The Church of Lost Souls 14

I was in a bit of a huff when we left the library. Sofia hadn’t been unkind. In fact she’d been very balanced and restrained in revealing the death cult at the library, but the facts were undeniable.

While she obviously found the whole thing deliciously funny she had always been careful with her fondness for its flavour, taking evenly tempered bites only occasionally and for light relief.

Having been mildly traumatized by the theft of his belongings, the revelations of old man and the beating he’d just stopped, Paolo seemed still lost in the sound of music as we waited for our slices at the pizza place near the Spanish Steps.

‘That voice,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I was thinking the same,’ said Sofia. ´So dirty.

‘That voice was coming from Maria’s apartment,’ I said. I told them I´d seen someone up there and that, if they´d bothered to look themselves, they´d have noticed that all the windows were fully open.

‘What did they look like?’ asked Sofia.

´What, the windows?´

´No, stupid, the person at the window.’

‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘Good old tracker dog Sofia’s found another lead.’ She looked away with a downcast grin. ‘For your information, Frau Sofia, I would say that I can’t be sure but it looked most like an old man or an old woman.’

‘Strange that the whole area was dead, no one anywhere and then we get to Maria’s street and, boom, that concert, the music,’ said Paolo.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘whatever´s happened is now a closed book. It´s an ex story. It is no more.’

‘It´s insurance money tomorrow and Switzerland Saturday,’ said Paolo.

´Right,´ I said.

It came to mind then that ever since Paolo had come into contact with me, he’d found only fear, violence, crime and mischief, and at an alarming rate. I had to say something.

‘Listen Paolo,´ I said, ‘I’m sorry about everything that’s happened the past few days. I know it´s all down to me but I assure you I’m as in the dark as everyone else, which may not be much consolation but’

‘but what?´ said Sofia. ´You didn’t steal his things and you weren’t to know what the old man would say to him. OK, it´s all very weird but you have to admit it´s very interesting too, no? For whatever reason we’ve been put together we should try and get to the bottom of this, right?’

‘Right,’ Paolo barked, unconvincingly.

‘That’s settled then,’ she said.

‘What’s settled?’ I asked.

‘That we find out what’s going on,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s exactly what we’re not going to do. This whole thing is finished. I’m going to paint the taverna and then we’re going up to Switzerland. Right, Paolo?’

‘Right,’ he said with a little more vim.

´So why did you invite Maria to the party on your last night?´ said Sofia.

We ate the pizzas on the steps and took the bus back. On the way Paolo revealed that he’d always wanted to be a singer and that the music had awoken something from deep within him. Sofia suggested he must do it and then he told us about his dad, who’d been a classical singer in Rio all his life. On his deathbed he’d taken Paolo’s hand and begged him to promise never to be a singer. ‘Sing, yes,’ he’d said, ‘singer, no.’

It seemed cruel for his father to have made such a bold request when he knew how strong his son´s love for music was but these matters are private. So close to death, could he have said it in delirium? Either way, Paolo wanted to be a singer.

‘I can´t wait to see what this Maria´s like,´ he said as we skipped off the bus. ´You said she was sexy, right? How sexy?´

´Very sexy,´ I said.

Paolo was older than me by a year. He had long brown frizzy hair in an Afro, Latino style. With his prominent features and duskily resonant voice he´d have made a grand pin-up in the music business. We were about the same height, six foot odd, and my hair was an Afro too, but curly and mousy brown. In the sun it had gone blond in places.

In many ways I had more loving thoughts for Paolo than I did for Sofia and Maria. With the girls it was mostly down to sexuality and prospects but with Paolo there was only fun and friendship.

When we got back to the campsite I went straight to the taverna to see the painter. He´d done most of the background on each of the four walls and would return the next morning. He was in a stinking mood.

I was to start painting the characters and do what I could. Then we´d both go steaming in tomorrow and finish it off. He showed me the kit he´d got for me.

All the paint colours were there with a good few brushes for different shades so I got going and the painter left.

The taverna was a simple build with a concrete roof and breeze block walls. In the brick-shaped room with a concrete floor there were small windowless openings at intervals along the walls. The entrance was an opening without doors.

The painter had managed well to set the tableau in good order. He´d used all four walls to wrap around the table of The Last Supper. The disciples´ bodies had been painted well too, leaving their heads clear for the cartoon characters.

