The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

by Paul Theroux

  3

  I still had no idea who she was, but after two days I had a better notion of what she looked like, her thin face and green eyes, the way her clothes hung straight down on her, her thin neck and narrow shoulders and bony legs, her limp skirt and the way her slip drooped beneath it, different clothes on different days but the same torn slip. She was like a certain kind of skinny doll.

  I did not want to talk to her—didn’t have the courage, had nothing to say. I just wanted a chance to stare at her. So outside the church on Wednesday afternoon I waited by the grotto, a statue of the Virgin Mary balanced on a ball, and standing there I realized for the first time that the ball was the earth and her bare feet were crushing a snake.

  Earlier in the year we had had a special ceremony and a sermon on this spot, consecrating the statue, the pastor explaining the Assumption, that when the Virgin Mary died she rose to Heaven.

  “The Blessed Virgin was not buried, her body did not decay, she was assumed into Heaven, body and soul, because she was the mother of God, the second Eve. This is Our Lady’s year, the Marian Year.”

  I kept hearing the expression “Marian Year” and I knew it had something to do with Mary, but what was I supposed to do? It did not seem so odd to me that she had uprisen, flown to Heaven on rooster tails of flame: it was shown in all the pictures, even the oldest ones.

  But now that the pastor kept insisting that Mary was assumed into Heaven, that this was official doctrine, saying “It’s true,” I started to think that it might not be true. Looking at the stone statue, the big hard folds of the Virgin’s blue cloak and her heavy body, I tried to imagine her rising from the ground, over the tops of the telephone poles and past the trees in Hickey Park, into the glowing clouds, the whole grotto, scallop shell and planet earth and all, shooting like a rocket ship upward on a plume of smoke.

  Then, staring past the Virgin, I saw the skinny girl hurrying along the sidewalk alone, wearing the jacket she had worn to the Novena—it had dried out—but a blue skirt, the same shoes, falling-down socks, and the scrap of drooping slip. Her tangled hair made her seem nervous and unhappy, as though someone was chasing her.

  The devil was always after us, the priests said. Maybe she was being dogged by the devil, walking lopsided, one shoulder higher than the other.

  She turned to climb the church stairs, and I followed her, keeping my distance, waiting a few seconds after the big door closed on her before opening it again. The bad light blinded me as I entered, I stumbled in the shadows, and I paused behind a pillar until I could see clearly.

  Two confessionals were in use. In the pews near them people were waiting, some of them kneeling, some sitting, waiting their turn to tell their sins.

  The skinny girl was walking slowly up the center aisle trying to decide where to go. We knew that in confession some priests were stern and some friendly. I had no idea which priests were in the confessionals, but I knew where to go when the girl chose. I wanted to be near her but not next to her. Her confessional had two compartments for people to confess. The girl was in the line that fed into the right-hand side, and so I sat two pews behind her, in the line for the left-hand compartment, five people ahead of me, five ahead of her. She knelt and prayed.

  Above her was a stained-glass window—Saint Rose of Lima, first saint in the Americas, from a rich family; but, the nuns told us, she decided to serve God. The next window showed Saint Theresa of Avila. She was famous for having a vision of Hell, another nun’s story: a tiny room made of white-hot metal in which she could neither stand nor sit, flames on the walls, where you burned for eternity.

  Every time I saw Saint Theresa’s odd comical headpiece and pleated cloak I was reminded of this hot room in Hell.

  That was why we were going to confession. If you were not in a state of grace, with a stainless soul, you went to Hell when you died and you stayed in the flames forever.

  Saint Francis, in another window, was a relief to me, the way the birds fluttered around his head—he spoke to birds, they talked back to him. On his hands were wounds, the stigmata. The cuts did not surprise me. If you were very holy, God made your hands and feet bleed, the way Jesus had bled during the crucifixion. I saw the wounds as a Jesus-like achievement, not something that was painful but a sort of reward, a bloody badge, and the proof of holiness.

