BRAGGIOTTI had long been urging Stephen to go about socially. “If you wish to be of maximum service as a Vatican diplomat,” said Roberto, “you must circulate quietly in Roman society, be seen in the best houses, become acquainted with everyone, listen to everything—including rumors, many of which will be nonsensical—and say nothing.” The advice sounded not unreasonable; sponsored by Roberto, whose family connections and personal charm admitted him to the great houses of Rome, Stephen had made more than one excursion into the curious world of Black Society.
The Blacks, or Neri, including some of the oldest families in Rome, were the Pope’s stanchest supporters. As a protest against the seizure of the Patrimony of St. Peter by the Italian government in 1870, the Blacks had severed all contacts with the royal House of Savoy. In the midst of their native city, they led an existence comparable to courtiers who had followed a deposed sovereign into exile. Politically and socially their lives were severely restricted; the men took no part in Italian affairs of state, and the women had relinquished the pleasure of attending White functions in the Quirinal Palace. To compensate for their narrow existence, the Blacks had escaped into a make-believe world of manners. They had lifted etiquette to the condition of an art—as outmoded, perhaps, as falconry—but an art, nevertheless, as Stephen discovered.
He found the system puzzling at first; only gradually did he begin to grasp its elaborate rules. He could easily understand why, in the great strongholds of Black Society, a special throne room was kept in readiness for the day His Holiness could again leave the Vatican and pay visits of honor to those who had remained faithful during his long imprisonment. (If no special room were set aside, a tapestried armchair was kept turned to the wall.) Stephen appreciated the profound loyalty and deep religious faith that buttressed these symbols, yet some of the trivia of Black Society annoyed him. He noticed, for example, that in certain houses many of the older men wore a glove only on the left hand, leaving the right hand bare. In other houses both hands were gloved, but the thumb of the right hand was exposed.
“What’s this off-and-on glove business?” he asked Robento.
“Two theoretic reasons lie behind it,” explained Braggiotti. “The glove was originally a patent of nobility. You never see a peasant with gloves on, do you? Traditionally, the glove is also associated with another symbol of rank—the sword. Some believe that the right hand must be kept unencumbered, the better to draw a sword in defense of your sovereign. Another school holds that you must be ungloved in order to accept the hand of your host the moment it is offered you. Any delay might be construed as unfriendly.”
“I see. But why the exposed right thumb?”
Braggiotti smiled patronizingly. “In all societies, there are degrees of intimacy. A seven-hundred-year-old family such as the Odaleschi, whose ancestors supported the Hildebrandine Popes against German brigands, cannot be expected to give their entire hand to late-comers. Anyone arriving after die seventeenth century—and that includes you, Americus—is lucky to get a thumb and forefinger.”
“Do they take themselves that seriously?”
“Only a few of the old purists remain. The whole business of Black and White is breaking up. But it won’t disappear entirely until the Roman question, involving the Pope’s temporal sovereignty, is settled. Meanwhile, I advise you to lay aside your New World notions. ‘When in Rome …”
Stephen followed his mentor’s advice to the letter. By the end of the post-Lenten season Braggiotti had taken him, with the consent of his ecclesiastical superiors, to several dinner parties. The doors of the ancient palaces flew open to the handsome Roberto and his American friend. A valuable education in the social life of Rome ran parallel to Stephen’s schooling in Vatican diplomacy; his ear became attuned to the buzz of political surmise and ecclesiastic forecast rising from the salons of Black Society. He heard the usual rumors: that the royalist party of France would soon be crowning a Catholic king in Paris, and that Soviet agents were shipping vast numbers of hopeless cripples to the shrine at Lourdes with a view to discrediting its miracles. To top everything, he heard that Queen Wilhelmina was being prepared for conversion by a Carthusian confessor. Stephen’s common sense discounted such rumors, but, by tactfully avoiding any expression of opinion, he maintained a diplomatic tradition by no means peculiar to ecclesiastics. He watched Braggiotti and other members of the hierarchy maintaining a similar silence, and marveled at the drawing-room technique of cardinals who by a sibylline smile could at the same time confirm and deny some bit of Vatican gossip.
