Everyone laughed except the American general. At West Point in his time, no one had bothered to study French.
Six rope-nosed tugs began nudging the Vesuvio into her berth. By now the ring on Orselli’s little finger was a burning band. There would be at least an hour before the American husband could come aboard. “You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. “The business of docking grows complicated.” He lifted his gold-fringed hat to the group, and made a special bow to the Apostolic Delegate. “May Your Excellency enjoy full success in your mission.”
“And you in yours, Captain.” The Archbishop had strolled often enough on the B-deck promenade to know that a perfumed wind was blowing from that quarter. The New World might teach His Excellency many things, but it could scarcely tutor him in the poignant art of irony.
From the Vesuvio’s bridge an hour later, Gaetano Orselli watched his passengers debark. Through marine binoculars he saw the American donna generosa give the seacomer’s kiss to her husband. “Lovely, treacherous creatures!” murmured the Captain compassionately. He focused his glass on the airplane swooping overhead, and made out the message painted on the underside of its wings. “Sons of Assisi?” The Captain wagged a puzzled beard. In Italy the children of St. Francis walked unsandaled across the earth. In America they flew madly about in airplanes. Shifting his glass, Orselli picked up the figure of a somewhat bewildered Archbishop descending the gangplank, and watched a dark-haired young priest advance to meet him with a respectful but quite American obeisance of knee and head. No mistaking that high-shouldered carriage or the expression of filial welcome on the priest’s face as he rose to greet the papal envoy. Only one man in the world could combine so much ecclesiastic punctilio with such independence of spirit. Orselli seized his megaphone.
“Stefano!” he shouted.
Above the tumult of sirens and clamoring voices, Stephen heard his name. His eyes traced the bellow to its source—a bearded man waving a megaphone from the Captain’s bridge. The niceties of protocol forbade shouting back, and the immediate business of herding the Apostolic Delegate and his little retinue across the pier was too pressing for a quick dash up the gangplank. Stephen did the best he could in a hasty pantomime with an imaginary knife and fork.
His gestures conveyed to Orselli: “I received your wireless and will meet you for dinner at the appointed place.”
The Captain’s glistening beard bobbed joyous confirmation. He laughed at the gay telegraphy, but his laughter changed to admiration as he watched Stephen shunt his charges past photographers and ship reporters to a pierhead court, where Lawrence Cardinal Glennon advanced with open arms to greet the emissary of his Sovereign Pontiff, Benedict XV.
ARRAYED in his best clerical broadcloth, a ten-dollar hat, and a pair of excellent black oxfords on his feet, Father Stephen Fermoyle walked eagerly along Prince Street to his rendezvous with Captain Orselli at the Cafe Torino. Prince Street, if not the heart of Boston’s Little Italy, is one of its principal arteries. Long before the Italians came, America’s earliest great—James Otis, the first Adamses, and Paul Revere—had trod this narrow thoroughfare. From its solid burgherish homes and mercantile establishments, the fledgling murmurs of American independence had issued. But the high tide of Colonial fame had long ago ebbed from this historic region, and latter-day waves of immigration had flooded it with newer, swarthier Americans from Naples and Sicily.
A heavy shower had fallen that afternoon; mud and garbage from swollen gutters flooded across the pavement, and eddied around Stephen’s polished boots. No matter. More significant currents were swirling along Prince Street. Stephen heard a soapbox agitator flogging his listeners with foam-flecked protests against the recent arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti. The pair had been charged with the high crimes of murder and armed robbery. “But their real offense,” cried the orator in Italian, “is their heroic opposition to capitalistic oppression.” The crowd roared approval. Stephen passed on.
In front of a steamship agency, an ecstatic group of Italian Americans were waving handfuls of paper money at each other. “Ponzi, he will make us rich,” they cried. “Ponzi will break the bankers’ stranglehold on the throats of little people.”
Stephen was dubious about that. He knew the Ponzi system; its fame was flying all over Boston. You gave Ponzi a hundred dollars, and in three months you got back a hundred and fifty. According to Ponzi, he used your money to buy Italian lire, and made a handsome profit on the difference in exchange. Clearly, the little Sicilian was suffering from fiscal dementia. Sooner or later his mansion of finance would crash, and the little people would lose their money. Meanwhile they hymned his name, and cursed the banks that paid a mere three per cent.
