Luciano Emilio Padroni groaned and tossed, unable to sleep.
Now in Mexico and elsewhere it was liberal theology, priests dressed like peasants, some even ready to fight with guns, agitating for land re-distribution, higher wages, all disturbing, all irrelevant to the meaning and function of the Roman Catholic Church upon this earth!
Luciano had thought he was awake, but the sun of Mexico really awakened him, golden and hot through the round windows of the jet as he showered and shaved himself, and dressed. By now he had to walk on the heel of his right foot. The swelling of his great toe had made the skin shiny, made the nail look absurdly small, like a button holding down a pillow. And the pink had deepened.
“So—a lancing now, perhaps?” Sixtus said to Franco as they breakfasted in Sixtus’s compartment. The doctor had asked to see the toe, so here it was, stockingless, though the rest of the Pope was clad.
Again Franco shook his head. “If it breaks, we have penicillin powder. I hesitated yesterday between an ice pack and simply elevating it.”
And gave only a couple of aspirins against the pain, thought the Pope. But politely, he said nothing.
Down the ramp now, as the crowd, held back by a three-deep wall of police and soldiers, lifted their voices in greeting. The Pope raised his arms, smiled, and once on the tarmac, bent and kissed its surface, causing such pain in his toe that he dared hope it had ruptured, but he did not look down at his feet. He wore loosely fitting white slippers, white stockings, a white robe with gold embroidery, and a round white cap on the curve of his skull.
An entourage of motorcycles and black limousines bore the Pope and his group toward their destination, which was the sports stadium of the University of Mexico. Sixtus had been to Mexico before, but to bless a cathedral, not to make an address. The President of Mexico rode in the limousine with the Pope, smiling but looking uncomfortably warm in a morning suit with wing-collar and white tie. The air-conditioning in the limousine had broken down, the Pope overheard someone say in Spanish.
Guards, off-key trumpets, and an attempt at a solemn march by a military band. The heat was enough to wilt a camel. The Pope, with crosier in hand, climbed wooden steps to a wooden podium and faced the masses in the stadium. The hum of thousands rose to a roar. Those not already on their feet in the oval arena stood up from folding chairs, while those in the bleachers stood up also, yelling, waving sombreros, applauding, anything to make noise. Sixtus lifted his arms in vain for silence. The Mexicans thought his gesture was a greeting and greeted him back. It was often so. The Pope waited in good humor, or at least with a good-humored look on his face. He watched a nimble, shirtsleeved policeman, not ten meters away from him and below him, club a thin dog in the ribs to get the dog off the scene. Many in the crowd were eating tacos, plain tortillas, roasted corn on the cob, and the whippet-like mongrel was after a crumb, and it was not the only dog, the Pope noticed. Two or three skin-and-bone strays had sneaked in and were being actively pursued and kicked at by the policemen.
Throb, throb went his toe, like the pulse in his temple. Sixtus felt sweat run down his sideburns on to his cheeks.
“My people!” he began in Spanish. “In the name of God . . .” He knew it by heart in several languages. The faint breeze lifted the pages of his speech which lay before him on a rostrum, and beyond the rostrum was a ring of black microphones, and beyond that the masses of Mexicans, mainly men in shirtsleeves and sombreros, but there were a good many women and children too. He could see fathers holding up their small children here and there, so they could say later, “My boy or girl saw the Pope!” Sixtus VI saw two men in raggedy clothing competing for a position directly before him. One family seemed to have at least six children, all appearing small from the Pope’s view. A few women with heads covered in rebozos wiped tears from their eyes.
“Silence!” cried a man on the podium.
“Throw him out!” said a voice from below, and the Pope saw a thin fellow in white trousers and a T-shirt, a man of middle-age, being hit over the head once, twice with a policeman’s baton, then dragged half-unconscious by another policeman from the scene. The man’s T-shirt had peeled off, torn apart, and the Pope saw the man’s ribs clearly, as he had seen those of the dog a moment before.
“Thief !” said a voice from somewhere. “He was after money! Shame!”
“Silence! Shame!” The voice, from a faceless man below, reached the Pope’s ears. Shame that anyone spoke while the Pope spoke?