Women were of course present at these affairs. Neri hostesses, inevitably titled, mingled with wives and daughters of ambassadors to the Vatican. Invited musicians entertained the company after dinner. Because Romans “love a voice” Stephen heard a great many arias in the best bel canto manner that spring. He was surprised to discover that not all Italian women were brunettes; frequently he encountered blondes, exquisitely pink and gold in coloring. To sit beside some gorgeous woman in decolletagé while a soprano poured forth Isolde’s passion was something of a trial to Stephen. He mentioned it to Roberto, and Braggiotti’s answer was “sensible” in both the English and French meaning of the word.
“Bothers you, does it? Well, my friend, one of the advantages of clerical life in Rome is the immunity you develop to malaria—and beautiful women.”
Stephen found himself particularly at home in the Palazzo Lontana, a baroque seventeenth-century structure on the Corso. Its convex façade of pinkish-yellow travertine made the palazzo resemble a private Coliseum. One entered the palace by a side gate opening into a walled courtyard, then took a modern elevator to the piano nobile, and walked through a series of coldly superb chambers—each a museum of murals, marbles, and tapestries—to the warmer but equally spacious salon of the Princess Lontana. The Princess, born Loretta Kenney of Steuben-ville, Ohio, had brought to her titled husband (one of the four chamberlains a numeri to the Pope) several millions of anthracite money, a head of natural red hair that forty years had not faded, and a talent for collecting cosmopolitans. The Princess, a true multilingual, also had an ability to carry flying translations from any side of the French-English-Italian-German quadrangle to any other, and exercised her skill simply because she wanted each of her guests to understand what the other guests were saying. In a hostess less charming, this ambition might have been fatal.
Because Stephen particularly enjoyed the Princess, he gladly accepted her invitation to an after-dinner party at the Palazzo Lontana early in May. This would probably be the last party of the season; soon, everyone who could get away from Rome’s wretched heat would flee to the seashore or mountains. The long oval chamber with its coffered gilt ceiling and space-creating mirrors was filled with a crush of guests as Stephen and Roberto entered. Tonight the leading figures of Black Society were out in strength: ambassadors wearing the ribbony badges of their rank; prelates in purple and scarlet; Neri wives and daughters, magnificently jeweled and gowned. Princess Lontana, a circlet of diamonds glittering in her red hair, came forward to meet the young mon-signors. Ten feet away from Stephen and Roberto she extended both hands, addressed several guests with her green eyes, others with a private flutter of her fan, and still others with all the languages that she knew. Her salutation to Stephen was pure Ohio American, and her greeting to Roberto was Italian equally good.
“You are angels to come, both of you. Now, everyone is here.” Her voice found the confidential level of a whisper. “This evening our pezzo grosso … das Prachtstück—or as we’d say in America, ‘the main event’—is Cardinal Merry del Val. Pay your respects to him, Monsignors, then feel free to do what damage you can among the ladies.” She accepted the “gnädige Prinzessin” and hand kiss of the Bavarian envoy, then turned once more to Stephen and Roberto. “Do not under any circumstance leave before supper. We have brought in langouste from Marseilles, Hochheimer 1911 from the Schloss itself, and Signora Piom-bino—mezzanine and all—from La Scala.” With these varied injunctions and enticements the Princess began dividing herself between the Austrian Ambassador, Graf von Huntzstein, and a monocled admirer, Lord Chats-combe.
Roberto nudged his companion. “Better go easy on the Hochheimer, Fermoyle, or you’ll be seeing two of everything.” Laughing, he slipped into the crowd.
Braggiotti’s gibe was skillfully aimed. Even without the Hochheimer, Stephen was already affected by the sight of so many unconcealed shoulders and feminine arms gloved to the elbows. He was neither prudish nor oversusceptible, yet as he watched the ever-breaking pattern of figures moving under the brilliant chandeliers he doubted the wisdom of trying to emulate Roberto’s casual acceptance of mixed company.
