Three-Cornered Halo (9 page)

The Mass began.

El Patriarca sang the Mass. Robed in black, before an altar hung with black, he moved, a grey man with a clever, worldly face, pacing slowly through the age-old ritual, lingering over words unchanged through centuries, in a language dead to change. There was a rustle of pages as the congregation sought through their Missals for the Epistle for the Day, following the Latin in the Juanese translations alongside. He passed, bowing, across the altar front, to the Gospel side. An assistant lifted the great book from the Epistle corner and carried it, supporting its weight against his own forehead, down into the sanctuary; and paused before the Grand Duke.

The Cellini thurible hung with its handful of glowing coals before the two prie-Dieu. The Grand Duke rose, took incense in a golden spoon and sprinkled a little on the coals; and when the sweet-scented smoke began to rise in its thin, grey thread, went forward and, kneeling before the Book, lifted the thurible on its sliding chains, tossed it a little forward, twice, and then up high, so that the smoke billowed out and all about the Book; and, repeating the movement three times, rose, bowed, and retired, moving slowly backwards to his prie-Dieu. The Gospel was read, the celebrant and assisting priests sat down in their places all about the altar, with folded hands. The thurible hung dormant again, on its stand. The Arcivescovo stumbled up the pulpit steps.

The Sermone de Defunto as preached upon this fiesta, is also traditional, and to the Juanese almost the best part of the day—a thundering denunciation of their lustful lives and deliciously terrifying threats of hell-fire awaiting them all too soon. Not that they believe a word of it; the good God who made His sons vigorous and His daughters beautiful, is kind and loving and will forgive; but old childhood fears prevail and though the Archbishop's voice had of recent years lost much of its ranting power, still the familiar words could send a shiver through the soul and many a firm purpose of amendment had been known to last right through the day of merry-making that followed, till the kindly moonlight came.… It was a considerable disappointment, therefore, to find El Anitra not giving them the Sermone de Defunto at all.

For the Archbishop was speaking not of the dead but of the living; not of the end but of the beginning; not of death but of birth. How great was the sin, cried the Archbishop raising a shaking emaciated hand, naming no names, of a woman who out of vanity and selfishness denied life to her children …! How great the abomination of passions gratified for no sake but their own! A man and a woman, a husband and wife, be they great or humble, rich or poor, came together for the procreation of their children; and to deny them being was lust and shame and a sin before the Lord.… The Juanese with their happy, teeming families and well-stocked Orfano del Innocenti, listened in astonishment. But soon a word was spoken in the body of the church, a name was named in a whisper that licked round the congregation like a flame. La Bellissima heard the low hiss of the sibilants and lifted her lovely head for a moment but gave no other sign. The Grand Duke sat rigid and silent in his chair. The Archbishop moved on to his second hobby-horse. It was the deep wish of the people of San Juan, that the name of their island saint be forwarded
without further delay
to Rome.… No one—no one, insisted the old man, forcing up his quavering old voice to a sort of shriek, had the right to deny so pious and proper a wish.…

The Grand Duke waited until the Mass was technically over; and then, not waiting for the Dismissal, rose to his splendid height, put out his hand to the Grand Duchess and led her slowly out—slowly, magnificently, deliberately pacing, not across the altar front and to the side door as is the Grand Ducal custom, but straight down through the body of the church, the people falling back, awed and amazed, to let them pass: down the long nave, out through the great West door and on to the cathedral steps. His carriage, elaborately carved and gilded, had been hastily brought round and he handed La Bellissima in. El Gerente de Politio shouted an order, his men stamped and shuffled their dirty white gym-shoes, slapped silver-chased blunderbusses with filthy brown hands. The carriage drove off. Up at the High Altar, the Mass went quietly on to its conclusion. Alone before Juanita's glass coffin, the Arcivescovo knelt with outstretched arm, and prepared for the terror to come.

