Csilla Kleinheincz
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The Utter Proximity of God
Michael J. DeLuca
Undoubtedly you have heard of Fecondita. It is the place to which Shakespeare refers when he speaks of the providence in a swallow's fall. Aquinas had only just seen it when he claimed God resides whole in all things and in each one.
Fecondita is a village in one of the valleys southwest of Torino, where God is actually present in every rock and tree, every beast, every dying swallow, every tawny, downy hair on the backs of your arms, every pore of the skin in the hollow of your collarbone. No, don't try to find it. Like the world into which we all have fallen—some hard enough to break bone—it is a place not found, but given. Be content that it exists, and no one else will find it either.
Fecondita has seen better days.
In Fecondita, swallows nest in the bathroom sinks of dead widows who forgot to close the windows before they drowned themselves from grief. In the bathtubs, munny grapes grow from the mould. A dozen widows who couldn't find the faith to die seclude themselves in a convent behind a hill, whispering rosaries with dry throats and refusing water. The forests resound with the off-key arias of a mad, drunken Sorcerer who never drinks and is not mad. All the fields but one lie fallow, filling up with whisperweed and bramble.
And in that one still-tended field, the last two sane men in the village, Nico the simpleton and Giulio the cripple, dig their shoulders into the yoke and sweat right along with the cow, poor Grazia. With their help, the old beast plods across the dense earth, though her milky eyes bug out of her head, and beads of sweat like salty berries ripen on their brows. With all three of them heaving, the plow moves but slowly. It moves, until the cow keels over, dead.
"It's a sign from God!” cries Nico.
"A sign from God for what?” asks Giulio. “That you and I should quit being plowmen? I could have told you that without a sign. Help me up!"
"I didn't mean that,” says Nico, pulling his brother out of the dirt. In the dent left by Giulio's body, dandelions are sprouting, though they plowed that furrow only a moment ago.
"What then?” asks Giulio, prodding the dead cow's flesh with the flat of his misshapen foot. “You think God wants us to play the martyr? To pick up the yoke and plow by ourselves? I should never have read you the Lives of the Saints. Get me my crutch!"
"That's not it either,” says Nico, prying the wooden crutch from beneath Grazia's carcass, propping it under Giulio's arm.
"Then for God's sake, what?” shouts Giulio, raising a fist. “You think He is punishing us for not going off to war and dying noble, stupid deaths like all the others? You think this accursed field with its endless weeds and that forest full of deer that eat whatever we grow are not atonement enough?"
Nico cringes, covering his head, though Giulio doesn't really strike. “I think it is a sign from God that we should take a rest."
"Oh,” says Giulio.
They sit on a toppled standing stone, one that has lain at the corner of the oxcart lane and the Roman Road to Torino ever since God first came to Fecondita. Each brother leans against the other. We float between them, on the back of a dandelion seed caught in an eddy of wind. God floats there too.
Over Nico's head, the campanile of the Convent of Our Lady Montimbanca rises above the hill. It strikes one o'clock, but they pulled the bell down years ago to melt it into bullets. So the only effect is a ripple in the air like that made by a drop in a puddle.
Through the crook of Giulio's crutch, the forest edge wriggles its hundred healthy limbs. It isn't taunting him, no. In fact, it is waving at us. But try telling Giulio that.
At last the berries of sweat stop rolling down their chests, and their breaths stop sounding quite so ragged.
"What the hell do we do, Nico?” Giulio asks. “We haven't got money for a new cow. If we did, we'd have to leave the village to buy one. And then we'd be killed in the war like everyone else. God has it out for us, Nico. Poor Grazia. You and I can't even lift her out of the way."
"Does God really hate us, Giulio?"
"No,” sighs Giulio. He pokes at his misshapen foot with the end of his crutch. “He did make you a fool, and me a cripple, so we couldn't join the army. He did save our lives. Though I don't know why."
"Then maybe He'll help us! You could go to the convent, and ask the nuns to pray God to send us a new cow!"
Giulio laughs. “I'm not going to ask the nuns anything, Nico. I already know what they'll say."
"What will they say, brother? Tell me."
