The Translation of Father Torturo

by Connell, Brendan

  “Listen to him,” Vivan said sweetly, sipping his coffee. “His offer is really not a bad one.”

  “What exactly is his offer?” Zuccarelli asked, somewhat pacified now that the scene had taken on a more businesslike tone.

  “To begin with,” Torturo said, “I want, I require a cardinalature.”

  “Absurd!” Zuccarelli laughed grotesquely.

  “I agree,” Torturo responded. “It is absurd. It still however would give me a certain measure of worldly satisfaction.”

  “I don’t doubt that in the least. I am sure you would be quite satisfied. But I don’t see that I am the man to grant it. Only the Pope can make a cardinal, and I do not see, even if I were to put in a good word for you, that he would be inclined to make such a gift. These things are done, to a certain measure, for services rendered.”

  “Oh, don’t worry on that score,” Torturo remarked casually. “I will render services.”

  Chapter Ten

  The pig had been hanging from the pine tree since morning, its hind legs secured to a branch by a rope. The doctor kicked Žnidaršič away from the pool of blood, cut the pig down and heaved its body into the centre of the court, near the well, onto the flagstones warmed by the sun.

  “This is good wholesome meat,” he murmured as he began to carve the pig.

  The dog barked.

  “Žnidaršič! Žnidaršič!” the doctor called.

  A man, probably in his mid-thirties, though with relatively boyish features, walked in. It was Marco. The dog ceased barking, approached Marco, and licked his hand and he, in turn, petted the dog

  “I was looking for a Dr. Štrekel,” he said, approaching the doctor.

  “Ah; and what do you need with him?”

  “I was told – I was told by a friend of mine that he could – That he could,” (grinning weakly). “Well . . . I was told that he could help me fulfil a certain urge.”

  “An urge, eh?” the doctor said, still leaning intently over his work and only glancing up.

  “Yes. I – I often think of spikes. Spikes and tusks. Pogo sticks, cucumbers and carrots. – Really I do need to be; – I do think of tusks so often!”

  The doctor looked at Marco archly. “Really?” he said.

  “Really. Much too often.”

  “So – you think of tusks?”

  “Yes. My general practitioner laughed when I told him what I wanted. He did not understand . . . I need someone who will do it for me.”

  “Do it?”

  “Yes. – Cut it off. Cut the left one off. I want the left one cut off.”

  “Are you serious?” The doctor’s intelligent eyes darted up and met Marco’s.

  “I have never been more serious. I have money and will pay. I want the left one removed.”

  “You have money and need some good work done, eh? . . . Well; then I suppose I am your man. Dr. Jure Štrekel at your service!” The doctor lifted up his hands. They were dripping with blood, the grim entrails of the pig hanging out of one clinched fist, like a macabre garland. “Ha!” he laughed, displaying his large, pink mouth and sparkling teeth. “I have been operating on this pork! – But come inside, I wash up and we talk things over.”

  Marco followed the doctor inside, the dog trotting at their heels. Nassa was in the kitchen, kneading dough. The doctor spoke a few words to her in Slovenian and she walked out of the room, inclining her head slightly towards Marco as she went.

  “So, what friend told you of me,” the doctor asked, rinsing his hands in the sink.

  “A friend; – an acquaintance of mine . . . A priest.”

  “Ah, the Father Torturo was it?”

  “Yes. He is my intimate friend.”

  “Then that is good. He is an honest man. – We drink wine and discuss business. It is better to talk business over wine.”

  “Certainly,” Marco agreed. “It might help me overcome my embarrassment. – I have never done anything like this before!”

  The doctor turned around and walked towards the cabinets, talking volubly as he did so about the quality of his teran, his ‘black wine’. Marco felt the pistol, which was equipped with a silencing device, in his jacket pocket and stepped behind the doctor. The doctor opened the cabinet, bent down, and reached for a plastic Sprite bottle, full of dark liquid. Marco slipped the gun from his pocket.

