Section Twenty Six

Clip

-Another

Clop

bloody

Clip

useless

Clop

male!

She hesitated, her hands sweeping, her fingers fluttering, -Now which way shall I go? -Which way? -Which way? -Oh, bugger fate! -Bugger Kismet! -One cul-de-sac's as good as another. -Let's go this way! Again across the dusty road, headlong and headstrong through a lofty arcaded gallery, sidelong-glancing at young couples entwined everywhere, (-more of them more of them more of them more of them!) then out the other side to the city, the same city, coded the same way, still incomprehensible, the trams and the crowds and the hints of secret signs looming up, magnified.
Dust swept up again; the motes tadpoled in her eyes. She shook her head to clear it. She staggered through a street of snack-bars and somehow found herself in a street called Via Sapienza.
-Street of Wisdom? -Street of Learning? -Street of Knowledge?
Her feet skidded slightly on the oily dryness as she went clip clop clip clop in her funny shoes down the funny street.
way of wisdom way of learning way of knowledge way of wisdom way of learning way of knowledge way of handling way of dealing way of coping way of fleeing way of fleeing way of fleeing no way out.
No way out. She stopped - cul-de-sacked. The alleys were awash with noise - the corners barricaded by variegated police in explosive investigation - the cobbles sullen with the spite of young children stealing satchels from their juniors - the streetsides constricting the further she walked, perspective no longer an illusion.
No way out. She felt like she was expanding. It now felt like her whole body, not just her head, was bursting. She moved off again. Slowly. Like a prisoner first day out.
People bunched up on either side of her. Many staring. They seemed rucked-up and distorted. Faded. Fraying apart. They weren't real. She felt she was slinking through a soiled tapestry. She had no control. It was like she was being unpicked and unravelled then stitched up somewhere else. As certain as Harold on the way to his destiny. As certain as the arrow on the way to Harold's eye.
She reached the end and turned right without thinking.
She looked down the street. It was flat, then ducked away at forty-five degrees. It was like being at the top of a ski-jump.
A memory of a first-time adrenaline rush flooded through her. She took a deep breath to calm herself.
Exulted in the temporary silence.

yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooowwwwwwwww

Too quick to startle, a motor-cycle elbowed past her personal space, making her sleeve flap. A leather-jacketed youth - macho, unhelmeted - controlled the handlebars, while, behind him, a girl - statuesque, long filaments of hairswimming out behind her in the breeze - lightly grasped his waist, her demeanour and make-up undisturbed. Cool as alabaster.
At the take-off point where the road started to descend, he wrenched the clutch and throttle in and out, teasing the bike into a wheelie, and they soared down towards the sea on one wheel, forming a perfect right-angle with the street, looking like they were going to take off into orbit any second, like Mary Poppins on four-star.
Two women, one of them old enough to be the other's mother, shook their heads, then laughed and gesticulated. They jabbered something to her, but she smiled grimly and carried on. She looked across the street to her left.
The Duomo lay inconspicuously, fronted on the noisy street named after it. Somehow appropriately for the city it presided over, it was wedged in tight; it was all Gothic frontage, like a Wild West Cathedral on a street with no space for tumbleweed.
Still staring at the facade, she bent down to tie a shoelace. Vehicles fuzzed and buzzed in front of her, forming a sort of net-curtain, diffusing her view, the noise fizzing in her ears.
Seeing a gap, she stood up, and pattered across the street. She crossed the tiny paved oasis and went in.
She paused awhile. It was the antithesis of the clamour outside. It was like St. Peter's in Rome. It was like a virgin womb. Full of emptiness. Catholic emptiness. Bursting with incense and genuflecting fervour. Bits of gothic business.
She started to walk. Clip clop clip clop up the right-hand aisle, staring at the wild, cornucopian ceiling. In spite of the newly-tied laces, the heels of her Italian shoes kept parting company with the heels of her feet, like some ostentatious Mediterranean rejection of these Proddy-dog plates of meat now they were back on their home territory.
A guidebook memory made her pause at the third chapel.
She rested her hands on the brass grille. She stared at the silver bust, traced the shapes of the precious-metal skull in her mind. -San Gennaro, are you really in there? She blinked. Glints from the jewels on the surrounding tabernacle went off like tiny fireworks, their trails sparking from one to another.
She broke away, moved to the centre and paused in front of a pew, staring ahead at the altar. -San Gennaro, tell me, if your head's over there, and they keep the phials of your blood over there, and - presumably, having been beheaded, you don't know where your body is, don't you find all this a bit disorientating?
As she lowered herself towards the seat, she had a sort of spirit-awareness of splinters. -Just like the princess and the pea and the God knows how many beds. -Careful! -No blasphemy! -Let's leave God out of this; we are in church, you know! -I mean... -Forget it! -Don't dig a deeper hole for yourself.
She sat down, then wriggled her buttocks slightly. The woodwork creaked beneath her like a rowing-boat. -That time on Grasmere when we tried... -Knew it would never work. -Pity. -Dear Sir, whenever I drink your lager, I am reminded of making love in a rowing boat because... -No. -No! -Stop it! No profanity either!

