Free The Translation of Father Torturo by Brendan Connell Page B

note. “Go down to the bar and get something to drink, on me. Come back in half an hour or forty-five minutes. We should be all settled up here by then. And cardinal,” he continued, lighting a match for Clara and then applying the flame to his own cigarette, “you might slip something on as well. Our good bishop is rather too generous with his compliments. Take it from me, a few weeks unsheathed in the sun and a regular program of callisthenics would do you a world of good. As it is, I feel like I am looking at the thin wedge of fat around a joint of prosciutto .”
    “Listen priest,” the cardinal said, showing the very gums of his teeth. “I don’t know what your game is, but you will surely suffer for crossing me.”
    “As I have already indicated,” Torturo said, exhaling a jet of smoke, “seeing you thus I take to be a rather trying punishment. Please be so kind as to put on your trousers.”
    “You can’t blackmail me!”
    “I can.”
    “It won’t stick.”
    “It will.”
    “And if I don’t comply? If I don’t care about my reputation?”
    Father Torturo’s lips became set. The cigarette dropped from his fingers. “Then,” he said in a menacing voice that rose into a violent crescendo. “Then,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Then I will make you suffer twice what you deserve – And, like this damn mouse, dash the life out of your tedious, bloodless carcass!” He raised the white, squirming handful over his head and flung it brutally to the floor, where it let out a horrible squeak and then lay, quite broken, its little mouth agape, showing minuscule teeth set in pink lips.
    “Picolito!” the cardinal cried, throwing himself down beside the mouse. He took it in his hands and pressed it, a lifeless rodent, to his face. He looked up at the priest with a horrified expression on his face, crying, “You are a madman; a scoundrel; a cruel maniac!”
    Torturo stood, powerful, immobile, unsympathetic. Vivan simpered, though his face showed signs of emotion.
    “ Ciao ,” Clara called, walking out the front door, dressed in leather slacks and a turtle neck sweater. “You boys have fun!”
    “Vivan, lock the door behind her,” Father Torturo said. And, looking coldly at the cardinal: “Put on your clothes.”
    Zuccarelli was visibly shaken. Alone, in a locked apartment with two men whose program seemed to be so diametrically apposed to his own left his mouth empty of the demands and cutting remarks he was habituated to spill forth. He lifted his shirt and white linen suit from the chair upon which they had been flung and, without a word more of opposition, stepped into the bathroom to dress.
    “Would you like wine, coffee, tea?” Vivan asked, sliding towards the kitchen, the front door key bouncing in his hand.
    “Coffee,” Torturo replied
    A quarter of an hour later all three men were seated in the living room, sipping the espresso which Vivan had prepared.
    “Today is your lucky day,” Torturo said to Zuccarelli. “I am sure that my methods have led you to believe that I intend you harm, when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. My intentions are to better your situation, by a rather broad margin. Don’t look so disgusted signore, I am being sincere.”
    “And I am sincere in my disgust. Do you think I could be otherwise after your intrusion into my private affairs with a video camera? Do you think I could trust a man whose aim is so obviously the destruction of my pleasures?”
    “A certain English authoress once wrote that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety. Now, that you find pleasure from paying Clara to let you suck her toes and feel the point of her heel, I feel no doubt. But, for a man in your position such a thing is certainly viewed as an impropriety. Now I personally,” (with a carefree gesture of his hand). “I personally have nothing against such hobbies, and am willing to give you full indulgence. Is all I ask for