The Conduct of Saints Page 3

  Formally, the priest asked the prisoner if he continued to be treated properly under the Republic’s new regulations.

  “On the whole, yes. A Colonel Porecca keeps shifting me, so that sometimes I’m in a dungeon, at others in a decent cell on the fourth tier with the window louvers arranged so that I can see more than empty sky. The higher up, the fresher the air and the better the view, so I’m forever negotiating with those in power to be sent aloft. I have a few old friends running the wing the Germans used, and I’m made more or less comfortable. The food, of course, is what you would expect. I’ve had a letter by means of a friendly guard saying my mother and Signora Koch are well. You must know how grateful I am to you for facilitating their passage.”

  “You have Father Consalves to thank,” Brendan said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “In any event, I’m indebted.”

  After a moment, Koch said, “If you really want to help, Monsignore, in this business of my being put before a firing squad, you might try a man named Saverio Volterra. The one who was with the military resistance under that fellow Montezmolo, whom Mr. Churchill so admired. I had Volterra in custody for a few days and let him go. I think he would put in a word for me with people close to the High Court, even act as a witness to my good character.”

  “You let him go so he could be your spy?”

  “I turned him, let him go with a kiss, as they say. He was well to the right to begin with, so it wasn’t hard. He’s a professor at the police academy now, I understand, and doing well.”

  “If you turned him, the court won’t like to hear his views.”

  “No one knows he was a spy. Only I know that, and now you. He’ll help. I supplied him with girls once, and he wouldn’t want that brought out, because he’s got himself married to an awful bitch of a strict Catholic—forgive me—who is also rich.”

  “You want me to blackmail him.”

  “You won’t need to. The threat is implicit.”

  “I’m afraid I’d better not do that.”

  “As you wish, of course.”

  Pietro Koch was a strong-looking young man of middle height, broad-shouldered, his dark hair parted in the center and brushed close to his narrow skull. He wore the trousers of a bright blue suit, the jacket slung over the back of a chair, wide suspenders, a tie with a design of flowers on it, bright brown shoes, the toes pointed.

  He said, turning his head, chin lifted, to show the priest his face, “What do you think? My mustache is gone. They didn’t require me to shave it for my identification photograph, but I decided to anyway. First I trimmed it to look like the film actor Ronald Colman. Then I thought, to hell with it, and off it came. It makes a change, I think, makes me look younger, and that carries weight with tribunals such as these. I know this from my own experience. A clean-shaven man always earned a little more sympathy from me. What I regret is that my upper lip is pale, and I have no way of getting into the sun to remedy the problem. This will make you laugh.” He took from his pocket a leather envelope attached to a beaded chain. Behind its glassine window were tinted photographs showing Koch full face and profile. “It looks as if I’d already been shot, doesn’t it? Notice under Social Status it says that I’m a gentleman. I believe I am, but I think my enemies would dispute it.”

  A package of cigarettes was on the table, and he pushed it towards the prelate.

  “How are you managing as concerns money?” Brendan asked.

  “I have a little and can get more.”

  “The princess Calfani may be able to say a word on your behalf. She isn’t sure. A matter of priorities, she says. There are many calls on her good will and influence just now.”

  “She won’t act, whatever she says. She was running a safe house and was on several of our lists, though there’s no way she can have known that. We might have caught her at it if we’d tried harder. I felt respect for her.”

  “I think she must have known.”

  “Really? Well, in any event, there was esteem on my part. I even respected the marchesa who owns that ’34 silver-colored Rolls Royce Phantom I’ve always coveted, the woman who seems so fond of Jews.”

  “The princess mentioned another marchesa—Hilda, countess of something or other. She has Fascist sympathies.”

  “Hilda dislikes me because I did an injury to a relative of hers, though I had no idea of the connection, of course—a partisan who turned out to be a spy for the SS, for Kappler, a fact of which, with the amateurish intelligence at my disposal, I had been unaware. She was offended, as well she might have been. That’s the difficulty with branches of police supposed to be in sympathy. We don’t communicate or, worse, we become rivals with private goals and ambitions. The SS was largely useless to me on that account.”

