during the Great Siege - both! My Grandmaster, both: death and life, ermine and old cloth, noble and common, in feast and combat and mourning we are Malta, one, pure and a motley of races at once; no time has passed since, we lived in caves, grappled with fish at the reedy shore, buried our dead with a song, with red-ochre and pulled up our dolmens, temples and menhirs and standing stones to the glory of some indeterminate god or gods, rose toward the light in andanti of singing, lived our lives through circling centuries of rape, looting, invasion, still one; one in the dark ravines, one in this God-favoured plot of sweet Mediterranean earth, one in whatever temple or sewer or catacomb's darkness is ours, by fate or historical writhings or still by the will of God.'
He must have written the latter part at home, after the raid; but the 'shift' is still there. Fausto II was a young man in retreat. It's seen not only in his fascination for the conceptual - even in the midst of that ongoing, vast - but somehow boring - destruction of an island; but also in his relationship with your mother.
First mention of Elena Xemxi comes from Fausto I, shortly after Maratt's marriage. Perhaps, a breach having been made in the bachelorhood of the Generation of '37 - though from all indications the movement was anything but celibate - Fausto now felt safe enough to follow suit. And of course, at the same time taking these fidgeting and inconclusive steps towards Church celibacy.
Oh, he was 'in love': no doubt. But his own ideas on the matter always in a state of flux, never I think getting quite in line with the Maltese version: Church-approved copulation for the purpose, and glorification, of motherhood. We already know for example how Fausto in the worst part of the Siege of '40-'43 had arrived at a notion and practice of love wide, high and deep as Malta itself.
'The dog days have ended, the maijstral has ceased to blow. Soon the other wind called gregale will bring the gentle rains to solemnize the sowing of our red wheat.
Myself: what am I if not a wind, my very name a hissing of queer zephyrs though the carob trees? I stand in time between the two winds, my will no more than a puff of air. But air too are the clever, cynical arguments of Dnubietna. His views on marriage - even Maratt's marriage - blow by my poor flapping ears unnoticed.
For Elena - tonight! O, Elena Xemxi: small as the she-goat, sweet your milk and your love-cry. Dark-eyed as the space between stars over Ghaudex where we have gazed so often in our childish summers. Tonight will I go to your little house in Vittoriosa, and before your black eyes break open this small pod of a heart and offer in communion the St. John's-bread I have cherished like a Eucharist these nineteen years.'
He did not propose marriage; but confessed his love. There was still, you see, the vague 'program' - the vocation to priesthood he was never quite sure of. Elena hesitated. When young Fausto questioned, she became evasive. He promptly began to display symptoms of intense jealousy:
'Has she lost her faith? I've heard she has been out with Dnubietna - Dnubietna! Under his hands. Our Lord, is there no recourse? Must I go out and find them together: follow through the old farce of challenge, combat, murder . . . How he must be gloating: It was all planned. Must have been. Our discussions of marriage. He even told me one evening - hypothetically, of course, oh yes! - precisely how he would find a virgin someday and 'educate' her to sin. Told me knowing all the time that someday it would be Elena Xemxi. My friend. Comrade-in-arms. One third of our Generation. I could never take her back. One touch from him and eighteen years of purity - gone!'
Etc., etc. Dnubietna, as Fausto must have known even in the worst depths of suspicion, had nothing at all to do with her reluctance. Suspicion softened to a nostalgic brooding:
'Sunday there was rain, leaving me with memories. Rain seems to make them swell like bothersome flowers whose perfume is bittersweet. A night I remember: we were children, embracing in a garden above the Harbour. The rustling of azaleas, smell of oranges, a black frock she wore that absorbed all the stars and moon; reflecting nothing back. As she had taken from me, all my light. She has the carob-softness of my heart.'
Ultimately their quarrel took in a third party. In typically Maltese fashion, a priest, one Father Avalanche, came in as the intermediary. He appears infrequently in these journals, always faceless, serving more as foil to his opposite number the Bad Priest. But he did finally persuade Elena to return to Fausto.
'She came to me today, out of smoke, rain, silence. Wearing black, nearly invisible. Sobbing plausibly enough in my too-welcoming arms.
She's to have a child. Dnubietna's, came my first thought (of course it did - for all of half a second - fool). The Father said mine. She had been to A. for confession. God knows what passed there. This good priest cannot break the secrecy of the confessional. Only let slip what the three of us know - that it is my child - so that we should be two souls united before God.
So much for our plan. Maratt and Dnubietna will be disappointed.'
So much for their plan. We will return to this matter of vocation.
From a distraught Elena then, Fausto learned of his 'rival': the Bad Priest.
'No one knows his name or his parish. There is only superstitious rumour; excommunicated, confederates with the Dark One. He lives in an old villa past Sliema, near the sea. Found E. one night alone in the street. Perhaps he'd been out prowling for souls. A sinister figure, she said, but with the mouth of a Christ. The eyes were shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat; all she could see were soft cheeks, even teeth.'
Now it was none of your mysterious 'corruption.' Priests here are second only to mothers in order of prestige. A young girl is naturally enough deferent to and awed by the mere glimpse of any fluttering soutane in the street. Under subsequent questioning, it came out:
''It was near the church - our church. By a long low wall in the street, after sunset, but still light. He asked if I was going to the church. I hadn't thought to go. Confessions were over. I don't know why I agreed to walk there with him. It was not a command - though I would have obeyed if it had been - but we went up the hill, and into the church, up the side aisle to the confessional.
''Have you confessed?' he asked.
'I looked at his eyes. I thought at first he was drunk, or marid b'mohhu. I was afraid.
''Come then.' We entered the confessional. At the time I thought: don't priests have the right? But I did tell him things I have never told Father Avalanche. I didn't know then who this priest was, you see.''
Now sin for Elena Xemxi had been heretofore as natural a function as breathing, eating, or gossiping. Under the agile instruction of the Bad Priest, however, it began to take on the shape of an evil spirit: alien, parasitic, attached like a black slug to her soul.
'How could she marry anyone? She was fit, said the Bad Priest, not for the world but for the convent. Christ