Resolving that this would be his last appearance in Roman society, Stephen moved toward the yellow sofa from which Merry del Val was asperging charm over an attentive audience. Stephen stood on the outer edge of the circle and listened to the Cardinal’s story about two clergymen—an Anglican and a Methodist—who chanced to meet each other on the way to a railway station. “No need to hurry,” said the Anglican. “My watch tells me that we have plenty of time.” They arrived at the station just as the train pulled out. “How vexing,” exclaimed the Anglican, “particularly when I placed such faith in that watch.” “Ah,” said the Methodist slyly, “what is faith without good works?”
Stephen joined in the more than polite laughter that followed the theologic snapper of Merry’s tale. The familiar timbre of Stephen’s voice caused the Cardinal to look up in recognition. He waved a patrician hand at the American Monsignor and lifted his fine baritone in a Horatian challenge:
“Integer vitae scelerisque purus …”
The invitation was too tempting. Stephen responded:
“Non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu”
Several heads turned to see the audacious fellow who could cap verses with Merry del Val. The trick was still a good one, and the Cardinal’s penchant for it well known. “Go on, go on,” urged the Princess Lontana. “A test, a test,” cried others.
Merry del Val smiled at the commotion. “There is no need to test Monsignor Fermoyle’s knowledge of Horace. I propose a divertissement more original. Suppose,” he appealed engagingly to Stephen, “we cap the poet’s verses in a language native to neither of us. What do you say to trying it in French?”
Squeals of delight rose from the ladies. Latin was beyond them; French they might understand. A space was cleared between the contestants; at one end of the gantlet sat Merry del Val enjoying the hubbub; at the other, Stephen faced him standing.
“Shall we go on with the Integer vitae?” asked Merry del Val.
“It’s one of the few I happen to know, Your Eminence.”
While the Cardinal delicately moistened his lips for the first line, Princess Lontana gathered her linguistic skirts about her for the hurdles ahead. Her attention at the moment was divided between Lord Chats-combe and Baron Rumboldt; for better or worse, these two gentlemen were about to hear in their native language a catch-as-catch-can translation of a Roman lyric poet tripping off the tongue of a Steubenville, Ohio, American.
Merry del Val began:
“L’homme honnête, tout pur, sans crime …”
Princess Lontana whispered simultaneously from both sides of her fan. “Der Mann des reinen Sinnes … the honest, pure-souled man …”
The poetic passage at arms was interrupted by the arrival of new guests who, sensing the unusual nature of the performance, found places along the line of fire. The Cardinal waited serenely for the late-comers to settle down, and during this interval of silence Stephen let his eyes range along the aisle of listeners. He had almost completed the circuit of faces, gowns, and coiffures when he saw quite close to him—so close that she might have touched him with her outstretched fan—the unforgettable face and figure of Ghislana Falerni.
More than seven years had passed since Stephen had seen the Contessa Falerni in anything but fantasy. Now, at the point-blank reality of her presence, a physical tremor seized him. He heard himself finishing a line:
“Sans armes je rencontrai un loup …”
Princess Lontana rushed in for the kill. “Wehrlos traf Ich einen Wolfin … Unarmed, I met a wolf!”
Stephen struggled to collect himself. In the prolonged silence he heard the Princess translating Merry’s verse: “She was an enormous creature.”… Somehow he managed to fake the next line; any Latinist would have recognized the pinched injustice done to Horace; how he ever finished the ode Stephen never knew. But when the ordeal ended, a salvo of hand clapping greeted the performers.
“Unusual, quite,” said Lord Chatscombe. “Never heard it done just that way at Cambridge.”
“Remarkable show,” said Braggiotti, then added, “to make it really difficult you might have rhymed.”
