Andras: Beyond Good and Evil

by S L Zammit

  An avid traveler, the marquis is a difficult man to pin down. When back at the palazzo he rarely entertains and mostly keeps to himself. Thank God for Rosina, ever loyal to the Order, for keeping her informed of his whereabouts. Quickly calming down, “Will you at least let him know I’m here?” she says sweetly.

  “Of course madam,” says the old lady eagerly. “Of course I’ll let him know.”

  Rosina puts her hand over Esmie’s arm in a gesture of endearment. The dame looks at the servant’s hand disdainfully but makes no movement.

  “Let me take you to the sitting area so you can wait comfortably,” she says leading Esmie down the hall. “Can I bring you anything madam? Some brandy to warm you up or maybe a cup of evening tea?”

  “No thank you Rosina dear,” says Esmie, carefully controlling her nerves. “Just let the marquis know that I’m here.”

  Esmie sits back in the plush velvet chair and admires the exquisite furnishings of the sitting area: the ever-changing fixtures of the marquis’ surroundings frequently substituted by other priceless possessions from his holdings in various bonded warehouses around Europe.

  Every time she sits in this room she notices something new, something different replacing an item she had admired previously.

  Stories swirl around of his accumulated treasures stacked in freeports: art, wine and antiques, making his exact worth impossible to determine.

  Her ears adapt to the deep silence within the walls of the house at night. In the background of the conspicuous ticking of a grandfather clock, she hears chatter and laughter and old Rosina making her way upstairs. She hears the knocking on the door upstairs and then all is quiet. The tick-tock of the clock reclaims the silence.

  When Rosina comes back, her face is flushed a deep crimson.

  “The marquis is indisposed madam,” she says softly.

  “Come, come Rosina,” coaxes Dame Esmie. “You were gone a while. Tell me what he said. I need to know his exact words.”

  Old Rosina crosses her hands across her torso and tilts her head sideways looking down at her feet.

  “Oh no madam,” she whispers. “I would much rather not.”

  “Come, come Rosina,” insists Esmie. “I need something to report back.”

  “Oh well,” stammers the old woman, “I apologize madam but he says that there is no need for a well rehearsed message. He is ready to meet with the Order granted you do him one favor.”

  “And what is this favor?” asks Esmie eagerly, involuntarily hoping for an utterly inappropriate request. The severe look on the ever-pious face of the maid makes her snap out of her delusion.

  “Well madam,” says old Rosina crossing herself, “and I apologize for this since it’s nothing less than blasphemy. I’m mortified to have to relay such a disrespectful message to a woman like yourself madam.”

  “Get on with it Rosina,” says Esmie impatiently.

  “The marquis requests that you go over to the cathedral and ask the monsignor to stop ringing the church bells. He can’t sleep in through the early morning ruckus and he intends to stay up all night,” says Rosina quickly, her eyes fixed on the floor.

  The words slash Dame Esmie like daggers. Shocked, she sits immobile in the velvet chair. As soon as Rosina stops speaking, silence fills the room. Stillness; the conspicuous sound of the clock does not detract her from hearing the soft sounds of lovemaking in the marquis’ bedroom; a refrain of moaning, groaning and sighing.

  Feeling the flush of embarrassment across her face, Dame Esmie bolts out of the velvet chair.

  “Well I never…” she says, her voice an angry whisper.

  “I’m so sorry madam,” whispers old Rosina. “He’s so rude sometimes.”

  Annoyed and embarrassed at having her hidden expectations dashed, Esmeralda rushes past the old woman avoiding eye contact and makes her way down the marbled hallway. The sounds from upstairs reverberate in her head, mocking her. Rosina follows her down the hallway, apologizing profusely, and helps her with the lock on the front door.

  Esmeralda stumbles out into the alleyway, swaying on her new Italian stilettos, almost tripping at every step on the fissured stone slabs of the pavement.

  “There is something weird about that house,” she ruminates as she staggers away, feeling relieved of its compulsive force.

