The Last Cato Read online

  “Let’s see… Let me think…Yes, I’m sure it was ‘το ιερον της Παναγιας καλως κεκοσμεται,’ ‘The temple of Her Holiness is beautifully adorned.’ Panagias, ‘All Holy’ or ‘Santisima,’ is the Greek name for the Virgin.”

  “Of course!” I proclaimed. Kekosmetai! Kekosmetai! Santa Maria in Cosmedin!”

  “Santa Maria in Cosmedin?” asked Glaucer-Röist, clueless.

  Farag smiled. “Incredible! A church in Rome with a Greek name? Santa Maria the Beautiful, the Lovely. I thought everything here would be in either Italian or Latin.”

  “‘Incredible’ is an understatement,” I murmured, pacing back and forth. “It’s one of my favorite churches. I don’t go as often as I’d like, because it’s far from my apartment, but it’s the only church in Rome that conducts Mass in Greek.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been there,” the Rock said.

  “Have you ever stuck your hand in the ‘Mouth of Truth,’ Captain? If you have, you know what church I’m talking about. According to legend, that horrific effigy bites off the fingers of liars.”

  “Oh, yes! Of course I’ve visited the ‘Mouth of Truth.’ It’s a very important place in Rome.”

  “Well then, the ‘Mouth of Truth’ is located in the portico of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. People from all over the world descend upon the church in tourist buses that often crowd the plaza. They stand in line, walk up to the effigy, stick their hand in, take the obligatory picture, and leave. No one enters the church, no one even notices it, no one knows it exists. And yet it’s one of the most beautiful churches in Rome.”

  “‘The temple of Mary is beautifully adorned,’” recited Boswell.

  “Okay, Doctor, but how do you know that church is the place? As I said, there are hundreds of beautiful churches in this city.”

  “No, Captain,” I replied, stopping right in front of him. “Not just because it’s beautiful, which it is, nor even because the Byzantine Greeks further adorned it when they fled to Rome in the eighth century to escape persecution over their worship of icons, but because the inscription in the catacombs of Saint Lucia points directly to it: ‘The temple of Mary is beautifully adorned’—kalos kekosmetai… Don’t you see? Kekosmetai, Cosmedin.”

  “He can’t see it, Ottavia. Let me explain, Captain. Cosmedin is derived from the Greek word kosmidion, which means adorned, decorated, beautiful. For example, cosmetic is also derived from this word. Kekosmetai is the passive verb in our phrase. Take off the first syllable, ke, whose only function is to mark the perfect tense, and you’re left with kosmetai. As you can see, kosmidion and Cosmedin share the same root.”

  “The Staurofilakes definitely mean Santa Maria in Cosmedin,” I said, totally convinced. “Now all we have to do is go there and prove it.”

  “Before we go, let’s review our notes on the first circle of Purgatory,” Farag said as he picked up my copy of the Divine Comedy.

  I took off my lab coat. “Fine. While you’re doing that, I’ll run a few important errands.”

  “There is nothing more important, Doctor. This very afternoon we should go to Santa Maria in Cosmedin.”

  “Ottavia, you always duck out when we have to read Dante.”

  I hung up my lab coat and turned to look at them. “If I have to drag myself on the ground again, climb dusty stairs, and run all over unexplored catacombs, I need more appropriate clothes than what I wear at the Vatican.”

  “You’re going shopping for clothes?” Boswell asked, surprised.

  I opened the door and walked into the hall. “Actually, I’m just going to buy some pants.”

  The truth is, I never would have gone to Santa Maria in Cosmedin without reading Canto X of Purgatory, but the stores closed at noon, so I didn’t have much time to buy what I needed. Besides, I wanted to call home to see how my mother and the rest of the family were doing. For that I needed some peace and quiet.

  When I got back to the archives, I learned that Farag and the captain were having lunch at the Domus restaurant. So I ordered a sandwich from the cafeteria and shut myself up in the lab to read what would befall us that afternoon.

