Chapter 40 Cosimo
Cosimo
‘I thought I might find you here.’
Cosimo looked up as Savelli came to sit beside him, setting his biretta on the bed. There would be serious consequences if he was found in Cosimo’s room during prayer time, but he was taking the risk anyway. Cosimo had been thrown into crisis.
Cosimo saw his cheeks were flushed from the walk back here, the rosy bloom of fresh air settling upon his body like a taunt, and he felt the flicker of rage again in his stomach.
He felt it every time now when Savelli came back from his pastoral visits with Father Caputo, because he himself had never felt so confined.
He longed for these walls to fall and the wind to rush in.
He kept tipping his head back, trying to breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe?
‘Did you see her?’
Savelli nodded. ‘She’s doing well. It’s been hard for her, juggling them all, but she has a woman helping her now, so things are easier. She said she even managed to get out to the market this morning to buy some fruit.’
Peaches, Cosimo guessed. They were her favourite.
‘And she’s planning a trip to Lido la Castellana for them later, for an evening swim and picnic.’
Cosimo stared at him as if he was being deliberately provocative. Peaches, swimming, a picnic? All these things embodied the world of softness that he was denied. Colour, taste, sensation …
Memories of a long-ago day bubbled up: diving from the rocks at El Ciolo, the girls lying on their towels and laughing as he and Fede took turns rating their dives.
It had been the first day that summer when things had gone back to normal between them all.
Looking back, he realized it had been perfect.
The Giannellis had turned up on their speedboat, intruding, but even that hadn’t spoilt the day.
Cosimo had vanquished Fon, and he’d felt like a king.
But hindsight had shown him he’d only won the battle, not the war. Now the wild hope he had nurtured following his reunion with Rafaella at Gina’s was fading fast. One day had run into another, into another, and no word had come from her …
‘Was her husband there?’
‘Yes. That was the point of today’s meeting – he wanted to see Father Caputo himself. He’s going to send someone to Brindisi to help with the search. He’s lost patience with the situation. Clearly he isn’t as charitable as his wife.’
His wife. Even the words made Cosimo flinch. The thought of Fon lying with her in their bed at night …
Savelli gripped his shoulder, seeing the storm flicker over his face.
‘I’m worried about you, Cosi. It’s been days now and your spirits are getting worse.
You’ve got to try to move past this.’ Savelli, to his credit, had made no further mention of his own feelings towards Rafaella.
He knew Cosimo’s story; he knew exactly who she was to him.
‘How can I, knowing she’s outside these very walls?’
‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ Savelli said, as gently as he could.
‘She told you that? You actually asked her?’
‘Yes. I said everything you asked me to say, but she said no good could come of it. She’s married now.’
Cosimo shook his head in disbelief. ‘But she doesn’t love him!’ he cried. A sudden, sickening thought hit him – unless … unless she had grown to love him? ‘Did she tell you she does?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Well, what did she say?’ he cried.
‘She asked how you were.’
‘And you said …?’
‘That you were fine. I didn’t think it would help for her to know you’re suffering like this.’
Wouldn’t it?
Cosimo got up and paced across the narrow room; it was more like a cell, the bed like a bench, the window set so high the only light was a thin slit that fell across the door. And everywhere immovable, ancient stone.
He pressed his hand to the wall, feeling its coldness against his palm, the stippled texture reminding him it was worn and marked but enduring.
As he must endure now. This was his penance, after all – the closest he could come to a life for a life.
This was his storm to weather, the test he must not fail.
Ever since that night when the world had literally crumbled around him, he had walled himself away from any feeling: the colours were too bright, the sensations too deep, excoriating him inside and out.
He couldn’t survive it. The guilt of what he’d done was too immense, and later, when he’d realized that saving his freedom meant relinquishing Rafaella – even though it had been her bargain, her pact – he had found safety only in absolute stillness, in total silence.
It hurt too much to feel. He had willed himself to turn to stone until, slowly, all those flashing, blinding, swirling emotions of anger, envy, lust and regret had sunk to the bottom of a muddy pit, out of sight and range.
He had reassured himself that as long as he moved with care, without provocation, there was no reason for them ever to rise up again.
It was this very denial of the senses that had helped him survive, but now everything felt airless and suffocating. He had buried himself alive but his spirit was fighting back; it still wanted to breathe. It refused to die.
He could no longer find refuge in this stone mausoleum, because she was here in Otranto and she was everywhere.
She scaled his walls and came to him in his dreams. He saw her face in every crowd.
She was behind his every confession of despair, anger, ingratitude …
of impure thoughts. The feelings rushed at him in a flailing, screaming constant assault on the senses and he couldn’t stop them.
Seeing her had been like a drowning man’s last gasp, a final clutch at life.
She was a rose in the desert: fresh and fragrant, delicate, but also strong.
Because she had thorns as well, and she was intent on keeping him back.
He told himself it was just a walk. There was no sin in wanting to feel the sun on his face, to warm his bones away from the cold, cold stone.
Savelli had advised this. Urged it, even. Fresh air and sunlight …
People nodded at him as he walked by, through the streets of the new quarter where modern apartment blocks seemed to spring up almost every week.
Cars were parked nose to tail along the roads, bunches of scooters left askew outside garages and back doors.
