Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (25 page)

Soldiers and police gaped, and rather nervously watched the crowds all around them. They had more than a thousand people to deal with now, and more were coming via the many streets and lanes off the plaza. Here also was a podium or round stage, but of metal, like an old bandstand without its roof. The Pope climbed the steps with Felipe. Stephen followed.

“Your
foot,
Your Holiness!” cried Padre Felipe. He was unshaven as usual, with heavy moustache, ordinary dark trousers and tunic, which looked as if he had slept in them.

“My foot was hurting an hour ago, but no longer,” said Sixtus, smiling. The Pope’s white stocking had also become red, but felt dry, as if the bleeding had stopped.

“This—” Stephen turned the rigid red slipper between the fingertips of his right hand.

Padre Felipe’s eyes widened. “Blood?”

The blood on the slipper had darkened, but its redness was unmistakably that of blood.

Sixtus VI placed the slipper at the edge of the rostrum, spread his arms, said the usual greeting and brief blessing, then picked up the slipper, which had its normal weight despite its color.

“My blood—I am human like you—and mortal,” said Sixtus.

The crowd stared in surprise, puzzlement, many smiled, uncertain how to take the Pope’s words, others stared with dark eyes into the Pope’s face as if, by staring at the holy man at such close range, they could extract all the wisdom they needed to live.

Thus was born the phrase “Pope of the Red Slipper.” Sixtus’s stubbing of his toe (which he described) he called proof of the fallibility even of those in high office. The pain that had followed was a sign of error, and the relief of that pain, when facts were faced and dealt with, was truth, reality. A stubbed toe! That was a mistake that everyone could understand.

The Pope stepped to one side of the rostrum and extended his red-stockinged foot, so that as many as possible might see it. “The pain is gone!”

Padre Felipe laughed softly, and his eyes sparkled.

As in the stadium, the somewhat stunned audience only slowly realized what the Pope was talking about, and why Padre Felipe was with him. The Pope extended a hand to Padre Felipe, and the priest took it. The Pope did not need to say more.

The low murmur of the crowd grew louder. From somewhere, churchbells began to ring, irregularly, sounding cheerful. A
mariachi
band started up tentatively in a nearby street, then gathered assurance and romped ahead. But mainly the crowd was solemnly happy, people chatted and laughed with one another. The Pope wandered among the throng, laying his hand for a few seconds on children’s and babies’ heads.

Policemen trailed him. The President watched tensely from where he stood near a row of black limousines. At least three television crews were at work.

A Mexican-style late midday meal was scheduled at the President’s mansion. By now it was after 2. The Pope asked the President if he might invite Padre Felipe to the lunch? Or would that cause the President inconvenience? The Pope knew it would cause a stickiness, but hoped this would not preclude Felipe’s presence, though the Pope did not say this.

The President, a fence-sitter of necessity, took a deep breath to reply, but Dr. Maggini got the first word in.

“Your Holiness, I must take the soonest possible opportunity to check your temperature. In view of your foot—and the heat—”

Sixtus understood: the cautious doctor was trying to prepare an excuse for the Pope’s words at the stadium and here in the plaza.
His Holiness did not mean everything he said. His mind was disturbed by a high fever at that time.
“You may take my temperature, Franco, but I feel quite well, very well, in fact.”

“Your Holiness—may I suggest—” The President sought for diplomatic words. “The crowd is growing. The sooner we leave—”

The crowd was indeed growing, the soldiers and police had become more active, leaping into the air, brandishing batons. The gathering populace was cheerful, Sixtus saw, but the number of police and soldiers would soon not be enough to handle them. Cardinal Ricci consulted with the President, a limousine was pointed to, and the Pope was urged toward it.

They all got in, except Padre Felipe, to whom the Pope had to wave good-bye through the window. They were off, not to the Presidential mansion but to the airport. Half an hour later, the Pope sat in a chair in his air-conditioned quarters in the Vatican jet, with a thermometer in his mouth.

