Chapter 37 Cosimo
Cosimo
The sliding panel to his left drew back, revealing a silhouetted profile through the mesh. Cosimo stared ahead at the wooden door.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ Brother Barbieri said in a sombre tone, but Cosimo could hear the curve of a smile in his voice. ‘It has been one week and four days since my last confession. Father, I have something important I wish to confess.’
‘Go on,’ Cosimo murmured.
‘I met a woman a few days ago – a married woman – and I have had bad thoughts, Father.’
Cosimo rolled his eyes. He had thought Barbieri might at least start small, say with feelings of jealousy, or kicking a cat.
They all knew the parishioners generally rotated their sins from a longer list. It didn’t do to bring too many, but they needed to have enough to appear contrite; three was generally agreed to be a good number.
‘Have you acted on them?’
‘Not with her, Father, no. But privately, I … I have struggled to remain chaste.’
‘Is that all—?’
‘No! No! No!’
Cosimo jumped as a disembodied voice to his right side suddenly started up.
‘Come out at once!’
Cosimo let himself out of the confession booth just as Barbieri was getting up from his kneeling position on the ledge outside.
Alessio Savelli met his gaze as the three of them waited for the priest to come round from the far side too and join them.
The cathedral was quiet but not empty, and they had come downstairs to the older confession booth in the crypt.
Father Polacco appeared, looking weary. ‘Brother Franchetti, that was the opportunity to ask what he meant by “struggled”. Did he remain chaste or not? This is fundamental to what, Brother Savelli?’
Savelli straightened up. ‘Matter and form, Father.’
‘Precisely. Matter and form. For serious sins, the details must be given – the matter – and it is your job to elicit them – the form – for the sin to be validly confessed and the sacrament of penance given.’
‘Yes, Father,’ Cosimo nodded. He knew perfectly well about matter and form, but he also knew Barbieri was trying to taunt him, having failed to force him to listen to the details of his latest temptation over dinner last night and again at breakfast this morning.
The priest gave Barbieri a worried glance. ‘Was that a true sin to which you were confessing, Brother Barbieri?’
‘Of course not, Father. It was just made up for this practice session.’
Cosimo kept his face impassive, but he could feel Savelli twitching anxiously beside him.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Father Polacco said with relief.
‘Brother Franchetti, you must stop skirting around the issues the penitent is confessing. You need to look into yourself. To err is human. If we are to help, we must engage, not rush through as if we are ticking off a to-do list.’ He looked at Savelli, who was watching with a concerned expression.
‘And don’t look so alarmed, Brother Savelli.
Taking confession is like being pecked by ducks … annoying, but perfectly harmless.’
To everyone’s relief, the cathedral bells began to peal.
The priest sighed. ‘Allora, that’s enough for today. We’ll try again tomorrow. But Franchetti, think on what I’m telling you, please. We keep going round in circles with this issue.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Hm. Now go to lunch, all of you.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ they said in unison, taking the ancient stone steps two at a time and heading for the door that led back to the seminary.
They walked out into the quad, a light breeze scurrying at their long hems, and Cosimo was suddenly reminded of standing on a balcony in shorts and bare feet, looking out to sea …
It was a snapshot from another life, so unimportant at the time, and yet the memory of it took his breath away.
He tried to bring himself back to the present moment: walking past orange trees, behind high walls.
‘You’ll go to hell for lying to him,’ Savelli said with a wry look.
‘Not if I add lying to my list of sins at my next actual confession,’ Barbieri grinned. ‘Besides, I need to take any opportunity I can to confess. He’d have a fit of apoplexy if he knew what she’s really been doing to me—’
Cosimo looked at him sharply.
‘In my dreams!’ Barbieri laughed. ‘Relax.’
‘How you made it this far I’ll never know.’
‘I always say, observing chastity is about resisting desire, not denying it exists,’ he grinned. ‘But if you’d seen her, you’d be questioning your life choices too, believe me.’
‘Aside from the fact you’re a novice priest, she’s a married woman—’
‘Oh, but they’re the best – everyone says it. We’re forbidden fruit and so are they.’
It was true. Women being attracted to men of the cloth wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon.
Some liked the ‘challenge’ of trying to get a priest to break his vows; others fell for the emotional intensity that could bloom instead when the physical realm was denied.
