The Translation of Father Torturo

by Connell, Brendan

  “There is something funny about this boy,” Guido’s wife Bruna said to her husband one night. “I am afraid he will bring us trouble.”

  “Oh, I admit he is a bit naughty,” Guido said with a shrug of his shoulders, “but that just proves that he has blood and not water in his veins. Frankly I am more worried about Marco; he is obedient at school, never complains and has yet to be caught stealing so much as an apple from the neighbour’s tree.”

  “Caro figliuolo,” Bruna sighed, thinking of her son.

  Xaverio was certainly considered a wicked child. After class, he often beat the smaller boys mercilessly. The larger boys, those closer to his own size, he generally refrained from fighting. Instead, he simply humiliated them by time and again bettering them at sports and thrusting the knife of his tongue into their sides. No one dared cross him at school because it was known that his uncle was un assassino, and his nephew therefore, if not demanding the utmost respect, was certainly not a boy to have as an enemy.

  “You have to be careful,” Bruna told him one day, upon catching him beating the neighbour’s dog with a stick. “The witches like little boys like you. They like to eat little boys like you and send them to the devil.”

  Far from scaring Xaverio however, this comment quite fascinated him. To be eaten by a witch and sent to the devil sounded, to his ears, like jolly fun.

  Luckily for his teachers he was a brilliant child, and they could give him passing grades without in the least fudging it. It was true that he often made sarcastic remarks that made the class giggle and themselves look like fools, but the boy was marvelous in Italian grammar and, when asked a question concerning history or mathematics he was rarely wrong.

  “He is intelligent,” Bruna said, “but not half so sweet as Marco.”

  These words, though casually spoken, put a good deal of consternation into Guido’s heart. He sincerely wished his son was not quite so sweet. He wanted him to be a bit rougher, a bit more like himself and less like his mother, whose qualities, though exemplary in womanhood, were not those he desired to see in a male, – particularly his own offspring.

  “What did you do after school today?” he would ask.

  “Played ball.”

  “With sides?”

  “Yes. My side lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “The other side cheated.”

  “But you didn’t cheat?”

  “No. Professor Lorenzo says that—”

  “Per la miseria!” Guido interrupted, pinching the five fingers of his right hand together and waving them in front of his chin. “You need a real education. Get in a few fights. Fists are the best professors.”

  Meanwhile, he looked at his nephew, Xaverio, with a kind of awe. The boy was athletic, quick witted, and as naughty as could very well be wished.

  “Listen figlio mio,” his uncle once told him, taking him on his lap. “It is obvious that, with your intelligence and spirit, a boy like you can grow up to be whatever he wants, either a criminal or a cardinal. In the history of our family we have many criminals, but not as yet a single cardinal. My confessor, Father Falzon, has agreed to tutor you and see if you are fit for the calling. By the Madonna, I hope that you are. If you lead a religious life it might help to exonerate me from some of my sins.”

  Father Falzon, a crusty old priest with a reputation for misanthropy, somehow found the boy to his liking. Unlike other children, Xaverio did not talk much. He also brought his tutor contraband tobacco with every visit and this, for a man who often had to resort to smoking stale cigarette butts for lack of funds, was like a gift from heaven.

  “Let me take a few puffs of this Saint Luis Rey,” said the priest, his eyes emitting a dull lustre, “and then we will pray to the Christ, there above my bed, before having our lesson.”

  Father Falzon instilled in the child the habit of prayer, the habit of attempted communion with God. From his tattered brevrey he began to teach Xaverio Latin, and was amazed with the rapid accomplishments of his student.

  “I have never seen anyone pick up the Latin tongue so quickly,” he told Guido. “A year ago he did not know the most basic elements of the language, and now he has already memorised the book of Genesis by heart.”

  What was even more amazing, was that, over the subsequent fourteen months, young Torturo memorised the entire rest of the Holy Bible, word for word, from Exodus all the way through Revelations. In less than two and a half years time, before he was yet a teen ager, he had become as good of a Latin scholar as Father Falzon himself, who was certainly one of the few priests in the city who could genuinely understand the dead language.