For some minutes a congratulatory throng swirled about Stephen, then began to thin out as Signora Piombino made ready to sing. Stephen gazed about the enormous oval chamber, hoping to see Ghislana Falerni again.
“Here I am.” The contessa was beckoning to him from a near-by sofa.
Stephen moved toward her, acting a great deal braver than he felt. “How did you know I was looking for you?”
Ghislana Falerni extended her hand palm downward, with the pressureless confidence of a woman who need never answer such a question. Her arm, bare between glove top and shoulder, was of a tapering roundness, ivory-pastel in coloring. Had it been the fragment of a statue, an archeologist might have labeled it “Metaneira, fifth-century Greek,” and marveled at the proportions of women in that classic age. Stephen bowed over her hand, releasing it a trifle sooner than the ritual of Black Society prescribed.
A life spent in the company of high ecclesiastics had given Ghislana Falerni an ease, rather than a familiarity, in their presence. She indicated a place beside her on the satin-tufted divan. “That was an amazing improvisation, Monsignor. Both your skill with words and the color of your habit have changed since I last saw you.”
Stephen struggled against too great a forwardness. “Yours, too. Then, you wore green.”
By the slightest lift of her dark lashes the contessa acknowledged the flattering miracle of his remembering. “That was such a long time ago.” Her voice was overcast with a regret connected neither with Stephen nor herself—an impersonal sadness such as a landscape painter might feel when, in the middle of a picture, the simple light of noon becomes a more complex problem in umber.
Signora Piombino began her program with a group of mood-creating German Lieder. Sitting beside Ghislana Falerni, Stephen felt a skein of enchantment settling over him. Words were unnecessary; the current of attraction flowed unspoken between them. The singer concluded with an impassioned performance of Schumann’s Widmung.
Silence after music being so perfect, Stephen was unwilling to mar it with speech. It was the contessa who brought the relationship back to reality. “My cousin Roberto tells me that you are in the Vatican Secretariat of State.”
“Is Roberto your cousin, too?”
“His mother and mine were sisters. We grew up together.”
Across the room Stephen saw Braggiotti leaning languorously against a high-manteled fireplace. His head was a curly cameo; in his hands he held a terra-cotta figurine, and was evidently discoursing on its origin to a female audience. Stephen was always puzzled by Roberto’s ease in the presence of women; was he naturally immune, or had he worked up resistance by a lifetime of practice?
“Your cousin must have been a devastating boy.”
“Un demonio … straight out of Raphael. Beautiful, as you see, but brimming with imagination too. Such games we used to play! Full of escapes and rescues.”
“For instance? The first one that comes to mind.”
“The very first? That would be ‘labyrinth.’ In fact, we always played labyrinth in one form or another.”
“I suppose you’d take the part of the imprisoned maiden—what was her name?—the one who gave her rescuer a silken thread.”
“Ariadne. Yes, Roberto would never allow anyone else to take that part. He’d make a labyrinth of brambles and hedges in the garden, and put me under a pear tree in the center. Then, after much groping about and slaying of minor characters—Roberto always insisted that they lie quite dead—he’d wind up the spool of silk and find me under the pear tree.”
“What would he do when he found you?”
The contessa gave Stephen the full candle power of her eyes. “What does any rescuing hero do? The myth permits no originality in these matters, Monsignor.”
Stephen felt like a man coming out of a pleasantly rarefied dream to find waking reality much more attractive. Ghislana Falerni was ten times more magnetic than he had remembered. And although she had an altitude about her, she gave no impression of being a distant star. He started to be surprised that she should have come down from her pedestal, then realized that it was he who had placed her there.
For his own safety Stephen decided to put her back quickly.
Meanwhile, he sought to find some reassuring flaw in the woman sitting so tranquilly beside him—some defect of beauty or understanding that would sever the skein of enchantment. Desperate scrutiny revealed no imperfection or even the promise of one. Possibly the contessa lacked effervescence, and perhaps for some tastes she was too generously proportioned. A noon sun might reveal toolings of age in her face, but in the present light no such traceries were evident. At supper she ate creamed lobster and drank white wine with the unaffected enjoyment of a woman who regarded food and drink as natural goods—things to be relished and consumed.
