The Seville Communion

VIII

An Andalusian Lady

"Can you smell the jasmine?"

"What jasmine? There isn't any."

"The jasmine that used to be here in the old days."

Antonio Burgos, Seville

If there was such a thing as blue blood, then the blood coursing through the veins of Macarena Bruner's mother, Maria Cruz Eugenia Bruner de Lebrija y Alvarez de Cordoba, Duchess of El Nuevo Extremo and twelve times grandee of Spain, must have been navy blue. Her ancestors had taken part in the siege of Granada and the conquest of America, and only two ancient houses of the Spanish aristocracy, Alba and Medina-Sidonia, could claim longer histories. The wealth that went with her titles, however, had long since disappeared. The estates and assets were gradually swallowed up over time and history, so that the tangled lines of her family tree were like strings of shells washed up empty on the seashore. The lady who sat sipping Coca-Cola opposite Lorenzo Quart in the courtyard of the Casa del Postigo was one month and seven days away from her seventieth birthday. Her ancestors could travel all the way from Seville to Cadiz without leaving their own land. King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia held her over the baptismal font. And after the Spanish Civil War, General Franco himself, despite his dislike of the old Spanish aristocracy, couldn't avoid kissing her hand in that very same Andalusian courtyard, bowing reluctantly over the Roman mosaics that had paved the patio since they were brought straight from the ruins of Italica four centuries earlier. But time moves on relentlessly. So read the motto on the English clock in the gallery of mudejar columns and arches decorated with rugs from the Alpujarras and with sixteenth-century bureaux that would have ended up in Seville auctions had it not been for the generosity of the banker and family friend, Octavio Machuca. Of past splendours there remained only the fragrant courtyard full of geraniums, aspidistras and ferns, the plateresque railings, the garden, the summer dining room with its Roman busts, a few pieces of furniture and some paintings on the walls. And in the midst of it all, with only a maid, a gardener and a cook in the house where she'd grown up with a staff of twenty, lived the white-haired lady with a string of pearls round her neck, a tranquil shadow leaning over its past. She offered Quart more coffee and cooled herself with an old fan decorated, with a personal dedication, by Julio Romero de Torres.

Quart poured coffee into the slightly cracked cup. He was in his shirtsleeves. The duchess had been so insistent that he remove his jacket because of the heat that he'd had no choice but to obey, hanging it over the back of his chair. He wore a black, short-sleeved shirt that showed his strong, tanned forearms. Clean-cut, good-looking and wholesome, he looked like a missionary, in sharp contrast with the small, hard figure of Father Ferro sitting beside him in his stained, threadbare cassock. On the low table set out next to the central fountain there was coffee, hot chocolate, and, rather eccentrically, a bottle of Coca-Cola. The old duchess remarked that she hated drinking Coke from a can. It tasted different, metallic that way. Even the bubbles felt different.

"More chocolate, Father Ferro?"

The parish priest nodded briefly without looking at Quart and held out his cup. Macarena filled it under her mother's approving gaze. The duchess seemed pleased to have two priests in her house. For years Father Ferro had arrived on the dot of five every afternoon except Wednesdays, to recite the rosary with the old lady. Afterwards he stayed for coffee, in the courtyard if the weather was good, in the summer dining room if it was raining.

"How lucky you are to live in Rome," the duchess said, opening and shutting her fan. "So near His Holiness."

She was remarkably bright and vivacious for her age. Her hair was white with slight hints of blue, and there were liver spots on her arms, hands and forehead. She was slim, slight, had angular features, and skin that was as wrinkled as a raisin. Her almost non-existent lips were outlined with lipstick, and from her ears hung small pearls identical to those of her necklace. Her eyes were dark like her daughter's, though age had turned them watery, red-rimmed. But there was still resolve and intelligence in them, and a light that often turned inwards, as if memories were moving across them like passing clouds. She had been fair-haired in her youth, as Quart saw in a portrait of her by Zuloaga in a room off the hall. So Macarena must have got her black hair from her father, a handsome gentleman in a framed photograph near the Zuloaga portrait. The duke consort was dark, with white teeth, a thin moustache, hair combed back, and a gold tie pin fastening down the points of his collar. Had one fed all these details into a computer along with the words "Andalusian gentleman", thought Quart, exactly that photograph would have come up on the screen. He had found out enough about Macarena's family history to know that in his day Rafael Guardiola Fernandez-Garvey had been the most handsome man in Seville. He was also cosmopolitan, elegant, and in fifteen years of marriage had managed to squander the remainder of his wife's already reduced fortune. If Cruz Bruner was a consequence of history, the duke consort was a consequence of the worst vices of Sevillian aristocracy. All the businesses he embarked upon ended in resounding failure, and only his friendship with the banker Octavio Machuca, who always faithfully bailed him out, saved the duke consort of El Nuevo Extremo from winding up in jail. Ruined by his final project, a stud farm, he ended up penniless, his health destroyed by flamenco parties till dawn and several litres of Manzanilla, forty cigarettes and three cigars a day. At the end, he shouted for a confessor, just as in old films or romantic novels. He was buried, having confessed and received the sacraments, in the uniform of a gentleman of the Real Maestranza of Seville, with his sabre and plume. All of Seville high society was present at the funeral. Half of those attending, a gossip columnist said maliciously, were cuckolded husbands there to make sure that the duke had truly been laid to rest. The other half were creditors.

