fantasy, my genius, my flair, eternally fashioning and refashioning myself and the world around me…’
The voice vanished abruptly as Zen twisted the volume control. He took out his pen and scrawled a message at the bottom of his mother’s note to the effect that he had got back safely from Florence and would see her for dinner. For some reason he found his mother’s absence disturbing. It was good that she was out and about, of course, keeping herself busy. Nevertheless, there was something about the whole arrangement which jarred. He set the note down on top of the television, walked back down the hallway and opened the last door on the right.
The pent-up odours of the past broke over him like a wave: camphor and mildew, patent medicines and obsolete toiletries, stiffened leather, smoky fur, ghostly perfumes, the whiff of sea fog. He pushed his way through the piles of overflowing trunks, chests and boxes. Spiders and woodlice froze, then broke ranks and scattered in panic as the colossus approached. There it was, in the far corner, perched on a plinth of large cardboard boxes containing back-numbers of Famiglia Cristiana from the early fifties. The gaily painted wooden box had originally been stamped with the insignia of the State Railways and a warning about the detonators it had contained. Zen still lucidly recalled his wonder at the transformation wrought by his father’s paint-brush, which had magically turned this discarded relic into a toy box for little Aurelio.
Reaching over so far his stomach muscles protested, he pulled the box down and removed the lid. Then he sifted through the contents — clockwork train set, tin drum, lead soldiers and battleships — until he found the revolver which had been made specially for him by a machinist in the locomotive works at Mestre. The man had been an ardent Blackshirt, and although unfireable, the gun was an accurate replica of the 9mm Beretta he carried when he went out to raise hell with his fellow squadristi. Zen weighed it in his hand, tracing the words MUSSOLINI DUX incised in the solid barrel, remembering epic battles and cowboy show-downs in the back alleys of the Cannaregio. The pistol had been the envy of all his friends, but its connections with the leader whose adventurism had caused his father’s death perhaps explained Zen’s lifelong reluctance to carry a firearm, or even learn to use one.
He squeezed his way back out of the storeroom with a sigh of relief, as though emerging from a prison cell. The past was always present in the Zen family. Nothing was ever thrown away, and even the dead remained unburied. That man Falco talked a load of pretentious rubbish, of course, but it was easy to see the attractions of his shallow, consumerist credo. Fascism had perhaps offered similar raptures and consolations to the people of his father’s generation.
It was ten to seven when he left the house, the replica pistol concealed in his overcoat pocket. The streets were crowded with shoppers and people going home from work or out on the town, and when he emerged into the vacant expanses of St Peter’s Square it was like stepping into another city. The throng of pilgrims and their coaches had long since departed, and the only people to be seen were two Carabinieri on patrol. Zen climbed the shallow steps leading up to the facade of St Peter’s and passed in under the portico.
Apart from a party of tourists who were just leaving, the basilica seemed as deserted as the piazza outside. Zen walked down the nave to the baldacchino, then turned right into the north transept. Between each of the three chapels stood a curvaceous confessional of dully gleaming mahogany which reminded Zen of his mother’s wardrobe. There were six in all, but only one showed a light indicating the presence of a confessor. The gold inscription above the entrance read EX ORDINE FRATRVM MINORVM. For a moment Zen hesitated, feeling both ridiculous and slightly irreverent. Then, with a shrug, he approached the recess and knelt down.
It was at least three decades since he had been to confession, but as he felt the wooden step beneath his knees and looked at the grilled opening before his face, the years slipped away and he once again felt that anxious sense of generalized guilt, assuaged by the confidence of possessing a system for dealing with it. So strong were these sensations that he was on the point of intoning ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned’ when a voice from the other side of the grille recalled him to the realities of his present situation.
‘Can you hear me, dottore?’
Zen cleared his throat.
‘Only just.’
‘I prefer not to speak too loudly. Our enemies are everywhere.’
It was the man who had phoned him earlier at the Ministry.
‘You are probably wondering why you have been summoned at such short notice, and in this unusual fashion. I shall be frank. Many people think of the Curia as a monolith expressing a single, unified point of view. This is not surprising, since we spend a considerable amount of time and trouble cultivating just such an impression. Nevertheless, it is a fallacy. To take the present instance, considerable differences exist over the handling of the Ruspanti affair. There have been some heated exchanges. I represent a group who believe that the issues at stake here are too serious to be swept under the carpet. If our arguments had been rejected by the Holy Father, we should of course have submitted. We have in fact repeatedly urged that the matter be placed before him, but on each occasion we have been overruled. The decision to cover up the truth about the Ruspanti case has been taken by a small number of senior officials acting on their own initiative.’
Zen glanced at the grille, but the interior of the confessional was so dark that he could not make out anything of the speaker.
‘What have you been told about the Cabal?’ the man asked abruptly.
Zen cleared his throat.
‘That according to Ruspanti there was an inner group within the Order…’
‘Speak up, please! I’m rather hard of hearing.’
Zen raised his mouth to the grille.
‘I was told that Ruspanti claimed that there was an inner group within the Order of Malta known as the Cabal. These claims were investigated and found to be false.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘ Is there more?’
The response was a low chuckle which sent a shiver up Zen’s spine.
‘Both more and less. Some of what you’ve been told is true, but the manner of its telling has been deliberately designed to mislead you into discounting it and concentrating your efforts elsewhere. Certainly Ludovico Ruspanti approached us with allegations about a secret society within the Order of Malta, of whom he was himself of course a distinguished member, and with whom he had taken refuge before we gave him sanctuary. We had received similar information before, but this was the first emanating from an authoritative source and which offered the possibility of verification. Ruspanti claimed to be able to provide names, dates and full documentation. Relations between the Holy See and the Order of Malta have been strained for some time…’
The man’s voice faded under a ululating howl which seemed to come from inside the confessional. It grew quickly louder until it was deafening, then gradually faded to nothing.
‘What was that?’ asked Zen.
‘What?’
‘That noise.’
‘I heard nothing. As I was saying, relations between the Holy See and the Order of Malta have been strained for some time, but our first reaction was indeed one of suspicion. To our dismay, however, our preliminary investigations substantiated every single claim which Ruspanti had made. Far from finding his allegations baseless or false, we uncovered evidence of the most alarming kind. I hasten to add that these findings did not in any way implicate the Order of Malta as a whole, which is and has always been an admirable body, tireless in its charitable exertions and unwavering in its loyalty to the papacy. The Cabal is something quite different, a parasitic clique, a sinister inner coterie hidden within the ranks of a respectable organization, like Gelli’s P 2 within the Masonic Order.’
The voice fell silent. For a moment, Zen thought he heard the rustling of paper.
‘You may remember the Oliver North scandal in the United States,’ the man continued. ‘A small group of influential people in the Reagan administration decided that there were actions which needed to be taken, actions which the President would certainly approve, inasmuch as they were logical developments of his avowed policies, but whose existence and implementation he could not afford to know about. These men therefore decided to take matters into their own hands, since Reagan’s were tied by his constitutional and legal obligations.’
Hearing footsteps behind him, Zen looked round. One of the blue-jacketed attendants wearing the red leather badge of the basilica staff was passing on his rounds. He glanced briefly at the kneeling penitent, but with no more than the usual impersonal curiosity which anyone might feel, wondering what secrets were being divulged in
