The Foot of Saint Catherine - SS

Literary Review, Spring, 1999 by Thomas E. Kennedy

Reynaldo descended from the train at Stazzioni S. Luccia nd stood on the platform for a moment, lifted a handkerchief folded into a white square from his pocket and coughed quietly into it. He was a tall, slender man, clad in a white linen suit and silk necktie of a nougat hue. As he meticulously blotted his forehead, the light of the north Italian morning glinted off the lenses of his spectacles. He returned the handkerchief to his pocket and stepped out onto the riva, past the statue of the virgin offering its stone embrace to the stale air of the ferrovia.

His eye swept along the graceful lines of a gondola, its silver prow brilliant in the sunlight, which dappled the green water. The gondolier pushed off through a mooring gate of striped barber poles. The smell of sulphur and sewage lifted from the water. Reynaldo coughed into his handkerchief and wiped his lips, held the linen to his nostrils.

He followed the Grand Canal nearly to the Rialto, walking slowly, gazing abstractly about. At the vaporetto station, he paused and looked at a tall, slender woman who stood at the rail of the boat as it backed away into the canal. Her face was long and thin, her lower lip full, her teeth large and white. She wore a dark, tight dress, and her dark gaze lifted frankly to Reynaldo's eyes as the vaporetto moved away from him. His eyes dropped to her fingers, long and delicate as porcelain, white as marble, on the railing.

His heart labored as he climbed the stairway away from the canal and made his way through the narrow streets toward the Church of St. John and St. Paul. By the time he reached the church, he was perspiring, and he stopped on the stone steps to blot his forehead and cheeks and coughed into his handkerchief.

Inside, monks in white robes swept the aisles silently with great dust mops. The beads that hung from the waist of one tall, slender, young monk clicked with the movement of his hips. He cast his gaze back over his shoulder at Reynaldo, peering up beneath his lowered brow with its curls of black hair flattened by perspiration.

Reynaldo hurried past him to the altar of St. Catherine of Sienna, where he blessed himself and knelt before the vigil tray. The bouquet of melting wax lifted to his nose as he gazed upon the Saint's piede enshrined in a cylinder of brass and glass at the center of the altar. The flesh of the foot was white as fine marble but for the third toe, which had blackened at the second knuckle and across the nail. The big toe, however, was perfect, its nail finely shaped and of handsome length. The foot was not larger than that of a child's.

He lowered his face and endeavored to pray, heard the clicking of beads and sweep of mop behind him, saw in his mind's eye the monk's gaze, the gaze of the dark woman from the vaporetto. He coughed into his handkerchief, rose abruptly from the kneeler. His heels sounded slowly along the marble floor as he passed the equestrian statuary, the Virgin with the electric halo, the figure of a Venetian orator, an early Bellini. He could sense the white monk's sweeping mop at his heels, heard the click of hip beads, heard or thought he heard a voice whisper, "Contanti per favore, signore." He stepped quickly into the souvenir alcove and concealed himself behind a rack of postcard reproductions of religious scenes. A woman sat at a desk muttering and squealing quietly, her face a rash of tiny beige tubular warts. He found an exit past the desk and then he was out on the campo, beneath the lofty figure of the mercenary captain Bartolomeo on his bronze steed.

The sun had mounted the arch of the sky. Reynaldo loosened the knot of his tie and opened the button of his collar and started walking again. Just before he reached San Marco's Piazza, in the corridor of a narrow damp stone walkway, he had to stop to catch his breath and lean on the wall. A fit of coughing wracked his lungs, and he muffled it in his handkerchief, peering at the red stain he left there. A long procession of Japanese tourists filed past him, following a woman who held aloft a large slice of artificial watermelon on a stick. One of the men, dressed in a dark suit and wearing many leather cases on straps slung round his neck and shoulders, smiled and bowed and took Reynaldo's picture from three angles. The man then motioned to two women, an older and younger one, and uttered a guttural command. The women put their small hands over their mouths and tittered, then posed on either side of Reynaldo as the Japanese gentleman smiled and bowed and took more photos.

He handed Reynaldo a printed card, bowed again and smiled, spat another command at the two women, and rejoined the procession following the watermelon slice.

Reynaldo looked at the card. Printed in Gothic script was the legend "Foto Joe Yamagoochi. Preserve moments of big importance in commemorative fotos to survive the many years."

Beneath the legend were a phone number and a Tokyo address.

Reynaldo slipped the card into his pocket and continued down the alley to the square. On San Marco, he sat at one of the outdoor tables. A waiter, immaculate in gold-brocaded white, approached and bowed crisply. "Prego, signore."