Beati Paoli
by Luigi Natoli
part one, chapter 9
| Italiano | English |
Coming out of the painter's studio, leaving his nephew to pose for the great historical canvas on which the Bongiovanni worked, Don Girolamo Admirata told him: "I am going to the office; I will return home perhaps a little later than midday. Do you understand?"
"All right," answered the young man, without turning, holding his arm raised with the sword in hand, in a belligerent gesture, as Don Vincenzo had put it.
The "office" was the administration of the large hospital, where Don Girolamo was performing his work of rational, that is, as we would say now, with a neologism not justified by any necessity, accountant. The large hospital was then in the ancient palace of Matteo Sclafani, purchased, for the instances of the pious Fr. Giuliano Majali, from the Senate of Palermo in the fifteenth century, to gather there the various hospitals, which were located in the city.
The magnificent palace, reduced to barracks by the Bourbons, who let it tamper, preserves today the remains of the ancient splendor in one of the facades, in the portal and in a great and terrible mural painting, perhaps of Flemish painter of the fifteenth century; a plaque, now no longer existing but reproduced by historians, told that it had been built in a year by the magnificent Matteo Schapani, Count of Adernò and rival in magnificence and greatness of the powerful Chiaramonte. Forming one of the corners of the floor of the Royal Palace, to get there you had to go along the Cassaro, being the study of the Bongiovanni in one of those venerable palaces of the fourteenth century, between the square of the Virgins and the alley of S. Antonio still visible.
Don Girolamo then, coming out of the alley on the old and noble artery of the city, ran to the right, but traveled a few steps entered the church of St. Matthew whose staircase was then cluttered part of the road.
Its appearance suddenly took an expression of humility and compunction with the low and inclined head, the arms conspersed on the chest, the gentle and slow step. Biascicando prayers, he approached the pile of blessed water, and he marked himself devoutly; then he bent through the aisle on the left, stopping in the fourth chapel, in front of the picture of the Novelli, kneeling little apart from another devotee, who seemed absorbed in prayer.
Don Girolamo scored himself again and with a voice quite audible, and with cadences from friar to choir, he sung the verse of the psalm: "Beatus qui intelligit super ege unz et pauperem."
And then, with the same cadence, the same tone, without turning around, that other devotee continued: "In die naala liberabit eum Dominus'.
Don Girolamo let him finish, and filmed: "Dominus conservet eum et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra."
And the other: -"Et non tradat eum in animam imitizicorurvc ejus."
Don Girolamo stooped and, as if he continued to pray, said these strange words: "I have a bag of lemons."
"Take them to the "scaro."
"What's a thousand?"
"Three, three."
"With the help of God and the Beato Paolo."
"Amen."
They had just finished exchanging this singular dialogue, which was heard a great voice and a gunshot, and almost at the same time a rush of steps up the stairs and inside the church, which spread a panic and a great confusion among the few faithful who were still lingering in the church. A man entered, or rather threw himself among the faithful, holding in one hand a still smoking gun, spilling a kind of beer, which, being in the church, ran to the door, to the shot, wanted to prevent him from entering.
The man either by chance, or by necessity of escape, threw himself into the left aisle, and stopped at the main chapel, letting himself fall over a chair, before one of the pillars of the dome.
He was pale and panicked. A great bruise inflated him monstrously with a goth: it seemed like the blow of a stick.
After the first dismay, the crowd of the faithful gathered around him, curious. Everyone wanted to see, they wanted to know.
"What was that? What has happened to you?"
Other people flocked to the church, from the street, while the sacristan tried to reject it and close the door.
"Did you kill him?"
"He failed..."
"No, he took it from his shoulder."
"He was right."
"They're overflowing..."
"You'll see they'll hang him."
"Yes, but in the meantime they can't arrest him..."
"For three days..."
"He should be helped!..."
"Eh! the church is guarded by birri... all doors are guarded.
Don't run away..."
"Who was it?"
"Who is it?..."
Questions, news, judgments were crossed around that man, who, still pale, pulsating, but turbid and fierce, pressed a piece on the goth, looking at all those eyes fixed on him.
