The Judas Cloth (41 page)

‘You’re not listening.’ Flavio was unaware of competing with his past self for Nicola’s attention. Best because past? No: because
first
!
Vivid, prism-images dissolved in Nicola’s head as the last of the champagne was doing in his glass. ‘Wool-gatherer!’

‘Sorry. What was it?’

‘Really, Nicola, if you were anyone else, I’d say you’d fallen in love with Miss Ella.’

The idol smiled on and shortly afterwards they got into a
silk-upholstered
carriage and dropped her off at the theatre where she had, it seemed, to limber up and prepare for the performance. The other two drove to the Albergo Brun where Flavio changed into evening clothes and talked about money.

‘My uncle despises it,’ he said. ‘Well, we know that he gave up a position in society to join the Church and a position as cardinal to join the Society. Yet the irony is that he has had to be more worldly since than he need ever have been in a secular sphere. Since he brought the Jesuits a fortune, he was given the task of persuading me to do the same – and, alas for the Js, nobody was less fit to do it. First he took the longest time conveying the fact that the good fathers expected some quid pro quo from me, some undertaking that they as well as I would profit from the law suit they were helping me win. What about my becoming one of them? Had I no inclination? Well, I saw that I had better show willing so, to cut a long story short, I entered their seminary and a miserable time I had. Poor as I was, I was used to my freedoms and when they handed me a whip to use on myself on Fridays – in memory of the Passion – and a barbed-wire ring to clamp round my thigh every morning between rising and the breakfast bell, I took it first for a joke and then for a vice. They’re touchy about being called worldly, so now all the old, forgotten savage rules are being revived. You don’t look your
superior in the eye but lower your head and keep “custody of your eyes”, etc. Meanwhile, need I say, the political members of the Society are intriguing as never before to get back into the Pope’s good graces. My uncle is an innocent. I used to divert myself – one has to survive somehow – by asking him whether, as the family and the Church are equally worthy institutions, it can be right to take money from one to give to the other. In his case and mine there was a clash of loyalties. What about our nephews? As one who had not had the benefit of family rearing, I was, I told him, asking in all innocence what I owed my new family. He was genuinely upset.’ Flavio laughed and pirouetted in front of a pier glass. ‘Do you like my duds?’

‘Do you know that the first thing you said to me was, “I like your livery”?’

‘And now I don’t. Despite your smart purple!’

‘We’re not all the same, Flavio!’

‘Oh I do know that. There’s you and my uncle and maybe three or four honest clerics to ransom the rest.’

‘Far more. Have you heard of Ugo Bassi? And Tasso?’

‘Dead, aren’t they?’

‘Tell me the rest of your story or I’ll start feeling I have to save your soul.’

‘Don’t you want to save it?’

‘Yes, but I suspect I’ll have to be sly. How did your uncle save you?’

‘First he got removed from my case. Father Grassi – do you know him? – decided he was too soft and I a hard nut to crack. So they locked me up and put me on short commons to break my spirit and I, if I wanted my fortune, couldn’t run off. Wearing me down was their best option because they couldn’t rush me into final vows the way other orders do. It’s against their rule. So they went at it hammer and tongs: starvation, religion, soft talk alternating with harshness and no mention of my case ever. They claimed to be interested exclusively in my soul. You’re right, Nicola, I’m a veteran at escaping spiritual snares!’

‘How do you know they weren’t sincere?’

‘I couldn’t afford to see things their way. After ten months of their treatment, I pretended to be a convert. I looked it too: emaciated, hollow-eyed, etc. Perhaps I had been half won over? I
was
praying, but to a sort of counter-God of my own.’

‘That was God!’

‘Mine!’

‘Everyone’s. The same. The one!’

‘My captured image of Him. Private! Personal! He helped me too. My uncle turned up again – they’d sent him to Naples, but he came back and demanded to see me and was shocked at how I looked. He insisted on my being brought to the country and fed properly. He told me how the law suit was going. By now he was furious with Father Grassi. He said the case had been taken to right a wrong, that profit was a worldly concept and that he didn’t care whether the Society agreed with him or not because it and the Church were becoming images of the thing they fought: materialism, and that he was going to put in a petition to be secularised. Well, then they really grew worried because they feared losing us both, so Father Grassi was overruled – my uncle had gone over his head to the General – and I was released.’

