San Silvestro
In telling her this, I made of her a diabolist
I will note that her relationship with the divine was inextricably sexual. Her carnal fantasies she revealed to me, as she revealed all her sins, for I was her confessor. It is in the nature of Man to sin and then sin again. And if they are of our flock, this cycle is unconstrained by repentance, which is to the temporal almost an appurtenance and to the spiritual anything but. I once expressed bitterness to others of my calling regarding this. I was told it is arrogance, approaching blasphemy, to have higher expectations of our sheep than the Lord.
Her angel would appear before her hale and calm and more beautiful than those many statues she sculpted of him, his face and body inspiring, though imperfectly, her saints and cherubim. She was adamant about that. That she could capture only a dim projection of him in her art. They would copulate; and this would both renew her infatuation and diminish her piety - you will understand that there is no contradiction in this. In every case, she insisted she was not dreaming. For if he was a dream, she reasoned, that would be proof her mind could fully contain him. And if it could do that, then so would her art.
Aquinas wrote that the angels can weave a form by condensing air. Whatever aspect they take in this world is not truly them. They can appear to eat but cannot eat. They can seem to touch but do not touch. They do not multiply as men do. If they perform such base acts as she claimed hers did, it is not out of desire but of will, towards an end. Aquinas thought demons alone would attempt such trickery. That it speaks only of the perversity of the fallen. In telling her this, I made of her a diabolist. For when she next accepted his temptations, she forsook her faith, forsook me, and began to believe her lover was Lucifer.
Though he spoke little (she told me, and did not give a name), Lucifer is the most beautiful of the angels. And she did not think there could be any being in heaven or hell that could match her nocturnal visitor. Thus, to her he was Lucifer. And finding him beautiful, she could not help but think him good. Such is the weakness of women.
In each cycle of repentance, lust, renunciation, and guilt, he would appear only once. Always, she ceased praying immediately, reserving her silent pleas for her Lucifer, who would become as a husband to her in her imagining. One night, and only one, would destroy a faith we spent months rebuilding. For a time after a visit, she felt he was walking with her, her hand in his. And she would abuse herself while thinking of those times they were truly together, or what she imagined was his invisible body beside her own, or the merest susurrus which became to her as his gentle whispers. But such fantasies are no replacement for form. And after a time she would grow jealous of her incubus, who she imagined took other lovers each night before returning to her. After months she became despondent, then the guilt would come and she would return to God, return to me.
She did not know me then by face. For she was not of my church. She came to me only for confession and always with the curtain drawn. She did so, so she could speak in her native language rather than her imperfect Italian. For I served in San Silvestro, that church Pope Leo XIII granted the English-speaking laity of Rome; and she was an American. But also, I think, because the judgement of the truly faceless man cannot sting. And yet, and here I reveal myself the sinner and you my confessor, I was not so disinterested as that.
She spoke of her art in confession. It was easy to track her down, to admire her from afar, more so as much of her custom was from the church. I found her beautiful. And finding her beautiful, would it not be natural to think her mine? Such is the weakness of men.
It is expected of a priest to wear clerical dress whenever in public. It will not surprise any student of men that this is a rule not always followed. And I was no exception. Having in my wardrobe a waistcoat, high collar and cravat of the type fashionable at the time for the literary sort of gentleman. And in these garments I would often walk the streets of Rome as an ordinary young man. Most often I would drink and read at some taverna or purchase books that a priest might get a second glance for purchasing.
On the morning I first saw her, three days after that first confession which robbed me of many hours of sleep, I clothed myself in this manner and made my way to Via Margutta, that artists’ enclave, where I was informed by a friend that she had a studio. This friend often aided the wealthy in commissioning funerary monuments. And I asked if he knew of any female American sculptors. He said there was but one of any talent in all of Rome. In this way, I learned of her address.
Via Margutta, the centre of Rome, the least Roman part of her. This street of stables and foreigners and foreign artists. The stench of mules and their excrement - so universal in that time before the automobile as to be beyond remark - was there remarkable. Cobbled streets lined with stuccoed buildings, structures of arches and imitation brickwork so artfully done - the Italian tradesmen lied with an integrity paradoxically absent from the honest work of their humble compatriots in Dublin, that city of my birth. So for all the stench, for all the muck and poverty, there was a beauty there, of soft yellows and verdant ivy and fresh cobblestones.
