by Edward Docx
The mâitre d’ appeared first – a one-man morality tale concerning the virtue of buffed nails and expensive moisturizer – and it was he who led us to our table, (a dapper parade of linen and silver), whereupon he offered Madeleine an ankle-height stand for her handbag. But it was the table waiter who made the evening. A delicately moustached man, he flourished the menus (on which only mine had the prices displayed) as if they were the tablets of Moses, and then proceeded to deliver such a richly animated, passionate and labyrinthine discourse on the joys of the various fish, fowl and fungi on offer – how they would be cooked, prepared and served, as well as which member of the kitchen would be responsible for doing so – that I began to fear there was a danger that all three of us might be rendered insensible by the sheer Epicurean drama of his descriptions. At the last, Madeleine settled on the cuttlefish with rosemary and squid-ink rice and I succumbed to a Spanish dried duck, served with wild thyme, walnut and raspberries.
Did we talk further about our families during that dinner? No. I am sure that we did not. I would remember. There was a question about my grandmother – but only about where we were going to meet up the next day. Certainly, I did not ask Madeleine anything more – if only because talk of her mother and father had seemed to unsettle and subdue her and I had no wish to do that.
A little drunk and more than sated, sometime towards the end of the midnight hour, we slipped across the wide Viale di Trastevere into Big Mama’s, a basement jazz bar – cavernous and dark with no windows and sawdust and square industrial pillars that obscured the view and fifties-style neon signs on the walls that blinked on and off. The Friday night crowd seemed mostly to comprise youngish Italians in just-so jeans and specially-set-aside-for-the-weekend long-sleeved shirts – all smoking Marlboro Lights – but there were one or two more serious-looking aficionados as well, sitting around the tables closer to the stage and taking care to smoke the real thing. We looked a little odd in our dining clothes. But cool as fuck too.
For half an hour, we stood together at the back, drinking Jack Daniels and Cokes – Bonnie and Clyde taking it easy before the next big heist – and listened to a guy with an untidy beard play the blues. He was good and his audience followed him closely. Indeed, we were both sorry that we had come in late because too soon he was closing his set (with ‘Hey Joe’), though quite clearly neither he nor his band really wanted to stop. When, finally, the drummer hit the last cymbal, the whole room fell victim to that slightly displaced, end-of-the-movie feeling for a minute or two before the spell wore off and everybody filed back to the bar or regrouped around their tables to reassess the night.
I lost Madeleine just then – she went off to the cigarette machine – and I found myself leaning against a pillar and watching this baby-faced boy inch his arm around his date while simultaneously attempting to be fully involved in the general conversation of his peers. It was slow-motion agony, like the replay of a downhill skiing accident. She was young and darkly pretty and she let him get almost comfortable before lifting his hand from where it had come to rest on her waist and discreetly but decisively moving it off to more neutral territory. I caught her eye and she looked away in embarrassment.
When I saw her next, Madeleine was at the bar, talking to the bass player from the band. He had long, light-coloured hair but he was good-looking in a sun-tanned, flamenco-dancing kind of a way. She was buying him a drink.
Jealousy came without warning and from nowhere. But there was no mistaking it: hot and stinging – the sudden piercing of the green-tipped dart, followed by the flood of poison. For some reason I delayed going over. I stood unseen and watched her. Now she was laughing at whatever he was saying. Now she had her arm draped over one of his shoulders. Now she was whispering her replies in his ear as if the background music made it impossible for her to be heard otherwise. She had only been gone ten minutes – or less.
I confess, the next few minutes were far worse than I previously pretended. They were piss-awful and disgusting and I hated myself throughout. But the surge of feelings took me by surprise: anxiety, panic, anger, indignation, vulnerability, insult, hurt, embarrassment, the sudden fear of loss – all felt simultaneously with good reason (just look at her) and without good reason (she was with me, we were in Rome, she was only playing, it was all OK). Yet that is what jealousy is really like, I thought: a toxic brew, made up of equal parts reason and unreason, and the true source of its power is that it destroys your sense of which is which – it makes you doubt your own judgement.
As I approached, she disconnected herself from his ear and raised her voice. ‘Hey Jasper, this is Marco. I’m gonna sleep with him as well tonight. He says he’s happy to take turns with you if you can handle it. He’s very cute, don’t you think? And he says he can fuck without strings. I think it will be good.’
I opened my mouth but there was no voice within me. I knew – though there had been nothing in her tone to suggest a joke, no sarcasm or slyness – I knew that I should laugh or at least say something that recognized her challenge for the brinkmanship that it was. But I could not. My sense of humour had vanished like water into desert sand. I understood that she meant nothing; and yet what she had said – it seemed to me – snagged by the moment – was an unprovoked act of pure psychological violence. My adrenalin rose.
Marco spoke – his English almost perfect but his accent more Swiss than Italian. ‘Hi, how you doing? I gotta say, man, I like this idea very much.’ He grinned in Madeleine’s direction – he did not appear to think she was joking. ‘I’ve never done with two people before – how about you?’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘I have.’ I caught the bartender’s attention. ‘But I’m afraid, Marco, nobody touches this woman except me.’ The paralysis was passing. ‘Sorry. But I own her and that’s how it is. You could buy her for an hour – maybe – but it’s a lot of fucking money and she’s not very cooperative. In fact she’s a bitch. Who wants a drink?’