“My people,” the Pope began again, speaking without his written speech. “I have a special message for you.” Often had he said these words in Lima, Rome, Warsaw. “Pay attention to your priests, your padres in your villages—men like Padre Felipe!” Felipe in the State of Chiapas was the most “liberal” and articulate of them all. The Pope heard a collective gasp, a single “Hah!” of amazement from some throat below. “Your priests are right to say that the rich are pitiless, that your wages are not enough—for human dignity or family nourishment. And too—”
The Pope had to stop, because a murmur passed over the crowd like a wind. Sixtus stamped his right foot, grasped his staff as hard as he could with his right hand, and set his jaw.
“Your Holiness—your speech!—Are you well?” It was Franco his doctor, bending anxiously toward him on his left, not daring to touch his left arm, it seemed, though his hand was outstretched to do so.
Sixtus VI felt suddenly angry at Franco, irrationally, insanely angry, and so he loftily ignored his doctor and continued. “And more!” he shouted into the microphones. “Since your poverty is a disgrace not to you but to those richer than you—you have every right, every conceivable right to try to improve your circumstances.—And you women, you mothers—it is not your duty or your God-assigned fate to be eternally bound to childbirth—as is a blindfolded ass to a wheel at a well.”
Sixtus paused, noticing curious stirrings in the populace before him. He sensed a storm coming, but sensed also that he had got his message across. Some figures below lifted their arms, as if afraid to cry out though they wanted to. The Pope banged his crosier down. “My word is truth—my word!” The butt of the crosier banged twice on the wooden floor. The Pope, though not looking down, was trying to hit his toe. Again with full strength he brought the crosier down, and this time struck his toe squarely.
The pain was acute and heat burst out all over him, then coolness came over his forehead and he smiled at the crowd before him.
“Bless you!” cried Sixtus VI. “Bless you!” He raised his arms, his right hand still holding the crosier. The pain had drained from his toe, and his right foot felt pleasantly cool even.
“Your Holiness!” Stephen had sprung up beside him in his dark robe, white collar, his young face smiling. He shook his head in a puzzled way. “Your foot!” he said, pointing.
Now the crowd was on its feet and shouting, and there was too much noise for anyone to hear any definite words. The President and his aides gestured courteously to indicate that Sixtus should come down from the podium. The Pope knew what was next on the agenda: a visit to a certain plaza downtown and near the Zocalo.
“Is Padre Felipe in the city?” asked the Pope. “I should like him with me today!” He had to shout to make himself heard, and he was addressing the aides, anyone rather than the President of whose co-operation he was not certain.
“We’ll find Felipe!” Who had said that?
The Pope’s right slipper was entirely red with blood, and Stephen pointed to it with an alarmed expression on his face.
The Pope made a gesture which said that all was well.
A limousine whisked the Pope, Stephen, Dr Maggini and one or two others of the Pope’s staff, as well as the President, toward Mexico City. The Pope removed his slipper and set it on his knee. In the hot breeze that came through the partly open window, the slipper rapidly dried, and stiffened.
“Y-your Holiness,” the President of Mexico said, gulping with nervousness, “I must strongly suggest that Your Hol
iness go directly to the airport. It is a matter of security.”
Sixtus VI had expected that. “God’s will be done. I am not afraid. The people expect me at the little plaza, do they not?”
The President, unable to contradict the Pope, nodded, bit his lip and looked away.
Padre Felipe had somehow got the message. The Pope saw his slender, black-clad figure before the limousine had quite stopped at the plaza. Here were police and soldiers in abundance. The tall Felipe looked like a scarecrow as he turned this way and that with arms outstretched, quietly resisting the police who seemed to want to remove him from the scene.
“Felipe!” shouted the Pope, as he stepped out of the limousine. This was the 25-year-old Felipe Sainz, who had twice been in prison for leading strikes for better housing for field-workers and for clamoring too loudly for medical care for injured workers and pre-natal food allowances for their wives. The young priest looked astounded as Sixtus embraced him.
