Child of the Twilight

by Carmel Bird

  The priests and students at the Irish College where Roland lived knew Father Cosimo as a trickster, a poet, a riddler. ‘He often speaks,’ they told Roland with a certain pride and affection, ‘more or less in the language of the old troubadours, the green language, the language of the birds. Like St Francis. That’s really his field, mediaeval texts and mystical matters. He talks in puns and paradoxes and codes. Just take no notice of him. He’s English, you know, only half Italian, he went to Cambridge. He has spent more than half his life in libraries and museums, poking around in old books and documents. We think he fancies he’s a bit of a troubadour himself, you know. He can sing.’

  They grinned at Roland when they said that. Perhaps they were including him in the joke. Perhaps they were making fun of him.

  ‘Ask him to sing. Get him singing for you. That will keep him happy, and it will entertain you. He practically lives in the archives deep down in old papers and books and manuscripts – feasting on bookworms and other strange dark awful foods.’ And then they laughed.

  Cosimo’s language could switch from the puns and the rhymes and the jokes to quiet scholarly abstractions in the blink of an eye, to utterances of apparently profound wisdom and spiritual simplicity.

  I met Father Cosimo myself the day Avila/Barnaby and I went to the Aracoeli, and he is just as I say.

  ‘Sydney,’ he said, ‘I expect you are a follower of the Swans, with your eye on the ball.’

  Cosimo follows every football code in the known universe, from the Shetlands to New Zealand. The Florida Gators are his passion, and he owns a brick in the Gator Walk. He is one of the people who owe their eyesight to Barnaby. His retina detached one night in 2000, and in a flash Barnaby was there to repair it. It’s nice the way we keep running into such people; Barnaby’s eyes, as we call them, all over the place. Cosimo has deep dark penetrating eyes that I find quite weird, and weirder still when I think that Barnaby has been inside one of them. I think Cosimo probably can speak mysterious ancient languages. I also have a talent for languages, in particular the language of animals. Barnaby calls me the St Francis of Holmby Hills.

  I’ve always been a reader of mediaeval literature in translation myself. My grandfather’s library had a big section of it, and even though some of the books were quite valuable, he let me read them. I used to curl up in the window seat and run my fingers along the edges of the pages that glowed with colours, Venetian red, ultramarine, viridian, lapis lazuli, gold leaf. I would lose myself in the old illustrations done by monks, pictures of strange and wonderful places and people and things. Little grinning monsters and jewelled butterflies in the margins, and great graceful leafy capital letters with tiny pictures curled inside them.

  ‘Frank, are you going to go on letting her ruin those books?’ my grandmother would ask, and Grandfather would wink at me and say, ‘Never mind, Horty, the child has to get an education from somewhere.’ Some of these books he left to me, and they’re in storage, however most of his library went to a university in Sweden.

  Back in Rome, in the absence of the Real Bambinello, after a time, people at the Aracoeli made do quite successfully with the Copy. They appeared to forget the Lost Boy, yet in their hearts they never really forgot that their Holy Child had been spirited away. The copy ‘wasn’t the same’ to those who had known the real thing, and was made from pine, not olive wood. It resembled the original on the surface, but you could somehow see there was no light, no life, no beating heart.

  The substitute statue came from a workshop where they carved wooden replicas, and also mass-produced them from plaster or plastic. In spite of the counterfeit, the miracles kept coming. That’s the way with miracles – of their nature they don’t operate by ordinary rules, so in a sense it doesn’t matter that a statue is a replica, or does it? I have argued with my invisible friends Aurora and Amber about this point, and sometimes I can see that a faithful replica can be as good as the ‘real thing’, and sometimes I get really nervous about it all and simply must have the original. There were several miraculous births reported just after the pine replica was installed – babies born to ‘infertile’ couples who had not had recourse to any form of worldly Assisted Repro Technology.

