by David Perry
CHAPTER XXXI
Baked Goods
Sunday, December 8, 2013, an hour before dawn, Orvieto
The Tower of the Moor rang out the hour with four sharp clangs that echoed across the frost-laced tiles of Orvieto’s rooftops. The town was still asleep—except her.
A tiny votive candle flickered behind the bar, the room’s only illumination. The lines in her storied face reflected the feeble flame, over nine decades of creases folded in shadowed lines and wrinkles. For more than seventy years, she had descended these stairs, at this hour, to do this thing. She didn’t need light to see.
This is how it had been done epoch upon epoch. From the time of Velzna when the town was Etruscan. After the rape by Rome. Throughout the Plague and during the reign of frightened popes. Throughout many, many wars. This was a sacred spot of creation, of honor, of escape from the sour tastes of life and the painful pangs of death.
The painting of the Seven Martyrs of Camorena peered down on her work. She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to see it to remember. It was always there, the tissue-thin skin that contained her life. Beneath the portrait, another image, a photo. Andrea. A year ago today he was to have been ordained. Instead, there was a funeral.
As automatically as breath she opened a huge and ancient cooler, a vintage as old as the war. She pulled out a long tray dotted with four enormous globs of dough. It was heavy, heavier than it used to be. Or just seemed so, more every day. Carefully, quietly, she sat it down on the wax-covered table in the middle of the kitchen. She reached behind her and grabbed a tattered but freshly laundered apron—dried from the night before—and deftly dropped it over her shoulders, tying the strings behind her. Ready for battle, she reached into an earthen jar with her right hand, scattering flour across the table. With her left she grabbed a rolling pin and attacked the mounds in front of her.
Beneath her feet, dusted with a snowfall of sugar and grain, crouched the trap door of her secrets, of Orvieto’s secrets. The hidden cache had escaped the pillage of Rome and the greed of dictators. It had already saved many—saved one. As long as she lived—maybe longer—its treasure was safe.
She continued to bake.
Two hours later, Orvieto awoke not to the peeling of bells, but to the bakery of smells that was Café Volsini, macaroons, croissants, pastries, cannoli, and communion wafers.
She took off her apron, put away the sacred dough, and then carefully pulled a tray from the oven. The bread of life. Wrapping the toasty loaf in a linen towel, she then swathed herself against the cold for the short walk across the Piazza del Duomo. The Bishop liked his bread freshly baked.
Velzna Volsini smiled to herself. She wondered if Arnaud remembered today’s anniversary. This was a communion he would never forget.
CHAPTER XXXII
Conception
Sunday, December 8, 2013, The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Orvieto
During Lee and Adriano’s two nights’ sojourn in Rome, Christmas had come to Orvieto.
Up and down the Corso, tiny living evergreens had been dropped outside of every business and store. Each shop owner was decorating the trees in a manner specific with their specialty. The butcher had sausages draped like garlands around the branches. Marco had made ornaments of wine corks for his, topped with a star made of twisted umbricelli. A constellation of cookies and sweets in the shapes of stars cascaded through the pine needles of the one outside Café Volsini. La Madrina looked up as Lee and Adriano passed. She was humming a gay tune and seemed quite chipper. She offered them a cookie “ornament,” and then returned to her decorating.
“Did we just fall into an alternative universe?” Lee whispered, wiping crumbs from Adriano’s chin.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen her smile.”
“And she was singing.”
“Maybe she got laid last night.”
“What a difference a week makes.”
Exhausted from two and a half days of nonstop power tourism, not to mention Lee’s relentless and somewhat troubling obsession about anything to do with Deacon Andrea, they had pretty much stayed closed to home last night. Lee was in a positive afterglow about seeing Pope Francis. Adriano chalked it up to the things one does for domestic harmony. He still couldn’t believe that he’d actually been to see the Pope. His mother wouldn’t have believed it. Frankly, he could hardly believe it himself. He pushed it out his mind, along with his mother’s face.