  Although she hasn’t accomplished her aim, she feels a certain solace, “I feel exposed whenever I’m in there. My thoughts run rampant and it gets worse when he’s around. Nothing’s private. There is something extraordinary about the man. The Order is right about him.”

  Her driver awaits her under a lamppost in the square. She quickly climbs into the backseat as he opens the door for her and lights a cigarette.

  “Get me out of here,” she orders.

  Chapter 3

  A little girl goes down a Tunnel Victoria Gozo, Malta

  Jan 1st 2000

  The cramped, unused storage space beneath the kitchen floor provides Aurora with a hiding place. It is where she rushes to every evening when she hears his key jangling in the lock. She quickly crouches in one corner, huddling her Cabbage Patch doll.

  “Shush Camilla dear,” she whispers to the doll squeezing its soft body against hers, the doll’s cold, hard cheek against her face. “We can’t let him find us.”

  Overhead her father’s heavy footsteps traverse the floor, the heaviness of the tread an excellent indicator of how much he’s had to drink.

  Aurora is very good at handling these situations. She listens attentively to his every move: the opening and closing of the cupboards and fridge, the dragging of the chair and kitchen table, his sighs and grunts.

  She reluctantly acknowledges the most distinctive characteristic in such instances, his complete disinterest and oblivion of her absence, for which, in a way, she is grateful. His awareness of her existence usually transmutes into aggressive anger, and so she anxiously awaits the moment of complete silence, indicating that he has passed out. This would usually end the tense episode with Aurora crawling out of the cellar and tiptoeing back to bed.

  But tonight this was not to happen. Muffled sounds through the cellar walls break the eerie silence. Straining her ears, she is convinced that someone is moaning.

  Setting down the doll, Aurora feels around the gray stonewalls of the crawlspace in the dark, until she comes to the very end of the cellar where the sound seems more defined. She distinctly hears a soft voice pleading in anguish, “Help me, help me.”

  For a moment Aurora cowers motionless, assessing whether the situation is dangerous. The moaning is now continuous and gets louder to the point where Aurora worries that it might wake father up.

  At this point she can guess where the cries are coming from, and in the dim lighting seeping through the floorboards above her head, she realizes that rubble is blocking her progress.

  The little girl stands still for a moment, making sure no one stirs in the house above. Feeling confident that all is tranquil, she proceeds on all fours removing gravel and pebbles and soon finds herself digging the soft friable sandstone along a tunnel. The more material she moves, the clearer the sound becomes, and her eagerness to reach her goal gets more intense.

  “Please help,” pleads the voice.

  “Hush,” she whispers. “I’m coming.”

  Chapter 4

  A robbery in a Church

  Jan 28th 2001

  The quaint houses along Charity Street in Victoria, the capital city of the smaller Maltese island Gozo, and the narrow, winding street itself, evoke a social life dating back hundreds of years.

  The street is one of a tangle of crooked, cobbled alleys so tight small cars barely pass through.

  Lines on rooftops are used to hang the washing, but the elderly avoid the drudge of going up the typically tight spiral staircases locally referred to as the ‘garigor’, by fixing clothes lines across their open balconies giving a further touch of antiquity to the area.

  At every street corner there are niches
containing a statuette of the Madonna with her reverent face addressing her prayers heavenwards, or one of various images of St. George on his white stead slaying a dragon.

  A few houses have been converted into small family businesses: a couple jewelry shops, a bookstore, an ice-cream parlor and a small pizza place.

  Narrow passageways branch off it like curving rivulets, leading to other blind alleys or little cul-de-sacs, short inlets of old walls dotted with small windows. The adjoining houses are covered with rambling vines, white and pink wax flower and fuchsia hibiscus.

  Zia Marie owns two houses on Charity Street, built around a stone courtyard crowded with potted plants and rambling vines around an old stone well.

  We share one of the houses, an immaculately kept home. The adjoined residence has been passed down the generations to Aurora’s family, which after the elopement of her mother, presently consists solely of Aurora and her destitute father, Tony.