*
In the old days of humility before God, it had been the tradition for the Juanese Grand Dukes to serve as altar boys at Mass. With the steady maintainence of their hereditary immensity, however, and the consequent inconvenience of having them lumbering about, ill-disciplined, in the circumscribed space of the sanctuary before the altar, the duties whittled down to a single offering of incense immediately prior to the reading of the Gospel, before the Canon of the Mass. The thurible, a treasure preserved for this purpose alone, is a thing of remarkable beauty attributed to Cellini and the pious loot of El Pirata himself; handed down from generation to generation and exclusively in the charge of the current Arcivescovo, whose care the cathedral is.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE
vagaries of the British on (conducted) tour have been described elsewhere. ‘Gay ones, jolly ones, vulgar ones; refined ones looking down upon the jolly ones and hoping they wouldn't shame them by whipping out funny hats.… Easy-going ones. Complaining ones. Experienced ones. Robust ones who drank Water out of taps and confounded the experienced ones by not going down with bouts of dysentery, anxious ones who refused all shell-fish, raw fruit and unbottled beverages and went down with dysentery before they had even started; neurotic ones, turning pale together at the sight of heaped dishes of death-dealing green figs and peaches, hearty ones calling loudly for lo nachurelle and assuring one another that a smattering of French would take one all over the world.… Pretty ones, plain ones, downright repellent ones.…'

The Major's grouppa, aboard the Bellomare's privately hired vaporetto, formed a fairly representative collection. They stood about in chatty little groups, for all the world, cried Mr Cecil, like the Noyades, bound together in bundles and spinning down the Loire to Nantes: only they were chugging, with much steaming and hooting, across the five-mile wide stretch from San Juan to the satellite island of Tenebros. There was a ponderous lady novelist in search of a setting for yet another volume of childhood dark doings and subsequent in-growing remorse: all written in language so obscure as to force even the most literate to read only between the lines. There were the inevitable half dozen widows whose husbands had overworked themselves to a premature death, apparently for no reason than to enable their relicts to console their loss with expensive trips abroad. There was the gentleman who, having cheerfully invested two hundred pounds in this outing of pleasure, now made himself miserable night and day, lest he be cheated out of a penny's worth (he had a curious walk, the feet straddled widely apart and was known to the group as Fuddyduddy); and there were two ladies suffering from stomach trouble who always did suffer from stomach trouble when they went abroad but who went abroad religiously, year after year, and proudly boasted the capitals they had been sick in; and a spinster aunt with her handsome niece whose chances of marriage she was, from some obscure reasons of jealousy, though devoted to the niece, resolutely destroying: Grim and Gruff they were named—Mr Cecil had met them on a previous Odyssey Tour. And there were the Bilsons.

Mr and Mrs Bilson were known as the Back-Homes. He was a builder, back home in California, and they were on their first trip to the beautiful continent of Europe; but displeased to find so little poverty there, for it was well known that Europe was supported entirely by U.S. dollars and they could not approve the general air of well-being and bonhomie. The Major, ever anxious to oblige, was always on the lookout for a barefoot child for them but those they saw looked depressingly as if they went without shoes because they didn't like shoes. Mrs Bilson was pledged to give a lecture to her Women's Club back home and exercised exclusively with the collection of data for this assignment; Mr Bilson had not yet recovered from the lack of initiative shown by the Italians in the matter of the leaning tower of Pisa. They were happy, however, in the knowledge that everything they saw in the way of Art was either faked or frankly a copy, the real stuff being all back home in the U.S., centred largely upon the Forest Lawns Cemetery, California. They were tactful and courteous about it; but absolutely firm.

