Rancid Pansies (20 page)

Once again I imagined myself in the hot, labyrinthine
corridors
of the Roman Curia, this time searching for Room 21. It would not have surprised me to glimpse the shade of Franz Kafka flitting ahead. At every level there was a background susurration, very faint, as of great numbers of people talking somewhere far away. Regardless of where I went it never grew any closer, neither did it fade. I saw not a soul. All the doors I tried were locked.

At last I came upon a janitor seated on a misericord that folded out of the dark wood panelling. He was reading a
dog-eared
book of Mickey Mouse cartoons. He courteously
directed
me up a flight of stairs to yet another corridor where eventually I fetched up outside a heavy oak door with the number 21 painted on it in faded gold figures. I knocked. Silence. I tried the handle. It would not turn. I stood back to look at the door in the way that one does, acting out
bafflement
as though for an invisible watcher. Only then did I notice the heads of large brass screws spaced regularly around the door’s periphery. It was unquestionably screwed shut.

‘True,’ the janitor said when I went down to tell him. He inserted a brown finger in his book. ‘It always has been like that. I have never seen it otherwise.’

‘You might have mentioned that.’

‘You didn’t ask, signore. And even if I had told you, you would still have gone to make sure. Maybe now you should try Monsignor Ricci on the ground floor.’ He smiled and resumed reading, his lips moving silently to Pluto’s repartee.

Mgr Ricci was an iron-grey elderly man in a black soutane. His face wore the expression of slightly bitter amusement common among Italian bureaucrats whose job it is to give the 
same explanation to endless supplicants, an explanation that studiedly explains nothing but which needs to be given
anyway
. However, he was neither playing
Grand Theft Auto
nor reading ‘Topolino’, and the fact that his large desk was piled high with files and dossiers inspired in me a faint confidence that here, finally, was somebody who might know something. I introduced myself and told him about my visit to the room called ‘De S.S. Manifestis’ and the young priest’s redirecting me to Room 21, a piece of whimsy that now made me feel a little less warmly towards him.

‘He was doing his job,’ Ricci said. ‘Enquiries involving
non-Catholics
are always referred to Room 21.’

‘Which is screwed shut.’

‘Which regrettably is not at present open.’ He laid his
reading
glasses down on the text he had been studying. ‘You must understand that his office, like this one, is merely one of
several
dozen that all serve the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Congregatio de Causis Sanctorum.’ Like most Italians, he couldn’t pronounce the Latin word ‘sanctorum’ without slipping a pared-down vowel sound between the
c
and the
t
. ‘As I’m sure you know, the Congregation is the part of the Curia that supervises the complicated process of canonisation, although nowadays it is admittedly simpler than it was before the late Pope John Paul II revised it. Might I enquire as to the Cause you are hoping to pursue?’

‘I’m not pursuing anybody’s Cause,’ I said with the
confidence
of a rational and sceptical outsider. ‘I am simply trying to establish the theoretical position of the late Princess Diana.’

‘Of course. You are following in the footsteps of’ – he broke off to uncover a desk diary – ‘Signor e Signora Barrington. A British couple who were here very recently.’

I groaned. I might have guessed Baggy and Dumpy would have got here first again. ‘I can imagine. And you, of course, told them that the whole idea of Princess Diana being
canonised
was ludicrous because apart from anything else she was a
Protestant. End of story, except I bet they told you some tale about an apparition.’

‘It wasn’t true?’

‘Not the way they told it, I shouldn’t think,’ I answered carefully.

‘I can see you know these people well,’ said the priest. ‘They were making difficult progress because they had to bring an interpreter with them but I hope I did my best to set them straight. We are dedicated to the truth in this place, the truth of Christ. We have an old saying here in the Vatican: “One vision does not make a saint”, and this I told them. As one would have expected, they were disappointed. Without
presuming
on your own faith, signore, I have to say it constantly grieves me to see the burden of ignorance under which so many non-Catholics labour who come to this room. I think they must long for the simple clarity that is the essence of the Mother Church. Let us pray that for many of them this may become the first impulse towards conversion. And speaking of which –’ Ricci got up and crossed over to a table where he pawed some files. ‘Here we are. I should have sent this back to the archives after their visit, but conveniently here it still is.’