  “My wife will bring the prosciutto,” the doctor said, slowly rising. “We eat and drink a glass of the black wine, and then do business.” Unscrewing the top of the bottle, and lifting it to his nose: “That is our custom you know; we always drink a glass of wine before business.”

  “A good custom,” Marco said while placing the barrel of the gun a few inches from the back of the doctor’s head, and pulling the trigger. Without so much as letting out a cry, the man fell forward, slamming the cabinet door shut and then toppling to the floor. The open bottle dropped from his hand. A circle of blood leisurely expanded around him and mixed with the black wine, which flowed fluidly.

  Marco heaved a sigh. His arms hung limp at his sides. Žnidaršič licked his right hand, which still held the gun, and then began to lap at the pool of blood.

  Nassa, the doctor’s plump, blonde wife walked in carrying a plate of ham and a loaf of home baked bread which she set on the table. She smiled stiffly, cautiously at Marco. The only sound in the room was that of the dog, lapping away. Marco looked at her sadly, tenderly. Her own gaze dropped to the floor, where it fell upon the body of her husband swimming in gore. She shrieked, loudly and frantically, threw her arms in front of her face and staggered back. Marco lifted the pistol, bit his bottom lip, and shot her twice in the neck. She reeled against a wall and fell, sliding down, her legs sprawled. He approached the quivering body and dispatched a third bullet into her crown. Žnidaršič turned and barked, alarmed at the noise, which was like a melon dropped on the floor. The dog received its death, a bullet being sent into its head with cold precision.

  The young man dragged the woman’s body into the courtyard, a clear trail of blood streaking the flagstones behind her. He lifted the temperate corpse to the opening of the well, and threw it in. The doctor was quite heavy. His mouth was open and his white teeth shone in a set smile. Marco managed, with great effort, to drag him to the the well. Straining himself, he worked the heavy frame over the stone edge and watched it topple into the black hole. Žnidaršič he threw in after, and then walked back into the house and washed his hands in the sink, with hot water and soap. After drying his hands with a paper towel, he approached the table, stepping gingerly over the pool of blood. The loaf of bread, treccia, braided white bread glazed with egg, sat on a cutting board. A fly buzzed around the plate of ham, and alighted on a white spot of fat. Marco shooed it away, picked up a piece of the ham and ate it, slowly and despondently.

  “It is really quite good prosciutto,” he murmured.

  Chapter Eleven

  Before sending Marco to conduct the aforementioned business with Dr. Štrekel, Torturo had made sure that he was through with his services. The doctor had, within half a dozen surgical sessions, given the priest those miraculous relics of the saints to keep encased in his own living muscle and meat. In between operations Torturo had stretched his limbs and exercised incessantly. He ate restorative foods: tripe soup, wild pheasant and boiled marrow bones. Oils of myrrh and frankincense he rubbed on his wounds, and the proper incantations he muttered thrice daily, taking care to perform all the necessary articles of his practice.

  The priest who Vivan had once described as ‘inoffensive as a fly’ was rapidly coming into his own. That he had very little in common with a buzzing, two winged insect was now openly apparent. He had subjugated Vivan with ease. Zuccarelli could not be said to have been subjugated, but the man had clearly seen that to help Torturo was in his own best interest.

  Both men wondered about this priest, this well built man in his thirties who chain smoked Parisiennes and who, apparently, had as deep and dark a clandestine life as could be imagined.
Rumours had been floating about for some weeks that he was occasionally visited by the Holy Ghost. He had been seen entering a cheese shop during a torrential rain, every inch of him completely dry. At the intersection of the via Benedetto Cairoli and the via Jacopo Avanzo a bus had run over a seven year old boy’s foot. Torturo instantly appeared upon the scene, pushed the hysterical mother aside and, after removing the boy’s shoe, rubbed his foot. The child laughed, rose to his feet and danced along the sidewalk.

  One night Torturo was preaching on the nature of the spirit world at Il Santo. Vivan was a member of the audience and was both impressed and moved by the oratory. Zuccarelli walked in and approached him.

  “Who is that?” he whispered.

  “Father Torturo – his voice is like wild honey.”

  “Impossible!”

  “You don’t like wild honey?”

  “Not the honey idiot! The notion that that is Torturo – it cannot be him.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because on my way here I passed by the Church of Eremitani. Torturo was there contemplating the half decimated fresco by Mantegna of the annunciation of the virgin. We talked for thirty minutes.”

  “But I have been sitting here intoxicated by his voice for three quarters of an hour!” Vivan said, his eyes growing wide with astonishment.

  “Fava de la Madonna,” Zuccarelli murmured. “Our priest is a mesmerist.”

  Not long after this incident, a young nun claimed that, while she slept, Torturo visited and admonished her for aberrant thoughts. “He, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh!” She insisted that the man would do great things in the church.

  “So now you are you working miracles?” Bishop Vivan asked him one day with a silly, self-conscious smile.

  “The miracles of one age become the commonplace workings of nature in the next,” Torturo replied simply.

  Through the efforts of Vivan and Zuccarelli, he was made an auxiliary bishop of Padua.

  When he appeared before the cardinal with a suitcase full of bones and a jar containing a tongue the latter became apprehensive.

  “What do we have here?” he asked.

  “The tongue of Saint Anthony and the relics of Milan.”

  “And how did you come by them?”

  “As an official statement?”

  “I suppose it had better be,” Zuccarelli replied nervously.

  “Officially: I prayed and fasted. I recited the responsory of Friar Julian of Spires: Si quaeris miracula; resque perditas. A messenger was put before me. As I knelt, behold, then an angel touched me, and said ‘Arise, I will show thee where they be.’ Then we walked to and fro over the earth and through the myrtles. The place where the relics were hidden was revealed in a vision.”

  “And where was that?”

  “In the hollow of a fig tree near Limena.”

  “You fetched them?”

  “I did.”

  “And this story is to be believed?”

  “It will be accepted. Us Catholics, after all, are not without faith; – We are not materialists.”

  Zuccarelli drew up a statement, outlining Torturo’s story and adding his own conviction that it was so. Vivan lent his signature to the document and it was sent to Cardinal O’Malley, one of the key figures in Rome and a man on politically intimate terms with Zuccarelli. O’Malley, through partial coercion, managed to see a number of other signatures of prominent men affixed to the document, including those of the Archbishop of Milan and the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. The Vatican, though pleased with the news, refused to offer its sanction to the relics without a verification procedure. A meeting was called of numerous ecclesiastic authorities, in order to ascertain the validity of the relics.

  “I do not know whose tongue that is over there on the table and, frankly, I do not want to know,” Zuccarelli said in a low voice, as the various ecclesiastics gathered in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua. “Outwardly I will remain convinced that it is the tongue of Saint Anthony; – I have told you I would do so much, and I will. Over my inner feelings however, you have no jurisdiction.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to lay bare your heart to me Cardinal,” Torturo replied. “I am perfectly satisfied with outward pretence.”

  “And you shall have it; – from me. But remember, we are not alone. The men you see around you, for the most part, are not fools. Though I have my supporters here, I also have my enemies. When I say something is true, they will surely claim it to be false.”

  “Yes, Cardinal Gonzales, who has been warming himself in front of the fireplace, has been giving you a most unpleasant look for the last five minutes.”

  “I noticed. It is because I am intimate with O’Malley, whose interests are opposed to his own. He does not dare offend the man personally, because he is afraid of him. It is much more convenient for him to display his impertinence towards myself, whom he considers harmless.”

  “Yet I imagine there are more fitting adjectives to describe you.”

  “Thank you – I suppose.”

  “They have closed the doors. I presume we are ready to begin?”

  “Yes; to our seats.”

  The various members of the committee found their seats around the great wooden table placed in the centre of the room, with cassocks fluttering and whispers exchanged. In the middle of the table was a small golden casket, lined with white silk, on which sat the tongue; to one side sat a larger casket containing the relics of Milan. A few old ecclesiastics sniffed at the tongue and poked through the bones.