Cosimo certainly sometimes felt stares lingering upon him in the cathedral, and he was careful never to lift his head and make eye contact.
Not that he could ever be tempted.
‘Barbieri!’ Some of the other brothers were sitting on the grass under the orange trees, beckoning him over.
‘See you later,’ he winked at them, peeling away and crossing the quad to join them.
Cosimo watched him go, feeling his irritation stirred.
Barbieri’s flippancy felt like a middle finger to Cosimo’s more earnest ambitions.
He was light-hearted and unserious, erring on the side of irreverence, as if all this was part of a slightly ridiculous experiment which would soon end; whereas Cosimo was here because the wider world had failed him.
There was nothing left for him but this.
But Cosimo also knew the reason he disliked Barbieri so much was because he reminded him of himself – his old self – and he was jealous that Barbieri could still somehow exist as a red-blooded, three-dimensional man in this place.
‘Are you and Caputo going back out with the doctor this afternoon?’ he asked Savelli.
‘No. We’ve got a meeting with the teacher again today to discuss the next steps for the children she took in yesterday.
We’ve gone through the records now and there’s no other family here; the father’s gone missing.
She’s adamant they can’t go into the orphanage but it doesn’t look like there’ll be any choice about it now. ’
‘Six children, you said?’
‘Yes. Although three are in hospital with pneumonia currently, but they should recover well. It won’t be long before they’re released.’
‘There’s not many people who would take on six children.’
‘Exactly! She’s not just got the face of an angel, she’s got the heart of one too. She’s so sweet and gentle and …’ He stopped, as if becoming aware of Cosimo’s curious look. Had he really said ‘face of an angel’? He cleared his throat. ‘Plus, she looks like she can afford it.’
‘I thought you said she was a teacher?’
‘Teacher with a rich husband.’
‘Does she have children of her own?’
‘Not that she’s mentioned,’ Savelli shrugged.
They opened the door into the seminary and headed down a long corridor, lined with portraits of the popes, towards the refectory.
Savelli glanced at him. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask if you would go to the next meeting for me?’
‘Instead of you, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
They turned into the dining hall. Three hundred seminarians, some as young as fourteen, all wearing their black house cassocks and green sashes, were eating at long tables and talking in low voices. Silence wasn’t stipulated here, but nor did anyone assert themselves in any way.
Savelli looked uncomfortable. He was never self-doubting and rarely prone to introspection but he seemed apprehensive now. ‘I just think this case needs someone who can handle it properly. You’re better at this sort of thing than me.’
‘Well, that’s not true,’ Cosimo said as they sat down opposite one another. One of the first-year novices was already approaching with their meals. They waited for him to set down the plates. ‘… Thank you.’
They began to eat – fava beans and chicory.
Cosimo watched Savelli. ‘Is it because of the teacher? You’re attracted to her?’
Savelli wouldn’t meet his eyes as he ate. ‘No, I’m not,’ he protested. ‘I’m just not … neutral to her. And I don’t think it’s helpful to put myself in the way of temptation.’
Cosimo knew his friend struggled with the requirement for chastity in particular.
It was difficult to adapt to the demands of the Church when it hadn’t been his personal choice to come here.
Cosimo had come through the gates at a sprint, seeking refuge as he tried to escape his sense of guilt and loss, but it had never been the same for Alessio, who would have chosen many other lives before this one: if not a racing-car driver, then a soldier in the Noble Guard or an Olympic skier.
Alessio had once told him, during one of their late-night talks, that being asked to live without desire felt like being robbed of his soul.
‘Listen, just because we’re in here, wearing these –’ Cosimo indicated their cassocks – ‘doesn’t mean we’re invulnerable to the baser, messier elements of being a man.
God knows I never want to say Barbieri is right, but he wasn’t wrong just now.
It’s not about denying desire but resisting it.
’ He knew none of them were alone in their struggles in that regard.
Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep he heard sounds in the night, muffled groans from beneath blankets.
Cosimo kept his voice low. ‘At the end of the day, we still feel, and that’s a good thing, because we’re alive and we’re men – not statues. Not saints. We’re not immune to those feelings because we’re in here. We just have to find a way of living with them.’
‘So you’re saying I should face her down?’
‘You make her sound terrifying,’ Cosimo grinned.