Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part one, chapter 2

Father Bonaventura: of the Minor Conventuals recently returned, he had gone to the choir for the office of Compieta; and Blasco, having to wait, sat on a bench, in the church, first to admire its beauties, then gradually, for one of those strange associations, of which the thread of conjunction does not appear immediately, to abandon itself to a crowd of memories, which spread on his face a veil of melancholy. Perhaps the image of that church, the slow and serious psalm of the friars in the choir raised at the bottom of his memory the images of another church and other friars; and the pale and sad figure of Father John emerged from the shadow of confused, clear and distinct memories; and next to it he saw another ten-year-old child: his, dressed in the black dress of the Minors, like a novice, intent on translating Virgil or Cicero or reciting by memory long pieces of grammar, under the threat of a ferula, ah! as sparkling on the palm of the hand! He wanted to make a friar like him, Father Giovanni, and instead!...

Good man! One day an order from his provincial father sent him away from that convent in Messina, and he was forbidden to take little Blasco with him. Why? imperfectly he remembered that Father John's loving care for the boy had given out to bad tongues, and there had been talk of scandal. Maybe it's the work of envy. And since 1698 he had no longer seen Father John and could no longer know anything about it... He had sought him in Messina; from Messina they had sent him to Caltanissetta; from Caltanissetta to Alcamo; here the traces had been lost; father John had left to go to Rome, and had never returned. Was he alive? Was he dead? Who knew anything about it?... Maybe Father Bonaventura... Yes, even Father Bonaventura had to look; but he had been luckier; from Milazzo he had passed to Palermo. - "You will find him in Palermo, in the convent of St. Francis of the Chiovari, healthy and well, thanking God!"

How many things in those 15 years!

Meanwhile the choir ceased: the friars came out of their scans, beautiful carvings of the early years of the sixteenth century, starting for the cloister; Blasco rose, and asked the first that he passed before him, if, by chance, he were the father Bonaventura.

"No; Father Bonaventura is there."

He pointed it out to him; he was an old man with silver hair around a robbed and full face; tall and well planted, with thick, long, falling eyebrows over his eyes, two white bushes, over a ditch.

"If you'll allow me, I'd like to talk to you," said Blasco, approaching him.

The friar told him: "Me? Do you want me?"

"If you're Father Bonaventura, yes..."

"Father Bonaventura is me, but I don't remember ever seeing you..."

"I believe it well, for ba... sorry! I was going to say the bad word in church; I said, therefore, that I had never seen your lordship before; but that doesn't matter. I must give her a letter that I actually have been carrying on for some time..."

"Oh, yeah... a letter? Whose?"

"Father Giovanni da Randazzo..."

"Oh!... oh! oh!..."

The friar gave in a laugh, which made his belly tremble.

"But if father Giovanni da Randazzo has been dead for five years!..."

"Ah! is he dead?... Oh poor man, how painful I am!..."

"How, didn't you know?"

"No, Father; since he gave me the letter, I have never seen him again..."

"Excuse me, and when he gave you the letter."

"Uhh! 15 years ago!..."

"How?"

"Fifteen years; yes, sir..."

Father Bonaventura looked at him amazed, but Blasco had the most sincere and simplest face of this world, not finding anything strange in what he said.

"Fifteen years! Fifteen years!!.

How do you keep a letter in your pocket for 15 years?"

"And yet it is."

"And could you keep it?"

"I challenge!... This letter represents for me a whole archive of documents!..."

"Ah!"

They had gone to the sacristy, and Father Bonaventura had sat in a leather high chair next to a table on which the lay friar had lit two candles. With one gesture he had invited Blasco to sit in another high chair, and now he looked at him with a great curiosity, seeming to him, as he had heard, an unlikely thing.

"And this letter, then?"

Blasco drew from the pocket of the broad brache a roll tied with a thread of string; he unfolded it and hollowed out a small box tied with another thread; he opened it with care, and removed a sheet of yellowed paper, folded and sealed with wax, the overwritten one of which, faded, was just read. Father Bonaventura put his glasses on his nose. There was no doubt; that was really the writing of Father Giovanni da Randazzo, and the letter was directed to him: To the Very Reverend Father Don Bonaventura of Licodia, of the Order of Minor Conventuals in the Convent of Milazzo.

