THEY SAY THAT EVIL is our burden to bear if destiny assigns it to us. It’s an objective form of suffering, a fact of nature, crudely realistic. But if, instead, it is we who engender evil and we’re even pleased to see it in action, then it’s only right that there should be no indulgence shown us, no remission of our sins. Or does a fissure open, even in this morbid case, through which clemency can pass? Would it be, after all, its very morbidity, then, the very pleasure taken in committing evil, that becomes its justification, or at least a mitigating circumstance, a natural factor, inevitable because intrinsic to our character, something that makes this evil, too, a thing to be tolerated, a burden to be borne, something we accept with a shrug, without demanding in exchange at least some punishment of the culprit? In the Middle Ages, people punished horses that had unseated and killed their knight, hanging or drawing and quartering them, after a trial held in accordance with legal procedure. But we are no longer in the Middle Ages, nor are these the times of Xerxes, who ordered the waves of the Hellespont whipped when they refused to subside. If someone enjoys torturing and raping and killing “because it’s in his nature,” what can ever make him change that nature?
IN SPITE OF THAT FACT, people say that all that’s needed to put things back the way they ought to be is remorse, confession. “Feeling horrible” is supposed to guarantee forgiveness to those who experience it. What matters are feelings, true or false though they may be, rather than facts or deeds. In Italy, especially, feelings have always gotten the better of facts, which are considered accidental elements, erasable at will, or subject to interpretation so subtle and casuistic as to bring about a complete inversion of polarity. It is always possible to get rid of inconvenient facts. The paradoxical lesson of Christianity trains the mind to perform this stunt, to turn the information provided by commonsense experience on its head, so that however things may go, the sinner redeemed will always be in the front row, offering lessons on the path followed to that point, displaying the misdeeds committed as a testament to his profound humanity. No one will ever have the nerve at that point, no one will call him a bastard after the path he has walked. If a lamb fails to get lost so that she can be searched for, found, and saved; unless a pilgrim wanders off the straight path, well, he’ll never get a speck of attention, in fact, he can just go fuck himself, him with all his rectitude.
WHEN I WAS TALKING about sermons, above, I wasn’t just referring to ones delivered in church, after the reading of Holy Scripture. It’s obvious that the preaching done in those situations had the tone of a sermon, otherwise, why bother? I’m talking, instead, about the things the priests would tell us, or the discussions we’d have with them, perhaps to talk about snacks or the formation of the soccer teams taking the field for a tournament, or Christmas vacations, or any other topic you care to name: in all those instances, it was inevitable that they’d eventually take on that distinctive cadence and, along with the cadence, the objective. I mean to say that their pedagogical vocation would get the better of any other communicative or expressive intent, in the end, the voice you’d hear was inevitably that of the wise teacher with life lessons or else the watchful guardian with your best interests at heart, or else perhaps we were merely reading an undertone into perfectly neutral statements, but they sure sounded to us like a string of admonishments. Even the cries of Brother Curzio when he wanted us to pick up the pace of our languid warm-up trots around the gymnasium, “Come on, get going, a little faster! Faster! Put your heart into it, come on!!” and even his sharp shrills on the whistle contained an unmistakable allusion to the troubles that afflict a young man who gives in to laziness. If Brother Franco winked an eye at Barnetta during recess and told him: “Pizza with tomato sauce is good, isn’t it?” Barnetta, who was about to chomp down, to prevent the tomato sauce from sliding off the side of the pizza that had folded precipitously downward (in fact, it was always that thin, greasy, gooey pizza, heavily laden with tomato sauce and therefore extra delicious, especially at 11:30 in the morning, an item sold throughout the schools of Rome, in every order and grade, now and stretching back into the past), Barnetta immediately halted, pulled his hand back, extracting the slice that was already halfway into his gaping maw, convinced that the priest was alluding to the sin of gluttony.
MORE THAN THE CONTENTS, much of it understandable and, in the final analysis, easy to subscribe to, and some of it even exciting because it was so similar to stories of magic or adventure tales, what made us lose all and any religious impulse and annihilate what lingering enthusiasm might have survived was, in fact, the tone. Yes, the tone, the tone, I’ve said it before but I’ll never tire of repeating it, the unmistakable Catholic tone: the tone in which that content and those stories were foisted off on us, that psalmodizing preachy tone, slightly high-pitched, nasal, raucous, exasperating, a sort of inspired and prophetic falsetto, as if the speaker had shut his eyes to better savor the vision conjured up by his words, and as he speaks, he smiles, that’s right, he smiles complacently. The complacency of priests derives, I believe, from the fact that they’re constantly mingling sin and goodness, and pointing out how the latter is sure to triumph in the end. Goodness absolutely had to triumph. Sin lay in ambush everywhere, it lurked, slithering along the edges of our words, images, actions, with the same treacherous undulation as the serpent in the Garden of Eden: but after giving the impression that it would always prevail, it ultimately got the worst of it. When the head of the serpent that poisons the world with its treacherous breath was finally crushed underfoot, the already querulous tone would begin to pitch upward, taking on a coloratura of indignation, turning almost vengeful, really, and then it would placate itself, turning magnanimous, relaxed, pastoral, drinking in the peace and quiet that reigned in the pastures once the wolf had been chased into the woods. The curve of the graph according to which the priests treated any subject was invariably the same, first rising then falling, with the peak situated around three-quarters of the way through the discourse: exposition/admonishment against the risks of sin/development of arc from sinfulness/indignation/ redemption/pacification.
