Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli

by Ronald Firbank

  "A nice cheery time this is!" he murmured, oppressed by the silent cypress-court. Among the blue, pointing shadows, a few frail oleanders in their blood-rose ruby invoked warm brief life and earth's desires.

  "A nice cheery time," he repeated, rising and going within.

  The forsaken splendour of the vast closed cloisters seemed almost to augur the waning of a cult. Likewise the decline of Apollo, Diana, Isis, with the gradual downfall of their Temples, had been heralded, in past times, by the dispersal of their priests. It looked as though Mother Church, like Venus or Diana, was making way in due turn for the beliefs that should follow: "and we shall begin again with intolerance, martyrdom and converts," the Cardinal ruminated, pausing before an ancient fresco depicting the eleven thousand virgins, or as many as there was room for.

  Playing a lonely ball game against them was the disrespectful Chicklet.

  "Young vandal," the Cardinal chided, caressing the little acolyte's lustrous locks.

  "Monseigneur?..."

  "There: run along; and say a fragrant prayer for me, Child."

  Flinging back a shutter drawn fast against the sun, the boundless prospect from the balcony of his cell recalled the royal Escorial. The white scattered terraces of villas set in dark deeps of trees, tall palms, and parasol-pines so shady, and, almost indistinguishable, the white outline of the sea, made insensibly for company.

  Changing into a creation of dull scarlet crêpe, a cobweb dubbed "summer-exile," Cardinal Pirelli felt decidedly less oppressed. "Madrid is on the Manzanares," he vociferated, catching sight of the diligence from Sodré. Frequently it would bring Frasquito, the postman—a big tawny boy, overgiven to passing the day in the woods with his gun and his guitar.

  "The mail bag is most irregular," he complained, fastening a few dark red, almost black, roses to his cincture. It was Cardinal Pirelli's fancy while in retreat to assume his triple-Abraham, or mitre, and with staff in hand to roam abroad as in the militant Springtide of the Church.

  "When kings were cardinals," he murmured quietly as he left the room.

  It was around the Moorish water-garden towards shut of day he liked most to wander, seeking like some Adept to interpret in the still deep pools the mirrored music of the sky.

  All, was it vanity? These pointing stars and spectral leaning towers, this mitre, this jewelled ring, these trembling hands, these sweet reflected colours, white of daffodil and golden rose. All, was it vanity?

  Circling the tortuous paths like some hectic wingless bird, he was called to the refectory by the tintinnabulation of a bell.

  In the deep gloominous room despoiled of all splendour but for a dozen old Zurbarans flapping in their frames, a board, set out with manifest care, was prepared for the evening meal.

  Serving both at Mass and table, it was the impish Chicklet who, with a zealous napkin-flick (modelled on the mozos of the little café-cum-restaurant "As in Ancient Andalucia" patronised by rising toreadors and aficianados of the Ring), showed the Primate to his chair.

  Having promised José the chef a handsome indulgence, absolved him from bigamy, and raised his wages, Cardinal Pirelli, in gastronomy nothing if not fastidious, had succeeded in inducing him to brave the ghostly basements of the monastery on the mount.

  Perhaps of the many charges brought against the Primate by his traducers, that of making the sign of the cross with his left foot at meals was the most utterly unfounded—looking for a foot-cushion would have been nearer the truth.

  Addressing the table briefly in the harmonious Latin tongue, his Eminence sat down with an impenetrable sigh.

  With vine-sprays clinging languorously to the candle-stands, rising from a bed of nespoles, tulips, and a species of wild orchid known as Devil's-balls, the Chicklet, to judge from his floral caprices, possessed a little brain of some ambition, not incapable of excess.

  "I thought you were tired of jasmine, sir, and th'orange bloom's getting on," he chirruped, coming forward with a cup of cold, clear consommé, containing hearts, coronets and most of the alphabet in vermicelli.

  "I'm tired, true, child; but not of jasmine," the Primate returned, following a little contretemps of a marqués' crown, sinking amid a frolicsome bevy of O's.

  "I hope it's right, sir?"

  "Particularly excellent, child—tell José so."

  "Will I bring the trout, sir?"

  "Go, boy," the Cardinal bade him, opening a volume by the menu-stand formed of a satyr sentimentalising over a wood-nymph's breasts.

