Gospel, page 29
(With or without the five male hustlers frolicking in the background? What that man got away with.)
Lucy’s head was spinning with Renaissance and romance—what was with her this morning? Calm down, she told herself, looking in the mirror, combing down her hair. On with the sweater, glasses, baggy jeans, and in her purse the guidebook of yesterday and her automatic camera and some postcards she’d yet to write. The professor was waiting for her downstairs, having this morning volunteered grouchily to show her a thing or two, before abandoning her to a Chicago-bound flight. Out of the room, down the stairs, those smooth marble stairs and the cool metal railing, handing in the key at the desk, and then out into this wonderful life-restoring light, warm heavenly air—
“Goddam it,” said O’Hanrahan, “are you going to tramp about in that lousy sweater and, aw geez, give me a break with those godawful bugeye glasses again—you told me you had contacts. I’m supposed to be seen with you? Didn’t you bring anything else to wear, for Christ’s sake?”
Lucy felt her face color completely, and she stammered, “Well, I thought I was going to England where it’s cold, just for a weekend…” And she knew her lip was trembling and her eyes were tearing up. The last person she wanted to show a hint of emotion in front of.
“Well … don’t get upset.”
An awkward silence, as they both tried to ascertain Lucy’s emotional state.
“Well, stop picking on me all the time,” at last she sniveled, turning away.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I’m used to traveling solo, you see or…”
She wiped her eyes quickly, under her bugeye glasses. And at that moment a shriveled gargoyle of a Florentine, with a bicycle full of bread, coasted up and looked at them both with a caricature of a face, a cartoon person—
“Get outa here, you,” said O’Hanrahan, waving him along.
Lucy laughed but it came out as a sob. That clown must have thought this was a lover’s quarrel. Old geezer and not-so-pretty young thing.
“Where do they get people like that?” said O’Hanrahan, flailing for something neutral to say. “Look, uh, Luce. I’ll declare a moratorium on treating you like shit for twenty-four hours. How’s that?” He passed over his handkerchief to her.
“I don’t think,” she said, pausing to blow her nose, “that you can go twenty-four hours being nice.”
“I don’t either. But the first twenty minutes or so oughta be okay.”
Lucy smiled, recovering. “It’s my period,” she said confidentially. “That always gets me all moody and sensitive.”
O’Hanrahan cut her off, putting an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t wanna hear about your period. Don’t wanna hear about your diarrhea. What I want is to have a good time with you today in Florence, all right? We’ll go to the market, how about that?”
Sniffing, she headed back to her room.
(Happy with yourself, Patrick?)
A memory returned to O’Hanrahan, a memory of how his late wife teared up and how her face reddened and her lip trembled when she cried. Which he had given Beatrice much cause to do.
(And not without some amount of pleasure.)
What a bully he had become—the most loathsome thing on earth, the cantankerous, bitter old wretch savaging the helpless, making the little girls cry.
Lucy, meanwhile, ran upstairs and reassembled herself, quickly put in the dreaded contacts, and was back in a flash, totally embarrassed but relieved somehow.
First stop. The Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella and the cloisters with a fragment of a Uccello depiction of the Flood and Noah’s ark and “God knows what kind of drugs the man was on,” O’Hanrahan observed. Uccello, the first surrealist. Second stop, San Lorenzo. There is Brunelleschi’s graceful nave and there is a Bronzino fresco of poor St. Lawrence on the grill, a hysterical cast-of-thousands psychedelic martyrdom. Next door, the Medici Tombs and Michelangelo’s sacristy featuring his statues of Night and Dawn.
“The man could not do tits,” elucidated O’Hanrahan.
In the shadow of San Lorenzo is the Florence Market, stall after stall of leather finery, jewelry, ceramics, loud bowling shirts and ludicrous scarves, souvenir T-shirts, noise and multicolored clutter in a marvelous Italian confusion. O’Hanrahan led the way through the tourist mobs with Lucy dutifully following, seeing a number of things she wanted. The professor halted before a stall featuring big, blowsy Italian dresses, sleeveless. He held out one for Lucy’s approval, a white silky frock with blue polka dots. “You like?”
She giggled, “Me? It’s not my style.”
