by Brendan Connell
(04/24/02)

The streets that lay around her had no squalor,
since she paced them always in the gold nimbus of her fascinations.
                --Max Beerbohm

"Who is she?"

"They call her Donna Fioretta, Father."

"She is magnificent, like a lily," Fra Bernardo said.

"Though quite unpluckable," commented his clerk, Ugolotto, a young man of oily appearance, bloated as a toad. "They say that she has taken a vow of virginity."

The friar, Fra Bernardo, who was much given to pleasure, scratched his chin and looked over the congregation: a morass of pious old women, dried up maidens, bones protruding from their figures like driftwood on deserted beaches, lips sharp and passionless as the beaks of cormorants. Donna Fioretta rose out of that pile of leached dung, with a religious smile, exuding an arousing perfume. Her body, full and beautiful, was the sort to easily make a man forget all other business.

"I will have her," murmured the friar, feeling a putrescent heat, like that of compost, swelling his cassock.

"If you come in the early morning, before the sun rises, you will find her here, praying alone."

"You seem to know her habits well?"

"Certainly," Ugolotto replied with a smirk. "A well-trained hound always smells its master's quarry."

That evening, by the light of three tallow tapers, Fra Bernardo set to work. Mixing urine and malachite he had his dazzling green; the dried petals of irises and ground basalt an astounding blue; jasper and the scales of the Priacanthus cruentatus for red. On numerous slips of paper he painted scenes of concupiscence, the figures marvellously foreshortened, the images erupting hot as geysers, draperies and positions boldly fashioned. Humans, in their naked state, toppled madly over each other; piles of flesh, like pink sea shells, fell into numerous patterns, positions, encompassing all of those described by Aretino, in his Sonnetti Lussuriosi and Veniero, in his Puttana Errante. As a heading to each image, each slip of paper, he wrote the words in purest gold, in characters gorgeous: "Fioretta, my righteous daughter, your body has been chosen as the receptacle for this earth's next great apostle. Give yourself to the first holy man you see, and the deed will be pure as the light of heaven, the place from which I look down with consecrating gaze, demanding your absolute obedience."

The next morning Donna Fioretta entered the church, walking with mincing steps, head bowed in devout modesty. She kneeled, clasped her hands together, gazed up at the dripping wounds and prayed. A slip of paper, like a feather of some exotic bird, a parrot or a peacock, floated down, applying itself, face upward, to the floor before her. She looked down, gathered in the image, and felt the blood boil through her breasts and mount to her cheeks. With parted lips she read the inscription, her scarlet tongue floating between her teeth. Her spine tingled. She gasped.

Other slips began to descend, drifting like mammoth flakes of painted snow -- lubricous and always bearing the same inscription -- demanding the receptacle of her body for the gratification of heaven. Rainbows of twisted, lusting limbs, exposed pudenda, and phallic compositions were there as the sky dripped angels and radiated glowing webs of copulation.

She gathered them up, fed on their imagery, and let the golden words coax her modesty. She back-stepped, turned, and stumbled towards the confessional.

Ugolotto let out a croak, a chuckle from his position above as he saw the young woman approach the place where Fra Bernardo sat waiting.

"I have to confess, Father," Donna Fioretta whispered in agitation, kneeling before the box where the sins of Christians were heard.

"What is troubling you, my daughter?" he asked, peering hard at her mouth and, though speaking with a firm and pious voice, secretly longing to strangle her organ of speech with his own.

"I have been touched by troubling thoughts -- I know not if by God or the Devil!"

She explained; she showed the slips of paper, blushing to the roots of her hair.

"These are missives from heaven!" Fra Bernardo exclaimed, feigning surprise.

"What should I do, Father? I am filled with confusion."

"What is it you think you should do?"

"Obey the words of the Lord, the mysterious words of God."

"This seems the most blessed, the most appropriate line of behaviour."

"You are the first holy man that I have seen."

"God has willed it so."

"As I am completely ignorant as to how these matters progress, I await your instructions."

"This evening, after the sun has set, come to my chamber and I will perform the sanctified deed, I will show you the arches of paradise."

"The Almighty demands my obedience, Father," Fioretta said, and departed, steps unsteady and body fluxing with dangerous sensation. At home she knelt before a small ivory crucifix and prayed in earnest that she might properly fulfil the wishes of heaven and show herself a worthy receptacle. Her mind, still effected by the images depicted on the slips of paper, was filled with a vague alarm, an overwhelming curiosity concerning the divine mysteries. With hot breath she exhaled her supplications, wanting nothing more than to be an instrument of the Lord.

