Diego Marani: God's Dog

The following evening, he waited for the woman in front of the vending machine. He had bought himself a coffee, just to have something in his hands, but he didn’t feel like drinking it.

‘We seem to keep the same hours!’ he said when he saw her approaching, though she was clearly eager to be off.

‘My timetable is dictated by necessity,’ she said, keeping her hands in her pockets, as though resigned to enduring Salazar’s company. The inspector promptly produced a coin.

‘What are you drinking?’

‘A cappuccino, thanks.’ The machine placed a plastic beaker in the ring and a puff of warm froth emerged from the spout.

‘How are things?’ asked Salazar, nodding in the direction of the stairs to the palliative care unit.

‘Same as ever. I can’t be sure whether he is conscious or not. At times I feel that he hears what I’m saying, that he knows I’m there. Then he seems to drift away. Sometimes I think he’s stupefied by pain. He’s got absolutely no strength, he can hardly breathe. All we can do is wait…’ The woman had her patter at the ready. It was best to be on the alert. That man too might be a guardian of the faith, they were poking their noses into everything nowadays. Particularly in hospitals; and if they reported you, that was that.

‘But he’s alive! And while there’s life, there’s hope!’ exclaimed Salazar with a pious simper.

‘We are in the hands of God,’ she concluded resignedly, lifting the plastic beaker to her lips.

‘Signora Bonardi, you mustn’t worry, I am not the person you think I am. I know the feelings of those who are watching a loved one die. All thoughts are legitimate in such cases. The Church too understands this, and our role as pilgrim priests is precisely to accept the believer’s doubts in these difficult moments. That is why we are independent of the church hierarchy, and accountable to no one,’ said Salazar mendaciously, drawing the woman aside. Years of experience with unbelievers had turned him into an artful preacher. But putting yourself on the side of those whom you wish to convert had always been rule number one with priests and salesmen.

Chiara Bonardi was no simpleton. She knew that she must proceed with care, particularly during this fateful vigil.

‘Father, I have no doubts. I am certain that my father will be going to heaven. With what he’s suffering, he deserves to.’ She put her hands back in her pockets, nodded in his direction and walked off.

Salazar stood there staring after her. He hadn’t yet decided whether she was putting on an act, or whether she was perfectly sincere. Leaving his coffee untouched, he went up the stairs. The duty nurse was already at her post, the newspaper open in front of her. Salazar opened up his camp-bed and threw on the cover. He checked the monitors in the sister’s office. He saw the doctor with the goatee emerging from the main corridor, wearing a flashy coat with a fur collar and toying with a ridiculous hat resembling a busby, which he clearly could not quite bring himself to put on.

I am beginning to be intrigued by these euthanasiasts and all their works. Here we have another example of science taking a wrong turn. Science had hoped to make man live for ever, but in fact all it does is make him die more slowly. Things were better when we knew less, when diseases were incurable, when heart attacks and tumours felled us at a blow. Death is easier when it is unforeseen. The world lived in peace until it rediscovered Greek thought and, with it, the mania for experiment. To experiment means ceasing to put one’s trust in the created world, but wanting to take it apart. This is another of the manias that science brings in its wake. Now our task must be to bury knowledge. To forget it. To cut off connections between scientists, to spread error, to lead people down the wrong track. In Rome, no one is aware of the awesome battle we are fighting outside the Catholic world. Two years ago in London a scientist at Imperial College killed himself. The news went unreported in the Italian press. Neil Corrigan was doing research into mirror neurons. His work had reached a point where he could prove that men and animals have very much in common in terms of feelings. He was in a position to prove that all earthly life is moved by an invisible empathy, and this is tantamount to pantheism. They ordered us to kill him. We did more than they could have hoped: we falsified his calculations, making him appear a charlatan in the eyes of the scientific community. So, out of sheer desperation, he did the job for us, and killed himself, throwing his research into total discredit as he did so. Our fight, therefore, must be to demolish science. In Africa, we intercept anti-AIDS vaccines and replace them with ampoules containing water. The illness is spreading, and man is losing faith in science; he is beginning to understand that God is the stronger of the two. In the Indian sub-continent we sterilise the seed provided by international food aid and reduce millions to starvation, so that they will emigrate to the West and become easy prey. Such are the battles we are waging.

Salazar put down his pen for a moment. He took the postcard of Veere from his exercise-book and turned it over in his hands, wondering how Guntur was getting on. He had tried to ring him from a public call box the previous day and left a message on the answerphone, but there had been no reply. He turned the page and carried on.

Today I began to tail the woman with the blue handkerchief. I know she’s hiding something, but I don’t yet know what. In the albums I found in her flat, some photographs had been recently added; old photographs, but printed just a few weeks ago. You don’t start reorganising your family albums when your father is dying in hospital. Perhaps it’s just that she’s a rebel, someone who wants to make a show of defiance; out of spite, perhaps, or maybe just on impulse. At all events, there’s certainly something bogus about the way she prays. She is the daughter of a scientist; the man she sits with in the hospital might even be Davide Zago. But what I saw in her flat is not the library of a professor of philosophy. Yesterday I went to the land registry office. Everything seemed in order: the flat is registered in the name of Chiara Bonardi. I think she knows that I am not a pilgrim priest. But I want to see where it’s all leading; what she is hiding behind that rosary she rattles off so confidently. If she is the atheist I think she is, I shall enjoy destroying her faith in man.

Salazar closed his diary, took his pipe out of his suitcase and smoked the last bit of Afghan black. He had forgotten that it might be difficult to find in Rome.

During the night he woke up with a start, thinking he had heard someone outside the door. He looked at his watch: it was three o’clock, not the kind of time when nuns are on the move. He had left the shutters open, and the door leading into the corridor was white with moonlight. He listened hard: there was certainly movement of some sort. The shuffle of footsteps broke the silence once again. He heard a thud, and a window opening with a grating sound beyond the left-hand wall. That in itself was odd: none of the rooms near his own was occupied, except by linen and provisions of various kinds. He turned the key in the lock and went into the corridor, pistol cocked. One of the doors was open. He pressed back against the door-post, then bounded into the room. The windows were wide open, and the curtain cord was swaying gently, banging against the wall. He leant out over the windowsill and saw a shadow going down from the gallery into the courtyard. He heard yet more footsteps on the stone floor of the entrance hall, then the rasping of the gate as it was pulled shut. The following morning the sisters called the police. Thieves had broken into the convent during the night and stolen some paintings from the refectory, but there were no signs of a forced break-in. Salazar looked suspiciously at the strips of roughly cut canvas dangling from the empty frames.