St. Peter’s Basilica And The Pope’s Fishing Cap

Seven hours after entering the Vatican Museum we are popped out an exit into fresh air again. The students collapse on benches, moaning, flinging their heads in one another’s laps; even the marine takes off her steel-toed marching shoes and looks at her feet as if she expects to see snakes where her toes had been.

Mrs. Pedrini offers around a bag of pretzels and I take one, full of gratitude for every individual grain of salt I can pick out on the surface of the baked, brown crust. Just one small grain takes on a clarity and brilliance to the eye, then a sharpness to the tongue—a single defined experience exceptionally welcome after the blurry attack of images and colors upon my senses that entered and are still knocking about in my brain.

I think I have been stricken with the disease common to visitors to Italy: the Art Overload Syndrome, or Stendahl Syndrome, named for the writer who, after visiting the tombs of the great l80 years ago in Santa Croce wrote, “I had palpitations of the heart… I walked with the fear of falling… I sat down on a bench.” The article I read reported that an attack of this condition makes the victim want to hop on a plane and go home. I definitely have all the symptoms. I have been overcome by art.

Stillness is the medicine to cure it (or, at the very least, sitting down on a bench). The afflicted person requires stopping, some kind of rest, a pause to let the colliding molecules settle, find some pattern and coherence. But for me there is only respite, not rescue. Now Nicoletta announces we are all to follow her to a pizzeria. After lunch we must storm the portals of the great St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Pope is nowhere to be found. However, we learn that a huge flock of his brothers in the ministry, the priests who were ordained the very same year as he, fifty years ago, are invited this very day to St. Peter’s for an anniversary party.

As we enter St. Peter’s Square, we encounter the arriving throngs—hundreds of old men wearing long cassocks, heavy silver crosses, and white silk caps (much like the yarmulkes of the Jews), all struggling up the stone steps, all wearing plastic name tags on their priestly robes, all on their way to a grand dinner party at the Vatican.

In St. Peter’s square an orchestra is just now rehearsing for the celebratory concert to be held outdoors tomorrow. The entire square is roped off, barricaded, and filled with folding chairs. Around the periphery media trucks are setting up enormous TV screens, speakers, microphones—wires are everywhere.

I look up to the high balcony draped in red velvet from which I have often seen, via the miracle of TV, the Pope give his blessings to his people, his country and to the world. Nothing is up there but a pigeon, pacing back and forth, obviously distressed by the worldly clatter and commerce taking place below.

Our class files into the church, with Nicoletta leading the way to Michelangelo’s famous Pietà in the chapel to the right. This is the first required stop on the list of attractions not to be missed. We have all read and looked at copies of this sculpture, the limp and just-dead Christ lying in his grieving mother’s lap while her one hand supports him and the other is held upward, open and relaxed, as if to accept her fate with supernatural grace. I am eager to see in person the Virgin Mother’s face (looking years younger than her bearded son) while she supports his lifeless form in the shelter of her embrace. Her expression of peace is most baffling to me. Shouldn’t the mother of a dead child be screaming in agony? Shouldn’t she be tearing her hair?

When questioned about the beauty of this sculpture, Michelangelo wrote: “If life pleases us, death, being made by the hands of the same creator, should not displease us.” It’s clear to me he has never been a mother.

Perhaps I will learn some critical lesson from looking closer at this contradiction in terms. But the problem is that we can’t get near the Pietà at all. Something in the vicinity of it or just adjacent (a wall? a pillar?) must be “In restauro.” Or the rumor goes around that someone has tried to hammer off one of Christ’s toes, and this barrier is for security. In any case, scaffolding has been erected all around the base of it. The Virgin’s tilted head is visible only from a distance, and even at a distance can only be glimpsed when a coin is put into the light meter.

I turn away in disappointment. The students groan, but recover quickly. In truth, they are waiting to take on the challenge of the almost-impossible climb up to the top of the dome where one can see a magnificent view of St. Peter’s square, Vatican City and all of Rome. As soon as Nicoletta warns against it, reminding them we have many miles to go before we sleep, they all rush away to climb to the dome. Nothing excites youth more than a dare.