The good Dr. Maggini had to concede that the Pope’s temperature was normal. A servant had bathed the Pope’s right foot in a basin of tepid water. The skin at the tip had split, but the color and even the size of the great toe was back to nearly normal, and the narrow split was not even bleeding now.

“It’s like a small miracle, isn’t it?” said Sixtus, smiling at the doctor and at Cardinal Ricci and Stephen who were in the room with him. “And where’s my red slipper, Stephen?”

“Ah, yes, someone—” Stephen began awkwardly. “It could have been Padre Felipe, Your Holiness, though I feel sure he didn’t intend to appropriate it, just carry it. There was some confusion in the last minutes.”

“A few moments in privacy, Your Holiness,” the Cardinal whispered.

The Pope made a gesture to indicate that he wished the room cleared. “Go and have some lunch, my friends.”

Cardinal Ricci lingered. “Your Holiness is perhaps aware of the consequences—”

“Yes, yes,” said Sixtus. “It will take a while for my words to seep down to all the people—at their roots.”

“Seep
down,
Your Holiness!—Would you like to see the television now? Rome is broadcasting without stop. Ireland—New York, Paris. It’s like an explosion of some sort. There’ll be turmoil for weeks—longer—unless you temper your words, alter them a little.”

“Ireland—yes, I can imagine,” said Sixtus. “And surely some people in America are happy?”

The Cardinal glanced at the closed door of the compartment, as if he feared a listener, or an intruder. “Do you realize where we are, Your Holiness? On the tarmac in Mexico City. We can’t go on to Bogotá. They won’t have the facilities to protect you. No South American country can provide security—under these circumstances.”

The Pope understood. It was the friendly people who might crush him and his staff, not the men with guns who might come later. Surely the landowners were already busy collecting themselves. “But to return to the Vatican now,” Sixtus began calmly, “would look like a retreat, would it not, my dear Cardinal? Running for safety?”

“Why, yes, perhaps!” the Cardinal replied promptly. “Except for the fact that the Curia is just as shocked as everyone else and not inclined to be—well, congratulatory, Your Holiness. I concede that our lives may not be in such danger in the Vatican.”

Sixtus told himself he could have expected the Curia to be chilly, even hostile, but the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until now. “Let’s have some lunch and watch television. Or I shall,” said the Pope.

The Pope had a shower and put on fresh and comfortable clothes. He had made it clear to Cardinal Ricci and others of his staff that he wished to go on to Bogotá, Colombia, though their time of arrival might not be the time Bogotá expected him. Couldn’t they spend the night on the tarmac here? Couldn’t Mexican soldiers guard them, if need be? The Pope received evasive answers. The Cardinal promised to speak with “authorities” by radio-telephone.

The Pope switched on the TV in his compartment during lunch with Stephen and Dr. Maggini. He saw that he need not have worried about the loss of his red slipper.

The slipper with its slightly upturned toe, its simple slit as opening for the foot, had been duplicated a thousand-fold by now in Mexico, New York, even Rome! People had made slippers out of pieces of cardboard. The news announcer smiled and stammered as he explained the slippers in Spanish. Small children, grown-ups with tears running down their smiling faces, held up paper replicas of his slipper, colored a bright blood-red. All this in less than four hours!

Sixtus caught Stephen’s eye. “I thought you would disapprove, Stephen, you the conservative.”

Stephen replied, “It was the
way
you said it—especially at the little plaza.” He wet his lips nervously, though he was eating fresh papaya with pleasure, as was the Pope. “I suddenly understood, Your Holiness.” Stephen glanced at the Cardinal and Dr. Maggini, who were both watching the TV screen with rather long faces. “You can count on me,” Stephen said softly.

“Thank you, dear Stephen. I mean to go on to Bogotá.—
I
should like to.” The implication was that he would not order anyone, not the pilot or anyone else to accompany him, because it now might mean endangering other people’s lives.