‘In the end, then, you got what you wanted from everyone: from the Jesuits and from the Sacra Rota.’

‘Oh it was too late to stop that. My mother’s impudence had cooked her goose and there was no reversing things. Yes, I won.’

‘And your uncle?’

‘He’s still a Jesuit. He and I have a truce. He says I never grew up, but can’t be blamed because I had to live like an adult when I was small. Also that I’m vulgar but that vulgarity is a worldly notion. Do
you
mind my vulgarity, Nicola?’

‘I’ve always liked it. It’s robust!’

‘Then you’ll like Miss Ella. Let’s go over to the theatre.’

Outside, in weak gaslight, flights of porticoes gleamed like stalactites. Bologna’s gas, said Flavio, was of poor quality, being obtained by burning horses’ carcasses. Nicola laughed disbelievingly, but Flavio swore that it was true. And why not? Why shouldn’t the remains of hacks and nags be turned – like the souls in Dante – into light? Briefly and wretchedly – but still it was a glittering end! This reminded him of the lights of Paris, where he planned to stay until he had learned how to make money make more money. This was why he had had no scruple about keeping his fortune from the grasp of both his half-sister and the Society of Jesus, since he, unlike them, would make it multiply. ‘Don’t laugh. One day I shall come back and teach you. I’ll bring you profitable lore. I’ve already started acquiring it.’

‘In the circus?’

No, said Flavio. The circus was a sideline.

Walking into the theatre, Nicola drew a cloak over his clerical costume and was quickly installed in a shadowy corner of a box. Priests were
forbidden to attend the theatre, but a blind eye was turned if a man was discreet.

Flavio left him alone while he went backstage to encourage Miss Ella – and to remind the doorkeepers that her excitable admirer was to be refused admission.

Meanwhile the music struck up and two clowns came forward to warm up the public. The show was, thought Nicola, innocent and wise: a handmaid to religion rather than, as was sometimes thought, an enemy. The circus swank showed up the vanity of vanities and the clown, arse up in sawdust, mocked the haughtiness which kept Roman landlords from learning how to read a balance sheet. He felt clairvoyant.
Something
was about to happen.

Flavio came back and sat in the front of the box nodding and bowing at people in other boxes while, down below, clowns with floury faces and great wounded smiles seemed vicariously to suffer the sorrows of the world.

‘Bravi
!
Bravissimi
!’

Spangled limbs whirled and acrobats took their bow. The crowd roared and vendors profited by the pause to hawk fizzy drinks. These were new here and said to have anti-hypochondriac properties.
‘Seltz
!
Seidlitz
!
’
cried the hawkers.

‘She’s next!’ whispered Flavio. ‘Sit forward.’

Nicola did and could now see the stalls where enthusiasts were shouting for Miss Ella. ‘Meezella!’ they pronounced, domesticating the sound so that it had an almost meaningful ring – and indeed it did mean something.
Misella
– from the Latin,
miserella
– was a disused old word for a female leper, and though the claque would not be thinking of it, the forgotten meaning gave an enfevered edge to their cry. ‘Meezella! Meezella!’ It was to see her that they had paid their money, returning in many cases, said Flavio, several nights in a row. She was the draw. Without her, the circus could not have appeared in a theatre like this.

‘Here she comes!’

Among Miss Ella’s public, Nicola idly noted a man with a bright beard, something now rare, since civil servants who made up a large part of the population were forbidden to sport one.

‘Watch!’ whispered Flavio.

She was quite unlike the girl Nicola had met in the café. As though released from a chrysalis, she had shed gravity and seemed transfigured as she smiled her glazed smile – justified, he now saw, by the inner
concentration it must take to risk life and limb before this public which screamed, as though driven by cannibal appetites, until quelled by the ringmaster, a cartoonish gentleman in lavender gloves.
Silenzio
!
Silence for Miss Ella and her horse, Starlight. ‘What you are about to see …’ And he named the crowned heads who had admired the spectacle. Then the horse piaffed and executed various caracoles and curvets, after which the dancer rose to her feet on its back and began her dance. Taut as a bird in flight, she stood on one silken leg and extended the other, landed on Starlight’s back, repeated the movement in reverse, landed again astride the gently moving mount, then, leaning so far back that her throat was parallel with the ceiling, raised her marvellous legs like stamens and for moments was standing on her head as the horse proceeded around the ring at its docile, steady pace. Entranced, the audience held its breath and the moments were both painful and thrilling. A current bound them in a communion as close as the one between the dancer and her mount. Feeling Flavio’s hand in his, Nicola gripped it in recognition of the marvel. Then it was over and Miss Ella smiled for the first time with an easy, open smile.

