Imprimatur (2 page)

So I read the novel. Or should I rather say: the memoirs? Are these really memoirs from the baroque period, reworked for today's readers? Or is it a modern novel set in the seventeenth century? Or both? These are questions that still beset me. There are indeed places where one seems to be reading pages that have come down to us intact from the seventeenth century: all the characters invariably use the vocabulary to be found in treatises of the period. But then, when discourse gives way to action, the linguistic register changes sharply, the same characters express themselves in modern prose and their doings seem even to take on the character of a detective novel— one of the Sherlock Holmes and Watson variety, to put it plainly. As though, in those passages, the authors had deliberately left traces of their intervention.

And what if they had lied to me? I was surprised to find myself wondering just that. What if the tale of the apprentice's manuscript which they had found was all an invention? Was it not too much like the device employed by both Manzoni and Dumas for the opening of their masterpieces,
The Betrothed
and
The Three Musketeers'?
Both of which, coincidentally, are set in the seventeenth century...

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get to the bottom of the matter, which is probably destined to remain a mystery. I have indeed been quite unable to trace the eight volumes of Abbot Melani's let­ters, from which the whole story began. The library of the Marchese *** *** was Split up by his heirs and sold some ten years ago. After I had bothered a few acquaintances, the auctioneers who made the sale discreetly passed me the names of the buyers.

I thought I had found the solution and that the Lord was with me, until I read the names of the new owners: they were Rita and Francesco. And, of course, they had left no address.

During the course of the past three years I have, with the few resources at my disposal, conducted a painstaking series of checks on the contents of the typescript. You will find the outcome of my research in the pages which I have annexed at the end of the text.

These, I beg you to read most attentively. You will discover for how long I relegated to oblivion the work of my two friends, and the sufferings which that has caused me. You will also find a detailed examination of the historical events narrated in the typescript, and an account of the exhaustive research I conducted in the archives and libraries of half Europe, in order to understand whether these might correspond to the truth.

As you can judge for yourself, the impact of the facts narrated was indeed such as to alter the course of history violently, and forever.

Very well, having completed my research, I can affirm with cer­tainty that the events and persons contained in the story which you are about to read are authentic. And, even where it was not possible to find the proofs of what I had read, I was at least able to establish the verisimilitude of the events recounted.

The affair narrated by my two former parishioners, while not grav­itating only around Pope Innocent XI (who is indeed barely even a protagonist of the novel) does, however, bring to light circumstances which cast new and grave imputations as to the limpidity of the Pontiff's soul and the honesty of his words. I say new, insofar as the inquiry into the beatification of Pope Odescalchi, opened on 3rd September, 1714 by Pope Clement XI, encountered objections
super

virtutibus
dur­ing the first preparatory stages, raised within the Congregation by the Promoter of the Faith. Thirty years were to pass before Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini silenced by decree all doubts expressed by the pro­moters and consultors as to the heroic virtues of Innocent XI. But, shortly afterwards, the process again came to a halt, this time for al­most two hundred years: indeed, only in 1943, under Pope Pius XII, was another rapporteur appointed. The process of beatification took a further thirteen years, until 7th October, 1956. Ever since that day, Pope Odescalchi has remained shrouded in silence. Never again, until now, was there talk of proclaiming him a saint.

It would have been possible for me, by virtue of the legislation approved by Pope John Paul II over fifty years ago, to request further inquiries. But in that case, I would not have been abl
e secretum servare in iis ex quorum revelatione preiudicium causae vel infamiam beato afferre posset.
In other words, I would then have had to reveal the contents of Rita and Francesco's typescript, if only to the promoter of justice or to the postulator (the saints' prosecution and defence lawyers, as the press so crudely describes them).

In so doing, I would have permitted grave and irreversible asper­sions to be cast on the virtue of the Blessed: a decision which could be taken only by the Supreme Pontiff, certainly not by myself.

If, however, the work had in the meantime been published, I would have been freed from the obligation to secrecy I therefore hoped that my two parishioners' book had already found a publisher. I confided the search to some of the youngest and least experienced members of my staff. But in the catalogues of books on sale, I found neither any writings of the kind nor my friends' names.

I tried to trace the two young people (by now surely no longer young): the registers showed that they had indeed moved to Vienna, at Auerspergstrasse 7. I wrote to that address but received a reply from the head of a university hostel, who was unable to provide me with any assistance. I asked the Commune of Vienna, but nothing useful came of that.

I feared the worst. I wrote to the parish priest of the Minoritenkirche, the Italian church in Vienna. But Rita and Francesco were unknown to everyone there, including, fortunately, the keeper of the graveyard records.

In the end, I decided to go to Vienna myself, in the hope of trac­ing at least their daughter, even though, some forty years after the event, I could no longer remember her Christian name. As was to be expected, this last attempt also came to nothing.

For three years, I have sought them everywhere. Sometimes I find myself looking at girls with red hair like Rita's, forgetting that hers will now be as white as my own. Today, she will be seventy-four and Francesco, seventy-six.

Now, I take my leave of you, and of His Holiness. May God inspire you in the reading which you are about to undertake.

