He caught a train west toward Mont Blanc, noting for the first time that he’d been awake all night, just as many of the Carnival-goers had been. Yet, he was not weary. He exited at the proper station and began his hike toward the mountain. The sun blazed with orange brilliance but was low enough in the sky that its rays withheld from burning one’s eyes. In the low plateaus, he came across a pasture of tall grass where a flock of butterflies was gathered, resting peacefully on the tips of each blade. He smiled and took off in a sprint, running through them and dispersing the butterflies into the air. They floated up, their colorful wings flapping against the blue of the sky.
Upward he then climbed, continuing with his prayers. He pondered the puzzling wonder in which he could feel so close to God in the confines of a small, dark room, and yet feel just as close to him in the vast expanse of the Alps. It was the mystery of the Faith, in that he understood it on some subconscious level, and yet, he could not explain it.
In the course of the next twenty-four hours he refrained from eating anything, drinking only water to renew his strength. He wandered about the side of the mountain, finding pleasant areas in which to utter his prayers—in the limbs of a pine, beneath a cliff, atop a gorge, at the mouth of a cave. He pitched a tent and departed early for bed, bundling himself in blankets to shield the bitter cold.
The next day he awoke at dawn and descended the mountain, arriving home in time to take his grandmother to Mass. While he waited for her to get ready, he poked his head in Luciana’s room, but her bed was empty.
The family’s maid was walking the hallway.
“Mariscia, where is Luciana?”
“I believe she spent the night at a friend’s house, Georgie,” she replied. “You know how crazy things are at the Carnival. But I’m sure she’s alright.”
“Oh … alright, yes, thank you.”
Pier Giorgio walked down to his parents’ bedroom and cracked the door. Both of them were sleeping. He shut the door and went back downstairs. Grandmother Ametis was ready and waiting.
“Ready, Georgie?”
“Yes, of course.”
He smiled and escorted her out through the front door.
22
The Shady Characters
Pier Giorgio was surprised when his eyes began to water. His emotions ran over him like a herd of beasts as Father Robotti lead him in his final promises, standing just before the altar at the Chapel at Our Lady of Grace in Turin’s Church of San Domenico. But these were not the priestly vows he had pictured himself making one day, rather, he was being received into the Third Dominican Order, a lay group dedicated to a defense of the Faith and a devotion to ardent prayer life.
It was a commitment three years in the making, juggled between dozens of other duties he had undertaken, including his continued education at the Polytechnic. But the decision to join the Order was affirmed with confidence when he made the decision in Germany to forego a priestly calling.
He had always been enamored with Dominican spirituality and found this intimate group as a way to further his relationship with God. It was a sort of compromise, he thought, to becoming a man of the cloth.
In the months that followed he attacked his new role within the Order just as he had done with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Marian Sodality, the Apostleship of Prayer, and every other organization to which he held claim. Through so many of these groups he continued to combat Fascism, which was spreading like untamed vines of ivy across the churches of Italy and threatening the Faith with their vice-like grip on religious freedoms.
But amidst the struggles of his daily life, he found time for solace as well in the form of friendship. The bliss of common interests found in several other young people helped ease the worries of his hectic life; it was a common interest that, without surprise, involved his love for the mountains.
At the end of another long week of studies at the Polytechnic, he stopped by the Cathedral on his way home to pray for the safe travels of his forthcoming expedition. An hour later he frantically packed up his belongings and sprinted over to the train station. Gathered there together, loading their luggage below the train, was the group known as “The Shady Characters.”
“Oh!” Marco exclaimed. “There’s our final member, and a founding member at that. We were afraid we’d have to leave without you.”
“I’m sorry for my tardiness,” Pier Giorgio panted, throwing his things below the train.
“What were you doing?” asked his friend Isidoro.
“Must you even ask?” Marco interjected. “He was somewhere close to a tabernacle, no?”
Pier Giorgio answered by way of a silent smile and they all laughed. Inside the train, they took their seats and prepared for their journey west toward the French border, a journey that would ultimately lead them to a small hostel resting atop the Alps known as the Little St. Bernard.
In a series of events lost to a clouded memory, Pier Giorgio had helped found this casual but important club consisting of nearly a dozen young, Christian mountain climbers. Their unusual name derived from a desire to seem mysterious to outsiders, though in most regards the name was no more than a joke. Their comings and goings were never of the serious sort, and it was fairly common for all their energy to be devoted to pranks played on one another. But they came together in fellowship several times a month, usually culminating with a weekend mountain excursion.
The group consisted of men and women, which was unusual, as most groups separated the sexes. But this was what Pier Giorgio loved about the unofficial “Society.” It was not regulated by the rules and regulations that so many organizations were confined by. It was a dynamic gathering of people, adding and losing members with each meeting, but Pier Giorgio remained ever at the center of them all, as if he were the timber that kept their fire roaring with life.