The long evening seemed not to tire her. She gave no impression of wishing to be elsewhere or of requiring the attention of anyone but Stephen. After two hours of watching Ghislana Falerni with the microscopic lens of a man praying for disenchantment, Stephen found her singularly flawless.
On the way home Roberto said casually, “I saw you talking to my cousin Ghislana. What do you make of her?”
Willing enough to express an opinion, Stephen found judgment difficult. “What can I say? She struck me as being lovely and sorrowing.” Unused to describing women, Stephen groped for a metaphor. “She seems like a wick saturated with mourning. Mysterious.”
“Mysterious ‘Gothic’ or mysterious ‘Greek’?”
“Definitely Greek. There’s nothing stained glass about her.”
“A touch of Ceres maybe?”
“I wouldn’t stress that part. But she does radiate myth. From what she tells me of the games you used to play, she must have always had a labyrinthine secret about her.”
“She was a regular Sleeping Beauty,” confessed Roberto. “She still is. This glorious cousin of mine, for whose sake I joyously committed symbolic acts of murder in childhood, this creature whose emotional potentialities have never been matched, or even tested, is still waiting—to drop the allegory—for her emotional equal to appear.”
“What about her husband?”
“A fine man … but much older than Ghislana. Besides, he was killed on the Piave four years ago in Italy’s greatest hour.”
“How has she managed to stay unattached since then?”
Braggiotti was torn between a defense of Italian gallantry and its failure to produce a prince worthy of his cousin. “Ghislana’s case is unusual. She is emotionally fastidious and very caste-conscious.” A note of curiosity entered Roberto’s voice: “Did she strike you as being too heroically built?”
“No.”
“Many men quail at a Juno. The mere prospect of encountering such a bete enorme—as your Horace puts it—is too terrifying.”
“I can well imagine.” To go on talking about this woman Stephen could have imagined anything.
“But there’s more to it,” continued Roberto. “You must understand that Ghislana has met only one kind of man: the Neri type. She married one. Not that the members of Black Society are less masculine than other men, but there is an undeniable quality of … of ingrownness about the relationship between men and women in this group. They have known each other too long, too well. Marriage verges on the incestuous. In Ghislana’s case, a newcomer would be necessary.” Having thought all around the subject, Roberto came out where he had gone in. “Yet how unlikely it is that any newcomer with the proper qualifications—emotional energy, social position, cultural and spiritual attainments—will ever appear.”
“Yes, it is rather unlikely.”
Stephen went to sleep that night fumbling at quite contradictory chords of emotion. He was glad that Ghislana Falerni was unmarried, sexually fastidious, and socially protected. If he could not claim her for himself, he hoped that no stranger would come scouring through the brambles to find her, whether under a pear tree or in the glass casket of Neri society. He simply did not want anyone else to awaken this woman. And that was strange, because just before dropping off to sleep, Stephen decided never to see her again.
THAT SUMMER Rome burned. From June to August the thermometer in Stephen’s office under the Vatican eaves registered blood heat every noon, then really began to climb. Finally Stephen threw the instrument away, and thereafter let his drenched clothing tell him how hot it was.
The atmospheric heat was accompanied by explosive political tensions as the Quirinal regime, morally bankrupt and strategically inept, raced toward collapse. In August a general strike paralyzed most of Italy; on farms and railways, in factories and at furnaces, men refused the questionable boon of work at wages of seven lire a day. Riots and confusion spread through the great cities of the north; Red “baronies” were formed in agricultural regions, while the whole nation listened, hope dicing with terror, for the tread of Mussolini’s legions marching on Rome.
