Children of The Sun

by Jonathan Green

  “No, my son. No! Before we can begin new works like this one, we must set in order what we have already—the parishes, the schools, the orphanages. There is work under your hand. Do that and rest content that you are serving God as he wishes to be served.”

  Borrelli was angry. Because he was a Neapolitan, the anger was swift and incontinent.

  “Your Excellency does not understand. How can he, when he does not see? These are children, the little ones of Christ! They sleep on the gratings and in the beds of prostitutes. They pimp and steal and lend themselves to murder and violence. They live like animals in the forest, friendless and alone. And Your Excellency tells me to forget them. For what? For those who have faith already? For those who have homes? For those who are cared for in the orphanages? No! If the Church refuses this work, it is not the Church of God!”

  Old and grey and terrible, the Cardinal sat in his high-backed chair and looked down at the small, boyish fellow who challenged him; challenged, too, the ancient power of the Church which he represented.

  What did he think? Did he think of Paul withstanding Peter because he held to the Jews when the Gentiles thirsted for the faith? Did he think of Vincent the Frenchman who sold himself to the galleys to join the forgotten and the desolate? Did he think of the gentle Francis whose frail shoulders held up the tottering Church in the old days? Did he think of the reforms he had not made because he lacked the strength and the men to help him?

  He is dead now and he cannot tell us.

  White-faced and trembling, Borrelli waited. For him, too, this was a crisis. If to be a priest of Christ meant to desert the children of Christ, then, he felt, he did not want to be a priest. It seemed an age before the old man spoke again. His voice was strangely gentle.

  “To redeem the children is one thing. To take them off the streets and give them a home—this I can approve. But the other—to live with them on the streets, to become in a sense a partner in their misdeeds—this I cannot understand. Why do you want to do it?”

  Borrelli relaxed a little. There was still hope. He took a deep breath and plunged into his explanation.

  “Your Excellency, you must understand something of what the life of the streets does to these children. You must know that to be a scugnizzo is to have a man’s soul in the body of a child. It is to have suffered in that body the rape of innocence, the pain of hunger, the bleak, desert cold of the city. To be a scugnizzo is to live without love, to trust no one, because the one you trust will snatch the bread from your mouth or the cigarettes from your pocket. To be a scugnizzo is to know that every woman is a whore, and every man a thief, that every policeman is a sadist and every priest a liar. If I went among them as I am now, they would laugh at me or spit in my face. If I offered them a home they would tell me that the carabinieri offer them a home, too—in a house of correction. I should never come within a hand’s reach of them. Believe me, Your Excellency…” His voice trembled and he threw out his arms in a passionate gesture of appeal. “Believe me! I was born in the bassi. I know!”

  Cardinal Ascalesi sat in his high-backed chair and pondered. Once in a lifetime, if he is fortunate, twice, if he is singularly blessed, a bishop finds among his clergy a man so marked by God that to turn him away would be like turning away Christ himself. This Borrelli looked like such a one. What he asked was strange, but exceedingly simple, new but old as the Gospel. It was not to be denied lightly nor yet accepted with haste and indiscretion.

  The old man laid his hands together, fingertip to fingertip and pursed his grey lips. Then, softly and deliberately, he gave his verdict.

  “I need time to consider this matter. Come back to see me in ten days. Meantime——” His voice faltered a little and his tired eyes softened. “Meantime, pray for me, my son. Pray for both of us. You may go.”

  Mario Borrelli walked out into the dusty sunshine of the city, puzzled and unsatisfied. He was too young to know how deeply he had touched the heart of Ascalesi. He was too afraid to see how close he was to success. More than this, he was a Neapolitan and he knew how often a polite deferment meant a definite refusal.

  He knew then, what I have since proved from my own brief experience, that, to one who has not seen it with his own eyes, the life of the bassi and the plight of the children is a bizarre nightmare, a dramatist’s creation, not to be taken literally.