  ‘Now isn’t that the real miracle, the very middle of a riddle of the middle of a miracle?’ Father Cosimo said to Roland. ‘You take away our miraculous statue, and perhaps Christ Himself responds to the prank with more miracles than ever. There is the old doctrine of Furta Sacra here. You probably know,’ he said, glancing up at Roland with his sideways look, ‘that in the Middle Ages, the heyday of relics, Furta Sacra was invoked principally to justify the “movement” of relics from one place to another. By purchase, or theft, or miraculous translation – relics can shift themselves around. And the doctrine can, you know, cover also such miraculous objects as our Bambinello, objects which have minds and wills of their own. It has happened before, when the statue was stolen, but returned itself to its place in the crib one Christmas. It is possible to believe that the statue needed to move, wished to move, again. And maybe, just maybe, it will come back of its own accord.

  ‘Think perhaps of the unstoppable Holy House of Loreto. All by itself – well, with angelic agency – it flies from Nazareth to its place in Italy at Loreto. You have not visited the Holy House? You must, Roland, you must do that. It is after all quite close to Assisi. My friends Antonio and Ulisse will take you there in a flash. The Holy Father has categorised it as the most sacred location on the face of the earth. A curious expression, that – the face of the earth. Does the earth smile, I wonder, to see the objects that we heap upon its lovely face? Heap upon it, weep upon it? Or does it frown? What does the earth think of the man in the moon? Of the lunar module? Do you know, I fell in love with the term “lunar module” when it was new-minted, green and shining, cheese and pickles, a word for wonder, sweet and sharp as a serpent’s tooth. But I’m digressing again. Let us fly back to the flying house of Loreto.

  ‘I suppose it may be because I am of the Brotherhood of Francis, but wherever I turn I seem to encounter the spirit of our blessed founder. Do you find that yourself? I personally believe that I was led to the Friars – the way was long and sometimes arduous – but that’s another story, isn’t it? An old tale of faraway and long ago, over the hills, Roland, over the hills. The only tune that he could play was over the hills and faraway. At Loreto it was Brother Francis who showed the way, who pointed out where the angels would put the Holy House down, even before it arrived, even before it had been imagined. Did you know that? Of course you did. Francis said where the angels would put it on the face, as I say, of the earth. Do you imagine angels, with the assistance of Brother Francis, might perhaps have carried off the Boy? Might they not? Is that a possibility to your mind? It breathes cool air in my mind, Roland. Ah, Furta Sacra, Roland, Furta Sacra. What a lovely thing.’

  Chapter Three

  The Poor of Rome Get Honeycomb

  Much of the story now comes from the damp red mouth of Cosimo. He spoke of the Holy House of Loreto, a place I have visited with Avila, naturally, and I have also been to Walsingham in England where there is another of these gloriously mysterious and wonderful habitations that arrived by miracle or magic. Both Virgins in these places, Loreto and Walsingham, are black. It’s a curious fact that the faithful can frequently and conveniently forget these statues are black. The Greek word for ‘little house’ is ooecium, a term that has moved over, as these things do, into the scientific terminology of fertility to give you the oocyte which is of course one of my own favourite topics of interest, along with the spermatozoon and all the rest of it. The Black Virgins in their little holy houses work many and many a miracle of astonishing birth. God alone knows how many of these Virgins Avila invoked on my behalf. It is strange and fascinating to me to think of people – Avila in particular – praying me into existence.

  One of my favourite Black Virgins is lately suffering from overexposure, in my opinion. If that is possible – I think
it is. She is the darling little creature in the Paris convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Doll size, so charming, so French, so sweet, so dark, dark, dark. She came to her current celebrity status after the publication of The Da Vinci Code because she is part of that whole business about the Merovingian bloodlines.

  Our Lady of Peace she is called, someone who will forever struggle with the warlike impulses of human beings, I suppose. I visit her whenever we go to Paris. I say over to myself like a prayer, or to Isabella and to Amber and Aurora, those T.S. Eliot lines from ‘Sweeney’ about the nightingales singing near the convent of the Sacred Heart. I don’t know the whole poem by heart, but occasionally I google it. Also ‘The Waste Land’, which was prophetic in its day, and gets more and more accurate as years go by.

