The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

by Paul Theroux

  I tried not to seem astonished.

  She was not smiling when she added, “So maybe just give me the three hundred and you can fuck me now.”

  I felt a sort of discouraged relief, as when an appalling secret is revealed, a person is caught in a lie. And my mind went back to my story, to the Gräfin, her dignity, her recklessness, and at last her coldness.

  “Maybe we can discuss it,” I said. I put my papers away, packed my notes, my pad, my pen, hefted my briefcase, and started away. Silvina followed me to my room.

  “You want a massage?” she said, tweaking the bows on her bikini bottom and letting the tiny garment drop to the floor, the gold bikini bottom that had mimicked and masked the black patch of pubic hair. She picked it up like a monkey seizing a big leaf, with a movement of her foot and a scissoring of two toes.

  I had no desire, and yet I wanted her to stay. I felt nothing, I felt sixty. But I knew, as the Gräfin knew, that she would do anything I suggested, anything at all. This knowledge, the anything, made me reticent.

  “Let me make a picture of you.”

  The last of the daylight slipped across her body as she sidled next to the window, the golden and pink sunset, as though a fire was burning on the sea, blazing on her skin.

  I sketched her slowly. I loved her small head and straight legs, her boyish buttocks. The sunset gilded her expression, made it ambiguous, something like a scowl. She touched herself between her legs. “You are arousing me.”

  “You are my model. You must not move.”

  “Not done yet?” she said a moment later. “This takes longer than sex!”

  “That’s the fun of it,” I said, sketching her sneering lips.

  “It will cost you more.”

  “Money, money,” I said, and I thought: Hungry little whorelet.

  “I need the money,” she said. “Not now, but when I am old I will need it.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Buy what I want.”

  “Maybe come back here to Taormina when you’re sixty and find a man,” I said, glad that she had relaxed, because the sketch was not done.

  “First marry a rich man. Live my life. Then, afterwards, come here and find a young man. A Stallone. Give him money,” she said. She reflected on this. “Nothing is wrong with buying sex. It is a tragedy if you want it and have no money to buy it.”

  I said, “You don’t need my life. You’ll be all right. You are willing to take risks.”

  I talked, I sketched. She was too impatient to be useful, but that did not matter anymore. I knew who she was: my picture was precise.

  She still believed that she was pleasing me. I spared her the truth. That I knew she was repelled by me and I by her. That she would never remember this. That I knew she was eager to get away. Nor did I want her to stay. I too needed to leave Taormina and would never go back.

  At last my sketch was done. Silvina took the money and peered at the picture, frowning.

  “It is all wrong,” she said. “Why you give me a hat? Why you make my hands with gloves? Why you dress me with this horrible old dress? You are laughing at me. And you make me look like an animal.”

  “Like a Gräfin,” I said. “A contessa.”

  “A monkey.”

  She tucked the money into the front of her bikini, where it made another bulge. When she left my room, a whore in a hurry, I knew everything, and especially that the Gräfin had spared me her past. Long ago, I thought that in knowing the secret of the Gräfin’s age I would be stronger than she. But the secret was elsewhere. It was about being a stranger and having no past, the sense of shame that impels people to succeed. She had come from nowhere, which was why she had seen me so clearly, as I had seen Silvina. At sixty, I now knew, you have no secrets, nor does anyone else.

  A Judas Memoir

  I. Holy Week

  1

  I WAS GOING NOWHERE alone up the wet Medford street through slashes of drizzle pretending my footsteps in puddles proved I was braving a storm. The rain was personal, falling especially on my head, testing my willpower. Then I saw the girl hurrying ahead of me. Her jacket was drenched in patches, her soaked skirt flapping against her legs, and a swag of slip, satiny, pink-edged, with a ribbon of lace drooping beneath the hem. She was there for a reason, I felt: because I was there, braving the rain. She turned at the sound of my puddle-slapping steps, her face pale and small. She seemed to study me with her narrowing lips. So I dogged her in the rain, following that hanging scrap of slip.