Today, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, was the traditional Italian beginning of the holiday season. Adriano and Lee ventured out into an Orvieto transformed. A huge Christmas tree had been hauled from the nearby forests and erected in front of Sant’Andrea and just below the Mayor’s city hall window. Strings of white lights arched over the cobblestones like electric frost.
“Buon Natale, my friends!”
The couple looked up to see Don Bello, weighed down with festively overflowing bags, making his way along the Corso.
The trio embraced.
“So, how was the Pope?” the old priest asked.
“How did you know?” Lee’s mouth was agape.
“Well.” Don Bello smiled. “I knew something about the tick—”
“The tickets were yours, weren’t they?” said Adriano, wagging his finger mockingly as one would to a naughty boy. “They were meant for you and Vicky.”
“Perhaps.” Don Bello winked. “But, trust me, Vicky and I have seen popes before and we will see popes again. If one lives in Washington, DC, one sees the President drive by. If one lives in Hollywood, I imagine you see movie stars on the street. Here, the Holy Father is always doing something. He’s our built-in celebrity. How close did you get?”
Lee looked to Adriano, who smiled indulgently and motioned for him to tell the story.
“He walked right past us!”
“Yes, for once, my antipathy for crowds came in handy,” said Adriano. “We sat near the back and after the service we made a dash for the exit—”
“—and that’s when Adriano saw the barricades,” Lee finished. “Everyone else was packed inside like a sardine and outside there was no one. So, we just waited. The barricades were right by the main door. I thought they’d spirit Francis out a side, but Adriano told me to stay put.”
“Even I, lapsed Catholic that I am, knew that a pope wouldn’t exit through the side door. Five minutes after we got to the barricade the doors swung open and out came a battalion of leaders from various faiths, a fleet of cardinals, and then Il Papa.”
“An Italian nun tried to push me away, but Adriano kept her at bay.”
“Yes,” Adriano laughed. “I told her in my politest but most direct Italian that if she wanted, she could peer between our legs, but there was no way we were giving up our front row seats, thank you very much.”
Don Bello chuckled and clapped his hands together. “Well done. It is always special being in the presence of the Holy Father. It sounds like even a doubter like you were moved.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said Adriano. “But I was glad to get close enough for an iPhone video to preserve the moment. Not to change the subject, but to change the subject, how was the Vatican?”
“The Vatican is the Vatican.” The elfish Don Bello shrugged good naturedly. “Everyone has an agenda and every agenda is filled out in triplicate. I went begging alms for my church and came back with a thirty-page questionnaire and formal request form from the Vatican bank. If I’d known you were going to be so chummy with His Holiness, I’d have asked for your influence! In time, the money will come. It always does.”
“You’re a patient man,” Lee said, relieving Don Bello of some of his bags. Adriano had already liberated the priest of one enormous box that had been precariously perched on top of his load.
“I am a poor Italian priest in the wastes north of Rome,” Don Bello said, smiling by way of answer. He nodded his thanks for the help with his packages. “You are proof of God’s providence. I needed help, and you appeare
d!”
“Your faith is greater than mine,” Adriano said gently.
“Ah, but that is the trick, dear Adriano. Whether or not you believe, God is still there. He does not need faith to exist. He simply is! Come, I will show you San Giovanale.”
He really does sound like Yoda, Lee thought, as they followed Don Bello up and down and round and about through Orvieto’s bustling, curving streets. Every few yards, they were stopped by residents who wanted to say a few words of greeting to the elderly priest, tip their hats, and move on. Lee felt like he was in an Italian-dubbed version of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Five minutes later, Don Bello stopped at the very edge of Orvieto’s northwest cliff face, slightly lower than the rest of the town and on an almost geometric point several hundred feet up. “This is San Giovanale.” As far as vision allowed spread the Umbrian countryside: extinct volcanic buttes, vineyards, forests, farmland, olive groves, and, shimmering a few miles away, the Paglia River. In the distance, several smaller hilltop towns bowed down like beautiful albeit less noble courtiers to the obvious queen of the region, Orvieto. On the very edge of the precipice, its ancient bell tower like a lighthouse warning sailors of the jagged cliff below, sat a small, simple, and obviously very ancient church. “This is the womb of Orvieto.”