‘Bis
!
Bis
!
Bis
!’

‘
Brava
!
Bravissima
!
Bis.’

The imperious demand for an encore would not let up. The
ringmaster
flourished a hand towards the dancer. It was up to her.

‘Bis
!
’
bullied the customers.

‘She’s tired,’ whispered Flavio anxiously. And indeed her taut, professional smile was back. Down in the front stalls, the bearded man fumbled, perhaps for a bouquet. Several had already appeared but were being withheld in the hope that she would perform again. She seemed to hesitate, patting and placating her horse, then, as if on impulse, urged it forward and began a briefer version of her routine, ending with her legs scissoring air like some cryptic hieroglyph. Suddenly she was down under the horse’s hooves, in a commotion of bent limbs, while members of the audience restrained the bearded man and someone snatched the pistol which had gone off, scaring Miss Ella’s mount so that it swerved and dropped her. Already the ringmaster had pulled the frightened animal clear of where she lay on the sawdust. Ladies screamed. Gentlemen tried to block their view.

‘Come with me.’ Flavio tugged at Nicola’s elbow.

Nicola found himself raced through agitated spectators, then past circus people in various stages of undress – a clown’s nose hung oddly around his neck – to where a small procession was carrying the dancer
on a stretcher. Flavio and he followed this to her dressing room where Flavio insisted on being left alone with her while Nicola and the rest waited at the door. After some minutes, he emerged.

‘I don’t want anyone touching her until her own doctor comes,’ he ordered. ‘Damn him! He’s supposed to be here.’ The man, he was told, was being searched for through the city’s cafés. He drank, Flavio explained, and had in fact been debarred on that account or on some similar count from practising in his own country. ‘But he’s devoted to Miss Ella. She may be concussed.’

He sent everyone away and asked Nicola to guard the door. Please. This was a vital favour. Nobody but Flavio himself or the Irish doctor – his name was O’Higgins – must be let in. He thought he knew where O’Higgins might be and was going to look for him. Please, he pressed his friend’s hand, and left before Nicola could mention the trouble in which this could get
him
if his superiors were to hear that he had been seen lurking outside a circus dressing room, trying to hide his purple socks behind a clothes hamper and clutching his cloak to his chin.

When Flavio came back alone, Nicola made these points with vigour, and insisted on being let into the room. Standing in the corridor was courting trouble and he feared to run into gawkers if he tried to go out alone.

Inside, Miss Ella had begun to groan. Her spangled costume was constricting her, but couldn’t be removed without turning her over and Flavio’s attempts to do this hurt. She would have to be cut free. Shouldn’t they call one of the circus women for this, asked Nicola. But Flavio, tight-lipped, said ‘No’ and began to nick at the garments with a scissors. ‘Ella,’ he kept whispering. ‘We’ll get you more morphine in a moment. Hold on. Hold on.’ He looked demented, could not be argued with, yet was deft, perhaps, remembered Nicola, because he had been a leather worker. It was a slow business, though, and, after twice jabbing the flesh with his scissors, Flavio asked Nicola to get his finger under the stuff and hold it while he cut.

Miss Ella was now as still as a funerary statue: one of those crusaders’ wives carved in modestly compact folds and flutings ready for centuries of inactivity.

Nick, nick went the scissors, cutting the cloth pod so that it peeled away in a flurry of sequins, underneath which was a layer of padding which fell to reveal male genitalia.

Flavio covered them with a protective hand. ‘This is under the seal,’ he told his friend. ‘Only you, I and the doctor know.’

Then he began to weep.

A crinolined female dwarf, shaped like a pyramid, was in ambush as Nicola left. ‘Father, did you give her the last rites?’