by David Perry
CHAPTER XXVII
Family History
Friday, December 6, 2013, morning, Rome, St Paul’s, Inside the Walls
“We’re the Yankee Church in Rome,” Vicky said, proudly touring Lee and Adriano around St. Paul’s. “That’s been our nickname since we were built in 1880 after Italy defeated the Vatican States and opened the city to other religions. We’re the first Protestant church ever to be built here, the official home for American Episcopalians in Rome. A Romanesque Gothic island of progressivism in a swamp of gooey Catholic tradition.”
This morning, Vicky was more simply dressed, just a modest black pants suit set off by the same silver pectoral cross from last night. As she walked through the nave pointing out various works of art and architectural features, it swayed slightly against her tightly buttoned-up bosom. Every few steps, a bit of the inscription that Lee had noticed at dinner would swing tantalizingly into view, but he couldn’t make it out. After a while he stopped trying for fear Vicky would think he was looking at her breasts, a silly thought, but nonetheless, gay or not, Lee’s Virginia upbringing was hard to avoid. He’d find another way.
“And yet, your best friend is an elderly pre-Vatican II Italian priest,” Adriano teased gently as they walked down the main aisle of the elaborate Byzantine-style sanctuary.
“I live in hope of dear Don Bello having a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment,” she purred sweetly. “I await his conversion one day.”
“I think it’ll be a long wait,” Lee ventured. “It’s hard to teach an old priest new tricks.”
“You’d be amazed,” Vicky said, walking toward the front of the church. “Don Bello is surprisingly good at new tricks.”
“The church is gorgeous,” Adriano said. “You’ll forgive me, but it’s almost Catholic in style.”
“No offense taken.” Vicky laughed. “It’s a spectacular mishmash of influences. The exterior is high Gothic Revivalist by a British architect, G. E. Street, but the interior is Byzantium meets Boston. The US Episcopalians wanted to make a statement. It’s a little bit British and a little bit American.”
“Like you,” Lee ventured.
“How funny,” Vicky said lightly.
Almost too lightly, Lee thought.
“I never thought of it that way,” she continued. “Yes, both me and my Church had American mothers and British fathers. My grandfather fought in the Great War, and my father fought in the Second World War, both with the Irish Fusiliers Guards.”
“That was Brian Swathmore’s unit,” Lee exclaimed. “Brian was an Irish Guard. He was at Buckingham Palace as a young man, and later fought in the war. He was part of the effort that liberated Italy. He even fought at Monte Cassino.”
“What a small world.” Vicky smiled. “I had no idea. We could have had a jolly time talking about our mixed-up heritage if we had known.”
“So, your family is Irish, then, not English?” Adriano asked.
Vicky smiled. “How is it they say nowadays?—it’s complicated. My family was very, very Irish, but also very, very English. They were from Belfast, Northern Ireland, the part that is still part of the United Kingdom. My grandfather, Victor Lewis, actually worked at the shipyard of Harland and Wolff. He helped build the Titanic.”
“That’s where Brian was from,” Lee added. “Well, that’s where he was raised, just outside Belfast. He was adopted. He never knew the identity of his birth parents.”
“Not an uncommon occurrence during those times,” said Vicky. “A great many homes were broken ones between the wars in the British Isles. My grandfather was a Catholic in Northern Ireland. And, like most men during the Great War, he went off to fight.”
“He was killed in the war,” Adriano stated.
“No, unfortunately not,” Vicky said. Seeing the strange looks on Lee and Adriano’s faces, she continued. “He came back a broken man when the war ended in November 1918, shell-shocked and destroyed by a year in the trenches. He became a committed pacifist and obsessed with the League of Nations. Evidently read everything he could about it. He was convinced it was the only thing that would prevent another war. He tried to rebuild his life. He would go to speak at local meetings of veterans, urging support for the League. Advocating for nonviolence and opposing anything that smacked of aggression. He was even opposed to Irish Independence because he thought it would lead to Civil Way, which it did, eventually of course. The Troubles, as my family always called it. But, for a while, he seemed to revel in his postwar life. He went back to working at Harland and Wolff, but many at the shipyard were suspicious of him.”