"First, Mother Concetta will bring out her ruler. She'll say, ‘Stupid boy, we taught you better,’ and slap my wrist so hard it leaves a welt. Then Sister Traviata will kiss it. And lastly Sister Annunziata will remind me God's love doesn't work that way: if it did, their husbands would still be alive."
"But won't they pray for us, Giulio? Won't they pray for us just the same?"
"I suppose. We're still alive, after all. Their husbands have been dead for years. Who else have they to pray for?"
"Then it just might help! Like Mama says, you never know."
"I tell you what, brother. It isn't as though we've anything better to do. Why don't you go ask the nuns to pray for a new cow, and I'll go find the mad Sorcerer Sancto who lives in the forest, and get him to raise up Grazia from the dead. We'll see who helps us first: God or the Devil. Assuming we don't die of hunger before they do."
"The Sorcerer Sancto!” gasps Nico. “Not him! He nurses rat babies from his own demon teat, after our mama poisons their mama. That is why Mama can never get rid of the rats in our cellar. Or that is what she says, at least."
"Mama also says that God helps those who help themselves. And if that were the case, then why should poor Grazia keel over and die? But Mama has never met the Sorcerer. And neither have we. Which means he'll at least have something different to say. Even if he wants me to hit myself in the nose with a shovel and draw unholy runes in the blood, at least it will be something new."
Nico scratches his head. “You are wiser than I, older brother. You're probably right. But I think we had better ask Mama."
"You go,” Giulio mutters.
God's dandelion seed floats on its way, and we with it, across the half-plowed field. Nico follows, hurrying up the oxcart path. Two swallows wing out of the woods, the same woods where the Sorcerer Sancto hides, each carrying a wild apple twice its size. The two birds disappear through the broken window of an empty farmhouse choked with munny vines and whisperweed, then emerge and flit back to the woods.
Apples often ripen out of season in Fecondita. The trick lies in finding the tree.
In the entryway to Signora Parrucca's kitchen, the smells of talc and perfumed hair pomade collide with the pungences of parmigiano and sweet peppers hung to dry. Pictures of her sons in mismatched frames line the rose-tiled walls. On our right against the ceiling smiles Tenente Colonello Ferdinando Marco Moresca Parrucca: blue-eyed, white-haired, and proud in his uniform. On our left, down by the floor, Nico and Giulio cringe from the flash. In between, were it God's will, we might count twenty-seven other pictures—but here comes Nico.
"Mama!” he calls, coming in the open door. “May I please have a bottle of beer, Mama? It's hot today!"
"Nicollino, trombini! Of course, if you ask so nice!” Signora Parrucca's voice floats up on a cool draft through the cellar door. She follows, wearing a yellow dress that makes her resemble a summer squash, and a glossy black wig half as tall as she is.
Nico takes a stool at the kitchen table. “Your favorite wig looks very fine today, Mama."
"Such a good boy.” Signora Parrucca tousles Nico's hair, then brushes it back all out of place. She puts a brown bottle and a glass before him. “There."
"Thank you, Mama."
She sweeps out into the garden. Her voice comes through the window. “Now tell me: what are you doing home so early? We need that field plowed! We can't live on beer and dried p
eppers all winter, you know."
Nico sips from the bottle. “Mama, I have bad news."
"Drink from the glass, young man!"
Nico winces and tips the bottle to pour.
Signora Parrucca swishes back in with a basket of peppers. “Bad news? Let's have it.” She pats a stray hair back into her wig. She purses her big red lips into wrinkles.
He gulps. “Grazia keeled over and died in the field."
She drops the basket on the table. “WHAT?"
The bottle slips out of Nico's hands as he throws them up to ward off a blow. The glass tips over. Beer spills all over her dress.
"Bischero insensato!” Signora Parrucca cuffs her youngest son across the head. “Out of my sight. Go! Before I get the rolling pin."
Nico scurries out of reach. “But Mama, we need help! What should we do?"
"You'll just have to ask the Lord for help. I'm not going to clean up your messes the rest of your life. You're lucky twenty-eight of your brothers are dead, Nicollo, or I might not feel so bad about beating you senseless!"