Msgr Lorenzo Dell'Agio

Bishop of the Diocese of Como

To the defeated

Sir,

In conveying to you these memoirs

which I have at last recover'd,

I dare hope that 'Your Excellency

will recognise in my Efforts

to comply with Your Wishes

that Excess of Passion and of Love

which has ever been the cause of my Felicity,

whenever I have had Occasion

to bear Witness thereof

to your Excellency.

Memorials

The men of the Bargello arrived in the late afternoon, just as I was about to light the torch that illuminated our sign. In their fists, they grasped planks and hammers; and seals and chains and great nails. As they advanced along the Via del Orso, they called out and gestured im­periously to the passers-by and knots of curious bystanders that they must clear the street. Truly, they were most wrathful. When they came level with me, they began to wave their arms about: "All inside, all inside, we must shut up the house," cried the man who gave the orders.

Barely had I time to descend from the stool onto which I had climbed than hard hands shoved me roughly into the entrance, while some began to bar the door with threatening mien. I was stunned. I came abruptly to my senses, jostled by the gathering which, drawn by the officers' cries, had piled up in the doorway as though a bolt of lightning had fallen from an empty sky. These were the lodgers at our inn, known as the Locanda del Donzello.

They were but nine, and all were present: waiting for supper to be served, as was their wont every evening, they wandered about the ground floor among the day-beds in the entrance hall and the tables of the two adjoining dining chambers, each feigning some business; but, in reality, all turning around the young French guest, the musician Robert Devize who, with great bravura, was practising the guitar.

"Let me out! Ah, how dare you? Remove your hands from me! I cannot remain here! I am perfectly healthy, understood? Perfectly healthy! Let me by, I tell you!"

He who thus cried out (and whom I could barely descry through the thicket of lances with which the men-at-arms held him at bay) was our guest Padre Robleda, the Spanish Jesuit, who, panic-stricken, began to groan and to pant, his neck all red and swollen. So piercing were his screams that they minded me of the squeals of swine, hang­ing head downwards before slaughter.

The noise resounded down the street and, it seemed to me, as far off as the little square, which had emptied in a trice. On the far side of the street, I caught sight of the fishmonger who, with two servants from the nearby Locanda dell'Orso, was observing the scene.

"They are shutting us in," I cried to them, trying to capture their attention, but the trio remained unmoved.

A vinegar-seller, a snow vendor and a group of little boys whose cries had, only moments earlier, enlivened the street, now hid fear­fully round the corner.

Meanwhile, my master, Signor Pellegrino de Grandis, had placed a small bench on the threshold of the inn. One of the officers of the Bargello laid thereon the register of the lodgers at our inn, which he had just received, and began the roll-call.

"Padre Juan de Robleda, from Granada."

Since I had never been present at a closure for quarantine, and no one had ever spoken to me of such a thing, I thought at first that they meant to imprison us.

"A dreadful, dreadful business," whispered Brenozzi, the Venetian.

"Come out, Padre Robleda!" called the officer, growing impatient.

The Jesuit who, in his vain struggle against the men-at-arms, had fallen senseless to the ground, now rose to his feet and, once he had made sure that every escape was barred by lances, responded to the call with a sign of his hairy hand. He was at once pushed towards me. Padre Robleda had arrived from Spain a few days earlier, and ever since morning, because of the day's events, he had sorely tried our ears with his fearful screaming.

"Abbot Melani, from Pistoia!" called the official, reading from the register of guests.

Darting up from the shadows came the fashionable French lace ornamenting the wrist of our latest guest, who had arrived only at sunrise. He raised his hand diligently when his name was called, and his little triangular eyes shone like stilettos piercing the shade. The Jesuit did not move a muscle to make room when Melani, with tran­quil gait and in silence, joined us. It was the abbot's cries that had raised the alarum that morning.

We had all heard them, they came from upstairs. Pellegrino, the host, my master, was the first to stir his long legs and run swiftly. But hardly had he reached the large chamber on the first floor, giving onto the Via dell'Orso, than he stopped. There, two guests had taken up lodgings: Signor di Mourai, an aged French gentleman, and his companion Pompeo Dulcibeni, who hailed from the Marches. Mourai, in an armchair, with his feet soaking in the basin for his customary bath, sprawled sideways, his arms hanging down, while the abbot held him upright and strove to revive him, shaking him by the collar. Mourai's attention seemed fixed upon his helper's shoulders and he appeared to be scrutinising Pellegrino with great astonished eyes, while an in­distinct gurgle issued from his throat. It was then that Pellegrino realised that the abbot was not calling for help but, with great uproar and agitation, interrogating the old man. He was speaking to him in French, which my master could not understand; but imagined that he was enquiring of him what had happened. To Pellegrino (as he was later to recount to us all) it did, however, seem that Abbot Melani was shaking Mourai with excessive vigour in his attempts to revive him, and so he rushed to release the old man from that all-too- powerful grasp. It was at that instant that poor Signor di Mourai, with an immense effort, uttered his last words: "Alas, so it really is true," he gasped in Italian. Then he left off from panting. His eyes remained fixed upon his host and a greenish dribble ran from his mouth to his breast. And so he died.