by David Perry
“You?” Lee had offered an octave higher than his usual.
“No!” Lee had remembered her violet eyes flashing. “Like me, you work at the pleasure of the Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco—and don’t you forget it!”
Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful, Lee had often thought. She scares me.
“She loves us, you know,” Adriano said, interrupting his husband’s Magda daydream. “And, the fact that she trusts us speaks volumes.”
“Oh yes.” Lee laughed. “Agreed. I’d certainly rather be on her good side than her bad.”
Adriano nodded his understanding. People on Magda’s bad side found their desks at city hall—and sometimes even in Sacramento, Washington, and other cities—quietly emptied and neatly boxed up for them.
“We couldn’t have gotten through this last year without her.”
Lee looked in through the salon doors at Brian sitting on the shelf in his box, carefully wrapped in the Union Jack and illuminated by a battery-powered candle emblazoned with the face of Padre Pio, Italy’s most popular and most-votive-candled stigmatic.
“Did you dust him today?”
“I’ll let you do that,” Adriano offered quietly, but without malice. “He was your best friend.”
“Yes, he was,” Lee said, staring at the mortal remains of the Right Rev. Brian Henry Swathmore, first openly gay bishop on planet Earth, “openly” being the operative word. His had been a long life, so it wasn’t that cancer was an untimely end, just a messy and undignified one for someone as formal as Brian. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Lee thought, and now Brian is on a world tour headed to his final resting place, Ireland’s Cliffs of Moher. He hadn’t been back to his native Ireland since he had been young. It was Brian’s dying wish, and there was no way that Lee wasn’t going to honor it. Sometime in February, on their way back from their European hijra, Adriano and Lee would climb the steep path to the sheer rock face on the west coast of Ireland, say a few private words, and thus end Brian’s journey, and theirs, before returning home.
“Do you remember the proclamation?”
“And the police escort?”
“And the honor guard?”
The couple smiled at each other, remembering all the ways, sacred and profane, in which Magda helped to make Brian’s last months something to be cherished. Lee and Adriano’s sabbatical had been her idea, and her connections. She was wonderful at organizing other people’s getaways, just not her own.
“He may have been Anglican, but he was as grand as any Catholic.”
“Grander,” Lee replied with real affection.
As any post-Vatican II Roman Catholic knew, no one did High Church better than the Anglicans. Catholics, at least in the US, may have become more susceptible to folk Masses and guitars, but the Church of England and its American Episcopalian brethren knew how to do ritual. “Bells and smells,” Brian had always called it, and as a retired bishop at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, no one had been bellier or smellier. His funeral had rivaled that of Diana in spectacle and in attendance. Magda had made sure the Mayor and several other city, state, and federal officials were present. The President sent flowers.
Adriano quietly got up, walked over to Lee, and put his arms around his neck. They looked at the urn holding the ashes of the man for whom they had cared, and with whom they had lived, for the last few years, including the last six months of a ravaging cancer. He had introduced them. He had married them. He had loved them very much. He had been their family.
“When I go, please just toss me into the surf,” Lee said after a bit.
“And put my ashes in the middle of a redwood sapling so that I can become food for a forest.”
Lee smiled, knowing his lover’s romantic notions of the afterlife.
“We’ve got a while for that.”
“Let’s hope,” Adriano said, all seriousness. “One never knows.”
“No,” Lee said. “One never knows. All the more reason to live in the moment. These next couple of months, I’m certainly going to try.”
“Do. Or do not. There is no try,” Adriano offered in his best, raspy Yoda impersonation.
Lee laughed, kissing the hands Adriano had draped around his shoulders. He closed his book, marking his place with a folded crossword puzzle. “Whatever thy bidding is my master. Let’s head out and see what Orvieto has to offer. We promised Peg we’d meet her for a drink. The grand Lady of the Plaza awaits!”
“Café Volsini?”
“Where else?”
CHAPTER VIII
Vescovo
Sunday, December 1, 2013, midmorning, Orvieto
The Bishop of Orvieto lit a cigarette and looked out the closed window of his office toward the cathedral. He wasn’t supposed to smoke inside, but who was going to stop him?