  She went into St. Ray’s, I entered just after her, and the heavy iron-studded church door banged shut behind us. We were both in a shadow that smelled of hot wax and candle smoke and damp wool and a residue of incense, all the stinks of veneration. But there was candle shine on the girl’s pretty face.

  The holy water was tepid from all the dipped fingers, and dripping from my fingertips to my palm I smelled its stagnation as I crossed myself. The church was clammier and cooler than outside, dank with sweaty varnish and dying flowers. Though the church was large, entering it on this dark day was like going downstairs into a damp cellar.

  When I had turned to dip my fingers into the holy water font I lost the girl. I took a seat at the far end of a rear pew, under a stained-glass window—Satan in a lower panel, his green face and veined crushed batwings and snakelike tail, his body twisted on the downward-thrusting spear blade of a glowing Saint Michael. The Last Supper, in an upper panel, showed thirteen Apostles at the long table, one with rusty hair and no halo—Judas looking guilty.

  The colored windowpanes trapped the light and prevented it from entering the church. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I saw that the girl in the wet jacket was in the pew in front of me, kneeling, her head bowed, and as she prayed and relaxed she lowered her small shapeless bottom onto her heels. I sat behind her and looked at her narrow shoulders, her skinny neck, her wet shoes—pigeon-toed behind the kneeler, and the scrap of satin, her smooth lace-trimmed slip, the more alluring for being mud-spattered.

  Above the altar the candle flickered in the red chimney of the lamp on the long black chain: the red light meant that Christ was present as a consecrated host in the tabernacle, the gilded cupboard-shaped box in the center of the altar. A statue of Christ stood at the side of the altar, his robe parted, his right hand indicating his torn-open gown and his blood-drenched heart in flames.

  The candles on the altar, the paschal candle, and the red-tinted sanctuary light were nothing compared to the heat from the sloping rack of vigil lights that blazed in front of the small side altar near me, the wicks standing in pools of liquefied wax, a bank of fluttering flames. A woman in a black coat lit a fresh one with a taper, then inserted a coin with a clink into the coin box, and she knelt and prayed.

  As I knelt to get a better look at the girl, she sat back in her pew, her hair near my nose. She slipped her wet jacket off and a warm sweet soap smell crept over my face. I remained a moment, sniffing, and then sat and looked at the tiny buttons down the back of her blouse, one of them undone, showing in the parentheses of her parted blouse the fastening of the back strap of her bra. That she wore a bra at all seemed to me a miracle.

  Feeling hot-faced at the sight of her bra strap in the church, I turned away and saw that I was sitting under the Eleventh Station, Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross, the soldiers banging the nails through Jesus' hands and feet with mallets while Jesus lay on the wooden cross, glaring at his persecutors.

  “This is the ninth day of the Novena and the beginning of Holy Week,” the priest said. It was Father Staley. “Scaly” Staley, we called him, because of his hands. “Those of you who have completed the Novena will be rewarded with sanctifying grace. Please follow the service on the pamphlet provided in the pew. Let us pray.”

  While he prayed aloud I looked at the Novena booklet, flipping through it until I came to the section of testimonials.

  I was operating a machine at my place of work, watching the belts and wheels. Without any
warning a wheel worked loose, the machine broke apart and scattered chunks of metal in every direction. Although I was not quick enough to get myself out of the way, I was completely unharmed. None of the pieces hit me and just one of them could have seriously harmed me or even killed me. I believe I was spared due to the divine intercession of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whom I had prayed to in the course of a recent Novena.

  Father Staley was clearing his throat in the pulpit. He gargled and said, “This is a special week in the church calendar. We know it is a special week when we look at the Gospel of John and read the words of Christ. 'Did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil.'”

  The big sleeve of his vestments crackled against the microphone as he paused to let this sink in.

  “One of you is a devil,” he said again. He nodded at us and dabbed at his mouth with his floppy sleeve.

