“He’s no longer here.”
“Then were is he?”
“He was taken . . . to the station.”
“And where is the train headed?”
“No, sir, I meant to our station, the carabinieri compound. But you can’t see him.”
“And why not?”
“I have no idea. By order of the judge in Camporeale.”
The six priests stepped back and started conferring amongst themselves.
Then Patre Pinta went back on the attack.
“We need to go into the home of our poor late brother.”
“It’s not possible. I have orders to—”
“You can’t treat us this way!” screeched Patre Marrafà.
“We’re not common thieves! We’re priests!” shouted Patre Scurria.
“And you, corporal, you know us perfectly well! You know who we are!” yelled Patre Raccuglia.
The windows of the house opposite opened, and some faces appeared.
All they needed was more chaos.
“All right, go on in,” said the lance corporal.
*
Five minutes after the social club opened for the afternoon, as scheduled, at three o’clock, the salon was already mobbed. Giallonardo the notary was receiving the members’ condolences as if he had been a relative of Don Filiberto.
“But, the last time you spoke to him, Signor Giallonardo, how did he seem?” asked don Liborio Spartà, the president.
“Well, the last time . . . he started crying.”
“Crying? Don Filiberto seemed like such a strong man . . . ”
“Thirty-nine years old, poor man!” said Colonel Petrosillo.
“What’s that got to do with anything? Thirty-nine years old or forty, the fact is the man was crying!” don Anselmo Buttafava retorted.
“Gentlemen, I would like to clarify that it was a rather unusual occasion,” Giallonardo resumed speaking.
“And what was that? Can you tell us?” asked Professor Malatesta.
“It’s no secret. When my housekeeper Rosalia killed herself the day before yesterday by throwing herself out a fourth-floor window at Camporeale hospital . . . ”
“Your housekeeper killed herself?” asked don Stapino Vassallo.
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but why did she do it?”
“Nobody knows.”
“But would you just let him finish speaking without interruption?” said don Serafino Labianca.
“ . . . I went to see Don Filiberto,” the notary resumed, “and I asked him if he would be so kind as to give the dead girl benediction. He said yes, and then started crying.”
“But the question remains: Why did he start crying?” asked don Serafino.
“Rosalia was a parishioner of his.”
“But, my good notary, if a priest cried over every one of his parishioners who died, he’d go blind in a month, believe me.”
“But he was particularly fond of Rosalia!”
“Oh, was he?”
“Yes, he was! He cared a great deal for her and admired her. He always used to talk about what a good girl she was, so respectful and devout . . . He would often keep her a long time in the sacristy . . . ”
“In the sacristy?” President Spartà repeated.
“Yes, what’s so strange about that? Isn’t catechism taught in the sacristy?”
“Bah!” said don Serafino.
“And what is ‘bah’ supposed to mean?”
“It means, Mr. Notary, that two plus two makes four!”
“I agree!” Colonel Petrosillo chimed in.
“But you agree with what, exactly?”
“Mr. Notary, it’s quite simple: Don Filiberto killed himself because he was in love with Rosalia,” don Serafino said bluntly.
“And Rosalia killed herself because she herself was in love with Don Filiberto!” the colonel said, smiling. “An impossible love!”
“Colonel, you know as well as anybody that there’s no such thing as an impossible love,” said don Anselmo.
The colonel took umbrage.
“And just what are you insinuating?”
“I’m merely saying that if they loved each other so much, the priest could easily have taken his frock off and hooked up with the girl. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time, nor the last!”
“Ah, the flesh is weak!” the colonel sighed.
“And yet,” said President Spartà, “we mustn’t necessarily dismiss the possibility that they were in love. Was Rosalia by any chance pregnant?”
“Oh, stop speaking twaddle!” the notary snapped. “Patre Filibeto was a saint, just as people say.”
“Sainthood and earthly love can easily coexist,” the colonel proclaimed.
*
An hour later another meeting was held at the castle of Duke Ruggero d’Altomonte. Except for Marquis Cammarata, all the local nobles were there.
“What’s this about the priest of San Cono parish?” asked Baron Roccamena.
“Just now at the club, people were saying that he killed himself because he was in love with a girl and got her pregnant,” Baron Piscopo replied.
Hearing the word pregnant, Baron Lo Mascolo turned pale.
“Why did you summon us here?” the Baron Roccamena asked Marquis Spinotta.
“Because the other day you asked me to telephone my cousin, Duke Simone Loreto di San Loreto.”
“And did you?”
“Of course I did.”
“And what did the duke say?”
“He said he would look into the matter immediately. And indeed he called me back just two hours ago.”
He paused for effect. And amidst the silence one could hear the hoarse voice of Duke Ruggero in the background saying:
“It’s all the fault of the French Revolution!”
“And so?” Baron Roccamena pressed the marquis.
“He told me the provincial commander of the carabinieri, Colonel Chiaramonte, has summoned Captain Montagnet to tell him he must return immediately to Camporeale. So now we’ve finally got him out of our hair, once and for all,” the marquis concluded, to the general exultation of all present.