  In his own way, Xaverio became quite fond of the old priest.

  Father Falzon, in his youth, had written a book of poetry titled Un Cuore delle Erbe. The book had been much acclaimed, and had won several noteworthy prizes. It was his first and only published work, yet it was a minor classic.

  Now, as chance would have it, Xaverio’s school teacher, Professor Lorenzo, one day assigned the students to memorise one of the poems, Amato Basilico. Several boys gave vent to muffled laughter, and winked at each other.

  “What is it you find so humorous Romeo?” the professor asked seriously.

  “We know who wrote this,” Romeo replied. “It’s that old priest, Father Falzon. Me and Arnoldo—”

  “Arnoldo and I,” the professor corrected.

  “Arnoldo and I passed by the church the other evening and saw him naked; we saw the old priest naked, drunk and sitting up in a pine tree.”

  That day, after school, Xaverio pummelled both boys vigorously, and advised them to watch their tongues.

  Firmly established on the path of scholarship and entering his teenage years, when a keen and original intellect naturally finds itself drawn to the arcane, Xaverio proceeded to work his way through the old priest’s entire library of texts, reading such books as the Sermones Vulgares and Tractus de diversis materiss praedicabilibus of Jacques de Vitry, the Cisterciensis Dialogus Miraculroum of Caesar of Heisterbach and the Exuviae Constantinopolitanae of Count de Riant.

  “Oh, that’s a fine book,” the old priest grimaced, coming upon Xaverio reading the De fabulo equestris ordinis cosantiniani of Marchese Scipione Maffei. “When you finish with that I will loan you his Arte magica dileguata and the Arte magica annichilata. These are hardly children’s books and, unfortunately, many of my colleagues would say I am poisoning a young mind, but you are intelligent and will surely make your way through the classical writings without doing too much damage to your soul.” (Here his top lip curled back, revealing a strip of pink, receding gums.) “To properly understand them though, I must say that a bit of knowledge of the Greek authors would do you good. I have a lovely Latin Parua Naturia of Aristotele Stagirita and—”

  “I would prefer to read it in Greek,” the boy said.

  Father Falzon was dumbfounded. “Would you now?” he said scratching his head. “Well, my Greek is not as good as my Latin, but I could teach you some basic grammar and vocabulary I suppose.”

  “Please do. It is necessary for Bible study; and Uncle Guido will appreciate it.”

  “Yes,” the father murmured, fingering the box of Montecristo No. 3’s Xaverio had handed him that morning. “I am sure he will.”

  One day, upon visiting the father for his lesson, Xaverio found him sick in bed. His cheeks were pale and, in the weak light admitted through the aperture which some humorous architect called a window, appeared extraordinarily long. His nose was as red as coral. Black rings circled his eyes.

  “I am afraid that I will not be able to give you lessons,” the old man said.

  “Maybe not today, but tomorrow.”

  “No, not today, tomorrow or the next day.”

  “What?”

  “Bring me a glass of wine and water. The water is there, on the dresser. Look under my bed; you will find a bottle of Barbera . . . Yes, that’s it; a nice portion of wine – Please, not quite so much water! – There is no
need to drown me.”

  When the boy had complied with his request, the old man held the glass of light red liquid to his lips and drained half its contents at a swallow. “Ah, that’s better,” he murmured, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I had fire in my throat.”

  Xaverio looked at him seriously and asked: “So, you don’t want to give me any more lessons?”

  “It is not that,” Father Falzon grinned hideously. “For one thing, I am not sure I have much left to teach you. You are a better latiniser than I, and, furthermore, your Greek is nearly at the same level.”

  “So you think I know enough; that is the reason?”