‘Same again for me,’ Madeleine said, looking slightly taken aback but with a glint of entertainment in her eyes.
‘You?’ I looked at Marco.
‘Sure,’ Marco nodded, ‘a beer would be cool.’
‘OK then.’
I ordered and then turned back from the bar. Madeleine stood up off her stool to allow her dress to fall straight, then sat back down again, crossing her legs provocatively. Marco, meanwhile, had joined his hands in the prayerful gesture of an Italian football player, exasperated by a decision that had gone against him. ‘Oh man. That’s such a big shame. I thought maybe today was my lucky day. For four years, I play the blues in a band and nobody ever offers me sex after the show. Not even a blow-job. Not even in Hungary. I thought maybe today for once God was looking after me. It’s a big shame.’
‘For me too,’ said Madeleine, looking forlorn but winking slyly at me. As I passed her another Jack Daniels and Coke, I felt her other hand on the back of my legs.
Almost as quickly as they had come, the feelings passed. But I was residually surprised at how shaken I had been over what was hardly anything. The experience had made its point: and once you’re on jealousy’s direct mailing list there’s no getting off.
The rest of that night was too drunken and delirious to remember. At three, we staggered out into the street – arm in arm once more and beneath stars that flickered when we weren’t looking and a moon that wobbled when we were – and we sluiced back across the Viale di Trastevere, taking care to avoid the jabbering of the junk-fried junkies outside the frazzled-food joints and keeping our ears open for the waspy buzz of the motorino boys, who swerved and banked and weaved across the Piazza as if in search of some spectacular collision that might just jolt everyone sober for long enough for us all to leave the childishness of the night behind and finally matriculate into the more serious business of tomorrow morning. We swayed down a side alley and fumbled and stumbled and groped our way along the warm stone walls – now whispering, now shouting, now giggling, now kissing – aroun
d a corner into the dimly lit Via del Moro, and on from there towards the blurred but stubborn sanctuary of Stardust, the last of the late-night retreats for all those who refuse to believe in the sun rising.
When they kicked us out, the air smelt fresh and the night was fading pale. We set off unsteadily home together, me trying to remember Italian swear-words to call her, and Madeleine giggling and walking backwards in front of me, pouting, pulling up the hem of her dress scornfully and deriding me. ‘Are you enjoying your weekend, Jasper, are you enjoying me? Yes? Huh? Yes … oh I think you are. But it’s so hard to tell with you, isn’t it? That’s right. Because you are a … a man. Oh so serious. A man! And real men never let you know what they are thinking, do they? No, they don’t. But a woman can always guess; that’s our great advantage. To a woman, the mind of a man is like a very boring game of noughts and crosses and the only thing that surprises us is that you keep asking for another round. There is nothing subtle or hard to figure in men. So come and get me then if that’s what you want.’
I did and I did.
In the shuttered darkness she asked me if I was awake. Yes, I told her, and rose to fetch her some water. She sat up and gulped it down and I went to fetch her some more.
23. The Canonization
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, …
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well wrought um becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love.
‘For Christ’s sake, Jasper, what time is it?’ Madeleine raised herself briefly and looked down the room to where I had just succeeded in rather noisily steaming some milk.
‘Nine.’
‘Well, what the fuck are you doing?’ She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow.
‘I’m trying to make this coffee machine work.’ The first burnt-treacle drips dropped into the white cup I had found. ‘Ah ha – there she goes. Fantastic’
‘Can’t you be just a bit quieter? Some of us have terrible hangovers.’
‘It’s not me. It’s the machine.’
‘What time do we have to meet your priest?’
‘Not until half-past ten.’ I took the quarter-full cup away and replaced it with another. ‘Would you like a cappuccino?’
‘Only if you promise to get the paracetamol out of my bag first and give me a glass of water.’
‘Of course.’ This meant that her coffee would probably lose temperature so I quietly poured it back into my cup, making mine a double, before adding the milk and taking a hesitant sip. Not bad for the first time out with a new machine. I ran the tap cool, broke some ice into a glass, and took it over to her. ‘Here you are. How bad is it?’
‘Not that bad. I’ve had much worse. The tablets are in my washing bag. Bring the whole bag in here.’
The bathroom was little more than a small ancillary chamber – a walk-in cupboard, more or less. I switched on the light and went in.
‘How come you’re dressed?’ she asked.
‘I got up to go to the market to get a few things for our lunch. And the ingredients for a Bloody Mary in case you wanted one. Although even the English shop at Piazza S. Cosimato didn’t have Worcester sauce, I’m afraid.’ I stepped out again and handed her the bag.
She rummaged. ‘Are we really having a picnic?’
‘Not sure. But I thought we’d have nectarines for breakfast – with live yoghurt and some lovely honey that I found in the shop.’ A moment of sudden misgiving for me, the after-shock from my former life. ‘Unless there’s something else you want.’