"His Holiness once granted me an audience," the old duchess told Quart. "And to Macarena too, after her wedding."

She bowed her head slightly as she reminisced. Over a third of a century and the reigns of several popes must have elapsed between her visit to Rome and her daughter's, but she referred to His Holiness as if it was the same man. Quart reflected that in some ways this was logical. At seventy, things either changed too fast or not at all.

Father Ferro still stared sullenly into his cup, and Macarena watched Quart. The duchess of El Nuevo Extremo's daughter was in jeans and a blue checked shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail and she wore no makeup. She looked relaxed and sure of herself as she poured the hot chocolate and coffee, attentive to her mother and the guests, Quart in particular. She seemed amused by the situation.

"What do you think of our church, Father?" asked Cruz Bruner as she sipped her Coca-Cola and smiled affably, her fan in her lap. Her voice, despite her age, was firm and serene. She waited for his answer. Quart smiled politely, aware also of Macarena's gaze.

"It is much loved," he said non-committally. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the dark, silent figure of Father Ferro. Here, in the presence of the duchess and her daughter, they were on neutral ground. On arriving, they had exchanged conventional greetings, but the rest of the time they were careful not to say a word to each other. Quart sensed, however, that this was the prelude to something. Nobody invites a scalp hunter and his supposed victim for coffee without having a purpose in mind.

"Don't you think it would be a shame to lose it?" insisted the duchess.

"I hope that will never happen," Quart said reassuringly.

"We had thought that was why you came to Seville," said Macarena Bruner pointedly.

Quart could see the ivory necklace round her neck and wondered if this afternoon too the plastic cigarette lighter was tucked under her bra strap. He would have willingly spent two months in Purgatory to see Father Ferro's expression as she used it to light a cigarette.

"No," he said. "I'm here because my superiors want a precise picture of the situation." He sipped his coffee and carefully placed the cup back on the inlaid table. "Nobody's trying to remove Father Ferro from his parish."

Father Ferro stiffened. "Aren't they?" He raised his scarred face to the galleries above them, as if somebody were about to appear there. "I can think of several people and institutions. The archbishop, for instance. The Cartujano Bank. The duchess's son-in-law…" He shot a suspicious glance at Quart. "And don't tell me that Rome's losing sleep now over a small church and its priest."

I have your measure, his look said. So don't give me all your fine words. Quart, sensing Macarena's eyes on him, tried to conciliate. "Rome cares about all churches and all priests."

"You must be joking," said Father Ferro, and he laughed coldly.

Cruz Bruner tapped the priest's arm affectionately with her fan. "I'm sure Father Quart isn't joking, Don Priamo," she said and looked at Quart for confirmation. "He seems a fine, upright priest. I think his mission is important. And since he's here to gather information, we ought to co-operate." She glanced quickly at her daughter and then fanned herself wearily. "The truth never harmed anyone."

Father Ferro inclined his head, respectful but stubborn. "I wish I shared your innocence, madam." He drank his hot chocolate, and it dripped down his badly shaven chin. He wiped it with a huge, filthy handkerchief which he pulled from the pocket of his cassock. "But I fear that in the Church, as in the rest of life, almost all truths are lies."

"You shouldn't say such things." The duchess was half-shocked, half-jesting. "You'll be damned." She opened and closed her fan.