  The street curves around the ancient basilica of St. George and opens onto a tiled square lined with rusty, timeworn lanterns and overspreading trees heavy with chirping birds, under which old men sit on wooden benches smoking cigarettes and gossiping.

  Tony spends most of his time sitting in the piazza, conversing, smoking benevolently offered cigarettes, drinking beer, cheap whiskey and whatever other liquor others shout for him, while pondering his misfortunes.

  The insularity of the island is the main cause for its small population to work hard for survival. Its people realized from early times that nobody owed them a living, and have always worked hard tilling the land, rearing animals and fishing for survival.

  Typically this crowd doesn’t take too kindly to slackers, but Tony uses every opportunity to defend and legitimize his malingering and so far his play on people’s kindness has ignored, indeed supported his indolent existence.

  “What that woman did to us is scandalous,” he would say. “Gouged out my heart and left me with no will to live, and a small child to take care of. Here I am a wreck, a cripple, unable to hold a job, self-medicating in a pit of despair.”

  By the end of the day, he is normally waxing philosophical; he then progresses into a state of unbridled anger erupting into aggressive, vitriolic arguments with whoever is around. Someone in the crowd usually musters the courage to convince him to go home, whereupon he stumbles down Charity Street often assisted to reach his front door by a neighbor who happens to be passing by.

  At other times, when Tony’s legs falter and none of the neighbors happen to be around, he drops into a drunken stupor on the side of the street. If by a certain hour her father doesn’t return home, Aurora knows to go look for him down the roads he frequents. She coaxes him out of his intoxicated slumber and half carries him home to his bed.

  On the occasions she is unable to locate him altogether, Aurora knocks timidly on our door and Zia Marie goes out and helps her find him.

  I have joined them on several occasions, and Zia Marie invariably turns these unpleasant excursions into an entertaining treasure hunt or a game of hide and seek for us kids, with the aim of mitigating the seriousness of Aurora’s situation.

  Zia Marie, a fastidiously clean and ordered person, manifests her disapproval and frustration as soon as we manage to drag Tony back into the house by putting everything that comes to hand in its proper order.

  In contrast to Zia Marie’s pristine home, the neighboring twin house where Tony lives with Aurora is in a state of utter dereliction.

  The rank air, the stench of dirty toilets and lingering smell of cigarette smoke, hit you instantly once you step inside. The floors are grimy and sticky, the paint peeling off the walls, the furnishings scant and disordered, an old Formica laminated table and a ragged couch permanently indented with the grimy shape of Tony’s body, the sink overfull with dirty pots, pans and dishes, the kitchen stove and walls gummy with layers of grease.

  “This is no way to raise a child,” Zia Marie would mutter sadly.

  But by the time she has voiced her grievances, Tony is oblivious and snoring, alien to the situation. Even if he were aware and conscious, Tony would never admit to any of his shortcomings or neglect towards Aurora. It was her mother who had abandoned them. He is still here after all, with the child, just as much a victim.

  I have to admit that I do not like Aurora’s father Tony at all, and many others join me in that sentiment.

  This Sunday, Tony sits on his usual bench in the piazza and as is customary for him, he observes the crowds of people as they scurry to mass in their Sunday best.

  The cold wind nips at his skin through his thin coat and flimsy clothes and blows his oily unkempt hair across his face as he rolls a cigarette between his yellow fingers.

  The basilica of St. George celebrates Sunday mass on the hour from seven till noon. Tony squints at the men in their expensive suits and long coats being reluctantly dragged to church by their wives in their stylish woolen dresses and fur coats. Through narrowed eyes he watches individually the numerous congregation as most of the people of Victoria visit the basilica in the morning hours.

  In his present state of mind, all Tony can think about is the coin collection to cover the church’s expenses, held right after the homily.

