The Translation of Father Torturo (24 page)

A nun bent over him and pressed a glass of water coloured with wine to his lips. He sucked at the liquid and swallowed gratefully.

“The brothers of the Confraternita della Misericordia placed you here,” she said. “They asked us to see that you are fed.”

Apparently she read the questioning gaze in his eyes, for she continued: “They are a particular order, their members come from all stations of life. Many are rich and aristocratic, while others are simply artisans. They take it as their sworn duty to help the miserable and destitute. You must be thankful for their attention.”

Torturo was thankful. He was starving, and the nuns gave him bread and soup. Though they were unable to offer him lodging beyond that necessary in order to bring him out of immediate danger, they procured him sleeping tickets for one of the local hostels. He was allowed a bed from eight every night until six in the morning. The sisters told him that for as long as he pleased he could return to Sette Santi every afternoon for their charity lunch, which he did.

One young nun, Sister Justina, who had particularly gentle manners, took it upon herself to feed the wretch. Her face was round and her figure slight and, though she was not by any means handsome, her quiet voice was full of warmth and her gaze radiant with compassion. When she could, she took him to a private place and washed him; she scrubbed his torso with a stiff sponge and lathered his scanty hair, wilfully overcoming her disgust. She pitied him, for he was the most appalling man she had ever seen, and wished she could do more to relieve his suffering. His eyes were strong and intelligent, and she could not help but believe his thoughts were in like accord. Occasionally, after the meal, she read to him for a quarter of an hour from the Holy Bible. He blinked and sighed in obvious appreciation. She was pleased that he responded to the teachings of Jesus Christ and was sorrowful that her time and position forbade her from further charity.

“Might I not read to him for five more minutes?” she would ask the abbess, Mother Barbara, when called away.

“I am afraid not,” was the recurring answer. “It is admirable that you find joy in such charitable endeavours, but forming a particular attachment to a needy individual is not to be borne. Your attention must be turned towards your other duties, for you are more than just this solitary cripple’s helpmate. It is obviously the Lord’s will that he suffer so – undoubtedly for some unspeakable sin; – The proper course for you my dear is not to do more than you are asked . . . In any case, the gout in my feet is especially bad right now, and your spare moments should rightly be spent massaging them.”

Sister Justina was Mother Barbara’s favourite. The latter enjoyed her, guarded her with a jealous eye and never tired of having the young woman’s small, soft hands running over her own sore joints. Though Justina did not take pleasure in the hungry passion of the abbess, she tolerated it, such being the ways of the convent.

One day, after feeding the cripple his soup and reading him an excerpt from
The Gospel According to Mark
, Sister Justina gave him a gift. He had been particularly solemn and thoughtful that day, and she thought her surprise might cheer him up.

“It is a nice wool cap,” she said, putting it on his head. “I made it – To keep you warm up top.”

He looked at her sadly.

“Don’t you like it?”

He nodded his head.

“You do?”

He nodded his head. “Yes.”

He moved slowly through the old, open hallway, towards the exit, the new cap, which was a sky blue, bright on his head. The nun walked by his side, chattering lightly as she went. They came to the door and she opened it.

“
Ciao
,” she said smiling. “See you tomorrow.”

The cripple shook his head.

“I will not see you tomorrow?”

The cripple shook his head. “No.”

“You have something to do tomorrow? Then I will see you the next day?”

He shook his head.

“Not then either?”

“No.”

“Well, when
will
I see you?”

He looked at her gravely, almost sternly.

“Won’t you come back? Won’t I see you again?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You will leave Florence?”

He nodded, his eyes still stern and penetrating.

“You are going on a voyage?” she asked with concern.

The cripple nodded his head. “Yes.”

The bells of the city began to strike three o’clock, their tintinnabulation echoing out sonorous, petulant, demanding.

“It is the time when I must attend Mother Barbara,” the nun said. “But wait here, let me get you something before you go.”

Before the cripple could respond, she was dashing away, her habit fluttering around her ankles and collecting around her young figure. In less than ten minutes she returned, carrying a purse in which were two loaves of bread, some olives, a hunk of Parmesan cheese and a twenty euro note.