Outside, a bus of German tourists was disgorging itself on the plaza in front of the Duomo. Jesus—he was supposed to bless them later. Christ.
A year. It had been a year.
God, these people. What was it with them? Now every age had to have a martyr, and this town was already crawling with them. Crawling with them.
He took a long, deep drag and coughed. There was a knock on the door.
“Yes, what?” the cleric snarled, stamping out the butt in a cut-glass cruet, ostensibly reserved for communion wine.
The door opened, and his secretary, one of the diocese’s many overly devout, bored, and retired gray-haired battle-axes, poked in her carefully shellacked head.
“Your Eminence. The doctor is downstairs. He said that you called. Are you feeling all right? I didn’t know you weren’t well. I’d have been happy to send for him if you need—”
“Dear God! I can make my own phone calls,” he snapped. “I’m fine.”
The woman shrank back against the door frame.
“I’m sorry.” The bishop bared his teeth in a semblance of friendliness. Oh, these people. Everyone is so sensitive. “Yes, I’m fine. I called him myself.” He patted her gently on the shoulder, suddenly wishing he had a Tic Tac to mask the odor of his vice. “I didn’t want to worry you. Send him up. It’s nothing.”
The elderly assistant smiled, appearing somewhat placated, and backed out the door, shutting it quietly.
“Christ.” The bishop reached for another cigarette, dropping his grin like an exercise painfully undertaken. You can’t do a fucking thing in this town without everyone knowing. It was a problem—had been a problem. Still was, only a little less so since last year. “Come in,” the bishop commanded, hearing his guest approach. He didn’t bother hiding the cigarette.
“You sent for me, Reverend Bishop?”
The cleric motioned for his guest to sit. The young doctor took a seat in a simple straight-backed chair facing the desk. The prelate sat down, the cathedral’s facade behind him in the window framing his red-capped head.
“He was here.”
“Yes,” the doctor whispered. “I know. I saw him last night in Sant’Andrea.”
The bishop leaned back in his chair and took a deep drag of his cigarette. The smoke was bothering the doctor. Good. He blew a mighty puff directly across the desk.
“I thought he was not to be seen again. I asked you to take care of it.”
“I-ah…I have no excuses, Your Eminence.”
“Indeed, you do not,” the senior priest snarled, stamping out the butt with a vengeance. “At least you have not forgotten the prohibition on excuses. Fix it.” He hastily made the sign of the cross from across the desk. “Now go.”
The young man got up slowly, bowed, and turned for the door.
“Luke? Dr. Wagner?Aren’t you forgetting something?”
The doctor stopped, pivoted gently, and slowly backtracked across the room. Walking around the desk, he dropped to one knee and took the bishop’s right hand in his own. Delicately raising it to his lips, he kissed the episcopal ring.
“Forgive me, Reverend Bishop.”
“When we’re done, th
en we’ll speak of penance and salvation. Get out of here.”
Luke stood up, bowed again, and backed slowly out of the room, crossing himself as he exited and closed the door behind him. The Bishop of Orvieto didn’t look up.
CHAPTER IX
Andrea
Sunday, December 1, 2013, early afternoon, Orvieto
“Cari! Ciao!”
Peg was already waiting for them at “her” table at Café Volsini. Kisses exchanged, the trio sat down just as a tray of wine and nibbles descended.
“I took the liberty of ordering for you. Grazie mille, Signora Volsini!”
La Madrina nailed them with a look and slipped the bill underneath the stem of Peg’s wineglass.
“I don’t think she likes us,” Adriano grimaced.
“She doesn’t like anyone. She doesn’t need to.” Peg smiled while popping a pizzetta into her mouth. “She just is. So, how was your first full day in Orvieto? Isn’t it a treasure!”
For the next twenty minutes or so, Adriano and Lee shared their impressions and Peg nodded, smiled, and tacked on recommendations for day trips to each of their revelations and queries.
