15. Savio
CHAPTER 15
Savio
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
S weat slicks my palms, coating my temples as I dart through the masses of people whose workday has just ended and toward my church.
Vespers calls me home, but how can I carry on as though nothing happened?
She saw me.
She saw what I was about to do.
Paolo is only alive because she stopped me.
The second I make it across the river, I find myself braking to a halt. A tourist screeches, “Whoa!” at me, like he thinks I’m going to crash into him, but I’m always aware of my surroundings. Always.
Except where she’s concerned.
I didn’t hear her .
Didn’t feel her.
The hair on the back of my neck didn’t stand on edge at her presence, making me aware she was in the alley with me.
My throat tightens at what that might mean.
I shoot the tourist an apologetic, “Sorry,” before swerving around the irate man, who’s glowering at me like I tried to do to him what I was about to do to Paolo, and head for my church.
I have a service to lead. But she saw me there. She’ll know where I’ll be.
What was she doing in that alleyway?
Will the police come for me?
There’s no proof.
There never is.
She saw me, but it’s my word against hers, isn’t it?
She just had brain surgery. Who are the cops going to believe? Me? A priest? Or a...
I feel guilty even thinking it.
Just because she was sick doesn’t mean she’s addled, or that her wits aren’t there.
I scrub a hand over my face, somehow finding myself in the middle of a crowd yet feeling utterly isolated.
But then, there’s no real difference, I suppose. Aren’t I always alone?
No one sees the real me.
No one wants to.
And even as the melancholic thought crosses my mind, I recognize how things were different when she looked at me after this afternoon’s service.
Somehow, she didn’t see me as a priest.
She saw me as a man.
God, it’s been such a long time since that’s happened.
When I pass the doorway of a small store where one of my flock lives, I cling to Gianni’s familiar face. He refuses to wear shoes, has feet blacker than soot, and stinks worse than a sewer, but his smile is genuine.
Honest.
As usual, he’s there, touting for a coffee.
It’s frigid in the shadows, and I’m not even sure why he refuses the boots I offer him, but despite being in the middle of a crisis, I hover by his side.
“Gianni, come to the church. I have another pair of boots for you.”
He grins at me, and his teeth are somehow perfect. In stark contrast to the mouth of the wealthy parishioner, Lara.
Odd how life works sometimes.
“My feet are fine, Father.”
I scowl at them. “How they’re still attached to your legs, I don’t know.”
He winks. “Never had a Father be so concerned about my feet before.”
“That’s me, I have a fetish,” I tell him dryly, making him cackle.
The homeless around here aren’t used to me or my humor. They laugh, but they’re always taken aback, and I can’t blame them.
The last priest was severely lacking a personality. He also needed shooting for the state he’d left the soup kitchen in. It was critically underfunded, and the food bank was just as sparse. I’ve spent most of my days here seeking ways to improve both, but it’s hard going.
I might be at the center of the Catholic world, but somehow, these people are more forgotten than most, and I’m only one person. I can only do so much.
Giving Gianni five euros, I tell him, “You’d better come by later. That coat is threadbare.”
“I don’t feel the cold, Father. I told you.”
I’m not sure how he doesn’t, but he’s always perpetually cheerful, so I figure he isn’t lying. I’m miserable when I’m cold. Would he be so cheery if he weren’t telling me the truth?
“If you say so,” is my dubious retort.
“Give it to someone who needs it.”
He shoves the note back at me, pushing it into my hands when I don’t take it. I know he’s involved with some shady dealings that I don’t approve of and would prefer to give him honest money than have him rely on the criminals who take advantage of the homeless.
“It’s okay, Father,” he reassures me, but he fails when he lies, his eyes flashing with the mistruth that has him avoiding my gaze for a second. “I got enough from another tourist. You give it to someone who needs it. I heard Riccardo lost his tent last night—someone tore it and kicked the sh… I mean, beat him. Pretty badly, too.”
“Let me at least buy you a coffee,” I argue, knowing there’s no point in wasting my time convincing him to keep the money.
The irony is, that these men and women are more generous than most priests I know.
Gianni’s eyes sparkle. “I can never refuse a coffee.”
“The usual?”
He nods, and even though I need to oversee Vespers, I head into the small coffee shop and grab him an espresso.
“Father,” the waitress greets. “I have some spare rolls from this morning for you.”
“Thank you, Elisa.” I accept the bag she hands over the counter, as well as the coffee. “I kept a book bag back for Adriano.”
Along with re-stocking the food bank, I’ve worked on creating a depository of other items that people need—anything from clothes to old kitchen appliances.
Her eyes widen at my words. “You did?” She releases a relieved sigh when I nod. “Thank you. This month is tight?—”
I shake my head at her—she’d already told me as much during her confession, expressing her worries about not being able to afford the items her son needed for school—and chide, “You don’t have to tell me that. I know you wouldn’t ask if you didn’t need it.” I smile at her to lessen her embarrassment, then, whisper, “Thank you for the rolls.”
She wriggles her shoulders uneasily—peering behind her in case her boss is watching. “They were just going to waste.”
“I know. Thank you .” Before, they’d have gone in the trash, because my predecessor had never thought to ask the local businesses to give us their perfectly comestible waste. Some do it willingly, Sandro Rossetti, Elisa’s boss, makes Scrooge look generous.
When I retreat from the counter, I hand Gianni his coffee. “Want a roll?”
He grins—like usual. And his smile is always infectious enough to make my lips curve. Even after what happened with her . “Please.”
