The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part IX
An ancient postal service; An answer to, ‘Why do cows wear helmets?’; and, at long last, the Penitential Act.
I had only just freshened by my tatzsche when I heard a knock on the door of our bunk. Thinking it was Desotto, I begged him in. Instead, I was greeted by the cowshit bugler, Tomasso.
“Hail, sergente. I have some mail for you.”
Tomasso doubled as a mail boy when he wasn’t badly bugling.
“Ah, the badger has come by. Let’s have it then.”
Continued from…
He handed me a small envelope addressed to me in what I recognized as my mother’s hand. I turned it over to open it and saw the stamp placed over the envelope fold as was done in San Sebastian postal custom. On the stamp was a red imprint of a small post horn with a badger crawling through it, mark of the postal service of San Sebastian, a private corporation founded by the Frankfurter-cum-Bergamese princely house of Thurn und Taxis: Thurn und Taxis Post, or T&TP.
T&TP remained by exclusive treaty the official postal courier for our small country as it had been for the Holy Roman Empire for hundreds of years. T&TP’s couriers, or bergamaschi, were an ancient and proud guild whose offices could be traced to Omodeo Tasso’s Compagnia dei Corrieri, established in 1290, and then from the post riders of Jannetto de Tassis, who was made the first Holy Roman Chief Master of Postal Services in 1489. Yet the current arrangement with San Sebastian put the Postbotini under some significant strain, the erstwhile Imperial postal service’s economies of scale being drastically reduced since the dissolution of the Empire in 1806 — when it had lost its Imperial sinecure and was forced to compete as a private entity with new postal services owned by the myriad German principalities and confederations thereof — and the conclusion of the Austro-Prussian War in 1867 (both events being still hotly debated in San Sebastian, albeit for different reasons).
Upon the latter event, the services of T&TP (which until then still served many states within the German Confederation and Zollverein as well as San Sebastian) were transferred to the Prussian state for a few million Thaler (albeit only under great and obvious Prussian martial duress directed toward the then T&TP postmaster, Eduard August Friedrich Freiherr von Schele zu Schelenburg). The only two alternatives for San Sebastian thereafter were a postal union with Italy, which was highly distasteful and doubtless to bring gauche stamps and “leaky envelopes,” or an independent postal service — ruinously expensive for such a small country as ours. But thanks to some masterful just-in-time political maneuverings by several high-ranking Sebastiano emissaries, who just so happened to be in Frankfurt at the time for reasons never made entirely clear to postal historians, San Sebastian was excepted post facto from the Prussians’ extortion and remained a client — the only remaining client, in fact — of Thurn und Taxis Post.
This undertaking had proven acceptable for mailings within the small nation of San Sebastian, the bulk of which was within bugleshot or a day’s trot on horseback (and which also had many private-courier alternatives). The same could not be said for international post. In that arena, the dwindling remnant of T&TP couriers in nearby Bergamo and the service’s limited surviving infrastructure and archaic bilateral agreements meant that international letters and parcels to and from San Sebastian were delivered at times irregular and unpredictable except in their temporal distance from the time of mailing, which was uniformly and unceasingly long, this due to the fact that under the Postal Entreaties of Lucho & Bergamo, which governed international mail between and betwixt San Sebastian and the Great Beyond, all such mail had to transfer at T&TP’s remaining facilities in Regensburg or Innsbruck or both, and sometimes a customs office in Hanover as well, before making its way to its destination, even if that was only Venice, Vaduz, Trento, or St. Moritz. It was not an ideal arrangement to put things mildly, especially from a business perspective. The result of it was that most businesses in San Sebastian conducted international affairs by private courier. This, in turn, left a small cadre of so-employed Sebastianos’ Swiss subcontractors with heavily stamped passports and a great deal of surplus income. But, of course, it also made international business very difficult in war time, during which private courier travel was greatly curtailed but some allowances were made for the free, though immeasurably slower, flow of official post. Too it gave rise to a thriving black market of smuggling anything and everything in and out of San Sebastian, tax and duty free, via dangerous trails through the sparsely populated Southern Limestone Alps of the greater Austro-Swiss-Italo-Liechtensteiner-San Sebastiano border region.
This letter, though, the one in my hand at present, had arrived the morning after it was sent. (I’d have hoped so, as my mother’s home was only two hours’ walk from the front.) In the letter no doubt my mother was beckoning me home. She had a question for me, she would say. She had questions for me always. She did not understand the concept of time, appointments, being busy, and the limits on my liberty imposed by military service. But she had a well-stocked bar and a very fine billiards table. It might be a nice escape for a day, I considered. I would look into perhaps taking a day’s leave… But ah, yes, Tomasso!
“Look, Tomasso, on the stamp,” I pointed at the post horn as he leaned over, squinting. “Your trumpet!”
“Aiche, sergente! Mine is a bugle. A bugle! And that is a post horn. The differences between the three instruments are drastic and legion. Again, I will tell you — ”
I waved him off. “No, no, Tomasso. If we have learned nothing over these past months it is that I do not have the intellectual resources to comprehend the subtle distinguishing characteristics of the infinite variety of brass instruments, which you have mastered.”
“But you can, sergente, it is simple — ”
“Ah ta ta ta, Tomasso, please. My letter. Allow me to read my letter.”