  There she stands in the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, the woman of peace, with her baby and her olive branch, wearing a crown made in the time of Pius X on her noble wooden head which was carved in about 1530. She is modelled on the idea of the Greek goddesses, so she has that powerful and faintly boyish air of somebody like Athena. Outside in the courtyard is one of those heavy old stone wells I really love, they are so magical to me. There’s nothing quite as wonderful as a wishing-well. Many such wells, and also many of the Black Virgins, are found over the ley lines or telluric lines that glide like snakes through the underground landscape of the world we live in, you and me. The wells and the Black Virgins connect this world to the next in ways I don’t pretend to understand. Just as once the shrines of ancient goddesses, often black as well, marked the intersection between life on the surface and life beyond.

  This connection between the Black Virgins and ancient pagan primitive powers can be quite disturbing to the everyday imagination of parish priests who are frequently a nervy lot, and so often they dissociate the statue from its past and its significance by denying that it is black. They will say it has been darkened by hundreds of years of candle smoke, an idea that is so obviously untrue it makes you laugh. These girls are black, wood or stone, black through and through and through, from their shiny pitch cheeks to their bleeding little cherry-wood hearts. They are pitch-black as the ace of spades.

  But to return to the Bambinello – the real statue was carved from an ancient olive branch found in the Garden of Gethsemane, and was decorated by wood-carving angels from heaven. It is a child with a down-turned rosebud mouth, round cheeks, wide steady eyes and a head too large for the tapering little body. His right foot is slightly advanced in its clumpy golden shoe. A large royal crown of gold sits straight upon his head. Pinned to his chest is a glittering monstrance which resembles a lovely toy windmill. His gold silk robe is tight, like a matron’s ballgown or a baby’s swaddling bands. He radiates light, yet something about his mouth suggests pain, suffering, distaste or sulking. Even wind. It could be time for a little opium in the gripe water. Perhaps he is worried, carrying as he does the woes of the world in his little heart. He is trusted and adored.

  After February 1994 his facsimile, which could certainly pass for the real thing in any light, was at first worshipped with a whiff, just a tremor, of reserve, for it was not the real thing. The candles lit before him were, in truth, candles dedicated to the Lost One, the True Bambinello. For lost as he was he could still perform the miracles. Before too long the new was accepted as the true, and life went on.

  It occurred to Roland that a good miracle would be the return of the Baby himself, but that was too simple. There are supposedly good reasons for all these things. The notion of Furta Sacra is certainly quite persuasive and seductive, and Roland found it so. The way the mediaeval mind worked to resolve the problem of the disappearance or theft of a work of art or devotion was truly marvellous. I think the whole idea is elegant and beautiful. The statues were not ‘stolen’ from one church by another, but had ‘decided’ of themselves to move on.

  For Roland, Father Cosimo was the strangest and most intriguing, most engaging and enraging figure in the monastery. As the official archivist Cosimo spent his time, when he was not buried deep in books and documents, delivering informal sermons to anyone who would listen, and Roland was a willing audience. When Cosimo embroidered his stories with rhymes and tricks, the older priest’s smile was like a ray of light. Cosimo’s grin would break through his short black-grey beard, and he would look up at Roland from under his eyebrows, eyes twinkling and shrewd and fully serviced and repaired by Barnaby. ‘Let me tell you,’ he would say, after uttering a short, harsh laugh, and he would launch into a long account of whatever was on his mind. To begin with there was Cosimo’s version on the history of the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

  ‘Let me tell you. Once upon a time – I mean in ancient Rome – the Senate used to meet on the steps of the temple to Juno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill. In other words, they met here, you see. That temple disappeared long ago, crumbled and bumbled into rubble and air, but certain stories and memories linger, not to mention pieces of stone. Mists of time, stones of time, parsley, sage. They do linger. Juno, who you realise was the wife of Jupiter and mother of Mars, was worshipped under many different names and functions. Imagine being the wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars. Some amazing family! Stop me if I’m insulting your intelligence, Roland.’

  But Roland never stopped him because the stories were always seductive, like a lovely old song, like a story told by a grandfather in the twilight before bedtime when the moths are drawn to the lamps and the darkness creeps quietly through the trees.

