Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism - By Christopher Golden

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THE VOICES OF THE NUNS from the convent of San Domenico rose and fell in a soothing rhythm, like the hush and crash of the waves against the nearby rocky shore. Nine-year-old Sebastiano Anzalone thought they sounded like angels. So beautiful were the voices that he found it difficult to imagine they could belong to the black-habited sisters who taught him writing and mathematics every day. Sister Veronica, perhaps; she had kind, sad eyes, and he could imagine her raising her voice in song. But Sister Maria and Sister Lucia were sterner and had little patience for the boys and girls that the war had left orphaned. Sebastiano did not really blame them—some of the children behaved like little devils—but he could not abide the curt chidings of the nuns, even when they weren’t aimed at him.

His worn, battered mathematics book lay open on the small desk in front of him and he scribbled the answer to a question about how many lire he would have left if he bought a bar of chocolate. It was a strange question, because he hadn’t held a bar of chocolate in his hands—nor any lire—since the Allies had taken Sicily from the Axis, killing his mother and father in the process. He missed chocolate, but not as much as he missed his mother and father.

Only three more questions to go. Sebastiano felt satisfied with his work and almost disappointed that when he finished this assignment he would have nothing more to do until tomorrow. Nearly all of the boys and many of the girls despised their school work. They would rather be out in the field behind the orphanage, kicking a football around, or down at the water’s edge watching the fishing boats and warships sail past. Sebastiano didn’t like the ships. If he let his gaze linger too long, he would want to know where they were going, and begin to wonder why he could not go as well, and there was no point in daydreaming about the kinds of wild adventures his father used to always promise to take him on. There would be no adventures for him.

No, unlike the other orphans, Sebastiano was content to sit at his little desk in the room he shared with three older boys, and to add and subtract and try to remember what chocolate tasted like. On an afternoon such as this, with the voices of the nuns rising from the church like the songs of angels, and the crashing of the sea, and the lovely smells of Sister Teresa’s wildly colorful flower garden drifting through the window, he could almost forget the exploding sky and the screams and the tears from July and August, just for a moment.

And then the moment would pass and he would remember.

Sometimes remembering made him cry.

Sebastiano looked at his three remaining math problems and frowned. Flipping the page he saw that there were more, likely meant as tomorrow’s assignment, and decided he would do them today. Adding and subtracting kept his mind occupied, and that was good.

Lost in his schoolwork, he almost did not notice when the voices of the nuns subsided, but then the momentary silence was broken by the deep, reassuring sound of the church bells, and he knew the mass had ended. Rising from his chair, he set down his pencil and went to the window to watch the sisters of San Domenico file out, filled with whatever private grace infused them during the mass said for them each Saturday morning. The nuns emerged in a peaceful stream of black habits and white wimples, of dangling crosses and rosaries wound about fingers, of kindly smiles to one another and conversations barely above a whisper.

Sebastiano blinked in surprise when he noticed a break in the parade of sisters—a man was amongst them, dressed in the cassock and surplice any priest might wear at the altar. Of course it was no surprise that a priest might be amongst the nuns, for wasn’t a priest necessary for any mass? The surprise and curiosity that raised Sebastiano’s eyebrows and made him lean on the windowsill for a better look came from the fact that he and the other children at San Domenico’s newly christened home for orphans had been told that a new priest would soon arrive to take charge—not only of the church, but of the spiritual education of the orphans. Father Colisanti had died of a heart attack more than a month ago, and since then a number