Are the times out of joint? Stephen wondered. He crossed a plank trestle and gazed into a deep excavation running parallel to the sidewalk. A water main had broken, and gangs of men were laying a new conduit in the shadowy trench lighted by bomb-shaped flares.
From the window of Torino’s Café an amethyst light was shining. The source of that light was an electric bulb in a bunch of alabaster grapes held in the bronze uplifted hand of a Neapolitan youth at the expectant moment of crushing the luscious fruit to his lips. The statue was not merely the bush of the Torino establishment; to the proprietor it was a lively memento of his own boyhood in the vineyards of Naples. It symbolized carefree enjoyment of two excellent things—youth and wine—both gone now, the first de facto, the second de jure. About his departed youth Torino could do nothing, but about the wine he took specific measures. He made it himself on his farm in Sudbury and sold it, de jure or not, by the glass or bottle to the regular patrons of his café.
Tonight, Virgilio Torino was readying three bottles of his best purple wine for the palate of a distinguished guest. Captain Gaetano Orselli would pay for two bottles; the third would be on the house. A fricassea di pullo was gently stewing in bay leaves for the Captain; his table was laid for two in a curtained booth; Torino’s little fountain splashed among its pebbles. The first bottle of wine lay in a wicker basket. Tosto, the good things of life would begin.
A priest entered. “Is Captain Orselli here yet?”
“No, but bene, soon. Will the Father sit down, have a glass of wine while waiting?” Stephen sat down, but took no wine; anticipation of meeting Orselli had lifted his spirits high enough already. He stretched his long legs under the table, listened to the splashing fountain, saw the wine bursts of light gleaming through the alabaster grapes, munched a plump olive from a heaping antipasto, and wondered when and where Americans had lost the secret of enjoying life.
At a long table near the window a society of some kind was beginning dinner. The chairman, bushy-haired, tub-chested, was proposing the first toast. Stephen could not catch his solemn words.
Of a sudden the fountain splashed higher, the light inside the alabaster grapes gleamed a richer purple, and Gaetano Orselli came through the door. The art of the entratura reached a minor peak as he handed his gold-leafed hat to Torino and strode, arms extended, toward Stephen.
The gift of glad greeting was in this man. “Furfantino! You ecclesiastical rascal! It is good to touch you again.” The Captain’s beautiful hands grasped Stephen, then passed upward to wrists, elbows, biceps, and shoulders before holding him off for appraisal. “You look heavier, handsomer, Stefano.”
“You look leaner, as handsome as ever, Captain.”
Orselli gazed about for a mirror to confirm the compliment, found none, then exposed his fine white teeth in the physical delight of smiling. “Lusingatore … you flatterer! We Florentines yield to the Irish in the courts of blarney. Torino, the corkscrew! We have only a few hours. We must drink as we talk.” Orselli poured two goblets of the Sudbury wine, lifted his glass connoisseurwise to the light, and found in its deep color the inspiration for a fitting toast.
“To the purple.” Pleased by the wordplay and the wine itself, Orselli drained his glass. “Purple? What am I saying? I expected you to be at least a monsignor al
ready, Stefano. What has held up the procession? Tell me everything without benefit of chronology.” Orselli speared a slice of salami. “Serve it forth all at once, like this excellent antipasto.”
Between mouthfuls of pimiento, anchovies, and pickled mushrooms, Stephen told of his curateship with Dollar Bill Monaghan; the minestrone found him describing Ned Halley’s saintliness and poverty. Orselli was finishing the first bottle of wine as Stephen recounted the saga of the Dolcettiano amethyst. At its happy ending the Captain burst in with admiration and delight.
“Either the Holy Ghost guided you—or you have the trick of landing on your feet. In a world off-balance, one gift is as valuable as the other. Who knows? They may be identical. …”
Torino was uncovering an earthenware casserole. “In all Italy, the Captain will find no plumper chicken than this,” he assured Orselli. “Even the King does not dine as well tonight.”
“Nor for many nights,” said the Captain. “No one dines well in Italy any more.” He drew the cork from the second bottle of wine. “Let us drink to happier days for the Italian nation.”
