The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “Shame, Arnoldo,” cried Orselli, tugging at Bozzi’s shoulder. “Father Fermoyle has tried to demonstrate the matter fairly. I will not permit this attack on my guest.”

  “Let him speak,” said Stephen.

  Grappa and anger swelled the veins of Bozzi’s forehead. “Thank you, Reverend Broadcloth, for your kind permission. You may take this message back to your Cardinal: tell him that when the Sons of Assisi find a priest who will bring religion to the poor—a priest who will come to us barefooted and garbed in rags as St. Francis did—when we find an American-Irish prelate who will forget property claims and humbly bring the sacraments to my neglected countrymen—then”—Bozzi turned his bushy head to the Sons of Assisi as if asking approval for the proposition he was about to make—“then we will sign over our title deed to the Cardinal. Is that fair?”

  “Fair enough,” said Stephen. “And if you walk through the streets of Boston you will find a hundred such priests eager to meet the conditions you have laid down. But no, you would not recognize them.” He turned to Orselli. “Come, Captain. Let’s get out of here. It would take a miracle to convince this man.”

  Stephen shouldered his way through the hostile crowd; Torino, all apologies, followed them to the door. On Prince Street oil flares from the excavation sent up a greasy light, and the odor of stagnant water hung corpse-heavy on the evening air. Silent and depressed, Stephen and Orselli walked southward, crossed the improvised trestle over the broken water main.

  “What a stupid exhibition that was!” said Stephen. “I should have known better than to dispute with such a man in public.”

  “You had no choice,” consoled Orselli. “Bozzi pressed the quarrel upon you. I must say that you managed the whole business with dignity and reason. Does it matter to you if a pig wishes to wallow in the mire of ignorance?”

  “I should have handled him more skillfully. But I was so bent on winning an argument that I lost an opportunity to make a convert.”

  An ambulance clanged along Prince Street and pulled up with a brake-screeching stop. Two white-coated interns jumped off and began questioning some laborers along the edge of the ditch. The men pointed into the muddy trench, and one of the interns ran back to the ambulance for a stretcher. Policemen began swinging their sticks at the gathering crowd. Stephen spoke to a tin-hatted workman climbing out of the excavation.

  “What’s going on?” asked Stephen.

  “All hell’s broke loose, Father.” The foreman pulled a bandanna from his hip pocket and wiped a mixture of sweat and mud from his face. “We’re layin’ a new water main when a cloudburst falls on us and blocks the new pipe with a lot of silt and stuff.” The man seemed eager to absolve himself from blame. “Well, I send Joe Salvucci in there—he’s the skinniest man we got—to clean the stuff out. Just then a truck backs up to the edge of the excavation, and the whole wall caves in, truck and all, right on top of the pipe where Joe’s working.” More bandanna work. “He’s a goner, sure.”

  “Is he still alive?” asked Stephen.

  “Mashed like a cockroach, but we can hear him groaning inside.”

  The crew of a wrecking crane were trying to fasten a block and tackle to the foundered truck as a preliminary to rescuing the buried man. “Hoist away,” came the cry. Windlasses strained, the truck moved about a foot, then slid back with a grunt onto the galvanized pipe. It was like hitting a baby on the head with a flatiron.

  I can’t stand here watching, thought Stephen. He pulled off his coat, handed it to Orselli, and jumped into the ditch.

  “Hey you, get out of there,” shouted the leader of the wrecking crew.

  On his hands and knees Stephen crawled under the truck and tapped on the dented main with a piece of stone. No response came from Joe Salvucci. Stephen pounded harder, laying his ear to the galvanized main. From the trapped man inside the pipe came a feeble knocking made by a desperate knuckle.

  Joe Salvucci was still alive! How can I reach him? thought Stephen.

  He crawled along the section of galvanized pipe till he came to its open end, the same dark orifice that Joe had entered a few minutes before. A noxious sewery stench struck Stephen’s nostrils as he peered into the death canal. A tight fit! Off came his Roman collar and silk rabat, off came his broadcloth trousers. In cotton undershirt and shorts, he thrust his head into the galvanized main, and inched his way through its mucky ooze. The terror of narrow places almost suffocated him. The slime lubricated his body, permitting it to slip along the inside of the pipe; he found that by lying on his side he could hump along on his shoulder.