  The priest stayed for half an hour. They did not discuss the High Court or the facts of the case directly, since Brendan had no more to report concerning his efforts on Koch’s behalf.

  The prisoner said, “Well, it’s plain I’m in for it. I’m told it’s said everywhere in the prison. On the basis of experience, I’m inclined to believe such talk. Did you see that mob at the visitors’ gate when you came in? You can just hear them from here. They want to lynch me as they did Carretta, the idiots. And he was a good anti-Fascist. People like that, common people, don’t even try to find out who their friends and enemies are. They assassinate whoever bathes and wears a necktie.”

  ◂ 4 ▸

  THE ANTEROOM oppressed Brendan—its marble busts of dead popes, its tapestries, their upper reaches lost in gloom, the discouraging little chairs covered in violet velvet, the Maestro di Camera hovering, the clergy in various costumes, each communicating his particular heat of anxiety or self-importance. He kept looking at his watch.

  There were twelve or so in the enormous chamber. You saved electricity where you could these days, and as a result the darkness outside seemed to push against the draped windows and leak in. There was a desk inlaid with porphyry, a gold-fringed runner on it, a telephone, a crystal cross, an unlit green-shaded lamp, an appointments book lying open: beyond that, the closed door of the small office the Pope used for private interviews.

  Bishop Sergio Paolini, the new personal secretary, came out of the office half an hour later and went straight to him. Brendan could see His Holiness, tall, frail-looking in his white cassock, standing framed in the partly opened door under the light of a dim electric chandelier, apparently looking at someone in the room not visible. He stood straight, the long head slightly inclined, fingertips on a pile of newspapers on the desk.

  “How much time do you need?” the bishop asked, a hand pressing on his shoulder to keep him from rising.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “He’ll come out to you. Where’s your zucchetto?” He reached through the slit in his soutane, took a skullcap from his pocket, and handed it to Doherty. “Ten minutes, less if possible. Don’t get excited. I know you, Brendan. Have you had anything to drink?”

  “Wine at lunch, Excellency.” They were friends, but in this place Brendan used the title.

  Paolini removed his hand, and Brendan rose as Pius came out of the office, glanced generally at everyone, all of whom had risen as well, nodded at Brendan, and went through a small door at the other end of the antechamber into a corridor, Brendan after him, his heart beating painfully as it invariably did in his presence, though he was accustomed to the sensation. Paolini followed and stood apart in the long high passageway hung with portraits, his leather-bound appointments book under his arm. Brendan bent a knee, kissed the ring on the extended hand.

  Pius said, “I am with the widow of a martyr of the caves. Her husband was a distant cousin of mine. I’m allowing her a moment to collect herself.”

  The Pope’s steel-rimmed glasses reflected what light there was from the wall sconces, so that he might have been looking at Brendan or his eyes might be closed. It was impossible to tell. Each time he saw him, Pius seemed older, paler. His lean jaws, normally close-shaved,
showed dark against the pallor. He kept a hand on the jeweled cross on his breast, a long forefinger tapping it, and spoke in English, using the words carefully. “So, here is our voyager. What do you want to ask us this evening, Monsignore? You may smoke that, if you like. Sergio, bring Monsignor Doherty—what is portacenere?”

  “Ashtray, Holiness,” Paolini said.

  Brendan remembered the cigarette behind his ear. It had been there since Princess Calfani gave it to him; even changing into his cassock had not dislodged it. He took it between his fingers and looked at it with distress. “Holiness, I won’t smoke.” Addressing the blinded glasses: “I’ve been with Lieutenant Koch at the prison. He feels sure the court will order his death. I agree with him. I believe that’s what will happen and soon, unless we act.”

  Pius said to his secretary, “Sergio, you know my thinking in this matter.” And to Brendan: “Who is instructing Lieutenant Koch?”

  “Monsignor Consalves y Martí sees him every afternoon.”

  “Do I know Consalves, Sergio?”

  “He had an audience in February or March, Holiness,” said the bishop. “A heavy man. He was attaché at Madrid.”

  “Let Consalves do his work and let the court decide,” he said to Brendan. “We may revisit the matter after that. How are you getting on with our penitent?”