*
They didn’t know, however, that Captain Montagnet was in fact on his way back to Palizzolo.
What had happened was that around three o’clock that afternoon, as the captain was waiting for the colonel’s call, another phone call came in, this one from Marshal Sciabbarrà.
“Ciaramiddaro, I urgently need to speak with Captain Montagnet.”
“It’s not possible. He’s in the colonel’s antechamber.”
“Is the adjutant Sinibaldi there?”
“Yes, I’ll put him on.”
“Hello, Sciabbarrà, how are you?”
“Major, sir, Captain Montagnet at the moment is in the colonel’s anteroom. I need to inform him that the situation here in Palizzolo is becoming difficult again.”
“How?”
“Don Filiberto Cusa, a parish priest, has killed himself.”
“So what?”
“There’ve been clashes between some of Don Filiberto’s parishioners and people from other churches in town. The latter group claims that Don Filiberto seduced a young female parishioner of his, and Don Filiberto’s faithful are up in arms. So far we’ve had two stabbings. So far.”
“Do you fear further complications?”
“As surely as death.”
“All right, thanks.”
The adjutant knew already what the colonel was going to say to Montagnet, and so, instead of speaking with the captain, he thought it best to mention the phone call directly to Commander Chiaramonte.
As a result, when he was finally received, the captain was told by the colonel
that, although the order had come from “higher up” for him to return at once to Camporeale, the situation had at Palizzolo had changed again, due to the priest’s suicide, and so he was granted a week’s extension.
*
Before leaving for Palizzolo, Don Marcantonio Panza had obtained from the courts of Camporeale a document written and signed by President Onorio Labarbera, which went as follows: “Don Marcantonio Panza, secretary to His Excellency Egilberto Martire, bishop of Camporeale, is hereby granted full access to the Church of San Cono and adjacent rooms (sacristy, priory, etc.), to allow him to catalogue all objects belonging to the late Don Filiberto Cusa and arrange for the shipment of said objects to the priest’s family.”
Upon arrival, Don Marcantonio presented the document to Lance Corporal Magnacavallo, who let him in. But less than five minutes later, the guard heard the envoy call him from inside the sacristy.
“Corporal, please come here for a moment.”
The young man shuddered. The envoy had probably discovered the corpse inside the chest! But that wasn’t the case. The chest was just as they’d left it.
“Would you please follow me?” said the priest.
Following behind him, he climbed the wooden staircase and entered the room where Don Filiberto had hanged himself.
The lance corporal froze in the doorway. It looked as if a cyclone had torn through the room. Drawers, cabinets, glass cupboards, and everything else had been opened, and all their contents thrown onto the floor.
“Go and have a look in the other room and the bedroom.”
In the second room, a desk had been overturned, its feet now in the air, drawers open and totally empty. The parish’s registers, papers, and documents were all gone. There wasn’t a single sheet of paper to be seen anywhere.
In the bedroom, even the mattresses had been torn open and gutted.
“What reason could your people have possibly had to do all this?” asked Don Marcantonio.
“My people?!” the corporal began, trembling with rage.
“Who, then?”
“It was those other priests, whom I, like an idiot, was stupid enough to let in here!”
They went back into the first room.
“Are you sure about what you just said?”
“And what was that?”
“That it was the other parish priests who took all the papers away.”
“Yes, sir, I’m absolutely certain. And I’m going to report it immediately to the marshal.”
Don Marcantonio looked up and cut the remaining rope still dangling from the rafter.
“Where have you taken him?”
“To the carabinieri station.”
“You were right to do so. The body won’t be allowed into a church, and therefore cannot have a funeral mass said for it, and cannot be buried in consecrated land.”
The lance corporal made such a bewildered face that Don Marcantonio couldn’t help but notice. He threw up his hands.
“Are you sorry? There are rules, however, and they must be respected. Suicide is an act against God.”
“And what about Count Mortillaro?”
The lance corporal bit his lip. The question had just slipped out. Two years earlier, Count Mortillaro had shot himself in the head. He’d been given a solemn funeral and buried in the family vault.
“That was a very different case,” Don Marcantonio said brusquely.
Want to bet, thought Lance Corporal Magnacavallo, that they would end up having to take the dead priest to the station after all, and hide him in the closet?
*
Matteo Teresi was at home, thinking about the article he had to write that night, when a carabiniere came to tell him that the captain wanted urgently to see him.
“What’s your part in all this confusion?” was Montagnet’s first question.
“Well, Captain, you’d suggested that I write an insinuating article, but in the meantime I was lucky enough to run into a witness, someone who’d seen Rosalia come out of the church after eight o’clock, and so . . . ”
He told him everything, even about the blackmailing charade. As he was talking, the captain’s face turned darker and darker.
“I ought to arrest you for disturbing the peace. And this time I wouldn’t be wrong, as I was with Dr. Bellanca. However, I believe you’re right.”
“About what?”
“Just after the news of the suicide began to spread, six parish priests dashed over to Don Filiberto’s residence, turned the place upside down, and took away all the papers they found there. Who knows what they were looking for.”