"Giulio, Giulio! We were right! Mama says we must ask the Lord for help!” Nico runs up to the fallen stone and hugs his brother, who pushes and struggles to get away.
"Isn't that wonderful,” says Giulio, freeing himself at last and fleeing several hobbling steps down the Roman Road.
"What do you think He will do?"
"God? I think He will cause the skies to open up and rain down yearling calves on all of our heads, and the roofs of all the houses will be staved in, and we will be blamed for it. And if we are lucky, by some miracle one may fall into a pond and survive. And assuming you and I and the calf and Mama all somehow live through the winter without any food, next year by this time the calf will be grown, and all four of us will be here again plowing the field. God willing."
"Really, Giulio? That doesn't sound so good."
"No, Nico, you fool. That was a joke. Go see the nuns. Sancto and I shall meet you here when the convent bell strikes four."
Munny grape vines thread the shut gates to the Convent of Our Lady Montimbanca. The rich, red fruit hangs heavy from the iron; the hinges strain to hold them. In a corner by the high brick wall, a few of the bars have fallen away. Nico ducks through; you and I and God walk at his heels, in the guise of a pregnant goat.
We find the sisters in the sanctuary. In shadow they kneel on bare stone, repeating Hail Marys and Our Fathers in voices hoarse as fraying rope to the rhythm of clicking beads. The stained-glass window over the altar casts the only light: a fluent blue that makes the room seem like the bottom of a lake, or a bathtub. The window shows the convent's patron, Montimbanca, preaching to the prisoners; the light would be brighter but for the vines climbing the window's other side.
"Reverend Mother,” says Nico, kneeling beside her, “our cow Grazia died today. I have come to ask you and your sisters to pray God to send my family another, so that we may sow our field and grow food and survive through the winter."
"Shame on you, Nico."
Nico ducks to avoid another blow that never comes.
"Didn't you ever think God might have something more to do in this world plagued by war than worry about a single family that ought to be able to care for themselves? For seven years we have prayed God to protect this village, prayed on bruised knees with throats like parchment paper. For seven years, what good has it done? Look there, before the altar."
Through a crack in the stone floor, a white sunflower grows, indoors and without light. The goat is tempted to go over and eat it.
"He took our husbands. Every year He takes another of our sisters. Last year we brought the convent bathtub out into the garden and planted it with roses, because we realized even we, God's brides, could not resist its temptation. And in return for all our faith and pain, He gives a single flower. But do we stop praying? No. God's works are not for us to understand, let alone a poor fool such as you."
Nico hangs his head. “I'm sorry, Reverend Mother. I didn't know."
"You are a fool, Nico, so I forgive you. You're lucky, though. Had your brother come instead, I would have had to fetch my ruler."
"Yes, Reverend Mother. Thank you."
"How is our little Giulio? We wish he would visit more often."
"Oh, he is well. Though he is worried because of poor Grazia, of course. He would have come with me, only just now he has gone to the forest to ask the mad Sorcerer Sancto to raise Grazia from the dead."
Mother Concetta grabs Nico by the ear, pinches hard, and doesn't let go. “Avenging angels of heaven defend our poor benighted village from the machinations of cripples and fools! Sisters! Sisters, please! For now our prayers will have to wait. We must go forth to drive out Satan. Sister Traviata, bring my yardstick."
In the forest of Fecondita, the Sorcerer Sancto lies asleep under an apple tree. He sleeps on the bare roots in only a loincloth, his arms flung up around his head, his ankles splayed. Dried mud streaks his face. Mosquitoes swarm him by the dozens. Giulio pokes him with a stick.
"Who are you?” the Sorcerer demands, awaking. He doesn't bother to swat at the bugs. After all, God is in them, too.
"I am Giulio Parrucca, from Fecondita."
"Ah, yes,” I say, “the cripple. What are you doing here?” For yes, it is I, the Sorcerer Sancto, who write this. I did not say so before, for fear you would stop reading. It would not be the first time.
A deerfly lands on Giulio's cheek. God, who resides, if briefly, in the fly, feels the quake of Giulio's grimace. Then Giulio kills it.