  It seemed to Stephen that he had crawled an oozy mile before he heard a man’s low groaning. In the darkness Stephen reached out to touch Joe Salvucci’s face. The man was lying on his back, his lips moving piteously.

  “Can you hear me, Joe?”

  “Who you?”

  “A priest—Father Fermoyle. I’ve come to hear your confession.”

  A note of wild beatitude entered Joe Salvucci’s voice: “I thanka God you come, Father.” Joe’s breath was being choked off by the weight of the truck as he began his confession. “I make Jesus name in swearwords … hundred times a day. Everything I say is Christ-a this, Christ-a that.”

  “That shows how near He always is. What else, Joe?”

  “I get drunk. I go to bad house. Afterwards I go home and kick my wife.”

  “Yes, my son.”

  Accents of fierce regret were in Joe Salvucci’s dying words. “I have been bad to my children. I drive my son Vittorio from the house. I tell God I am mos’ sorry for that.”

  “God understands, Joe. In His mercy He forgives you, and all the poor trapped men who will come after you, forever and ever. Is there anything else now?”

  “One more thing, Father.” Consciousness was slipping away, and with it slipped the language of Joe’s adopted country. He began murmuring in Italian. “I say many times that priests are not good men, that they think only of money, their robes, their belly. I say many times that priests do not love their people … I take back those lies now, Father.”

  A fierce joy burned in Stephen as he put his lips as close as possible to Joe’s ear. “Make a good act of contrition, my son.”

  Joe Salvucci’s voice came gaspingly, “Signore, io detesto tutti i miei peccati, perche sono vostra offesa e mi rendono indegno di recevervi nel mio cuore …”

  “Go on, Joe, finish it.”

  “… e propongo con la vostra grazia di non commetterne più per l’avvenire, di fuggirne le occasioni, e di farne la penitenza …”

  At the end, Joe’s lips were barely moving. Stephen felt an ominous tightening of the pipe; he wriggled backward through the constricting dark. There was a grinding wrench as the full weight of the truck descended.

  Covered with filth, Stephen crawled out of the pipe. Half naked, dazed, and heart-stricken, he lay in the mud, the words of Joe Salvucci’s confession ringing pitifully in his ears.

  “You all right, Mac?” asked one of the workmen.

  “I’m fine,” said Steve. “Just throw a couple of buckets of water over me, and I’ll put on my clothes.” He tried to get up, staggered, and would have fallen again. But Orselli’s powerful arms were around him, Orselli’s perfumed beard was in his face. “You were magnificent, Stefano,” the Captain murmured, covering Stephen’s nakedness with his London-made coat. “Help me lift him into the ambulance,” he snapped at the gaping interns.

  “No ambulance, please,” begged Stephen. “Just take me home in a cab, Gaetano.”

  THE BOSTON PAPERS were full of it next morning. Placing the Cardinal’s mail beside his plate, Stephen tried to leave the room quickly.

  “Not so fast, Father,” said Glennon. He picked up the Globe, and read the headline aloud. “ ‘Priest Risks Life to Hear Confession of Trapped Laborer’ … I see you covered yourself with mud—and publicity—last night.”

  The Cardinal sipped his coffee “You realize, Father Fermoyle, that I do not ordinarily approv
e of such melodrama. It tends to create a false impression of a priest’s daily routine.” He spread marmalade on buttered toast and munched awhile. “There are in this case, however, extenuating circumstances.” More marmalade, more munching. “It may interest you to know that a man named Bozzi came here in person last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “He had his crowd with him—the Sons of Assisi. Excitable fellows. At the time I didn’t quite understand what all the jabbering was about—especially the reference to St. Francis walking barefooted through … ah … mud. But the Globe clears the matter up nicely. I hope you suffer no aftereffects from your plunge into the primal ooze.”

  Stephen gazed at the tips of his second-best shoes. “Only the loss of a broadcloth suit and a pair of new oxfords, Your Eminence.”

  “The archdiocesan treasury will replace them, Father. But to get back to Bozzi. He seemed apologetic about an argument he had had with you. His apology took a rather handsome form—very handsome, I may say. He presented me with a document—I think I have it on me now. Yes, here it is—a warranty deed to the Prince Street property in the North End.”