  The trick with the multiplication table kept running around in my head. I could still see myself, seven or eight years old, sitting at the kitchen table, my homework in front of me, Cesare beside me explaining the trick. How could child’s play be elevated to a thousand-year-old sect’s initiation test? There were just two explanations. First, what was considered the summum of science centuries ago was reduced to the level of primary school. The other was astounding and hard to accept: The wisdom of the past had crossed the centuries hidden in popular customs, stories, children’s games, legends, traditions, and seemingly innocuous books. To find it, we had to change the way we looked at the world. We had to accept that our eyes and ears are poor receptors of the reality that surrounds us. We had to open our minds and put aside our preconceived notions. I was starting to suffer through that surprising process, but I had no idea why.

  I no longer read Dante as indifferently as before. Now I knew that his words hid a meaning more profound than what I first had thought. Dante had also stood before the guardian angel in the catacombs in Syracuse and had pulled those same chains. Among other things, I felt a certain intimacy with the great Florentine author. I was surprised he dared to write Purgatory knowing that the Staurofilakes would never forgive him. Maybe his literary ambition was so enormous that he needed to show that he was the new Virgil, to receive that crown of laurels, the poets’ prize that adorned all his portraits. According to him, it was the only thing he truly coveted. Dante had felt the irresistible urge to go down in history as the greatest writer ever, and it must have been extremely painful for him to watch time passing, to see himself grow old without fulfilling his dreams. Just like Faust centuries later, he probably considered selling his soul to the devil in exchange for glory. He realized his dreams, but the price he had to pay was his life.

  Canto X started as Dante and Virgil were finally crossing the threshold into Purgatory. They heard the door close behind them and figured there was no turning back. Thus began the Florentine’s purification, his own process of internal cleansing. He had visited hell and had seen the punishments inflicted upon the condemned for eternity. Now he begged to be purified of his own sins. He wanted to enter the heavenly kingdom, totally renewed, to join his beloved Beatrice, who, according to Glauser-Röist, was just a symbol of Wisdom and Supreme Knowledge.

  Then we were climbing through a narrow cleft

  along a path that zigzagged through the rock

  the way a wave swells up and then pulls back.

  “Now we are at the point,” my guide began,

  “where we must use our wits: when the path bends,

  we keep close to the far side of the curve.”

  My God, a rock in motion! The piece of bread I was chewing turned bitter. I was glad I’d bought those new pants. They hadn’t cost very much and were really comfortable. Hidden in the store’s dressing room in the store, alone in front of the mirror, I discovered they gave me a youthful look I never had before. I wished with all my heart there wasn’t a ridiculous rule that forbade me from wearing them. In such case, I’d have to completely ignore it, without remorse. I suddenly remembered the celebrated North American nun, Sister Mary Dominic Ramacciotti, founder of Girls’ Village in Rome. She got special permission from Pope Pious XII to wear fur coats, get a perm, wear Elizabeth Arden makeup, frequent the opera, and dress with exquisite elegance. I didn’t aspire to all that; I was simply content to wear some simple pants.

  After great hardships, Dante and Virgil finally reached the first cornice, the first circle of Purgatory.

  From the plain’s edge, verging on empty space,

  to where the cliff-face soars again, was room

  for three men’s bodies laid out end to end;

  as far as I could take in with my eyes,

  measuring carefully from left to right,
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  this terrace did not vary in its width.

  Suddenly Virgil admonishes Dante to stop snooping around and pay attention to the strange mob of souls headed their way, painfully and slowly.

  “Master, what I see moving toward us there,”

  I said, “do not seem to be shades at all;

  I don’t know what they are, my sight’s confused.”

  “The grievous nature of their punishment,”

  he answered, “bends their bodies toward the ground;

  my own eyes were not sure of what they saw.

  “Try hard to disentangle all the parts

  Of what you see moving beneath those stones.

  Can you see now how each one beats his breast?”

  These were in fact the souls of the sovereigns, crushed by the weight of enormous rocks to humble and purify them of worldly vanities. They advanced painfully through the narrow cornice, their knees pressed to their chests, their faces contorted by exhaustion. They were reciting a strange version of the Lord’s Prayer befitting their situation: “Oh Father, who art in heaven, although not just in heaven…” is how Canto XI starts. Horrified by their suffering, Dante bids them a speedy journey through Purgatory so they can soon reach “the wheeling stars.” Virgil, always more practical, asks the souls to point out the way to the second cornice.

