Free Glorious Ones by Francine Prose Page A

Armanda.
    “I can’t quite believe that the answer lies in those nasty little jokes you made about her ugliness, Flaminio. Certainly, we’ve seen thousands of uglier girls in our travels. Nor do I believe what you said to the others, later, about the adoption being your ultimate act of repentance; if you were really serious about the repentance, one visit to the confessional and two thousand Hail Mary’s would do just as well. So tell me, Flaminio: what is it? Why did you do it?”
    Flaminio draped one arm around my shoulders, just as he used to do in the meadows by the camp. “I will tell you, my son,” he said, in that familiar, slurred, drunken way of his. “You know what an upright, honest man I am, what a true Christian, what a brave soldier of morality. You know that I have fought injustice wherever I saw it, fought to expose untruth and hypocrisy whenever I found it.
    “Well, that is what moved me, my boy. I took one look at those hypocritical nuns, trying to hide that unfortunate little girl. One look at those brides of Christ, trying to disown His ugly child. And, right then, I resolved to adopt the poor little thing—to make them recognize her, acknowledge her, even if only to deliver her to me.” Flaminio paused dramatically, to let his words sink in.
    “One thing I know about you, Captain,” I said, “is that you are a shameless liar. Go on, have another glass of wine. Maybe it will make you tell the truth.”
    We drank silently for a few more hours, each involved in his own thoughts. I assumed that I would hear no more on the subject. And then, just as the tavernkeeper was beginning to scratch his head and yawn loudly, Flaminio Scala began to tell a story which at first seemed to have no relation to my question.
    “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was the most dashing, the most handsome, the most sought-after young man in Europe, I had occasion to travel from Florence to Perugia. As I boarded the coach I noticed that the only other passengers were two nuns, robed completely in white. They were seated next to each other, perpendicular to the window.
    “I sat down across from them, and stared at them with the prurient curiosity which healthy, normal men always have about nuns. But their heads were lowered; they were silent, as nuns traveling from place to place usually are. Thus, as the coach got under way, I soon forgot their presence, and began to regard them as dispassionately as I might have regarded two white sacks of flour.
    “You can imagine my surprise, then,” said Flaminio, “when, for no apparent reason, the nun seated nearest the window began to shriek at the top of her lungs.
    “ ‘Saint Eulalia’s bloody breasts!’ she screamed. ‘Saint Sebastian shot full of arrows! John the Baptist’s headless stump! Saint Theresa Whore of Jesus! Mother Mary’s womb!’
    “Jumping and thrashing about in her seat, she went on in this way for what seemed like an eternity. All the while, her companion murmured soothing syllables, stroked her arm gently, did everything in her power to calm her.
    “What a spectacle it was, Francesco,” said Flaminio, grinning as he leaned towards me. “What a show! I could hardly keep from howling, I nearly choked.
    “The only thing which prevented me from exploding was the fact that the nuns’ cowls had fallen back in the course of the commotion. And, for the first time, I could see their faces.
    “I saw that the screaming nun was a woman of about forty. Her features were almost handsome, her eyes were black and wild. But the muscles around her mouth had that slack, toneless quality which so often disfigures the faces of madwomen.
    “Her companion, however, was a perfect angel of no more than eighteen. And, though the crazy woman initially engaged my curiosity, it was the other to whom my eyes kept returning, again and again.
    “Like all young, beautiful nuns, she became somewhat nervous under my scrutiny; but she did not speak until the elder one