  A smile slanted across the Cardinal’s large mouth. He rose from his chair and slapped the document exultantly against the breakfast table. “We made it, Stephen!” he laughed, holding out a congratulatory hand. “My heartiest thanks, Father. The whole affair was a masterpiece of priestly behavior and perfect timing.”

  The Cardinal lowered his voice confidentially. “Rienzi, the Apostolic Delegate, was much impressed. He had instructions to straighten out this sticky Sons of Assisi business, but when that wild-eyed delegation came in last night and voluntarily surrendered title, Rienzi did the handsome thing and distributed medals blessed by the Holy Father himself. Everything, including the honor of the Archdiocese, had a bright burnish around midnight.”

  Glennon’s mood of jubilation ebbed. Laying aside the warranty deed that meant so much to him as an administrator, His Eminence became a priest again. “Tomorrow morning, I’m saying a funeral Mass for Joe Salvucci at the Prince Street Church. I’ll be greatly pleased and honored, Father Fermoyle, to have you assist me as deacon.”

  CHAPTER 3

  MONA FERMOYLE pitched her toque at the bedroom bureau, kicked off her pumps, and flexed her slim body restlessly on her narrow bed. She had come home from work, entered the front door without a word of greeting to her father or mother—and now Celia was at the foot of the bed, unpacking a heartful of mother-hen questions. “Would you like a little supper in bed? Have you got a headache, darling? Do you know that Emmett’s coming tonight?” Mona’s replies were undaughterly. No, she didn’t want any supper in bed. Yes, she knew that Emmett Burke was coming. No, she didn’t have a headache—headaches weren’t due for a week yet. Yes, no; no, yes. “Ma, for heaven’s sake lay off me, will you? I’m frazzled. Maybe it’s the job, maybe it’s the weather. I don’t know. It’s something. Shut the door.”

  As Mona sat up to unfasten her garters, the tangled nature of that “something” flattened her out on the bed once more. Something? Everything! Job, Church, family, Emmett Burke, respectability, life in general. The plumbing-supply office with the Sani-enamel bowl in the window beside her typewriter; the bickering with Florrie; Celia’s solicitous clucking; the Thursday-night meetings of the Unmarried Women’s Sodality—and Emmett. His breathlets, speckled neckties, weekly haircuts, and monotonous monologues about K. of C. politics, and firing pins.

  If he talks about firing pins tonight, thought Mona, I’ll throw his three-sixteenth-carat diamond on the sidewalk, and stamp on it.

  Mona was engaged to Emmett now; at Christmastime he had given her the smallest possible yellow diamond, and received the smallest possible kiss in return. In certain quarters Emmett was considered a catch. Caramel-faced Lucy Curtin paled for him; Celia Fermoyle saw valuable deposits of piety and regularity in his chunky person; and Sister Bernadine, who had taught Emmett commercial geography in high school, was on record with the statement that he was the finest young man in the parish, and would have made a noble priest if only he had had it in him to learn just a noseful of Latin—which noseful Emmett could not acquire. So, on his return from war he was cast as a stanch lay pillar, and went to work in his father’s grocery store for nineteen-fifty a week.

  Of this princely wage, Emmett deposited twelve dollars every Friday night in the Medford Co-operative Bank; when he had saved five hundred dollars he and Mona Fermoyle would get married. Emmett had it all figured out. “We’ll furnish a flat with that Four-Room $298.89 Love-Nest Special in Caldwell’s Furniture Store … Groceries won’t cost anything. The old man will come across with a five-dollar raise the day we get married, and off we go to Providence for our honeymoon, with a hundred biscuits in the old haversack. Register at a hotel and everything …”

  At the prospect of her nuptial flight, now alarmingly near, Mona rolled over and punched her pillow. Tonight Emmett would claim a small advance in the shape of a good-night kiss, and the taste of Sen-Sen would be on her lips afterwards. Strange, if you loved someone, you didn’t care what his kisses tasted like. And no tightening up, either. You just lay your head back, and waited with your mouth quiet till it was covered, then sank into the bottomless dream, murmuring—or sometimes only thinking—“Benny darling … it’s been so long.”