Soldiers and police gaped, and rather nervously watched the crowds all around them. They had more than a thousand people to deal with now, and more were coming via the many streets and lanes off the plaza. Here also was a podium or round stage, but of metal, like an old bandstand without its roof. The Pope climbed the steps with Felipe. Stephen followed.
“Your foot, Your Holiness!” cried Padre Felipe. He was unshaven as usual, with heavy moustache, ordinary dark trousers and tunic, which looked as if he had slept in them.
“My foot was hurting an hour ago, but no longer,” said Sixtus, smiling. The Pope’s white stocking had also become red, but felt dry, as if the bleeding had stopped.
“This—” Stephen turned the rigid red slipper between the fingertips of his right hand.
Padre Felipe’s eyes widened. “Blood?”
The blood on the slipper had darkened, but its redness was unmistakably that of blood.
Sixtus VI placed the slipper at the edge of the rostrum, spread his arms, said the usual greeting and brief blessing, then picked up the slipper, which had its normal weight despite its color.
“My blood—I am human like you—and mortal,” said Sixtus.
The crowd stared in surprise, puzzlement, many smiled, uncertain how to take the Pope’s words, others stared with dark eyes into the Pope’s face as if, by staring at the holy man at such close range, they could extract all the wisdom they needed to live.
Thus was born the phrase “Pope of the Red Slipper.” Sixtus’s stubbing of his toe (which he described) he called proof of the fallibility even of those in high office. The pain that had followed was a sign of error, and the relief of that pain, when facts were faced and dealt with, was truth, reality. A stubbed toe! That was a mistake that everyone could understand.
The Pope stepped to one side of the rostrum and extended his red-stockinged foot, so that as many as possible might see it. “The pain is gone!”
Padre Felipe laughed softly, and his eyes sparkled.
As in the stadium, the somewhat stunned audience only slowly realized what the Pope was talking about, and why Padre Felipe was with him. The Pope extended a hand to Padre Felipe, and the priest took it. The Pope did not need to say more.
The low murmur of the crowd grew louder. From somewhere, churchbells began to ring, irregularly, sounding cheerful. A mariachi band started up tentatively in a nearby street, then gathered assurance and romped ahead. But mainly the crowd was solemnly happy, people chatted and laughed with one another. The Pope wandered among the throng, laying his hand for a few seconds on children’s and babies’ heads.
Policemen trailed him. The President watched tensely from where he stood near a row of black limousines. At least three television crews were at work.
A Mexican-style late midday meal was scheduled at the President’s mansion. By now it was after 2. The Pope asked the President if he might invite Padre Felipe to the lunch? Or would that cause the President inconvenience? The Pope knew it would cause a stickiness, but hoped this would not preclude Felipe’s presence, though the Pope did not say this.
The President, a fence-sitter of necessity, took a deep breath to reply, but Dr. Maggini got the first word in.
“Your Holiness, I must take the soonest possible opportunity to check your temperature. In view of your foot—and the heat—”
Sixtus understood: the cautious doctor was trying to prepare an excuse for the Pope’s words at the stadium and here in the plaza. His Holiness did not mean everything he said. His mind was disturbed by a high fever at that time. “You may take my temperature, Franco, but I feel quite well, very well, in fact.”
“Your Holiness—may I suggest—” The President sought for diplomatic words. “The crowd is growing. The sooner we leave—”
The crowd was indeed growing, the soldiers and police had become more active, leaping into the air, brandishing batons. The gathering populace was cheerful, Sixtus saw, but the number of police and soldiers would soon not be enough to handle them. Cardinal Ricci consulted with the President, a limousine was pointed to, and the Pope was urged toward it.
They all got in, except Padre Felipe, to whom the Pope had to wave good-bye through the window. They were off, not to the Presidential mansion but to the airport. Half an hour later, the Pope sat in a chair in his air-conditioned quarters in the Vatican jet, with a thermometer in his mouth.
The good Dr. Maggini had to concede that the Pope’s temperature was normal. A servant had bathed the Pope’s right foot in a basin of tepid water. The skin at the tip had split, but the color and even the size of the great toe was back to nearly normal, and the narrow split was not even bleeding now.
