The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  He was struggling in a net of small talk when the Princess summoned her guests to dinner. Stephen found himself between his hostess and one of the Alessandro twins—an arrangement that freed him from conversational risks with Ghislana Falerni, but exposed him to the still-greater hazard of looking at her across a candlelighted table. By the sternest discipline he tried to avoid gazing at her; even so, he felt her image forming on the sensitized film that makes pictures for memory.

  The Princess was clapping her hands. “Because everyone here speaks Italian,” she said, “there will be no translations tonight.”

  “Hear, hear!” cried Roberto.

  “This leaves me only two roles,” continued the Princess. “Which shall I play: the deaf duenna who has lost her ear trumpet or the wicked croupier urging everyone to play for ruinous stakes?”

  “The wicked croupier …”

  “The deaf duenna …”

  “I shall be both.” From the table decorations the Princess seized a trumpet-shaped squash and held it to her ear: “Que dis-tu? … Louder please.” While her guests laughed at the mimicry, she raked in an armful of tableware—spoons, salt shakers, everything within reach. “Fâites vos jeux, messieurs, mesdames. The wheel is crooked, but people have been known to win. Umberto, the grape! Magnums of it.”

  Across the table Ghislana Falerni’s eyes were saying to Stephen: “Do not be afraid. This is all very innocent and harmless. Please try to enjoy yourself.”

  Stephen took a single glass of champagne; to the flood of wit and laughter he added almost nothing. It was Roberto who, despite his inflamed heel, sparked the table talk. He began by giving a fantastic account of his walking trip with Stephen; drafted on a not-quite-truthful scale and colored by all the paint tubes Roberto could squeeze in three minutes, the sketch was still an amusing likeness. Lord Chatscombe responded with a half-hour account of a similar tour he had taken in the Basses-Pyrenees twenty years before. “We followed the track of Wellington’s campaign against Bonaparte,” His Lordship began—then in heavy-dragoon fashion proceeded to fight the Peninsular War all over again. Every gully became a British redoubt grimly fortified by His Lordship’s dullness. To snatch her party from the jaws of Wellington’s final victory, the Princess fluttered her eyelids in a desperate appeal to Roberto: “Head the Englishman off before he takes Italy.”

  At her signal, Roberto went up like a fire balloon. Without props or preparation he transformed the terrace into an enchanted deck thronging with characters swarming up from the hold of his imagination. He began by imitating a Lebanese merchant trying to sell a shipment of wormy figs to the Archimandrite of Athens, who had plenty of figs but needed a prayer rug for his chantry. Roberto seized a napkin from the table and became a Syrian rug dealer who by a singular freak of fortune had the precise article, the very thing. He invented dialects and vocabularies to describe the rug; its dimensions grew until the whole terrace was carpeted with a texture of surpassing beauty—the lifework of a hermit-artist who had blended flowers and fruits (chiefly figs) into a complex allegory of Mohammed’s career on earth. This was regrettable because the Archimandrite could not entertain the idea of spreading a Mohammedan rug on the floor of an Orthodox Catholic Church. Obligingly, Roberto whipped up a new rug depicting the nine most celebrated miracles of St. Athanasius. From the Archimandrite’s point of view, this theme, too, was unfortunate. “How,” he inquired, “could pious feet be expected to tread upon the holy image of a great saint?” For this poser, Roberto had no reply. Stunned and grieving, he reeled out of the rug business, and became a jongleur pleading the case of a stableboy hopelessly in love with the lady of a castle high on a peak in remotest Aquitaine.

  Stephen, along with the other guests, was transported by a performance so packed with imaginative energy. While the rain hung off and atmospheric tensions gathered and the party took on the aspect of a fete champetre, he forgot that he was not supposed to look at Ghislana Falerni. At first he allowed himself the visual delight of framing her portrait in quick glances. Then, while a florin moon climbed the sky, he became fascinated by the portrait’s detail: the medallion head (so like Roberto’s), the gardenia-pastel of throat and shoulders, the opulent contours shadowing off into secrets, part myth and all mystery.

  Stephen was chastening his gaze when the contessa’s eyes engaged him at level range across the table. The glance hung, held, wavered, and caught again. He stopped laughing, and did not raise his eyes again until Roberto’s comic vein ran out.