To be a sculptor then was to make an exhibit of your process as much as your work. Tour guides, those ciceroni, treated studios as attractions and no small amount of custom was acquired in this way. For this reason, every studio had a portion open to the public, filled with completed works and carvers copying the artist’s plaster, a mould of the original in clay, into marble in their mechanical way, by means of the macchinetta di punta (little pointing machine) which allows the craftsmen to match their master’s plaster with great exactitude.
It is common for people to be disappointed to learn that a sculptor does not just take a chisel to stone and pull from within it a masterpiece. I conjecture, though historians will deny this fancy of mine, that even Michelangelo and his ancient progenitors worked in a similar way, with some mechanism they elide. I accuse Michelangelo of lying and the ancients of sharing some of our genius in production.
Whatever the case of those that inspired her, she worked in the way I have described. So in that portion of the studio I found myself in (a former stable) a carver of around forty worked with an apprentice who could almost have doubled as the model for the statue which he and his master were copying into stone. They nodded as I entered but did not speak. Some tourists, talking in German, and one with a clear French accent, watched them work.
I wandered around the small studio, and noticed there that every statue was of a man. Noticed there the face of her lover. That is, in their composite was suggested a visage beyond them all. A primogenitor I knew to be her angel. That being who (it being three days since I mentioned only a demonic angel would lie with a woman) she would soon claim to be the highest of the fallen.
When I judged the pair of carvers wholly immersed in their work, I made my way to the back of the studio where there was a portal to a small staircase. Walking up it, avoiding even the barest creak of the wooden steps, I found myself in a short hall - and at its end a room whose door had a keyhole, through which I spied. And there she was. Of twenty-two at most, her hair of a red rare outside of the country of my birth, tied into a tail in a manner both practical and becoming, her skin pale, only the barest crescent of her neck uncovered by her waistcoat, her small hands slick with dark clay, her face radiant and clear, her eyes betraying that mixture of keen wit and slight madness almost required of an artist. And beside her was a vast armature, a skeleton of wood and wire, only half of which was covered in clay. This she was clearly shaping into an angel, but as of then it was but a crude golem.
It struck me as almost sacrilegious to transmute the base into the divine in this way. God made Adam out of clay. And men are low creatures. As to the material of the angels, scripture makes no claims. The Muhammadans say He wove them of light. And this seems slightly more appropriate. Aquinas says they are of spirit. But what is spirit? That which is not mundane. Whatever that is, it is not the base earth from which Man was born; of that, I am certain.
This is made more obvious now my flesh betrays me and death approaches, her final work standing proudly in my San Silvestro, unsullied, his alabaster immune to those depredations time and sin have wrought on me. It can’t truly be marble. This seems impossible to me. Could it be him or some aspect of him standing static for these long forty years? A corner of Lucifer protruding into our world in the shape of a beautiful man? I can almost fancy his expression changes when I am not looking. I can almost hear him now in every susurrus, as she did. The temporal world grows thin around me and the spiritual beckons in that coquettish way a word does when on the edge of one’s recollection.
For forty years I have lived with a turmoil, growing as a tumour within me. For forty years - and first stirring in that moment, born as I watched her through that keyhole. Her confessions came alive within me on appreciating both her form and that form implied by her art. In a moment of sobriety, I retreated. My mind on fire as I ran first from the studio and then Via Margutta, returning to my apartment haunted by temptations.
A lustful thought arising is not a sin. A lustful thought indulged is. I found myself, then, pacing my apartment, attempting to marshal myself, attempting to achieve an equanimity that had previously been so natural to me.
Our promise of celibacy is an exacting one. Great continence is expected of us, and even that abuse of the self is as verboten as any other act. Until that time, this was not so burdensome to me as it was to others of my calling. I thought myself immune to desire. I was used to mewling confessions of pawing fornications. Therein, many of my compatriots found their own temptations. Always, I was unmoved, even vaguely disgusted by the lowly nature of our flock.
My lack of interest in the carnal seemed proof to me of my calling. Assured me I was right to forsake a wife and her corresponding pleasures. And yet she lay with an angel. One of those creatures who had always fascinated me. And yet she was beautiful. And so was he. From the intriguing perversity of their congress, I could find no respite nor would I allow myself any relief.
It was in this state of duress, which I hid so well, that she found me again for confession some three weeks later.
She is gorgeous, my San Silvestro, though no longer innocent, if ever a church has been. She has seen much. But now she is the home of him. Now he stands nude in a lowly corner, a chain around his left ankle, stroking his hair with his right hand as he contemplates his fall with an expression of stoicism, that same infinite pride which undid him now as a buttress to the weight of his infinite loss. I brought him here, even before I convinced my superior to purchase him. Summoned him to this plane with my corpuscle of sin. It was for my sake he seduced her, I know this now. A future cardinal’s soul. That is what he sought.