“It’s like a small miracle, isn’t it?” said Sixtus, smiling at the doctor and at Cardinal Ricci and Stephen who were in the room with him. “And where’s my red slipper, Stephen?”
“Ah, yes, someone—” Stephen began awkwardly. “It could have been Padre Felipe, Your Holiness, though I feel sure he didn’t intend to appropriate it, just carry it. There was some confusion in the last minutes.”
“A few moments in privacy, Your Holiness,” the Cardinal whispered.
The Pope made a gesture to indicate that he wished the room cleared. “Go and have some lunch, my friends.”
Cardinal Ricci lingered. “Your Holiness is perhaps aware of the consequences—”
“Yes, yes,” said Sixtus. “It will take a while for my words to seep down to all the people—at their roots.”
“Seep down, Your Holiness!—Would you like to see the television now? Rome is broadcasting without stop. Ireland—New York, Paris. It’s like an explosion of some sort. There’ll be turmoil for weeks—longer—unless you temper your words, alter them a little.”
“Ireland—yes, I can imagine,” said Sixtus. “And surely some people in America are happy?”
The Cardinal glanced at the closed door of the compartment, as if he feared a listener, or an intruder. “Do you realize where we are, Your Holiness? On the tarmac in Mexico City. We can’t go on to Bogotá. They won’t have the facilities to protect you. No South American country can provide security—under these circumstances.”
The Pope understood. It was the friendly people who might crush him and his staff, not the men with guns who might come later. Surely the landowners were already busy collecting themselves. “But to return to the Vatican now,” Sixtus began calmly, “would look like a retreat, would it not, my dear Cardinal? Running for safety?”
“Why, yes, perhaps!” the Cardinal replied promptly. “Except for the fact that the Curia is just as shocked as everyone else and not inclined to be—well, congratulatory, Your Holiness. I concede that our lives may not be in such danger in the Vatican.”
Sixtus told himself he could have expected the Curia to be chilly, even hostile, but the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until now. “Let’s have some lunch and watch television. Or I shall,” said the Pope.
The Pope had a shower and put on fresh and comfortable clothes. He had made it clear to Cardinal Ricci a
nd others of his staff that he wished to go on to Bogotá, Colombia, though their time of arrival might not be the time Bogotá expected him. Couldn’t they spend the night on the tarmac here? Couldn’t Mexican soldiers guard them, if need be? The Pope received evasive answers. The Cardinal promised to speak with “authorities” by radio-telephone.
The Pope switched on the TV in his compartment during lunch with Stephen and Dr. Maggini. He saw that he need not have worried about the loss of his red slipper.
The slipper with its slightly upturned toe, its simple slit as opening for the foot, had been duplicated a thousand-fold by now in Mexico, New York, even Rome! People had made slippers out of pieces of cardboard. The news announcer smiled and stammered as he explained the slippers in Spanish. Small children, grown-ups with tears running down their smiling faces, held up paper replicas of his slipper, colored a bright blood-red. All this in less than four hours!
Sixtus caught Stephen’s eye. “I thought you would disapprove, Stephen, you the conservative.”
Stephen replied, “It was the way you said it—especially at the little plaza.” He wet his lips nervously, though he was eating fresh papaya with pleasure, as was the Pope. “I suddenly understood, Your Holiness.” Stephen glanced at the Cardinal and Dr. Maggini, who were both watching the TV screen with rather long faces. “You can count on me,” Stephen said softly.
“Thank you, dear Stephen. I mean to go on to Bogotá.—I should like to.” The implication was that he would not order anyone, not the pilot or anyone else to accompany him, because it now might mean endangering other people’s lives.
“I shall go with you,” said Stephen. A moment later, looking at the TV screen, he said, “These little slippers! Unfortunately, Your Holiness, by tomorrow they’ll probably have them in plastic! Ha-ha!”
Now there was Ireland, Londonderry, a group of laughing women being interviewed.
“Bowled over? That we are! But it had to come, didn’t it? We’re all happy. . . .” The voice-over began translating into Spanish. The Catholic women of Ireland were all faithful believers, and grateful to the Pope, one woman said, and would be even better Catholics for what Sixtus Sextus had done.
Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes Page 18