From the dust and ugliness of the political bull ring Stephen sought an interior refuge of contemplation. In vain. Ever since the evening at the Palazzo Lontana the corridors of his inner life had been crowded with images of Ghislana Falerni. Through scorching afternoons he was beset—and not too subtly—by fantasies of this woman with the Metaneira arms and ivory-pastel flesh. Her economy of movement, which had struck him at first as pleasing, now became painful in retrospect. The slow extending of her gloved hand, the exquisite lift of her eyelashes, the delicate management of her body as she rose, reached, walked—all these whirled through Stephen’s memory.
Everything she had said to him became an echo. Words that of themselves had only the lightest of emotional content, phrases incapable of any personal assay, thronged back now richly freighted—not with special meaning (that would be too absurd), but with sheer vibratory excitement. It occurred to Stephen that the experience of listening to Ghislana Falerni, should she ever choose to tell him anything really important, would be unbearable. Meanwhile he found himself holding intimate but imaginary conversations with her. On the spool of an unsayable yearning he wound a secret thread, and when the spool was full he always found himself on the grass with Ghislana Falerni under a flowering pear tree.
The myth permits no originality in these matters, Monsignor.
From vassalage to these fancies, Stephen resolved to free himself. Hitherto he had always enjoyed a reasonable amount of success in his strivings for repose. He had begun to think of himself as one of those fortunate men whose natural resistance to sensual temptation was stronger than the temptation itself. Or if not naturally stronger, then by petitioning the Giver of supernatural grace, he had always found the extra strength that God gives for the humble asking. Until his thirty-third year Stephen Fermoyle had been let off, excused from, many of the dusty and desperate concessions that most men are required to make in their emotional lives.
He was not to be let off now.
Stephen did not dare think of himself as being in love with Ghislana Falerni. Yet by no process of evasion could he deny that she had touched the central membranes of his heart and mind. Why, he asked himself, should I be so moved by this woman? Seven years ago she troubled me at sight. And now, again. What in me responds to what in her?
Answers smote him. Ghislana Falerni reveals to you, in unblurred perfection, the possibilities of an earthly happiness that you have always denied, that you never dared dream. Yet here she is: the queenly myth-mother containing all bounty within the compass of her being—aching, as you do (as everyone does), for the solace of giving herself away to an emotional equal.
He supposed there were many men who spent their lives in this condition—constantly thinking of some woman, chained to the hope or memory of her person, restless without possession of it, and fearful lest she should find happiness with another. Stephen now suffered the agonizing consequences of giving one’s love disproportionately to anyone but God. It shamed him to realize that Ghislana Falerni had gained entrance to the sanctuary reserved for his priesthood, and that she had advanced, during a single interview, to the very doors of the tabernacle. She must be turned away before she invaded the sacred precincts where only one love could dwell.
Stephen Fermoyle, the sworn celibate, the dedicated priest, resolved to turn her away. Without hysteria, and like a man combating a severe but curable disease, he entered upon a regime of strict self-discipline. He fasted, abstained from meat, and increased the devotional aspects of his life. Each day, to the more fervent reading of his Office and the daily celebration of Mass, he added extra prayers, particularly the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. He called upon the Mother of God to intercede for him at the throne of the Father; he invoked her aid with glorious names:
Mother most pure,
Mother most chaste,
Mother inviolate,
Mother undefiled,
Virgin most prudent,
Virgin most renowned,
Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most merciful,
Mystical rose,
Tower of ivory,
House of gold,
Gate of heaven,
Refuge of sinners,
Comforter of the afflicted.
Pray for me.
By means of the Stations of the Cross he renewed in himself those painful intimations of mortality, of penitential suffering and atonement, that Christ had undergone as a man.
Stephen applied to Alfeo Quarenghi for heavier assignments of work and volunteered to perform Monsignor Guardiano’s official duties while the latter took a month-long holiday. While Rome sweltered through August Stephen intensified his ascetic regime. Gradually the image of Ghislana Falerni began to fade; her voice grew dimmer. Like a slow, withdrawing wave she retreated down the beaches of Stephen’s heart, and left him standing before the tabernacle, alone.