  Brendan said, “I saw him earlier today, Holiness.”

  “Signor Alessandro Serenelli’s testimony is potentially the most significant we have in the cause of Maria Goretti’s beatification. Don’t be overzealous in order to magnify doubts, carissimo, but if you have a doubt, we’ll hear it. The Diocesan Court has done its work. The Promoter of the Cause is ready to go forward. Your capacity is that of friend to the Congregation and our private advisor. You won’t be giving evidence. Sergio?”

  “His Holiness understands that while there are several miracles established to the credit of Maria Goretti, this is our major one—our dramatic one. But it’s the drama we mustn’t trust. Make sure his promotion of Maria is sincere, that he won’t complicate matters in the court by diverging from his former depositions, and that he has in no way returned to violence and perversions of the flesh. Bear in mind—I believe this is what His Holiness is suggesting—that we need a proclaimed saint for our youth, first of all for those in Italy who have been corrupted by Communism and by the American and English soldiers, but also for Catholic children everywhere—one to whom young girls in particular may appeal when tempted or in doubt. We are looking to 1950 now, which will be on us before we turn around.”

  The light had shifted, and Pius was looking at Brendan with intent, the dark, penetrating eyes now visible. He said, “Speaking personally and as one who has himself been granted visions by God’s grace, I have no doubt concerning the man’s redemption, just as I believe in the authenticity of our little saint’s martyrdom. Sufficient evidence is there on both sides. Your brief at this point is to reassure those who hesitate. I am not one of them. Sergio, what is the idiom?”

  “Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” Paolini said.

  “Dot them and cross them”—the gray face lit with a smile now, the manner informal. “You must take care of yourself, Brendan. You look unwell. Tell the prisoner in the Regina Coeli that if he repents, God will forgive him, and we as well. Tell him the Bishop of Rome has declared that he pities him, has prayed for him, and will continue to pray for him.”

  After he had seen Pius back to his office and returned, the papal secretary said, “His Holiness just yesterday saw a copy of the file with the names of Koch’s prisoners and victims. It’s a bloody indictment—hundreds of names. Women among them. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes,” Brendan said.

  “We have no jurisdiction in his case, and if we had, we would not use it. While we may not and do not desire a man’s death—heaven forbid—we would intervene sooner with almost anyone else. It’s already felt by some that we did too little to try to mitigate Koch’s violence, even that we encouraged him to proceed simply because he arrested Communists. But the man’s work helped make the negotiated peace impossible. How could the Allies think of dealing with governments that allow animals like that to act without restraint? His Holiness doesn’t blame them at all. What’s more, Koch’s brutality helped provoke the violence of the leftist partisans and brought us to the Via Rasella affair, and consequently to the massacre at the caves, and finally to that woman weeping in the Holy Father’s office. We would help Koch to escape death if we could, but he deserves punishment.”

  Brendan said, “They will shoot him summarily after evidence is put before the tribunal. He’s been in the Coeli less than a week, and the feeling against him is at its height. A mob has already tried to get into the place to kill him, as it did Carretta.”

  He said after a silence, “I was with Princess Calfani today. She also spoke on behalf of Pietro Koch, and she was his enemy.”

  Paolini shook his head.

  “Forgive me if I don’t believe you, Brendan. You don’t help your case.”

  ◂ 5 ▸

  BRENDAN HAD his dinner in what had been the servants’ dining hall of the seventeenth-century palace called Villa Carlotta, where he lived. He was given cold beets, an omelette made from American powdered eggs, gray-looking peas out of a can, and a cup of pudding. There was no meat. He had forgotten that Sister Claudia was ill. In her place was Sister John, dwarf-like, angry because she was being kept from her bed, from which she would be required to rise before dawn. She ran back and forth, preparing and serving his supper, shaking her head and murmuring to herself, then disappeared entirely and wasn’t seen again.