  “No; I would still have you come around even if it was you who gave me lessons. To my feelings Xaverio, you are my only ally here on earth. In the kingdom of heaven maybe I have a few friends; possibly even a connection or two downstairs; but here you are really my single interesting associate. This might surprise you, but many people look on me with suspicion. You ask why the lessons will end? I have spent my life in sedentary occupation; too much poring over books without the appropriate exercise; too much blood meat and maybe a sip too much wine. If you want a lesson then look at my sagging body, a mass of puss, fat, bile, blood and hair precariously clinging to a stack of weary bones. The only thing that keeps me attached to this bag of flesh is the thin stream of air which I laboriously drag in through my swollen lips and raw nostrils. The soul quivers, inconstant in the body like a bubble in water. Let me tell you frankly, without beating about the bush: I will be dead within the week.”

  “Dead?” the boy asked simply.

  “Yes. I am ill. I had a dream last night that my body was consumed by maggots. After I die I want you to go to a seminary school.”

  “Fine.”

  “You have the intelligence to one day be a bishop, cardinal; – even Pope!”

  “I will do as you wish.”

  “Go to my closet.”

  “Yes.”

  “You see the box?”

  “This cardboard box?”

  “Right.”

  “Should I open it?”

  “No. Get it out of here. When I am dead, burn it.”

  “Burn it without opening it?”

  “Yes; better you don’t open it.”

  “Burn it?”

  “Burn it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you want some advice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t give yourself away. Not until you have them check-mated. You are smart, you stay relatively quiet. Better keep it that way . . . Look at me. I was never silent, never able to keep the words from falling from my mouth . . . I should have been a cardinal, not a damned putrid priest . . . Yes, stay quiet. That is the best gambit . . . Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now come closer . . . Kiss me; on the cheek . . . Do I smell so bad?”

  “Yes; you do.”

  As Father Falzon predicted, he was dead four days later, of what malady the doctors were hesitant to report. Against the old priest’s wishes, Xaverio opened the box. Inside were a number of books in Latin (The Satyricon of Petronius, The Life of Heliogabalus by Aelius Lampridius), an Italian copy of Justine by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, as well as a vast assortment of improper contemporary literature. The boy scanned through the glossy illustrations of the journals, remarking on the depravity of the Italian presses, who certainly managed to outdo that of any other nation in the art of lascivious crudity and symbolic perverseness. The books in Latin and Justine he kept and read. The other literature, which was of no intellectual value to him, he distributed at the schoolyard after class. As he walked away he looked back, over his shoulder. He could see knots of boys stationed in front of the building, pushing each other and craning their necks over each others’ shoulders while several, getting hold of some torn out page, scampered away gleefully, the obscene icons flashing in their clenched fists.

  “You should have seen it, after school today,” Marco told him that evening, when they were sitting in their room.

  “You were there, after school?”

  “Yes, helping Professor Lorenzo.”

  “And what happened?”

  “We looked out the window and saw the boys – They all had bad magazines in their hands.”

  “And they were enjoying them?”

  “They seemed to be. Professor Lorenzo ran out and caught two – Mario and Roberto. He asked them where they got the magazines from, but they would not answer. He beat their knuckles bloody with a ruler, but they still would not say.”

  “And the magazines?”

  “Confiscated – In Professor Lorenzo’s desk.”

  “Ahh.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why the boys like those things.”

  Xaverio smiled contemptuously.

  The next day he built a fire in the backyard and threw the empty box atop the flames.

  “What are you doing?” his uncle asked, coming to the back door, a cigar clamped between his teeth.

  “Fulfilling my teacher’s last wishes,” the boy responded gravely, his eyes fixed on the burning cardboard, black smoke curling up into the blue sky.

  A week later he set off for the Collegio di SS Pietro e Paolo, located just outside the city of Parma.

  “I wish I were going as well,” Marco sighed, as they sat together, waiting for the train while Guido went off to buy the ticket.

  “Your mother does too,” Xaverio grinned.

  “Yes, but it is father who makes the decisions, and I am afraid he has other things in mind for me besides praying.”

  “You’ll manage,” Xaverio said, taking the ticket from Guido as he walked up.

