Water Theatre (38 page)

I followed him up the steps and out onto a flat roof terrace with a low parapet. Light blazed out of the immaculate blue
sky. Turning my back to the sun, I saw the campanile rising from the chapel roof, and beyond, at the top of the hill, the walls of Fontanalba. As Fra Pietro gazed out across the parapet towards the hills, I heard my voice saying, “So what is this event they're organizing at the villa?”

Fra Pietro blinked at me in the heat. “It's a big conference which happens each year. For people that have a great interest in the art and philosophy of the Quattrocento – Marsilio Ficino… Pico della Mirandola… Botticelli. Also the music –
arie antiche
. Many poets and thinkers will come.”

“I see. And Adam's never mentioned anything to you about the sun at midnight?”

He looked at me in surprise, puzzled by this arbitrary shift of attention. “The sun at midnight? Ah, you mean
La leggenda di Fontanalba
? Yes, of course, we have talked of this sometimes. But I think it is Lorenzo who is interested in this old story.”

“The other night,” I said, “before Adam came back, when you and Larry were talking about him – I got the impression he thought you knew where Adam was – what he was doing in the mountains?”

The friar shrugged and made a small, self-effacing moue.

“Yet you didn't seem to want to talk about it,” I pressed. “All you said was that you and Adam had been talking about St Francis.”

“Yes.” Fra Pietro looked uncomfortably away. For a moment I thought he was about to say nothing further, but then he added, “Lorenzo and I… we do not see – how do you say it? – eyes to eyes? But Adam – he is a serious man. When we have talked together about the shepherd in the story, we have also talked of more serious things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Mostly we have talked about the Poverello, and how he saw the presence of God in the beauty of the earth. We have talked also of the true thing – the historical thing – that has happened when he climbed into the mountains.”

“Which was?”

Fra Pietro seemed mildly amazed by my ignorance. “At La Verna the Seraph came to him from heaven. Francesco was given a vision of a man crucified among his wings of fire. The
beata stigmata
appeared on his hands and feet at that time. Also the wound in his side.”

“And you consider that history rather than myth?”

“Of course. They are God's wounds. Many people saw them. They were with the Poverello till death. What Dante has called
l'ultimo sigillo
. The final seal of his union with Christ. That he is become an instrument for God.”

Scarcely a breath of air moved on the terrace. With a flattened palm Fra Pietro consoled the tonsured crown of his head. “The day will be very hot, I think. Shall we go inside?”

“Is that the story that Adam wanted you to tell me – the story of St Francis on the mountain?”

The friar frowned in perplexity. “Excuse me?”

“He said something about a story you'd told him. He wanted you to pass it on to me.”

“Adam has said nothing to me of this.”

“Must have forgotten. He said it was a story about a proxy.”

Fra Pietro was already descending the steps. “I don't understand this word.”

“Proxy? It means a person who does something instead of someone else. On their behalf.”

“Ah yes! Proxy!
Una persona al posto di un'altra
. Now I understand. I think Adam means the story which I have told him about Maximilian.”

“Maximilian?”

At the bottom of the steps Fra Pietro smiled up at me.

“Maximilian Kolbe,” he nodded. “He is the saint of Auschwitz. He is a saint who, like yourself, was also a journalist. Yes, I think perhaps this story will speak to you, my friend.”

*

Back in the cell, I slipped off my shoes and stretched out on the bed while Fra Pietro settled himself in the chair by the window to share the story with me.

“It begins in Poland,” he said, “in a small town called Zdu
ska Wola, not far from Łod
, which is a city of industry where clothings are made. A weaver called Julius Kolbe once lived there with his wife Maria. They are hard workers, pious people who are members of the Third Order of San Francesco, which is for those who must live in the world. Also each year Julius makes the pilgrimage to Jasna Góra – the Bright Mountain – where is the holy sanctuary of Our Lady of Cz
stochowa. She is the Black Madonna, who is deeply loved in
Polonia
– as also here in Fontanalba.”

Fra Pietro went on to tell me that Julius and Maria Kolbe had been blessed with five sons. The second, born in 1894, was baptized Rajmund, though he was affectionately known to his mother as Mundzio. He had grown up as a normal, lively boy until he was ten years old, when his behaviour suddenly changed. He became much quieter and more withdrawn, spending an unusual amount of time kneeling before the family's shrine to the Black Madonna. One day, finding him there in tears, his mother insisted he tell her what was wrong.

“At last,” said Fra Pietro, “the boy makes his confession. Some time before this day he has caused some trouble in the house because of his mischief, and his mother has said, ‘Mundzio, Mundzio, what kind of man will you become?' Of course, always a mother will say such a thing when her child is a trouble to her, yes? But the question touches this boy in his heart. He kneels alone to pray for forgiveness at the shrine of Our Lady and asks the question to her. ‘What kind of man shall I be?' he asks, and so innocent is his prayer that immediately the Holy Mother appears in front of him. She is holding in her hands two crowns. She explains to him that the white crown is for a life of purity and the red one is the crown for martyrdom. She asks him which crown he will choose for himself, and
Mundzio says, ‘I will take both.' When he became a young man Mundzio dreamt to be glorious as a soldier fighting in war, like San Francesco, who was a knight in his youthful days. But his mother has persuaded him to follow the true path of the Poverello and serve God as a Knight of Christ. So he took for himself the name of Maximilian, a saint who was martyred in ancient days because he refused to become a soldier like his father and fight in the wars.”