  While in retreat it was his fancy, while supping, to pursue some standard work of devotion, such as Orthodoxy so often encourages or allows: it was with just such a golden fairy-tale as this that he had once won a convert: Poor woman. What had become of her? Her enthusiasm, had it lasted? She had been very ardent. Perfervid! "Instruction" would quite wear it out of them. Saint Xarifa's at fall of day; ... an Autumn affair! Chrysanthemums; big bronze frizzlies. A Mrs. Mandarin Dove. American. Ninety million sterling. Social pride and religious humility, how can I reconcile? The women in Chicago. My God!!! My little step-daughter.... Her Father, fortunately.... Yes, your Eminence, he's dead. And, oh, I'm glad. Is it naughty? And then her photograph à la Mary of Magdala, her hair unbound, décolletée, with a dozen long strands of pearls. "Ever penitently yours, Stella Mandarin Dove."

  "I'd rather have had the blonde Ambassadress to the Court of St. James," he reflected, toying with the fine table-glass of an old rich glamour. A fluted bell cup sadly chipped provoked a criticism and a citation from Cassiodorus on the "rude" ways of boys.

  Revolving around an austere piece of furniture that resembled a Coffin-upon-six-legs, the Chicklet appeared absorbed.

  "I hear it's the Hebrew in heaven, sir. Spanish is seldom spoken," he exclaimed seraphically.

  "Tut, dear child. Who says so?" the Primate wondered, his eyes wandering in melancholy towards the whitest of moons illumining elusively the room—illumining a long, sexless face with large, mauve, heroic lips in a falling frame, and an "apachey," blue-cheeked Christ, the Cardinal noticed.

  "Who, sir? Why, a gentleman I was guide to once!"

  The Cardinal chuckled comprehensively.

  "I should surmise, dear child, there was little to show."

  "What, not the crypt, sir? Or the tomb of the beautiful Princess Eboli, the beloved of Philip the Second, sir?"

  "Jewel boy. Yum-yum." The Cardinal raised his glass.

  "And the bells, sir? Last night, I'll tell you, sir, I thought I heard old 'Wanda' on the wind."

  "Old Wanda, boy."

  "She rings for deaths, sir."

  "Nonsense, child; your little ears could never hear as far," the Cardinal answered, deliberating if a lad of such alertness and perception might be entrusted to give him a henna shampoo: it was easy enough to remove the towels before it got too red. The difficulty was to apply the henna; evenly everywhere; fair play all round; no favouring the right side more than the left, but golden Justice for each grey hair. Impartiality: proportion! "Fatal, otherwise," the Primate reasoned.

  "Are you ready for your Quail, sir?"

  "Quail, quail? Bring on the dulces, boy," his Eminence murmured, regarding absently through the window the flickering arc-lights of Clemenza far away. Dear beckoning lamps, dear calling lamps; lamps of theatres, cinemas, cabarets, bars and dancings; lamps of railway-termini, and excessively lit hotels, olé to you, enchantress lights!

  "And, after all, dears, if I did," the Cardinal breathed, tracing a caricature of his Holiness upon the table-cloth lightly with a dessert-fork. ("Which I certainly deny" ...), he brooded, disregarding the dissolving Orange ice à la Marchioness of Macarnudo.

  "Had you anything in the Lottery, sir?"

  "Mind your business, boy, and remove this ballroom nastiness," the Primate snapped.

  It was while lingering, after dinner, over some choice vintage, that he oftenest would develop the outline of his Defence. To escape the irate horns of the Pontiff's bull (Die, dull beast) he proposed pressi
ng the "Pauline Privilege," unassailable, and confirmed A.D. 1590 by Pope Sixtus V, home to the battered beauty of the Renaissance hilt. "With the elegance and science," he murmured, "of a matador."

  "I have the honour to wish you, sir, a good and pleasant night."

  "Thanks, boy."

  "And if you should want me, sir" ... the youthful acolyte possessed the power to convey the unuttered.

  "If??... And say a fragrant prayer for me, child," the Cardinal enjoined.

  Resting an elbow among the nespoles and tulips (dawn-pink and scarlet, awakening sensitively in the candle-glow), he refilled reflectively his glass.

  "God's providence is over all," he told himself, considering dreamfully a cornucopia heaped with fruit. Being just then the gracious Autumn, a sweet golden-plum called "Don Jaime of Castile" was in great perfection. It had been for the Southern orchards a singularly fertile year. Never were seen such gaily rouged peaches, such sleek, violet cherries, such immensest white grapes. Nestling delectably amid its long, deeply-lobed leaves, a pomegranate (fruit of joy) attracted the Cardinal's hand.