“You don’t have any style,” he gently corrected. “But then, I have only begun my vocation, my mission.”
A man within the stall, wearing one of the dazzling chartreuse and magenta shirts hanging on the racks around him, put out his short cigarette and added to the discussion, “Si, signorina would look byootiful in the dress. Byootiful, byootiful.”
After a brief discourse on what European size Signorina was, she slipped behind the stall to the changing room. The changing room was really a space enclosed by two sheets suspended from clotheslines. To the right you could look into the neighboring stall’s changing-space. There an Italian boy was trying on a pair of jeans, advertised as 100% FROM THE USA by signs full of stars and stripes attractive to European customers. The boy looked over at her, smiling, shrugging, saying something in Italian, not embarrassed in the least to be observed in his boxer shorts. Not that he should be, thought Lucy, he’s gorgeous. After his departure, Lucy slipped off the sweater and baggy jeans and put on the dress. There was a four-foot panel mirror leaning against a pole on the ground, which made it difficult to judge herself.
She couldn’t go out in public in this. For one thing, her shoulders were whiter than white and she’d soon resemble a lobster. Not the most attractive upper arms in the world, a bodily region in recent years that had surmounted a challenge to the hips and thighs for fat-supremacy. Serious armpit stubble—
O’Hanrahan: “Come on! Stop temporizing!”
The dress was long enough to reach her knees, which was good because the thighs didn’t need more exposure … she’d better get out there and get it over with.
“See?” she said, talking quickly, “it’s just not me, and it shows off my fat butt—”
O’Hanrahan, astonishing her, slapped her backside: “It’s a fine butt, signorina. This is the land of the big butt. Child-bearing hips turn a man on in these Mediterranean climes.” He stood back to look at his creation. “Stop slouching. Get those shoulders back—this your first dress? Didn’t your mother teach you comportment?”
She straightened her shoulders. “Hardly.”
“What do you think?” O’Hanrahan asked the American yuppie tourist-couple in their late twenties who were also looking at goods in the stall.
“Needs a belt,” said the woman seriously.
The couple was Steve and Donna, they were from Michigan. Really, where about? Birmingham, near Detroit? You’re from Chicago, at the university? How long you been over here? Having fun? Isn’t Florence nice? Yes, Florence is nice—
“Yeah, real nice,” interrupted O’Hanrahan, cutting short the cant. “Donna, what color belt do we need with this dress?”
“Red … about this thickness,” she said, demonstrating with her hands.
“How about green?” suggested Steve.
“Green with blue polka dots on white?” said Donna. “Good thing you don’t work in fashion, sweetheart.”
Lucy was sort of thinking green might be nice. But a red belt was decided on, which dictated a red hat.
“Dr. O’Hanrahan,” she said, “you don’t have to keep buying things.”
“Silence,” he insisted, reaching for a floppy, cardinal-red, woven-straw circular hat, a bit too big. “Steve, Donna. We need your judgment here.”
Steve said the hat needed to be smaller in diameter, Donna said nonsense, it should be bigger and more audacious. It was Italian and meant to be excessive. There was a guy who looked Irish-American, ginger-headed with freckles, with a rural U.S. accent Lucy overheard as he tried to ask how much a wallet was. He had been sneaking glances at Lucy for some time, which O’Hanrahan noted. “Excuse me, young man,” said the professor, “but we need your fashion advice here.”
He turned to them, at their service.
“I think a reeeal big hat,” he said, breaking the tie.
His name was Farley, from Louisiana, his first time in Florence. Your first time too? You been to the Uffizi? Some’n else, huh? Florence is nice, ain’t it? Yep, Florence sure is nice—
“Well then,” interrupted O’Hanrahan again, “I think we’re just about presentable here…” Donna, Steve, Farley, and O’Hanrahan stepped back to observe the finished product. “Sunglasses,” remarked O’Hanrahan. “This fashion plate from the pages of Moda needs sunglasses.”
Leaving the others in a chorus of seeya arounds, have a nice trips, Lucy and her companion moved on to a sunglasses stall. Before a minuscule tiny mirror, they tried numerous pairs. To make Lucy laugh, O’Hanrahan found a pair of heart-shaped purple plastic spectacles and put them on: “Is it me?”
