Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (24 page)

The doctor shook his thoughtful head. “But not yet, Your Holiness, a lancing might create complications.—Perhaps an X-ray in Dallas-Fort Worth.”

To Sixtus’s annoyance, the doctor always spoke of the airport as if it were a single city. “Or New York which is sooner?”

“New York is for refueling, if you recall, Your Holiness, so security is not arranged. We’re simply stopping at Kennedy for a couple of hours.”

Sixtus did remember. And the tour had to be on schedule, everywhere.

Dr. Maggini gave him two aspirins from a box he had in his pocket. “I would recommend that Your Holiness lie down and keep the right foot elevated.”

Sixtus VI retired to his private compartment. Here he had a wide bed, though not so wide as a
matrimoniale,
a shower, basin and toilet, a table with seats for two by a window. The bed could be curtained off which Sixtus thought a bit absurd. Was this in case he died in the air? A little privacy for his final moments?

He lay down, propped his head against pillows, and looked again at his speech. But now, perhaps because of the aspirins, he felt sleepy, and he shut his eyes. The aircraft’s motors made a sedating hum. He awakened from a sharp pain in his toe, as if Franco had indeed lanced it. But no. Franco was not here, and the throbbing was now like a hammer on a nerve. Sixtus blinked with the pain, alarmed.
I am mortal after all,
were the words that went through his head, but he had always known that, often said it in his speeches. He was but a human bridge between God and man, nothing more. Suppose blood poisoning, somehow, crept up his leg? Amputation? Well and good. Not fatal.

Why was the pain so awful? Sixtus started to press the bell for Franco, then drew his hand back. He was suffering,
this
was suffering, and how many times had he enjoined his people to bear sufferings of various kinds? It ill behooved him to whimper about a stubbed toe!

The Pope lunched with Stephen, Dr. Franco Maggini and Cardinal Ricci. The atmosphere was cheerful, despite polite commiserations from the Cardinal about his toe.

“Things will go well,” was the attitude at the table, and Cardinal Ricci actually said it.

There was no X-ray laid on at Dallas or Fort Worth, and the Pope did not complain lest he run into “no security” again. More refueling, then on toward Mexico City. The Pope slept badly, and concentrated on, as he put it in his own mind, making a good show tomorrow. That was to say, doing his duty well.

Pope Sixtus VI had been born Luciano Emilio Padroni in a poor region of Tuscany. In a curious way, poverty, sadness and deaths in the family, hardship, and his fondness for Padre Basilio in his village had steered him toward the Church. After some youthful escapades, when Luciano had been nineteen and again at twenty-two, he had found his feet, and his feet were firmly in the Church. Luciano believed in God and Christ. He was strong in physique, fond of hiking and skiing, even now in his late fifties. He made friends easily, though he was not gifted with an aptitude for scheming. The public seemed to like his directness and his face. This had been so when he was much younger, but still it had been a surprise for Luciano, just years ago bishop in an unimportant Tuscan diocese, to be elected Pope. He had telephoned his mother, moments after learning the news. That had been six years ago. It seemed to him that the world had been quieter then, that nations had not everywhere been at one another’s throats, but probably that wasn’t so. The world did
not
change drastically, just became “more so” in certain departments. Now it was the pro-birth control people again, flaring up in the United States as they had a few years back in Ireland. Bishops and priests in America had come out in their own churches in favor of birth control, in favor of condoning homosexuality and calling it a psychological aberration rather than a vice. Sexual intercourse before marriage was all right with them too. And equal standing in the Church after a second marriage. There was no end to these liberals’ ideas, it seemed, and they did not realize that they were not making the Church any stronger by their new “principles,” but turning the Church into a leaky vessel.

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 Holiness 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.