Joe and Mrs. Pedrini and Nicoletta confer: they will venture forward into the bowels of the church and try to discover the pulpit of St. Peter—a great carved throne in bronze. I am certain that if they find it, it will merely be a lump under a sack of burlap. I’m not interested. What I want is to go outside. I’m inside and I want to be outside—my need, for once, is that simple. I whisper to Joe that I will forgo this tour, and will meet him outside, hours…or years…hence, whenever he appears.

On my way out, at the base of a great marble pillar, I find a hat—it’s a fishing hat—with a wide brim and a plaid ribbon around the circumference. I feel it is an omen, a message for me, perhaps from the Pope, himself. This must be his fishing cap, I’m sure of it. A consolation prize because I have not been able to touch the Virgin’s marble hem or learn the secret of her serenity. I appropriate this cap and place it on my head. It is surely as good a memento as a rosary dipped in holy water.

Outside, I seat myself on one of the great staircases just against the wall, and lean back to watch the continuing parade of elderly priests. I look at each of their faces, their wrinkled, mostly-kindly-looking faces, as they pass by. I wonder at the lives they’ve led, if they ever regret they did not marry and have children, if they feel jealous that they are merely priests, while their brother in faith has climbed the ecumenical ladder to become Pope of the World.

I know my innocent and naive imaginings are the laconic thoughts of a Jewish girl from Brooklyn who understands very little of this Catholic culture. How can I really perceive the meaning and sanctity of this trinity, this crucifixion, this passion, this sacrifice upon which all Italian art is based, modeled, and executed?

That old bearded man I see down there, dressed in a brown robe tied around the waist with a rope, the man just walking past the Swiss guards—is he a monk, a penitent, a beggar, a holy man? Those geese, flying in formation overhead, directly over St. Peter’s Square, flying in a thrillingly perfect “T” (not a “V”)—are they papal birds, symbolizing the miracle of faith?

The orchestra in the square is now playing music, thunderous stirring Beethoven, vibrating the very walls of the Vatican with the amplification machinery that’s set up for tomorrow’s event. Everything here is overdone, oversized, over-pious, over-charged. I feel an impulse to cry. All my emotions and responses are bursting forth. I am sitting on the steps of the house of the man only one step removed from God. It is no wonder I am overcome.

Mai Jing and Maria come staggering up the steps toward me and fling themselves to rest on the stair below where I sit.

“Guess what? We saw the Pope!” Maria confesses.

“Yes! We saw the Pope,” Mai Jing repeats.

“You saw the Pope?” I am instantly jealous. I was right here all this time looking at birds and I missed His Holiness?

Mai Jing explains. “We got lost before lunch. We were so tired we left the Vatican Museum before the rest of you and came into St. Peter’s to sit down, and the Pope was right inside saying mass. No one even bothered us. They just let us stay and watch.”

“You actually saw the Pope saying mass?”

Both girls are staring oddly at the fishing cap on my head.

“Yes, we heard him say mass. And afterward, one of the priests who was there blessed my rosary,” says Maria. “My grandmother will die of joy!”

“I’m not Catholic,” Mai Jing says. “I’m glad I saw him, but it really didn’t mean that much to me.”

“But still!” I protest. “It would have meant a lot to me, and I’m Jewish!”

“…And just after that, we climbed up to the top of St. Peter’s Dome. It took forever to climb up there, we were almost sick to our stomachs. The steps are slippery and slanty, you have to hold onto the walls. Some people were just hanging out the little narrow windows, they were too dizzy to go up or down. There are so many steps you finally can’t breathe. But when you get to the top you see the most beautiful, most breathtaking view of all of Rome! The most amazing view in the world! Did you see it?”

“No,” I say. “I missed that, too.”

Apparently, I have missed everything. I have missed the Raphaels behind burlap and the Pietà hidden by scaffolding. I have missed the view of Rome, and I have missed the Pope himself.

While I am doing this, I begin to catalog other things I have missed in my life: the chance to be a great beauty. The chance to be rich (or famous—either would do). The chance to be a great musician (a singer with a voice like Cecilia Bartoli is what I have in mind). I long ago lost my chance to be a Rockette when, at age five, I fell off my bike and scarred my knee badly. And I lost my chance to be the first woman-something: pilot? President? Police chief?

A Mother Goose rhyme comes to my mind:

Pussycat, Pussycat, Where have you been?

I’ve been to London to visit the Queen.

Pussycat, Pussycat, What did you there?

I frightened a little mouse under a chair.