Then, Quart saw Father Ferro smile properly for the first time. A good-natured, sceptical expression – a bear pestered by its cubs. It softened his features, making his face look unexpectedly gentle – as in the photograph, taken in that same courtyard, that was back at Quart's hotel. Quart thought of Spada, his boss at the IEA. The archbishop and Father Ferro had the same smile, like veteran gladiators. Quart wondered if his smile would ever become like theirs.

"Father," the duchess said after a glance at her daughter and a moment's thought, "this church is very important to my family. Not only because of its historical significance but also because, as Don Priamo says, whenever a church is demolished, a piece of heaven is removed. And I would hate to see the place I hope to end up in reduced in size." She drank some more Coca-Cola, half shutting her eyes with pleasure as the fizzing tickled her nose. "I'm putting my faith in our parish priest that he'll get me there before too long."

Father Ferro blew his nose. "You will get there, madam," he said, blowing his nose again. "You have my word." He put the handkerchief away and glared at Quart, as if defying him to question his ability to keep such a promise.

Cruz Bruner clapped her fan against her hand, delighted. "You see" she said to Quart. "That's the advantage of having a priest to tea six days a week… It gives one certain privileges." She looked gratefully at Father Ferro. The expression in her watery eyes was both serious and mocking.

The old priest shifted in his chair, made uneasy by Quart's silence. "You'd get there just the same without me," he said sullenly.

"Maybe, maybe not. But I know that if they don't let me in, you'll give them what for up there." The old lady considered the jet rosary beads lying next to a prayer book on the table covered with magazines and newspapers. She sighed. "At my age, I find that reassuring."

In the garden, beyond the open gate, blackbirds could be heard singing. A gentle chirrup that ended in two sharp trills. The duchess turned to listen. May was their mating season, she explained. They often perched on the wall of the convent next door and could be heard singing at the same time as the nuns. Her father the duke, Macarena's grandfather, had spent the last few years of his life recording the blackbirds' song. The tapes and records were still in the house somewhere. Through the recorded birdsong you could hear the sound of the duke's footsteps on the gravel paths.

"My father was an old-fashioned gentleman," continued the duchess. "He wouldn't have liked the way the world's changed." From the tilt of her head, it was obvious she didn't like it either. "In a book published before the Civil War, The Large Estates of Spain, my family is mentioned as being one of the wealthiest in Andalusia, though even then the wealth was only on paper. Money's in different hands now. Banks and financiers own the big country estates and surround them with electric fences. They have expensive cars, and they're buying up all the wineries in Jerez. Sharp people who've made their money overnight, as my son-in-law would like to do."

"Mother."

The duchess raised her hand. "Let me say what I have to say. Don Priamo never liked Pencho, but I did. And the fact that you're separated changes nothing." She fanned herself again, with unexpected vigour. "I admit that in this business over the church he's not behaving like a gentleman."

Macarena shrugged. "Pencho was never a gentleman," she said. She took a lump of sugar and sucked it thoughtfully. Quart watched her, until she suddenly looked up at him. "And he's never tried to pass himself off as one."

"No, of course not," said the old lady, suddenly sarcastic. "Your father, now he was a gentleman. A real Andalusian gentleman." Then she was lost in thought, touching the tiles around the fountain with her fingertips. The tiles, she explained to Quart, dated from the sixteenth century and had been laid throughout the house in strict accordance with the rules of heraldry. "An Andalusian gentleman," she repeated after a moment's silence. The line of lipstick on her thin, faded lips contorted – a bitter, private smile.

Macarena Bruner shook her head: "The church means nothing to Pencho." She seemed to address Quart rather than her mother. "He sees it only in terms of square metres ripe for development. We can't expect him to see things our way."

"Of course not," the duchess said. "Maybe someone from your own class would have."

"You married someone from your own class," replied Macarena, annoyed.

"You're right." The old lady smiled sadly. "At least your husband is a man. Courageous, with the insolence that comes from relying on oneself alone…" She looked quickly at Father Ferro. "Whether we like what he's doing to our church or not."

"He hasn't done it yet," said Macarena. "And he won't, not if I can help it."

Cruz Bruner frowned. "Well, you're making him pay, dear," she said.

They had strayed into an area that seemed to make the old lady uneasy. Her manner towards her daughter was discreetly reproving. Macarena stared into space beyond Quart's shoulder. "He hasn't finished paying," she said quietly.