  Its seeds, round and firm as castanets, evoked the Ortiz. "Ah, Jesus-Maria. The evening she waved her breasts at me!" he sighed, attempting to locate the distant lights of the Teatro Trinidades. Interpreting God's world, with her roguish limbs and voice, how witching the child had been but lately in The Cistus of Venus. Her valse-refrain "Green Fairy Absinthe" (with a full chorus in tights) had been certainly, theatrically (if, perhaps, not socially), the hit of the season.

  "The oleanders come between us," he deliberated, oppressed by the amative complaint of some sweet-throated, summer night-bird.

  "It's queer, dears, how I'm lonely!" he exclaimed, addressing the ancient Zurbarans flapping austerely in their frames.

  The Archbishop of Archidona, for all his air of pomposity, looked not unsympathetic, neither, indeed, did a little lady with a nimbus, casting melting glances through the spokes of a mystic wheel.

  "It's queer—; you'd be surprised!" he murmured, rising and setting an oval moon-backed chair beside his own.

  As usual the fanciful watch-dogs in the hills had begun their disquieting barking.

  "The evenings are suicide," he ruminated, idly replenishing his glass.

  Sometimes, after the fifth or sixth bumper, the great Theresa herself would flit in from the garden. Long had her radiant spirit "walked" the Desierto, seeking, it was supposed, a lost sheet of the manuscript of her Way of Perfection. It may have been following on the seventh or even the eighth bumper that the Primate remarked he was not alone.

  She was standing by the window in the fluttered moonshine, holding a knot of whitish heliotropes.

  "Mother?"

  Saint John of the Cross could scarcely have pronounced the name with more wistful ecstasy.

  Worn and ill, though sublime in laughter, exquisite in tenderness she came towards him.

  "... Child?"

  "Teach me, oh, teach me, dear Mother, the Way of Perfection."

  IX

  Verifying private dates, revising here and there the cathedral list of charges, Don Moscosco, the secretary of the chapter, seated before his usual bureau, was at the disposal of the public. A ministerial crisis had brought scattered Fashion home to town with a rush, and the pressure of work was enormous. "Business" indeed had seldom been livelier, and chapels for Masses of special intention were being booked in advance as eagerly as opera-boxes for a première, or seaside-villas in the season.

  "If the boys are brisk we might work in Joseph," he mused, consulting with closely buttoned lips his Tarifa and plan; "although I'd rather not risk a clash."

  Unknown to double-let like his compères on occasion outside, the swarthy little man was a master organiser, never forgetting that the chapter's welfare and prestige were inseparable from his own. Before allotting a chapel for a mass of Intent, it was his rule to analyse and classify the "purity" of the intention (adding five per cent. where it seemed not altogether to be chaste, or where the purpose was "obscure").

  "I see no inconvenience," he murmured, gauging delicately the motif of a couple of great ladies of the bluest blood in Spain who were commissioning masses for the safety of a favourite toreador in an approaching corrida.

  "Five hundred flambeaux, at least, between them," the secretary, negligently, spat.

  It was the twenty-first day of September (which is the Feast of Saint Firmin), and the sacristia, thronged with mantons and monsignori, resembled some vast shifting parterre of garden-flowers. Having a little altercation together, Mother Mary of the Holy Face and Mother Garcia of the Company of Jesus, alone, seemed stable. In honour of Saint Firmin the door of Pardon (closed half the year) had just been thrown open, bringing from the basilica an odour of burning incense and the strains of a nuptial march.

  How many of the bridal guests knew of the coffin installed in the next chapel but one? the little man wondered, rising gallantly to receive a client.

  She wore no hat, but a loose veil of gold and purple enveloped her hair and face.

  "I fear for him!"

  "There, there. What is it?"

  "I fear for him"—a man and the stars, nights of sweet love, oleander flowers were in her voice.

  By her immense hooped earrings, as large as armlets, he knew her for the Adonira, the mistress of the toreador Tancos.

  "Come to me after the Friday miserere," the official objected: "let me entreat an appointment."

  "No. Now."

  "Well."

  "I want a Mass."

  "The intention being...?" The secretary sent up his brows a little.

  "His safety."

  "Whose?"

  "My lover's."