"I came,” says Giulio, “because I am tired of plowing and sowing. God gave me this useless leg, so I couldn't go to war. Instead I went to the convent to learn from the nuns. Among other impractical things, they imparted to me a love of reason, a healthy dislike for religion, an irrational terror of measuring implements, and an irresistible desire never to lay eyes on another nun for as long as I live. While I was there, I couldn't think of a worse existence. Then they let me out, and I became a plowman."
"I don't see what that has to do with me,” I say.
The swallows have returned. They snap up the bugs that threaten to bite me; I help them to choose the best apples to take back to their nest.
"For three years I have sweated along with the cow,” says Giulio. “Today the cow died. Though I know God has no wish to help me, but only to torment me and keep me from death, I choose to take it as a sign—a sign I should move on. I can think of only one profession worse than both plowing a field and learning from nuns, and that is yours. I am here, Signor Sancto, to become a mad Sorcerer. If you can prove that you possess powers gifted by Satan, then I shall become your apprentice."
The Sorcerer Sancto, who is me, laughs and laughs.
The swallows, startled, flitter away, nearly dropping their apples. A damp wind rises; storm clouds are on their way, the color of cannon-powder, booming like war. The forest shakes its hundred thousand healthy limbs in Giulio's face, without meaning to mock him, but Giulio wheels on his crutch and starts to limp away.
At last I stop laughing. I go after Giulio, and laying a hand on his shoulder, I ask, “How shall I prove my evil power?"
"Bring my family's dead cow back to life, so that Nico may sow my Mama's field and grow corn, and thus they'll survive through the winter."
What use has a mad holy man such as I for a faithless apprentice? No use at all. But God's will is easier shown than explained.
Seven years ago, when the war called the sons and husbands of Fecondita away to die, Giulio, Nico and I, Cecilio Sancto, stood in line with the rest. Giulio came because he wanted to fight. He hated Fecondita, and wished for nothing more than to escape and see the world. He wished it so hard he threw away his crutch. Nico came because his brothers did. I came to see what would happen. I wasn't a Sorcerer then, not yet—just a man of small faith and strong conviction.
Except for Giulio the cripple and Nico the simpleton, the army accepted into its doomed ranks every man of Feco
ndita, old or young, from twelve years of age to a hundred and twenty. They would have taken me. But when the sergeant reached my place in line, I wouldn't salute. I couldn't meet his eye. Like Giulio, I wanted to see the world. But I didn't want to have to kill or die to do it.
So I ran. I ran for the forest, as fast my two whole legs could go. The men of Fecondita laughed at my back. Even Giulio called me a coward.
The sergeant drew his pistol. He fired on me, a deserter. He would have killed me. But a dying swallow fell into the bullet's path, and I survived.
The soldiers came after me. But the forest of Fecondita, where God resides in every rock and leaf, did not betray me.
Thus did I become the mad, drunken Sorcerer Sancto, lonely, sober, and sane, who hides in the forest, seeing all and doing nothing, but somehow, by my power and God's will, protecting this village from harm.
Atop the fallen stone by the Roman Road, God and a ground squirrel sit cracking acorns. A summer storm rumbles overhead. The convent bell strikes four o'clock; four ripples spread across the field.
Along the Road from the north comes Mother Concetta, clutching her yardstick, dragging Nico by the ear. Twelve sisters march after her, saying Rosaries in rhythm with their steps.
From the forest to the south I, the Sorcerer Sancto, stride with a gait that eats up three yards at every step. Giulio hobbles gasping behind.
"There he is, sisters, the Demon!” cries Mother Concetta, letting go of Nico's ear at last to cross herself. “Oh, heavenly Father, defender of cripples and fools, please in your infinite mercy see your way to striking the evil, mad, drunken Sorcerer Sancto dead!"
Around the stinking corpse of Grazia three red foxes bow their heads—not praying, no, but feasting. Their coats gleam as bright as though Signora Parrucca had brushed them five times that very morning instead of her prized black wig.
Nico, his ear still quite purple and pulsing, runs to shoo them. The twelve nuns, hiking up their habits, hurry close behind. They form a ring in the fecund earth around the cow's corpse, linking their hands, except where Mother Concetta grips her yardstick.
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