  ‘The lady’s designation “Moneta” was derived perhaps simply from the Latin for “hill”, or perhaps from the word for “warning”. A chill warning in the morning, in the morning dew. The idea of “warning” rather than “hill” is persuasive, as it was at this temple that Juno’s sacred geese warned the Romans that the Gauls were about to storm the Capitol. The Romans, the Gauls – do the names of the peoples really matter? Well, perhaps they do. If you recall, the city of Rome was saved by those geese, the cackling white geese on the hill. The goose is loose, Roland. And every goose when once let loose returns and still remains a goose. Have you had much to do with geese?’

  Cosimo had a habit of stopping suddenly and playing with his fingers on the surface of the table or the arm of the chair as if he were at a silent piano. Now he pursed his lips and sang loudly and operatically, ‘The goose is loose’, and Roland observed with some distaste the pink pucker of his lips within the foliage of his beard, and he thought suddenly of poking in his little finger. The others were right, Cosimo really could sing. His was an easy baritone, a rich, resonant, lovely voice. To Roland it was mesmerising, having a shadow of a soft lilt, and a distant and curious note of light laughter. When Cosimo looked at him, Roland had an unusual impression that the priest was thinking of him, of nothing but him as he sang, and this, while being novel, was unsettling, as if Cosimo could get under his guard, could possibly know his thoughts, could enter the recesses of his heart. What mad ideas were these? Cosimo was just a good storyteller, a fine singer, and a clever communicator, or, as the men at the College would say, a trickster, a troubadour manqué.

  ‘The goose is loose. At some stage a mint was established in the temple, and the modern word for money derives from Juno “Moneta”. Curious, isn’t it? Or perhaps it is not so strange. Goose quills from the left wing as the bird flies are always best, you know. It makes sense. Are you right-handed? Yes? Because the curvature of the left-wing quills bend away from the eyes of the right-handed scrivener. Goosey-goosey-gander, Roland, goosey-goosey-gander. I’m a left-hander gander myself.

  ‘Even in these modern times people climb the staircase here at the Aracoeli on their knees, you know. Why? In the belief, Roland, that by doing so they may win the lottery. Yes, the lottery. I have sometimes secretly considered crawling up there myself. What do you think of that for an idea? Is it a Franciscan idea, do you think? Or is the devil himself whispering in my heart? It’s an old old staircase, put there in 1348, I believe. That’s
a century I am fond of, although earlier is better. For me. So is it a Franciscan idea, Roland, about the lottery? Is it a gesture towards that old word “moneta”? Render unto Caesar, Roland, render unto Caesar. Is winning the lottery a proper Franciscan idea?’

  And grinning in a kind of secretive way, he played another silent few bars on the table, humming softly. There was no answer needed to such a question. One of Roland’s many distant Italian aunts had had a windfall after making the prayerful pilgrimage up the staircase, but this was scarcely the time for such sweet old family folklore. Or so he told himself. Nor was it the time for Roland to admit to himself his strong suspicion that his mother had probably written to the Bambinello concerning in some way his own conception and birth and ordination and Roman visit, bundling up all the connections she could make between her son and the statue. Had he carried a letter thanking the statue for his own birth? This was a disturbing suspicion, tangled as his birth always was with the birth and death of his sister. Thoughts of such a letter stirred in his heart those sharp memories of Eleena, and stirred also the question of why Roland was spared the day Eleena was killed. Roland preferred not to examine these matters, would hand them on, offer them to God whenever they showed signs of opening up. They were, he thought, in a file marked ‘To Be Opened Later or Possibly Never’. What was in that letter that Callianthe sent to the Bambinello? There might possibly be thanks for the birth all those years ago of her twins, prayers for Eleena’s soul – what else? Roland tells himself it is none of his business, it is between Callianthe and God, Callianthe and the Bambinello. Perhaps she was asking for money. No, no, this was not probable, but Cosimo’s stories were getting to him. His mother might simply have been praying for his own wellbeing in Rome. That was almost certainly the case, if you thought about it. He wasn’t even supposed to speculate on these things, the transactions being between his mother and the Bambinello.