Fra Pietro was warming to his theme. Picking his way through the language, he spoke of a modest young man, both scholarly and zealous, and utterly devoted to the Virgin Mary. Despite his weak tubercular constitution, Maximilian resolved to create a new knightly Militia of Franciscan Friars consecrated to the service of the Madonna – the
Militia Immaculatæ
. Their mission would be to combat the evils of a world in the throes of revolution and world war – a war in which his own homeland had been the principal battleground of the eastern front. A war in which his father, who was a Polish nationalist, was captured by the Russians and hanged as a traitor.

Maximilian was in Rome at the time of his father's death, and it was there that he first became inflamed with missionary fervour. At first just six of his Franciscan brothers were inspired to action by his vision of an international Christian militia, but from this small beginning, he began to conceive of a crusade that would reach all over the world. In 1918 Maximilian was ordained as a priest, and only a year later, Benedict XV gave the papal blessing to his
Militia Immaculatæ
, which grew to become one of the largest and most influential religious communities.

“Soon they built a village in Poland. A newspaper was written and printed there, which was read by many people. There was a radio station and industries – not for making money, you understand, but to feed the community and to spread the word of Maximilian's love for the Immaculate Mother of his childhood vision. Then in September of 1939 Germany
invaded Poland, and Maximilian and his Franciscan brothers were arrested by German troops because of their links with the Polish intelligentsia. After much suffering, he was sent to the forced-labour camp at Auschwitz.

“There are many stories of how he has given strength to others in the camp. Those who have come out of that place speak of him with love and wonder. They tell how always there are too many sick and hungry there, but Maximilian, who was never strong and often ill, would make others go to the hospital before himself. One man told how he had carried dead bodies to the fire with him. When that man shouted out against God, Maximilian said to him that hate could do nothing, for it is only love that creates.” Fra Pietro held open his hands. “He was truly a man. A saintly man. A man who has understood that when San Francesco spoke of poverty he has meant for us not only to be poor in money and things of the world, but to be poor also in self. To refuse to possess even life itself when life requires it of us. Truly he was a man not like other men. Yet here is a question for you: is the life of such a man of value more than any other man?”

Evidently the question was not rhetorical: Fra Pietro was waiting for my answer. “It depends what you mean,” I said. “In one sense of course it is. Why else would we be talking about him when there are tens of thousands who died in Auschwitz about whom we know nothing? But I suppose in another sense…” I faltered, thinking of the many people I'd seen die in wretched circumstances, unattended by any saving miracle or grace. “I don't know,” I said. “I don't know how you make such judgements.”

Fra Pietro nodded. “Perhaps only for oneself,” he said, “only for the life that we are given. But when it was time to make such judgement, Maximilian had no doubt. It happened like this. It was July in 1941 and very hot. One day a prisoner has escaped from a
Kommando
working on the farm. The rule is that when one man escapes, a certain number of men who live in the same
block must die. This man is from Maximilian's block. All day he and his comrades have stood in the sun. At last the officers come to choose who are the ones to die. They inspect the first line. An officer points to a man. The others move away and the next line comes forward. Another man is chosen. And it goes on until one man cries, “Oh my poor wife and children!” He is a soldier in the Polish army. Now he will die for nothing he has done, and who will care for his family?

“In this moment another man comes from his line. He wears glasses and is very weak, but he takes off his cap and presents himself before the officers. ‘What does this Polish pig want?' one of the officers says. Maximilian Kolbe answers him: ‘I am a Catholic priest. Take me in that man's place. I will die for him.'”

Fra Pietro released his breath in an expressive shrug. “If the number is right, the officers don't care if this man or the other man will die. Maximilian has offered himself. He gives himself as proxy, yes? For them better a weak man dies than one who is strong to work. So Maximilian and the other
condannati
are taken away to a dark place, under the ground, made of concrete. Like a cellar.”

“A bunker.”

“A bunker, yes. They have no clothings when they go in there. They will have no food to eat. When they go into that place they are already dead men. There is only the dying remains to do.” He glanced across at me again. “In Africa we have seen such death, you and I. We know how it is slow, how it is full of pain. We have seen that such death has no dignity. But there is one thing that these men have. They have with them a priest. Apriest who will pray with them and comfort them. A priest who has chosen to suffer with them, who gives his life so that another man might live, and who will be with them in the hour of their death. One by one they die, until only Maximilian is left alive. In the end they inject acid into him and Maximilian Kolbe dies on the fourteenth day of August in 1941. But I think, my friend, by
the free choice he has made to die in the place of another man, Maximilian has already defeated all the powers of death.”