‘I’d prefer to be young and healthy.’
She shook her head and carried on with her business. ‘Let me raise you a little.’
His bed had been replaced with a motorized hospital model. Sister Emilia used the controls to elevate his head and when he was safely upright she held the drinking straw to his dry lips and stared sternly until he relented and took a couple of gulps.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Zarilli is waiting to see you.’
‘What if I don’t want to see him?’ The Pope knew that the old nun lacked even a rudimentary sense of humor so he let her silence last for only a few seconds and then told her that his visitor was welcome.
Dr Zarilli, the pontiff’s private physician, was waiting in an anteroom outside the third-floor papal apartment with another doctor from the Gemelli Hospital. Sister Emilia ushered them into the bedroom and parted the long cream curtains over the Piazza St Pietro to let in the waning sunlight of a fine spring day.
The Pope raised his arm weakly and gave the men a small official wave. He was wearing plain white pajamas. His last therapy had left him bald so for warmth he wore a woolen cap which had been knitted by the aunt of one of his private secretaries.
‘Your Holiness,’ Zarilli said. ‘You remember Dr Paciolla.’
‘How could I forget?’ the Pope replied wryly. ‘His examination of my person was very thorough. Come closer, gentlemen. Can Sister Emilia get you some coffee?’
‘No, no, please,’ Zarilli said. ‘Dr Paciolla has the results of your last scans at the clinic.’
The two men with their black suits and grim faces resembled undertakers more than doctors and the Pope made light of their appearance. ‘Have you come to advise me or bury me?’
Paciolla, a tall cultured Roman accustomed to tending to rich and powerful men, didn’t seem fazed by the setting of the house-call or this particular patient. ‘Simply to inform Your Holiness – certainly not to bury you.’
‘Well, good,’ the Pope said. ‘The Holy See has more important matters to attend to than calling for a Conclave. Give me the report, then. Is it white smoke or black?’
Paciolla looked at the floor for a moment, then met the Pope’s steady gaze. ‘The cancer has not responded to the chemotherapy. I’m afraid it’s spreading.’
Cardinal Bishop Aspromonte poked his large balding head into the dining room to make sure that Cardinal Diaz’s favorite sparkling wine was on the table. It was a trifling detail for the Secretary of State and Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church but it was entirely within character. His private secretary, Monsignor Achille, a wiry man who had long ago followed Aspromonte from Genoa to the Vatican, directed his attention to the green bottle on the sideboard.
Aspromonte mumbled his approval and disappeared for a moment, only to enter again when he heard the telephone ring. ‘That’s probably Diaz and Giaccone.’
Achille picked up the dining-room phone, nodded, then commanded starchily, ‘Send them up.’
‘Five minutes early,’ Aspromonte said. ‘We’ve trained our guests well over the years, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, Your Eminence, I believe we have.’
Monsignor Achille escorted Cardinals Diaz and Giaccone into the book-lined study where Aspromonte waited with his blue-veined hands clasped over his expansive belly. His private rooms were splendid, thanks to recent renovations courtesy of a wealthy Spanish family. He greeted the two men warmly, his jowls wobbling when he grasped their hands, then sent Achille scurrying for aperitifs.
The three old friends wore red-trimmed black cassocks with wide red sashes but that was the extent of their similarities. Cardinal Diaz, the venerable Dean of the College of Cardinals who had formerly held Aspromonte’s job as Secretary of State, was at seventy-five the oldest but the most imposing. He towered over his colleagues. In his youth in Malaga before joining the priesthood he had been quite the boxer, a heavyweight, and he had carried this athleticism into old age. He had large hands, a squared-off face and ample grey hair but his most remarkable feature was his posture which gave him a strong upright appearance even when he was sitting.
Cardinal Giaccone was the shortest, with a deeply lined and jowly pug face which could mysteriously change from scowl to grin with only the slightest shift of musculature. The little hair that he had left was confined to a fringe above his beefy neck. Though otherwise nondescript, if all the cardinals were to assemble on a sunny day he could always be picked out of the crowd because of his trademark oversized Prada sunglasses which made him look like a film director. He relaxed now, his worry about being late dissipated. There had been a traffic snarl-up on the way back from the Via Napoleone where, as President, he had held his monthly meeting with the staff of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology.
‘The lights are burning upstairs,’ Diaz said, pointing at the ceiling.
The Pope’s apartment was two floors above their heads in the Vatican Palace.
‘I suppose that’s a good sign,’ Aspromonte said. ‘Maybe he has made some improvement today.’
‘When did you see him last?’ Giaccone asked.
‘Two days ago. Tomorrow I’ll visit again.’
‘How did he look?’ Diaz asked.
‘Weak. Pale. You can see the pain on his face but he’d never complain.’ Aspromonte looked at Diaz. ‘Come with me tomorrow. I don’t have any formal business. I’m sure he’ll want to see you.’
Diaz nodded crisply, picked up the glass of Prosecco which Achille had placed by his chair and watched the tiny bubbles rise heavenward.
The pain had been at an ebb for a good hour or more and the Pope was able to take a bowl of thin soup. He had an urge to rise and take advantage of this rare surge of energy. He rang his buzzer and Sister Emilia appeared so quickly that he asked her jokingly if she’d had an ear pressed against his door.
‘Get Fathers Diep and Bustamante. Tell them I want to go downstairs to my office and my chapel. And get Giacomo to come and help me get dressed.’
‘But, Holiness,’ the nun demurred, ‘shouldn’t we ask Dr Zarilli if this is wise?’
‘Leave Zarilli alone,’ the Pope growled. ‘Let the man have dinner with his family.’
Giacomo Barone was a layman who had been in the Pope’s employ for twenty years. He was unmarried, lived in a small room in the Palace and seemed to have no interests beyond football and the pontiff. He spoke when spoken to and when the Pope was deep in thought and disinclined to chat idly they might spend half an hour in silence as they worked through ablutions and robing.
Giacomo came in with a heavy stubble on his face. He smelled of the onions that he’d been cooking.
‘I want to wash and get dressed,’ the Pope told him.
Giacomo bowed his head obediently and asked, ‘What do you want to wear, Holiness?’
‘Just house dress. Then take me downstairs.’
Giacomo had powerful arms and shoulders and moved the Pope around his chamber like a manikin, sponging and powdering, layering garments, finishing with a white cassock with fringed white fascia, a pectoral cross, pliable red slippers and a white zuccetto in place of the knitted cap. The act of dressing seemed to tire the pontiff but he insisted on carrying out his wishes. Giacomo lifted him into his wheelchair.
They took an elevator to the second floor where two Swiss Guards in full blue, orange and red-striped regalia stood at their traditional posts outside the Sala dei Gendarmi. They seemed shocked by the presence of the Pope. As Giacomo rolled the wheelchair past, the pontiff waved and blessed them. They made their way through empty official rooms of state to the Pope’s private study with its large writing desk, his favored place to work and review papers.