Gospel, page 28
“It’ll be too hot to wear that sweater in Florence,” he said at last. “We’ll see at last if you brought a change of clothes.”
She looked down at herself. “You don’t like this sweater?”
“This isn’t a conversation.”
Lucy looked in her big carpetbag. “When I tell you what I brought you you’re going to be happy to see me. Aren’t you curious how I found you? I took the night flight from Dublin to Milan and then I took a cab to the train station, then I got on this train and waited until the sun came up to check each compartment. I knew you didn’t travel second class.”
O’Hanrahan crossed his arms, unimpressed.
She produced a train itinerary: “It didn’t matter when you left Paris,” she said, “you would have to come in on the morning Milan train—this one—or you coulda gone through Torino, see?” She held up the schedule. “In which case I would have caught you in Florence. See right here—this black line?”
“Stop waving that in my face. You’ll wake up the signora.”
Lucy fished through her carpetbag for her purse, and from the purse removed a wallet. She handed the credit card to O’Hanrahan: “You’ll be happy when you see this. And here’s the telegram that came with it. It arrived in Ballymacross after you left.”
The professor stirred at last. “Let’s see that…” A smile played at the corners of his mouth but was quickly restrained. “Positively surreal. Who’d have thought Chicago would have coughed up a cent?” He handed the telegram back to her and examined the credit card: PATRICK O’HANRAHAN with CORPORATE ACCOUNT emblazoned under the logo. “Who the hell is John Smith?” he asked, referring to the sender of the telegram.
“University treasurer?”
“Never heard of him, not that I could tell you who the university treasurer is. Sounds like a name you sign in with at a cheap motel.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
“What would you know about cheap motels?” O’Hanrahan lovingly added the VISA card to his wallet. “Wonder what the spending limit is?”
Lucy brought out his sister’s letter. “And now, sir, since you’re in a reading mood—”
O’Hanrahan snatched it, pulled down the window to throw it out, Lucy yelped “No!” and the signora awoke. She gave them both a disapproving glare and they remained in suspended animation until she closed her eyes again. O’Hanrahan whispered to Lucy, as he pushed the window back up, “I know every word in it without reading it. The old battle-ax is incapable of surprising me.”
Lucy held it out to him, undeterred.
“All right, all right…”
Dear Patrick,
When news reached me that you had sold your’s and Beatrice’s house and closed your accounts at the bank
He grumbled, “Yours with an apostrophe, for Christ’s sake. You see what I raised myself up from?”
I was at first in a panic, thinking you were in trouble, emotionally or financially. But now I hear from Dr. Shaughnesy that you are in Europe, living it up, waisting your money and no doubt drinking it dry. If you think spending every cent you have is spiting me, then I’m afraid you are very much mistaken. You don’t have to bankrupt yourself on my account because I don’t want a cent from you.
“Hmmm, the Wicked Witch of Wisconsin thought she was going to get a piece of valuable Forest Park real estate.” O’Hanrahan turned to Lucy. “I take it you’ve read this letter.”
Lucy, never able to lie when asked something directly, nodded guiltily.
And you are very much mistaken if you think that I’m going to bankrupt myself for you when you return. You are an ill man and you will need more than I have in the bank or your pension provides for you to see it through. Therefore this little spending spree in Europe has robbed you of any chance of a dignified treatment.
“Ehhhh,” sneered O’Hanrahan, skimming the next two pages, “she just carps on and on like this.”
Lucy asked quickly, “Are you really ill, Dr. O’Hanrahan?”
“Catherine O’Hanrahan has been trying to get me committed or chucked in a clinic since 1974 so she can run my life. Just like she ran my mother’s for nearly twenty years—she’s only comfortable at a deathbed. If I wanted to make her day, I’d end up in the gutter like she predicts so she could rescue me and attain her crown of martyrdom.”
Lucy smiled agreeably though she was sure there was more to the story. She waited a moment more. “Rabbi Hersch said you were ill too.”
“What is this, a conspiracy? Do I look like I’m on death’s doorstep to you?”