  People left the confessional with their heads down, and other people entered, looking anxious. We slid along the pews, awaiting our turn. Each time the priest began to hear someone's confession a window inside was jiggled open, like a kitchen cabinet. Then the priest pronounced a blessing, and when the confession was done he shut the slider with a smack and opened the one on the other side.

  The girl was kneeling, praying. I tried to pray, but above my head the stained-glass window showed Saint Michael spearing the devil, his snaky tail whipped to one side. The windows were full of snakes. Saint Patrick holding a staff was casting wiggly snakes out of Ireland, and the Virgin in her window was squashing a squirming snake with her bare feet.

  I looked from one snake to another, marveling at how fat and healthy they seemed. These evil things were the only images in the windows that were full of life, even struggling to survive as they were, and the saints were overcolored, with big sleeves and fat faces and dead eyes, and halos like gold donuts.

  Thup-thrip, the jiggling slider closed on one side of the confession box, and thrip-thup, opened on the other. The girl was gone from the pew in front, so I assumed she was inside the confessional and perhaps the mumble I heard was hers. Since I knew the confession formula, I could follow the high points of what she was saying. Beneath the loose curtain I could see her scuffed shoes and falling-down socks.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” After a pause, a breath, she continued. “It has been blee weeks since my last confession. Blee blee fault blee times. Blee my mother blee.”

  Hearing her say the word “sinned” made me eager and hot, and there was more.

  “Blee blee blee impure thoughts blee times.”

  Lifting my hands to my face and blinding myself I saw in my dark damp palms someone new, not a pale skinny girl but someone friskier and fleshier, who committed sins and suffered guilt; someone like me.

  “Blaw blew blee occasion of sin?” the priest asked.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Blah blay else?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Blay blee Hail Marys and blaw Our Fathers and a good Act of Contrition.”

  “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” she replied. “I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.”

  As she gulped and recited in a quavering voice I realized that I was in love with her—hearing her confession, her uncertain and guilty voice, her pathetic expressions of sorrow, a tone that said: I am sorry but I know I will sin more and I will have to come back here and confess my sins all over again.

  Thup-thrip. Then she was pushing the limp brown confessional curtain aside and ducking out, and as she did, heading for the altar, her hands clasped, her head lowered, her eyes were on me, and she looked happy.

  Instead of going into the confessional I slid out of the pew and followed her to the altar rail. I knelt beside her. The heat of the vigil lights, the flickering bank of candle flames, the smell of scorched wax, the warmth of the altar, and the sooty lingering whiff of incense. She was mumbling prayers, her forehead resting on the altar rail. I watched her out of one eye, but when I turned away and pretended to pray she got up and left the church.

  So only then did I go to confession, and now I had a descriptive phrase for my sins: impure thoughts.

  4

  “What happened yesterday?” Father Staley asked from the pulpit on Holy Thursday, and he waited a while, too long, and I was worried, because I was thinking about yesterday. Finally he said, “Judas was plotting to betray Jesus yesterday. What happens today?” The priest leaned forward and spoke angrily. “Today, Judas betrays Our
Lord.”

  Father Staley was speaking directly to me. I could not look at him.

  “And so Christ’s message on Holy Thursday,” he said, and he raised a flopping sleeve and shook his white finger at me, “Christ’s message on Holy Thursday is, prepare to suffer.”

  She was sitting in front of me. I thought she had seen me on the way in. She had seemed to hurry ahead. How I loved her. Who was she?

  “Tomorrow is Good Friday. Christ knew that he was going to be crucified. He knew that nails would be driven into his hands—big spikes, like the ones carpenters use. Driven into his feet. And a crown of thorns. Not the sort of thorns you see on rose bushes. These are big thorns—inch or so—you find them in the Holy Land. They didn’t set the crown of thorns on his head like a hat—they jammed it down so the thorns pierced his flesh. Drove the thorns into the bone of his skull!”

  Father Staley waited a little, picking at the dead skin on his fingers.

