yes, he seemed genuinely sad and made sure I was given a severance and a pension on which I could live fairly comfortably for the rest of my days. Still, he fired me. Difficult as it is to write those words, my cousin fired me.

  It was, of course, another of his tricks, another act of loving genius—though it took me months to understand that.

  Anna Lisa and Piero were soon married (they invited the Pope and the Dalai Lama, but neither man could attend). My so-called firing freed me to move to Rimini and be close to my daughter and son-in-law. At that point, Rosa decided on a major change, too. She shifted most of her responsibilities to trusted associates and moved in with me, in a cozy apartment on a shaded street, three blocks from the beach. She spent a few hours a day on her business, but it seemed to have loosened its hold on her.

  Six months later little Giorgio Paolo came into the world, a healthy, bubbly, Jewish/Catholic/Buddhist creature, named for his cousin once removed, the Pope of Rome. It goes without saying, I’m sure, that Anna Lisa and Piero’s child became, instantly, the sun around which our lives orbited. Rosa and I were there every day, helping, holding, changing diapers, playing games, singing, adoring.

  Still, I had no business to oversee, no office to go to in the morning; the substantial joys of grandfatherhood couldn’t completely fill my days. There were long walks on the beach and quiet dinners out with my wonderful wife. There were books to read and symphonies to listen to and soccer matches to watch. Even so, there were too many empty hours.

  It was then that my cousin rescued me, yet again. One fine June day, when the Russian tourists were flocking back to Rimini’s beach, he summoned me to Vatican City. There, after a night of rest, we enjoyed another of our traditional breakfasts. Over chocolate, fruit, and coffee he said he’d been in regular contact with the Dalai Lama and that the two of them had decided it was important to record the story of their trip. For posterity. For the popes and lamas of the future. For ordinary people.

  “You are going to do the job,” the Pope said, pointing at me.

  “What job, cousin?”

  “You are going to write up the whole thing, start to finish. My understanding is that Cinzia and the children have moved to another location, in another land, so there will be no danger to them now.”

  “Holy Father,” I said. “I’m no writer, and it’s an important job. You should hire a professional.”

  He turned down his mouth and made his face into the stern mask his opponents in the bureaucracy had come to know well. “Cousin,” he said, in a certain tone, “listen to me now. What Tenzin and I did, what you and Rosa enabled us to do, has been the subject of millions upon millions of words, all of them written by professionals who, frankly, have no idea what they’re talking about. They weren’t there. They have no inkling as to our true motivation, of God’s hand in all this. There is, of course, no mention of our dreams, and none of Shelsa and Tommaso.”

  “What have you heard about them?”

  “That they’ve moved on, as I said. I do receive the occasional secret note from Agnese, and from the other one—what was his name? The American.”

  “Ringling.”

  “Yes. That part must remain in confidence for the time being, subject for another book, perhaps. I only hope I live long enough to see what becomes of them all…In the meantime, our story has to be told. And it has to be told with the most rigorous honesty. You are to leave nothing out, avoid nothing. Niente, capito? Do I make myself clear?”

  “But—”

  “I hereby appoint Rosa to assist you—she’s more honest—and I require you to present the completed manuscript to me exactly one year from today, in this room, if God grants me that much more time on earth. Typed. Double-spaced. Pages numbered in the upper-right-hand corner. Absent of spelling errors and grammatical slips. Failure to do so will result in your excommunication. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Abundantly clear, Holy Father.”

  “Giorgio.”

  “Abundantly clear, Giorgio.”

  “Good. Have yourself a stroll in the Borghese, then take the afternoon train back to Rimini. Get started on the book tomorrow morning. Any questions, my beloved cousin?”

  “Yes, one. What would you like as a title?”

  The Holy Father pondered a moment, pressing his lips together, slanting his eyes to one side. At last, a small glow of pleasure lit his face. He looked at me and said, “What was that phrase I used, at Mazzo’s villa? The one that seemed to make him so happy? Do you remember it, cugino?”

  “Sì, me lo ricordo. Me lo ricorderò per sempre.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I remember it. I will remember it always.”

  The End

  July 7, 2014 / Cagli, Le Marche, Italy

  August 3, 2016 / Conway, Massachusetts, USA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Roland Merullo is the acclaimed author of twenty previous books, including Revere Beach Boulevard, Golfing with God, and Breakfast with Buddha. Merullo’s work has been translated into German, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, Chinese, and Turkish, and he has won numerous prizes, including Massachusetts Book Awards in both fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

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