What is an artist compared to a cardinal? I have risen far since my youth. Yet I never left Rome. Never left my San Silvestro. Never left him who sullies her. Who mocks this holy place in his stillness. Whose perfect face I have held a chisel to so many times, a hammer ready to strike. Yet never could I bring myself to do it. For I knew utterly he would then counter me directly. I would break some pact that would place me within the purview of the spiritual before my time, as she did. He would end this farce, that pretence of being stone. And I would have to choose as I have avoided choosing all these years. Choose between God and his disgraced servant. Between heaven and hell. Between the teachings of this church which has succoured me and that Gnostic inversion which tempts me.
I scream my turmoil now in this letter. For this I apologize. I am writing quickly in my fevered end. Writing in full view of him, this body weak, these hands old. Scrawling on papers I have laid on the marble floor of my church, surrounded by candles with their dripping wax. He watches me when I am not watching. He moves in the corner of my eye. Truths become evident in the twilight of life. As the veil drops, one sees the present clearly and the past too.
I can almost hear her now. Hear her as she was on our second meeting. That voice such a delicate thing. Her absurd American accent only sullying it slightly, it interrupting me as I sat in a near stupor in the confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession,” she said. “My thoughts are impure. I struggle still with temptations. I struggle with them despite my conclusions.”
“Your conclusions, my child?”
“It is as you said. And forgive me, but I know you are the same priest as before. He is a demon, as you say. Yet he tempts me. My heart is broken. I mourn him. I wish for nothing more than his return. Lust. That is my sin. It is for that I ask your pardon.”
“A lustful thought is not a sin, my child. A lustful thought indulged is. Do you understand?”
“Then I indulge, Father.”
“I see,” I said. “Then you must avoid those occasions of sin.”
“I do not understand.”
“Those circumstances that lead you to temptation.”
“I am tempted when I sleep, Father. When I dream, when I sketch, when I sculpt, when in a crowd, when among friends, when I am alone and think of him. All occasions are occasions of sin for me.”
“Then repent and pray, my child. In faith, you will find reprieve. And-”
I was silent for a moment.
“Yes, Father?”
Half of me feels I leapt off a precipice then from which there could be no return, the remainder of my life just that brief sensation one feels before meeting the bottom of the abyss. Yet there is always repentance. There is always redemption, the other half of me says. That half of me that still belongs to God.
“From now on, confess to me and me alone,” I said. “The others, they will think you mad.”
“And you don’t?” she asked.
“I believe you, my child.”
And I did. Whatever you doubt of this account. You will not doubt that.
A year passed as I described in my introduction: her alternating between her faith and damnation, heartbreak at her lover’s absence leading to guilt - and this guilt her return. Her contrition, though always temporary, was genuine. And were she to die soon after confession, I knew her soul would be saved. She would be welcomed by the Host without compunction. Such was the magnitude of her vacillations. Such is the mercy of our faith, a faith which would welcome me, too, even now, if I would only let it. And maybe I will. The doctrine of perfect contrition grants me this escape - grants me this even as the hemlock numbs my legs, prevents me now from running to another of my calling for a true confession. This mortal sin not so mortal.
A year passed, but the last quarter of it she was absent. This was the longest period of absence since I met her. And I began to wonder if she would ever return. Every night, I waited. Thoughts of her constant as I went through the motions with my laity, boring sheep with their boring sins. She did not return to me, so I went again to her studio, to that staircase, to that hall, to that keyhole. And there I found only him - not in clay but in stone. When I opened the door and stood before him, I could not help but think she had succeeded. I could not help but think she had captured him.
“When I was a boy,” I whispered, “I thought it was unjust I was born a man and not created an angel. It seemed unfair I was denied that power and rectitude. This was my first heresy. It led me to study theology. It led me to redemption. It led me to God.”
He looked at me proudly. He looked at me as he always looks. With his beauty and alien intelligence. With his perfection, with his utter disdain for the Lord and his works.
“If we are favoured over the angels, it does not always seem so. And yet you envy us. Or this is the teaching of our church.”
And his expression seemed to change. Change to an almost mocking smirk. Changed in the way it does now, changing completely without changing at all.
“What is she to you? What do you want of her?” I said. He did not reply. But he was listening. I tell you, he was listening.