  Satan was grinning in the stained-glass window, his green face, his broken wings, his shiny thrashing tail.

  “Who is that devil?” the priest asked. “The devil is you, if you betray Christ by committing sin.”

  Satan was grinning in the window because he was being speared, because he was in pain, because in stained-glass windows only the devils grinned. Grinning was a sign of wickedness.

  “Later, John says, ‘And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him.’”

  I could tell from the way his lips smacked that Father Staley wanted us to remember the word “sop.”

  “What is a sop?” he asked, and nodded and paused. I looked at The Last Supper for a clue. “It is something you eat. They were at the Last Supper, eating. Judas was eating with the Apostles. But Satan entered into him.” The priest lifted the Bible and the lacy cuff of his big sleeve swung as he said, “'Then Jesus unto Mm said, “That thou doest, do quickly.”’”

  In the long silence that followed, Satan hovered over me and tried to enter me and make me look at the girl’s gray bra strap.

  Father Staley shouted from the pulpit, “‘That thou doest, do quickly!’ Betray me, but make it quick!”

  This sharp cry of condemnation made the girl in front of me jerk her head back, and after that a shiver passed through her body. I became conscious that I was watching her and I shut my eyes.

  Father Staley said, “Unless you are in a state of grace the devil is inside you, blackening your soul. You are Judas, betraying Jesus. You are a Roman soldier hammering a nail into our Lord’s hands!”

  And yet even then I did not believe the devil was inside me; I believed that if I struggled and prayed there, and let the girl leave the church alone, I could enter a state of grace.

  2

  I went to sleep that night, and woke the next day, with the same thought, not any words but a clear picture of the pretty girl with the wet jacket and the drooping slip. I remembered that grayish lacy slip swinging below the hem of her dress before I remembered her face, her green eyes, her nervous lips and skinny fingers. I wanted to see her again.

  “Where are you going?” my mother asked as I headed outside.

  “The Stations.”

  She was pleased and surprised, she looked at me in a kindly way, she said, “Don’t forget to bring something for the collection.

  I found some change on a saucer in my room that I had been saving to buy some ammo for my air rifle. I took a nickel, but hesitated. When I saw my face in my mirror I felt ashamed and pocketed the quarter.

  The afternoon was bright and cool because of yesterday’s rain; the sky was clear, the clouds bulky and white and tumbling overhead; the streets were dry but the gutters were still moist and muddy. At the corner of Webster and Fulton I saw John Burkell coming toward me, biting his necktie. He seemed glad to see me. He took his tie out of his mouth and jingled some coins in his pocket.

  “Want to go to a show?”

  “I’m going to church.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He meant it wasn’t a sin not to go today.

  “My mother’s making me. The Stations.”

  “There’s a pisser Abbott and Costello movie at the Square Theater.”

  “I’m going to be late.”

  Burkell didn't say anything. He just put the end of his tie back into his mouth and walked toward Medford Square.

  The Stations of the Cross service was at four, and it was ten to four by the time I got to the Fellsway, where black cars were speeding past. I ran across one lane and onto the center of the island toward the trolley tracks. A sudden clanging of the bell of an approaching trolley made me jump, and the thing screeched past me on the metal rails as I imagined myself run down and smashed under the iron wheels.

  That thought of dying was worse because I had not seen the pretty girl, and somehow I expected to, as I had the day before, at the Novena. On the area of the sidewalk where I had followed her in the rain I saw four big boys and a small one sauntering along in my direction.

  Strange boys approaching on the sidewalk in a certain careless way always made me nervous, because they were bolder in a group. For a moment I wished I had gone with Burkell, but then it was too late to think anything at all because the boys were blocking the sidewalk and wouldn’t let me pass.

  I stepped off the sidewalk into the gutter and hurried onward with my head down.

  “Want a fight?”

  I said nothing.

  “Get him, Angie.”

  One of them tried to snatch my arm.

  “He’s smaller than you and you’re scared.”