Somewhere between “You simply must do the walk to Bolsena” and “Don’t miss the Etruscan necropolis,” Lee noticed La Madrina Volsini walking quietly behind the counter of the antique bar to light a small white candle—definitely not electric or battery powered—in front a faded Polaroid photo of what looked to be a young, almost boyish, priest. She said nothing as she did so, but Lee noticed that as she struck the match, the other three bar staffers stopped what they were doing, bowed ever so slightly, and said nothing while the elderly café owner lit the votive. Delicately, she let her wrinkled fingers caress the photo. Crossing herself, she turned abruptly, once again all business. As if momentarily in suspended animation, the café staff quickly returned to life, pretending not to have noticed the almost sacred machinations of their boss.
“Who’s that?” Lee asked quietly, nodding toward the mini-memorial behind the bar.
Peg looked to where Signora Volsini had just lit the candle. Her smile cracked, and her face froze. “Oh dear, yes. The Feast of Saint Andrea. It’s been a year. Let’s go outside. Arrivederci, Signora!” Peg was up and out the door with astonishing speed, as if wanting to be anywhere but inside Café Volsini. Lee didn’t know a dress with that many pleats could move so fast or dexterously.
Outside, Peg hustled them down the pavement half a block before she spoke. “Deacon Andrea. Bernardone. She found his body, last year, after he jumped from the cliffs here in Orvieto.”
Lee’s face went ashen.
“Oh my God,” Adriano said, squeezing Lee’s hand and looking at him for a reaction. Lee barely felt it and avoided Adriano’s eyes, avoided his own thoughts.
Suicide. Adriano squeezed harder. Lee came back to the present.
“Yes. It was quite the scandal, let me tell you! A week before he was to be ordained fully into the priesthood, the bishop got a letter directly from the Vatican in Rome saying that Andrea was ‘unfit’ or some such excuse. The rumor was that Andrea was gay and that an embarrassing secret was about to bust loose. It was all highly unusual. They told him by fax, if you can believe it. Anyway, poor Andrea just broke down. He jumped from the cliffs right after Mass—on his birthday! Signora Volsini found him the next morning while she was out for her morning walk along the Rupe in front of Floriano’s altar.”
“The Rupe. What’s that?” Lee asked.
“The Anello della Rupe—the Ring of the Rock. It’s the walking path that circles the entire city at the foot of the cliff. It’s quite a drop. Horrible. His body and face were terribly mangled. Probably died right away. One certainly hopes at least. His body fell right in front of the Chiesa del Crocifisso.”
“The Church of the Crucifix,” Adriano translated.
“Exactly. Evidently it was one of Andrea’s favorite spots. He always helped with the annual Mass in honor of Floriano. So tragic, and ironic, that he should die there.”
“I don’t recall a St. Floriano,” said Lee, searching for historic information, but only as a mask for his own darkening memories.
“He wasn’t a saint. He may have been no one at all,” said Peg. “His legend is one of Orvieto’s most treasured tales. Supposedly, Floriano was a Roman soldier stationed here in the sixth century. Orvieto has always been somewhat rebellious of Roman authority, then and now. Anyway, Floriano, who was Christian, was falsely accused by his fellow soldiers of some horrible crime—murder, theft, adultery, the accounts differ on what was the trumped-up charge. Whatever it was, the stories all have the same ending. Overcome with hopelessness, Floriano threw himself from the cliff before his comrades could do the same.”
Lee listened without really hearing. Next door, a ballerina in a mechanical jewelry box popped up while a shop owner finalized a sale to two tourists. Lee’s mother had one just like that. He pushed away the thought.
“And the Chiesa del Crocifisso is where he was buried,” Adriano stated with none of his usual irony when discussing Catholic shrines
“Oh no,” said Peg with a dramatic holding up of her palms. “He didn’t die. As he fell, the story goes, Floriano clutched a crucifix he was wearing around his neck and landed completely uninjured. In gratitude, he immediately carved a cross into the soft tufa, volcanic rock…with his hands.” With that Peg put down her arms.
“Is it still there?” Lee asked.
