At the first sight of the presidential limousine, the tape on the loudspeakers stopped and the Police Band struck up the chords of the Founder’s Hymn. Standing between the awning and the flag-decked rostrum on which Emmanuel would make his speech, the school choir began to sing above the shouts and cheering of the crowd. Policemen in their flowerpot tarbooshes strained to hold back the crush as the presidential limousine paraded around the ground with Emmanuel Adjouna holding his arms high above his head, twirling a white handkerchief in his right hand and beaming his famous smile. The words of the hymn may have proclaimed him liberator, saviour and redeemer of the land, but that day, dressed in his striped peasant smock – emblem of his identity with the common man – he was the favourite son come home to be honoured and embraced by those who loved him. His face revealed his appetite for adoration. He delighted in the tribute of flowers thrown by the market women, who jiggled in a dance of welcome. He must have been all the more astounded, therefore, when something else was lobbed out of the jubilant crowd – something small, dark and unidentifiable that broke open around his car in a flash of harsh, disintegrating light.
16
Convento
I did not sleep well that night in the cottage. Shortly after Adam rang off, Captain Midnight turned up with his latest woman and for what felt like a session long enough to flight-test all the sexual positions known to man the night was loud with their noise. After that my sleep was troubled by dreams, of which one in particular stayed with me.
I was sorting out a century of junk stacked in an attic room at Cripplegate Chambers – old ledgers, unsorted papers, broken furniture and Victorian engravings with cracked glass. Though I’d been warned the room was haunted, I didn’t believe it, yet when I gave up on the mess in despair and tried to pull the door shut behind me, it felt as though the handle on the other side was gripped by strong hands. I couldn’t see what held the door against my pull, but I could feel its strength and it frightened me. When I called for help, my voice wouldn’t work properly. Yet some sort of muffled shout escaped me as I lurched awake in thin light.
I got up early, went outside, and was watching the swallows skittering in the early light above the wooded hill when the whole landscape around the cottage seemed to change its appearance. What had simply been a sunlit hill now struck me as a recumbent woman’s pregnant belly. Beyond it, her breasts were formed by a higher saddle of twinned hills. The terraced groves to my far right covered the open curve of her left thigh, while her right thigh rose to the knee at the crown of the hill on which the village proper stood. The cottage lay cradled in her lap, and her groin was shaped by a bushy cleft of steep shadow, where some household rubbish had been tipped beyond the nearest stretch of olive trees.
Once having seen the figure, it seemed impossible not to have noticed it before. Shaking my head, I went back inside to get some breakfast, and when I returned to the blue table under the bamboo awning, the illusion was still intact. A few minutes later the brown-robed figure of Fra Pietro appeared round the bend of the track. I got up to greet him, eager to ask whether this illusion of a gigantic female figure in the landscape was common knowledge.
As I tried to point out what I’d seen, the friar looked around uncertainly, then he stared at me bemused. But we were both standing, and the view had altered with that angle of vision, so I persuaded him to sit at the table, gazing up in the direction I pointed, while I traced the woman’s massive contours with my finger.
“Those far hills are her breasts,” I insisted, “and that nearer hill is her belly. Then if you follow the slopes down you can make out her thighs. Don’t you see? It’s as if we’re in the lap of a giantess, looking up at her.”
Obligingly he peered into the sunlight. His head moved from one side to the other, then he turned to smile at me. I looked back at the landscape and saw only what he was seeing: the rounded contours of densely wooded hills banked steeply behind each other.
“I understand that you wish to come to the convento?” he said quietly.
“It’s Adam’s idea,” I said.
Fra Pietro nodded. “I know something of the terrible things you have seen. I think that after one has suffered to look at such things, it is wise to come out of the world. For a time, yes? If not, the heart can – soffocare? – suffocate, I think.” The fingers of one hand fluttered as if tracing the flight path of a moth. He shrugged and smiled. “In our convento you will have time to bring a little peace to the soul. Come,” he said, “you have a bag? You will permit?”
