by D. L. Smith
“Something fell . . . The ceiling, I think . . . It has to be. I tried to turn on the lights, but I don’t think we have electricity. Everything was dark. I had to go out through the garden. Some of the old wall has fallen, but I couldn’t see . . . I couldn’t see if . . . I couldn’t see.”
Father Elio’s dry voice was filled with dread. Everyone knew what it was that he couldn’t see and what filled his heart with fear. If the garden wall collapsed, had it crushed the frail fig tree? Was the Miracle destroyed? But before anyone could respond, a high, frightened cry cut through the darkness.
“Father Elio!”
A lantern was running across the piazza toward them. When it reached the bottom step they could see that it was attached to Angelo de Parma’s skinny grandson, Frankie. Barefoot and dressed only in his underwear, the boy was wild-eyed and out of breath.
“Father Elio! My grandfather told me to get you! Nonno’s house fell in! He’s buried! And his dog too!”
Elio struggled to his feet, rubbed his face harshly, and took a deep breath to clear his head—there would be much to do all over the village and that would keep him from thinking about . . . Don’t think about it! Too much to do.
The old priest was amazingly calm as he quickly divided up chores for those around him. Leo would gather volunteers. Some of them would meet at Nonno’s old shed down by the pier to begin digging and the rest would spread out to discover if more buildings had collapsed on their sleeping neighbors. There might be injuries. Many would be frightened and looking for refuge. Marta and the girls would open the hotel for everyone and would prepare coffee. There was much to do. But when they were ready to go, they discovered their lantern-bearer frozen like a statue.
At first Frankie was humiliated when he realized he was standing in front of Carmen Fortino in his underwear. Carmen, who was of course used to adolescent infatuation, perceived the boy’s embarrassment and played on it for a moment out of habit. However, Frankie had discovered that if he held the lantern at just the right angle he could see many secret features of Carmen’s body through her thin nightgown and he couldn’t help but offer her an innocently lecherous grin. But before Carmen understood what was going on or Frankie could get what he considered a really good look, Father Elio was hurrying the boy back across the piazza toward the harbor road.
It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout Santo Fico as to who had suffered what. There was an abundance of cuts and bruises, a fair amount of hysterics, and one suspected heart attack that turned out to be nervous indigestion. The injured and frightened, almost by instinct, began gathering in the piazza where they discovered candles and lanterns burning in every window of the hotel and they were drawn to it like moths. Marta and the girls had their hands full supplying coffee and tea and wine and whatever else a distraught neighbor might need.
It soon became obvious that everyone in the village, and probably the region, would have a fair amount of cleaning up to do. There was going to be a run on roof tiles for weeks to come. Fortunately for Santo Fico, it appeared that the only severe damage to buildings was Nonno’s ancient shed and the church. But what had happened to the church was still unknown, and would remain so until sunlight. Father Elio refused to think about it; his only concern at the moment was Nonno.
A dozen workers in a variety of nightshirts moved with eerie slowness through the mound of rubble that Nonno and the gray dog had called home. The glow of kerosene lamps, with their tall shadows flickering against the back wall of Angelo de Parma’s tall house, accentuated the ghostly quality. The men worked as quickly as they could, but they had to be careful. When the lights hit from a certain angle it appeared as though Angelo de Parma’s great two-story back wall had shifted and was now leaning toward the sea. And, as if to thwart their efforts, great red tiles would occasionally slide off Angelo’s roof and shatter on the cobblestones, landing dangerously close to workers.
As hard as Father Elio tried to put the fate of his beautiful little church out of his mind, images of the dust-clogged chapel and the terrible breach in the ancient garden wall attacked his brain. Every time a tile crashed near him he heard the terrible roar of his beautiful arched ceiling collapsing onto the mosaic floor. Stepping through the rubble of Nonno’s room, he pictured the rubble of his garden wall. He was expecting punishment, but never this. This was too much.
They’d been working their way through the wreckage for almost twenty minutes when Leo turned over a board and in the dim lamplight discovered a chunk of plaster that seemed to have a nose. As he bent down to inspect it, the chunk of plaster opened its eyes and blinked at him. Then it sort of smiled, and sort of wheezed, “Hey, Nico.”
