The Translation of Father Torturo Read Free

moving away with his long, virile strides.
    “The nerve!” Cardinal Zuccarelli gasped, his normally bloodless cheeks turning plum coloured. “The loathsome man hardly acknowledged my presence.”
    “I am afraid you will have to excuse him,” the bishop said, touching the other’s hand lightly. “I believe the poor fellow is overwrought over the loss of the tongue of the blessed St. Anthony. To my understanding, he has taken a temporary vow of silence.”
    “Has he taken a vow of pertness as well?”
    “Oh, he is an odd fellow, I’ll admit that,” Vivan replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “But your Emminency would be hard pressed to find a more devoted servant.”
    “That may very well be,” Zuccarelli said, slipping his arm through that of the younger man and resuming the stroll forward, “but we must remember that He most appreciates the humble servant. The proud servant often disdains those dirty little tasks which make up his daily duty. One day you find that he has been sweeping all the dust under the rug instead of doing things proper, and you say to yourself, ‘Oh so that is why I have been sneezing so much!’ Indeed, it is the humble servant He most appreciates.” The mouse peeped out of his pocket and chirped. “Yes Picolito,” he said, stroking its little white head with his thumb. “Papa knows you’re a wee-wee-humble servant.”
    The two men slowly moved through the Prato della Valle, and on towards Il Santo, the Cathedral of St. Anthony, their figures swaying slightly from side to side with each advancing step.
     
    Chapter Three
     
    The parents of Xaverio Torturo were liquidated, due to a vendetta, when he was a boy of six. Found in the back bedroom of their palazzo, bodies chastised with more bullet holes then there are days in a week, and then severed into as many pieces as there are weeks in a year, they were the victims of a kind of crime which, to this day, is not uncommon in Italy. Undoubtedly he would have met the same fate, such revenges usually extending to the second and third generations, if he had not at the time been at his uncle Guido’s house, playing at marbles with his cousin Marco, who was but a year younger than himself. When the news came that young Xaverio’s house was wet with blood, he remained at his uncle’s. Guido, according to the laws of vengeance, rooted out the murderers and did them one worse than was done to his own brother and sister in law. The uncle, adopting Xaverio into his household, became more like a father than an uncle; Marco more like a brother than a cousin.
    “There is something funny about this boy,” Guido’s wife Bruna said to her husband one night. “I am afraid he will bring us trouble.”
    “Oh, I admit he is a bit naughty,” Guido said with a shrug of his shoulders, “but that just proves that he has blood and not water in his veins. Frankly I am more worried about Marco; he is obedient at school, never complains and has yet to be caught stealing so much as an apple from the neighbour’s tree.”
    “ Caro figliuolo ,” Bruna sighed, thinking of her son.
    Xaverio was certainly considered a wicked child. After class, he often beat the smaller boys mercilessly. The larger boys, those closer to his own size, he generally refrained from fighting. Instead, he simply humiliated them by time and again bettering them at sports and thrusting the knife of his tongue into their sides. No one dared cross him at school because it was known that his uncle was un assassino , and his nephew therefore, if not demanding the utmost respect, was certainly not a boy to have as an enemy.
    “You have to be careful,” Bruna told him one day, upon catching him beating the neighbour’s dog with a stick. “The witches like little boys like you. They like to eat little boys like you and send them to the devil.”
    Far from scaring Xaverio however, this comment quite fascinated him. To be eaten by a witch and sent to the devil sounded, to his ears,