We knew the shape of the curve so intimately that, at mass, we could trace it in the air with our hands, waving an imaginary conductor’s wand, miming the tempestuous fortissimo and then the inevitable closure of reconciliation.
I can’t say if that was faith or something else, whether it was faith or stupidity, if it was faith or a conscious lie, if it was a false certainty or a thought so insistent that it came true, at least for those who had repeated it in their heads so many times that in the end they no longer even needed to think about it, one assurance of life and another of death, a contract signed and set aside, under a stack of other assorted papers, I don’t know if that faith was truly faith, or a gift, or a grace, the true faith, the true simple faith of someone who believes that God exists, that He created us out of nothingness, and awaits us in the afterlife, with a reward or a punishment ready to hand, depending on what we do now, here, today, me, you, us, everyone, judged one by one, and if you have this faith, then maybe you’ll get by, and if you don’t, then you’ll just muddle through and hope for the best, maybe there’ll be a final act of clemency, for which, strictly speaking, you can’t even hope, since you don’t believe in it. What kind of hope, faith, or charity can skeptics practice, and if they practice these virtues anyway, then what difference is there between them and believers? Just the fact that God isn’t brought into it? And the very word “credo”—literally, “I believe”—in the final analysis, what does it mean, what does it prove, what does it matter, truth be told, whether or not you believe? In the final analysis, I can even believe in what’s not there, what isn’t true, and in fact there are plenty of people who believe with all their heart in some genuinely crackpot things, flying saucers, vampires, that Hitler loved mankind and wanted to save it, that Hitler isn’t dead and Paul McCartney is, but does their vibrant faith by chance make their convictions any more true? And if instead they don’t beli
eve, they refuse to believe, and they say that the death camps never existed, does that disbelief somehow make the smoke go back down the chimneys and reassemble the incinerated bodies of the children, does it bring them back to life? The fact that they don’t believe in the crematoriums, in the ovens, does that by any chance cancel their existence, does it make it any less solid, does it transform the bricks into mist? All of this emphasis on believing or not believing struck me, since I was a boy, as overstated, a false problem, an overvalued factor, a totem. Faith, sure, faith, all faith is nothing more than a way of hiding the truth or an attempt to get to it by taking a shortcut, almost, so to speak, by deceit, by trickery. To understand, certainly, to explore, yes, to try out and to seek, but to believe? Is it really that important?
FROM THESE TWELVE YEARS at a school run by priests, from the incessant preaching, sometimes explicit, at other times tacit, to which I was exposed, I have developed two different attitudes, mutually contradictory: the first is utter hatred for emphasis, whatever the text or discourse in which I find it; the second is the involuntary tendency to take on the tone and the pacing of a sermon the minute I start talking about a subject that is dear to my heart. In social occasions, for instance, I often say nothing, for as long as possible, but once I start talking, if for any reason I feel that I ought to provide a clearer explanation of what I think, before long I’ve slipped into the posture of a preacher, hammering and obsessive, eventually overwhelming or boring those I’m talking to, and that is also the reason I prefer to remain silent.
AND WHAT HAPPENED, after all, when I prayed? Nothing. I’d pray with my mind drifting to other things, then, ashamed of my distraction, I’d try to steer my wandering thoughts back onto the subject of my prayer, but I’d draw a blank: what had been the subject, what had been the intention? God was in my mouth and I did nothing other than to chew on His name. Peering around, I decided that if the others, kneeling like me, with their hands cupped in front of their faces or their fingers intertwined beneath their chins, were doing the same thing, then it meant it was possible, it was possible to pray, it meant something, and therefore it was simply a matter of being patient, of doing the same as them and waiting for a different sentiment to spring from those formulations, an emotion unlike anything I’d experienced so far. Or else, and this was another opportunity to assign meaning to that ceremony, even if I didn’t feel anything special as I was doing that praying, it would still prove effective in satisfying the requests I had made: another case in which it was a matter of waiting and seeing how it turned out. Patience remained the main structure upon which the entire matter hinged. I found this second hypothesis to be much less attractive than the first one: I didn’t like the idea of begging for charity in order to obtain this or that, and since I was a rather fortunate young boy, I had no special graces to implore or wishes so great that they couldn’t possibly be satisfied by my father and my mother, who were so very generous and affectionate with me and my brothers. In that case, better to turn to them directly for my requests. And so I limited myself—as the priests had suggested I do, drawing upon the equivalent of a preprinted form to be filled out—to praying for the continued health of my family members . . . for their happiness . . . to help me to be a good boy . . . right, and then . . . and then . . . as a generic and all-inclusive appeal, well, certainly, I prayed for peace among men . . . indeed, according to the standard formula, for “peace on earth.” To judge from subsequent developments, you’d hardly say that my requests had been heard. Peace on earth? Not even the shadow of it (though as far as that request goes, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting great results), and as for my family, it’s been decimated by disease or other misfortunes (five died young of cancer, one suicide, and one who was killed while tearing along at high speed on his motorcycle). Still skeptical about the efficacy of my prayers as well as anyone else’s for “peace on earth,” what I do hope for is the protection so vainly invoked for my family back then, possibly shifted forward with more effective power to the family that I’ve created myself now; and so I suspend all judgment and I wait and wait . . .