He heard music playing from the bars. Most tourists stuck to the historic centre, and it was the locals who congregated here; he heard their sullen shouts at one another from doorways or across balconies, as they stood smoking cigarettes.
Some of the prostitutes were out already and he sped up as he walked past. His cassock didn’t inspire reverence in them but mischief, as if he was a challenge to be overcome – they made a point of swaying their hips and squeezing their cleavages for him, especially when they got a closer look at his face.
‘For shame!’ they cried after him angrily, as if he was denying womankind.
He crossed the street, feeling the wind pick up and his pulse quicken as he drew closer to the water. It glistened in small winking blue pockets at the ends of streets.
He walked until he left the blocks of the new neighbourhood behind and the land spread out into a patchwork of fields, groves and copses. The beach lay beyond a stand of eucalyptus and fir trees and he crossed the open grassland, aware he was conspicuous here in his long seminarian’s habit.
The white sandy bay was broad, curving around to low-lying rocky points at each end.
Even at this time, as the sun was descending rapidly, there were still plenty of people lying out on towels, others on sunbeds with orange umbrellas.
The water was pale like celadon, lacking the dazzling intensity that had characterized Tricase Porto in such unapologetic terms; but it was clean and no doubt warm in the shallows.
He recognized the tribal activity here: the anziani floating as they talked; the ragazzi jumping off the rocks.
Mothers on the sand, building sandcastles and …
He found her. Rafaella was sitting on a blanket, towelling off a little girl, the droplets flying off her like she was a dog in full shake. They were laughing about something and the sound of her voice carried to him, light and percussive.
Everything in his body slackened. His muscles, his soul …
Running into her the other day had been a karmic shock for which he wasn’t prepared, but to come here, knowing he would find her …
Because it wasn’t just a walk. It was a temptation he had been unable to resist. She was refusing to see him and this might be his only chance to rest his eyes upon her, to nourish his soul with a closing look that could last the ages.
He stopped behind a eucalyptus, only half hidden, but telling himself there was no reason for anyone to be peering into the trees here. He watched her and it felt as if time itself was unwinding, the spring on a watch spooling the hands backwards to the easy days of their Tricase summers.
She was his best friend. Rafaella Parisi, the girl he had known and loved his entire life.
He had beaten her at running races; she had beaten him at chess.
She had taught him how to dive deeper; he had taught her Roman swear words and slang.
They had been separated for too many months in every year, and yet everything momentous that happened to him was only truly celebrated once he had shared it with her.
He remembered his jealousy as they’d moved into adolescence and Romola’s door had been shut on him while the girls gossiped about boys; how he would stand at the door straining to hear who she would mention.
And how, when she grew tall and lanky, he teased her and said she looked like a boy, because he knew she wanted to be petite like Gina and he was terrified that his attraction to her would be revealed.
He moved closer, unable to stop himself as he watched her recreate the idyllic scenes of their own childhood.
She was so good with children, a natural.
He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t yet a mother.
Savelli had told him she was a teacher now and it pleased him because she’d always been too clever, too enquiring, to settle for serving drinks and cooking dinners.
There was a little boy, around ten or so, organizing the bigger kids into a circle as they threw a ball around.
A young woman was helping Rafaella with the younger ones, drying them off from their swim and trying to poke skinny arms through sleeves.
There were a lot of failed attempts, the clothes sticking to their damp skin, ill-coordinated limbs at the wrong angles as their giggles drifted over the sand to where he stood hidden.
He felt himself sinking into the halcyon scene, his body remembering these soft, comforted feelings, and had to forcibly draw himself back.
Because it was also a mirage. To a stranger’s eye, the two women could have been sisters, sitting on the beach together with their children; but the nanny was paid and the children … borrowed.
This, this right here, he reminded himself, was the fallibility of the feeling world. Things were never as they seemed. Lies and deception were everywhere. Death might lie around every corner—
‘Go and get it, Rosa!’ he heard one of the children cry, and he looked up to see the older boy pointing in his direction. The ball was rolling his way, at speed.
Rafaella looked over too, squinting as she watched the young girl run onto the grass, arms outstretched to catch it though it was far ahead of her. Cosimo hid himself behind the trunk, but although it offered some cover …
‘Not too far, Rosa!’ she called.
Cosimo held his breath as the ball rolled past his feet and came to a stop just beyond him.
He couldn’t kick it back without being spotted, but if the child saw him here, hiding behind the tree, she might scream and then …
She stopped running suddenly and he froze.
Was he visible around the slim trunk? Was his cassock caught in the breeze?
‘Brother!’ the little girl cried excitedly.
He stiffened, realizing he’d been caught; that despite his best efforts to remain hidden, he had been found out anyway. Was it a sign? God’s will that they were supposed to meet? Just like they had met the other day? They needed to talk. There was so much to say.
He began to step out—
‘Rosa!’ said a familiar voice as Alessio Savelli moved across Cosimo’s field of vision, stopping just in front of him and holding out the ball. ‘Is this yours?’
‘Si!’ she cried, taking it happily and unceremoniously, running back towards her brothers and sisters on the beach.
Cosimo felt himself sag as the moment passed as quickly as it had come. His subterfuge was still safe. God’s will remained unknown.
He looked up and met Savelli’s eyes. ‘… How did you know?’
Savelli fixed him with a knowing look, but he shrugged. ‘I just thought I might find you here.’