The hotel had put up a picnic lunch for its party and all was madly gay. Mr. Cecil, dressed to the nines in Juanese costume (modified to suit in the workrooms of Christophe et Cie.) was the very spirit of fiesta, darting from one group to another, retailing his joke about the eight-nooser, trying out his Restorationese before its London debut. The Major also was in splendid form, surrounded by his grouppa, the admiration of the six widows in his brass-buttoned blazer and a curious little round hat made of stitched white linen. He had intended locking himself into the ship's excusado and hurriedly mugging up bits about Tenebrossa; but this proving impracticable, for the single apartment was available to ladies and gentlemen alike and not very agreeable to either, had contented himself with a couple of stiff Juanellos and a Quiet Talk with Hat who was apt to interrupt without ceremony. Thus fortified, he gathered his party about him—others might listen-in if they wished to, the Major was entirely complacent—and, balancing himself on a bollard above the heads of the crowd, began a little speech. “H'rm, h'rm. Few-words-'bout-today's-expedition. Island of Tenebrossa, small island, five miles off San Juan el Pirata. Old custom, two hundred years old—go there, hang a lot of convicts: dare say you've read it all up in your guide-books? And the custom goes on to this day. They don't really hang the fellers now,” added the Major reassuringly, respectful of the delicate nerves of the memsahibs. “Got a sort of harness now, worn round their middles, dangle up there quite comfy, just pretending. Jump about a bit, though, as though they were hanging. Disagreeable business, hanging.…”

“Back home in the States …”

“… nearly as disagreeable as electrocution, I wouldn't be surprised,” said the Major, neatly. But it had thrown him. “Er—where was I?”

“You were going to explain about the hoods,” suggested Miss Cockrill in a voice of silk.

“Ah, yes, hoods. These chaps brought over here by a special vaporetto—Vaporetto of Death, it's called: say nine of 'em. All in hoods and sort of nightgowns; you know, à la Kloo Klux Clan. Nobody knowing who was who. Thing is, one of 'em was going to get off, only no one knew which—feller didn't know, himself. Forced to do a dance, just sort of shuffling around, you know: and shuffling's the word, because that's just what they were doing, shuffling themselves like a pack of cards and the other fellers, the hangmen fellers, just strung up the next that came along and the next.… Bets going on like billy-ho, down in the arena below the hanging rock—who'll get away with it? and relatives hopping like sandfleas, of course, as each one went up, wondering, Is that our Willie? Finally—say nine fellers, like I said: eight hanging there, one left. Poor chap wearing the hood and all that, still didn't know what was happening: suddenly got hold of, shoved into a coffin, coffin fastened down, stood on end under the gallows—opened, hood pulled off, feller ‘rose from the dead.' General sentiment of Don't do it again, and he got off scot free. If,” said the Major with a rare moment of sentience, “you can call it scot free.”

A boy came round, piping mellifluously, with a tray of wares: limonado, Juanello, carafes of the filthy red wine made on the island which, to the amazement of the native, the touristi were apparently willing to pay for and drink; and snacks—biscotti and toasti, and pizzi of fresh-baked dough strewn with anchovy and herbs and tomato, the hot cheese bubbling over all. There was a sharp argument with Fuddy-duddy who thought the hotel should be paying out for this refreshment, ending as usual in the Major diving a hand into his own tight pockets with mutterings about anything-for-peace.… Fuddyduddy, having won his point and made everyone unhappy and embarrassed, then said he didn't want any, anyway, it was the principle. Mr Bilson said that back home they would just drop into a drug-store and everything there would be covered in cellophane. Mrs Bilson made a note in her large black book, ‘Isl. Tennerbrozzer, people hung in old days, sandwiches on boat, flies.' The woman novelist looked searchingly into the limpid eyes of the little boy carrying the tray. Miss Cockrill said that now perhaps Major Bull could go on?

“But that's all,” said Major Bull.

“What about the dances?”

“Oh, well, yes, the dances.” He gave her a look of reproach. “Yes. Well. Lot of dancing on the island. Everyone dead keen.”

“I was reading last night,” said Miss Cockrill in a loud cool, determined voice, “that nowadays dances commemorate all these old customs the Major has described to us. The young people dress up and execute them; like our Morris dancing, for example—er—back home. There is a special dance from the landing-place to the rock, the ‘Dance to the Gallows'…”