‘Maybe the Holy Spirit knew I was coming.’

Ricci glanced at me from beneath stern eyebrows. ‘It is not for us to second-guess the
inscrutabilities
of the Holy Spirit. Now, this file contains a tiny part of the evidence used for the beatification – and what must surely be the eventual
canonisation
– of the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, or Mother Teresa as she is still known to millions. I do not have the authority to show it to you directly, still less give you a copy of any
document
in it. However, I can tell you it includes certain notes and entries in the Blessed Teresa’s spiritual diary following
meetings
with
la Principessa
Diana in the 1990s.

‘The gist of it is that in three private audiences Diana expressed a keen interest in converting to Roman Catholicism. It was evidently her opinion that the Church of England, far from being a spiritual entity, was nothing but a social club for
the English middle classes and that it would soon die out in the United Kingdom because a majority of its members was now aged fifty or over. The Blessed Teresa expressed sympathy with this view without, of course, venturing an opinion. In her diary, though, she wrote that she rejoiced as she always did when anybody showed a longing to step from darkness into the radiance of the True Cross.

‘However, er’ – Msg. Ricci turned over some sheets of paper rapidly – ‘yes. The Blessed Teresa did tell Diana she should be very watchful of her own motives. She ought to guard against being seduced by the inverted glamour of charity work with slum dwellers, lepers and AIDS victims and not to forget the eye of the news camera cannot see what God sees in the heart. Above all, she must be absolutely certain in her own mind that she would not be embracing the Catholic faith in order to score off her husband Charles. It would undoubtedly make his constitutional position as potential monarch quite difficult and might even be a deciding factor for his mother the Queen never to abdicate in his favour. As you can see,’ Ricci said, closing the file, ‘the Blessed Teresa had a remarkable
understanding
both of the Princess and of British constitutional affairs. But then I hardly need tell you she was a quite
remarkable
person in her own right, as well as a handmaiden of Jesus Christ.’

To say I was surprised at this news is not enough. I am an artist, not a journalist, and I was elatedly assessing the exciting implications for my opera. Maybe there
was
plausible hope of a canonisation for Diana – if not by some future pope then at the hands of Gerry Samper, librettist of genius. I was already beginning to see an ascent into heaven in Act 3: a grand finale to stir the blood and bring in its wake a tempest of applause from an audience with tears streaming down its face, standing and clapping until its hands were numb. However, we weren’t there quite yet. One or two points still to clear up.

‘That’s fascinating,’ I told the Monsignor. ‘So, assuming there is nothing recorded on paper to show that the Princess
did
convert, would it theoretically have been possible? I mean, could a woman like Mother Teresa, a nun, have secretly received Diana into the Church? Or could only a male priest do that?’

‘I take your point, but it is quite irrelevant in the light of Teresa’s beatification. After all, if a future
saint
couldn’t receive someone into the Church, who could? Diana wasn’t hoping for ordination. She showed an interest solely in
converting
, an interest the Blessed Teresa ultimately judged to be genuine and fervent.’ He re-tied the file with its purple ribbon and replaced it on the table.

I couldn’t resist letting a trickle of holy water out of this urbane priest’s stoup. ‘I have heard it said that Mother Teresa’s journal also tells of her being plagued by doubts. I’m not sure the average layperson associates sainthood with doubts.’

‘My son,’ he responded unfazed, ‘doubts are to Christians what erections are to adolescents. They come unbidden at unwelcome moments and simply have to be lived with and dealt with as they arise. That is what we call faith. The
struggle
to keep this faith is part of what
makes
a saint. And now I must beg you excuse me. You happily chanced to catch me between appointments and I see I have a meeting in a few minutes.’

I took my leave of the Monsignor, expressing gratitude for his time. Little could he have guessed the artistic consequences of his dry summarising of archival data. Descending the
building’s
broad steps into the sunlit courtyard in which the
cheeping
of sparrows was suddenly loud I felt life streaming back into me. Even here, in the heart of the bureaucratic Vatican, I could smell espresso coffee and garlic frying. Italians have a genius for getting life’s priorities right. It is something we British completely lack.

