Page 19 of Daughter of Genoa (Escape to Tuscany)

Vittorio

When Vittorio next arrives at the Tipografia Guichard, he finds Marta waiting for him at the kitchen table and reading Brighton Rock .

That pleases him, perhaps rather more than it ought.

He’s resolved so many times that he’ll drop this frivolous habit of English chatter; that he’ll stop dredging up silly little phrases to amuse her.

But she looks up at him and smiles, and he finds himself saying:

‘ Good morning, Marta. How do you like Graham Greene? ’

‘ Very much ,’ she says. ‘ It’s all terribly exciting. I’ve been parcelling it out to myself for days, otherwise I shall read it all in one great gulp. Then the story will be finished, and I shan’t get to read it for the first time ever again. I expect that sounds silly to you. ’

‘ Not at all .’ He sits down and casts a guilty glance at Silvia, who’s looking steadfastly at her knitting, just as she always does.

Sometimes, when Vittorio lies awake troubled by something he doesn’t quite understand, he thinks that these conversations – however innocent they may be – go against the whole idea of having Silvia there in the first place.

‘ You said someone donated it to your library ,’ Marta says now. ‘ Does that happen often? Do people just drop off their old gangster novels for the Jesuits to read? ’

‘ Well, in a way… I mean, some people – parishioners, kind ones – they do bring us books sometimes, if they think we might perhaps like them. We don’t always like them ,’ he adds, and she laughs.

She’s looking for distraction, he realises – she’s hoping he’ll say something to entertain her, to brighten her existence a little.

And why should he hold back, when he has an entertaining story to tell?

That it brings him pleasure is really neither here nor there.

He looks down at the table, at the white cloth with its embroidered flowers.

‘ Between you, me and the gatepost ,’ he says, and – in his mind’s eye – he sees her smile, ‘ I’m not certain how we ended up with Brighton Rock . I know only that I found my assistant librarian reading it, and I took it from him. ’

‘ What, really? ’ She’s delighted; he can hear it in her voice, and that delights him in turn.

‘ Really. Brother Carlo can be somewhat unserious. Besides, he was supposed to be weeding the books. I’m afraid he doesn’t find library work as interesting as do I. ’

‘ Then he’s a fool, this… Brother Carlo, is it? Not Father Carlo? ’

‘ Brother Carlo, that’s right. He’s what we call a… ’ The translation eludes him. It seems an eternity before he retrieves it again. ‘ Temporal coadjutor. The brothers assist the priests, you see, taking care of the things of the house. ’

‘ But they’re not priests themselves? Or are they training to become them? ’

‘ No, no. Being a Jesuit brother is its own vocation. ’

‘ Perhaps that’s just as well ,’ Marta says, ‘ in Brother Carlo’s case. Is he at least useful when he isn’t reading Graham Greene? Does he have some talent for library work, even if he doesn’t much like it? ’

‘ No ,’ Vittorio says. ‘ He’s really quite awful at it. He doesn’t help me at all .’

He hopes she’ll laugh again, but she doesn’t. Instead she says: ‘ But that’s all right, isn’t it? Because then you have to go on doing everything. ’

He raises his head. Marta’s looking at him. Her face is quite serious, but her eyes are merry.

‘ I hope I didn’t offend you, Father Vittorio ,’ she goes on. ‘ It’s just that if I had a library, then I should never let anyone competent help me look after it. I should want to take care of it all by myself .’

Her mouth lifts just a little at the corner, her lips pressed together as if she wants to smile but is trying not to; and with a dizzying drop of the stomach, Vittorio knows what troubles him at night. He knows what sends his mind whirring even when his body is exhausted. It’s her.

‘ You understand ,’ he says, and he watches her smile break like the dawn.

‘ Of course I do ,’ she says.

It’s too much. It’s painfully sweet, and he mustn’t indulge himself. ‘Let’s start work,’ he says brusquely, dropping into Italian, and he looks away. ‘You take the first shift.’

‘All right, I will.’ Her voice is subdued; Vittorio suppresses a pang of regret. He goes to the window and stares out at the sky: it seems to him obscenely, irritatingly blue. After a moment, there’s a discreet cough just behind him, and a cup of tisane is placed on the windowsill by his elbow.

‘Thank you, Silvia,’ he says, returning his gaze to the sky.

‘Cigarette, Father?’

‘Yes, please.’

A tin of cigarettes and a lighter appear next to the teacup.

He waits until Silvia’s footsteps have retreated and he hears the creak of her chair before he picks up a cigarette.

His hands are shaking so badly that he has to make several tries at lighting it.

But he manages in the end, and he takes a long drag, as deep as he dares, until his chest constricts and his diaphragm twitches and he has to slowly, slowly breathe out again.

It’s happened to him before, this sort of thing.