  “Let go,” I said, and hated the tremor of fear in my voice.

  “Chickenshit. Hit him, Angie.”

  I winced and kept walking. I knew nothing crueler or more vicious and unforgiving than ugly hard-faced boys like these daring me to fight. One put his leg in front of me while another pushed me. I tripped and fell flat but scrambled to my feet and tried to get away.

  “Fairy!”

  Before I could move on, a boy I couldn't see punched my upper arm, then knocked me on the head. I was breathless and terrified.

  “Asshole!”

  I staggered along the gutter, splashing into a puddle left over from yesterday, and soaked my shoes, the water chilling my socks and feet. The boys laughed, and one of them threw a muddy stick at my arm.

  My feet squelched, and what was worse was that one foot was wetter than the other and made a noise as I ran. I knew I was late for church, but at least I had a place to run to. I saw St. Ray's ahead as a refuge and was glad for my decision to go.

  Easing the big door open, holding it ajar and hoping no one would see me, I slid through the narrow crack into the darkness of the church.

  “Shame on you!”

  With this hiss, which startled me, a hand snatched my ear and I saw the angry face of a nun—pale skin and a half-plucked mustache and a black hood like a villain, no lips and crooked teeth and a bristly chin. She twisted my ear and then punched my arm, harder than the attacking boy had done.

  “It’s a sin to be late,” she said in a harsh sour breath. “It’s an insult to Jesus.”

  I was startled and felt helpless again. Nuns were hardly human, bearded women, like demons, somehow incomplete, hidden beneath black gowns and starched collars. I could not imagine what their bodies might look like when I considered their scary faces and claw-shaped hands.

  She had punched my coat where the boy's muddy stick had whacked me.

  “You're filthy. Your shoes are soaked.” She held on to my arm. “This is the house of our Lord and Savior!”

  She twisted my arm and pushed me so hard I scuffed my feet for balance, and some people in the last pew turned to see what the fuss was about. I ducked down the side aisle and into the nearest pew to get away from the nun, and as I knelt I heard the chanting of the congregation and the loud “Amen!”

  “Sixth Station,” Father Staley said aloud, and raised his eyes to the image on a pillar. He stood there, an altar boy on eithe
r side of him, each one carrying a lighted candle. The priest went on announcing: “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus.”

  Palm fronds were folded behind the carved wood image that showed Veronica's cloth imprinted with the face of Jesus, the hanging cloth like a mirror, another miracle.

  “Veronica in her mercy was guided by the angels,” the priest said, “although there were devils all around.”

  Knowing human cruelty—boys who looked for fights, nuns who pinched me and tried to frighten me with threats, and other human scares—made it hard for me to believe in the devil. Human wickedness worried me and made me want to be alone, or else to find a friend.

  She was not in church. I squinted into the dim light that was dulled by the soupy color of the stained-glass windows. I thought I saw her at the Tenth Station, Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments, but it was someone else, a bigger neater girl and not as pretty. I knew that in looking for the skinny girl I appeared attentive and pious, my face forward. I watched for her and heard Father Staley's shoe leather squeak. I watched for her and heard the chinking of coins in the collection basket. I dropped the nickel in and kept my quarter.

  Father Staley had left the last Station, fourteen, Jesus Is Placed in the Sepulchre. He turned to face the people in the pews and said, “Confession will be heard tomorrow. You must be in a state of grace or else you can’t perform your Easter duty.”

  As he spoke I saw the girl on the far side of the church—her lovely face—under the Eighth Station, The Women of Jerusalem Weep Over Jesus. I turned to get a better look and my arm went numb as though I had been bitten—it was the nun, bugeyed in fury, pinching me.

  “Kneel down!”

  “I want ejaculations from you,” she said in my ear. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, forgive me!”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, forgive me.”

  “Five hundred times.”

  I knelt with my head down reciting them, and when I was done the church was empty, the girl gone. But it wasn't only punishment; we were promised that each ejaculation knocked one day off the time we would spend in Purgatory.