“Hey, Nonno . . . Here you are.”
Tears welled up in the dusty old eyes. “I knew you’d find me . . . You’re standing on my stomach.”
Leo called out. Others quickly gathered around and so began the slow process of digging him out. But Nonno called to Leo, “Hey, Nico, you won’t leave me, will you?”
“No, Nonno, I’ll stay right here.”
But the old man wasn’t convinced, and when Leo moved back to let the other workers in, he sobbed, “It’s not like the mountains, Nico! I didn’t want to leave you! I swear to God I didn’t! Please . . . Don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me . . .”
No one had any notion of the storms that were swirling inside Nonno’s head, but his panic was dangerous; every gesture he made came precariously close to knocking down the one remaining support wall. If it fell, a ton of ancient brick and plaster would slam down and press Nonno to the floor like a dry flower in a family Bible. Leo bent over his unexpected charge and spoke words to calm him.
“I’m here. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you, but you have to hold still and let everybody work. Okay?”
“Okay.” And Nonno was calm again, but his eyes were still full of tears as he whispered just to Leo, “I’m sorry about the mountains. I should have just crawled under the snow and stayed with you and your brothers. Everything’s been bad since I left you. And now my house fell on me.”
“I know.”
“You won’t leave me?”
“No. I’ll stay.”
“Thank you. ’Cause when my house fell on me, I got scared. I think the gray dog’s dead.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll make it okay.”
Stabilizing the house would take some time. Meanwhile, Angelo de Parma’s roof tiles periodically dropping in like mortar shells was hindering the work. Something had to be done before somebody was brained. Lumber had to be gathered to brace the wall and also positioned to shield the rescuers and the defenseless Nonno. So half the workers scattered to gather boards and beams, while the other half stayed behind to protect the trapped old man. The protectors stood in the rubble and scanned Angelo de Parma’s roofline, brandishing garbage can lids to fend off the terra-cotta projectiles.
Father Elio asked Leo to take some men to the shed behind the church and retrieve some discarded lumber. When Leo suggested that it might be better for the old priest to take the men, he just shook his white head and said, “I can’t. I can’t look. Not yet.”
Leo understood. But he’d made a promise to Nonno that he would stay close. At that moment, Frankie de Parma was sitting on a pile of the rubble with his skinny legs curled up into a ball and holding a garbage can lid over his head like an umbrella. In the debris at Frankie’s feet Nonno’s dusty face shone like a china plate as the two of them chatted. Nonno would be okay for a bit and the trip to the church and back would take only a few minutes, so Leo grabbed up a lantern, recruited a couple of other men, and ran up the hill toward the piazza.
He really did intend to return.
TEN
In the darkness Leo couldn’t tell if the damage to the church was better or worse than he’d imagined, and he was in no hurry to explore again—at least not through the front doors—so he directed their path across the steps and around to the north side. They passed a gaping hole in the
garden wall; this had to be where Father Elio had made his scrambling escape.
The lumber was right where Father Elio had indicated and in a matter of minutes the men who accompanied Leo were hurrying back across the piazza balancing boards on sheets of plywood. Leo lingered behind on the pretext of searching for more lumber, but he had something else on his mind.
The thick garden wall showed no signs of buckling. It appeared as though most of the eastern section had simply gotten tired and decided to lie down. Leo climbed through the gap in the broken wall, afraid of how he would find the ancient fig tree on the other side. But the twisted old treasure was safe. The sudden slide of tumbling masonry had avoided the withered fig completely and the black stump and branches gleamed in the lamplight. Unhappily, the side of the cathedral that had been in the path of the toppling wall wasn’t so lucky. Great chunks of its exterior had been cruelly battered and now the weight of much of the old garden wall rested against the side of the northern transept. With just the feeble light of his lantern, it didn’t appear to Leo as though there was any serious damage, although from where he stood, much of the lower wall did seem to have taken on an unnatural, warped sort of posture. Leo pictured the other side of that wall and felt an involuntary shudder. He quickly groped his way across the brittle garden and entered the sanctuary.