  Someone, however, said: “Follow this bank

  along the river with us, and you will find

  the road a living man can surely climb.”

  As in Pre-Purgatory, Dante has long conversations with old acquaintances or famous people along the way. They warn him against vanity and pride, as if they guessed that this cornice might keep the poet from being purified on time. After a lot of talking and walking, he starts Canto XII. At the beginning, Virgil admonishes the Florentine to leave the souls of the prideful in peace and concentrate on finding the way up:

  “Now, look down,” he said. “You will be pleased,

  and it will make your journey easier,

  to see this bed of stone beneath your feet.”

  Dante obediently looks at the road and sees the marvelously carved figures covering it. In a long passage of twelve or thirteen tercets, he gives succinct details of some of the scenes in the engravings: Lucifer falling from heaven like a bolt of lightning, Briareus agonizing after rebelling against the gods of Olympus, Nimrod crazed when he saw his beautiful Tower of Babel for the last time, the suicide of Saul after his defeat in Gelboe. A multitude of mythological, biblical, and historical examples of the punishment for pride. As he walks along, bent way over so he can see every single detail, the poet asks admiringly who the artist was who so skillfully depicted those shadows and poses.

  Fortunately, I said to myself, Dante didn’t have to carry a rock. That was a great consolation to me. Still, he still had to walk doubled over a long ways to see the reliefs. If that was the Staurofilakes’ next test, I was ready to start. Yet something told me it wasn’t going to be that easy. The experience in Syracuse had had a profound effect on me, and I no longer trusted Dante’s beautiful verses.

  The travelers finally come to the far side of the cornice. Virgil tells Dante to get ready, to adorn his face and attitude with reverence because an angel, dressed in white, shining like a morning star, is approaching to help them depart:

  He spread his arms out wide, and then his wings.

  He said: “Come, now, the steps are very close;

  henceforth, the climbing will be easier.”

  To such an invitation few respond:

  O race of hen, born to fly heavenward,

  How can a breath of wind make you fall back?

  He led us straight to where the rock was cleft.

  Once there, he brushed his wings against my brow,

  then he assured me of a safe ascent.

  Some voices intone the Beautus paupers spiritu* while Virgil and Dante climb the steep stairs. Up until then, Dante has complained several times about how tired he is. Suddenly, he’s surprised he feels as light as a feather. Virgil tells him that, although he hadn’t realized it, the angel has erased, with a beat of his wings, one of those seven P’s engraved on Dante’s forehead (one for each deadly sin). He’s carrying less weight now. Dante Alighieri has just shed the sin of pride.

  At this point, I fell asleep on my desk, completely worn out. The Florentine poet was saved from exhaustion; I was not so lucky.

  My dream that night was full of disturbing images of the crypt in Syracuse. Always, Farag smiled and led me to safety. I took his hand in desperation, for it was my only chance to save myself. He called to me with an infinite sweetness.

  “Ottavia… Ottavia. Wake up, Ottavia.”

  “Doctor, it’s getting late,” Glauser-Röist roared mercilessly.

  I moaned, and couldn’t shake my dream. I had a splitting headache that felt worse if I tried to open my eyes.

  “Ottavia, it’s three o’clock,” Farag said.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, struggling to get up. “I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”

  “We’re all exhausted,” Farag agreed. “Tonight we’ll rest, you’ll see. When we leave Santa Maria in Cosmedin, we will head straight to the Domus and not get up for a week.”

  “It’s getting late,” the Rock insisted, lifting his backpack onto his shoulder. It looked much heavier today than on our last outing, in Syracuse. It looked so big that he could’ve had a fire extinguisher in it.