Directly opposite the entrance at the far end of the room was the pizza oven set inside its bricks and mortar. That´s where Jesus would be going, with Foghorn to his left and Popeye to his right.

With the stone table in front for making the pizzas it looked like a featureless head with a gaping mouth.

From the entrance I stood and charted which of the other characters should go where and then began sketching them in in pencil on the walls.

With the sun beating down at the concrete roof it was hot and sticky in no time but at least all the other workers had gone. It was just me.

An hour or so in I was making quite good progress when a man in a white coat entered and started throwing wood into the oven. He then lit it.

It was a preliminary test, he said, and left.

It didn´t half get hot in there. I´d done half the characters in pencil and one colour and managed to get the other half done in the ensuing hour, taking breathers outside every ten minutes. It was a furnace.

While I was doing Goofy I looked over to the pizza oven and noticed that its mortar surrounding had started to craze terribly. Crazing is when a surface cracks under pressure due of bad mixing or bad drying. In this instant it looked like the latter was responsible for the damage. It hadn´t been allowed to dry. The man in the white coat had lit the oven way too early and this was the result.

Jesus´ place at the table was looking very precarious as I imagined painting his face on the damaged surface.

The man in the white coat came back after an hour or so. By then the heat had subsided considerably and I´d done all the disciples´ outlines in two colours. All I needed to do was draw an outline of Jesus on the oven and stick at least two colours on him so that he was dry in the morning along with the other characters.

On entering the man walked nimbly behind me as I was painting Goofy. When I turned around I could see there was blood all over his coat. At his side he was dragging a plastic sack full of large bloody joints.

At the oven he quickly filled it again with wood and the fire took hold immediately.

I asked him about the crazed mortar and he made the action of painting.

´But is Jesus, no?´ I said, ´not good for Jesus.´ I went to touch the mortar but it was red hot. I would certainly not be able to start work on him till the morning.

The man held his hands up as if to say what could he do so I got on with my work, touching up a few of the characters.

Moments later I heard him shuffling around and turned to see him struggling with the bag. Lumping it down onto the stone table the lengths of meat slivered out as he arranged them. One by one they went into the oven, by then a veritable furnace.

He said he needed to do a test on the oven for the owner, to bless it, I think he said. ´Like in chiesa, no?´

I asked him why not bless it with pizzas and he shrugged, mumbling in fast Italian.

The temperature had gone down with all the meat steaming away in there so he stuck a load more kindling in and the fire cracked back into life.

He must have stood there for a good half-hour poking it around as I got on with the characters.

I went outside for a smoke and a rest and when I looked up there was thick black smoke floating everywhere around the campsite. It didn´t look healthy at all so I asked the man to take a look.

He said it was fine, ´just oven, first time, si?´

I wasn´t convinced. We went back inside and he put more wood into the oven. When he finally left a while later we said goodnight and I started packing stuff up and cleaning brushes.

Before leaving I couldn´t help taking a look inside the oven and saw, right at the back, some very large joints on their bones. They were hidden for the most part behind the burning wood, piled high by the man just before leaving, but I could see they were cuts from legs and arms. I couldn´t tell the animal. A calf, a lamb?

It was about nine by that time and I was famished so I headed off to see Paolo and Sofia.

They´d spent the afternoon lounging around the tent. There were some scraps for me, Sofia said. Actually it was a beautifully prepared chicken sandwich with potatoes in mayonnaise and a few crisps.

I wolfed that down quickly and then, keen to know their opinion on the bones, I asked them to come to the taverna but by the time we got back it was almost pitch black. I tried the lights they wouldn´t come on. Maybe they´d been switched off at the mains by the owner after we´d gone.

Stood in darkness we entered the taverna and approached the oven. Each of us tried striking matches and looking inside its mouth but it was still way too hot and none of us could see the bones at the back, pushed up and cushioned against hot greying embers that glistened with the last of their redness, the joints crackling, the bones creaking under the stress.

‘I’m supposed to be painting Jesus here,´ I said pointing to the cracked mortar above the furnace, a gaping space surrounded by animal disciples.

´Good luck with that,´ said Sofia. She asked about the man and I told her that he´d wanted to bless it for the owner. ´Bless a pizza oven with a carcass? I don’t think so.´