Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci Read Free Book Online

flowing to the floor, his collar tightly buttoned around his thick neck, and his paddle held discreetly behind his back. Immediately then all whispering, hair-pulling, note-passing, and paper-throwing would cease (
la maestra
was by no means as strict a disciplinarian as Father Nick) and the air would resound briefly with the scrape of chair legs against concrete; and finally, benches and chairs aligned in perfect columns, students standing beside them, evenly spaced, eyes forward, a burnished silence would descend on the room and a thin sour smile would stretch across Father Nicola’s fat sour face.
    ‘
Buongiorno, ragazzi.
’
    ‘
Buon-gior-no, Don Ni-co-la.
’
    When we had resumed our seats, Father Nick would circulate around the room and look into our eyes for signs of sin. When he’d chosen a victim, always a boy, he’d pass his desk and then slowly turn and call his name, so that he was alwaysstanding behind you, out of sight, when you stood to answer a question.
    ‘Antonio Girasole,
alzati, per favore
.’
    Antonio would rise and face forward, the priest standing only inches behind him, close enough for Antonio to feel his breath against his neck.
    ‘Tell me, Antonio,
quante persone ci sono in Dio?
’
    Always an easy question to begin.
    ‘Three persons, Don Nicola.’
    ‘
Tre persone, giusto
. And what are they called, these three persons?’
    ‘
Il Padre, il Figlio, e lo Spirito Santo.
’
    ‘
Bene, Antonio, molto bene
. You are truly a theologian, a Jesuit even.’
    A titter would arise from the other students; Father Nick liked to play with his victims before going in for the kill, like a boy tearing the wings off flies.
    ‘And now tell me, Antonio: how can it be that these three persons are one?’
    A dead silence, broken finally by a shuffling of feet, a nervous cough; and then from Antonio a small ‘I don’t know sir,’ and Father Nick would have his first victim.
    Father Nick never failed to crucify a scapegoat or two on his visits, allowing them to bear the burden of our collective guilt—for who among us could have answered those questions of his? But afterwards, our dues paid, he’d tell us stories about his days in the seminary; and somehow these stories would make me forget his paddle, so that it was always a shock when he next loomed up again in the school doorway, as if my mind could not understand how the Father Nick with the paddle and the Father Nick who told stories were one and the same person.
    ‘I had a friend in the seminary named Dompietro,’ he told usonce, ‘who I knew from Rocca Secca. When they gave us beds they put Dompietro in the dormitory across from mine. So on the first morning in the seminary I went to call Dompietro to come with me to breakfast—but when I came to where he slept I found him lying on the ground with his head under his bed.
    ‘ “Dompietro,” I said, “what are you doing under your bed?”
    ‘ “I’m looking for my shoe,” he said.
    ‘After a few minutes he pulled himself out from under the bed and held up his shoe.
    ‘
“Eccola!”
he said, with a big smile on his face, as if he was the happiest man in the world. Then he knelt down beside his bed, put his hands together, closed his eyes, and whispered a little prayer.
    ‘What a strange fellow this Dompietro is, I thought to myself. He’s thanking God because he found his shoe!
    ‘The next morning when I went to call Dompietro it was the same story all over again. There was Dompietro lying on the ground with his head under his bed.
    ‘ “Dompietro,” I said, “what are you doing under your bed?”
    ‘ “I’m looking for my shoe,” he said.
    ‘And once again when he found the shoe he whispered a little prayer to the Lord.
    ‘This went on every day for over a week—first the shoe, then the prayer. I was beginning to think that maybe Dompietro was a little crazy. But in everything else he did he seemed very wise—it was only this one thing with the shoe I couldn’t