Laughing, she shook her head. “I dare you to wear them when you get to Assisi. Maybe in Rome too, for a papal audience.”
“I think they suggest the dignity I deserve.”
“You look like Elton John.”
“Who?” He asked if Elton John had anything to do with the Baptist, the Evangelist, John the Presbyter, John Bishop of Rome, John of the Cross, John Chrysostomos, John the Silent, John the Almsgiver, John of God, Juan de Capistrano?
“You live in the wrong millennium, Dr. O’Hanrahan.”
“Here you go,” he said, handing her a big black pair of standard anonymous-making sunglasses.
“With the big hat and the sunglasses, people will think I’m a pop star hiding out, incognito.”
“Tonight,” promised O’Hanrahan, augmenting with Italian hand gestures, “the wolves, i lupi, will be out stalking the hot, reech milionaria americana, capisce?”
“I have my doubts anyone will be stalking me tonight. Too much competition from my countrywomen.” Lucy bowed her head serenely, peering over the top of the sunglasses. “And of such dubious virtue.”
Lunchtime.
“So what will it be?” said O’Hanrahan, scanning the menu. They were in an outdoor restaurant of the Piazza della Repubblica, a modern plaza of busstops that despite the most uncharming view in Florence, manages a formidable café life. “A little milktoast perhaps? Some oatmeal or gruel? Something to calm the ever-churning stomach?”
Lucy hid her smile behind the big menu.
“You’re probably one of those American girls,” he said vagariously, “who comes to Italy looking for a hamburger, some french fries…”
She put down her menu. “You order for both of us. Do your worst.”
To the bored narcissistic waiter, O’Hanrahan ordered in Italian, a flurry of an order—Lucy tried but couldn’t follow it. First, there arrived a bottle of chianti.
O’Hanrahan: “A glass, signorina?” And as he filled it:
“Whoa, sir, that’s enough.”
“You’re not going to let me drink this nectar all by myself, are you?”
“Wine always upsets my stomach. I’m not a drinker, really.”
O’Hanrahan smiled artificially. “I’d noticed.”
First course, after Lucy polished off a basket of warm Italian bread, was spaghetti aglio e olio, so simple, so perfect, just oil and bits of fried garlic and that was splendidly simple and complete. The next course arrived and Lucy examined it oddly.
“They look like little octopuses. Octopi,” she corrected herself.
“Squid,” said O’Hanrahan, on his fourth glass of chianti. “Calamari, and a bit of octopus there, too. In vinaigrette.”
Determined to be as cosmopolitan as her costume, Lucy bit into one with a positive attitude—deliziosa! she declared, before O’Hanrahan corrected the gender. She devoured her serving, even stealing one from O’Hanrahan’s dish before the third course arrived and was set before them. Something orange and spongy and slimy.
“Hmmmmm,” said Lucy, trying a bit. First it was delicious. Then, still chewing, she considered it again. “Strange texture.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Not so sure about this.”
“Five different cuts make up the world-famous Florentine tripe dish, as there are five different stomach tissues in the cow—that crisscross fleshy tissue there…” He pointed with his knife to the tripe slices in question. “… and this bit looks like tentacles almost, these little sucker pods here, see?”
Lucy, somewhat paler, nodded curtly.
“Ymmmmm,” said O’Hanrahan, spearing a tripe piece, running it around in the tomato sauce and popping it into his mouth. “Fortunately, our Miss Dantan’s no philistine. Sheeeee’s not gonna turn up her nose at international cuisine, is she?”
“No,” said Lucy, “she’s not.”
O’Hanrahan gazed around the square while breaking off a piece of bread. “It’s a wonder beautiful as everyone is, good as the wine is, tasty as the food is, that Italy ever developed a cult of poverty and celibacy. Il Poverello and The Virgin Martyrs. Ever looked into your namesake?”
“St. Lucy?”
“Santaaaaa Luciiiia, he warbled.
She put her fork down, and recalled Sister Miriam’s lectures at St. Eulalia. “Somewhere in Sicily?” she ventured. “Back in Roman days. Some girl who, given the choice of losing her virginity with some rich, good-looking Roman prince or dying in unspeakable tortures, took unspeakable tortures.”