The sagrestan and the "massor" were trying to get all those people out: "It's time to close... we have to close the church!... oh, let the love of God take you!... Get out, go!... go!... Leave him alone. In the end there is nothing extraordinary..."
A little with words, a little with gestures and with pushes, they tried to chase out the crowd, waving, breaking up, recomposing around that man; someone reacted, altercating! the church resonated with shouts and threats.
Then Fr Jerome said to the sacristan: "Bring him into the sacristy and lock him in..."
It was in fact the only way to remove that man from the curiosity of others and to force people to leave the church, having nothing more to see. The sacristan looked at Don Girolamo and seemed to exchange with him a brief imperceptible sign with the eye.
He approached the man and said to him: "Come with me to the sacristy. You'll be better."
The man didn't get to repeat it. The crowd opened to let him pass, closed behind him, followed him; the sacristian closed the sacristy and threw the key into his pocket: "And now," he said, "it seems to me that you can leave."
So the church gradually emptied itself; not without generous expanses of little flattering epithets at the address of the sacristan, who, pushing the most reluctant forward, responded by chewing the words ironically: "Okay! okay!... Whatever you want."
He served the door: outside of which two cops of the city captain, armed, sat on the last step, unable to enter the church to arrest the man who had taken refuge, because among the immunity of which they enjoyed churches and convents there was also that of the right of asylum; and justice could not set foot in a sacred place, without an express faculty of the archbishop. But on the other hand, the right of asylum could not last more than three days, in which case the perpetrator was to be handed over to secular justice. With caution the city captain had kept the doors, while his Excellency the Viceroy urged the order of the Archbishop.
Don Girolamo Admired and the other devotee had not come out of the church, when the sacristan returned, after closing the door; the "devote" ordered him in a quick and sharp tone: "Open the sacristy."
The sacristan obeyed.
The "devote" and Don Girolamo entered; they covered their faces with black masks; the sacristan remained outside, at a nod of Don Girolamo's eyes.
The man was walking with his hands on his chest, his eyebrows sharpened, and he seemed to follow a thought. At the entrance of the two, he raised his head surprised by the masks, suspicious, ready to defend himself; but immediately he stopped, when the "devote" who had taken a humble and meek tone, said to him: "If you are right, if you are a persecuted poor person, if you have been offended, trust, perhaps we can benefit you. What's your name?"
The face of that man had illuminated himself with a ray of hope and joy, as if he had received a long-awaited revelation.
He answered without hesitation: "Andrea... Andrea Lo Bianco."
"Are you a citizen?"
"Yes, sir..."
"What have they done to you?"
"They threw me in jail, and they didn't do anything..."
"Nothing at all?"
"I swear, by Jesus sacramented!..." His words had the accent of truth. "But maybe they needed to make me disappear..."
"Who?"
"Who? The Duke of Motta!..."
"The Duke of Motta? Don Raimondo Albamonte?"
"Exactly."
"And for what reason?"
The man remained silent not seemingly willing to reveal what was perhaps a great secret; the two masked waited a little in silence, then the "devote" insisted: "Why did the Duke of Motta want to get rid of you?"
"Because... 'cause maybe he thinks I'm a dangerous witness... I was arrested, tried for a crime that I had not committed, that I could not prove... and yet I was sent to row in the prisons of the kingdom... And there he tried to assassinate me... Guardian."
He discovered his chest, and showed a scar a little under the collarbone.
Don Girolamo and the other looked at each other.
Andrea continued: "I fled... We were in Milazzo. I ran out of jail, broke my irons, swimmed in. On foot I came here to Palermo to get revenge... and not just me!. A little while ago as I went up for Cassaro, here is the Duke in porterina... I recognized the liveries... I approached to see better inside. A servant who went by the door, throws again; the duke sees me, recognizes me, shouts; that servant tries to take me, I reject him... then raise the reed to hit me... I lost the light of the eyes and shot... I don't know if I killed him..."
"Who? The Duke?"