  The Cardinal sat in his big palace attended by discreet and subtle advisers, the bureaucracy of the Church. How could he understand what went on in the back streets? The problem was to make him understand, so clearly that no adviser could talk him out of it.

  Mario Borrelli went home and prayed. That night, as he lay wakeful in his narrow bed, the idea came to him. He looked at his watch. It was still an hour to midnight. Time enough yet to make contact with the man he needed. In a flurry of excitement, he slipped out of bed, dressed himself, left the house and hurried to the nearest bar to make a telephone call.

  An hour later, he was drinking coffee and talking excitedly with a photographer from a Neapolitan daily. The project they framed was shatteringly simple.

  In the ten days and nights that were left, Borrelli and the photographer would walk the city together. They would photograph what they saw—the homeless waifs sleeping in the streets, the urchin packs cooking the food over fires in the alleys, the nightly interrogations in the questura. Then they would show the photographs to Cardinal Ascalesi.

  Ten days later, Mario Borrelli stood before the old man and watched him poring over the glossy prints spread out on the desk. The Cardinal’s face was haggard as he scanned the devastating evidence before him. Then he straightened up and spread his hands over the photographs, as if to shut them out of his sight. His grey mouth was tight with anger. When he spoke his voice was strong with conviction.

  “Even had you not shown me these, I should have given you permission for your work. Now that I have seen them, I am doubly sure that it is a good work. But…” Ascalesi paused and Borrelli waited tensely for the rider. “But I am still sure that this work is full of danger—spiritual danger—for the man who undertakes it.”

  Borrelli nodded. He knew it himself, very well. He was a Neapolitan, young and warm-blooded. How would his priestly vows stand the impact of the thrusting sensuality of the streets? It was a question he had asked himself many times.

  Ascalesi went on:

  “Therefore, I consider it wise that you should have a companion, not necessarily for this pilgrimage of the streets but for the project in general. He should be a friend as well as a counsellor, so I leave you free to choose him for yourself and recommend him to me. I shall relieve him of his present appointment and attach him to you.” The old man’s face relaxed into a warm smile. “David goes out to fight Goliath in the streets of Naples. As well that he should have a Jonathan to comfort him. Non è vero!”

  Borrelli’s tight face broke into an urchin grin. He felt free and happy, and, like all his people, he wanted to shout and sing and tell the whole wide world. But the Cardinal was a great man and demanded a great respect. So Borrelli mastered his joy and began to tell the Cardinal of his friend, Spada, young like himself, a priest of the diocese of Naples. He was not, like Borrelli, a thrusting, combative man, but his heart was full of love for children, and when the urchins came one day to the house they hoped to have, they would have much need of love and fatherly care.

  The Cardinal nodded his approval of this line of reasoning and began to talk of other matters. One hour and a half later, Mario Borrelli stood in the streets of the city and looked about him. It was his city now and the children of the city were his children. If he failed them, there was no one else to whom they could turn. He shivered though the sun was warm. He felt suddenly lonely and afraid.

  He turned into an old grey church and knelt a long time in prayer.

  * * *

  A few days later the scugnizzi of the Piazza Mercato turned a speculative eye on a new arrival.

  He was working his way up from the direc
tion of the waterfront, picking up cigarette butts as he came. He wore a filthy shirt, patched in many places. His trouserlegs were ragged and hung down over a pair of odd shoes, cracked and broken at the seams. His hands were stained with grease and tobacco. His face was grimy and unshaven and he wore a greasy peaked cap on the back of his head.

  At the corner of the Piazza he stopped, leaned against the wall, took out a half smoked cigarette and lit it with a wax match that he scraped against the stone. He smoked slowly, shoulder against the angle, legs crossed, bright eyes darting this way and that appraising the trade in the Piazza.