“Oh no, sir, in fact for your age—”
“Normal retirement age,” he ranted. Then, as if to himself, he swore he’d take the matter up with Rabbi Hersch next time he saw him. “I’m in perfect health, in fact.”
“That’s what my father says too, sir, and his system is one big ulcer. Ulcers run in our family, actually. Too much worry but that’s very Catholic…” O’Hanrahan glared at her, so she asked instead, “Does your sister have a point, Dr. O’Hanrahan? I mean, if you’re using up all your, you know, money, then what are you going to do when you get … I mean, when you do retire?”
O’Hanrahan wasn’t going to discuss his retirement plans with Lucy. “The great Dr. O’Hanrahan is going out in a blaze of glory. Zion’s glory, angelic realms of glory, a hoary head and a crown of glory—we’re not choosy. This gospel I’m after means everything. I may even be excommunicated, the highest honor accorded by the Roman Catholic Church.”
Lucy smiled, not meaning to.
“Grants, fellowships, appointments.” He paused, aware he was not quite as sure as his words. “I’ll be respected,” he added.
“You’re already respected, Dr. O’Hanrahan.”
Yes, he thought, once upon a time, by people now mostly dead … And yes, in your little Theology Department circle I suppose I get a kind word or two, but what of The Ages? O’Hanrahan fell into thoughts of his former glories: Do you remember when you were a Jesuit novice at the American University in Beirut, Paddy? 1949? Do you remember what short work you made of the Thanksgiving Hymns in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Translated in part by you, the twenty-four-year-old kid, the goy! Professor Albright—that genius, who was among the first to recognize the value of the scrolls—do you remember the praise heaped upon you? Those Israeli masters, Sukenik and his son, those masterful Frenchmen, Dupont-Sommer and de Vaux … A head-turning swirl of adulation and promise that you’d eclipse them all!
(So what happened, Patrick?)
O’Hanrahan felt the adrenaline surge, that inescapable tension within: is there time enough? Time for me to join those ranks of academic immortality? Time to get a few points on the board? Lucy meanwhile was fading, her eyes getting heavy.
“Been to sleep yet?” O’Hanrahan asked.
“A bit. On the plane for a while, and back there in second class. What I am is starved.”
O’Hanrahan proffered his sticky bun in the cellophane.
Lucy considered it and shook her head. “Better not,” she whispered: “I’ve still got diarrhea.”
The signora in the compartment repositioned herself with snorts and grunts.
“Why didn’t you take the stuff I gave you?”
“I did, sir. It hasn’t worked yet, all the traveling around. I think it was Mrs. McCall’s boiled cabbage stew. You see, I don’t really eat meat very much and—”
“Scusi,” said a man who opened the door of the compartment quickly. A short man, dark curly hair, almost Arab-looking. He stared at Lucy and then O’Hanrahan, and then looked at the luggage rack at O’Hanrahan’s satchel. O’Hanrahan startled, wondering if he was going to grab it, but then all of them heard the conductor in the corridor, coming to check tickets. The dark man looked at the conductor approach and then cursing under his breath, hurriedly left the compartment, slamming the door.
Lucy looked at O’Hanrahan. “What was that about?”
“Friend of yours, Miss Dantan?” O’Hanrahan protectively retrieved his satchel and held it on his lap.
The conductor appeared. “Biglietti, per favore.”
Lucy, in a strained whisper, asked the professor to explain in Italian that she would pay to upgrade her second-class ticket.
As they haggled and quibbled, the train continued across the flat Emilian farmland, which could have been the fields of rural Illinois, Lucy soon told herself, feeling the need for the familiar in yet another new country. Soon there was Parma, then Modena, cities Lucy knew from medieval church history or literature—what excitements and explorations waited beyond the train station signs … Then Bologna. She craned at the window to view the domes and towers and ochre highrise buildings as they left Bologna Centrale. O’Hanrahan fell asleep and she missed his narration … not that she would have incurred his wrath by awakening him.
But soon, up from the plains miraculously, were the Apennines. The train began winding its way through a series of dramatic tunnels, bringing temporary darkness and consternation, because Lucy greedily wished to look out and assimilate. A flash of a rich man’s villa. A few seconds of the neighboring autostrada, a four-lane engineering marvel of stilted bridges and tunnels. Another break between tunnels revealed a farm and a vineyard and … could that be a mule and peasant cart laden with grapes? Could Italy have remained so quaint back in these hills?