Leo wasn’t used to the cathedral at night. It was dark, and the cavernous space was alive with unnerving little noises. And instead of his lantern illuminating, its feeble light was swallowed up by hungry shadows, making it even more alien.
The largest pile of debris was mounded just inside the front doors and extended a full ten meters into the sanctuary. Beyond this heap, the wreckage gradually diminished, but still spread in every direction almost all the way to the altar. The mountain of debris on the floor was shocking, but what was even more astonishing was above him. Overhead, bright stars shone and twinkled against the clear black sky. Almost a third of that magnificent ceiling lay in ruins while what was left hung precariously, threatening with each aftershock to crash down on him. But still Leo gazed upward, bewitched by the serenity of the night sky. Of all the elements in the church, Leo had loved the ceiling the most. Now that it was spoiled, he was overwhelmed by the oddest sense of release. There was something strangely fulfilling about this yawning hole that joined the inside of the sanctuary to the expanse of creation that had always existed just outside, but never seemed to be considered. Churches were sanctums intentionally removed from the real world. They were meant to be more than just an earthly refuge; they were reflections of a promise that we might glimpse, but not attain—not in this lifetime. Now, as Leo stared up at the night sky, it occurred to him that he actually preferred the sanctuary this way. It was peaceful, and there was something wonderfully demystifying about it all.
He doubted if Father Elio would share his feelings, though; the old priest was going to be heartbroken. Too bad, he thought. Life is disappointment. Everyone else has to deal with the careless wounds life hands out, so why should Elio Caproni be any different? Because he’s a priest? Leo figured out a long time ago that a person can run, or hide, or ignore the havoc of life for only so long. Permanent sanctuaries aren’t allowed in this world—not in the obscurity of Milano, or across the sea in Chicago, and certainly not here in insignificant Santo Fico. Calamity will find its way to you and, with an unforgiving fist, pound your door down— or in this case, your ceiling. This will break the old man’s heart, but he’ll survive. Leo had.
The floor trembled slightly beneath his feet. It wasn’t much of a shake, just a tiny shudder. There had been a dozen small aftershocks in the last hour since the quake and although they weren’t enough to do damage, they were certainly enough to set everyone’s ragged nerves on edge. A few bricks dropped out of the darkness and crashed to the church floor, sending Leo scrambling out of the center of the room and back to the safety of the walls. Even for all of its irreverent spiritual implications, perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to stand under that portion of the ceiling right now.
He was at the entry to the northern transept when either the flickering shadows of his lantern played tricks with Leo’s eyes or he was struck with a horrifying sight. The blanket had fallen from the fresco and the faces on the wall stared out at Leo from odd angles and with expressions of what looked like mild surprise. The fresco had always possessed the remarkable ability of appearing three-dimensional, but in the dim light of his lantern the painting looked . . . well, rearranged. It was as if the earthquake had taken a few of the characters, shaken them around, and then set them down again in new positions, leaving them all slightly askew.
Leo crept slowly back into the small room, picking his steps carefully in the dim lamplight. He had to see the fresco more closely. A fine dust filled the air like a faint fog, but that didn’t explain why the characters seemed so cockeyed. It was obvious that his assessment had been mistaken when he looked at the wall from the garden side. Outside, and in the darkness, it appeared as though the wall had taken a hammering, yes, but was still essentially sound. From the inside, even in the glow of the lantern, he could see that the lower wall had fractured and the weight of the upper section was slowly crumbling inward. The fresco wall was shattering before his eyes.
Another aftershock trembled beneath his feet and the fracture in the wall poured a stream of crumbling mortar onto the floor. Small rivulets of plaster dust rained down. Holding the lamp over his head, Leo discovered an ugly, gaping crack in the ceiling that ran the length of the short room. The transept was splitting in two from above as the supporting wall deteriorated. Every now and then the ceiling actually groaned, as if it could barely manage the strain of holding itself up. The faces in the fresco seemed to cry out to him, as though they also knew that the transept was doomed—maybe only minutes away from total collapse. Leo had visions of ending up like Nonno.