  “He knew this was going to happen. He had been told. It was written in the Scriptures. Holy Thursday, when Christ was betrayed by Judas, he knew he was going to suffer and die. ‘That thou doest, do quickly!’”

  She was listening with her head and shoulders, a stiff attentive posture, her hair out of place. I loved her loose hair, her untidy clothes, her twisted collar—one side up, the other down, the smudge on her upper arm where she had brushed the church door perhaps.

  Something also told me—the way she sat at a slight angle—that she was aware that I was behind her. If she had turned just a fraction more she could have seen me. Though I was listening to the priest, I was watching her the whole time.

  “The example of Christ’s suffering has inspired many people to suffer themselves—to become better Christians. Maria Goretti was just a poor pious girl in a small Italian village. She was twelve years old. She did not know that Christ had chosen her. What was the choice he offered? It was to give way to the devil or to die. The devil lived in the village. His name was Alessandro Serenelli.”

  I almost laughed out loud when I heard this funny name, especially the “nelly.” I looked down smiling at the floor of the church and did not look up again until I had swallowed the smile.

  “Serenelli watched Maria Goretti. He followed her. Wherever Maria Goretti went, Serenelli also went. But his heart was filled with impure thoughts. Serenelli stared at Maria Goretti’s innocent body. He stared at her modest clothes. Maria was never alone—Serenelli was always behind her, watching her with his lustful eyes. Waiting for his chance.”

  I picked up a hymnbook and leafed through it to take my eyes off the skinny girl in front of me. I felt the priest was warning her about me—she was Maria, I was Serenelli. I wanted it to be a love story, with a happy ending, but I was nervous: in church I never heard love stories, and there were no happy endings.

  “Serenelli followed Maria even into the church. He watched her praying. But instead of admiring Maria for her faith, Serenelli harbored impure thoughts. Imagine! In church, this devil was sinning in his heart!”

  I tried to read a hymn, I put my fingers on it.

  “Serenelli sat in the church and watched the poor girl praying. Wicked thoughts kept him watching. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her.”

  My eyes were so dazzled with fear for Maria and swallowed laughter I could not make out the words of the hymn.

  “The devil was inside Serenelli.”

  The name Serenelli made me think of a small fat man with a big nose and black mustache and flat feet, a clown in a brown suit with spaghetti stains on his necktie and a smelly cigar in one hand.

  “He followed Maria to her home. She took a shortcut through some woods. The pure innocent soul did not know that this demon was watching her. And when he got a chance he grabbed her and demanded that she commit a sin of impurity.”

  Until that point the whole story made sense to me—I could see each separate word as a vivid detail. But “sin of impurity” baffled me. I saw Maria, I saw Serenelli—Serenelli was me. But what did he want? Whatever it was, the sin was so enormous that she would be damned if she did what Serenelli wanted her to do—which was what?

  “Maria said that she would never give in to him. She would not commit a sin.”

  But in this description—Maria in the woods, talking back to Serenelli—I began to suspect that she was tempted. That the sin attracted her. That she needed to pray, because part of her wanted to give in to Serenelli. In my mind the sin was something to do with kissing her, hugging her, touching her—Serenelli slobbering over her, still holding his smelly stogie in one hand and squeezing Maria Goretti’s cheek with the other. I smiled because I saw this clearly—the fat hairy man, the brown suit, the skinny little girl in her ragged skirt and muddy shoes; the woods; the shadows, the puddles, the lighted windows in the girl’s distant house.

  “When she refused, he stabbed her. Still she prayed to God for strength. Serenelli stabbed her again and again. Even after she fell to the ground this devil stabbed her.”

  I was so horrified I let the hymnbook slip to the floor. I saw the knife plunging into Maria Goretti’s body. I saw Serenelli transformed from a guinea wop like Chicky DePalma’s father, with a mustache and cigar, into a devil with crazy eyes and a bloody dagger. Maria was like the girl sitting hunched and attentive in front of me, so small in my imagining that it seemed especially cruel to stab her more than once. And so thin that I imagined the knife going in one side and the blade point sticking out the other, each thrust of the knife making two wounds, blood spurting out.