As O’Hanrahan opened his eyes briefly, Lucy pounced with a question: “How long are we going to stay in Florence?”
He drowsily closed his eyes as if he didn’t hear, then said, “Long enough to put you on a plane for Chicago.”
FIRENZE
JULY 1ST, 1990
Within the hour the train, after numerous stop-and-start delays, pulled into Santa Maria Novella Station. O’Hanrahan stood up and reached for his bag without speaking a word to Lucy.
“We’re getting off?” she asked.
“Could be.”
Lucy, in a panic, grabbed her suitcase and followed.
“Are we also going to Assisi?” she mumbled, dragging her suitcase a few paces behind him through the terminal.
“We are not going to Assisi. I am going to Assisi, after I talk to the Franciscans here. Florence is the traditional gossip-stop for Assisi since the Franciscans assigned here usually got drummed out of the big operation down the road. There’s a library I want to look in as well, not that any of this has the remotest possibility of being your business.”
Over the cobblestone streets buzzing with Vespas and motorini with teenage couples clinging to the seats, past the plaza’s postcard trees and sea of Scandinavian backpackers, Lucy followed O’Hanrahan into the sun and down a narrow street of hotels a block from the station.
“I’ve got lots of work to do,” he told her as he fished for the newly minted credit card. “So go play tourist. Not even I am so cruel as to put you on a plane without giving you a day in Florence to look around. Scram and don’t bother me.”
O’Hanrahan checked in at the Hotel Davide and accompanied Lucy in the lift to the third floor. Lucy, he noted with some fondness, was wide-eyed, eagerly drinking it all in, impressed with the tall ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows and the small stone balcony outside … this was all so romantic and Italian to her, this average continental hotel room.
Lucy soon made her escape into the city.
She spent the middle of the day in the Uffizi, and then, brandishing a guidebook, ran around after 4 P.M., when churches were open again, to half a dozen she couldn’t properly name now—madonnas and masterpieces happily whirled about in her head, too much to disentangle. Lucy trudged back to the hotel with a pocket full of postcards to write, and collected her room key from the half-attentive desk boy she could not catch the eye of. She rounded the hallway to see O’Hanrahan emerge from his room preparing to leave.
“Hello, Dr. O’Hanrahan!”
“Hmph.”
“Just wanted you to know I was back from the Uffizi.”
“You like it? All that art?”
“It was the greatest museum I’ve ever been to in my life!”
“Did you sign the petition for them not to tear it down and put up a Holiday Inn?”
Still believing anything possible in Europe, Lucy protested, “They can’t—the building is so nice…” Then she saw by O’Hanrahan’s expression that he was kidding. Of course, he was kidding. “Oh, sir, are we going to dinner?”
“No, we are not going to dinner. I am going to dinner with some friars and the custodian at the Biblioteca Laurenziana after having a peek at their index.”
“I don’t speak Italian, you know. And I don’t guess my Latin’s gonna go very far.”
O’Hanrahan was not even looking at her.
“I’ll have to go it alone out there and I’m short of money now—”
“Should have gone home while you had the chance.”
Lucy put a right hand on her hip. “You wouldn’t have had your credit card if I’d done that and we wouldn’t be staying in such a nice hotel tonight, would we?”
Fair enough. He produced his wallet and slipped her a 50,000 lire note. “This oughta do you. Point to a slice of pizza in one of the bakeries. Get a gelato.”
“I’ve had some gelato in Chicago. They have this place up on North Michigan Avenue—”
“Goooood,” sang the professor, departing, “when you get back, it’ll seem like you never left.”