  We left the Hypogeum, but not before I took something for my headache, the strongest thing I could find. We crossed Vatican City and got into Glauser-Röist’s blue sports car parked on the Swiss Guard’s lot. The fresh air helped clear my head and alleviate the pressure. What I really needed was to go home and sleep for twenty or thirty hours. Right then I understood our harsh reality—until our quest ended, rest, dreams, and an ordered life were impossible luxuries.

  We crossed Porta Santo Spirito and drove down Lungotévere until we came to the Garibaldi Bridge, buried as usual in fierce traffic. After ten long minutes of delay, we crossed the river and sped straight down Via Arenula and Via delle Botteghe Oscure to the Piazza San Marco. We took a roundabout route that got us to Santa Maria in Cosmedin even faster. Scooters buzzed around and cut in front of us like clusters of crazed wasps. Miraculously, Glauser-Röist managed to dodge them. After several close calls, the Alfa Romeo pulled up at the sidewalk next to the Piazza Bocca della Verità parking lot. There was my little, ignored Byzantine church, with its wise, harmonious proportions. I studied it fondly as I opened the door of the car to get out.

  The sky had clouded up throughout the day. A dark, gray light ran roughshod over Santa Maria in Cosmedin’s beauty, but didn’t diminish it entirely. I looked to the highest part of the seven-story bell tower rising majestically from the center of the church and reflected again on that old idea of the effects of time, inexorable time, that destroys us and turns works of art infinitely more beautiful.

  Since antiquity, there had been an important Greek colony in that part of Rome (known as the Boario Forum, on account of the cattle fairs held there). There was an even more important temple dedicated to Hercules the Triumphant, erected in his honor for recovering oxen stolen by the thief Caco. In the third century A.D., a Christian chapel was constructed on the ruins of that temple. It grew in stages and was embellished until it became the wonderful church it is today. It was a defining moment for Santa Maria in Cosmedin when Greek artists came to Rome, fleeing Byzantium where they’d been persecuted by other Christians who thought it was a sin to create images of God, the Virgin, or the saints.

  Farag, the captain, and I walked up to the church’s portico, not without sidestepping the curlicue of tightly packed rows of retirees standing in line to have their pictures taken with their hand inside the enormous mask of the “Mouth of Truth.” The captain advanced with the determination of a military flagship, indifferent to his surroundings. On the other hand, Farag’s eyes were popping out of his head as he tried to memorize
even the most insignificant details.

  “That mouth…,” he asked amused. “Has it ever bitten anyone?”

  I broke out in laughter. “Never! If it ever does, I’ll let you know.”

  I watched him laugh. His blue eyes grew darker in the light. Stray gray hairs here and there in the stubble of his beard highlighted his Semitic features and his dark Egyptian skin. Life took some strange twists and turns to bring together a Swiss Guard, a Sicilian nun, and a compendium of so many races.

  Spotlights placed at the top of the lateral naves and columns lit up the interior of Santa Maria. The light filtering in from outside was too weak to celebrate Mass. The church’s style was essentially Greek Byzantine. Although I liked everything about the church, what drew me like a magnet were its enormous iron candelabra. Instead of sheltering dozens of squat, white votive candles as in Latin churches, they held delicate yellow tapers, typical of the Eastern world. Without hesitating for a second, I walked to the candelabra leaning against the parapet of the schola cantorum, in the central nave in front of the altar. I tossed some coins into the alms box and lit one of the golden lights. I closed my eyes halfway and sank into prayer, asking God to take care of my poor father and brother. I also prayed that he protect my mother, who, apparently, was having trouble getting over their deaths. I gave thanks for being placed on a mission for the church, a mission that helped me put off the pain of losing them.

  When I opened my eyes, I was completely alone. I glanced around for Farag and the captain, who were wandering around the lateral naves like baffled tourists. They were very interested in the frescos on the walls with scenes from the life of the Virgin and in the cosmatesque-style decorations on the floor. Since I was familiar with all that, I went to the presbytery to examine the most remarkable peculiarity of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Under a Gothic baldachin from the end of the eighth century, an enormous bathtub made of dark, salmon-colored porphyry served as the church’s altar. One would think that some rich Byzantine man—or woman—from imperial Rome had once taken some nice perfumed baths in that future Christian tabernacle.