"He'll always be your husband," said her mother, "whether you live with him or not. Isn't that so, Don Priamo?" The expression in her watery eyes was mischievous again when she turned to Quart.

"Father Priamo doesn't like my son-in-law, but he maintains that a marriage – any marriage – is indissoluble."

"That's true," said the priest. He had spilled more hot chocolate and was brushing it from his cassock angrily. "God Himself cannot undo what a priest has united on earth."

How difficult it was, thought Quart, to distinguish between pride and virtue. Between truth and error. Determined to remain on the sidelines, he lowered his eyes to the Roman mosaic at his feet, brought here by Macarena's ancestors: a ship surrounded by fish, and something that looked like an island with trees, and a woman on the shore carrying a jug or amphora. There was also a dog with the inscription CAVE CANEM, and a woman and a man touching each other. Some pieces were loose and he nudged them back into place with his foot.

"What does that banker, Octavio Machuca, have to say about all this?" he asked, and noticed the duchess's expression instantly soften.

"Octavio is a very old and dear friend. The best I ever had," she said.

"He's in love with the duchess," said Macarena.

"Don't be ridiculous." The old lady fanned herself, staring disapprovingly at her daughter. Laughing, Macarena insisted it was true. The duchess was forced to admit that Machuca, when he first arrived in Seville, had indeed wooed her for a time before she married. But such a marriage would have been inconceivable at the time. He never married, and never made any advances to her while her husband, his friend Rafael Guardiola, was alive. She sounded sorry, but Quart couldn't tell what she regretted.

"He asked you to marry him," said Macarena.

"That was later. I was a widow by then. But I thought it best to leave things as they were. Now we take a stroll in the park every Wednesday. We're very good, old friends."

"What do you talk about?" asked Quart, smiling to make his question seem less intrusive.

"Nothing," said Macarena. "I've spied on them, and all they do is flirt quietly."

"Ignore her. I take his arm, and we chat about our own things. Of times gone by. Of when he was a young adventurer, before he settled down."

"Don Octavio recites The Express Train by Campoamor to her." "How do you know?" "He told me."

Cruz Bruner straightened, touching her pearl necklace with a hint of past coquettishness. "Well, yes, it's true. He knows I like it. 'My letter, rejoicing as it goes to meet you, will tell you of my memory…"' Her smile was melancholy. "We also talk about Macarena. He loves her like a daughter and he gave her away at her wedding… Look at Father Ferro's face. He doesn't like Octavio."

The old priest scowled defiantly. It was almost as if he were jealous of their walks in the park. On Wednesdays he didn't take coffee with the duchess of El Nuevo Extremo and she recited the rosary without him.

"I neither like nor dislike him, madam," he said, uncomfortable. "But I find his attitude to the problem of Our Lady of the Tears highly reprehensible. Pencho Gavira is his subordinate. Don Octavio could stop Gavira from proceeding with this sacrilege." His anger made his face look hard. "In that respect he has not served you or your daughter well."

"Octavio has an extraordinarily pragmatic approach to life," said Cruz Bruner. "He couldn't care less about the church. He respects our deep affection for it, but he believes that my son-in-law has made the right decision." She gazed at the escutcheons carved in the spandrels above the courtyard arches. "Macarena's future, he'd say,*is not in clinging to the wreckage but in climbing aboard a brand-new yacht. Which my son-in-law can provide."

"It has to be said, Don Octavio isn't taking sides," agreed her daughter. "He's neutral."

Don Priamo raised an apocalyptic finger. "One cannot be neutral about the house of God."

"Please, Father," Macarena said to him with a tender smile, "try to stay calm. Have more chocolate."

The old priest refused a third cup and stared sullenly at the tips of his scuffed shoes. I know who he reminds me of, thought Quart. Jock, the grumpy, aggressive little fox terrier in Lady and the Tramp. Except that Father Ferro was more truculent. Quart said to the old duchess,

"Earlier you mentioned your father the duke… Was he Carlota Bruner's brother?"

The old lady was taken aback. "You know the story?" She played for a moment with her fan, glancing at her daughter and then at Quart. "Carlota was my aunt, my father's older sister. A sad family tale… Macarena has been obsessed with the story since she was a child. She would spend hours with her trunk, reading those unhappy letters that never reached their destination and trying on old dresses at the window where they say Carlota sat waiting."

There was something new in the atmosphere. Father Ferro looked away, embarrassed. The subject seemed to make him uncomfortable.