NEARLY ALL BELIEVERS, for that matter, cut and stitch themselves a religion to fit, holding on to the things that suit them best and deleting the more restrictive or disagreeable chapters, behaving more or less like that pirate who took the Tablets of the Law to sea with him, and scratched off a certain number of Commandments.
1
ARBUS WAS TOO FAR AHEAD of all the other students, so in the second year of liceo—eleventh grade—he withdrew to study two years in one and present himself for the final high school exams. In order for this to be permitted, the candidate had to have a an average of nine—roughly, an American A, a 4.0 GPA—but that was no problem for Arbus because he excelled in all the subjects, except for Italian, even better than Zipoli or anyone else, and the teachers were willing to help him, raising his average by a few points if that should prove needful. Arbus was ready to make the great leap forward and we prepared ourselves to bid him farewell. It was a shame to see him leave, but it was also the right thing. Our class was losing the most advanced and diabolical brain, if by this adjective you are referring to logical and connective capacity, taken to extreme consequences without fear of anything.
Some time ago I studied the character of Satan and I discovered that his image oscillates between the two extremes of an absolute glittering intelligence and the most absolute, abysmal, black stupidity. According to tradition, the devil is either very astute or else foolish or even demented, given that he seems to be ready to fall into any trap set for him by a barely functional peasant. In general, in any case, his way of thinking, even when it appears to be dizzyingly subtle or wily, remains deep down mechanical, a matter of applied intelligence: he is a deducer, a calculator, but he seems incapable of making quantum leaps or significant advances from the plane upon which he conceived his initial thought. The devil, in short, is a logical fellow, indeed, he is absolute logic incarnate in a being of immense power, and this may perhaps help to explain the contradiction between intelligence and stupidity, given that even the latter quality is the product of a mental process that is, in its way, irrefutable. Idiocies are usually perfectly logical. And the fool who allows himself to be deceived in the medieval tales isn’t incapable of reasoning, indeed, if anything, he does too much reasoning: in the most literal sense, he has reason on his side, and he remains convinced that he has it on his side even after the prank being played at his expense has been fully consummated. What makes us laugh behind his back is in fact precisely this: not his error, but the way in which he is right—the eternal and useless rightness of Shylock, the law that succumbs to the exception, reason and rightness (deep down, blind and obtuse) defeated by a small twist, a loophole that in the end proves victorious. The absence of the law proves superior to any law. Freedom is superior to logic—freedom, which the devil does not rule.
Which is why he is the implacable accuser of God and of His defects. It is precisely the devil’s frenzy to bring his reasonings to completion, reaching for the most absurd or dolorous implications (that is, in fact, why he is, in the final analysis, a servant: the servant of his own mind), making him so exquisitely sensitive to the endless injustices of Creation. It is enough for him to turn his gaze around him, and lo the devil twists aghast in suffering: everywhere, he sees contradiction dominating, which is a knife to the heart for a logical fellow like him. Divine action—by the light of the diabolical mentality, which is rectilinear—is unjustifiable. The Grand Inquisitor’s question is unquestionably diabolical in nature: why do children suffer, why are the innocent left to die? As he asks it, the devil, who spouts it through the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, no doubt has reason on his side. And he is a thousand times right to be infuriated at the tiny little tear shed on a deathbed, allowing the soul of a perfect bastard (Buonconte da Montefeltro) to fly away to heaven in the arms of an angel. How can this be? Doesn’t no one deserve hell, not even a scoundrel like him? In that case,
what point is there, what difference does it make whether we are good or bad? In that case, the devil might as well become good. “Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love.” Like those revolutionaries who aspired to justice and who, once they had witnessed the defeat of their ideals, decided that it had become pointless to continue their opposition, and instead chose to accept, indeed embraced and practiced with the most cynical realism, the injustices they had once fought against, similarly the devil—who had once been blinded by his thirst for justice, only to become resigned to the inconsistent law of general injustice that governs the world as it was created by the Lord God—limits himself to torturing the occasional just man, like Job, in his spare time. Evil has become his weary work, his routine, as horrifying as it is taken for granted, and now it is only rarely that we espy the old glint of rebellion in his eye.
The Catholic School Page 32