  There had been no time for a real drink, but he’d brought along a bottle of wine from the stock he kept in the cellar. Everyone else—there were ten or twelve priests of various ranks who lived in the house permanently or temporarily, whose work was in the offices of the Holy See—had finished their meals hours before and gone upstairs: all except a bishop named Ricci, who also lived in the house and had done so for nearly thirty years. His work at the Vatican library had to do with maps and prints, and Brendan understood he was seldom consulted. Part deaf, bald under his skullcap, seemingly feeble, only his large eyes, the irises coal-black, the whites as clean as a child’s, showed his irritable energy. Brendan detested him. Ricci had said there was a letter from Brendan’s mother in his, Brendan’s, mailbox and that he was to be sure to pick it up, to which Brendan made no reply. The man sat kneading balls of bread, a walking stick laid across the table before him. Brendan indicated his straw-bottomed flask, and the old bishop poured an inch of wine into his empty water glass.

  “Never more than a finger without food. That’s all I ever take. Two at dinner. If you’ll permit me to say so, you drink too much, Monsignore.” He fixed the brilliant eyes on him. “How does it go with your child-murderer? Is he the demi-saint our newspapers make him out to be?”

  “I’d say he’s too good to be true.”

  “I didn’t catch that, but don’t repeat it. Your expression suggests disapproval. Some, even criminals, are capable of bearing goodness like a virus, you know, not being at all good in themselves. That’s my observation anyhow. One might allow oneself to think of goodness as a disease that does not necessarily infect its carrier but may be passed on—that it is in the nature of saints invariably to be carriers and also, sooner or later, to be infected themselves. I think of Francis, my own personal favorite—both good in his nature and a carrier of good—and then of Augustine, who was a carrier but good in himself only by means of a great, a Herculean effort of will, effort for which he is much praised, as he should be. He is our serious saint, Francis our delightful one, of whom it might be said that salvation was too much fun for him.”

  “I believe he had his problems with sin, my lord.”

  “We might say,” Ricci declared, seeming not to hear, “speaking lightly of course, that Augustine not only carried the virus of God’s absolute goodness but had himself to be viciou
s in the first instance in order to learn the true nature of the evil he was intended to counter by his appointed work. Do you see?”

  “Yes, of course I see.”

  When his food arrived, Brendan, hungry, began to eat at once.

  “No benedicte? Never mind. I suppose it’s the way your generation goes about things. I don’t mean to say the saint was aware of God’s plan and was performing as in a theater. Augustine probably enjoyed praising emperors and courting the girls quite unself-consciously. He was good at it. It’s only a plaisanterie, my thought. You’re too solemn, Doherty. When I spoke of harboring infection, to pursue the image, I had in mind the tubercle bacillus, its host having an insufficient immunity as it were against goodness. But perhaps your man, this Alessandro Serenelli, if he is a carrier, has not himself been infected. Or he’s a sham entirely. It’s your job to find out. You’re the soul doctor. On the other hand, perhaps he both carries the bacillus and has been infected, and you will fail to find it out. My money is on your failing in that case. You’re not a sympathetic man, except in the sentimental way of the Hindu or Buddhist. It’s Catholic sympathy that’s wanted in these affairs.”

  “I’m filled with Catholic sympathy.”

  “Are you? No. I hear from an informant in residence here, who was himself waiting for an interview, that His Holiness spoke to you this afternoon. I haven’t had an audience in three years. My presence has not been requested, and I have not offered it. I go around the city, however, see and hear things, confer with this one and that one. I mean Vatican City. Rome as well, though I am careful to stay this side of the river, there are so many thugs about. I like to walk, make my way slowly, observing, decapitating flowers with my stick. This offends the police, whom I both admire and like to offend: they are so physical, like our invaders. What do you think of the Americans, by the way? I dislike them intensely, no offense to you meant. They are drunken and noisy, and they seduce our young women. The English are very little better. I understand there are black men among the Yanks, as we are to call them in the new republican atmosphere. After a period of nominal restraint, of seeming to recognize their status as tolerated guests, the blacks have also begun to rape our female Romans, some of them matrons with children, the children present often as not and made to observe. Negroes. You, as an American, ought to know something about all this, and I would be grateful for any light you can shed. It’s beyond my capacity to understand. Fifty cases have been reported, but the police do nothing, because they are under the command of the iron-fisted American Military Government.”