"Father Quart," Macarena said, "has one of Carlota's cards."

"That's not possible," said the duchess. "They're in the trunk up in the pigeon loft."

"Well, he has. It's a picture of the church. Somebody put it in his hotel room."

"How ridiculous. Who would do such a thing?" The old lady looked suspiciously at Quart. "Has he returned it to you?" she asked her daughter.

Macarena shook her head slowly. "I've let him keep it. For the time being."

The duchess was confused. "I don't understand. Only you ever go up to the pigeon loft, or the servants."

"Yes," said Macarena, turning to the old priest, "and Don Priamo."

Father Ferro almost jumped out of his seat. "For the love of God, madam. You're surely not insinuating that I…"

"I was joking, Father," said Macarena. Although Quart couldn't tell from her expression whether she was or not. "But the fact is, the card got to the Dona Maria Hotel and it's a mystery how."

"What's the pigeon loft?" asked Quart.

"You can't see it from here, only from the garden," explained Cruz Bruner. "It's what we call the house's tower. There was once a pigeon loft up there. My grandfather Luis, Carlota's father, studied astronomy and set up an observatory. Eventually it became the room where my poor aunt spent her last years, as a recluse… Now Don Priamo uses it."

Quart looked at the old priest in evident surprise. This explained the books he'd found in his quarters. "I didn't know you were interested in astronomy,'' he said.

"Well, I am." The priest was uneasy. "There's no reason you should know. It's none of your business, or Rome's. The duchess is kind enough to let me use the observatory."

"That's right," said Cruz Bruner, pleased. "The instruments are all very old, but Father Ferro keeps them clean, and in use. And he tells me about what he sees. He won't make any discoveries with that equipment, but it's a pleasant pastime." She tapped her legs with her fan, smiling. "I don't have the strength to climb up there, but Macarena goes up sometimes."

One surprise after another, thought Quart. This was a strange little club that Father Ferro had here. An insubordinate astronomer priest.

"You didn't mention your interest in astronomy either," Quart said, looking into her dark eyes, wondering what other secrets were hidden there.

"I'm interested in tranquillity," said Macarena simply. "You can find it up there, among the stars. Father Ferro lets me stay while he works. I read or watch him."

Quart looked at the sky above their heads – a rectangle of blue framed by the eaves of the Andalusian courtyard. There was a single cloud, high up. Small, solitary and motionless, like Father Ferro. "In the past," he said, "astronomy was forbidden to clerics. It was considered too rational and therefore a threat to the soul." He smiled in a friendly way at the old priest. "The Inquisition would have imprisoned you for it."

Father Ferro looked down, bad-tempered, unyielding. "The Inquisition," he muttered, "would have imprisoned me for a lot of things, not just astronomy."

"But not anymore," said Quart, thinking of Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz. "Not that they wouldn't like to."

For the first time they all laughed, even Father Ferro, reluctantly at first, then with good humour. Talking of astronomy seemed to have narrowed a little the gulf between him and Quart. Macarena sensed it and looked pleased, glancing first at one and then the other. Bright glints once again shone in her eyes, and she laughed her frank, open laugh, like a boy's. She suggested that the old priest show Quart the pigeon loft.

The brass telescope gleamed beneath the mudejar arches open on all four sides of the tower. It looked out over the rooftops of Santa Cruz. In the distance, among television aerials and flocks of pigeons flying in all directions, were La Giralda, the Torre del Oro and a stretch of the Guadalquivir with jacarandas in flower like blue splashes along its banks. The rest of the landscape before which Carlota Bruner had languished a century earlier was now a mass of modern concrete, steel and glass buildings. There was not a single white sail in sight, nor boats bobbing on the current, and the four pinnacles of the Archivo de Indias looked like forgotten sentinels atop the Lonja building, guarding the paper, dust and memories of a time long past within it. "What a wonderful place," said Quart.

Father Ferro didn't answer. He took his dirty handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tube of the telescope, breathing on it. It was an ancient model, almost two metres long, with an altazimuth mounting. The long brass tube and all the metal parts had been carefully polished. The telescope shone in the sunlight, and the sun was moving slowly towards the far bank, over Triana. There was little else in the pigeon loft: a couple of old torn leather armchairs, a desk with numerous drawers, a lamp, a print of seventeenth-century Seville on the wall, and a few leather-bound books: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Quevedo, Heine, Galdos, Blasco Ibanez, Valle-Inclan, together with some treatises on cosmography, celestial mechanics and astrophysics. Quart went to take a closer look at them: Ptolemy, Porta, Alfonso de Cordoba. Some were very old editions.