She kneeled down and hung the purse around his neck.

“This is for your trip,” she said. “Some food for your trip,” she blushed. “And a little money, – It is almost nothing, but it might help.”

He looked at her: firmly, sadly.

Just then Mother Barbara appeared, her stout figure filling the passage behind them. Her tremendous, sensual second chin hung palpitating with emotion and the black hair on her pale upper lip stood out with frightening clarity.

“Come girl!” she cried. “Enough dawdling with that cursed cripple. It is the time for you to massage my feet. I have been walking on them all day, involved in labour upon labour, and they are in sore need of your caresses. Come – Hurry, before you put me completely out of temper!”

“I have to go,” the nun said sadly. Then, when Mother Barbara’s back was turned, the young woman quickly kissed Torturo on the forehead, got up and darted off, with a broken goodbye, one hand straying to her eyes as she retreated.

“Goodbye,” he thought, as he turned and crawled away.

He made his way along the Lungamo Generale Diaz. The shops were just beginning to open. The weather was overcast and streets damp, but it was not raining. He crawled along the Loggiato degli Uffizi, past the gallery, past the busts of Dante, Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. At the Piazza della Signora, in front of Bandinello’s
Hercules
, looking more like a sack of melons leaning against a wall than a demi-god, a crowd of Japanese tourists parted for him, with comments of joint interest and disgust. A number took pictures of the twisted chopped up monster, the sub-beast, thinking him about as interesting as anything they had yet seen in Florence.

He crawled past the Church of San Michele, past Verrocchio’s
Incredulity of St. Thomas
, a bronze masterpiece of Christ urging the sceptical apostle to shove his hand in his pierced side. Pleasure seekers were just starting to appear along the street, taking advantage of the break in the weather, eager to search out a glass of wine or cappuccino and to be amongst people; the people who were, for Torturo, no more than ghosts.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Over the months the nubs of his shoulders and butts of his thighs, all that remained of his limbs, had grown especially strong, taking up as they were the entire burden of his person in all its shifting about. When he set off on the road from town he moved slowly, but much less slowly than might be expected from one in his condition, without either arms or legs. He made his way along the narrow strip of gravel and dirt that sat between the road and the ditch to one side, moving steady and resolute, despite the never-ending stream of traffic that roared by him. Cars sounded their horns, trucks and buses splashed him with mud. The day wore away in this monotonous struggle for distance, darkness fell and he was forced to crawl completely off the road, to avoid being run over. He travelled the fields, his crutches sinking in the mud, his body often getting caught up in barbed-wire fences, dogs occasionally coming upon him, barking and trying to make a meal of his burly stumps. He fought them off, roaring inarticulately, jabbing with his stalks of wood.

By the time he reached the village of Vaglia it was half-past two in the morning and he was thoroughly spent. Using his jaws as a tool, he worked a hunk of bread from his pouch. He swallowed a few mouthfuls, washing it down with water sipped from a puddle and then fell asleep in a stand of weeds. The next morning he was awoken by a slug crawling across his face. He shouldered it away, rinsed his face in the puddle, relieved himself in the weeds, and resumed his northward journey.

The second day was harder than the first. The sky was dark with clouds and, at nine in the morning, began to scatter fresh rain, which gradually increased in strength into a downpour that lasted throughout the day. The cripple crawled along the gravel, through the mud, wet and dismal. When he passed through villages people stared at him in amazement. No one had ever seen such a down-trodden creature. He was like a leper from another age and people felt an instinctive inclination to avoid him as if he were a sack of diseased flesh. He travelled through Ponte Ghieretto, over the Passo della Futa, through Firenzuola and Pietramala, and after exhausting himself on the Passo della Raticosa, fell asleep beneath a pine tree, the rain still falling with vigour. Awaking in the middle of the night, he shivered with the first phases of influenza. As hearty as his constitution was, it was being taxed to the extreme. Not able to fall back asleep, he vomited and then crawled towards the road. The rain had stopped, but the moonless sky was black. Tremors shook his body as he crawled; the wood strapped to his thighs scraped along the asphalt. Though the traffic was extremely light, every car that passed him nearly ran him over. With thoughts unclear he began to hallucinate, fancying he saw the roadway marked with pools of blood and the majestic pines that shot up from the hillsides as never ending crucifixion scenes. The earth swung beneath him. He himself was a monstrous toad, bloated with wriggling worms of flame which scrambled for escape through the orifices of his head. – And he prayed. In a continuous moan he prayed for some simple time without horror and pain.