  His craving makes his head resound with the clanking of the donated coins falling into the collection baskets. The image of the luxurious, shiny marble slabs covering the church walls, draped with rich red damask, burns in his head. Inside the church, the cornice is coated in gold. St. George is dripping gold from his hands as he stands by his white stallion taunting him.

  And on this particular Sunday, the idea that seeded in his mind months before, which had sprung from the compulsion of his dire condition, turns into a plan. He had not chosen this course deliberately; truth be told, it had sprung from the necessity of his disposition.

  Tony knows the ongoings in the piazza better than anyone else. The schedules of the town’s folk are ingrained in his brain. He knows when the square is alive, busy, full of chatter and bodies, he knows when people traverse the piazza most frequently, he knows when the local council workers bring in their water bowsers and hose down the area sending rivers of water and soap suds down the alleys, bringing out the children splashing their feet in the streamlets formed along the streets close by.

  He also knows when the square is lifeless, when no one is about and the area is deserted for quite a few hours.

  One o’clock on a Sunday is the time when the last morning mass is over, the old bells in the church steeple chime thirteen times and then all is silent till the hour of three.

  It is when everyone returns home to the Sunday meal followed by a long siesta. Tony knows that the piazza will be empty after one o’clock and rarely does anyone emerge from home before three in the afternoon.

  He is well aware that the money collected during the morning masses is secured in the safety of the sacristy. The possible presence of the sacristan, a senile and feeble man, does not in the least bit worry him.

  Tony leaves his bench and moves into the shadows of the archway in front of the closed shops in the piazza, facing the church. He waits patiently until the last lingerer evacuates the square post-mass. He observes as the priest locks up the front door of the church and walks on home.

  Tony proceeds to the side of the basilica where he quietly eases open the wooden door of the side prayer room of the church, the vestibule to the sacristy.

  As expected the room is empty. The small space is saturated with the heady scent of incense. The thin vapor still lingers around the pale fingers of sunlight reaching in from the high windows making it more conspicuous. Flickering candles burn at the feet of the Virgin Mary serenely holding her child.

  As soon as he enters the building, Tony, who hasn’t set foot inside St. George’s church for over a decade, is overwhelmed by the opulence of his surroundings, the variety of opportunity facing him. He is immediately overcome by the post-drinking headiness that has of late become a persistent ailme
nt.

  The old paintings and their frames, the candelabras, chandeliers and antique candleholders, the wall hangings are all a good source of money; he could even get a pretty penny for the hassocks.

  He feels waves of anger, revulsion and hatred well up within him as he is hit by the realization that his plan has not been well conceived. Equipped with only the lining of his coat, he is facing treasure he can’t possibly carry away. In face of all these riches, the church collection is but a pittance.

  He trips on the altar steps and tries to steady himself against a side altar grabbing a heavy silver candleholder for support. The top part of the ornament comes loose from its fixture and he decides to carry it with him.

  Threading stealthily across the room, Tony makes his way towards the area behind the main altar. He hears the old sacristan hum away while reorganizing the place for the evening masses. The old man is steaming the priests’ vestments and hanging them in preparation for the evening celebrations.

  Tony spots the large wicker basket full of envelopes and money, across from where the sacristan is standing with his back towards the doorway.

  The old man, the only obstacle between him and the money he so desperately needs to tide him over for the coming weeks, can easily be knocked out from behind leaving Tony unidentified as the perpetrator of the robbery. In a fit of unbridled fury and entitlement, he springs in the direction of the sacristan.

  Misjudging the trajectory of his assault, he swings past the sacristan, who in a shockingly agile maneuver, sways around and pushes Tony who staggers and falls onto a pedestal holding an ornate golden tabernacle.

  The pedestal tips over and the large gold cabinet, holding the chalices with the holy bread and wine, crashes to the ground. The bottom of the antique gold box breaks away from the rest of the cabinet, and the two chalices holding the blessed wine and wafers, spill onto the floor.

  The sacristan gasps in horror. “Lord have mercy on us!” he yells, ignoring Tony altogether and stumbling toward the mess on the floor of the church. “This is sacrilege!”