He glanced around the car, eyeing each of his friends sitting beneath the dim, flickering lights of the train. He watched, unbeknownst to them, as they laughed and told stories and discussed the impending weekend climb. Pier Giorgio knew these moments ran deeper than they appeared on the surface. While he viewed their camaraderie as a means of recreation and relaxation, he knew the time he spent with these friends was a way to lasso their souls toward Christ. Their guards were down on such occasions, their watchful dragons resting in jaded slumber. It was here, Pier Giorgio knew, that he could bring the Faith to them, perhaps without them even realizing it.
In many ways, it astounded Pier Giorgio that so many of his youthful brethren went about each day without a second thought to the world to come. He worried for them more than they could possibly fathom; he worried, in fact, for their own souls more than perhaps they did themselves. He was free of condemnation and judgment, for he was not without his own transgressions, and his friends were certainly not forged from the fires of great evil. But he noticed as the years passed that they were coasting through life, at first dipping their toes into the lakes of sin, but in time had stood back up and seemed to be bracing themselves for a plunge, headfirst, into such tainted waters.
Pier Giorgio prayed that they would stop, if but for a breath, to consider the capacity in which God viewed their sins, and in doing so they might combat the hypnotic trance of this world and its materialistic and self-gratifying demons. Such trips into the towering stratospheres of the Alps were a haven where Pier Giorgio knew he could reach them, and it was such trips that confirmed his decision to forego his inclination to the priesthood. As a layman, as a friend, he could reach them more intimately.
At the last stop, the group exited the train and retrieved their luggage. They quickly changed into their climbing gear so as to set out toward the hostel and reach it before nightfall. Pier Giorgio led the way through a hiking trail that sent them up toward the clouds, navigating their way through the pine forests and eventually scaling steep gorges and cliffs. They worked together and respected the mountains at moments of peril, moving slowly and linking themselves with rope, and at simpler momen
ts they laughed and told stories, as if strolling through a park resting thousands of feet above sea level.
The Little St. Bernard, with its stone walls and tin roof, came into view just as the sun’s rays disappeared beyond the surrounding cliffs. The group broke into cheers and sprinted across the flat terrain leading up the entrance.
After checking in, Pier Giorgio broke off from the group to check on the status of a visitor he’d asked to come without the knowledge of the rest of the group. He located the room given to Monsignor Pinardi and knocked on the door. The older priest, nearly bald and slightly overweight, came to greet him.
“I hope you are well, Monsignor. I cannot thank you enough for making the trip.”
“Thank you for inviting me Georgie, and for picking up the cost on my room.”
“Of course. It’s a small cost in exchange for your celebrating Mass tomorrow. I will see you in the morning, then?”
“Yes, bright and early.”
“Wonderful!”
Pier Giorgio departed down the hall and found his way to the servant quarters, greeting all the employees of the hostel—the cooks, maids, and custodians—with smiles and hugs. He inquired about their health and how their families were doing, and asked them to come to Mass in the morning.
He joined his friends in the dining hall and sat down to break bread with them. The fellowship of good conversation and company continued, with the added benefit of wine and pipes whose consumption had been delayed on the journey there. There were a few other patrons staying at the hostel, but none who possessed the energy of the Shady Characters and the ability to be the life of the party.
After dinner, they retreated to their rooms momentarily to bundle themselves in warmer clothing. A tradition awaited, that of a short hike to a nearby waterfall just beyond the hostel grounds, hidden a half-kilometer away behind a small cliff. The area was only reached with great care. Pier Giorgio and several of the men lit lanterns and led everyone else through the darkness of the alpine woods, around the cliff by means of a dirt trail and to a clearing just next to the waterfall. They built a campfire on the bank of the river and settled into a circle to prolong their evening.
“I wonder how many souls have frequented this spot before us,” Giuseppe mused, “I cannot image it is many.”
“No, not many at all,” agreed Christina, a young brunette with sharp features and engaging eyes of hazel. “We’ve never seen any other guests of the Bernard here before. It’s too hidden.”
“Does this not make you stop to appreciate what we’ve found …” Giuseppe asked no one in particular, “… to think that we presently rest in a spot where perhaps only a few souls have come in the entire world’s history?”
“We Shady Characters are first-class adventurers,” Pier Giorgio said proudly, still working on his pipe from dinner. The fire in the center popped with life.
“Where did you sneak off to before dinner, Georgie?” asked Clementina, the unofficial leader of the Shady Characters.
“Ah, so you noticed? I went to see a surprise guest whom I have invited.”
“Who?” Marco asked.
“Monsignor Pinardi has agreed to come say Mass for us first thing in the morning.”
A few of them moaned playfully.
“Georgie,” Isidoro broke in, “tomorrow is Saturday. We’ll go to Mass on Sunday morning.”
“There’s no harm in going to Mass two days in a row,” Pier Giorgio reasoned. “I have invited him all this way, so I will be in attendance. But anyone who wishes to make other plans may do so. I’ve spoken with many of the servants of the Bernard and they will be there.”
After a short pause, a young man new to the group, Ernesto, said, “I feel no different when I have left Mass; it seems if I had not gone at all, nothing would be different.”
“You must not say this,” Pier Giorgio said, turning his focus toward the new member.
“I don’t wish to feel this way. I have guilt over these feelings, but yet, it’s the way I feel.”
