Michael Dibdin - Cabal

‘… quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’

Amplified both by the loudspeaker system and the sonorous acoustics of the great basilica, the celebrant’s voice reverberated with suprahuman authority, seemingly unrelated to the diminutive figure beating his breast like a hammy tenor in some provincial opera house. The fifty or so worshippers who had turned out on this bleak late-November evening were all elderly, and predominantly female. The apse and the chapel of the cattedra, itself a space larger than many churches, had been cordoned off for the service by uniformed attendants, but in other regions of St Peter’s basilica tourists and pilgrims continued to promenade, singly or in groups, dazed by the sheer scale of the sacred and secular claims being made on every side, numbly savouring the bitter taste of their individual insignificance.

For some, the tinkling of the bell, the strains of the organ and the procession of red-clad priest and ministers had come as a welcome relief from these oppressive grandeurs, rather as though afternoon Mass were a dramatic spectacle laid on by the authorities in an attempt to bring this chilly monstrosity to life, a son et lumiere event evoking the religious function it had originally had. Curious as children, they crowded behind the ropes dividing off the apse, gawking at Bernini’s shamelessly showy sunburst and the great papal tombs to either side. For a time the rhythmic cadences of the Latin liturgy held their attention, but during the reading from the Apocalypse of St John many drifted away. Those who remained were fidgety and restless, whispering to each other or rustling through their guide-books.

One man, standing slightly apart on one side of the crowd, was ostentatiously paying no attention at all to the service. He was wearing a suede jacket and a flowery print shirt opened at the neck to display the thick gold chain which nestled in the lush hairs on his chest. His big arms were crossed, the sleeve of the jacket riding up to reveal the gold Rolex Oyster watch on his left wrist, and his large, round, slightly concave face was tilted upwards like a satellite dish tracking some celestial object invisible to the naked eye, high above, in the vast dark recess of the unlighted cupola. Not far away, at the base of one of the massive whorled columns supporting the fantastic canopy of the bronze baldacchino over the papal altar, a woman was also absorbed by the spectacle above. With her grey tweed coat, black tailored wool jacket, calf-length velvet skirt and the white silk scarf over her head, she looked like a designer version of the aged crones who constituted the majority of the congregation. But her lipstick, a blare of brilliant red only partially qualified by her cold blue eyes, sent a very different message.

The homily which followed the reading sounded less like a learned discourse than a spontaneous outburst of sour grapes on the part of the priest, nettled by the poor turn-out. Once upon a time, he complained, the church had been the centre of the community, a privileged place where the people gathered to experience the presence of God. Now what did we see? The shops, discotheques, night clubs, beer bars and fast food outlets were all turning people away, while the churches had never been so empty. The touristic passing trade had by this time largely dispersed, but this line of argument appeared to risk alienating even the core of the congregation, reminding them painfully of their status as a marginalized and anachronistic minority, representatives of an outmoded way of thinking. Coughing, shuffling and inattention became endemic.

A brief diversion was provided by the arrival of a buck-toothed, bespectacled nun, breathless and flurried, clutching a large bouquet of flowers. She apologized to the attendants, who shrugged and waved her through the ropes. Depositing the bouquet on the balustrade surrounding the colossal statue of St Veronica, the nun took her place on a bench near the back of the congregation as the priest began reciting the Credo. A plainclothes security man who had been looking on from the fringes of the crowd walked over, picked up the flowers and inspected them suspiciously, as though they might explode.

‘ Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos…’

At first the noise sounded like electronic feedback transmitted via the loudspeakers, then the screech of a low-flying aircraft. One or two departing tourists glanced up towards the looming obscurity of the dome, as the man with the suede jacket and gold chain and the woman in the tweed coat and white scarf had been doing all along. That certainly seemed to be the source of the eerie sound, somewhere between a whine and a growl, which billowed down to fill the basilica like coloured dye in a tank of water. Then someone caught sight of the apparition high above, and screamed. The priest faltered, and even the congregation twisted round to see what was happening. In utter silence all watched the black shape tumbling through the dim expanses towards them.

The sight was an ink-blot test for everyone’s secret fears and fantasies. An arthritic seamstress who lived above an automobile body shop in the Borgo Pio saw the long-desired angel swooping down to release her from the torments of the flesh. A retired chemist from Potenza, on the other hand, visiting the capital for only the second time in his life, recalled the earthquake which had recently devastated his own city and saw a chunk of the dome plummeting down, first token of a general collapse. Others thought confusedly of spiders or bats, super-hero stunts or circus turns. Only one observer knew precisely what was happening, having seen it all before. Giovanni Grimaldi let go of the nun’s bouquet of flowers, which scattered on the marble floor, and reached for his two-way radio.

Subsequent calculations demonstrated that the period of time elapsing between the initial sighting and terminal impact cannot have exceeded four seconds, but to those watching in disbelief and growing horror it was a period without duration, time-free. The figure might have been falling through a medium infinitely more viscous than air, so slowly did it appear to descend, revolving languidly about its own axis, the long sustained keening wrapped around it like winding robes, the limbs and trunk executing a leisurely sarabande that ended as the body smashed head first into the marble paving at something approaching seventy miles per hour.

No one moved. The glistening heap of blood and tissue subsided gently into itself with a soft farting sound. Priest and congregation, tourists and attendants, stood as silent and still as figures in a plaster Nativity. In distant nooks and crannies of the vast enclosure, the final echoes of that long scream died away. Then, as strident as trumpets, first one, them many voices took up the strain, shrieking hysterically, howling, sobbing and gasping.

Giovanni Grimaldi started towards the body. It seemed to take for ever, as in a bad dream, the crowd perpetually closing up right in front of him, denying him passage. Then he was through the inner circle, beyond which no one was prepared to go, and promptly slipped and fell, his radio dropping with a loud clatter. Instinctively the crowd drew back, terrified by this renewed proof of the malignant power possessed by this killing floor. The screaming redoubled in volume as those at the back were toppled and trodden underfoot. As the attendants ran to try and contain the crowd, Grimaldi stood up, his blue suit stained with the blood on which he had slipped. It was almost invisible on the marble slabs, a light spattering that blended perfectly with the scarlet veins beneath the highly polished surface of the stone.