predatory.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Precisely, what? What do you mean,
precisely
?’
‘There you are: you’re reduced to semantic arguments. That’s all there is. If you’re not careful, you’ll slide on into old age and semantics is all you’ll have. You’ll sit there just like the cat and words will go round in your head and there’ll be nothing else.’
‘Your analogy is breaking down. The cat’s mind is empty, you just said so yourself.’
‘I bet you even rationalise your faith, don’t you? I bet you don’t
feel
it any longer, not with your emotions, not with your body. I bet it’s just words. Liturgy, dogma, creed, words. Sterile. Tell me what you think.’
‘What I think about what?’
‘You, your life, your vocation. What’s it for?’
Conversations like this gave him a sharp and curious sense of delight – something that was almost physical, like a guilty pleasure. On occasion he provoked them, willed her to produce these outbursts. ‘Why on earth do you
live
in these dreadful rooms, Leo?’ she asked when she and Jack visited him in the Institute. ‘What’s to stop you moving out, getting a place of your own? If you’re not careful you’ll end up evolving into a dreadful old fossil just like all these other priests.’
‘I don’t think you
evolve
into a fossil,’ he answered her. ‘I think you’ve mixed your metaphors. Again.’
‘There!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘That’s just what I mean.’ She became, of course, the negation of her own argument, his escape from the very evils she accused him of. Her tone, her presence, her manner conspired against him, jostled him out of complacency and compliance. Consciously, unconsciously, he began to change. A metamorphosis. Celibacy is the enemy of change but Leo Newman, Father Leo Newman, began to ease himself reptile-like out of the dry skin of his old life.
‘How do you know a
princess
, for goodness’ sake?’ Madeleine asked when he told her his plans. She bubbled with laughter at the idea. ‘How on
earth
do you know a princess?’
‘She was a friend of my mother’s.’
‘Your
mother’s
? I thought your mother was a piano teacher.’
‘Can’t a piano teacher know a princess?’
‘A cat may look at a queen,’ Madeleine said. It was what Leo had come to label one of her ‘Irish’ replies.
She went with him to visit the princess in her castle, the eponymous Palazzo Casadei, a mouldering Roman palace that had belonged to the family since the sixteenth century. The family had survived popes and kings, dictators and presidents. It had lived there when Benvenuto Cellini was a prisoner in Castel Sant’Angelo, and when Keats was a young hopeful dying of consumption in a boarding house not far away. It had watched the Garibaldini celebrating in the streets and the French troops marching in to restore the papacy. It had weathered theocracy and monarchy, oligarchy and tyranny but now looked as though it might well not survive democracy. The
principessa
lived on the
piano nobile
amidst the fantastic wreckage left behind bybands of marauding visitors: the portrait of the family pope, the paintings of long-dead ancestors, the gilt and guilt of those five hundred years’ survival. She resembled her surroundings as a pet resembles its master: she was ancient and decaying, the edges frayed and the prominences shiny and threadbare.
‘
Conoscevo tua madre
,’ she said to her visitors from the outside world. I knew your mother. She used the familiar form of the pronoun,
tua
, as though Leo were a child. ‘
Una bellissima donna
.’ The old woman nodded as though confirming the fact to herself and the fog of memory seemed to disperse for a moment to show distant scenes, forgotten people. ‘I remember hearing her play, do you know that? She played like an angel. Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, those great Germans. Ah,
die gute alte Zeit
. And I remember you, oh yes, I remember you. Young Leo, isn’t that it?’
Leo and Madeleine
‘Precisely.’
‘Precisely, what? What do you mean,
precisely
?’
‘There you are: you’re reduced to semantic arguments. That’s all there is. If you’re not careful, you’ll slide on into old age and semantics is all you’ll have. You’ll sit there just like the cat and words will go round in your head and there’ll be nothing else.’
‘Your analogy is breaking down. The cat’s mind is empty, you just said so yourself.’
‘I bet you even rationalise your faith, don’t you? I bet you don’t
feel
it any longer, not with your emotions, not with your body. I bet it’s just words. Liturgy, dogma, creed, words. Sterile. Tell me what you think.’
‘What I think about what?’
‘You, your life, your vocation. What’s it for?’
Conversations like this gave him a sharp and curious sense of delight – something that was almost physical, like a guilty pleasure. On occasion he provoked them, willed her to produce these outbursts. ‘Why on earth do you
live
in these dreadful rooms, Leo?’ she asked when she and Jack visited him in the Institute. ‘What’s to stop you moving out, getting a place of your own? If you’re not careful you’ll end up evolving into a dreadful old fossil just like all these other priests.’
‘I don’t think you
evolve
into a fossil,’ he answered her. ‘I think you’ve mixed your metaphors. Again.’
‘There!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘That’s just what I mean.’ She became, of course, the negation of her own argument, his escape from the very evils she accused him of. Her tone, her presence, her manner conspired against him, jostled him out of complacency and compliance. Consciously, unconsciously, he began to change. A metamorphosis. Celibacy is the enemy of change but Leo Newman, Father Leo Newman, began to ease himself reptile-like out of the dry skin of his old life.
‘How do you know a
princess
, for goodness’ sake?’ Madeleine asked when he told her his plans. She bubbled with laughter at the idea. ‘How on
earth
do you know a princess?’
‘She was a friend of my mother’s.’
‘Your
mother’s
? I thought your mother was a piano teacher.’
‘Can’t a piano teacher know a princess?’
‘A cat may look at a queen,’ Madeleine said. It was what Leo had come to label one of her ‘Irish’ replies.
She went with him to visit the princess in her castle, the eponymous Palazzo Casadei, a mouldering Roman palace that had belonged to the family since the sixteenth century. The family had survived popes and kings, dictators and presidents. It had lived there when Benvenuto Cellini was a prisoner in Castel Sant’Angelo, and when Keats was a young hopeful dying of consumption in a boarding house not far away. It had watched the Garibaldini celebrating in the streets and the French troops marching in to restore the papacy. It had weathered theocracy and monarchy, oligarchy and tyranny but now looked as though it might well not survive democracy. The
principessa
lived on the
piano nobile
amidst the fantastic wreckage left behind bybands of marauding visitors: the portrait of the family pope, the paintings of long-dead ancestors, the gilt and guilt of those five hundred years’ survival. She resembled her surroundings as a pet resembles its master: she was ancient and decaying, the edges frayed and the prominences shiny and threadbare.
‘
Conoscevo tua madre
,’ she said to her visitors from the outside world. I knew your mother. She used the familiar form of the pronoun,
tua
, as though Leo were a child. ‘
Una bellissima donna
.’ The old woman nodded as though confirming the fact to herself and the fog of memory seemed to disperse for a moment to show distant scenes, forgotten people. ‘I remember hearing her play, do you know that? She played like an angel. Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, those great Germans. Ah,
die gute alte Zeit
. And I remember you, oh yes, I remember you. Young Leo, isn’t that it?’
Leo and Madeleine
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