Dead Voices, page 12
“You stay here,” I told Nick, like an anxious parent. “I have to find him quick or the vultures will get him.”
“You are worried over nothing,” he said. “We had a Frate like him in Florence who seemed helpless but was as ruthless as they come. You have to be a lion and a fox, but those who’ve learned to use the fox survive the best. And if there’s one thing you can bet on, it’s that appearances are always deceiving.”
I dashed out of the VIP area to the regular concourse in back of us. A few people in Leafs sweaters were milling about, but no sign of Francesco. I asked a few of them, and the guys who worked the concessions, if they had seen a guy in a hoodie with a tonsure. No one knew what a tonsure was. Someone did tell me, however, that this Italiansounding guy had asked about the washrooms. I found him in the washroom taking a leak.
“Hey, Francesco,” I said, after a big sigh, “you scared the shit out of me. I thought you had left the arena.”
“No, no,” he said, with a big smile, “I have to relieve Brother Bladder. But I do not like this game called hockey. I will stay out here. You go back and watch the game.”
“But I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“Non ti preoccupare. I will do some mingling.”
“What do you mean by mingling?”
“Ah, you know. Listen, talk, sing. With the poor.”
“I don’t think you’ll find any poor here,” I said.
“Oh, there are always those who are poor in heart, Brother Marco.”
He smiled at me in such a curious way I couldn’t contradict him.
During the third period I went back to the concourse and found him sitting in a bar area with a small group of fans who were laughing and carrying on as if teasing him. But he seemed to be having as much fun as they were. They were trying to get him to drink beer and he was trying to extol the virtues of poverty. The second time I went back they were all singing The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors, which was playing with subtitles over the monitors. Francesco’s voice rose over the others in glee, even though I suspected he didn’t know what the words meant.
After the game, as we were going down the elevator, a few of the VIPs asked about Francesco’s tonsure. While he was explaining to the bemused fans, Nick leaned close to my ear.
“Maybe later we can put the Frate to bed and you and I can go to a whorehouse. I’m suffering from conjugal famine at the moment and nothing would please me more than sampling the courtesans in this country.”
I could only stare at him, unsure if I had understood him properly.
During the subway ride back we sat side by side. Nick couldn’t stop criticizing the buffet food we had at the game. He called it peasant’s food and nothing like what he was used to in Florence, where everything was prepared with artistic flourish. The hockey food, as he called it, was more fitting for the third circle of the Inferno, where Cerberus, the three-headed dog, was quieted with scraps of earth, pasto morde, tossed from Virgil’s hands.
“Ah, pasta al Dante,” I said.
“There is Ovid, Virgil, Boccaccio, and above all . . . Dante,” Nick said.
“Who is Dante?” Francesco said.
“An Italian who doesn’t know Dante is like pasta without sauce.”
“Brother Niccolò, you are a very knowledgeable man with words, and I praise you, but there’s no sweeter sound than birds chirping in the morning or the roar of the mighty wind whistling through the leaves in the evening. I can look at the sun and be filled with its splendour. Or the glow of the moon on a cloudless night and feel the richest man on earth.”
Francesco’s expression became almost sublime, as he recalled these experiences, but Nick wasn’t impressed in the least.
“What hooey,” he said, shrugging. “I’ve caught thrushes in my time and know the sound of birds when they know they’re about to become food.”
“I can’t believe you would kill a Brother Bird.”
“Now, boys,” I raised my hand, feeling a little lightheaded from the wine. “Let’s try to be good, eh? You guys can be a pain in the ass, but, what the hell, you’re paisans and keep me on my toes.”
We were silent the rest of the ride.
I was driving them back to my place when I broke the silence.
“Whatta you guys wanna do tomorrow? We’ll go to the opera in the evening, but we gotta fill in the afternoon.”
“I’d like to see how the legislature works,” Nick said.
“It’s Sunday. All government buildings are closed. You can go with Allen on Monday.”