“Because he was a pacifist?” Adriano asked.
“Oh no.” Vicky laughed. “Most everyone was a pacifist after World War I. No, because he was Catholic, not quite kosher in Protestant Northern Ireland, if you’ll forgive the mixed religious metaphors. He was Irish and Catholic but working in Protestant Belfast. The pro-Irish rebels didn’t trust him, and neither did the pro-British unionists. Also, he became more and more depressed by how plans for the League of Nations were shaping up. He could see that the Great Powers would never allow it to be anything with any real authority. Its provisions were full of loopholes that he was sure would one day lead to another war. Anyway, it was around this time that my grandmother got pregnant, and they had a little boy, my father, Victor Lewis, Jr. on January twentieth, 1919. On little Victor’s first birthday, which coincidentally was the day the League of Nations Charter was finally signed, my grandfather took an early morning bus from Belfast, walked to the Cliffs of Moher, and threw himself off. He left a note for my grandmother. All it said was, ‘I won’t live to see my son go off to war.’ My grandmother went completely over the edge and had to be institutionalized. She died a few years later in an insane asylum.”
“Jesus,” was all Lee could say.
“Quite.” Vicky sighed. “An orphanage took in my father, and by all accounts, he was treated well and was quite smart. When he turned eighteen, my father joined the army, the Irish Fusiliers, his father’s old unit. Two years later the Second World War started and my father ended up in Italy. He was part of the unit that liberated Orvieto from the Nazis in June of 1944. They were battling their way up the peninsula and as they approached Orvieto, a German soldier drove down waving a white flag.”
“The Germans surrendered without firing a shot? That’s a first,” said Adriano.
“No, the Germans weren’t surrendering. It’s actually quite a unique story. The German officer came down and approached my dad with a proposition. Move the battle.”
“That’s right,” said Lee with a snap of his fingers. “Remember, Adriano. I told you about it. That article I read online about the Nazi colonel and the young priest speaking Latin.”
“Yes,” said Vicky with a somewhat stilted laugh. “You’ve heard something about it. Well, it’s all true. Evidently the German had quite fallen in love with the beauty of Orvieto and its rich history, specifically the cathedral and its priceless art by Fra Angelico and Signorelli, not to mention the relics from the Miracle of Bolsena. Anyway, he suggested to my father that they declare Orvieto an open city so as not to damage it. You say your friend Brian, Bishop Swathmore, fought at Monte Cassino, south of Orvieto?”
“Yes,” said Lee. “He was badly injured there, and after the battle evacuated back to a hospital in Belfast. He didn’t like to talk about it much. I gathered that he saw some horrible things during the fighting. I did ask him once if he thought he’d ever killed anyone. ’Yes,’ he said. ’I know I’ve killed someone.’ It’s one of the reasons he entered the priesthood after the war.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Vicky. “The Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino was totally destroyed by the Allies because the Germans had dug into the abbey there. That was two months before the liberation of Orvieto. Both sides knew that Germany was losing the war, and neither wanted to leave behind an Italian wasteland of destroyed churches if they could help it. Nazism aside, the one thing both German and Italy ha
d in common was Catholicism, especially among the old-guard aristocracy.”
“So, the Brits let the Germans leave Orvieto and then just marched in?” asked Adriano.
“No, sadly, nothing quite so bloodless. My father and the German officer just agreed to move the battle. Both forces decamped about twenty kilometers away and went at it. The fighting went on for three days. Hundreds were killed, on both sides. It was brutal. The British government maintains a splendid war cemetery just outside Orvieto, on the flatlands at the base of the cliff. My little Anglican flock used to decorate the war graves there every November eleventh on Remembrance Day. Red poppies on everyone’s lapel and that sort of thing. Of course, now, someone else does it.” Her voice trailed off.
“Your father is buried there,” Lee said, more a statement than a question.