  The boys studied him carefully, noting the broken nose and the tight mouth and the insolent tilt of the head. A guappo this one—cocky, tough, dangerous possibly. They hadn’t seen him before. They wondered where he came from, whether he were alone or whether he were a scout from one of the groups operating down by the merchant docks. Was he buying or selling? Was he a contact man beating up trade for someone else? In the world of the scugnizzo these were important questions closely related to the economics and politics of the half-world. It was important to get the answers as soon as possible.

  They let him smoke for a few moments and they studied every gesture he made. They saw how he held his cigarette between the thumb and the forefinger. They saw how he blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. How he spat into the puddle, how he cleaned his nose by pinching it between two fingers and then wiping it on his sleeve. They saw how he scratched his thighs and his armpits like a man accustomed to lice in his clothes.

  No doubt about it, he was one of the boys. Now it was time to make contact.

  A weedy youth with a dark, Arab face detached himself from one of the groups of loungers and sauntered across the Piazza. Out of the corner of his eye, Borrelli watched him come. His stomach knotted a little, but no flicker of fear showed itself in his bright eyes. The youth came abreast, opened a packet of American cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth, shoved the packet into his pocket and then asked for a match. Borrelli took the glowing butt from his mouth and held it against the tip of the other’s cigarette. Then he put it back in his own mouth. He did not move from his lounging posture.

  The youth grunted his thanks and leaned on the wall beside Borrelli. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth in the slurred and sing-song dialect of Naples.

  “I haven’t seen you before.”

  Borrelli shrugged expressively.

  “Naples is a big town. I haven’t seen you either.”

  The dark youth blew out a cloud of smoke and considered the matter. The accent was right, the words were right. You can’t fake the dialect of the streets. The attitude was right, too. The fellow was a guappo all right. You couldn’t rattle him. Best to take him easy.

  “You in business?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Got any contacts?”

  Borrelli cocked his head on one side and gestured vaguely.

  “Enough for me.”

  “What sort of contacts?”

  Without haste, Borrelli fished in his pockets and brought out, in succession, a packet of American cigarettes, a cheap ring with a synthetic stone, a dollar bill and a grimy address book with a few scrawled names and telephone numbers. The sallow youth studied them a moment, then nodded approvingly. Contraband, theft or receiving, a few girls. It was enough for one man. This one obviously knew how to look after himself. But there was something else he had to know.

  “Ever been in gaol?”

  Borrelli grinned, crookedly, and spat on the ground.

  “Not yet. But I need a change of air.”

  Ah! Now we were come to the nub of it. The police had been on the tracks of this fellow, so he was moving his camp. That made him more co-operative, more susceptible to a proposition. The youth fished in his pocket and brought out his own cigarettes.

  “Here, have one of these.”

  Carefully, Borrelli pinched out his own stub and put it in his pocket with the rest of his gleanings. Then he took a cigarette from the proffered packet.

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mario.”

  “Mine’s Carlucciello. I run things round here.” He waved an expansive hand at the seedy bustle of the Piazza Mercato. “Like to meet some of the boys?”

  “Sure.”

  Mario Borrelli heaved himself off the wall, hitched up his belt and sauntered across the crowded square with Carlucciello. His face was still the cocky indifferent mask which the guappo presents to his fellows. But inside he was grinning like a schoolboy. He had passed the first test. He was in.

  Mario Borrelli had become a scugnizzo.

  * * *

  Now there began for him a life that was a grotesque parody of normal human existence. He had entered the kingdom of the beggars. He had taken on their dress, their speech, their habits. He must turn now to their shifts and stratagems to keep himself alive.

  The gang in the Piazza Mercato had accepted him. He must make his just contribution to their harsh life. He must accept their risks and their devious code of honour.

  So the moralist became an associate of thieves.

  When the more agile were scaling balconies to steal washing or tools or the pitiful jewellery of the poor, Borrelli kept watch and whistled the warning signals. When the proceeds were sold to the fences, Borrelli added his voice to the chaffering and held out for a better price. When the boys were chased by angry householders or the police, Borrelli carried his share of the spoils and ran like a hunted animal. He ate the bread that was bought with money stolen from Church poor boxes. He peddled the cigarettes that were smuggled through the customs or filched from the glove-boxes of American cars.