“I will go to Mass in the morning,” Francesco said. “Afterwards I’d like to visit the lepers.”
“Lepers? You gotta be kidding. There are no lepers.”
“Where do you keep your sick and shunned, then?”
“In old age and nursing homes. There’s one just up the street from my place.”
“OK, then. After Mass I will go and visit the old and infirm in the old age home. Afterwards, however, I want to be out in the country.”
“We could drive to Niagara Falls. You guys have heard of Niagara Falls, haven’t you? It would take a little over an hour. Or we could go up to Woodbridge, the Italian area.”
“On Sundays I enjoy the outdoors,” Nick said. “I used to ride through the Tuscan countryside to get the lay of the land in case of an invasion and visit some of the militia people who work on the farms. I’ve come to like life on the farm and spending the day with my family.”
As it turned out, Sunday was a partly cloudy and a mild day. Nick spent the morning working on his writing in his room upstairs, while Francesco went to Mass at the church a block away. After I did my own writing, I waited for Francesco and brought him to the old age home just up the street. It was a modern brick facility, one storey, and actually called a retirement home and not for those who were seriously ill. Fortunately for us, a sign outside said it was welcoming walk-in tours. When we went through the front door we were in small waiting area, overlooking the dining room. A number of white-headed old men and women were seated at their tables, with their walkers parked beside them, everyone conversing in low tones. The smell, a combination of unaired old clothes and boiled cabbage, was hardly conducive to good cheer.
One of the staff came up to us immediately and said the walk-in tours hadn’t started yet. I explained, however, that Francesco was a visiting friar from Italy and was on a tight schedule. The staff person was a brown-skinned girl in her late-twenties, slim and attractive in her light blue uniform, her name tag indicating a Jessica. She said to sit down and wait a while and she’d show us around.
While we were sitting on the waiting chairs, however, Francesco simply got up and beckoned me to follow. We walked over to the dining area and sat down at a table with a couple of residents who were eating their lunch. One was a thin wizened old guy who must’ve been in his late seventies, with a shaved head and rheumy eyes, dressed in an old plaid shirt and denims. The other was a woman with a full head of white hair sticking up and in a white housecoat who looked to be in her mid-seventies.
I introduced Francesco and asked if we could sit with them while waiting for our tour.
“Suit yourself,” the guy said. “It’s a free country. I’m Saul and this is Iris.”
“Can we do anything to help you, eh?” Francesco said in his best Canadian.
“Like what?” Saul said.
“Would you recommend this place?” I asked him.
“It all depends on your frame of reference,” he said with a shrug.
“Don’t mind him,” Iris said. “They try to do their best. It isn’t easy with our conditions.”
“One day at a time, right?” Saul said with a tight smile.
Francesco was listening intently and smiling. When he heard the last comment and my translation, he broke out in laughter.
“Sì, sì, brother and sister. May the peace of each day be upon you.”
“Who is this guy?” Saul asked me.
“I am your brother,” Francesco said.
“I don’t think so.”
They went on to have a conversation of sorts, with Francesco speaking in broken Canadianese and looking to me to translate the more difficult parts, but Saul wasn’t having any of it. The more Francesco spoke, the more Saul became irritated. The other residents were looking at us, sensing something was brewing.
Finally Francesco took Saul’s hand and stroked it as he would a child’s.
“We will do anything we can to help you, Brother Saul,” he said. “Just give us the word.”
“I don’t need your help,” Saul said, pulling his hand away. “I’ve been a self-supporting guy all my life. That’s the point about this place. It’s an indignity to be dependent on others.”
“No, no, brother Saul. To be dependent is the greatest joy. To serve Brother Death and Lady Poverty is beyond compare.”
I wasn’t sure I had translated accurately. Nevertheless, we all looked at Francesco who had a beatific smile on his face. But the comment only made Saul so angry he told us to leave.
When I tried to explain to Nick what had happened at the retirement home, he had a big laugh. We were alone in the kitchen waiting for Francesco.