“Yes, if you believe that sort of stuff. I mean, really. There’s a little chapel there now and every year, around the middle of September as I recall, there’s a small service. For the last few years, Andrea was quite in charge of it.”
“So,” Adriano ventured, “Andrea was popular in Orvieto.”
“Popular is the understatement of the decade,” said Peg, with none of what Adriano and Lee had already come to expect as her signature theatricality. “Everyone in town just loved him. If there was a good deed to be done, Andrea was doing it, quietly. He didn’t call attention to himself. He just moved through the town helping people. It was his birthday the night that he jumped. He killed himself right after Mass at Sant’Andrea. His funeral two days later was immense.”
That must explain the scuffle during Mass last night, Lee thought. The two young men must have been friends of Andrea, come to pay their respects exactly a year after his death. Was one of the boys Andrea’s lover? Both perhaps? Was La Madrina trying to shoo them out of the church because they were gay?
“Wow. Two days after he celebrated his birthday, he was buried from the same altar,” Lee stated quietly. Adriano squeezed his hand again. This time he felt it, and was grateful.
“Oh my God, no.” Peg grabbed her bosom and threw back her head, once again the drama queen holding court. “No. He was buried from Il Duomo, the cathedral! Sant’Andrea isn’t big enough to hold all the people that came to Deacon Andrea’s funeral, let me tell you. There was even a cardinal who came from Rome. The press was all over, but the bishop refused to let them inside. I, of course, was an exception.”
“You went?” Peg didn’t strike Lee as the churchgoing type.
“Everyone went, the whole town. I did a special blog post all about it,” Peg said, releasing her chest and drawing her scarf closer to her neck. “It was the biggest thing to hit Orvieto since the town was liberated from the Germans in World War II—and no, I wasn’t around for that.”
“His name was Andrea and he was born and died on the feast of his namesake,” Lee said quietly, more of a statement than a question.
“Hmmm, yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” Peg frowned a bit and stopped walking. “That would have been a good angle into the story. Can’t believe I didn’t use it. Oh well, I can always update the blog, but, maybe not. I wouldn’t want people to think I was trying to promote myself using Andrea’s memory.”
I can’t imagine that would stop you, Lee thought. Fear of pissing off La Madrina was more like it.
“How old was he?” Adri
ano asked.
“Twenty-nine when he jumped. Yesterday would have been his thirtieth birthday.”
“My age,” Lee said. “To the day.”
The trio walked on in silence for a few minutes. Then Peg started up again with a list of sights for Adriano and Lee to visit. “and you simply must take in the British war cemetery just outside of town and the site of the Camorena massacre, kind of a locals’ WWII fetish if you ask me. And you must not miss Civita di Bagnoregio, like a mini-Orvieto and just a few miles away. It’s another one of Umbria’s delicious mountaintop villages and practically deserted. Less than a dozen people live there full-time. It’s totally isolated from the outside world and only connected by a tiny little pedestrian bridge that looks for anything like an Italian Great Wall of China. No thank you.”
The same street vendor they had encountered briefly yesterday afternoon ambled up to them.
“How ’bout you, Signor? CDs. Music for the soul.”
“No thanks,” said Lee as he turned away.
“It’s great music. Why don’t you give it a listen, man? Please?”
“I told you no already,” snarled Peg with her hand uncurling like a fern in dismissal. “Now leave us alone!”
“You don’t have to yell at me.” The dark-skinned peddler shuffled away, dejected, like a puppy caught peeing on the rug. The two Chinese kids from Mass the night before turned the corner, and the hawker perked up, in hot pursuit.
“CDs. Music for the soul.” The street merchant continued his plaintive and futile query.
“God, he drives me crazy,” Peg harrumphed, shoving her gloved hands into her coat. “I never take his crap and still he asks. I don’t know why the carbinieri let these people roam around like that. It didn’t used to be that way. Most of them are just drug dealers, pimps, and hookers from Africa. We’re getting overrun by immigrati!” She spit out the word, then instantly retreated into a practiced serenity. “Ah, here we are. My street. You can drop me here. Ciao!” said Peg, who was gone in a swirl of fabric and arm gestures.