Don Bello motioned them into the sanctuary through a small side door. Inside, San Giovanale was as Spartan and compact as a monastic cell. How close I came to that before I met Adriano, Lee thought. A vaulted ceiling of rough-hewn rock bore witness to several architectural styles and epochs of conquering hordes. The altar was a simple stone slab. The cross, stark and empty of the usually gruesome and bleeding Christ. More like the ones of Protestant churches, this crucifix was not a symbol of death, but rather a statement of resurrection. You will find no body here. The only adornments, which stood out even more because of their monogamy, were the murals, tantalizing and often incomplete dashes of colorful Bible stories scattered around the perimeter of the nave. It didn’t take an art historian to see that they were very, very old.
“These are the oldest pieces of Christian art in Orvieto,” said Don Bello, walking with Adriano and Lee around the church. “They date back to just before the year 1000. And, before that, this was the site of an Etruscan temple, and even before that, a place where the earliest humans gathered in reverence. From here, Orvieto sprang.”
Just then, the side door erupted with the boisterous energy of several teenagers carrying boxes, backpacks, and two guitars. With them was a young nun—obviously their teacher—in a plain gray habit and fluorescent orange running shoes. Their smiles and voices grew louder when they saw Don Bello, greeting him with a chorus of ciaos.
“Ah, the youth choir for tonight’s service of the Immaculate Conception.” Don Bello beamed and excused himself to go deal with the group. “Go out to the garden. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes and continue the tour.”
While the priest waded into the army of Catholic adolescence, Lee and Adriano made their way slowly toward the garden of San Giovanale.
“You don’t see kids that young in churches back home,” Adriano remarked as they walked down the side aisle past an especially well-preserved set of frescoes. Next to it was a panel equally as damaged by centuries of neglect. Don Bello would need a lot of money to restore them all. “It’s nice to see kids doing something besides graffiti tagging. I just wish their minds weren’t being filled with this hocus-pocus. The Immaculate Conception of Jesus. Please. What a crock. As if having sex to bear a child was a sin.”
“The Feast of the Immaculate Conception isn’t about Jesus,” Lee said, looking at an especially delicate wall painting. “It’s about Mary being born without sin. God could not be born of anything other than purity and perfection. Not only was Jesus born of a virgin—the Incarnation of Jesus—but she, herself, had to be conceived without original sin. The early Church fathers really wrestled with it, the concept of the Theotokos, Greek for Birth Giver of God. It’s the one thing that truly separates Catholicism from other Christian faiths, an almost equal worship of Mary—a woman—alongside Jesus.”
“So, tonight was the night that St. Anne got knocked up by St. Joakim,” Adriano taunted playfully.
“Yes,” Lee said, surprised that Adriano actually knew the names of Mary’s parents. “If you must put so fine and crass a point on it, this was date night for the BVM’s mom and dad.”
“The BVM?”
“The Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Adriano just looked at Lee in perplexed wonder. “You truly are a font of obscure information.”
“It’s not that obscure,” Lee said, somewhat ruffled. “Over one billion Catholics believe it.”
“Well, the Church may worship a woman as a virtual goddess, but they certainly aren’t ready to have one on the altar.”
“True,” Lee said thinking of Vicky and her militant Anglicanism. He was still puzzled by the significance of that date on the back of her cross. January 3, 1983. He looked over at the nun setting up music stands and corralling her flock. “I have wondered sometimes at the devotion of women in the Church, and nuns especially. Why do they put up with being such second-class citizens?”
“Do you believe it?”
“What?”
“In the Immaculate Conception.”
“I had an Immaculate Medal. My mother gave it to me for my first communion.”
“That’s different,” Adriano said quietly, knowing he didn’t dare delve deeper into that subject.
“You know, my mother was a convert,” Lee said. “She was born Southern Baptist but became Catholic to marry my father.”
Adriano gestured for Lee to continue. Lee didn’t often talk about his parents, unless it followed one of his nightmares, and then, only haltingly.
