Father Urbano was not altogether comfortable in the great basilica. Its magnificence sometimes overwhelmed him. In its staring mosaics and golden volumes there was a quality that troubled him, an otherness, as if its builders were not connected to him by blood and bone. They had tossed up over the round vaults their bulbous domes and designed the great mosaics and attached the tesserae in dazzling clusters, and the mosaics were the wonder of the world, he knew that. And yet their staring eyes disturbed him.
They were indifferent to daily life, to the getting of bread, the raising of children, the doing of laundry. The shimmering figures existed only in eternity, where a peculiar kind of freezing wind had stiffened their limbs and wrinkled their gowns in tortured folds. Their dark brows frowned, their eyes sent long rods of accusation crisscrossing the upper air. It was a web of mighty gazing, never intersecting the upward glances of the tourists shuffling below.
And one of the huge segmented volumes within the basilica aroused in Father Urbano a superstitious dreadfor no reason! It was completely absurd! And yet there was something primitive and a little frightening about the hollow cavelike space above the north aisle, as though a shriveled hermit might be squatting in the farthest corner, crouching in a litter of bones, existing on crumbs flown in by pigeons.
Father Urbano had tried to escape his duty. "I don't know, Excellency. Perhaps I can be of more service here among my parishioners. Perhaps I'm not abbastanza sofisticato for priestly duties in such a famous basilica."
The cardinal patriarch had smiled indulgently. "I disagree, Father. Oh, I know it's beneath your dignity in some ways, keeping track of sinkages and the growth of fungus and the control ot crowds and the sale of souvenir booklets. But"he paused, and Father Urbano knew his cause was lost"you never can tell when another saint might thrust his arm from a column, and surprise us all." This was a half-irreverent joke, a reminder of the miraculous reappearance of the lost remains of Saint Mark, which had suddenly emerged from a pillar.
But of course there were satisfactions, too, in Father Urbano's unwanted elevation. He had a true vocation for attending to the muttered confessions of every sort of human sin, and a profound and solemn loss of self in the conducting of the mass. And here in Venice he took pleasure in scholarly friendships, enjoying warm exchanges from time to time with the learned scholar Samuele Bell, and with the new procurator of San Marco, Dottoressa Lucia Costanza, who had been a childhood friend.
Today he was amused rather than shocked by her request. "Andiamo," he said, "let's take a look."
A line of tourists was waiting to be admitted to the Treasury of Saint Mark. They looked curiously at the small round priest and the tall woman and murmured resentfully in German, Japanese, and Czech as the ticket seller waved them through. Four of the tourists were from the British Isles. They complained to each other loudly, not caring whether or not they were overheard.
"What right has she got to go to the head of the queue? " said the wife of the bishop of Seven Oaks, far back in the line, craning her neck to stare at Lucia.
"Well, obviously," said the bishop, "that fat little priest likes attractive women."
"Oh, do you think she's attractive?" said his wife, looking at him severely. " Louise, do you think that woman is attractive?"
Louise was the wife of the member of Parliament from the Channel Isles. "Not at all," she said briskly. "Tertius, what do you think? Is that woman attractive?"
"What woman? " said the member of Parliament, who was all at sea.
There were two chambers in the Treasury. One displayed magnificent chalices of blood-red sardonyx from Constantinople, alabaster patens, and amphoras of rock crystal. Lucia had seen these things before. Now she looked at them silently, feeling the solemnity of their antiquity, the aura of their sacred transforming power.
"But this room is beside the point," said Father Urbano. "It's the other one that matters in this case. Come on." They passed the waiting tourists again and walked into the second chamber of treasures. It was filled with reliquaries.
They were new to Lucia. "Tell me about them."
Father Urbano explained. There was no ironic emphasis in his voice as he led her from one to another. He merely named them quietly, the reliquaries that were like brass sleeves with hands, containing the arm bones of various saints, the bronze chest holding the leg bones of Saint Peter, the small statuettes of brutish men throwing stones at a statuette of Christ.
"Just a minute, Father," said Lucia, staring at the little figures. "That rock on the topit's real. Is it supposed to be an actual stone from the Flagellation?"