“Are you sure you did well today?” I ask, handing him some bread. “You don’t need?—”
“I promise, Father. Give it to Riccardo. But thank you.”
Knowing not to press because his pride won’t let him accept the money, I nod. “How’s the head?”
Some bastard hit him this past week. I didn’t think it was because of his ‘work’ but you never could tell.
“I get some pain now and then.”
“Tell me if you need Ibuprofen.”
Knowing he’ll dismiss any advice I might give him—he doesn’t approve of chemicals—I raise my hand in farewell, and retreat to Santa Cecilia.
With the bread in my hand, it’s almost easy to forget what happened thirty minutes ago, but I can’t.
I half-expected the police to be waiting for me when I arrived, yet they weren’t.
No one is.
The church, though small, has a building behind it, a new annex. I go in there, pass the meager stores of food, and leave the bread in the industrial kitchen where volunteers shout me cheery greetings. The annex, which consists of a kitchen and a large pantry, joins the church to a community hall.
It’s my predecessor’s contribution, and I helped with the fundraiser for it when work stopped before completion due to a lack of funds.
Entering my office, I quickly change after I wash up, knowing there’ll be questions if I appear different than usual, and head on out to the chapel.
Vespers is ridiculously quiet, but the evening services usually are. Lara and only a handful of others attend. We go through the motions in the deathly silent church, and for once, the rigidity of the rites calms me down.
I didn’t expect that but I suppose there’s comfort in repetition.
When Lara hobbles from the church, her chauffeur propping her up, I watch her go, then glance about the pews.
I almost expect her to be there, waiting for me. Except, she isn’t.
Why isn’t she?
And why didn’t she call the carabinieri ?
Why aren’t they here—sirens blaring, flashing their fireworks through the stained-glass windows?
The question plagues me as I close down the church for the night. I’m supposed to lock the doors, and I do, but it’s always begrudgingly.
What’s the point in locking down a church that’s supposed to be open at all hours of the day? The hearth of faith beckoning and welcoming any lost soul in the night?
That disturbing chore complete, I wander over to the presbytery where I live. It’s right beside Santa Cecilia, and the thin, narrow building houses only four rooms—a kitchen/living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms.
I currently live alone, but visiting priests sometimes lodge with me.
Once inside, I head straight for the kitchen.
Preparing myself some tea, I ponder my next move when the edginess of being denied surfaces, making my hand shake as I spoon the tea leaves into a cup.
Although the temptation is at war with the surprise of being caught, the sin eater has not been nourished tonight.
I close my eyes as the kettle hisses out the warning that it’s boiling. The sharp sound pierces me to the quick, but I let it.
Despite his pleas to the contrary, Paolo is escalating.
His sobs told me as much. His shame and his pity are intertwined because he knows he’s weak—that he’ll fall again and again—so he blames his innocent niece.
Now, however, my hands are tied.
He’ll be wary of me. When he wakes up where he did, Paolo will question why he was there, why I took him to that alley.
Even if he doesn’t remember me joining him at Carlucci’s—the bar Junia complains is his regular hangout—someone on the staff will mention it and that will trigger questions.
I struck him with my blade too—a small nick but it’s enough to draw suspicion my way.
I can shove aside the questions with answers that will appease, but will he trust me again?
Doubt spears me, and I regret being caught before I managed to do the deed.
The notion surprises me.
As it stands, I’m not in trouble. It’s her word against mine, but if there’d been a body then that would have changed things dramatically.
I rub a hand over my face as the kettle carries on whistling, and the truth hits me.
I’m getting worse.
Exactly like Paolo.
Panic starts to crowd me.
How can I not care that I might end up in jail?
How can I not care that?—
I throw the kettle across the room when it won’t stop whistling. The smashing sound, the destruction as plastic and metal burst apart, tearing at the soldered seams, and the hiss as boiling water collides with the cold stone floors and the painted walls, make something inside me quiver.
Fuck, I need to let this poison out of my system.
I eye the flame of the gas stove. The strange desire to hold my hand over it fills me.
But that will be noticed.
People will see the burn and notice the scars.
They will question and I can’t afford the luxury of answering.
So I remove temptation by switching the stove off and shuffle out of the kitchen to ascend the rickety stairs that are so steep, in the dark, you could fall up or down…
When I make it into my bedroom, a simple room with no ornamentation save for a crucifix above the bed, white sheets with a colorful patchwork quilt that was left behind by my predecessor, and books on the shelves that line one wall where the window is open to let in the frigid night air, I walk toward the dresser.
The bottom drawer houses the box I need.
My throat’s full, stomach’s churning, muscles tense, and my whole body vibrates with so much feeling that I don’t even know how I’ll expel it all.
Then I open the box.
And inside, the bloodstained, steel-spiked leather reveals itself to me. The one thing I keep purposely dirty.
My turbulent heart rate slows at the sight, in acceptance of what I must do, from the poison I know I must milk from my system. Shrugging out of my black suit jacket, I remove the trappings of my clerical uniform, and when I’m bare, pick up the lash.
My fingers tighten around the knotted handle, and a sweet serenity slithers inside me as, with a flick of a practiced wrist, I let it fly.
The pain is excruciating.
The pain is delightful as the barbs take hold and tear at my flesh.
How I pray infection will take hold.
How I pray this will be the end.
But there’s no physical release just freedom . A freedom I never felt when the French government liberated me from Farid and his rebels.
More importantly, I find peace.
Even if it’s only momentarily.
My brain vacates itself.
I’m nothing.
Not sensation.
Not feeling.
Not fear or hope or anything .
I’m meat.
Bones.
Blood.
Free.