  The after-dinner change of positions began. Some of the guests followed Roberto into the pear orchard to play a game composed chiefly of chasing and laughter. Couples drifted through arbors; inside the house someone was splashing lyrically at the piano. Stephen chatted on the lawn, struggling against the compulsions that drove him toward Ghislana Falerni. The moon was swimming through a gauzy bank of clouds when he finally stopped fencing with himself and sat down beside her on the almost deserted terrace.

  The contessa’s glance was a muted re-entry of the motif their eyes had struck across the dinner table. A mere phrase; no more. Then modulating into safer music, she chose exactly the right key to excite Stephen’s wit, yet not alarm his senses.

  “Is it my imagination, Monsignor, or have you been avoiding me?”

  “Your imagination is as lively as Roberto’s. The simple truth is I’ve been wanting to talk to you all evening.”

  “Let us talk then—simply at first, truthfully later.” The contessa was a croquet hostess offering her guest a choice of mallets. “You may open, Monsignor.”

  Stephen included sky, earth, the contessa, and himself in a humorous wave of his hand. “Where shall I begin?”

  “Does it matter? The first three exchanges never count anyway. Afterwards, if there is anything to say—it will be said.”

  Her mildly cynic mood kept the play exactly where she wanted it. Stephen was laughing now. “Well then,” he asked, “where did you spend the summer?”

  “At Capri, mostly. I have a house there. The bathing and boating are delightful.” See how easily it goes? “And what have you been doing?”

  “Oh, tugging at a mechanic oar.”

  “Didn’t you find Rome unbearable during the hot months?”

  At the third exchange, Stephen discovered that even talk of weather could be dangerous in this woman’s presence. Memories of his rearguard action against her all summer betrayed him now.

  “I survived …” he said, “somehow.”

  “ ‘Somehow’? The word has a melancholy fall, Monsignor. Yet I must admit”—the contessa’s lace handkerchief occupied her eyes and fingers—“there is no other word to describe the way most lives go on.”

  The free moves were over: the true count could begin. But neither the contessa nor Stephen was willing to test the depths beneath them. In silence Ghislana Falerni stretched her lace handkerchief tambour fashion across her knees, gazing at it as an imprisoned queen might contemplate a rich and useless embroidery made by her own idle hands. The posture conveyed, more clearly than any declaration, everything she wanted to say to the man beside her. Regard me (it pleaded) not as a temptress to be approached with caution, but as a woman who is weary of being decorative on garden furniture. See me, not as a threat to your priestly soul, but as a fellow creature condemned to drop day-to-day pebbfes into an urn of loneliness.

  The plea disturbed Stephen’s mind and conscience. Twice he had misread the truth about Ghislana Falerni. In younger dreams he had cast her as the unapproachable Madonna, a Beatrice figure on a mystical balcony. More recently he had come to regard her as a combination of high-hipped earth goddess and exquisitely girdled woman of fashion. Was he seeing her now through another veil of illusion, or was he encountering reality this time—the reality of a fastidious and lonely woman struggling to breathe in a glass casket? Stephen could not tell; he dared no longer trust his judgment about the contessa. He only knew that the more he saw of her, the more riddling and various she became—a prof
oundly feminine cipher longing to be read on many levels of meaning.

  His position, both on the terrace and in the contessa’s life, was untenable, basically false. Training and instinct urged him to walk away rapidly, but at this moment they were powerless to free him from the magnetic tensions streaming out of Ghislana Falerni. It occurred to him (as a kind of pitiful compromise) that if he gave the conversation an impersonal turn, the dread charge might exhaust itself in commonplaces.

  “Wasn’t Roberto a clown tonight?” His words made a doughy sound, like a child’s fist beating a flabby drum. “Have you ever seen anything so comical as his rug-dealer act?”

  The contessa came back from her tambour reverie. “You should see him in the water. He’s at his best then. At Capri this summer he turned himself into a blue dolphin for a whole week. Even Cardinal Giacobbi laughed at his antics.”

  Stephen’s surprise was genuine. “Did the Cardinal Secretary visit you at Capri?”

  “Everyone visits me there.” Rebuke, light as a petal, lay on the contessa’s lips. “Had you paid me a courtesy visit in Rome last spring, I would have invited you for a holiday.”

  Stephen said nothing.

  “And you,” she went on, “would have refused the invitation.”