She took another gulp of her water, threw back her head, took the pills, and then threw back the covers. She swung her legs around so that she was sitting on the side of the bed – finger and thumb to her forehead. Wincing, she said, ‘Your obsession with what to have for breakfast is fucked up, Jasper. I’ll eat whatever. But first I’m going to have a shower so that Father whoever-his-name-is gets me fresh.’
There was no way around it – Father Cedric was a big guy. And what with the no-sex drill that goes with his line of work, I can’t say I blamed him: were I forty-nine, forced into frocks twice a day and having to work Sundays, I’d take to my grub big-time too. Yeah, and the booze. In fact, I find it pretty hard to say what the upside of being a man of the cloth is these days. No one believes a word you say, the hours are unsocial and sporadic, the money is not what it used to be, and the chicks are more or less over their thing about dog collars or whatever it was. Plus most people think that you’re an alcoholic or an undercover paedophile or both, which – whether true or not – must really put the brakes on things when it comes to socials with the flock. As for the so-called sacraments, well hardly anybody can keep a straight face anymore when you’re up there on the altar mumbling away to yourself; and who among the congregation really wants forgiveness or penance or any of that crap? Nobody. They all want more sin, plenty of it and with a ‘Pause’ button if possible. About the only time you get so much as a word or two of genuine respect is when you’re called out in the middle of the night to chuck eau de Cologne over dying octogenarian widows – who, tragically, are also about the only people left on the planet still interested in getting it on with you weekday afternoons. It can’t be much of a life. But at least Father Cedric had somehow arranged his billet as close to the action as possible: if you’re going to be a priest, then you might as well hang at Vatican City.
It must have been a few minutes after the anointed hour when I first saw him bustling in our direction. We were standing to attention in front of the Swiss Guard at the command post just off the Via di Porta Angelica, which runs north out of St Peter’s Square itself. I was enjoying the pleasant sensations of a Bloody Mary (previously thought a little too fiery, but which was now delivering exact measures of peace and good will). Madeleine was powering her way through a second litre of mineral water. In what I took to be a send-up of my efforts to persuade her to dress conservatively, she was wearing her pumps, a white shirt, a camel pleated skirt, a printed headscarf and her tortoise-shell sunglasses. We had kept conversation to a minimum on account of our hangovers but I had tried to impress upon her the need for a compromise between modesty and lightness – a futile exercise, of course.
‘Hello, hello, hello! You must be Jasper!’ Father Cedric now stood before us, head to toe in bursting black cotton, rolls of fat piling up as if caught in some atrocious bottleneck above his belt, which was itself straining at the very end of its tether. Red-faced and bespectacled, with a rather self-conscious tonsure, there was, I thought, a faint Irish note to his voice. He had also acquired that curiously exaggerated lilt of a person used to talking to others in a second language, and he was hopelessly out of breath. ‘Mrs Jackson told me to watch out for a young man with very black hair! How useless – to think – here in Rome! But I knew I knew I knew it must be you because you are with such a fine young lady!’
‘This is Madeleine,’ I said.
She took off her sunglasses and gave him a smile sure to plague his prayers forever more.
He took her hand in both of his. ‘Oh yes! Mrs Jackson told me all about you both. Welcome, welcome, welcome.’
Liar, I thought.
‘And has your stay with us thus far been a pleasant one?’ he enquired, not looking at me.
‘Wonderful, thank you,’ said Madeleine, not looking at me either, ‘Jasper and I have seen lots of churches.’
Surrounded by liars, and about to enter the inner sanctum. At least we’d all feel at home.
‘Oh, how splendid!’ Father Cedric clapped his hands together and wrung them from side to side as though celebrating some private triumph. ‘But there are so many … so many b
eautiful churches in Rome. It’s most difficult to say which one I like best of all. Most difficult.’
I stepped in quickly: ‘Oh, we’re both big fans of San Pietro in Vincoli – especially the Michelangelo.’
‘Yes – it is beautiful. Very beautiful.’ He pushed at the bridge of his glasses. ‘Moses with horns: a mistranslation of the Hebrew, which actually means something like “ray of light”, I think. But easily done. Even the great make mistakes – which is some comfort …’
‘We have both remembered our passports,’ I said, steering us away from further danger. ‘And we wondered whether or not there was a chance of getting them stamped?’
‘Oh yes: do you think the guards will stamp my passport?’ The water must have drowned the pain because Madeleine was suddenly eager as a convent girl. ‘Only I collect stamps and it would be great to have one from the Vatican.’
‘Well, let’s see, shall we. We can certainly ask. Follow me, follow me.’
Having surrendered passports and filled in all the necessary reams of paperwork (with many helpful intercessions from our guide and guarantor) we walked on either side of Father Cedric up the slight incline through the gardens underneath the arch of Pope Julius II and entered the vast Belvedere Courtyard. He raised his arm to point to the elevated passage that leads tourists to the Sistine Chapel – high up and to the left, an awful scaffolding construction that nobody seemingly could do anything about. And then beckoned us along: ‘Now – Madeleine, Jasper – it is my privilege to take you inside. This way – here we are, here we are: the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.’