Fra Bernardo spent the afternoon in preparing his body for the activity of evening, bathing it in perfumed water and rubbing it with oil of rose and olives. He sipped at a bottle of terre ducali, a barbera del Monferrato, a restorative wine from Piedmonte, after which he sent Ugolotto out to fetch him a royal supper from a reputable inn not far distant. For starters, he had a swan in chauldron sauce. The gravy, of giblets strained with blood of the bird and a little piece of the liver, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, salt and sugar, was as rich as it was divine. He then ate a chine of beef and a breast of mutton boiled and stewed in claret. This was followed by a pastry of fallow deer, three green geese in a dish with sorrel sauce, a stork in vinegar, and lampreys in yokes of eggs and the livers of stock doves. By desert, which was a syrup of violets and whole cherries in confection, he felt his manhood primed for any task, and could scarcely wait the short time that remained before Donna Fioretta was due at his chamber.

The rays of the sun descended behind the yellow Tuscan hills, furrowed, scarred with grape vines, their fruit swelling, ready to burst as with blood. The friar paced his chamber, feeling the sticky skin of his thighs rub against each other while, under his breath, he chanted liquorice psalms. When it grew dark, he lit the tapers, and licked, with an agile tongue, the foam from his lips, his fingers touching the weeping shafts. He decked his bed with fleeces, rabbit, and goat skins, and then lit incense of myrrh. He sniffed in the aroma, gazed into the smoke, and let his mind traipse across fields of vice.

There was a knock at the door, and she entered, Ugolotto pushing her forward into the room. She was dressed charmingly in garments of blue sarcenet which, though hiding her figure, perseveringly alluded to its bold prominences. Her neck was pale, her cheeks flushed; agitated like a dog ready to rub itself raw in a dirty rut. The friar, upon seeing her so innocently decomposed, felt his desire to possess her redouble.

"Are you prepared to lend your body to this holy task?" he asked.

"As God wills it."

"Let your garments drop."

The shaggy mane and regalia of a wounded sea creature; the magenta overtures of a shred of flesh.

Holding his breath, he drank in the image with the thirst of hellfire, and flinging away the mask of good manners, grabbed her up and threw her roughly upon his bed.

"What religion is this?" she cried, feeling his grasp tighten around the fragile stalk of her waist and watching, with wide eyes, how he mounted the pulpit. "What are you doing?"

"In my profession we call this process 'sending the Pope to Rome' and it is believed to be the most sanctified of all earthly acts. Now, open up the door to St. Peter's and let the Supreme Pastor perform his blessed office!"

Donna Fioretta, who was by this time stirred to a state of high reverence, gladly abandoned her defenses in order to let the friar prove his words with deeds. The latter, his nail well tempered in the furnace of desire, proceeded to drive it into her wounds, all the while giving vehement praises unto God and asking the young woman if she was yet prepared to pay homage to the Deity. Feeling herself filled with a new and most blessed sensation, the Donna Fioretta screamed out that she was indeed redeemed and wanted nothing more than to witness the righteous fury of the Lord. Fra Bernardo, ever ready to labour for a just cause, called upon heaven to witness the act, whereupon he confirmed Fioretta to a new faith, letting her witness not only the resurrection, and the ascension, but also the coming of the holy spirit.

Ugolotto had been listening the whole while at the door, enjoying the melody he heard within and feeling the torture of longing unsettle his brain. Becoming overwhelmed with the most urgent inspiration, he was on the point of privately strumming the strings of his own mandolin, when he became aware that the noise within had almost ceased. He stealthily entered the chamber, where he saw Fra Bernardo fast asleep upon the bed, the Donna Fioretta playing heartily upon his flute, without, however, managing to get the instrument to sound even one true note.

"What have we here?" said Ugolotto, his tongue growing almost numb in his mouth as he gazed on the young woman's shape. "Has the good friar already performed services?"

"Indeed he has not!" cried the young woman, looking up. "Though he did do a great deal to guide me along the true path, he found himself unable to proceed after giving the first oblation."

Ugolotto, overjoyed at this opportunity, lost no time in informing Donna Fioretta that, though he was but a lowly toad, no one knew better than him the mysteries of the second coming. She, excited beyond bounds at the prospect of further enjoyment, begged him to do with her as he wished. The young man, needing not to be asked twice for a service he was passionate to render, threw off his garments and proceeded to take his pleasure, showing Fioretta that, though he was not the least attractive in face or body, he could make her pray to heaven as well as any priest in the land, his shepherd's crook being as firm as the crosier of a bishop.

The sun was already shining its light through the windows when Fra Bernardo awoke. He leaped from the bed, rubbed the small of his back, which was quite sore, and blinked his itchy eyes. Ugolotto was near at hand, whistling a sprightly tune while tidying the chamber from the previous night's activity.

"Ugolotto," the friar cried, "it is already late in the morning! I have services to attend! Why did you not awake me?"

"My dear Fra Bernardo," Ugolotto grinned good humouredly, sticking out his belly. "The cock crowed eight times before the matins bell tolled, and since that did not awake you I could not guess what would!"

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