"I would never have imagined it," Quart said. "I mean, that you'd be interested in this sort of thing."

His tone was sincere, conciliatory. In the last few hours his view of Father Ferro had undergone considerable change. The old priest was rubbing the telescope, as if a genie with all the answers were asleep inside. He shrugged. His cassock was so stained and threadbare that it looked more grey than black. Strange contrast, thought Quart: the small, dingy priest beside the gleaming telescope.

"I like watching the sky at night," Father Ferro said at last. "The duchess and her daughter allow me to spend a couple of hours a day up here, after dinner. There's direct access from the courtyard, so I don't bother anyone."

Quart touched the spine of one of the books, Delia celeste fisionomia, 1616. Next to it were some volumes he'd never heard of, Tabulae Astronomicae. A rough village priest, His Grace Aquilino Corvo had said. The thought made Quart smile to himself as he leafed through the astronomical tables.

"When did you become interested in all this?"

Apparently satisfied with the condition of the telescope, Father Ferro put the handkerchief away in his pocket, turned to Quart, took the book from him, and put it back in its place. "I spent many years living on a mountain," he said. "At night, when I sat outside the church, there was nothing to do but look at the sky."

He fell silent, as if he'd said more than he had needed to. It wasn't difficult to picture him sitting at nightfall beneath the stone portico of his village church, staring up at the vault of heaven, where no human light could disturb the harmony of the spheres revolving through the universe. Quart picked up a copy of Heine's Travel Pictures and opened it at a page marked by a red ribbon:

Life and the world are the dream of a drunken god, who steals away from the banquet of the gods and falls asleep on a solitary star, unaware that he creates what he dreams of… And the images of his dreams appear, at times with a motley extravagance, at others harmonious and rational… The Iliad, Plato, the battle of Marathon, the Venus de Medici, the French Revolution, Hegel, steamships, all arc thoughts that emerge from his long dream. But one day the god will wake, rubbing his sleepy eyes, he will smile, and our world will sink into oblivion and none of it will ever have existed…

There was a warm, gentle breeze. Muffled sounds reached the pigeon loft from the courtyards and streets below. Through the windows of a nearby school came a chorus of children's voices reciting a lesson or poem. Quart listened – something about nests and birds. Suddenly the recitation stopped and the chorus burst into cries of laughter.

Over towards the Reales Alcazares, a clock struck three times. It was a quarter to six. "Why the stars?" asked Quart.

Father Ferro took a small dented tin from his pocket, and from the tin he took a filterless cigarette. He moistened the end with his tongue and put it in his mouth.

"They're pure," he said.

He lit the cigarette in the hollow of his hand, inclining his head as he did so. His forehead and scarred face became even more creased. The smoke floated out through the arched windows while the smell, strong and acrid, reached Quart.

"I understand," Quart said, and Father Ferro turned to look at him with a flicker of interest. The man almost smiled. Unsure whether to regret this or congratulate himself, Quart realised that something had changed. The pigeon loft was a neutral space between heaven and earth where their mutual distrust seemed to diminish, as if, according to the old custom, they could both take sanctuary here. Quart felt the impulse towards comradeship that was often – although in his case not too often – established between one cleric and another. Solitary, lost soldiers encountering each other on the battlefield.

"How long did you spend up there?"

The old priest said, the cigarette smoking in his mouth, "Over twenty years." "It must have been a small parish."

"Very small. Forty-two people when I arrived. None by the time I left. They either died or moved. My last parishioner was over eighty -she didn't survive the snow that last winter."

A pigeon wandered up and down one of the ledges of the gallery, near the priest. He stared at it intently, as if it might have a message tied to its leg. But when it flew off with a flapping of wings, his gaze remained fixed on the same spot. His clumsy movements, his slovenliness still reminded Quart of the old priest he hated as a child, but now he could see significant differences between that priest and this. He had thought that Father Ferro's roughness sprang from a primitive state. That he was just a grey cleric who, like the priest from Quart's distant past, had not been able to rise above his own mediocrity and ignorance. But here in the pigeon loft Quart found a different kind of priest: consciously reactionary, fully aware that he was renouncing a brilliant career in the Church. It was quite clear that Father Ferro had once been – and in some ways continued to be, almost in secret – more than a coarse village priest, more than the surly, stubborn parish priest who ignored the reforms of the second Vatican Council by celebrating Mass in Latin at Our Lady of the Tears. It was not done from a lack of education or because of age; it was done out of firm conviction. In Quart's terms, Don Priamo Ferro had chosen his flag.

