Page 38 of Daughter of Genoa
‘Not her.’
‘You don’t know for sure.’ Fulvio gives him a broad wink. ‘Believe me, you can’t know what’s going on in a woman’s head. You might find that she’s very interested indeed if you ever decide to kick over the traces.’
It’s a dreadful affront to his priestly dignity. Vittorio should object, but he’s too busy thinking about it. Just for an instant, of course, before he remembers his vows, and Mr X, and Marta’s desperation.Tell me he’s safe, Father Vittorio, please.
‘I won’t do that,’ he says.
Fulvio sighs. ‘I know. You’re a good man – too good, in my opinion. But I hope it feels better to talk about it, at least.’
Vittorio manages to smile and say that it does. And in a certain sense, that’s true. Talking about Marta out loud to someone feels like that first moment when his lungs opened and took in air. He’s alive and in love. And he tries to see that love as sinful and misdirected – a disordered attachment, Ignatius would call it – but he can’t. Not now, not any more.
But talking about her has also made it all real. He can’t unsay what he has said; he can’t force it back into the depths of his awareness. He’ll have to live with it, carry it, for what remains of his life.
He and Fulvio lapse into silence after that. Vittorio is used to silence as a particular, set-apart thing – a spiritual practice, a form of deprivation, the place where he meets God – or else as the natural corollary of living in a community of self-contained men, dividing so much of his time between the library work he does alone and the clandestine work he can’t talk about even with his spiritual director. But this silence is different: companionable, undemanding. It’s a friendly silence, and he’s grateful for it.
When he finally gets up to go, Fulvio says: ‘Be nice to yourself, Father Vittorio. Won’t you?’
‘I’ll try,’ he says, as much to reassure the old man as anything.
‘Good lad.’ Fulvio nods. ‘And if I don’t see you again, good luck.’
*
‘Intertrigo,’ Dr Rostan says, inspecting Vittorio’s left armpit. He’s already removed the dressing on the puncture wound and pronounced it satisfactory. ‘You can put your arm down now, Father.’
Vittorio gratefully lowers his arm. It aches from being held aloft even briefly; his right one is still aching. ‘What is that exactly?’
‘It’s a very common condition – don’t worry. Essentially, you sweat, and that makes your skin stick together. Then you move around, creating friction.’ Dr Rostan rubs his palms together to demonstrate. ‘And that’s what makes this nasty, prickly rash. If you’re unlucky, you get a nice infection to go with it – but in this instance, you’ve been lucky. Yours doesn’t look infected, only angry. I know that doesn’t count for much in the current situation…”
‘It does, believe me,’ Vittorio says. He can’t imagine whatthatitch would be like.
‘It’s not surprising you’ve got it,’ the doctor says. ‘If you’re sweating at night, and your system is under stress, it’s easy for something like this to crop up. Add in this warm weather and that… thing you wear all day—’ he gestures to Vittorio’s cassock, which lies draped across the end of the table ‘—and it was pretty much a certainty. The only thing I cannot understand is why you didn’t tell me about it yesterday. Were you embarrassed? Afraid?’
‘It didn’t seem too bad,’ Vittorio says. ‘I was in too much discomfort with my breathing. Now you’ve fixed that, I’m noticing other things more.’
‘I didn’t fix anything,’ Dr Rostan says sternly. ‘I gave you some temporary respite from just one of your symptoms, but you need diagnosis and proper care. You know that perfectly well, so I shan’t keep bludgeoning you over the head with it. But I can’t believe for a moment that a rash like this didn’t bother you until today. Wasn’t it driving you mad?’
‘No. It did bother me – I was uncomfortable, but I managed to ignore it.’ Vittorio can’t begin to explain just how divorced he is from his body and its sensations; how two and a half decades of strict discipline have made him not just able, but inclined to disregard all but the most urgent physical signals. He’s only just starting to realise it himself. ‘It didn’t start driving me mad until I looked at it.’
‘Until you looked at it,’ the doctor echoes. ‘I see. And have you got it anywhere else? Or is it just under the arms?’
‘Just under the arms,’ Vittorio says. It’s another lie for the list, he knows, but he can’t strip off below the waist and let this man look at his intimate parts. He simply can’t.
‘Right. Well, if you did have it anywhere else, assuming it wasn’t infected, then the treatment is the same and it’s really very simple. Keep the area clean and as dry as you can. Wash at least twice a day, and certainly before you get into bed. Don’t scrub or scour yourself, and dry the skin by patting, not rubbing. Apply some medicated talc each time – I’ll give you some of that – and petroleum jelly, to help with the friction. I’ll give you a cream to leave on overnight, too. Ideally you’d start wearing nice, light, breathable summer clothing instead of that get-up of yours, but I expect that’s out of the question.’
‘It is.’
Dr Rostan makes a regretful face. ‘Worth a try. But if you do everything I’ve told you to do, it should improve quite quickly. If it doesn’t, of course, let me know. Have you any questions?’
‘May I put my clothes back on?’ Vittorio asks, and the doctor laughs.
‘Yes, of course, unless you’ve got any more surprises in store.’
That night before bed, Vittorio carefully washes, dries and powders himself, then smooths on cream. He makes himself look as he does it, taking care to find and cover every bit of red, itchy skin, and it feels wrong to pay such close attention to his body. It feels like a breach of every rule he’s absorbed since he entered the novitiate at seventeen. But he knows that if he wants to keep going for as long as he can, to wring every bit of use out of these last months of his life, then he must learn to pay attention; to be nice to himself, as Fulvio put it. And there is no question now that he wants to keep going.
*
When he wakes up the next morning, he’s drenched in sweat as usual. But the rash has already started to fade, and the itch has dulled to a nagging hum. It feels like a sign. He rises and prepares for his day.