“But, sergente, simply allow me to explain. I have a new analogy. You will understand. You see, if a bugle is like a small pony while a trumper is a…”
Tomasso droned on. In addition to his poor bugling, he also was exceedingly difficult to get to stop once he got to distinguishing brass musical contraptions. He could go on for hours.
Then I remembered! A sure-fire excuse. One with the added benefit of being true. I stood, put on my coat, and stamped my foot.
“Tomasso!”
“Yes, sergente?”
“I am late to confession. Would you have me sent to Hell if an explosive shell were to be launched through that door right now? If so, my soul’s damnation will be on your hands.”
“Eh, oh no, sergente, I do not want that. But only purgatory for you surely, maybe, I can’t imagine that you — “
“Silence, Tomasso. Toot your mouth-bugle elsewhere. I must go cleanse my soul.”
He stepped to the side, crestfallen, but believing he was doing his duty.
“Do not forget your letter, sergente,” he said, his head down.
“Ah, yes.” I snatched the envelope off the table and put it in my inner coat pocket.
And with that, I was off to see Father Koblenza.
It had taken me a mere decaminute or so to meander from the trench to the chapel in town, the Kirche de Sana Eliszabetta. In that time one or two Austrian shells hit in the distance, a third landed with a thwump you could feel in your chest. The Austrians had many duds — we called them nulli. All in all it was nothing too nerve wracking, but it did put a spring in my step.
I saw from the road that one adjacent farmer had strapped little helmets to his cows’ heads. They appeared to be double-stacked milk buckets, cut to allow for the animals’ ears, necks, and eyes. In a way, they looked much like the helms of our Estruscan ancestors. It was to my mind a quintessential Sebastiano gesture — Potest mundus per viam suam; habebimus nostrum.
Upon entering the church, I could tell I was late. The usual queue was gone but the lamp outside the confessional was still lit. I checked my watch. Confessional hours were still on for ten more minutes. It shouldn’t take half that long with Father Koblenza.
Father, I did this that and the other, it usually went. Well, this is wrong, it separates you from God, but God is loving and infinitely merciful and he understands temptation for he was tempted himself after all, and he certainly understands the temptations of this new modern world, and the hardships and stresses of war, and so on and so on, Father Koblenza would usually say, And, of course, many of us act out of habit, which can lessen our fault, for you are perhaps not fully in control of what comes in your mind or even your actions in many cases. So, the important thing is to try. Always to try to do better, he would say. Ten Hail Marys. Maximum. Every time.
I removed my cap as I stepped from the narthex into the nave. I crossed myself with Holy water from the stoup. I took in the echoes from my footfalls and the smell of damp granite, candlewax, stale incense, and the pews’ long-farted-on oak — together it smelled of God.
I walked softly to a pew near the confessional. I knelt near the aisle and prayed.
“O most merciful God! Prostrate at your feet, I implore your forgiveness. I sincerely desire to leave all my evil ways and to confess my sins with all sincerity to you and to your priest. I am a sinner, have mercy on me, O Lord. Give me a lively faith and a firm hope in the Passion of my Redeemer. Give me, for your mercy’s sake a sorrow for having offended so good a God. Mary, my mother, refuge of sinners, pray for me that I may make a good confession. Amen,” I recited quietly and kneeling.
I crossed myself. Then, after confirming it was empty, I stepped quietly into the confessional, twisting the lock behind me and kneeling before the screen. I began the penitential act.
I began, just above a whisper, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been eight days since my last confession. These are — ”
“Have you had abortion?”
…I froze.
This was not Father Koblenza! This was some priest who sounded as if he’d been interrupted eating a soup of split peas and miniature boulders. His Sebastiano accent was not Italian. Not even Friulian. Ladin, maybe? Croatian? I made a strange sound myself. Almost a laugh.
The gargly gurgle came again from across the screen, “Abortion is not a laughing matter.”
“Of course, not… Of course not, Father, it is only that I was shocked, for I am a… a male. I have not had an abortion.”
“Have you done abortion?”
“No, father. I cannot do so. I am not a doctor.
“Many do abortions who are not doctors.”
“I do not know about that, Father.”
“Have you procure an abortion for another? For a woman?”
Who is this man? Where is Father Koblenza?
“No, Father.”
“I hear there is a communist Milanese doctor doing such a thing to women near the front, war often bringing out such nasty business as it does. You are not this man?”
“No, Father.” I knew he should not be asking who I am. “I have not procured an abortion.”
“Very well. I hope you are truthful. Consider whether you may have done so, indirectly, through your actions. Or put another, a woman, in a position to consider it, through your actions… You understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good. Go on.”
It took my a moment to regain my composure. I was struck with an urge to lie. To condense my confession to the barest and flee. Or just to flee. How quickly could I unlock the panel and vamosz? The priest sounded like he would have trouble exiting the confessional fast enough to know who I was. He would have to first put down his throatbound rock remoulade and clear his throat. Perhaps also mount his wheeled chair. Yet it was possible someone would be in the nave now. I could not cause such a scene. And it would only lengthen the next confession. And surely fleeing a confession is a mortal sin itself. I would be excluded from communion in the face of death at any moment from Austrian balloon bombs and induced avalanches.
“Yes, Father. It has been eight days since my last confession. These are my sins.”
Continued…