“I understand, Ernesto, I do. There is no denying that the human mind is weak and tempted to boredom by habitual practices like our sacred Mass. I’ve found myself pondering trivial matters while sitting in the pews, like my next exam at school, or how to get back at Marco for putting that rotten egg in my shoe the last time we came up here.”
Everyone laughed.
“I’m ready for you,” Marco said confidently.
“Yes, sleep with one eye open, my friend.” Pier Giorgio chuckled and went on. “But Ernesto, I promise you, the unseen graces received from the Mass—from the Word and the Flesh you consume—is beyond measure. We all fight inner battles, do we not? Battles against sins we know are wrong; battles against the moments of our sadness or depression, or rage or temptation?”
He looked around the circle, but no one answered.
“How is it that we are able to fight these inner battles? By turning to drink? To dance? To sport? To climbing mountains like this? All these are only temporary solutions, if solutions at all. It is only by feeding on the Bread of Angels that we gain the strength to fight these battles against passion and all adversities, because Christ has promised eternal life and the graces necessary to obtain it to those who feed on the Holy Eucharist. And when you are totally consumed by this Eucharistic fire, then you will be able, more consciously, to thank God who has called you to become a part of that multitude, and you will enjoy the peace that those who are happy in accordance with this world have never experienced, because true happiness does not consist in the pleasures of this world or in earthly things, but in peace of conscience, which we only have if we are pure in heart and mind.”
“Poor Ernesto,” Isidoro said shaking his head, “he had no way of knowing he would set off our club’s Minister of Christ.”
Several of them laughed and attempted to change the subject, but a young man named Bertone brought the topic back.
“I know the importance of Mass. But I do not see, Georgie, how you are able to keep such a strong faith. Does it not waver at times? It must, with all that’s happening in Italia with the Fascists. Did you hear about the priest who was beaten to the point of near-death in Florence last week?”
Pier Giorgio nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“I am angered that God would allow such a thing to happen,” Bertone added.
“I’m angered by this as well, but we must not direct our anger at God. He did not commit these acts. Those men did, and we must pray for them just as much as we pray for the recovering priest, if not more. Remember that the men who performed this heinous act had the free will to forego their violent urges. Free will allows such things to happen, but God must give us this freedom, for only then can we truly choose to love him. But yes, Bertone, my faith wavers at times. How could it not with all the pain and sadness of this world? At times I feel like a man drowning, searching for the strength for one more stroke. But it’s only through faith that we can find meaning in it all. Faith is the anchor of our salvation; therefore, we must cling to it tightly. It is the only thing which allows us to bear the thorns with which are lives are woven. What would our life be without it? Nothing, or rather it would be spent uselessly, because in the world there is much sorrow, and sorrow without faith is unbearable. But sorrow lit by the torch of faith becomes a beautiful thing because it tempers the soul to the struggle.”
“Our faith can be strong,” Christina said from across the flames of the fire, “but what will we do without our Church, Georgie, when it falls to the Fascists who wish to destroy it?”
“If our faith is strong our Church will be strong as well. The times we’re going through are difficult, because cruel persecution of the Church is raging. But you bold, young people,” he said peering around the circle, “you should not be afraid of this small thing known as Fascism. Do you not know that we win?” he asked laughing. “It has already been written; remember that the Church is a divine institution and cannot come to an end. She will last till the e
nd of the world. Not even the gates of hell can prevail against her. So I say, bring it on Benito!”
He stood up and pounded his chest like a gorilla. They all laughed.
“You should be careful,” Marco offered, “Mussolini is likely to have spies in these woods.”
Pier Giorgio jumped behind a tree stump, poking his head up like a groundhog. Marco, filled with perhaps too much wine, jumped on top of him and the two wrestled amidst the laughter of the rest of the group.
Moments later, the commotion dissipated. Clementina threw another log on the fire and the group settled back in.
“Alright,” Ernesto said, “I will come to Mass with you tomorrow. How could I not after such words you have graced us with?”
“Yes,” Giuseppe agreed, “we’ll all be there, in order to make our fearless leader happy.”
“Wonderful!” Pier Giorgio exclaimed.
The conversation turned back to trivial matters, to which Pier Giorgio contributed little. He decided he had commanded enough of the conversation already. So he sat quietly in the glow of the fire, peeking at a member of the group who had remained silent throughout most of the trip. His eyes fought the temptation to glance at her every so often, but Laura Hidalgo was like an optical magnet to which he was powerless against.
23
The Haze of Love
He wrote her letters. Many of them. But, as a fool afraid to disclose what was blossoming within his heart, he hid his love from the one to which his feelings were directed to by writing letters to all the members of the Shady Characters.
The idea came to him in a panic after he had dropped off the first of his letters to Laura at the post office. He pictured her opening it, surprised to get something from him in the mail. She would no doubt ask Christina and some of the other members of their club if they too had received letters from Pier Giorgio. When they replied that they had not, her suspicion would set in and his feelings for her would become a common topic of conversation among the group. The horror was too ghastly to imagine.
To the Heights: A Novel Based on the Life of Pier Giorgio Frassati Page 13