There was a notebook open on the desk, with pencil diagrams of a constellation. Quart thought of the old priest peering through his telescope at night, absorbed in the silence of the firmament revolving slowly beyond the lens, while Macarena Bruner sat reading Anna Karenina or the Sonatas in one of the old armchairs, moths fluttering around the lamp. He suddenly wanted to laugh at himself. It made him feel terribly jealous.

He saw that Father Ferro was watching him, as if the look on Quart's face had set him thinking.

"Orion," Father Ferro said, and Quart, disconcerted, took a moment to realise that the priest meant the diagram in the notebook. "At this time of year you can see only the topmost star of the Hunter's left shoulder. It's called Betelgeuse and appears over there." He pointed at a section of the sky, still light, on the horizon. "West by northwest." He still had the cigarette in his mouth, and ash dropped on to his cassock.

Quart turned the pages of the book, which were full of notes, diagrams, and figures. He could identify only the constellation of Leo, his own sign. According to legend, the javelins of Hercules had bounced off Leo's body of metal.

"Do you believe," Quart asked, "that everything is written in the stars?"

Father Ferro grimaced. "Three or four centuries ago," he said, "that kind of question would have cost a priest his life." "I've told you, I've come in peace."

Father Ferro's laughter was sarcastic. A harsh, grating sound. "You're referring to astrology," he said at last. "I'm interested in astronomy. I hope you'll underline the subtle difference in your report to Rome." He fell silent, but went on looking at Quart curiously, as if reappraising him. UI have no idea where things are written," he added after a while. "Although I can tell at a glance that you and I aren't even using the same alphabet." "Please explain."

"There's not much to explain. You work for a multinational organisation that is based on all the demagogy Christian humanism and the Enlightenment filled our heads with: that man evolves to higher states through suffering, that humanity is destined to reform itself, that goodwill begets more goodwill…" He turned to the window, again dropping ash down his cassock. "Or that Truth with a capital T exists, and is enough in itself."

Quart was shaking his head.

"You don't know me," he said. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know who you work for. That's enough." He turned back to the telescope, checking again for dust. He put his hands in his pocket. "What do you or your bosses in Rome know, with your bureaucrats' mentality? All you know of love or hate are their theological definitions, or whispers in the confessional… I can tell at glance, just by the way you talk and move, that you're a man whose sins are those of omission. You're one of the TV preachers, pastors of a soulless church, who speak of the faithful the way companies speak of their customers."

"You're wrong about me, Father. My work…"

The old priest again made the grating sound that was his laughter. "Your work!" He turned abruptly to Quart. "Now you're going to tell me that you get your hands dirty, aren't you? Even though you're always so well groomed. I'm sure you have plenty of justifications and alibis. You're young, strong, your superiors give you room and board, they think for you and throw you bones to gnaw. You're the perfect policeman working for a powerful corporation that serves God. You've probably never loved a woman, or hated a man, or felt sympathy for a miserable wretch. No poor have blessed you for their bread, no sick for their solace, no sinners for their hope of salvation… You follow orders, nothing more."

"I follow the rules," said Quart, and instantly regretted it.

"Do you?" The old priest looked at him with intense irony. "Well, my congratulations. You'll save your soul. Those who follow the rules always go to heaven." His mouth twisted as he took a last drag on his cigarette. "To rejoice in God's presence." He threw the cigarette end out of the window and watched it fall.

"I wonder," said Quart, "if you still have faith."

These were strange words, coming from Quart, and Quart knew it. Quite apart from the fact that such questions – more appropriate to the hounds of the Holy Office – were not within the jurisdiction of his mission. As Spada would have said, at the IEA we deal not with people's hearts but with their actions. Let's stick to being good centurions and leave the dangerous task of probing the human soul to His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz.

. And yet Quart waited for an answer in the long silence that followed his remark. As the old priest moved slowly round the telescope, his reflection slid along the polished brass tube.

"Still is an adverb of time," Father Ferro said at last, frowning, possibly reflecting on time, or adverbs. "But I forgive sins," he added. "I help people die in peace."