"No, the servant... Now, I know, they're gonna arrest me... There's no way to escape here... I will be hanged with the extraordinary term, because the duke is powerful. It's not life that I care about; I played it other times, when I followed my master, good and holy soul, the duke, the true duke of Motta, Don Emanuele... No, it is not life; but not being able to avenge the innocent..."
He remained silent a little while longer; then, as he suddenly resolved: "If I do not deceive myself, and if what I have heard is not a lie, gentlemen, I beseech you, protect me!... Maybe, you won't regret it, you can help me do a great work of righteousness... I beg you!..."
Don Girolamo and his companion looked at each other, they did not immediately answer or directly.
The "devote" said, "What innocent are you talking about?"
Andrea, with sparkling eyes, the muscles of the face contracted as from a horrible vision, placing his hand on the arm of the masked man, said, spelling the words, impregnating them with deep hatred: "Don Raimondo Albamonte would not be duke of Motta if he had not suppressed the Duchess widow, his sister-in-law, and the grandson, the legitimate heir..."
A cry of amazement came out of the mouth of those two...
"What do you know? How can you say that?"
Andrew stretched out his arm toward a crucifix standing on the table, between two candlesticks.
"Yeah... I know; I know who provided the poison; for this reason they wanted to suppress me, as another witness was suppressed: the waitress of the Duchess!..."
The two masked men looked, more and more amazed, at that revelation they did not expect.
For a minute they kept quiet. Some blows were knocked slightly at the door of the sacristy. Don Girolamo opened and pushed the boss out. It was the sacristan.
"Soon! Hurry!" he said, "they hit the small door. They'll be the cops with the Archbishop's permission... Your Honor, go away."
"He's fine. Go open it."
The other, which he had heard, approached a closet, and opened it, punched the bottom, which he gave in and showed a dark and deep void. He went in there, saying, "Come."
Andrea and Don Girolamo followed him; the closet closed, the bottom returned to its place: Andrew believed he fell into the mysterious void and stretched out his hands instinctively, as if to grasp something or to recognize if those two saviors were next to him. But suddenly a light risked the place: the one before had lit a lantern that probably stood in a small niche dug into the wall.
"Let's go."
Andrea recognized that they were walking through a corridor dug into the tuff, high enough for a man of common stature to pass without bumping with the head. The madid walls gave off a strong smell of damp, and from time to time it leaked a few cold drops.
They went one after the other; their steps went out in the yielding and hanging ground. The hallway went down slightly. And Andrew heard on the vault a deaf noise, like a grumble; and he guessed that there was a road or a square above them, and that chariots were passing through them. Where to? He had lost his sense of direction, and could not do any induction.
Suddenly they stopped. The masked man turned off the lantern, and the darkness turned them on. Andrea heard three shots beaten with the knuckles of his fingers on a table, probably a door, and after those three other shots three each followed by a scratching, like a cat trying to open. A stake slipped gently into the rings, and a thread of light opened up along a wall: voices whispered soft, rapid, short, and the door opened entirely.
Andrea found himself in a small, naked room, which received light from another door open in a bright room, cluttered with barrels and barrels. A small, fat little man, with a thrown face and small, black, shiny eyes like those of a mouse, stood aside, with a cap in his hand, in a respectful attitude, but not servile.
"Uncle Rosario," said the man who went ahead and had beaten, pointing to Andrea, "must be saved."
"All right."
"Life for life!"
"Half a word!" protested Rosario's uncle putting his hand on his chest.
The masked man turned to Andrew and said to him: "Stay here. You'll be sure. I'll see you later and we'll talk. Goodbye."
Andrea tried to hold him.
"Lord, sir, at least let me thank Your Ladyship..."
But the other showed him that he was silent and followed by Don Girolamo entered the other room; there, with a quick gesture, they both took off their masks, and went out into the street.
Andrea asked Aunt Rosario: "Please... tell me..."
But he put the word in his mouth: "First of all learn a word..."
"What word?"
"This."
And uncle Rosario put his lips in front of him, and took them between the index finger and the thumb of the right with a significant gesture that meant: "Shut up, whatever you see."
Andrea understood, blushed with shame and murmured, "Excuse me."
"Nothing, man. Now come up, where you'll be like a pope."