“Very good. Lucia, the Blessed and Most Holy Virgin Martyr of Syracuse, lived at the end of the 200s, and is often,” O’Hanrahan went on comfortingly, “pictured with her eyes on a plate.”
Lucy slowed in the chewing of her tripe.
“One legend said they were torn out by the Romans. But that’s not the older, more beloved Sicilian legend.”
“Which is?”
“She had this Christian boyfriend who wanted to marry her,” said O’Hanrahan, reaching over to steal another square of tripe. “But,” he added, raising his fork to make the point, “he would respect her spiritual marriage to Our Lord. But he kept getting tempted by her curvaceousness, her loveliness, her heaving Sicilian breasts—”
“I’m waiting.”
“And he felt lust in his heart when he looked into her limpid blue eyes. So, like a good girl, she tore them out and presented them to him on a plate.”
Lucy tore at a piece of bread, unimpressed. “Don’t worry, Dr. O’Hanrahan, these eyes are staying right in here.”
“You can go see her incorrupt arm up in Venice.”
“Her incorrupt arm?”
O’Hanrahan poured himself the next-to-last glass of the chianti. “Lot of ol’ girls around Italy refused to rot upon deliverance from their earthly ordeals. Up the road,” he continued, “is Lucca. A lovely Tuscan city. You can see in some church whose name I’ve forgotten the Most Blessed Virgin of Lucca, Santa Zita, incorrupt from the 1200s, no formaldehyde, no taxidermy. She’s on display in a glass case, all dried-up and dusty. Probably as she was in life.”
Lucy was caught again with a full mouth of rubbery tripe.
“And every April something-or-other the old widow women and faithful line up down the block to come and kiss the mummy on her rotted, wasted maw. They stroke her withered, shriveled hands and feet. That’s really good sauce, isn’t it? And too bad you can’t take in Cascia this trip.”
(The Blessed and most Venerable Santa Margherita, Miracle Worker of Cascia, the Saint of the Impossible.)
O’Hanrahan regaled his companion: “While in the convent Margherita prayed for ordeals to befall her and, in His infinite mercy, God allowed a thorn from an altarpiece to float down miraculously to the praying Rita and pierce her forehead, producing an open, festering wound from which an unbearable putrescent odor would emanate all of her days. Such Divine Favor!”
(Watch it, Patrick.)
“On her death, light shone forth from this gash,” he added.
“Do tell,” said Lucy, resolutely continuing to eat.
“Now true incorruption, Lucy, has a Roman Catholic checklist of sorts, if you want to start planning ahead. Benedict XIV’s De cadaverum incorruptione, which allows that the skin can be discolored and black or bruise-tinted, but the joints have to be flexible and limbs shouldn’t snap off when moved. There should be a moistness to the body. Often, it is found that congealed or fresh blood will form on the saint’s wounds, as holy men through the centuries carve up and divide the previous relic. Or go in for repairs.”
“Repairs?”
“Some repairs are allowed,” O’Hanrahan continued. “Santa Margherita’s cheek gave way and sank into her face in 1650, but it was lovingly repaired with string.”
“Fascinating,” said Lucy.
O’Hanrahan gaily noted Teresa of Avila and her sidekick, Mother Maria of Jesus, whom he billed as “that great double-act of incorruption.” While the various parts of Teresa exuded divine perfume, Mother Maria’s remains have been known to flow with sacred ooze. Divine leakage was recorded when a loving priest amputated St. Teresa’s hand for a relic, before cutting off one of her fingers, which he carried around with him as a cherished keepsake. One of Teresa’s feet went to Rome, a cheek was hacked off and sent to Madrid and was stolen during the Spanish Civil War, as was her left hand, which ended up in Franco’s personal collection.
“He must have thought,” speculated O’Hanrahan, “that this blessed amputation would intercede for him before God for his many crimes.”
(It didn’t.)
“I’ve been to Teresa’s convent in Spain, Alba de Torres, dear girl. And one can see her heart and left arm. You are familiar with Bernini’s famous statue of St. Teresa in Ecstasy?” Lucy nodded. “The most overrated piece of sentimental schlock in Western art. Anyway, Teresa’s heart was pierced by an angel’s flaming dart during one of her transports and the nuns are able to show you the precise point the dart pierced her aorta.”