  “How could I do otherwise? I am neither your cousin—nor an aging Cardinal.”

  Night turned on a noiseless axle. “Does that mean you cannot be a friend?”

  Ghislana Falerni’s question was an honest proffer of human regard. By the timbre of her voice Stephen recognized it as a sincere bid from an emotional equal to share with her some part of his isolation and loneliness. As a man Stephen could not lightly reject the offer; as a priest he could not rise to it. He was familiar with the advice of those saintly counselors, Chrysostom and Jerome: flee relationships with unattached women. He knew, moreover, that his feelings for Ghislana Falerni were not the stuff of which friendship is ordinarily made. Yet illusion beckoned; hope soared on rosy wing. The thing was possible! Aided by the pure fires of discipline, and skill sprung of extra grace, might one not transform forbidden clay into a vessel of singular devotion?

  “I should like to be your friend …”

  A light breeze, distilling hints of rain, lifted the ends of the contessa’s chiffon scarf about her shoulders. Her hands caught at the fluttering fabric. Too late. A loosened end of the scarf flicked Stephen’s cheek and sent a shivering charge along his facial nerves.

  Field scents surged across the terrace in a perfumed wave; midnight was about to dissolve in urgencies of rain. On Stephen’s arm lay the unretrieved end of the contessa’s scarf—gossamer testimony of a truth too heavy for denial, unerasable even if withdrawn.

  From the terrace Stephen could see an orchard of pear trees in the moonlight, their low boughs heavy with fruit. To say, “Walk with me in the orchard … once … for remembering,” and to hear Ghislana Falerni whisper, “Yes … for remembering always,” would have been happiness enough. But such fulfillment was denied. The only possible relief was the utterance of her name.

  “Ghislana.”

  “Stephen … I have so longed to call you by name.”

  “I have called you by name a thousand times.”

  Along the grass, tiny winds curled in rising overtures to rain. “How did I reply?”

  Stephen’s voice was barely audible. “In words never to be spoken—except on grass beneath a pear tree.”

  The first raindrop fell, a full period to their conversation.

  THE EARTH lay docile under a drenching shower as Stephen waded through a field of uncut hay. Behind him the horned Adversary prowled; the wolf of midnight was abroad, seeking the ruin of souls. In the downpour Stephen came to a knoll, thinly wooded, and scrambled up its briery ascent. Branches whipped his face; thorns tore at his hands and clothing. At the top of the hill he looked back at the lights in the upper windows of the country house. Only an unwillingness to lend himself out to morbid scourgings saved Stephen from the emotional luxury of throwing himself face downward and confessing to the thorny earth the nature of his desire for Ghislana Falerni. No longer could he delude himself about its moral implications. No matter how poetically one glossed the matter, Ghislana Falerni was, quite bluntly, an occasion of sin. She might be sensitive, lonely, capable of high friendship—but she was also (could he deny it?) a menace to his immortal soul.

  Under a dripping oleander Stephen sat broodingly; chin on knees, he considered what he must do. He needed no angel writing in a book of gold to tell him that he was under grave obligation to guard himself from further exposure to this country-house Eve. His experiences with her had proved that she could beguile and cozen him to his death as a priest. Twice he had failed to resist her; there must be no third fall. As the rain dripped from oleander boughs, and the lights of the country house went out one by one, Stephen reached his decision. Tomorrow he would leave quietly at daybreak; no fanfare of departure, no farewells. He would slip away before breakfast, return to Rome, make a spiritual retreat—and never under any circumstances see Ghislana Falerni again.

  Resolution fixed, Stephen returned to the darkened house. In his room he removed his wet flannels and sat down to write a brief note to Braggiotti. “Dear Berto: I must get back to Rome immediately. Give my good-bys to Princess Lontana and the contessa. Will see you under the Dome when your holiday is over. Affectionately, Stephen.”

  He had folded the note, intending to thrust it under Braggiotti’s door, when Roberto hobbled in, no longer the airy magician with a sackful of rugs and lutes, but a rumpled, sleepless man dragging a painfully inflamed foot.

  “Take a look at this confounded blister, will you, Steve? It’s getting worse. All that jumping around this evening didn’t do it any good.”

  Stephen examined the angry inflammation. “Boy, you’ve got a real infection here. You need a doctor. Tell you what: I’m leaving for Rome early tomorrow. We’ll hire a car and drive back together.”