  "But, señorita, it's all done! It's all done, dear lady," the words were on Don Moscosco's lips. Still, being the pink of chivalry with las mujares and a man of business, he murmured: "With what quantity of lights?"

  "Two. Just for him and me."

  "Tell me how you would prefer them," he exclaimed, glancing whimsically towards the canvas of the Magdalen waylaying our Lord.

  "How I would——" she stammered, opening and closing the fansticks in her painted, love-tired hands.

  "You would like them long and, I dare say, gross?"

  "The best," she breathed, almost fainting as though from some fleeting delicious vision in the air.

  "Leave it to me," Don Moscosco said, and dropping expressively his voice he added: "Come, señorita; won't you make a date with me?"

  "A date with you?"

  "Ah-hah, the little Juans and Juanas; the charming cherubs!" the secretary archly laughed.

  Returning however no answer she moved distractedly away.

  "Two tapers! Two. As many only as the animal's horns. It's amazing how some women stint," he reflected, faintly nettled.

  The marriage ceremony was over. From the summit of the giralda, volley on volley, the vibrant bells proclaimed the consummation.

  "It was all so quick; I hope it's valid?" Madame la Horra, the mother of the "Bride," looked in to say. With a rose mole here and a strawberry mole there, men (those adorable monsters) accounted her entirely attractive.

  "As though we should hurry, as though we should clip!"

  "Eh?"

  "As though we were San Eusebio, or the Pilar!"

  "Forgive me, I came only to—I, ... I, ... I, ... I think I cried. The first spring flowers looked so beautiful."

  A mother's love, and contrition, perhaps, for her own shortcomings, the secretary brooded. "I shall knock her off five per cent."

  Lost in bland speculation Don Moscosco considered the assembly collected outside the curtained camarin of the Virgin, where the gowns of the Image were dusted and changed.

  For Firmin she usually wore an osprey or two and perfumed ball-gloves of Cordoba, and carried a spread fan of gold Guadalmedina lace. Among devotees of the sacristia it was a perpetual wonder to observe how her costumes altered her. Sometimes she would appear quite small, dainty and French
, at others she would recall the sumptuous women of the Argentine and the New World, and aficianados would lament their fairy isle of Cuba in the far-off Caribbean Sea.

  Traversing imperiously the throng, Don Moscosco beheld the Duquesa DunEden.

  Despite the optimism of the gazettes it looked as though the Government must indeed be tottering, since the Duquesa too was up from her country quinta.

  "I have a request to make," she began, sinking gratefully to a chair.

  "And charmed, in advance, to grant it."

  "I suppose you will have forgotten my old spaniel, Clapsey?"

  "Ah, no more dogs!"

  "She is passing-out, poor darling; and if the Church could spare her some trifling favour——"

  "Impossible."

  "She is the first toy tail for my little cemetery!"

  "Quite impossible."

  "Poor pet," the Duquesa exclaimed undaunted: "she has shared in her time my most intimate secrets: she stands for early memories; what rambles we'd go together, she and I, at Santander long ago! I remember Santander, Don Moscosco (imagine), when there was not even an hotel! A little fishing-village, so quiet, so quiet; ah, it was nicer, far, and more exclusive then...."

  "I dare say."

  "You know my old, blind and devoted friend was a gift from the king; and this morning I said to her: 'Clapsey! Clapsey!' I said: 'where's Carlos? Car-los...?' And I'll take my oath she rallied."

  Don Moscosco unbent a shade: "A token, is she, of royalty?"

  "He also gave me 'Flirt'!"

  "Perhaps a brief mass ..."

  "Poor dearest: you'll keep it quiet and black?"

  "We say all but the Black."

  "Oh?"

  "One must draw the line somewhere!" Don Moscosco declared, his eye roving towards a sacristan piloting a party of travel-stained tourists, anxious to inspect the casket containing a feather from the Archangel Gabriel's wing.

  "I know your creative taste! I rely on you," the Duquesa rose remarking.

  Nevertheless, beneath the routine of the sacristia the air was surcharged with tension. Rival groups, pro- or anti-Pirellian, formed almost irreconcilable camps, and partisanship ran high. Not a few among the cathedral staff had remained true to his Eminence, and Mother Sunlight, a charwoman (who sometimes performed odd jobs at the Palace), had taught her infant in arms to cry: "Long live Spain and Cardinal Pirelli!"