“Pops?” Vicky laughed loudly. “Oh goodness, no! I’m not that old! He didn’t even meet my mother until well after the war. He’s still with us, and quite feisty for a ninety-three-year-old. After the war, he bought a little pub in Liscannor on the west coast of Ireland where he fell in love with my mother, a lovely American girl doing postwar volunteer work, quite a bit younger than my father. It took them a while, but along I came in 1958. My mother died in childbirth. I never knew her.”
There seemed nothing to say, so Lee waited for Vicky to continue. It was like an audiobook of Doctor Zhivago.
“In a very real sense, it’s because of Pops that I ended up in Orvieto. My father came back to Orvieto four years ago in June of 2009 for the sixty-fifth anniversary of Orvieto’s liberation. There was a parade and everything. He was hailed as the liberator of the town. It was impossible for him to pay for a drink. I came with him and fell in love with Orvieto. That’s when I decided to set up my little Episcopal community there.”
“So, 2009—that was your first trip to Italy?” Lee asked, remembering the date near the “Magi” inscription on the photo in Vicky’s dining room: January 3, 1983.
Vicky opened her mouth for a second with no sounds coming out. She looked to Lee like a ventriloquist dummy whose puppet master decided to change the dialogue at the last minute, fearful of being caught in an off-color joke or a lie.
“Yes,” she stated evenly. “It was.”
She chose the lie. Lee knew with utter clarity. The photo in the St. Paul’s rectory proved it.
“What about the German officer who came down from the cliffs of Orvieto with the white flag? Whatever happened to him?” said Adriano.
You beat me to the question, Lee thought. He couldn’t explain his troubling fascination with the Episcopal web swirling around Orvieto. But, at the moment, he knew that Reverend Vicky, somehow, was at its center. Caught in or spinning those strands, however, Lee was unsure.
“Interesting that you ask,” said Vicky. Lee thought she seemed noticeably relieved at the change of subject. “He disappeared. After the war, my father tried to find him, and during the sixty-fifth anniversary commemorations the Mayor of Orvieto and several papers tried to track him down to see if he was still alive, but no luck. After the liberation of Orvieto, he just disappeared. Of course, a lot of people disappear during a war, alive or dead.”
“That’s some story,” said Lee, now more determined than ever to find out the tale behind the photo in the St. Paul’s rectory. A young man killed himself and within days both a highly regarded bishop and the pastor of a small, unimportant Episcopal congregation are “forced” to leave. Lee remembered that Adriano always called it his Spidey-sense, an inexplicable knack for finding out the story behind the story.
“Yes, well, enough of that,” Vicky said with a slight clap of her hands. “Let me show you around my church. The mosaics are quite famous. They’re the largest works by Edward Burne-Jones, the noted English artist of the Pre-Raphaelite style. This is my favorite.”
The trio stopped in front of the main aisle and looked up at an immense and elaborate semicircular work over the altar. A benevolently triumphant Christ was seated in glory between five luminous men with an empty spot to his right.
“Who’s missing?” Adriano asked.
“That would be for Lucifer,” Lee jumped in. “It’s Christ in the court of the archangels. The empty chair is where Lucifer would have been, before the fall from Grace.”
“Correct,” Vicky said. “Well done. You do know your Biblical history.”
“Just enough to be dangerous,” said Lee.
“And he’s a killer at crosswords,” Adriano summed up.
“It’s such a powerful statement I think,” said Vicky, looking up at the mosaic. “Lucifer, the greatest of the Heavenly Hosts, the bringer of light, God’s greatest spiritual warrior, banished from heaven.”
“‘And there was war in heaven.’” Lee quoted Revelation.
“Poor Lucifer,” Adriano sighed. “That’s what you get for betraying the Almighty.”
“Yes, but the work isn’t a reminder of Satan’s betrayal. It’s about the promise of redemption.”
“I don’t get it.” Adriano looked puzzled.
“Of course,” Lee nodded. “The chair is empty, awaiting Lucifer’s return. Like the tale of the prodigal son.”
“Yes,” Vicky said, quietly staring upward and turning over her cross in her hands distractedly. “Everyone deserves forgiveness, no matter how great the error. Even the Devil can find salvation. With God, everyone can once again come home.”