Stephen touched the wine to his lips. “Tell me about Italy, Gaetano. We get no reliable news of what’s happening there.”
“It is not a joyful tale,” said Orselli. “My country is like a man with boils, sitting on a dung heap of confusion and dismay. The war gave us a bayonet wound here”—he pointed to his midriff—” but the peace has dismembered us entirely.” Orselli made chopping motions at his own arms and neck. “At Versailles your Mr. Wilson with his Fourteen Points—God Himself had only ten—treated us like an enemy rather than a faithful ally.”
“What about the League of Nations?”
“League of robbers!” Orselli spat out a chicken bone. “We have already lost Dalmatia and Fiume. Japan receives mandates that should be ours. But we have only ourselves to blame. We are disunited in our councils, broken at home, powerless abroad. In a world of whirling chaos Italy will be destroyed unless a strong man arises to bind the broken rods of authority into a firm bundle. … What’s this, Torino?”
Torino’s head popped apologetically through the curtains. A flask of liquor was in his hands. “I deliver compliments from an old friend of yours,” he said to the Captain. “Messer Arnoldo Bozzi sends you this bottle of grappa in the hope that you are still able to drink his health.”
“Bozzi! Is that sheep poisoner still alive? Tell him to come to the bridge at once. The Captain will gladly match thirsts with him.”
As Torino darted away, Orselli explained to Stephen, “In my youth I had the honor of not marrying this Bozzi’s sister. Since then he is compelled to admire my judgment. Other than that, Messer Bozzi is as illustrious a rogue as ever fled the Italian police. He has the soul of a true Florentine conspirator. Ah, here’s the conspirator now … Arnoldo!”
A man of vast girth—the frizzled-haired toastmaster that Stephen had noticed on entering the café—filled the entrance to the booth. He and Orselli gripped hands with exclamatory warmth, each standing off to appraise the other—as if hoping to find a broken tooth, a balding scalp, or other evidences that the years had been unkind.
Bozzi glanced inquiringly from Orselli to Stephen.
“You are surprised by the honest company I keep, Arnoldo. Meet my dear friend, Father Fermoyle, Secretary to His Eminence the Cardinal. Stephen, this is Arnoldo Bozzi—a whited carbonaro”
Stephen remembered the name. “I have often heard of Mr. Bozzi. He is president, I believe, of the Sons of Assisi.”
“A crew of counterfeiters, no doubt,” said Orselli. “Well, Torino, do not stand there smirking like an innkeeper. Brandy glasses are what we need. Sit down, Arnoldo, if you can crowd that belly of yours into a small space.”
Bozzi sat down and lifted his glass of grappa. “Sempre!” he toasted, his index finger erect. This, the favorite toast of the Bersaglieri, was a studied insult to the celibate priesthood. Stephen did not raise his glass.
“Well now, and what is this Sons of Assisi business, Arnoldo? Was it your airplane that almost knocked off the funnels of my ship this afternoon? What have I done to deserve a bouquet that missed my deck by a hundred meters?”
“The bouquet was for Archbishop Rienzi, the papal delegate, who comes to straighten out the ecclesiastical mess here in Boston.”
Stephen’s smile said: “Go ahead and be as bad-mannered as you please. This is my night off.” His smiling challenge drew a direct question from Bozzi. “Are you really the Cardinal’s secretary?”
“I am.”
“Then you know of our plea for an Italian church in the North End?”
Stephen nodded. “I am familiar with the correspondence.”
“In God’s name, what’s all this about?” asked Orselli. “Don’t tell me you’ve become a champion of religion, Arnoldo?”
“A champion of Italian Americans, rather,” said Bozzi. He launched into a partisan explanation for Orselli’s benefit. “Three years ago the Sons of Assisi bought and decorated a church for our neglected countrymen. We imported a good and holy Franciscan priest from Italy, and all we ask is that he should say Mass in our church. We have petitioned the Irishman Glennon for permission to conduct holy services—but His Lordship refuses to hear our plea.” Bozzi turned to Stephen with a flattering “you’re-an-intelligent-fellow” expression on his heavy face. “You have read our petition. What is your opinion of it?”
“My opinion,” said Stephen, “is expressed in the last letter from the Cardinal.”