“Good for the old guy,” he said. “Virtù in the form of courage, strength, honour, and dignity was prized in the Roman Republic, which made it strong enough to conquer the whole world. Till the prelates came along and softened us so much into mamma-boys we virtually opened all our gates to the foreign invaders. Has there ever been an Italian army strong enough to defend its borders? The whole world mocks us for our weaknesses.”
He looked so furious I didn’t want to counter him.
“But why is that the case?” I said.
“Because we don’t have the stomach to do what has to be done.”
“Isn’t it better to be a lover than a fighter?”
He made a scoffing sound, and flipped his hand at me as if addressing a child. “I am a lover, my friend. And I’ve been in prison and tortured by a strappado. And I tell you that we can never have the opportunity to be lovers unless we fight first for our piece of land. There would never have been a Jesus if not for a Moses and a Joshua and a David first, fighters all of them. Even Il Signore of the Bible is a warrior-tyrant, brooking no rivals.”
I pondered over Nick’s words as I drove them west along the QEW to the far edges of Mississauga. He was sitting beside me, while Francesco sat in the back. We were heading for an apple picking farm, since they both wanted to be in the countryside on that mild late October day. I very much doubted Francesco could sit through the opulent production of Turandot, so this could be our last time together as a threesome.
The apple farm was in a remote area off the highway. The owner had set up a tent in between the main house, which was still in use, and the old teetering barn that was literally falling apart. Inside the tent were bushels and bags of the various types of apples grown, with the prices if you picked your own.
I paid for three large bags and we got on the back of a flat-back cart pulled by a huge work horse and driven by a young man who introduced himself as Billy, the son of the owner. Billy, in denims and an old sweater, with a shock of red hair, seemed a personable lad. Seated with us were two other couples, with their children, all kids between ten and five. Billy gave us the particulars on the various types of apples.
“If you kids can’t reach the apples,” he told them, “you can’t climb the trees, eh, because it’s too dangerous and we don’t have apple-picking insurance for kids. So you have to get your parents to use the ladders.”
“I assume you have apple-picking insurance for parents who climb ladders, right?” one of the fathers said with a straight face.
“Sure do,” Billy said. “Apples are the greatest fruit in the world. Some people even say that Eve ate the apple in the Garden because she was braver than Adam.”
“I don’t get it,” the father said.
“Well, no apple-labour, no apple-pie.”
The parents groaned.
Francesco, sitting beside a couple of the kids — with their feet dangling from the edge of the cart — was playing foot-tag with them, kicking their feet and avoiding their frantic efforts to kick his. Nick was sitting back with his hands on the bed of the cart and letting the autumn sun shine on his face.
After Nick asked me to translate the joke, he raised his hand.
“If I may give a different interpretation,” Nick said. “The problem with Adamo is that he let Eva, Fortuna, sway his hand. He should have beaten her down with a stick.”
This went over like a lead balloon. The mothers looked at him as if he were a wife-beater. As the horse slowly walked through the apple groves, the mothers took their children away from Francesco, looking at him askance.
“They’re just off the boat,” I said with a shrug.
I motioned to the boys. We jumped off the cart and split up amongst the different apple groves. I preferred Cortland apples, hard and tart and juicy. Francesco went towards the Golden Delicious, while Nick fancied the Macs. Plenty of apples were rotting on the ground. We could take the various ladders to any tree. By this late date we had to climb virtually to the top of the gnarly trees, which, fortunately, weren’t that high.
Later, when I had my bag full, I was looking for the boys when I heard a couple of Italian voices in a heated exchange coming from the top of a tree. Apparently they had put their ladders on the same tree, climbed up, and were bobbing for the remaining apples.
“Boys, get down from outa there!” I yelled up to them.
They both slowly descended. Francesco had a silly grin on his face. Nick was scowling, all incensed.