Lucy, however, discovered mumbling English at shopkeepers was no problem, and some were even nice to her. She had a 2500 lire pile of gelato: stracciatella, zuppa inglese, and zabaglione. She wanted to try what sounded the most exotic. Lucy then strolled around and admired the buildings and the palazzi and the mix of people, soon finding herself in Piazza Signoria before the Medicis’ stronghold, the Palazzo Vecchio with its crenellated high tower—looking like a personal fortress ought to, thought Lucy. Underneath this golden medieval skyscraper was all of Florence milling about, buskers and Eurohippies and lots of American tourists, mostly college-age girls, with trains of Italian locals straggling behind trying to score with them, laughing at everything they each said. Policemen on horseback patrolled indifferently, tourists lingered before the postcard trees and souvenir stands, and there were also the Florentines themselves, beautiful and confident, walking home with their shopping or going out to dine and, everywhere, the cooing, mewling birds in possession of the square, the sudden fluttering eruptions of excitable pigeons.
I could stay forever, Lucy thought.
Having walked most of the old quarter enraptured, she surrendered to the hotel, tired in her bones. She thought she’d leave a note:
Dr. O’Hanrahan,
How was your night? Did you find anything important? If so, you can come and tell me about it, I’ll probably be awake.
Lucy
Lucy lay in her room, exhausted, but awake with the wonders of the day. It was as if someone had whispered: see how much of your life you have wasted? This has always been here, Lucille. And like the students and twenty-something-year-olds wandering in the piazza tonight, you too could have been here years ago. She thought of the girls in the square—boy, did American voices, nasal and one-half too loud, stand out in other countries; she saw why foreigners complained about Americans. Those girls weren’t any more attractive than she was when she fixed herself up, Lucy thought, and they were besieged with Italian admirers. Some of those guys were sleazy beyond belief … but everyone looked to be having fun. A little summertime romance. Something to talk about when they get back. Something she wished she could tell Judy.
Lucy then replayed her visit with David McCall in her head. She was fairly sure he liked her and was interested and she just did all the same old dumb usual stuff to make sure romance never came to a point, to prevent being rejected. Would it have been so bad to come out and announce her interest directly? God, she thought, having made a fool out of myself over this guy Vito in the Theology Department back home, what did I have to lose with David? Vito was a short, dark Italian guy with cheekbones you could slice bread with, generally adored by women—particularly his rear end, venerated especially by Judy the connoisseuse herself. And Lucy had once flirted with him to a degree that Vito, very gently, suggested he was not available. Nonetheless, Judy and Lucy were positive that Vito was attainable and furthermore none of his girlfriends was any better looking than either of them—worse, thank God, much much worse!
Vito’s brother looked identical from behind and was often mistaken for Vito, and hence was called Deutero-Vito. In the winter with everyone bundled up, anyone short and Mediterranean resembled Vito as well and Lucy remembered the day she had everyone in the Theology grad student coffee lounge howling by identifying two or three Pseudo-Vito’s. In addition, you see, to the Deutero-Vito.
Theology grad student humor there.
Lucy then heard the lift engage, faintly, at the end of the hall. She listened for footsteps. There was a pause. Was it O’Hanrahan reading her note? She heard a crumpling of paper, then the door being opened, and then it being closed. Lucy was curious. She slipped out of bed and stuck her head out in the hall to look: her note was crushed into a ball on the floor before his door.
I love Italy so far, she thought, back in her bed and looking at the ceiling, but I wish I weren’t here alone.
JULY 2ND
Next day.
And what a day. The sky was a breeze-swept, clean and infinite blue, fit for going to sea like Amerigo Vespucci, fit for the mannerist blue on the pallet of Michelangelo or Pontormo, fit for the blue on the cerulean cape of the Most Blessed Virgin; and the sun was pure this morning, firing the earthen walls of faded yellow and deep orange, palaces and tenements alike—and for the lucky mortal who cared to raise his head there awaited the dizzying contrast of the baked ochre meeting the lapis lazuli of the sky. Lucy was intoxicated: is not this the weather that bore the Renaissance, cosseted the temperamental artists, soothed the poets, prodded the world to walk resplendent from the Dark Ages? Was it not on such a day that God made good His promise and sent an angel to inform Mary of what was to befall her—let’s have the angel of Leonardo’s Annunciation and let’s have a Virgin by Botticelli, Lucy wasn’t so choosy as to which one, and let’s have the Christ Child by Michelangelo in his Tondo Doni.