The first incident was in London, with a pretty young woman who used to accompany her grandmother to Mass at Farm Street.

Of course, they didn’t actually speak to one another.

But he would see her shepherding the crotchety old lady around, being soft and kind and attentive in a way that made her seem even more like an angel, and after a while he started wanting to catch a glimpse of her.

The day he found himself lingering before the statue of St. Thomas More, waiting for the two of them to emerge from the Calvary Chapel, he finally got an attack of conscience and took the matter to his spiritual director, Father Dominic.

Father Dominic was an impressive man, about as old then as Vittorio is now. He took a strong line.

‘The Adversary,’ he proclaimed, leaning forward and looking Vittorio straight in the eye.

‘You watch for him. A righteous man is a great prize for the Evil One. He seeks to attack us at our weakest point, and yours, it seems, is your chastity. You must fight him with everything you have. Confession, communion, fasting and mortification – and prayer, ceaseless and sincere prayer. That’s the only way you’ll rid yourself of this disordered lust.’

And Vittorio had been ashamed. He’d thrown himself into a regime of prayer and discipline that would have made a saint flinch.

If he’d had the pastoral experience he has now, he would probably have recognised that this was itself disordered, that his soul was in greater danger from the sin of scrupulosity than the temptations of the flesh.

But he was young and frightened, and whenever he wanted to break his fast or get up from his prayers, he’d hear Father Dominic’s voice in his mind: He seeks to attack us at our weakest point, and yours, it seems, is your chastity.

This had lasted until one of the oldest members of the community – a tiny, wrinkled raisin of a man called Father Hugh – had found him sobbing before the tabernacle in the house chapel.

Father Hugh, God rest his soul, had done the pastoral thing.

He’d sat down next to Vittorio, waited patiently until his tears had died down, and he’d asked what was wrong.

‘Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,’ he said, when Vittorio had told him – as he’d thought – all the dreadful facts of the case. ‘You aren’t stepping out with this girl, are you? So far as I understand, you haven’t even talked to her. Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me.’

Vittorio shook his head. ‘Of course there isn’t. I’ve told you everything, Father, I promise.’

‘I know, dear boy, I know. Well, then I don’t see any reason to get in a flap about it.

You’re hardly an unrepentant sinner – you’re all too repentant, as I see it.

No, you’re just a young man who noticed some attractive creature.

And that does happen, I’m afraid. It may even keep on happening until you’re too old to bother any more. ’

‘Then what do I do about it?’ Vittorio asked, agonised.

‘Accept that it’s happened. That’s the first thing you can do.

And then don’t act on it. Don’t try to see her and, if you do cross paths, don’t pay her any special attention.

Stick with that for long enough and you’ll forget all about it, I promise.

And go a little easier on yourself, above all.

Confide in God – confide in me if you like, but kindly drop all this self-flagellation business. It isn’t doing you any good.’

‘But Father Dominic said—’

‘Father Dominic,’ Father Hugh said severely, ‘has many qualities, but he is rather a moral simplist. Look, far be it from me to undermine the authority of your spiritual director. But why don’t you give my method a go, and then if it really doesn’t work, you can go back to his?’

Vittorio had said that he would. And Father Hugh had been right, in the end.

It hadn’t been easy to train himself out of the habit of looking for the girl, and it was even harder to force himself to pay no heed when he did see her.

But it got easier, and after a surprisingly short while, he discovered that his infatuation had faded. He was at peace again.

Father Hugh’s method has carried him safely through twenty years and perhaps half a dozen pretty faces.

As he stands at the window, listening to Marta’s breathing and the steady scratch of her pen, he has the sinking feeling that it won’t be enough this time around.

Because it’s happened to him before, yes, but he didn’t know those women like he knows Marta.

They certainly didn’t know him like she does.

The scratching stops; Marta breathes out. ‘Change,’ she says.

Vittorio stubs out his cigarette in the saucer and lifts the cup of lukewarm tea to drain it. There’s a gritty drift of leaves at the bottom and it makes him wince. ‘Ready.’

*

In spite of it all, he manages. He and Marta work in silence, bar the odd polite word.

He doesn’t look at her, but spends his breaks at the window, smoking or else reading in his breviary.

By the time they’ve worked through all the cards, he’s starting to think that he might be able to apply the usual method after all.

If he can only stay detached like this for a while longer, then perhaps he’ll grow used to it.

He’s packing up his bag when Marta speaks. ‘ Father Vittorio ,’ she begins, and he knows what she’s going to ask because she always asks it, won’t be deterred from asking it. ‘ Father Vittorio, how are you feeling? You’re very quiet today. Are you all right? ’

Vittorio looks down at the stole in his hand, and he mentally apologises to Father Hugh: for lapsing in his discipline, and for borrowing his words to do it. ‘ Of course I’m all right ,’ he says. ‘ I’m positively top-hole .’