While she spoke, Lee quickly took a look at the cross she was nervously turning over in hand. He was just able to make out the inscription before she dropped it back into place on the front of her blouse: “1-3-83.”
The same date on the photo in Reverend Vicky’s dining room at the St. Paul’s rectory.
I wonder, Lee thought. What happened in Rome on January 3, 1983? What was the meaning of “Magi” and why was Vicky lying about it?
As they exited the church, Lee hung back. Don Bello and Reverend Vicky were conversing in Italian, with Adriano having no trouble keeping up. Lee looked back at the mosaic over the altar and the empty chair for Lucifer. Everything was so perfect, and yet, it was if the entire scene was waiting for evil to return. Lee felt the same way.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Repentance Denied
Friday, December 6, 2013, twilight, Rome
Adriano would never forget. How could he?
“This is the last thing you’ll ever get from me.”
His father had come into Adriano’s bedroom and handed the envelope to his only son with trembling hands. The sharp yellow edges of a check shone through the thin white paper. Adriano took it, tore it up without opening it, dropped it into the trash can next to his desk, and turned back to his computer. Down the hall, his mother sat on her bed, praying among a backdrop of candles, her rosary clicking like worry beads in her hand. Three hours later Adriano was on a plane to Spain to live with his grandfather. Adriano had been eighteen.
Ten years ago, today. Reverend Vicky’s words had brought it all back. As if he needed much of a reminder.
“Everyone deserves forgiveness, no matter how great the error. Even the Devil can find salvation. With God, everyone can once again come home.”
Easy for a priest to say.
Adriano took in the view of Rome from the rooftop colonnade of the Castel Sant’Angelo, Hadrian’s Tomb as it had originally been built. Hadrian, one of Rome’s Four Wise Emperors. Hadrian, the openly gay lover of the legendary Antinous. Hadrian, his namesake and his grandfather’s. When he was a boy, he had drawn pictures of this place on the back of napkins, schoolbook covers, paper tablecloths in seaside cafés near his native Caracas. His parents had always promised to bring him here. Oh well, another promise broken. No matter. Hadrian’s body was no longer here. No one even knew where it was. Funny, Adriano thought. My grandparents fled the oppression of a Spanish dictator and started a new life in Venezuela. Decades later, their grandson had done the same in reverse, an immigrant from Catholic homophobia and parental shame. His grandfathe
r had taken him in. Three years later, his grandfather had died. The year after that, Lee had sailed into his life on a cruise ship calling on Barcelona.
Ancient history, or at least Adriano tried to make it so.
His grandfather had fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Republic, against Franco, against the Fascists, against the Church. The Republic had lost. His grandfather had lost. A few hours before he died, holding his beloved grandson’s hand, he told Adriano, “Your mother, my daughter, she loves you. Your father loves you. One day, you will forgive them.”
“They have never asked for my forgiveness,” Adriano said.
“They don’t know how. They have to forgive themselves, but they can’t. Not until you forgive them first.”
Adriano had his grandfather buried among the graves of his fallen comrades from the war. He sent a telegram to Venezuela informing his parents. He heard later that they had flown to Spain and put up a memorial plaque. Whatever. Adriano had moved on.
“Barrer debajo de la alfombra” was the phrase in Spanish, a national trait that his family had raised to religious ritual: sweep it under the rug. Franco. Fascism. The Catholic Church’s complicity in all of it. A trinity of excuses for his parent’s rejection. There wasn’t carpet enough in the world to pave over that.
“Adriano, look what I found!”
Lee was running toward his husband like a kid who had just found that the best ride at the carnival was free and had no line. He was so like a little boy in his enthusiasm for anything and curiosity about everything. Adriano smiled. He loved Lee very much. He was his lover, his compinche, his friend, his husband. Take that, Catholic Church. Lee was the only family he had left. Adriano reached out his arms and waited for his beloved’s discovery.
CHAPTER XXIX
Curious Curia
Saturday, December 7, 2013, Vatican City
“She called.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to know what they knew.” The American seminarian’s voice dropped to an even lower whisper as two students passed by.