  The celibate joined the pimps.

  He was one of the dancing groups that edged the foreign soldiers closer and closer to the casino. When the girls came out to sun themselves on the balconies or at the doors of their shabby rooms, he talked with them and joked with them. He took his share of the money that was paid in commission by the whoremasters and by the private practitioners.

  The priest became a beggar.

  He stood with the boys outside the tourist agencies whining for cigarettes. He carried bags and jostled for tips. He collected trodden butts and teased out the tobacco for the back-alley manufacturers. He opened car doors outside the theatre and was jostled and pushed by the fine gentry who were affronted by his filth.

  When midnight came and the commerce of the day and the night was done, he squatted with the scugnizzi over a fire of twigs and warmed his scraps of food and talked with them in the argot of the streets. He slept huddled against them for warmth, under the stairways or in the corners of the courtyard where the wind was less.

  For four months he lived this life, and the marks of it are on him still.

  When I pressed him for details of his urchin life, he shrugged uneasily and refused to give them. It was ‘fastidious’ to him, he said, using the Italian phrase. It embarrassed him. He preferred to look forward, not back. What I learned about him was told to me by the boys who had shared his life and the love he poured out on them even in the tormented existence of the streets.

  He is quick to anger when anyone makes a slighting remark about the poor, or the shabby trades of Naples. He speaks with a Christ-like gentleness about the girls in the closed houses and in the poor back rooms. His fiery indignation pours out on those who profit from this commerce in flesh and misery.

  But it was not until I probed deeper and more brutally that I touched the real wound. It is not healed yet. I do not think it will ever heal.

  As a Catholic priest, Borrelli believes and preaches that the end can never justify the means, that it is never lawful to do a wrong act even to compass a worthy one.

  One day, I put it to him bluntly:

  “You are a priest, Don Borrelli. How did you square your conscience with your actions as a scugnizzo?”

  He looked at me sharply. He had been interviewed by many people, but I wa
s the first, I think, who had probed so close to the core of the matter. It was a long time before he replied. When his answer came, it was pieced out with meticulous care, as if he were trying to explain it, not only to me, but to himself.

  “It was my endeavour, so far as possible, to withdraw myself from the direct act of sin. For instance I never stole, personally. I never solicited directly for a girl. I participated, certainly, in the act, but I tried so far as possible to make my participation a matter of appearance, to withdraw it, as much as I could, from the substance of the act.”

  “But in fact you did participate?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you did share in the fruits of the act?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that justifiable in law and conscience?”

  Borrelli pushed a tired hand through his hair and looked at me steadily. I was ashamed of my insistence but, if I were to arrive at the truth of the man, I must have the answer. He gave it to me, quietly.

  “Much of it was justifiable, yes. Much of it was, shall we say, on the razor edge between right and wrong. But I was committed, you see, I could not turn back. I could only make my own judgment and commit it to the mercy of God. Even so…”

  He broke off and looked down at the palms of his workman’s hands.

  “Even so?”

  “Even so” said Don Borrelli, softly, “there were many moments when I was a scugnizzo and not a priest.”

  I did not ask, because I had no right to know, what were the things for which he reproached himself. But my heart went out to him. No matter what he did, no matter how much good flowered under his hands, he would always be haunted by those moments when he was a man and not a priest. Perhaps it is the Almighty’s way of saving the best of his servants from the ruinous sin of pride. I don’t know.

  But I do know that God will judge Mario Borrelli a lot less harshly than he judges himself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MARIO BORRELLI had two things in his mind when he went down into the dark kingdom of the urchins: understanding and leadership.

  Without understanding, he could not lead. Unless he led, he could not hope to survive the climactic moment when he revealed himself as a priest and offered the scugnizzi a home and a hope.