Mary Russel - A Thread of Grace

“This is your confession, not your wife’s. And in any case, a man who tends someone else’s garden can hardly complain when his own has weeds. How long has this been going on? A year? A year and a half?”

“Really, Padre, it’s not your place—”

“Don’t tell me my place, figlio mio. I am your confessor!”

“I shall speak to the archbishop about this, Tomitz!”

“Do that,” Osvaldo suggests with acid courtesy. “Better yet, go to the archbishop for your confession and see what he has to say when a man seeks absolution each week with no remorse and every intention of committing the sin again.” Leather creaks as Brizzolari shifts uneasily on the kneeler, and suddenly Osvaldo understands. “He already told you to break it off, didn’t he! So you came to someone new, and stupid, who would require eighteen months to see through you!” Osvaldo wants to reach through the scrim and shake the man. “Can you possibly believe that God is fooled by such games?” To the silence beyond the grille, he says, “A rosary, my son! And you must break it off with that woman. Now make a good Act of Contrition.”

Osvaldo listens to the grudging prayer of repentance. Brizzolari leaves in a huff. Osvaldo gives lurking penitents five more minutes to work up their courage and spends the time trying to convince himself that his own anger was righteous, not just indignation at being played for a fool.

No one else comes. He pulls the curtain aside, stretches cramped muscles as thirty nuns begin to chant their rent-in-perpetuity: a rosary each evening for the soul of Ludovico Usodimare, the pirate-prince who built San Giobatta and Immacolata convent with a modest portion of his stupendous plunder.

Renzo Leoni was right: the basilica is not much to look at. Its plaster swags and plump putti are indifferently molded, though cheerfully painted. Above a boisterous baroque altar, John the Baptist and an unblushing Usodimare anachronistically flank the risen Christ, portrayed as an improbably young man triumphant in the Easter dawn, happy as a soccer forward who’s just netted a header. Osvaldo’s favorite fresco is an Annunciation: androgynous angel to the left, pubescent girl to the right, a sunburst Dove hovering between them. The composition is sentimental, but it captures the moment when the Virgin’s shock gives way to a secret pleasure. Was I too hard on Brizzolari? Osvaldo asks her in his heart. What could I have said that would not have encouraged him to go on sinning?

Quieting his thoughts, he hears an answer. He knows he’s doing wrong. Tell him what the right thing is! Go home to your wife. Find a rose, and bring it to her. Treat her with the attention and care you gave your mistress. Love can bloom again. Women are forgiving, and so is God. Earn back your wife’s trust, and our Lord’s.

He envies the shoptalk of cobblers and waiters. Tailors and barbers can laugh at customers’ quirks, exchange trade secrets, discuss technique. Osvaldo Tomitz, who must remain silent about his work, never returns directly to the rectory after hearing confessions. He regrets antagonizing the rectory housekeeper by being late for supper, but he needs fresh air and sunlight on his face before joining his brothers in Christ at the table.

Outside he merges with the crowds that stream away from the port. Women, children, and old men queue for trams and cram funiculars ascending the cliffs to smaller inland towns. The Allies mean to deprive Hitler of anything northern Italy can produce, and their air raids have intensified since the armistice. Porto Sant’Andrea becomes airless and lightless at dusk, its windows sealed with blue paper so the coast won’t contrast with the sea, leading bombers toward docks, ironworks, steel mills, and warehouses. When military targets are hard to identify, civilian neighborhoods suffer the consequences. Anyone who can leave, does.

The menace is no longer from the air alone. By order of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Italian males between fifteen and fifty are being force-marched south to build German defenses, or stuffed into freight cars and shipped north to German factories. The only men who dare show themselves flaunt black shirts and boots. After a forty-five-day eclipse, the fascisti are back, loud and laughing, immune to German labor sweeps.

Radio loudspeakers mounted on the corners of public buildings crackle to life. Republican broadcasts begin with the state hymn, “Giovinezza,” and with a travesty of prayer. “I believe in God, Lord of heaven and earth. I believe in justice and truth. I believe in the resurrection of Fascist Italy. I believe in Mussolini and in Italy’s victory.” Ignoring this ridiculous credo, Osvaldo sprints up long stair-streets, leaving town by way of the Genoa gate. In the distance, a rabble of boys plays soccer on a makeshift pitch, raising dust in the late afternoon’s heat. Already sweating, Osvaldo yearns to cast off the black serge cassock, to rid his nose of its smell, his shoulders of its weight, his legs of its tangle. That’s out of the question, of course. Even so, he intends to hike up his skirts and scuffle for a football in the heat-burnt grass, taking such pleasure in the sport it seems as confessable as old Rina’s missed Mass.

A croupy cough erupts behind him. Osvaldo whirls.

Wearing a civilian suit, and sober, Werner Schramm bends at the waist and coughs until he clears some obstruction. “You’re the one… who speaks German,” he says, breathless. “I want you… to hear my confession.”

“Herr Doktor Schramm, this isn’t the time or place—”

Schramm’s spine uncoils. “How do you know my name?”

“We read your papers.”

“You read—? How dare you!”

Osvaldo feels his patience snap like a mast in a storm. “You were pig-drunk! Did you expect to sleep it off on a pew, like a swine in mud? You behaved disgracefully toward Suora Marta! You were rude and profane in the house of God!”

“I— my apologies,” Schramm stutters. “I have no head for liquor.”

Fifty meters away, the soccer players are staring. “Go on with your game,” Osvaldo shouts. “All right,” he mutters to Schramm. “We can return to the basilica and—”

“No! I mean— Please, I need to see your face.” Schramm looks around and gestures toward an olive grove clinging to a nearby terrace, high above the coast. “Over there,” he orders, adding stiffly, “if you will.”

A tethered goat grazing beneath the silver-gray leaves lifts its horned skull to consider the newcomers. Gulls wheel in air scented by wild thyme and rosemary. Eye level with Osvaldo, the birds cock their heads in passing and inspect the priest with brainless optimism. Food is scarce; scraps for gulls are nonexistent. Don’t look at me, Osvaldo thinks irritably. Go find a Franciscan!

“Does heaven exist?” Schramm demands.

Osvaldo blinks. “Yes. Of course.”

“One who dies without the stain of sin on his soul goes to heaven?”

“Herr Doktor—”

“Children under the age of reason are not responsible. They cannot sin. If they die, they go to heaven. Yes or no?”

“If they were baptized.”

“What of souls trapped in bodies that can never achieve reason?” Schramm asks in the same peremptory tone. “The feebleminded? The mad? They, too, go directly to heaven. Their stainless souls are freed by death. They are with God.”

Osvaldo frowns. “Yes,” he says more slowly.

“And if they are not baptized? What about—”

“Herr Schramm, if you wish to engage in doctrinal debate—”

“A priest’s office is to instruct the faithful!” Schramm shouts.

The grazing goat shies away, and the German is swamped by another coughing fit. Disgusted by the pulpy noise, Osvaldo looks away to hide his grimace. The paroxysm passes. Schramm leans against the terrace wall, wipes his mouth on a handkerchief, reaches into his suit coat for cigarettes. Osvaldo accepts one, but he puts it in his pocket, unwilling to smoke during a sacrament. “These can’t be good for you,” he remarks. “Not with a cough like that.”