  “All told, Serenelli stabbed Maria Goretti fourteen times.”

  I wanted Father Staley to stop using the name Serenelli, because it was still hard for me to picture a devil named Serenelli.

  “As she was dying, her last words were merciful—forgiving her killer. ‘I want him to be with me in Paradise!’ Christ on the cross turned aside and said the same thing to the good thief. That is why she is going to be canonized in a few months. She will be a saint! Christ provided the example for Maria Goretti. But who provided the example for Serenelli? It was Judas, the sinner, who betrayed Our Lord and Savior. Let us pray.”

  I knelt and prayed but all I saw was the skinny girl in front of me, and wherever I saw bare skin I saw bleeding stab wounds.

  More priests appeared in purple albs and frilly smocks at the altar, and the service continued with chanting and incense and foot-washing and the raising of a monstrance, a big spangled trophy with the host inside a round glass door, and the whole gold thing shaped like a blazing sun.

  But I sat and stared at the girl’s shoulders and head, and I tried to sniff at her hair when she sat back in the pew. When the service ended I watched her leave. She did so in a hurry, not looking at me, which I felt was her way of noticing me.

  5

  Good Friday was a holy day of obligation: it was a sin not to attend church. I knew I would run into my friends. The week had developed slowly for me, the progress at church had allowed me to be near the pretty girl I devoured with my eyes from behind, the girl who, to my confusion, to my guilty flustered pleasure, had confessed to “impure thoughts.”

  John Burkell was sitting on the church steps chewing his tie. When he saw me he started complaining about the length of the service.

  “This thing is going to last a year.”

  He was snapping a stiff card the size of a playing card.

  “What’s that?”

  He handed it over. One side showed Jesus rising to a multicolored Heaven, and under a prayer was a small cellophane window with a cloth dot, the size of a dot that a paper punch made.

  “Part of the Holy Shroud,” Burkell said.

  But I read, Fragment of a piece of linen that has touched the Holy Shroud, and pointed this out to Burkell.

  “Same thing,” he said.

  As we were talking, Chicky DePalma walked over, his footsteps making clicking sounds from the metal taps on his heels, clickety-click, like a tap dancer.

  “T
hat’s gatz,” Chicky said. “Look at this.”

  He took out a small card with a similar cellophane window, but this one showed a dark chip of wood.

  “Piece of the True Cross.”

  It looked like the sort of splinter that you tweezed out of your finger after you'd been fooling in woodworking class.

  Burkell said, “My old man says they've found enough pieces of the True Cross to rebuild the Italian navy.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Chicky asked.

  But I was laughing, imagining a whole harbor of bobbing ships, all of them made of tiny dark splinters.

  “Your old man's a Protestant,” Chicky said. “What does he know?”

  Burkell went silent and chewed his necktie.

  “They got a mixed marriage,” Chicky said to me, and made an Italian gesture of emphasis, flipping the fingers of one hand.

  “My folks aren't the only ones,” Burkell said in a small beaten voice—he was embarrassed at having to admit that one of his parents was a Protestant—that is, damned to Hell for all eternity. He was watching the steps, his face tight with shame, looking at the people going in to the Good Friday service. “Her parents got one, too.”

  The pale skinny girl had just walked by.

  “Her father's a Jew. Her mother’s Catholic. That's worse. Jews are Christ killers.”

  I controlled myself and said, “What’s her name?”

  “Evelyn Frisch. She goes to the Swan School. Her sister’s a tramp. She lives down near you, off Hickey Park.”

  I had never seen her. I said so.

  Burkell said, “Because of her folks, the mixed marriage. She only started to come here a few months ago.”

  The fact that she had chosen to come to church alone, to attend Holy Week services, made her seem virtuous. She was always on her own. She got down on her bony knees and prayed. But I hoped that she was also showing up partly to be near me, to let me see her, as part of a flirtation.