  “Back to that oven? Not Berto.” He looked up questioningly. “Why the sudden departure? Don’t you like the people here?”

  “Skip the inquisition. I’m leaving.”

  Braggiotti was indignant. “But you can’t run out on me like this, Stefano. We started out on a jaunt together, didn’t we? Now that old Eagle Feather’s pulled up lame, you just can’t abandon him.”

  “You’ll be in good hands.”

  “Whose? Baroness Sigismunda’s? She’ll paw me like a raisin bun. And can you imagine Chatscombe’s fishy mitts winding my bandages?” Roberto was wheedling now. “I need you, Stefano. We’ll call a doctor in the morning. Please wait till he comes.”

  Stephen weighed the risks. “All right,” he said grudgingly. While rain beat all night on the roof of his dormer, he knew, by the attars of clover drifting in from drenched fields, that he had made a mistake in judgment.

  The only medical man in the neighborhood was a hunchbacked curio, part farrier, part leech, who engaged in rustic surgery as a side line. “Dr.” Manescalco (to give him his professional brevet) lanced Roberto’s heel next morning without benefit of antisepsis, then applied a hot herb poultice “to draw out the purulency.” His instructions to Stephen were brief: “Keep him off his feet. Change the poultice every four hours. A young man with healthy blood should have no trouble casting off an infection of this nature.”

  “But suppose it spreads?” asked Stephen.

  “In that case”—the doctor explored the depths of his armamentarium—”we shall poultice the entire leg.”

  Stephen saw that he must tread tactfully in the presence of professional vanity. “Would you advise a return to Rome?”

  Manescalco flashed a peasant wit. “Rome? Ha-ha! Later perhaps. As yet our patient is not ready for the last sacraments. Ten lire, please.”

  Stephen spent the forenoon making Roberto comfortable; it was almost lunchtime when the Princess and her house guests began to troop in. Standard sickroom conventions were observed. The men were bluff, false-he
arty; the ladies knocked timidly and tiptoed in with pears, grapes, and nosegays. Baroness Huntzdorf went so far as to dab possessively at Roberto’s moist forehead with her handkerchief. As Ghislana Falerni, crisp in orchid-colored linen, bent down to bestow the cousinly version of a kiss, Stephen turned away.

  “Don’t turn your head, Fermoyle,” cried Roberto. “Watch me enjoy the corporal works of mercy. More corporal works, Ghislana—I’m a very sick man.”

  Laughter from everyone but Stephen. “Visitors outside,” he ordered. “I’m changing the poultice.”

  It was midafternoon before Stephen permitted himself a breather. Breviary in hand, he strolled onto the sun-washed terrace to read his priestly Office—which he should have completed before noon. It was the feast of the Nativity of Mary; the prayers for the time seemed particularly appropriate and beautiful. Trying to concentrate on his holy Office, Stephen heard shouts and applause from the tennis court, where mixed doubles were in progress. Ghislana Falerni and Lord Chatscombe were outplaying Baroness Huntzdorf and her partner. Stephen had always thought of the contessa’s beauty as essentially static; now as he watched her bend and reach for the ball he saw that she was disturbingly graceful in motion. Her game was like a silk ribbon coming off an endless spool. He forgot his breviary while she flashed in tennis whites through a long rally, and made a stunning overhead kill at the net.

  This isn’t helping any, thought Stephen, turning away toward the shade of the fruit orchard. Pacing down an alley of pear trees, he focused his mind on the Lesson in which St. Augustine compares Eve and Mary, the two women who run through the lives of men:

  Eve mourned, Mary rejoiced. Eve carried tears in her heart; Mary, joy. Eve gave birth to men of sin; Mary to the Innocent One. Eve struck, and Mary healed. Let timbrels reverberate under the fleet fingers of this young mother. Mary’s canticle has ended the lamentations of Eve.

  Refreshed and strengthened, Stephen went back to his sickroom duties. The condition of Roberto’s foot now thoroughly alarmed him. Red streaks were shooting up the thigh; Braggiotti tossed feverishly, complaining of pain in his back and a throbbing headache. In desperation Stephen made a larger poultice, covering the leg from the knee down, a rustic remedy, powerless, he knew, to hold back the tide of infection sweeping through Roberto’s body.