  At seven o’clock Mona sipped the cup of corn chowder that Celia brought up. She said “yes, no; no, yes,” to her mother’s questions, then listlessly began dressing. Her midweek date with Emmett being strictly nonfestive—a movie and sundae afterwards—it didn’t make much difference what she wore. The navy gabardine suit and batiste blouse would be good enough. At seven twenty-nine she heard Emmett’s familiar ring, a long and two shorts, kept him waiting about six minutes, then came clicking down the front stairs.

  There stood Emmett in the parlor, barbered to the nines, wearing his brown suit (the blue serge came out on Sunday evenings), a fig-speckled tie, shoes shined with ox-blood polish, a new round hat in his hands, and a box of candy under his arm.

  “Hi, Mona,” he said, in the too-eager way of a roulette player who doubts that his luck will hold. With clumsy carelessness he proffered the candy.

  “Cavalier Brand, all cream centers,” he announced. “A special at Morgan’s.”

  “Oh, chocolates. Thank you, Emmett.” Without looking at the box, Mona laid it on top of the piano.

  “Where’re we stepping tonight?” Emmett’s question implied a boundless variety of entertainments—dancing on the Westminster roof, the floor show at Sirocco’s. But financially these were out of bounds. Emmett had exactly a dollar to spend, and Mona knew it.

  “What’s down at the Alhambra?” she asked with no salt in the question.

  “Vilma Vale in Canyon Love.”

  “I hear that’s good,” said Celia, who had opened the box of candy and was munching a cream center.

  “Canyon Love it is, then. Good night, Ma.”

  With such non sequitur counsels as, “Have a good time,” “Be a good girl,” and “Get home early,” Celia Fermoyle put the sign of the cross on their young backs as they went down the front steps. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph protect them,” she breathed, watching them through the curtained window. “Emmett’s a good boy, Emmett is. He deserves a good, home-loving wife. It’ll be the happy day for me when Mona’s safely married to him.”

  Mona, knowing that her mother was mumbling pieties behind the curtain, and realizing that the whole population of Woodlawn Avenue was peeping through similar curtains, wanted to smash Emmett’s new round hat over his ears, and run shrieking down the street.

  She wanted to go dancing with someone she loved, but that being impossible, she walked circumspectly through Medford Square with Emmett holding her by the arm as though he were a sheriff, telling her all about the firing pin on the Springfield rifle—what a good long, strong, classy, nifty, pip of a firing pin it was. And once, when his stream of small-arms enthusiasm slackened for a moment, he pr
omised that he’d take her to Rappaciutti’s after the show and buy her a banana split.

  Canyon Love was no masterpiece, but at least it brought tears, and when you get tears, you get a very good thing. Streaming from his blue eyes, Emmett’s tears were a delicious solvent to delivery-wagon cares and the pangs of underprized love. In the warm lassitude of the darkened theater his hand closed wistfully over Mona’s fingers. She did not object, and Emmett sat choking with weepy bliss until the organist, with a good-night fillip, crashed into The Sheik of Araby. The house lights flashed shamelessly on, and the dream collapsed.

  “Geeze,” said Emmett (whose single vice was that one interjection of familiarity with the name of the Second Person of the Trinity), “that was a good show. Always get a good show at the Alhambra. Better’n the Plaza, but the ventilation’s not so good. They got the best organ, though. Some organ. I hear it cost ten thousand bucks. …” He lingered in his seat, for although the lights had forced him to drop Mona’s hand, he was still glowing with the treacly warmth of Canyon Love. The theater was emptying rapidly, and Mona prodded her escort.

  “Let’s get going, or we’ll be locked in for the night.”

  “That wouldn’t be such tough luck, would it?” This was the most suggestive thing that Emmett had ever said, and because Mona made no answer, he considered himself rebuked for his “freshness.” He was about to apologize, when he remembered that he still had the big gesture of the evening ahead of him … the banana split. He waxed resilient, big.

  “Well, let’s gumshoe over to Rappaciutti’s and line up for the banana split I been promising you. …”

  Again Mona failed to blow back the feather of repartee; again Emmett was disconcerted. She could put him out of gear so easily, with or without a word. Everything would be rolling along beautifully, then, with no preliminary flutter, the illusion of companionship would crackle and fade. And always Emmett would suffer in puzzlement before making the fatal mistake of asking: