by Grace Brophy
Lest I forget, please offer once again my sincerest apologies to Sergeant Antolini. I don’t know what got into me! A bientot,
Artemisia.
Two sheets of finely scripted bitchiness, Alex concluded, as he folded the pages and put them back into the envelope, the writing of a calculating, manipulative psychopath, rubbing in his demotion to Foligno under the cover of extending the olive branch. Translation: Fuck you.
Genine had advised him just last week that the count was hoping Artemisia would be home soon. At least that was what Sophie Orlic had told the sergeant when she’d appeared at the Assisi station to apply for a soggiorno for her daughter. It was exactly what he would have expected of Umberto Casati, an arranged marriage for his psychopath daughter with the very rich Zangarelli. After marrying a count’s daughter—a beautiful one at that—Zangarelli would finally become a Knight of Malta, and Umberto Casati would benefit in countless ways, money being his first object.
His grandmother had been right; Fulvio was at home on Good Friday. Cenni had visited Grazia a few days after Fulvio’s funeral, unofficially, with Hanna tagging along, and Grazia had sworn that Fulvio had been at home until well after six o’clock. But by then, Fulvio had been positively identified through his DNA as the father of Rita’s child, and there was nothing Cenni could do to convince Grazia that her husband had not murdered Rita. He had reported his conclusion to the questore and to Antonio Priuli and was overruled by both. Since Artemisia had feigned madness, if she were tried for one murder, or for both, she would never be convicted. Carlo had emphasized that point repeatedly, adding, “I can think of far worse assignments than Foligno. I called in a whole lot of favors to keep you in Umbria, Alex. Show a little gratitude!”
Alex’s own reasoning had followed suit. Artemisia’s mother, about whom he still felt remorse, would have preferred it this way; it was obvious now that she had protected her daughter throughout her life, and afterward. And Grazia. What would she have wanted? Cenni thought for only a moment. It didn’t matter what she would have wanted. Artemisia was right, Grazia was better off without Fulvio. Yet, despite Carlo’s arguments and his own reasoning, he couldn’t let it go. He had filed a protest with Priuli. He wasn’t surprised that Priuli had rejected it or that Umberto Casati knew of it, Italian politics being what they are! Perhaps he should have listened to Greci and kept quiet.
In the future, he would stick to the bare essentials of policing, keeping terrorists at bay and young children safe from pedophiles. It was a chaotic world, and he had no hope of imposing order where it was not wanted. What in this world made sense anyway? Four weeks ago, Sergeant Antolini had given Piero the brush-off, and Piero had stopped talking to him. This morning, Piero had called to chat, ostensibly to discuss Perugia’s disastrous relegation to the Second Division, but after hemming and hawing, he’d mentioned offhandedly that he had taken Elena home to meet his mother. And Lucia, fired by Umberto Casati as a gossip, was now working for Alex’s grandmother, for whom gossip was meat and drink. Rita’s money was to be split between the Canadian and her uncle—a million each, after lawyers’ fees. According to Genine, the Canadian had gone off with a waiter from Assisi to map the Medieval world.
Artemisia was the winner. She’d marry Zangarelli and reign supreme over the Galleria Nazionale. If she could convince Naples to sell its Judith, Alex had no doubt she’d send him a special invitation to its unveiling. And he’d go, too. This was not the end, not by a long shot. Sophie was now living with Umberto Casati, perhaps even sleeping in his bed, and he no longer cared. He had another blonde to contend with.
Sunday was Renato’s investiture as bishop of Urbino, and Alex was still grappling with the question of whether to take Genine to the ceremony. If he did, it would be tantamount to a formal declaration. Just then, in the middle of his musings, a young boy, flying low as a dive-bomber, banged into his table, knocking over his third doppio corretto. Alex concluded that it was time to head for Gubbio. He handed the torn pieces of the lettera raccomandata to the waiter—“for the trash, per favore”— dropped a few coins on the table, and got up to leave. It was that sort of a day.
Epilogue
* * *
Bread of Angels
* * *
THE SUNDAY OF Renato’s investiture as Bishop of Urbino had arrived warm and heavily perfumed after two days of downpouring rain. Spring floated through the partially open car windows, carrying with it the loamy effluence of freshly plowed earth and the occasional whiffs of apple and peach blossoms. His mother and grandmother had declared a truce for the day, his mother taking the front passenger seat and his grandmother sitting in the back. He would have preferred it the other way around as his mother had a habit of squealing every time he passed another car, but that morning she was busy talking about Renato’s new home, an eighteenth-century palace full to the brim with gold plate, and had failed to notice that he was passing four cars in a row. The blood rushed to his head when he swung back to his side of the road just a few feet ahead of an oncoming truck. He looked back in his rearview mirror at the flash of high beams from the Fiat Punto that now trailed behind and caught his grandmother’s eye. She smiled, he hoped in complicity. But at other times when he looked back, he could see her staring out the car window, a look of solemnity on her face. He wondered what she was thinking. She was proud of her grandsons—they both knew that—and he had always marveled at the ease with which she had accepted Renato’s decision to give his life to a God whose existence she had always denied. But even today, twenty years later, Alex still struggled against his brother’s decision.
A few kilometers before the exit for Urbino, he could see the tall round towers of the Palazzo Ducale, shining golden in the morning sun. Alex loved Perugia, but he also had the sensibility of an aesthetician and so had to acknowledge the superior beauty of Urbino, a city he had decided in self-confident brashness at the age of eighteen was the most beautiful in Italy. He had yet to change his mind. He loved the elegance and harmony of its rose-colored brick buildings, its lofty seat high above rolling hills of vines and olive trees, the pellucid light that bathed the city in a voluptuous pink even in the darkest days of winter. His fondness for Urbino came at least in part from his great admiration of its most famous son. The gentle confluence of harmony and sheer luminosity that marked the works of Raphael were, he reflected, simply a manifestation of the painter’s birthplace.
After dropping his mother and grandmother in front of the cathedral, an accomplishment achieved only by identifying himself as a policeman five times in five minutes, he parked below the city and began the long climb back up. He had time before the ceremonies would begin, and he walked slowly, pacing himself, enjoying the warm sun on his face and the chattering of the new communicants, their parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, as they wound their way upward toward the cathedral. The little girls, preening in their flowered coronets and white bridal communion dresses—silks, tulles, organzas, poplins—skipped and danced, twisted and turned, to their own delight and that of their admirers. The boys, somber-faced, embarrassed, hair slicked back, dark Sunday serge suits, white armbands, dawdled behind until pushed forward by gentle nudges. He remembered the day that he and Renato had received the Eucharist for the first time; he had been as awkward and as reticent as the boys he watched today. Renato had been different, though, eager and very serious. He had even warned Alex that morning not to brush his teeth in case he might swallow some toothpaste.
A woman and a young girl walked directly in front of him. The girl, slight for her seven years, was always a few steps ahead of the woman, but never too far ahead. Every few minutes she would turn around to reassure herself that the woman was still following behind. The girl had an anxious, pinched expression, as though she were holding in her happiness. Her dress was more simply cut and shorter than those of the other girls, of a lawn material, gossamer in its fineness. She carried a prayer-book in her right hand. He couldn’t see the woman’s fac
e but her carriage was severe and unbending. Another communicant from across the road called out the girl’s name. “Rita!” Alex gave a start, but it was a common enough name for girls in Umbria. Rita waved back and, distracted for just that moment, she tripped on a loose stone and dropped her prayerbook. It narrowly missed falling into one of the many puddles that lined the side of the road. The girl quickly bent and retrieved the book, then looked around to see if the woman had noticed. The woman, now alongside the girl, grabbed her roughly and shook her, before taking the prayerbook into her own hands.
It was one of those small moments of parental harshness that we witness every day without paying close attention, but Rita Minelli’s diary had made Alex aware of the impact of the smallest gesture, whether good or bad, on the human heart. He didn’t know if the woman were even the girl’s mother; perhaps she was just a friend or a distant relative, but he was sure that when the girl remembered her First Holy Communion later in life, the scene that had just taken place would recur. And then, as sometimes happens in our quiet moments of reflection, he realized that less than an hour ago he had acted just as harshly to his mother. She had been talkative and happy in the car ride from Perugia to Urbino, thrilled that one of her sons was soon to be a bishop. She had prattled on endlessly about Renato’s new residence with its forty rooms, its fifty gold dinner plates, its renowned centerpiece, Raphael’s Madonna of Urbino.
He had taken pleasure in puncturing each of his mother’s assertions. The rooms were unheated, the gold plates were unsanitary and unpleasant to eat from, the Raphael was a false attribution, so that even his grandmother had jumped to her defense. It was true that his mother was a snob but she loved her sons, and not once could Alex remember her shaking him or his brother as the woman in gray silk had just shaken the young Rita—certainly not for an infraction as minor as dropping a prayerbook. Well, just once, he remembered, and then until his teeth hurt, but that was on the day he had dared his twin to jump from the roof of the hay barn in the back of his grandparents’ farmhouse. Renato had broken his tibia in the fall!
Every seat in the cathedral was filled. People were standing in the back and along the side aisles when Alex walked up the center aisle to take his seat next to his grandmother in the right front pew. The bishop-elect’s family were the honored guests of the diocese along with a contingent of priests, monsignors, and bishops, the latter dressed in purple cassocks and birettas, all waiting for Renato to make his entrance. The Apostolic Nuncio walked first onto the altar, splendid in white and gold brocade, his slender neck weighed down by a jeweled miter. When he bent his head, Alex could see that the miter was lined in scarlet silk. He was followed by two bishops, also dressed in heavily embroidered vestments, their white miters banded in gold. Renato came last, a humble contrast in unadorned white linen and crimson skullcap. Earlier that day when his mother had sung her praises of Renato, she had done so with a measure of grievance; the future bishop had refused her offer of a chasuble and stole in silk damask with symbols of the cross, sheaves of wheat, and tongues of fire, all hand-stitched in brilliant threads of red and gold. His miter, she told them, would be plain white, no decoration at all, his crosier a simple shepherd’s staff, and the pectoral cross that he had chosen was silver rather than gold. Even worse, he had refused to assemble the usual court of archbishops and bishops on the altar to assist in his Episcopal ordination. The altar would be empty, she complained, just the three anointing bishops, a deacon, and two acolytes to assist at the mass. Alex could only be grateful that Renato had spared them a ceremony of many hours in length; he wondered, though, how he had pulled it off. The Church loved its pomp and circumstance.
The ceremony of investiture harmonized gracefully with the celebration of high mass. After the gospel, the Apostolic Nuncio and, in turn, the two assisting bishops, laid hands on Renato and intoned the words of ordination: So now pour out upon this chosen one that power which is from you, the governing Spirit whom you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the Spirit given by him to the holy apostles, who founded the Church in every place to be your temple for the unceasing glory and praise of your name. As Alex watched the remaining rituals—the anointing with holy chrism, the bestowal of the symbols of episcopacy: the miter, the crosier, the ring, the pectoral cross, and, finally, Renato’s enthronement in the bishop’s chair—he shared his brother’s joy. But joy is ephemeral, and as the congregation rose in one body to cheer their new bishop and the bells rang out over the city, another less dignified image of his brother sprang to mind, of that day years ago when Renato, in cassock, had jumped over the fence and unto the football field to celebrate Perugia’s defining win over Lazio. Renato had returned in triumph holding aloft Vannini’s left boot. Alex doubted that the Bishop of Urbino would have time to attend football matches, and a lump rose in his throat as he resumed his seat with the rest of the congregation to await the homily.
The Cenni twins had certain characteristics in common. A talent for diplomacy was one, a tendency to intractability, another. How these dissimilar traits met in harmony in the same person was a mystery to all who knew the twins, but they did. Renato, who delighted the archbishop with charm and tact, also tempted his wrath on many occasions. When Renato had first come to Urbino, he had begun the practice of letting girls serve at mass. A girl was serving today, in fact. He had also adopted the habit of delivering very short and very pointed homilies from the communion rail. “A priest is of the people, not above them,” he had said to the archbishop when asked to explain why he eschewed the pulpit. Apparently, he was not going to change his habits as bishop, Alex thought, as he watched his brother descend from the altar and approach the communion rail. He stood directly across from his family. As the Bishop of Urbino he acknowledged their presence with a shy smile and an unobtrusive wave, and his mother, who had finally managed to contain her weeping, began again.
After thanking those in attendance, Renato spoke directly and simply to the new communicants:
My dear girls and boys, today is an important day for me and a far more important day for you. Some of you may think that the grandeur of the ceremony that you just witnessed— and which gave me great joy—means that the ordination of a bishop is a more important event to God than the sacrament of Communion. It is not. The most important event in your Christian lives is the one that you will partake of today, as it was for me more than thirty-two years ago. When you were infants, your parents brought you into the Church through the sacrament of Baptism, but they did this without your knowledge or consent. Today you embrace Christianity with full knowledge and an open heart. Today you give yourselves fully to Jesus Christ. In the last month you learned from the Soure that when you take the host into your hands, you hold the living body and blood of Christ, that when you ingest the host, you become one with Christ in love. And this is true and important and sacred, but there is another and an ever greater lesson that you must take into your hearts today and remember always. Each time that you receive the body and blood of Christ—and I hope you will do it often—you are bidden by Christ to become one in love, one in tolerance, one in kindness with all women and all men, wherever they may live, whatever language they may speak, whatever religion they may practice, whatever the color of their skin. My children, there are no exceptions. To receive Christ in love, you must love all humanity. Today I ask that each of you, each boy and girl who is about to receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time, choose another from the congregation—a stranger—to come forward with you to the altar, to share the gift of Jesus, so you may always remember that your commitment to love God carries with it the equally joyous commitment to love all of his children. God bless you.
The intense whispering that Alex could hear behind him, lasting throughout the Liturgy of the Eucharist, suggested that Renato’s invocation to the new communicants to join with a stranger at the altar was neither expected nor planned for. He remembered how carefully the Suore had drilled his Communion class, incessantly, for weeks befo
re the event. The boys were to march down the aisle on the left and the girls on the right, each positioned according to height. That year he had grown faster than Renato, and the sisters, in rigorous application of their self-made rules, had placed him at the back and Renato in the middle. Despite the twins’ vociferous complaints, they had received the Eucharist separated from each other. Alex was confident that in the three decades which had since passed, the communion drill hadn’t changed. Perhaps, he thought, Renato is indulging his wicked sense of humor while finally getting back at the Suore. Whatever the case, his brother was certainly flexing his newly acquired Episcopal muscles in disturbing the good sisters’ time-honored routine.
As Renato and the Apostolic Nuncio descended from the altar, each holding a ciborium of communion wafers, the chords of Panis Angelicum swelled the Cathedral and the children started down the aisle. The girl in the gossamer lawn dress, little Rita, led on the right. Even down the length of the cathedral, Alex could sense her distress as she moved slowly and hesitantly up the aisle. The boy on the left was well ahead. As soon as the boys stopped, each one positioning himself next to a pew, Alex realized what the Suore intended the new communicants to do. Each child would go forward to the communion rail with the person at the end of the pew. He could step aside, he thought, but then his grandmother would have to step aside as well. As Rita drew closer, she looked up at him with a timid, expectant smile. He remembered clearly Renato’s words—You are bidden by Christ to become one in love, one in tolerance, one in kindness. Alex smiled back, stepped out of the pew, and took her small hand in his.