"It's not your office to forgive," Quart said. "Only God can do that."

The priest looked at him, as if he'd forgotten that Quart was there. "When I was young," he said suddenly, "I read all the philosophers of Antiquity, from Socrates to Saint Augustine. And I forgot them. The only thing that remained of them was bittersweet melancholy and disillusionment. Now I'm sixty-four, and all I know about people is that they remember, they're afraid, and they die."

Quart must have looked surprised and embarrassed, because Father Ferro nodded, his hard dark eyes fixing him for a moment. He looked up at the sky. The solitary cloud – maybe no longer the same one -had gone to meet the setting sun, and a reddish glow now spread over the distant buildings.

"I searched for Him up in the mountains for a long time," Father Ferro went on. "I wanted to have it out with Him, a kind of settling of scores, one to one. I'd seen so many people suffer and die… Forgotten by my bishop and his aides, I lived in atrocious solitude. I emerged only to say Mass every Sunday in a small, almost empty church, or to trudge through rain or snow to give extreme unction to a soul who waited for my arrival to die. For twenty-five years, sitting at the bedside of those who gripped my hands because I was their only comfort in the face of death, I prayed to Him. But I never received an answer."

He broke off. It was Quart who spoke now: "Either we live and die according to a plan, or merely by accident." It was neither a question nor an answer. He was just prompting Father Ferro to continue. For the first time, Quart had some understanding of the man before him; and he knew that Father Ferro could sense this.

The old priest's face softened. "How to preserve, then," he said, "the message of life in a world that bears the seal of death? Man dies, he knows he will die, and he also knows that, unlike kings, popes and generals, he'll leave no trace. He tells himself there must be something more. Otherwise, the universe is simply a joke in very poor taste; senseless chaos. So faith becomes a kind of hope, a solace. Maybe that's why not even the Holy Father believes in God anymore."

Quart burst out laughing, startling the pigeons. "That's why you're defending your church tooth and nail," he said.

"Of course." Father Ferro frowned. "What does it matter whether I have faith or not? Those who come to me have faith. That's justification enough for the existence of Our Lady of the Tears. And it's no coincidence that it's a church of the baroque, which was the art of the Counter-Reformation, which declared, 'Don't think. Leave that to the theologians. Admire the carvings, the gilding, the sumptuous altars, the passion plays that have been the essential means of entrancing the masses since the time of Aristotle… Be dazzled by the glory of God. Too much analysis robs you of hope. See us as the solid rock on which to take refuge from the roaring torrent. The truth kills you before your time.'"

Quart raised a hand: "There's a moral objection to all this, Father. What you describe is alienation. Your church, presented like that, is the seventeenth-century equivalent of television."

"So what?" said Father Ferro with a shrug. "What was religious baroque art but an attempt to win the audience away from Luther and Calvin? Anyway, where would the modern papacy be without television? Naked faith can't be sustained. People need symbols to wrap around themselves, because it's cold outside. We're responsible for our last innocent faithful, those who followed us believing that we'd lead them to the sea, lead them home, as in the Anabasis. At least my old stones, my altarpiece, and my Latin arc more dignified than all that amplified singing and the huge screens that have turned services into a spectacle for the masses, dazzling them with electronic gimmicks. The Church leaders think that's the way to keep their customers. But they're wrong, they only degrade us. The battle's been lost, and now the time has come for false prophets."

He shut his mouth and bowed his head, morose. The conversation was over. He leaned on the window ledge and looked out over the river. Quart didn't know what to do or say. After a moment he went and leaned on the ledge beside Father Ferro. He had never been so near the priest. Father Ferro's head came up to his shoulder. They stood like that, without speaking, until long after the clocks on the towers of Seville struck six. The solitary cloud had dissolved and the sun was sinking. To the west, the sky was slowly turning gold. Don Priamo Ferro spoke again.

"I know only one thing: when the seduction is over we'll be finished too. Logic and reason will mean the end. But as long as some poor woman needs to kneel in my small church in search of comfort, the church must remain standing." He took his dirty handkerchief from his pocket and noisily blew his nose. The light from the setting sun lit the white stubble on his chin. "Burdened as we are by our miserable condition, priests like me are still needed… We're the old, patched drum skin on which the glory of God still thunders. And only a madman would envy our secret. We know," said the old priest darkly, "the angel who holds the key to the abyss."