"We hear," he said; and not without emotion the friar broke the seal of that letter that seemed to come from the underworld.

He read with half a voice, without articulating the syllables well, with a kind of grumbling, which became slower and as amazed.

He went all the way, stopping with wonder, and murmuring: "Toh! toh! toh!..."

And when the young man looked at him, he asked him, "And you, son, do you know what this letter contains?"

"Surely not. She will understand that when Father John gave it to me, to the point of leaving, I counted only ten years; I remember, however, that my good teacher said to me: "Be careful, son, not to lose this letter and bring it to Father Bonaventura; he will help you find your family"."

The friar listened silently to him, but there was a great concussion on his face; he said, "Do you want to hear what he writes?"

"Maybe! If there's anything that can put me on the road..."

"Maybe. Listen."

"Very reverend dear father and friend, On the point of starting from this convent, by the malevolence of others, for which I thank God, because I submit to cruel trials, I write the present, which I entrust to little Blasco, in the hope that he can bring it to you soon, so that he may have your protection, now that he misses mine. You know in what grievous circumstances this poor boy found by us, and how he is alone in the world, at least until his father recognizes him. If I had not been so rudely detached from him, I proposed to carry out the education of Blasco, and to present him to the father in conditions to obtain an advantage to him an office in the Grand Court, as it suits his origin; but unfortunately I must interrupt my work' Blasco cannot follow me, but you, dear friend and brother, can replace me, because you also have your part in the miraculous work that left this child among the living, for the permission of Divine Providence.

That's why I'm entrusting it to you. I hope to go to Rome to defend myself from the slanders, if God wills; nor do I know what my fate will be; but I know that in your hands Blascus will be better than in mine, and your word will be more effective to make him recognize by his father, and to make him have the future that his poor mother desired.

I embrace you with brotherly affection and I am your friend FRA GIOVANNI DA RANDAZZO."

Blasco had listened to the reading with deep emotion, and his eyes had moistened.

"There are many things," he said, "that I do not understand and that I ignore... I don't remember my mother... Have I met her? Did I live with her? Why did my father abandon me? Who's my father? How did I find myself entrusted to Father John?"

"So he never said anything to you?"

"No; he always promised to tell me everything when I grew up."

"But why didn't you come before? Why did you keep this letter on for 15 years? How come you didn't hurry to bring her to me, as Father Giovanni wanted?"

The young man did not respond immediately; he may have been following a few thoughts; then, shaking his thick hair, he smiled halfway and said: "In fact... You're right. If I came directly from Castiglione, it would be strange, but I come from Tunis."

"From Tunis?"

"Exactly. Spain, however, was only my last stop..."

"But why?..."

"It's a long story... I'll tell her later. I'm just telling her that Father John left, I felt all alone in the convent of Castiglione and after a few days I fled to join Father John, and left with him; instead everything happened backwards. I got away from Sicily, but not by my will; I went wandering from here and there, without being able to go back... But I'll tell her. Now, Father, one thing I care more than any other: to know who I am, if I must continue to call Blasco from Castiglione, or if I can claim a house; to know all the mystery of my birth, of my childhood wrapped in the shadows... and first of all, Father Bonaventura, where my mother is..."

"And dead," murmured the friar, raising his eyes with resignation "died for long years, my son..."

"And my father?"

"He died too."

The friar's voice had become gloomy for sadness. In the sacristy they were alone; the darkness invaded it and cealed the high wooden cupboards sculpted, blackened by time. Only the two candles lit brightened on one side the large room, of a reddish light, which illuminated the faces of the two interlocutors and the bloody Christ. A brass brazier burned with them, and mitigated the cold of the air. Around it was a great silence.

Father Bonaventura said: "All the times that, for a case, I carry myself with memory so many years ago, I feel oppressed by sadness, because a spectacle of horror comes to my eyes..."

He kept silent, as if to reorder his memories: Blasco looked at him with his soul in his eyes; what had often tormented the playfulness of his adventurous youth was finally about to be revealed to him.