As I drove him around the village walls, we passed no one except an old woman dressed in black who walked slowly with her back bent and her slight weight propped on a stick. In her other hand she held a posy of flowers.
“Serafina…” Fra Pietro smiled. “Two hundred years old, I think, and every morning she makes her offering to the Madonna!”
In the wing mirror, I saw the old lady stop to watch me pull up on a verge of rough grass across from the convento. The walls of the building glowed softly pink in the dry light. I switched off the engine. Except for the sound of water pouring into a cistern and the tap of the old woman’s stick against the road, the morning was very still.
“Come, come,” fussed Fra Pietro, “welcome.” He opened a small door in the wall, ushered me through, and I stepped out of this world.
The day’s heat had already begun to build, but there was respite in the cool, reclusive shade of the convento. I had expected to be affronted by the kind of overdressed religiosity a northerner associates with Italian Catholicism – a taint of incense in the air, a display of old bones and murky bits of cartilage encased in glass reliquaries. Instead I entered a bare, white-plastered hall with a vase of lilies on a simple table and low arched doors on three sides. Fra Pietro led me through the farthest door, where we stepped out into a cloister. At the centre of its courtyard a fountain shivered in the sunlight.
“Once this was a large community,” the friar was saying. “But now only few of us remain. I regret that my brothers have no English, but Adam has told me that you wish to make a silent retreat and that you will not eat with us, so it’s no problem. It is very quiet here. Come, I will show you the room we have for you.”
I followed him round the cloister to where a flight of stone stairs climbed from the far corner, each tread so scooped by wear that I guessed some parts of this building were much older than its exterior suggested. At the top we came out into an upper corridor, where he opened the door on a narrow room and ushered me inside. Light slanted through Romanesque windows piercing the bare stone walls on two sides. Under one of them, a single bed occupied a corner of the room. Under the other stood a desk with an inkwell, three drawers and a chair. On the white-plastered inner wall hung a large icon of the crucifixion with a prie-dieu beneath it. The cell was otherwise empty, except for two wire coat hangers dangling from a spike next to a cupboard.
“Is very simple,” said Fra Pietro, “but you will be comfortable, I think?”
The window above the bed looked down where the lane wound round the convento to dip towards a shady glen with a bridge. From there it climbed into the wooded hills towards Gabriella’s villa. Not a breath of wind disturbed the trees. The other view, from the desk, looked south towards the distant plain, where a train sped silently along the tracks. I looked back at my quarters, wondering whether I could live with that crucifix for the next three days.
Fra Pietro had taken my narrow-eyed gaze for admiration. “It’s wonderful, yes? A copy, of course. The original is in the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Assisi. I love how our Lord’s arms are open as in an embrace, yes? An embrace wide enough, I think, to take in all the sufferings of the world. But come.” He opened the cupboard to reveal a washbasin with a shaving mirror and shelf above it.
“The water is good to drink,” he said. “From our spring. And when you wish to make a bath, then you must come this way.” He took me out onto the landing and opened a door on a cubicle large enough to hold a la
vatory and an open shower. “Through here,” he said, gesturing me along the corridor towards another flight of steps, “you can come to the roof.”
I followed him up the steps and out onto a flat roof terrace with a low parapet. Light blazed out of the immaculate blue sky. Turning my back to the sun, I saw the campanile rising from the chapel roof, and beyond, at the top of the hill, the walls of Fontanalba. As Fra Pietro gazed out across the parapet towards the hills, I heard my voice saying, “So what is this event they’re organizing at the villa?”
Fra Pietro blinked at me in the heat. “It’s a big conference which happens each year. For people that have a great interest in the art and philosophy of the Quattrocento – Marsilio Ficino… Pico della Mirandola… Botticelli. Also the music – arie antiche. Many poets and thinkers will come.”
“I see. And Adam’s never mentioned anything to you about the sun at midnight?”
