Confessions Read Online Free Page A

that’s it, Fèlix, that’s politics. On both sides.’
    ‘And the great ideals?’
    Now Félix Morlin stopped and looked up at the sky, preparing to emit a memorable phrase.
    ‘International politics are not the great international ideals: they are the great international interests. And Italy understood it well: once you have got on the side of the good guys, who are us, launch the offensive in Trentino to destroy that divine blessing of forests, counter-attack, the battle of Caporetto with three hundred thousand dead, Piave, breaking the front in Vittorio Veneto, then the Padua armistice and the creation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians – which is an invention that won’t last more than a couple of months even if they call it Yugoslavia. And I predict that the unredeemed regions are the carrot that the allies will snatch away, leaving Italy frustrated. Since everyone is going to keep fighting, the war won’t be entirely over. And just wait for the real enemy, who hasn’t even woken up yet.’
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Bolshevik communism. If not now, in a few years.’
    ‘How did you learn all that?’
    ‘Reading the newspaper, listening to the right people. It’s the art of effective contacts. And if you knew the sad role of the Vatican in these affairs …’
    ‘And when do you study the spiritual effect of the sacraments on the soul or the doctrine of grace?’
    ‘What I do is studying, too, dear Fèlix. It’s preparing myself to serve the church well. The church needs theologians, politicians and even an enlightened few like you who look at the world through a magnifying glass. Why are you down?’
    They walked in silence for a while, their heads bowed, each with his own thoughts. Suddenly, Morlin stopped short and said nooo!
    ‘What?’
    ‘I know what your problem is. I know why you’re down.’
    ‘Oh, really?’
    ‘You’re in love.’
    Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, fourth-year student at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, winner of the specialprize for his brilliant performance over the first two academic years, opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again. He was seeing himself on the Monday after Easter, at the end of the Holy Week holidays – with nothing to do after preparing his dissertation on Vico, the verum et factum reciprocanture seu convertuntur and the impossibility of understanding everything, unlike Félix Morlin, the anti-Vico, who seemed to understand all of society’s strange movements – when he crossed the Piazza di Pietra and saw her for the third time. Luminous. The pigeons, about thirty of them, created an obstacle between them. He approached her, and she, carrying a small package in her hand, smiled at him just as the world turned brighter, cleaner, purer and more generous. And he reasoned logically: beauty, so much beauty, cannot be the work of the devil. Beauty is divine, and so must be her angelic smile. And he remembered the second time he had seen her, when Carolina was helping her father unload the cart in front of the store. How could that sweet back be made to carry rough wooden boxes cruelly filled with apples? It was intolerable to him, and he rushed to her aid. They unloaded three boxes between the two of them, in silence, with the ironic complicity of the mule, who chewed on hay from his muzzle. Fèlix stared at the infinite landscape of her eyes, not wanting to lower his gaze towards her incipient cleavage, and Saverio Amato’s entire store was silent because no one knew what to do when a father dell’università, un prete, a priest, a seminarian rolls up his holy cassock’s sleeves and acts as a porter and observes their daughter with such a dark gaze. Three boxes of apples, a blessing from God in times of war; three delicious moments beside such beauty and then glancing around, realising that he was inside Signor Amato’s store and saying buona sera and leaving without daring to look at her again. And her mother came out