She crossed her legs
She closed her eyes for a second
The dark space wrapped around her (a cold blanket)
incense impregnated the air in front of her
she took it up like a whale sucking plankton
it fizzed like cordite in her nose
her head swam with bubbles
they burst hot-cold through her skin
-Are you there?

from the corner
dark within dark
a swathe of widow's habit
like a mobile shroud
floated up the aisle
a ghost in negative

she coughed; looked up
four giant arcs of stone
springing from floor to ceiling
a wheezing diaphragm in their petrified rib-cage
-Are you there?
no sound
perhaps the slightest hint of sparrows' song
four giant arcs of stone
imprisoned
a canary behind bars

a crack of a flung-open door
a clatter of footsteps
smacking up the stone steps at the rear
squeals of heel underfoot
sliding slipshod along the slithery marble
a jostling
a smack of palm against palm
a crack of palm against face
smack
crack
smack
crack

a sigh, two upturned eyes
an acceptance of the inevitable

a violation of urchins
swathing a trough through the heavy seclusion
their flaunted brash greens and purples
flouting the pall of incense and prayer

a candle juddered in resonance with their
loud-voiced effrontery
the ceiling was in a wax-melt

they loaded onto each other
like a sweat-and-muscle pyramid
foot on hand and foot on shoulder
all gaudy suspension
like the contents
of a Victorian butterfly display jar
formaldehyded under a glass bell
non-faded colours
brilliance retained
life lost

a head nodded up from devotion
to stare again
then retreat
to silent disgust

the biggest stopped
looked around
lips formed a shush
(the sibilance spreading through the space, through the vastness through this up-turned catacomb, twisting like a medusa of hisses)

it fizzed like cordite in her ears

they froze
pillars of salt
cowed by the religiosity
their giggling ceased

she touched her tongue to the back of her teeth
blood - salt-blood - on the tip

they turned and high-fived it out of there
jostling still but wordless now
their tongues were cleft to their palates
perspective damping down their footsteps
until silence ambushed them at the door

unfragrance of incense guttering back in
no longer muted
by upstart desecration

the candles
seemed to flick out blackness
darkening the space

the air a waxy burden
Catholic-heavy
heavy as guilt
she sighed her relief
she massaged her stomach
(dirt from the denim beneath her fingernails)
she felt heavy to her core
heavy in her middle
bursting at her seam
she felt a thick ooze
push up through her heart
to her brain
she smelt bad blood
smelt temptation
she gazed up at a crucifix
she thumbed the plastic troll on the keyring in her pocket
it felt too smooth
she pulled it out
it looked like a little devil
she put it away
deal with the itch
leave it alone
deal with the itch
leave it alone
deal with the itch
leave it alone
she scraped knee across knee
unfolded her legs
she felt the crucified gaze holding her
a surreptitious
reach-down
to her
waist

more shadows cast by clothes more like shadows than clothes
a chink in the left-field vision
three nuns gliding by in echelon

pushing aside the cellulite dimples
the wicked hand
reaching down
reaching down
down through the red-meat aroma
fingers closing on the string
string like wire beneath the nails
pulling tight
easing the pain
stemming the discomfort
lightening the load
she looked up

the nuns crossed themselves before the altar
she thought they were going to curtsey
like before the Royal Box at Wimbledon
she withdrew her hand