“She is not yours. And you, you are not hers!” I said. And then I ran, ran as I did before, frighted as much of myself as her incubus.
For it was then my crime first occurred to me. It was then I saw the means of her salvation. If you guess, you guess correctly. If you despise, you do so with justice. You understand then why I have kept this secret in my breast all these years. Why I have kept this sin within me. Why I have risked my very soul for the sake of this secrecy. Why I have distrusted even that seal of confession, which seal I break now. For we are men. That aspect of us that is holy is always in some sense a pretence. What am I if not proof of this? What is this cardinal if not that?
And so I waited some months. I do not recall the number. But she came as she always came. This time near in tears. Once more heartbroken. Once more needing nothing more than forgiveness, nothing more than my reprieve.
“I have strayed again, Father,” she said.
“In which manner, my child?”
“You recognize me. You know in which manner,” she said.
“I do. But it is not about me.”
“Very well,” she said.
And we talked as we always talked. Like a well-rehearsed play. She of that type of actor who truly becomes whatever heroine she portrays. And she left holy, her tears dry, her bearing innocent.
I felt the weight, then, of a stiletto I had purchased, felt the weight of it in a pocket I had sewn into my cassock. I would like to say I was racked with indecision. I would like to say it could have gone either way. That it was a hap or a coin flip. But no, it was inevitable. I chose that path. I planned and prepared, had lived it so many times in my imagining. Was it to save her or to frustrate him? I confess, I do not know even in this lucid ending, even in this final hour.
What I do know is I followed her, followed her with my hand in that mentioned pocket. Fondling the horn of my stiletto’s handle, I kept a distance of about one hundred paces as she walked from my San Silvestro to her studio which served, too, as her apartment.
She stood, just having finished working the lock and opening the door, when I struck. More of a shadow than a woman then, her coat robbed of its colour by the twilight. I overtook her just as she opened the door, missing that target that would end her instantly, the point hitting bone, my second thrust missing her heart, my third as well. And she ran, the shock overwhelming all conscious thought, her only instinct that primeval motive of flight. She moved so quickly, ran up that staircase.
I did not follow. For I was in as much shock as she. I stood still as stone, still as he does now. And then, I followed, followed that trail she had left behind her. I missed the heart, but one of my thrusts hit an artery, her path traced in blood. So much blood. So much of it in such a small woman. Globs of it on the stairs, streaks of it on the floor of the hall, having run down her legs; the end of her long skirt was to that horrid pigment as a crude brush, void of colour in the darkness, somehow more vivid for that.
The door to that cursed studio was open, and I saw her at his feet, hugging his legs as if in supplication, both of them dark figures, as if a bad lithograph. I found a kerosene lamp on a table beside the door. Found, too, a box of matches. The smell of sulphur as I lit one. The flash of ignition granting me a prelude that was almost too much to bear. I raised the lamp and walked towards them. Her skin so pale now, almost a perfect white. I would not have thought it possible before for her pallor to lighten any further, the same colour as him now, that same alabaster, almost one with him. Her beautiful hands grasping his calves, staining them with blood.
And on his face an expression I have not seen since. One I cannot explain by an illusion or hallucination or faulty memory. Victory, that is what I read in his eye, in his smile. Victory and that sort of amusement that is beyond anything so crude as laughter.
She had died his. He had won. And by means of my hand.
Thus ends my confession, which is well as my fingers now begin to numb; and soon I will not be able to write. Soon that power will leave me. And yet I will continue to think. Continue to be myself until my lungs go, which will be at least an hour from what I have read. Will I repent? If I do, I must do so completely. Perfect contrition. That is the only path to salvation I allow myself. I owe her that, at least. I may well feel it soon, but I do not now, have not even in all these forty years of tumult.
Who knows what it is one experiences just before death. Maybe all souls in dying know perfect contrition, and hell is empty. All souls, even mine. A happy thought? Half of me thinks so. A heresy? Almost. But I do not lack for those. I look at him now. At his perfect visage. In this moment, I am his creature. In this moment, I confess this as much to myself as to you.
Pray for me, my brother. Pray for me, you who finds this confession.
Pray for my final moment, which belongs not to this paper, not to this pen, not to you or her or even him.
Pray for this cardinal, whose worst sin was envy.
Forgive him his weakness. Forgive him his lust.
My angel. My Lucifer.
Pray for the woman I damned, her who loved as I loved.
Pray for that sculptress: my riva...
buddy you said once a week
buddy you said hopefully once a week