“They were looking for this,” said Teresi, taking out the letter written by Don Cusa and setting it down on the desk.
CHAPTER XII
FOUR ARTICLES, TWO MONOLOGUES, AND ONE DIALOGUE
Two days after the the death of the parish priest of San Cono, Matteo Teresi published in his newssheet an article he’d written after coming to an agreement with Captain Montagnet, the title of which was “The Penance Is Like the Sin,” with, as subhead, “The Truth on the Suicide of Don Cusa.”
It went as follows:
There have been many diverse and conflicting rumors circulating among the population of Palizzolo (and among those of the nearby towns, even in Camporeale, the provincial capital) concerning the reasons that may have driven thirty-nine-year-old Don Filiberto Cusa, priest of the local parish of San Cono, to commit the tragic act that has created such a stir.
We are now able to reveal to our readers the truth of the matter, thanks to a handwritten letter from Don Cusa himself, drafted just minutes before he took his life. We were able to read this letter before turning it dutifully over, as we have done, to the proper authorities at the Court of Camporeale.
In just a few brief lines, Don Cusa confesses to having deceived, over a certain period of time, a naïve young member of his parish, Rosalia P., subjecting her to such unnatural practices as masturbation and fellatio, which he presented as magical religious rites designed to protect the young woman from the temptations of the flesh. We will not dwell here on the tawdry details.
On the day when a rumor spread throughout Palizzolo that cholera had descended upon the town, the young woman fled to the countryside with two female friends. But during the night the three women had the misfortune of crossing paths with the noted brigand Salamone, who set upon Rosalia with particular ferocity and at great length, keeping her prisoner for an entire night and the following morning, until he was captured by the valorous Lieutenant of the Royal Carabinieri Rodolfo Villasevaglios.
Returning that same day to her place of residence, where she worked as a housemaid (but was treated like a daughter), the young woman asked that evening for permission to go to the church of San Cono, where Vespers had just rung, so she could meet with Don Filiberto. After hearing the girl’s confession, and her description of what the brigand had put her through, the priest, blinded by his passions, convinced her to come with him into the sacristy and then to his apartment upstairs, where he subjected her to a series of “penances” that were in no way any less cruel and ferocious than the turpitudes of the brigand Salamone. When she came back out through the sacristy door an hour and a half later, shaken and upset, Rosalia was aided and escorted back to her residence by an acquaintance. As of that moment, she refused to speak, eat, or drink.
Dr. Palumbo of Palizzolo was promptly summoned to examine the young woman, and after administering first aid decided it was best for her to be admitted to Camporeale hospital.
After verifying the terrible abuse the girl had undergone and assessing her mental state, the hospital’s chief physician dutifully reported the matter to the Royal Carabinieri. The investigation was assigned to Captain Eugenio Montagnet, who noticed, after questioning Don Filiberto, that the priest’s claim to have seen Rosalia leave the church right after her confession
was inconsistent with the time of the girl’s return home, at 8:30 P.M., as reported by her patroness. The testimony of the acquaintance who had come to her aid instead indicated that Rosalia had remained inside the church until that time—a period lasting about an hour and a half. This was as far as the investigation had got at the moment when the unhappy Rosalia unexpectedly took her own life, throwing herself out of a fourth-floor window of the hospital where she was staying. The previous evening, however, she had in fact resumed talking, only to utter, in the presence of the doctor and the nurse, this terrible statement: “The penance is like the sin.”
The horrific meaning of these words will surely not escape our readers’ comprehension.
At this point Captain Montagnet resorted to a strategy to corner the priest. Finding himself with no way out, and gripped by remorse, the priest decided to take his own life.
Don Filiberto’s mortal remains have been reclaimed by his brother, Orazio, who lives in Quattrocastagni.
Such, then, are the facts concerning this suicide.
There is, however, another episode, in itself quite alarming, which has come to our attention. Shortly after the news of Don Filiberto’s tragic death began to spread, the priests of the other parishes of Palizzolo (namely, Don Alessio Terranova, Don Eriberto Raccuglia, Don Alighiero Scurria, Don Libertino Samonà, Don Angelo Marrafà, and Don Ernesto Pintacuda), with the sole exception of Don Mariano Dalli Cardillo, priest of the parish of the SS. Crocefisso, presented themselves to the lance corporal of the Royal Carabinieri assigned to guard the door to the sacristy, and asked to be granted entry to Don Filiberto’s apartment in order to bless his mortal remains. Upon being categorically refused, the priests began to raise such a row that the carabiniere, to avoid further tension, let them in. The six priests spent a good deal of time, unsupervised, in the apartment, and then left. Shortly thereafter, Don Marcantonio Panza, secretary of His Most Reverend Excellency, Bishop Egilberto Martire, equipped with a lawful authorization from the Court of Camporeale, appeared before the same lance corporal. Upon going upstairs into the late Don Filiberto Cusa’s apartment, however, he immediately summoned the corporal into the residence and showed him that the apartment had been turned upside down, apparently as the result of a frantic search, and that every document, including private letters, receipts and the like, had been removed, apparently by the other priests.
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