IS THIS SLAB OF PROSE A POST-modern mystery tale, an exposé, a thriller, or a slice of pseudo-historical hocus pocus? It may well be all of these things, or none, or something in between. Or perhaps it's a pastiche of a range of genres, including the
staid detective masterclasses of Arthur Conan Doyle. It has been compared with Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and sold enough copies to fit the bill: to date, one million across Europe. This is its first appearance in English.
It even compares itself, if only in form and content, with Boccaccio's Decameron – "the narrative is divided up into days … the characters held in captivity because of the plague and, in order to while the time away, tell each other the most varied tales".
I admired, but didn't relish it – it is over-sized and under-paced and wears its artifice thinly and with a smugness that makes its showiness seem all too knowing and self-conscious: a game of unwrapping. The outer layers, at the beginning and the conclusion, consist of letters from Monsignor Lorenzo, Bishop of Como, to Alessio Tanari, a key adviser to the Pope in the delicate matter of sanctification. The letter is dated 2040.
Up for sainthood, some think belatedly, is Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689). Along with his letter, Lorenzo attaches a damning typescript, 40 years old, which he has hoarded, and which – should its contents convey the truth – exposes Innocent as greedy, corrupt and worst of all, a traitor to Catholicism. Specifically, it alleges that he funded William of Orange, who would later be King of England, in anti-Catholic sorties.
The plausibility of this theory is one of the strands which the novel weaves best, its allegations underpinned by a shrewd rationale that involves the Pope's war against the Turks, and his adversarial relationship with Louis XIV of France.
The whole fiction parcel is sticking-plastered with notes which detail and amplify parts of the story, all augmented with a trail of scholarly "documents" pertaining to the mercenary/political relations between the Pope and the Protestant prince. We are left in no doubt that Bishop Lorenzo believes every last detail of the typescript's contents.
What does it tell us, and who is it by? It is ostensibly the memoir of a scullion, unidentified, recalling a series of mysteries and small dramas which occurred in the heart of Rome in the course of two weeks in September 1683. During this time bubonic plague afflicted the city, confining the lodgers at the inn where the scullion works. He – and we – become familiar with the motley cast of hostages to misfortune – the sick, the surviving and the dead. The scullion, a dwarf, falls in love with Cloridia; his master lies in a fever; the captive doctor among the residents causes panic, not reassurance; the captive abbot, Atto Melani, turns out to be not what he seems, as does the dead man, an early victim.
There is a theft, and for many chapters Melani, accompanied by our narrator, delves into the labyrinth under the inn, in pursuit of the thief. This leads to blunders, comical accidents, acquaintance with the professionals (the corpisantari) seeking relics, and holy bones that rot in the runnels beneath the city roads.
Scares are legion during these searches. Often melodrama flares: "Suddenly I saw a monstrous hooked hand clutch at Abbot Melani's shoulder. Miraculously, I stifled a scream…" Miraculously, you read on.
Conscious comedy comes in the guise of one of the relic hunters, Ugonio, whose speech is a study in farce. Slowly, as Melani takes the scullion into his confidence, tales of the courts of Europe unfold, betraying their machinations, inter-marriages and avarice, all of which Melani knows well, since he is a spy.
The tale accelerates towards its conclusion, a madcap Boulting Brothers comedy of an ending, in which the Pope comes close to death and his would-be assassin is revealed. One of the problems for the reader is that the prose, whether Lorenzo's, the scullion's, or that of the documentation, all bears the same authorship-print, the same grammar, style and syntax, so similar that you cannot believe the provenance they claim. And how did the bishop acquire his typescript? Well, from two journalist friends called Rita and Francesco. It's a stylish joke that caps the artifice of the enterprise. A mirror of sorts. And, of course, they disappear!
The full article contains 755 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