Bozzi sneered. “You see, Captain, they all hang together, these Irish-American priests. Well, let them hang.” The Sons of Assisi president took a new tack. “Would it surprise you to learn that the Pope himself is behind us, and that your Irish Cardinal will find himself overruled by our infallible Italian pontiff?” Bozzi was gibing at Stephen now. “He is infallible, you know.”
“About the Pope being behind you, I wouldn’t know,” said Stephen. “But as to his infallibility—well, there’s the famous story told by Cardinal Gibbons. When someone asked the old Cardinal, ‘Do you believe the Pope is infallible?’ Gibbons laughed and said, ‘All I know is that when he last addressed me, he called me Jibbons.’”
Orselli’s laughter broke the tension. “ ‘Jibbons’! Ha-ha. Come Arnoldo, smile, my friend. This is not a consistory.” He poured more grappa for himself and Bozzi.
Bozzi tossed off the powerful distillate, but refused to be placated. He was one of those intensely individualistic rebels who resist any form of authority. Sincerely enough, Bozzi believed in a return to the simpler religion of St. Francis. And now, with his followers behind him (the entrance to the booth was packed with the Sons of Assisi), he determined to give this cool cleric a thrashing.
“In every letter to us the Cardinal says: ‘Hand over the deed to your church property, and I will give you permission to say Mass there.’” Hired-hall truculence and too many liters of alcohol were in Bozzi’s question, “Why is this?”
The old proverb, “Never argue with a drunk or a zealot,” warned Stephen against entering the debate. But the man was entitled to an answer, and of the many possible replies, Stephen sought the one best suited to his audience. With Orselli gazing at him confidently, and Bozzi sneering like a chess player who has just checkmated a king, Stephen began:
“You must understand, Signor Bozzi, that the constant and unchanging objective of the Church is the care of souls. It was for this purpose that Christ founded His Church and made it the divine instrument by which man might gain eternal union with God.” Stephen waited for this basic proposition to sink into the minds of his hearers, then proceeded. “The Church is the source of the sanctifying grace that enables man to achieve this end. And it is also the guardian of the inspired truths that Christ revealed to men.”
“One knows all this from the catechism,” said Bozzi. “But what has it to do with the ownership of Church property?”
“I might make the point,” said Stephen, “that a synod
of American bishops has decreed that all Church properties must be owned by the diocese in which they are located. I might go into the history of that decree, and describe the confusion, the schismatic dangers arising from the lay-trustee system that preceded it. But with your permission, I would rather attempt to explain the doctrinal concepts underlying the diocesan ownership of Church property.”
Bozzi turned to his followers. “We must watch out for this argomentatore clericale, else his priest talk will lead us astray.”
Stephen let the laughter subside, then resumed the high ground of his original argument. “The Church,” he said, “is not only the mystical body of Christ: it is also a tangible earthly organism—a society formed of living men, a structure clearly manifest to the world in its ceremonial observances, its laws, and administrative offices. It has its visible head, the Pope, who as Christ’s Vicar speaks with infallibility”—Stephen loaded his words for Bozzi’s benefit—“in the sphere of faith and morals. From the Pope, or, as some theologians contend, from God Himself, this authority descends to the bishops, who guard, define, and teach Christ’s sacred truths within their diocesan limits. The bishops must be watchful lest errors of doctrine or practice creep into the Church. Cardinal Glennon, in the discharge of his sacred office, is the guardian, definer, and teacher of Catholic truth for the Archdiocese of Boston.”
“Guardian of truth maybe,” said Bozzi. “But does his guardianship include title to all real estate?”
“According to Church law, it does.”
“Then Church law is ridiculous,” shouted Bozzi. “God does not care who holds title to a brick building.”
“If God does not care,” said Stephen quietly, “why should you?”
“Bravissimo!” roared Orselli. “Are the Sons of Assisi more property-minded than God?”
Bozzi thrust his enraged bulk across the table and poured a torrent of abuse over Stephen. “Your soapy words will not clean the face of the matter. Put it as you please, the truth is that your American Church is nothing but a big corporation, always stretching out greedy fingers for more holdings. From the Cardinal down, it has forgotten the simple teachings of Christ, and thinks only of revenues and property.”
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