(the cotton rasp against the knuckles)
she looked down
BLOOD!
a spread pubic triangle of red on her lap
a blackberry bruise on her blue-jeans
she reached for her rucksack
felt it scrape against her thighs
moved it across to cover the mark
mask the well-hung odour

the nuns knelt

the black smell of candles
seared back in

she pushed her knees together and sat tight
(she smelt like an over-dead pheasant)
-My god my god why have I forsaken you?

a priest emerged from a chapel
glanced into a confessional
like inspecting it for dust
(the well-worn creak of the door)
he set off
every footstep underscored by breath
like a man walking through wet clay
his wheezing spreading across the space
echoed and magnified
shuffling like a walrus past the praying woman
(the wet slap of his feet)

she bowed her head as he passed

a smell of mothballs

she sucked her cheeks inwards
aftertaste of basil and oregano
she looked down at her lap
STILL THERE!
she looked up and glanced to her right

the widow still hunched-up
her soul still evaporating
she seemed to see bubbles rising
each one a prayer
each one softly underscored
by the narrowing echoes
of the priest's footfalls

She glanced around again. Empty of all but those who knelt. She opened the rucksack, took out the map, which she folded over her lap, then removed the guidebook.

The Miracle of the Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Gennaro.

This is one of the most hallowed of Neapolitan religious rituals, and you can read this up in any number of conventional guide-books, but the essential thing to remember is that it is a sport.
In fact, the liquefaction is in all probability the most senior event in the Neapolitan sporting calendar, and has provoked such hysteria as to make the events at San Paolo stadium seem as gentle and refined as an afternoon of Flat Green Bowls. It is a scene I have been fortunate enough to witness. Imagine it.
The crowd is restive, everybody jostling for position the better to get a view of the event when it occurs. The officials are in place, ready as ever to adjudicate over the result, to see fair play, to check that everything is done in accordance with probably the oldest set of rules in sport world-wide.
The participants are ready; the microphones are in position: it must be remembered that these prelates are not combatants as such. There is no direct simultaneous competition - the event is a game of cat-and-mouse between the dead, decapitated saint - a man who withstood any manner of ingenious methods of torture by the Romans and hence knows how to be patient - and the current upholders of the See of Rome, which See, I do not need to remind you, conspires with its fellow seas: the Adriatic, the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian... No matter, it's an old joke.
It is a timed event - akin to speed-skating or TT races. Time is of the essence. At pre-set intervals, three times a year, the Saint is given the opportunity to achieve blood-liquefaction status.
It should be noted, however, that the Saint does not hold all the aces, because, if the blood fails to liquefy, he may be deemed to have failed, and secular retribution may well ensue. It depends on his mood: he may choose to go for either of his personal bests, in terms of rapidity of liquefaction, or in terms of making the punters wait the maximum amount of time, should he be more than a little peeved.
Somehow - miraculously, I almost said - I have managed to wedge myself into a prime position, by jostling my way through and taking no account of anybody. In this, I am not conspicuous.
I see the priests massing, the cardinal holding up the casket containing the phial purporting to contain the saint's blood.
This time the blood liquefies really easily, as if it were absorbing the energies of this heaving, anxious mass, eager to see some token of hope.
A huge cry goes up. Prayers are then uttered. Remember, we are in church!
However, good luck has been assured until next time! And we all need every bit of luck we can get, don't we?

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