  Zuccarelli, who was to head the committee, sat at one end of the table, Gonzales, an agile old cardinal, at the other. All the chief ecclesiastics from Padua were there, including of course Vivan, and many from Rome. Torturo took his place next to Cardinal Di Quaglio, a plump, polite little man with smooth white hands and a double chin. The latter’s nostrils widened. He looked over at Torturo.

  “Excuse me,” he whispered. “But what is that cologne you’re wearing? It smells categorically celestial!”

  Torturo smiled stiffly and shrugged his shoulders.

  Zuccarelli opened the meeting with a brief speech outlining the general circumstances and stated that he firmly believed that the relics were genuine and should be seen as such. Gonzales roundly objected, stating that there was little more evidence that they were real than the word of a single priest.

  “Are you calling him a liar?” Zuccarelli asked pointedly.

  Gonzales pursed his lips. “I make no direct accusations,” he said.

  “And where do you propose he got the bones from?”

  “We are in Italy; – Bones are far from rare.”

  “And the tongue?”

  Gonzales gave the ghost of a smile. “Oh, men lose their tongues often enough.”

  A number of those present burst out in indignation. The comment was generally taken to be in ill taste.

  Torturo stood up before the assembly. He seemed to almost glow in the ill-lit room. There was a certain bearing, a power to his person which was ineffable. He exuded, not only supreme self confidence, but a kind of dominant strength that was somewhat uncanny.

  “Cardinal Gonzales has kindly informed us that men often lose their tongues,” he said, “while giving us a brief but piquant demonstration that he has not lost his own.”

  “The fellow certainly does have fire,” thought Zuccarelli. “It is remarkable that he remained unknown to me for so long. We could have been of use to each other earlier.”

  Torturo placed his finger tips on the table and continued: “My veracity has been brought into question: The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. – Now, let us be clear about the matter at hand: We have before us right relics of the saints, and, according to the Council of Trent, we must pay them due respect. – The holy bodies of holy martyrs, which bodies were the living members of Christ and the temple of the Holy
Ghost and which are by Him to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified are to be venerated by the faithful, for through these many benefits are bestowed by God on men. – Furthermore, Vivan is the bishop of this diocese and he has recognised the relics as authentic.”

  “Yes,” Vivan said with a simper. “I know a relic when I see one and those are relics; – That tongue looks awfully relic to me.”

  “It is all very well to talk randomly on these matters,” Gonzales said peevishly, the loose skin which hung from his chin to his throat, like that of a lizard, quivering, “but, the fact is that the bishop is required to obtain accurate information, to take council with theologians and pious men, and in cases of doubt or exceptional difficulty to submit the matter to the sentence of the metropolitan and other bishops of the province. Furthermore, nothing new, or that previously has not been usual in the church, shall be resolved on, without having first consulted the Holy See.”

  “That is the very process which we are engaged in,” Zuccarelli said solemnly. “And I suggest we go about it respectfully. We must hold in the highest regard the saints who were so much beloved by God, and also their bones, which were once the frameworks of the temples of the Holy Ghost.”

  “But these are mere bones!” Gonzales burst out in disgust. “Possibly those of some worthless beggar – And God only knows where the tongue came from! Bishop Quivil of Exeter, whose authority on the matter is pronounced, clearly states that relics should in no way be venerated on account of dreams or on fictitious grounds.”

  “Cardinal Gonzales,” Torturo said coolly. “You seem determined to cast a doubting shadow over this assembly. What you refer to as ‘mere bones’ are more precious than refined gold; – The tongue is a priceless treasure. – I do not have the least doubt that, were you shown Saint Peter’s chains, you would say they were for snow tires and, were your eyes exposed to the gridiron of Saint Laurence, you would claim it was meant for the pressing of waffles. – Bishop Quivil, in making that statement (which you so kindly abridged) was referring to the discovery of new relics; – He in no way intended it to be used in regards to the re-discovery of relics already regarded as such.”