“Why don’t you have a little talk with Paolo; he’ll fill you in,” said Michael. “Paolo is a real priest, not like me. He knows all about it.”
She eyed him fiercely. “Something’s going on and you’re not telling me.”
“I don’t quite know myself. I’m too ashamed to tell you,” said Michael. “And anyway you’d never believe me if I told you the truth.”
“Yeah, right!” said Honey. “That’s what every liar says.”
27
As ever, Rome was luxuriating in the velvety folds of its history. Past midnight, their tinted-glass limousine dropped them at the edge of an enormous plaza, empty but for lunar shadows cast by the columns. In the background lay the floodlit bulk of St. Peter’s, a huge illusory shape set against the sky.
Giacomo stretched his back. “Ah, how good to be home.” He genuflected towards the dome, without any excessive show of emotion.
Paolo, on the other hand, grabbed his rosary and, with mumbled incantations, fell to his knees.
Honey would not leave Michael’s side; she was due to come into full flower that day. He sensed her tremulous presence just behind him, then her hoarse voice whispering into his ear:
“Where the fuck are we going? What is this place?”
“St. Peter’s. Heard of it?”
“Not really. Some church. Who gives a shit?”
Giacomo interceded, slipping his arm under her elbow and leading her on at a brisk pace. “Come child. Time to disseminate.”
As they marched into deep shadow on the west side of the façade they saw men in dark suits and ear-mussels standing by the entrance to the crypts. Respectfully they got out of the way as Giacomo walked confidently towards them, brushing aside a dawdler on the stairs. Once inside, Giacomo and Paolo headed for the wardrobe, where they left their coats and trousers with a girl who gave them ceremonial robes.
“I thought you’d been excommunicated,” said Michael.
“Up there I have but not down here,” said Giacomo. “Our existence would be too disturbing for the world so we keep it to ourselves. We’re very considerate people.” He looked at the wardrobe girl and said, with a nod in Michael’s direction: “I’d say he needs an alb and a black stole, wouldn’t you? With some nice decoration… Ah yes, that one with the fish will be just fine, thank you, my dear.”
“What do you do down here? Worship golden calves or something?” said Michael, nervously putting on his robes as he jogged along behind him.
“For now, just be aware of this: ‘Ecce ipsi idiote rapiunt celum ubi nos sapientes in inferno mergimur. The unlearned themselves take heaven by force, while we wise ones are drowned in hell.’ St. Augustine, in case you were wondering.”
“Don’t I get some clothes as well?” moaned Honey.
Paolo, to keep her quiet, gave her a white cotton gown.
They entered a candlelit vault, whose groaning pillars bore the full weight of the Basilica above them. There must have been a thousand people in the dim subterranean chapel. Their silence seemed to take the oxygen out of the air.
The priest and his acolyte stood with their backs to the congregation; busily, they sprinkled holy water on the altar, accessed via a small bridge across a cistern of black undulating water reaching from one transept to the other.
An unseen choir filled the air with wailing dirges. Not pleasant at all, thought Michael. As they were seated in the front pew, he noticed O’Hara at the back inside an island of men in purple robes. He stared bleakly at them across a sea of heads.
The situation was already disturbing enough. But when Giacomo and O’Hara bowed respectfully to each other, it grew stranger still. “What are they doing?” Michael whispered to Paolo, who elbowed him jocularly and said:
“Down here, we try not to be trivial.”
“That man tried to kill us, and he’ll probably try again.”
“So what?” said Paolo. “In killing us he would have been doing us a favor. Anyway, we would have come back another day.”
“Some of us don’t believe in all that.”
“Some of us are about to have their illusions shattered.”
Honey pressed herself against him as hypnotic singing rose up from the cistern at the other end. “I’ve never seen a fucking church like this before. It’s like a nightmare; like a goddamn Tom Cruise movie.”
A ceremonial golden barge came gliding in. Seven maidens in white tunics stood singing in it, holding out their hands imploringly towards the congregation, then lifting their tunics and revealing their dark, triangular pudenda.
“What are they doing?” Michael whispered to Paolo.
“Praying for fertility, which shall be denied the little slaves.”
“So give them rubbers and they’ll be fine,” said Honey with a smirk.
The doors flew open at the back. A procession of singing children with candles in their hands moved slowly through the congregation, lighting up the gnarled faces of clerics and cardinals.
“They are the blessed ones,” Paolo explained. “They were never born.”
Again Honey disagreed. “Sorry, father, but they look born enough to me.”
The procession stopped when it reached the altar.
The barge began to pull away, while the women on it dropped to their knees, wrung their hands and pulled their hair. They called out to the singing children standing on the footbridge as their craft passed beneath and then glided out of view. The children fell silent and blew out their candles. Darkness fell over the subterranean church, offset by a single candle of massive girth, still burning on its pedestal in the middle of the altar.
Then, with ritual wails, the children filed out.
The congregation was left hovering in a sort of thunderous silence, before the heavy artillery, a group of robed men behind the sanctuary broke into sonorous song to mark the end of the ceremony.
Giacomo stood up and said briskly to Michael. “Would you like a tour before we go home?”
“Okay, why not.”
Leaving Honey and Father Paolo behind, Michael followed Giacomo into the atrium, where the worthies had gathered for conversation while wine and cakes were brought round. Unfortunately, O’Hara was waiting for them. Tall and dignified, intent on a bit of explication, he marched forward as soon as he clapped eyes on them.
“Giacomo, dear soul, will you forgive me,” he effused, offering his clammy hand. “I was lost; the Devil took me. If anyone knows the ways of the world, its pitfalls and traps, it must surely be you?”
The two men faced each other, each with a sort of hovering moral scrutiny imprinted on his face.
“So go with God, my brother,” said Giacomo ceremoniously, “and do not heed the Devil again.”
O’Hara frowned. “Yet the Devil tells me I must have you in the vaults where I can venerate your memory — here in the World you stand in my way, my friend.” O’Hara threw Michael a sour glance. “And I confess I am dismayed to see this instrument of mine in your hands. His face reminds me of my own transgression.”
“I’ll keep him, then,” Giacomo rejoined, with a glint of mischief. “As a reminder of your moral failings.”
Michael found himself grabbed by the scruff of his neck and marched out by Giacomo, whose face, by now, had turned scarlet.
“What’s going on?” Michael whispered.
“Bloody hypocrites. Using Satan as an excuse. They are not worthy of their robes or their beards.”
“What are those vaults he was talking about?”
Giacomo stopped and recomposed himself. “Ah, yes, the vaults. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t see them; I think you’re ready.” He pushed open a side door and they went through a warren of changing rooms and properties stores — Michael saw rows of costumes on rails, pikestaffs and weapons of all descriptions, a wire net filled with stuffed swans; even, vaguely glimpsed as they passed, a cage of monkeys, one of them a noble old orangutan staring forlornly at a twig, as if longing for its home, far away.