“I shall go with you,” said Stephen. A moment later, looking at the TV screen, he said, “These little slippers! Unfortunately, Your Holiness, by tomorrow they’ll probably have them in
plastic
! Ha-ha!”

Now there was Ireland, Londonderry, a group of laughing women being interviewed.

“Bowled over? That we are! But it had to come, didn’t it? We’re all happy. . . .” The voice-over began translating into Spanish. The Catholic women of Ireland were all faithful believers, and grateful to the Pope, one woman said, and would be even better Catholics for what Sixtus Sextus had done.

“Among the people, the picture in Latin American countries is similar,” the Spanish-speaking newscaster continued, as the screen showed a cathedral-backgrounded plaza that might have been in any one of scores of cities in South America. Men and women chanted “Arriba Sisto!” while soldiers, mainly relaxed soldiers, looked on amicably with rifle straps over their shoulders.

The Pope with his remote control switched to another station, as his roast veal was brought in. This was a more serious program altogether: an elderly statesman was being interviewed in Rome in Italian. Sixtus recognized him at once, since his face was as familiar as that of a close relative by now, Ernesto Cattari, head of a minority conservative party which never got anywhere in the Italian government, but none the less was important as a symbol of money, titles, stability of the Church, anti-Communism.

“. . . therefore we all hope that this curious statement is an aberration.” Here he gave a laugh in his short grey beard. “A result of the torrid sunlight, perhaps—and best forgotten.—We await, of course, further comment from His Holiness.”

It was late in the evening in Rome, thought the Pope, and indeed Signor Cattari did look weary.

Madrid. Evening. The screen showed the façade of an apartment building in what the announcer called “a rather poor working-class neighborhood.” Women, a few men, leaned out of nearly every window, waving, smiling, yelling “Arriba el Papa!” and “Thanks be to the Pope!” A TV man with a mike in his hand spoke to a young woman on the pavement. “You ask
me
?” she said in Spanish. “I cannot find words—just yet. Except to say that Pope Sixtus’s speech will change our lives—for the better, that’s for sure.”

The Pope heard gunfire outside the aircraft some distance away, or so it sounded, and at the same time there was a knock at the door. One of the Pope’s secretaries stuck his head in.

“Please excuse me, Your Holiness! We have just had an urgent request from the President—” the secretary gulped “—to leave the airport at once. The police are finding it difficult to restrain the crowds. People are
walking
to the airport—”

The Pope understood, and put his knife and fork down. “Was that the shooting I heard? The police are shooting at them?”

“Probably only warning shots, Your Holiness, but as I understand, it is wisest to depart at once for—” He stopped. “The aircraft is well fueled and ready for take-off, Your Holiness.”

“For where?”

“It would be best to go where we are not expected. We can ask permission in flight. Miami, Florida, for example.”

“I prefer Bogotá, as scheduled, though we’re early. Ask if anyone wants to debark. To get off.”

“Get off the
plane,
Your Holiness?”

“You realize that it is dangerous,” said Sixtus, feeling that he said the obvious, but often it was necessary with his over-polite staff. “Just ask. There must be time—a few minutes, are there not?”

The secretary disappeared.

The plane’s engines started, its nose turned in another direction. The Pope switched the TV off. Out of a window he saw four, five male figures walking away with suitcases in hand. He didn’t recognize any of them, but he didn’t look closely. He smiled at Stephen.

“Bogotá. I shall send a message appealing for calm—dignity—thoughtfulness. A quiet celebration of the red slipper.”

The Pope did send such a message shortly after take-off, then closed his eyes in prayer and meditation in his comfortable chair. He had asked Stephen to interrupt him in case of important news, and had asked the Cardinal to report to Stephen. The Pope felt exhausted in a pleasant way and, if he dozed during his meditation, he would not reproach himself. Sometimes great ideas came in such moments, not to mention that he was going to need all his strength and ingenuity in the hours ahead.

Stephen awakened him with a soft, “Your Holiness,” and handed him a folded piece of paper.