On my way out I passed through another courtyard with a fountain at its centre – the entirely dreadful
Delfino e
Fanciullo
by Federico Corvo, who had only won the commission by being Pope Hadrian VII’s former catamite. It really ought to be
scrapped for its bronze and replaced by something modern. Around it, clearly oblivious to its aesthetic deficiency, was gathered a disgruntled knot of arguing foreigners. From my previous visit I recognised them as the American authors in search of the Holy Grail. Since then they seemed to have
banded
together for mutual support. Obviously they were hardcore traditionalists and not subscribers to excitable modern theories such that the Grail was actually Mary Magdalene’s womb – which if true would surely have made the Last Supper (aka Repast Plus) a bizarre and racy occasion that only Aleister Crowley could have enjoyed. These questers had spread maps on the worn stonework and were arguing animatedly about the cost of shuttling around Europe and even into Asia Minor in their hunt. Their voices went ricocheting about the
surrounding
buildings’ impassive façades. It struck me that the railways of each European country ought to issue a specially reduced season ticket – I fancy it might be called a Student Grailcard – to promote such tourism, which is clearly a growth industry.

‘Fucking Italians,’ one was saying bitterly. He wore a jacket with a tan suede yoke over a snap-front shirt down which a string tie dangled. ‘They just give you the royal run-around here. Polite as all-get-out but they’re not about to give up a single damn piece of hard info. Nada. Zilch.’

‘Hey, lemme tell you it’s no better in Malta,’ said another. ‘Those Templar Knights of the Grand Doo-Dah, whatever? Those bastards wouldn’t –’

‘Look, what it is, it’s a conspiracy, okay? It’s simple. These Europeans are in it together. It’s a conspiracy aimed at the heart of American literature.’

It turns out the
Forestale
and even the Comune’s Department of Works insist on sending representatives to attend the
excavation
of my collapsed home, so this event has been further delayed by several days. Joan doesn’t care a hoot, not least because she has phoned her brother and learned that she did
indeed hit the national press for a single edition. Apparently she is suspected of conducting satanic rituals in her back yard in Havant that have resulted in the death of at least one dog. A neighbour claims to have seen her kneeling with a gun and when the gun went off the whole yard was bathed in
unearthly
red light that was visible from as far away as Warblington. He also saw naked figures dancing around the corpse of the dog. The RSPCA are investigating.

A yet better reason why Joan seems in no hurry to leave Italy is – well, to put it bluntly – Marta. To say they have hit it off would be an understatement. To say that Joan has already moved out of her hotel and into Marta’s hovel up at Le Roccie would be a good deal more informative. This is a wholly
unexpected
turn of events and I’m still trying to work out the
possible
consequences for G. Samper. It would never have occurred to me to imagine they have anything in common other than a taste for
varminty
. Can it be that my fantasies about Marta’s nocturnal visits from the simple woodcutter’s son with his hefty chopper were wide of the mark? I’m astounded; I don’t normally get things like that wrong. I now have to imagine rather different scenes taking place in that attic bedroom of hers with the iron-framed peasant
letto
matrimoniale
in which I once, in dreadful error, woke up next to its owner with the mother of all hangovers. But let’s not go there. I absolutely must see Marta to talk about the opera but I haven’t wanted to intrude. It just never seriously occurred to me that she … I mean, I swear she used to leer at me in a way that … Naturally it’s none of my business. It’s absolutely of no consequence to me what two grown ladies do in their spare time. Why should I care? It’s not even interesting, for heaven’s sake. I just hope if the woodcutter’s son ever finds himself at a loose end, it’s mine.

Today is excavation day and I am up bright and early.
Searching
the Belgian’s TV for a weather forecast that can tell me what to expect, I hit the ineffable BBCNN where a generic tart
is doing aerobic exercises in front of a map of the Caribbean. Her whirling arms and jabbing gestures are supposed to show the course of Hurricane Rupert,
sweepin
in there an just
clip-pin
the toppa Haiti while over ere in suvvun Europe these ot winds from Africa are
drivin
up Italy an there’ll prolly beesum thunderstorms developin later over the Hapennines though the picture over in central Mongolia ere is very different with these cooler winds pushin dahn from Russia an easin those igh temperatures, thirty-eight, look,
forty-four
over there in Riyadh so take plentya sunblock there, any of you travellin in that, er, region. It’s already Thursday nah in Australia, so …