“I can’t leave you guys for a minute,” I said. “You’re setting a bad example for the kids, I’ll tell you.”
“I was only playing,” Francesco said. “Brother Nicolino takes things way too seriously, eh. Here, take all my apples, if you want them.”
“I don’t want your apples,” Nick said.
“They are not mine.”
“Whose are they, then?” I asked him.
“They belong to the farmer whose land we stand on,” Nick said. “He paid for the land, went through the labour of growing the apples, and now should receive his just rewards in the form of payment.”
Francesco shook his head, the grin even wider. “No, no, brother Nicolino. The farmer is just taking care of the land and the trees growing on it for the moment. In the end, no one owns the land or the apples.”
“In your fantasy world maybe,” Nick said.
“Stop it,” I said. “Save your arguments for the show tomorrow, OK.”
“Can you imagine this guy ever governing a country,” he said to me, raising his chin. “Why, he’d give the whole country away.”
“Yes,” Francesco said.
“And what about the people who don’t believe as you believe? The other religions. Are they as good and right as you are?”
“I don’t know about the other beliefs. They can believe whatever they want. I just follow in the footsteps of the Saviour. In Him I find my strength.”
“And if these other people who don’t believe in the Saviour were to attack you and do you harm, what would you do, huh? Would you turn the other cheek and let them kill you?”
Francesco gave him a big smile. “No, I wouldn’t turn my cheek. I’d look them in the eye and tell them they had nothing to take from me — even my life.”
At that, Nick gave Francesco a straight right hand that caught him flush in the nose. Francesco went down, scattering his bag of apples.
I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. My first impulse was to help Francesco up, but I could see he didn’t need any help. After a few seconds of pain and dismay, the smile returned to his face. He didn’t seem angry in the least, as if he had experienced such attacks before and was well used to them.
Indeed, what happened next was even more astounding.
Francesco, his nose obviously broken and battered and streaming with blood, got up and opened his arms and made as if to hug Nick. But Nick stepped back, his face aghast, cursed a few times in Italian, and hurried back to the parking lot.
I gave Francesco a couple of Kleenex. He thanked me and wiped his nose.
“It is like the hockey game, eh?” he said, laughing.
We picked up the apples and walked in silence back to the car.
The drive back to my place wasn’t easy, I have to admit. No one made a sound in the car. When we got back, Nick immediately went to his room upstairs and closed the door. Francesco’s nose was twisted a bit. His right eye got blue and puffy. I ordered him to go lie down on the sofa in the living room and gave him a frozen liquid bag I had in the freezer.
“Allen is going to kill me when he finds out,” I told him. “I was supposed to keep you guys out of trouble. Now you’re not even fit for the cameras.”
“Non ti preoccupare,” Francesco said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was my fault. My vanity got the better of me. I got too full of my own pride and pride knocked me on my culo.”
Under the circumstances I thought it prudent not to go and see Turandot that night. Francesco and I spent a quiet evening watching the only Italian movie I owned. Actually it was an old black and white Spanish movie that had been dubbed into Italian that I had seen as a kid and that had greatly influenced me. I had picked up a DVD copy on my last visit to Italy. Marcelino, pan e vino. Francesco got a big kick out of it. He had never seen it. It was about a baby who’s left on the doorstep of a monastery and raised by these monks who treat the kid as their own child. The kid, however, is very mischievous and plays all sorts of pranks on the monks to amuse himself. Francesco laughed his head off at the pranks.
When it came time to eat, I made some pasta. My wife had taught me how to make a whole pot of meat sauce and then freeze it in smaller plastic containers for future use. When Francesco asked me about my wife, I told him she was a bit like him. When I first got to know her she had this huge candle in the shape of an apple in her apartment that emitted a delicious scent. Apples, I told him, were just as good old as new. After we finished our pasta, I called Nick down to eat his portion. Nick was still tight-lipped and didn’t speak to Francesco. He ate alone in the kitchen, while we waited around the corner in the living room.