When daylight came, grey and mournful, his feverish state somewhat subsided. He ate a mouthful of Parmesan cheese, rallied himself, and continued forward. Though he knew he was ill, he did his best not to slacken his pace. Light blended into darkness and reality was infused with faint hallucinations, halls hung with skins and familiar joints, the seemingly endless roadway scattered with sharp thorns. There was blackness and an occasional hour of sleep procured in some dry patch of ground, beneath a tree or hedge, occasionally in an old barn. Then there was again aching and travel and fever. The clouds blew in over the hills and seemed puffed full of wrath. In the distance there were scars of yellow light. The storm was electric. Wind and rain shook through the branches of the trees, screamed in the air, and, attacking in horizontal sheets, flailed his tortured body, as if wanting to pound the very life out of him. He could scarcely breath. The rain pricked like needles. Wet to the kidneys, his nose ran with mucous and throat swelled with pain. He collapsed, his face sunk in the mud. He felt as if he could not move another inch, but, with a supreme effort of will, he propped himself on his crutches and moved another mile.

At dawn the weather broke. The countryside shone, glossy green. Half dead, he climbed over a hill. Down below he saw the city of Padua, in the midst of which glittered the seven cupolas of the Basilica del Santo. Travelling on average nineteen hours a day, the entire journey had taken him twenty-three days.

Chapter Twenty-Three

At the base of the steps, a being struggled. About knee-high, with wooden crutches strapped on in place of his four limbs, like an image of Breughel’s, the man was trying desperately to mount the steps. The people around him stood back a respectable distance, though more from fear than the desire to accommodate. With beggarly rags hanging about him, and an unearthly stench rising, permeating his vicinity, this glob of human suffering was truly grotesque. His features were swollen and indistinguishable. A woollen cap, which sat perched atop his skull, fell off as he struggled, revealing a glossy red scalp with thick, wiry hairs clinging to it. The man swivelled his neck and looked back imploringly.

“Ewww!” a young woman said, upon seeing his face.

But, in every group of cowards there are inevitably a few heroes. Two stout men, young, generous and beef-fed, ran up from the back of the line.

“Yes, good, help the poor fellow up the steps,” a woman said.

One perched the cap on the glossy scalp and then together they heaved the limbless being up by the armpits and ascended the steps, the queue moving aside for them with murmurs of admiration for their effort and a mixture of contempt and pity for their burden.

“
Ecco
,” one of the men said as they shoved their burden up against the glass case.

The tongue, red and ripe as a strawberry sat enclosed within, resting atop a gold pin and highlighted against a background of gold brocade. Torturo felt the stump of his own organ, bereft of branch, unable to speak or even properly taste, quiver at the back of his throat. A croak, hoarse and awful, escaped his distended lips.

“He is telling us to let him down.”

“That’s fine. He has looked long enough.”

“Ckhhhaaggghh!” Torturo croaked.

“
Prego, prego
,” the men said, hoisting him back down the stairs and setting him on the floor.

The cripple moaned, inarticulate and frightful. His bottom jaw was nearly toothless and those on the top glistened like fangs in the maw of some blood-thirsty animal. His eyes flashed scorn. He turned and, with the utmost difficulty, made his way from the chapel, his crutches clicking and scraping against the marble floor.

Outside the weather was cool but clear. He pushed himself up against the wall near the church entrance. He gazed up at the great equestrian statue to his right,
The Gattamelata
of Donatello, and his wool cap fell off again. The cripple buried his chin in his chest and thought of her who had given him the gift; he felt the difficulty of loss. Through half-open, slightly moist eyes he stared at the woven, blue, soft hair of sheep. He was weak with hunger and fatigue and nearly drowned in disappointment. A coloured slip of paper came down. A five euro note floated into his cap. He glanced up.