  The train pulled in. Xaverio shook hands with Marco and kissed Guido on the cheek. Carrying his grip he boarded the iron beast which, squealing and moaning, carried him away, over rivers and past lakes, with snow-capped blue mountains behind them. He watched out the window, the farmers tilling the rich land, the land that had been marched over by armies, travelled by men of genius, fertilised by the bodies of hundreds of thousands, plague stricken, and soaked with the blood of millions more – through war, treachery, the struggle for power and the unpluckable thorn in man called hate. He watched the businessmen who sat on the same train as him, sporting ostentatious gold watches and well-tailored suits that were worth a months food. Then there were the women, the prima donnas, sheathed in costumes like snakes’ skins which, by their movements, their motions and smiles, they seemed ever ambitious to shed. These were the people whose sins he must one day hear, the people that he must one day acquit, yet the people who, as sure as the moon did glow, he despised. He thought of his old friend, Father Falzon, who was more intelligent than any of these men of business, yet had lived his life without comfort and scarcely a pleasure outside of books, wine and tobacco. Lying dead he was, rotting in a pauper’s grave.

  “I’ll be damned if I stay miserable for them,” Xaverio murmured, looking at the garrulous crowd around him, which he thought more stupid than sheep, more dumb than oxen; the gregarious nature of the Italian people striking him at that moment, the first moment of his independence, as particularly distasteful.

  Chapter Four

  At the Parma station, he was met by a young priest from the seminary, with a very high forehead showing the signs of early hair loss.

  “Xaverio Torturo I presume?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, come with me,” the priest said, placing his hand on Xaverio’s shoulder and guiding him out of the station. “You are a very handsome boy. Strong shoulders. You should do well,”

  Xaverio felt very much like breaking the fellow’s fingers and telling him to go to hell, but he did not. He remembered the last words of Father Falzon and, lowering his gaze to the ground, kept silent. Pleased, the young priest smiled and patted him on the back.

  Torturo’s grip was put in the trunk of a two seater. The prie
st unlocked the passenger’s side, threw the keys in the air and, jauntily catching them in the other hand, stepped around to the driver’s side. As they drove through the streets and then on to the edge of town where the seminary was, the priest never ceased talking, in his clipped, slightly arrogant voice, telling the boy about the town, its history and benefits, the seminary itself, the staff and the noteworthy students. On the whole it was a well practiced speech, one Xaverio was sure had been used on numerous others. He made a mental note to despise this young priest. The fellow’s instant familiarity disgusted him to no small degree, and was a gross but prognostic taste of what life was to be away from home.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” the priest smiled, showing his teeth.

  “Immensely,” Xaverio replied.

  He was determined to play his hand strategically.

  At the seminary he was immediately introduced to the rector, an ash-coloured man with wide, pseudo-ecstatic eyes, who said to him:

  “You have been born in lawful wedlock, have surpassed your twelfth year, and have indicated that you wish to be of service to the Church. You are here so that we may form Christ in you, for thereafter you are to form Christ in others.”

  Xaverio’s nature was such that, whatever he did, fair or foul, he put his whole nature into it. The basic courses at the seminary were for him a simple matter. His spare time he devoted to his own studies and training in the gymnasium. He read like one possessed, lifted weights, boxed and practised hand stands. At night, while the other boys slept, he devoted himself to rigorous meditation in the chapel. That there were things supramundane, things which were hidden from everyday eyes and mute to everyday ears, he knew through reading. It was not possible that there could be so many reports of the fantastic without them having any foundation in reality. The Holy Bible and the Lives of the Saints and desert fathers were full of the supernatural, not to mention all those numerous accounts he had come across in his other readings. Much of the material he had studied under Father Falzon’s care certainly had a mystical flavour to it. He felt reasonably confident that the paranormal was an actual thing. It held great attraction for him; he was fascinated with the notion of miracles and aspired to gain a bit of mystical authority. All wicked temperaments like power, and it has been generally acknowledged that the greater part of the power of the universe is hidden. What was hidden, he desired to find, without in the least equating it with a straying from his religion. Some say that magic is but a disease, a corruption of religion, while others maintain that it is the natural preliminary phase of all religions. He found the former view to be hypocritical, inwardly professed the latter and, in the end, followed a creed all his own.