He looked at me in surprise, puzzled by this arbitrary shift of attention. “The sun at midnight? Ah, you mean La leggenda di Fontanalba? Yes, of course, we have talked of this sometimes. But I think it is Lorenzo who is interested in this old story.”
“The other night,” I said, “before Adam came back, when you and Larry were talking about him – I got the impression he thought you knew where Adam was – what he was doing in the mountains?”
The friar shrugged and made a small, self-effacing moue.
“Yet you didn’t seem to want to talk about it,” I pressed. “All you said was that you and Adam had been talking about St Francis.”
“Yes.” Fra Pietro looked uncomfortably away. For a moment I thought he was about to say nothing further, but then he added, “Lorenzo and I… we do not see – how do you say it? – eyes to eyes? But Adam – he is a serious man. When we have talked together about the shepherd in the story, we have also talked of more serious things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Mostly we have talked about the Poverello, and how he saw the presence of God in the beauty of the earth. We have talked also of the true thing – the historical thing – that has happened when he climbed into the mountains.”
“Which was?”
Fra Pietro seemed mildly amazed by my ignorance. “At La Verna the Seraph came to him from heaven. Francesco was given a vision of a man crucified among his wings of fire. The beata stigmata appeared on his hands and feet at that time. Also the wound in his side.”
“And you consider that history rather than myth?”
“Of course. They are God’s wounds. Many people saw them. They were with the Poverello till death. What Dante has called l’ultimo sigillo. The final seal of his union with Christ. That he is become an instrument for God.”
Scarcely a breath of air moved on the terrace. With a flattened palm Fra Pietro consoled the tonsured crown of his head. “The day will be very hot, I think. Shall we go inside?”
“Is that the story that Adam wanted you to tell me – the story of St Francis on the mountain?”
The friar frowned in perplexity. “Excuse me?”
“He said something about a story you’d told him. He wanted you to pass it on to me.”
“Adam has said nothing to me of this.”
“Must have forgotten. He said it was a story about a proxy.”
Fra Pietro was already descending the steps. “I don’t understand this word.”
“Proxy? It means a person who does something instead of someone else. On their behalf.”
“Ah yes! Proxy! Una persona al posto di un’altra. Now I understand. I think Adam means the story which I have told him about Maximilian.”
“Maximilian?”
At the bottom of the steps Fra Pietro smiled up at me.
“Maximilian Kolbe,” he nodded. “He is the saint of Auschwitz. He is a saint who, like yourself, was also a journalist. Yes, I think perhaps this story will speak to you, my friend.”
*
Back in the cell, I slipped off my shoes and stretched out on the bed while Fra Pietro settled himself in the chair by the window to share the story with me.
“It begins in Poland,” he said, “in a small town called Zduska Wola, not far from Łod, which is a city of industry where clothings are made. A weaver called Julius Kolbe once lived there with his wife Maria. They are hard workers, pious people who are members of the Third Order of San Francesco, which is for those who must live in the world. Also each year Julius makes the pilgrimage to Jasna Góra – the Bright Mountain – where is the holy sanctuary of Our Lady of Czstochowa. She is the Black Madonna, who is deeply loved in Polonia – as also here in Fontanalba.”
Fra Pietro went on to tell me that Julius and Maria Kolbe had been blessed with five sons. The second, born in 1894, was baptized Rajmund, though he was affectionately known to his mother as Mundzio. He had grown up as a normal, lively boy until he was ten years old, when his behaviour suddenly changed. He became much quieter and more withdrawn, spending an unusual amount of time kneeling before the family’s shrine to the Black Madonna. One day, finding him there in tears, his mother insisted he tell her what was wrong.