Nonno! He’d forgotten about Nonno! He had promised the old man he would stay. He should be back down at the pier right now. The faces on the wall were covered with dust and surprise, just like Nonno had been, but they couldn’t be helped. The room was doomed and so were they.
As Leo turned to leave, a loud buzzing and a blinding flash of light startled him. The electric lights that pointed toward the fresco had unexpectedly burst on and then, just as quickly, they died. Father Elio must have tried to turn them on as he made his escape. After only seconds they glowed feebly again. They flickered several times, then slowly brightened until, after a few faltering surges, the two bulbs were shining steadily. The beams were nowhere near full strength, but at least he had light. From the cheers echoing in through the missing ceiling Leo concluded that the power, however feeble, was apparently back on in the whole village.
When he faced the fractured wall shining under the muted glare of the lamps, what he saw made his breath catch. He could feel his heart beat and in his ears was a buzz louder than the hum of the electric bulbs. His guilty dream had become substance. The buckling and bulging of the wall was forcing the top layers of the mural to pull away from their base. Like an aged photograph peels away from a yellowed page as it turns, both the thin intonaco and the thicker arricio layers of plaster were lifting away from the ancient weave of lath. The individual sections were separating like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spreading across a strangely expanding table. Although a few smaller pieces had already broken away, fallen to the floor, and shattered like china, the major sections still clung to the cracked and splintered lattice by what appeared to be either sheer willpower or force of habit.
It was obvious that one of two things was shortly going to happen. Either a substantial aftershock was going to collapse the ceiling and destroy the fresco, or it was going to shake the damaged panels from the wall and they would be destroyed. In either case the fresco, like the ill-fated chamber that had been its home for over four hundred years, was doomed. If anything was going to be saved, Leo would have to act quickly.
There are some temptations that ar
e so overwhelming that they don’t require deliberation. We know the outcome before we ever begin the debate, but still we go through the mental gymnastics because we know that we should—we must, to continue living with ourselves. In the days to come, it would be these flimsy rationalizations that Leo would cling to in his attempts to justify what he knew he was about to do. In point of fact, he thought, it probably wasn’t even his fault. It was all the fault of those two damn fat men from Roma who talked too much. This moment was merely harvesting the fruit of a seed that they had planted in his heart over twenty years ago.
It was the summer of his fourteenth year the day that an unfamiliar Lancia sedan pulled into the square. Leo and Topo were sitting in the center of the piazza with their feet dangling in the empty fountain, disputing the pros and cons of stealing some of Topo’s father’s cigarettes, taking them down to Brusco Point, and practicing smoking. The argument was going nowhere when the strange car circled the two boys and stopped in front of the hotel. Four fat passengers climbed out, spread a map across the hood, and stared at it. At last they folded it and entered the hotel. Although Topo begged Leo to let him do Franco’s part, Leo knew that he would have to do it on his own. He did, however, agree to let Topo hang around—a decision he would forever regret.
Leo, dogged by Topo, found the party sitting at a table in the restaurant. As expected, the two bookish men (both short, round, and bald) and their wives (equally short and round, with mounds of spray-lacquered hair) were just another car of confused tourists headed for Follonica that somehow ended up in their dusty piazza. Leo was delighted to discover that they were actually rather eager to see and hear about the Miracle and the Mystery.
Everything remained monotonously usual until Leo took them inside the church to view the Mystery. He had barely begun his patter and turned on the lights when both men gasped. In unison, eyeglasses appeared from their pockets and they moved Leo out of the way for a better view. The confused boy didn’t have a chance to tell them the full, miraculous story he had created because the two men became engrossed in their own hushed conversation. They asked Leo hard questions and he had trouble keeping up with their enthusiasm. They made him repeat certain sections of his story and then they would ignore him, brusquely turning their attention back to their own fervent discussion. They talked about things like “three-point perspective” . . . “naturalness of curve” . . . “tone and hue” and other things that Leo didn’t understand. At last their impatient wives gave them an ultimatum that could not be ignored and the quartet left the cathedral, paid Leo his fee plus a modest tip, climbed in their car, and drove off headed north.