“My grandmother, Mama’s mother, wasn’t happy about it,” Lee went on. “Catholics were viewed with suspicion in the rural South. Southern Baptists didn’t drink, smoke, or gamble.”
“And your father did all of the above.”
“There were three things my grandmother could never understand about Catholicism: bingo, real wine at communion, and the Roman Catholic obsession with the Virgin Mary.”
“So,” Adriano pushed, “do you believe it?”
“In the Immaculate Conception?”
Adriano nodded silently.
Lee smiled. “Actually, I do.”
“What?” Adriano was truly taken aback. “I know you’re kind of hippie-dippie and certainly think there’s life after death, but really, Lee, this is too much!”
Lee just grinned beatifically. “Today celebrates the idea that Mary, conceived the good old-fashioned sexual way, was born sinless, immaculate. It’s the easiest of church teachings to accept. I believe that all children are born sinless.”
Adriano pursed his lips and regarded his husband. “You are one complex piece of work, Lee Fontaine Maury, but I love you. So, in your belief system, everyone is sinless, even a pagan like me.”
“Oh no, lover, not you,” Lee tweaked as they walked out into the chilly sunshine. “You’re a deviant sinner. But you were born blameless.”
The entrance to the garden was just to the right of the main door, and down a sloping earthen ramp that wound around the ancient building, ending in a V-shaped plot of land punctuated by a huge stone cave on one end and the foundations of San Giovanale on the other. The point of the V was a flat, clearly defined oval of earth rising a hundred feet above the road below. Like a figurehead at the prow of a ship, an ancient but obviously sturdy olive tree stood sentinel, one thick branch overhanging the precipice. Its gnarled branches bore witness to taking the windy blasts of many a winter here at Orvieto’s northwestern corner. From here, all of northern Italy and beyond it all of Europe spread out. Behind, Orvieto rose up like a crown.
“This is where he jumped.”
Adriano and Lee turned to see Don Bello ambling up behind them. “Andrea.” Don Bello said his name simply. “Here was his last l
ook at Orvieto.”
Lee and Adriano stood silently, not knowing what to say. Finally, Lee offered, “I’m so sorry.”
Don Bello didn’t answer. He just stood and took in the view.
“This is right above Floriano’s shrine,” Lee said. “The Church of the Crucifix.”
“Yes.” Don Bello sighed. “Officially, La Chiesa del Crocifisso del Tufo Orvieto is part of my parish. It is part of San Giovanale.”
“So, you put the candle there,” Adriano said. Don Bello looked at him sadly. “We saw it a few days ago when we went for a walk around the Rupe.”
“Yes,” replied the old priest. He nodded and then opened his mouth as if to say something more. Closing it slowly, he only added, “Yes, yes.”
“We saw some Arabic lettering there on the rock too,” said Lee.
“Of course.” Don Bello smiled that indescribable melancholy grin that denoted memories of equal parts pleasure and pain. “Dawud. He loved Andrea too.”
“Dawud?” Lee and Adriano both asked.
“The CD peddler. You must have seen him around town. Poor man.” Again, Don Bello looked as if he were going to say more but remained silent. After a while he spoke, his voice even but quiet, like a man reciting a prayer. “‘And behold, all of this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.’ Do you know that passage?”
“It’s when Satan appears to Jesus while he is in the desert fasting,” Lee said quietly. “The Devil takes him up onto a high promontory and shows him a view of the earth’s riches. He offers it all to Jesus if he will betray his father and worship Satan. Jesus, of course, says no.”
“Yes, but that’s not the point.” Don Bello turned from the view and faced Lee with real fervor in his voice. “He was tempted. He was human.”
“Like us,” Adriano said simply.
“Exactly, my son,” Don Bello said, patting him on the shoulder. “Just like us. No more no less. If Jesus can be tempted by the pleasures of this earth, who among us can pretend to be different? Temptation comes to every man and to every woman and its ways are subtle and many. Sometimes a beautiful gift can hide a poisonous surprise. And sometimes, not every temptation is a sin. Sometimes the sin lies in not giving into temptation.”