“At last,” said Fra Pietro, “the boy makes his confession. Some time before this day he has caused some trouble in the house because of his mischief, and his mother has said, ‘Mundzio, Mundzio, what kind of man will you become?’ Of course, always a mother will say such a thing when her child is a trouble to her, yes? But the question touches this boy in his heart. He kneels alone to pray for forgiveness at the shrine of Our Lady and asks the question to her. ‘What kind of man shall I be?’ he asks, and so innocent is his prayer that immediately the Holy Mother appears in front of him. She is holding in her hands two crowns. She explains to him that the white crown is for a life of purity and the red one is the crown for martyrdom. She asks him which crown he will choose for himself, and Mundzio says, ‘I will take both.’ When he became a young man Mundzio dreamt to be glorious as a soldier fighting in war, like San Francesco, who was a knight in his youthful days. But his mother has persuaded him to follow the true path of the Poverello and serve God as a Knight of Christ. So he took for himself the name of Maximilian, a saint who was martyred in ancient days because he refused to become a soldier like his father and fight in the wars.”
Fra Pietro was warming to his theme. Picking his way through the language, he spoke of a modest young man, both scholarly and zealous, and utterly devoted to the Virgin Mary. Despite his weak tubercular constitution, Maximilian resolved to create a new knightly Militia of Franciscan Friars consecrated to the service of the Madonna – the Militia Immaculatæ. Their mission would be to combat the evils of a world in the throes of revolution and world war – a war in which his own homeland had been the principal battleground of the eastern front. A war in which his father, who was a Polish nationalist, was captured by the Russians and hanged as a traitor.
Maximilian was in Rome at the time of his father’s death, and it was there that he first became inflamed with missionary fervour. At first just six of his Franciscan brothers were inspired to action by his vision of an international Christian militia, but from this small beginning, he began to conceive of a crusade that would reach all over the world. In 1918 Maximilian was ordained as a priest, and only a year later, Benedict XV gave the papal blessing to his Militia Immaculatæ, which grew to become one of the largest and most influential religious communities.
“Soon they built a village in Poland. A newspaper was written and printed there, which was read by many people. There was a radio station and industries – not for making money, you understand, but to feed the community and to spread the word of Maximilian’s love for the Immaculate Mother of his childhood vision. Then in September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Maximilian and his Franciscan brothers were arrested by German troops because of their links with the Polish intelligentsia. After much suffering, he was sent to the forced-labour camp at Auschwitz.
“There are many stories of how he has given strength to others in the camp. Tho
se who have come out of that place speak of him with love and wonder. They tell how always there are too many sick and hungry there, but Maximilian, who was never strong and often ill, would make others go to the hospital before himself. One man told how he had carried dead bodies to the fire with him. When that man shouted out against God, Maximilian said to him that hate could do nothing, for it is only love that creates.” Fra Pietro held open his hands. “He was truly a man. A saintly man. A man who has understood that when San Francesco spoke of poverty he has meant for us not only to be poor in money and things of the world, but to be poor also in self. To refuse to possess even life itself when life requires it of us. Truly he was a man not like other men. Yet here is a question for you: is the life of such a man of value more than any other man?”
Evidently the question was not rhetorical: Fra Pietro was waiting for my answer. “It depends what you mean,” I said. “In one sense of course it is. Why else would we be talking about him when there are tens of thousands who died in Auschwitz about whom we know nothing? But I suppose in another sense…” I faltered, thinking of the many people I’d seen die in wretched circumstances, unattended by any saving miracle or grace. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how you make such judgements.”
Fra Pietro nodded. “Perhaps only for oneself,” he said, “only for the life that we are given. But when it was time to make such judgement, Maximilian had no doubt. It happened like this. It was July in 1941 and very hot. One day a prisoner has escaped from a Kommando working on the farm. The rule is that when one man escapes, a certain number of men who live in the same block must die. This man is from Maximilian’s block. All day he and his comrades have stood in the sun. At last the officers come to choose who are the ones to die. They inspect the first line. An officer points to a man. The others move away and the next line comes forward. Another man is chosen. And it goes on until one man cries, “Oh my poor wife and children!” He is a soldier in the Polish army. Now he will die for nothing he has done, and who will care for his family?
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