Committing an unspeakable sin in Vatican

Pope Francis is in the news. I left Christianity long ago but Francis is a man I respect – and am fond of. He’s honest – but he’s not going to be so honest as to pull down the Church. Because, I’m sure he believes the Church still has a mission. He’s compassionate to the core, no holds barred. He has tried his best to clean up the Church – but no one can really do it, not even Jesus Christ. I wish him good health and would love to see him on the Pope’s chair for a long time. He’s a reassuring presence.

These thoughts came to mind as I was planning another visit to Rome, a city that always beckons you. Not knowing Italian is a problem, but it’s a city like no other. History energizes its sparkling modernity. I’ve been to Rome twice. It was during my first visit that I did something unspeakable in Rome – to be precise in Vatican. If I were a Christian I would’ve confessed this sin. After so many years it may not be sinful to confess my sinful deed publicly. If Pope Francis reads this, I’m sure he’ll only guffaw. I would’ve loved if he did read me. Francis is a wonderful writer. I recently read his autobiography, Hope, which is a gripping, moving, honest narrative.

I committed this sin in the gardens of Vatican. Here I must make a diversion to my greatest grievance about European and American cities – or most of them. They do have latest public amenities unheard of in Indian cities but - sadly – are miserably lacking in the single most important basic amenity: the public rest room or simply, the public toilet. For a visitor wandering in Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, New York, London, Edinburgh, name any city, the near-absence of public rest rooms is a nightmare. Especially so if he happens to hydrate himself – in plain words, drink water - as he walks around seeing the sights. If there indeed are public toilets – I’m sure there must be a few – there’s no way a visitor can locate them. In New York there’s an app to locate the public rest rooms. Last year I walked 2 kilometers using it to find a toilet, only to be confronted by a board saying it had been relocated. The permanent solution is to go to a restaurant, order a coffee and pay a good sum in precious dollars so we can answer the call of nature. But that’s a luxury a shoestring traveler cannot afford. (Here’s useful information I just received from my niece in New York. Starbucks allows non-customers to use its washroom.)

I remember taking a train all the way down from somewhere in upper Manhattan to the Staten Island ferry station to use the toilet. Another day in Bronx, having been misguided by several people including a policewoman about the nearest rest room, I was nearly thrown out of an elite Club where the managers felt very insulted a stranger had asked to be allowed to use the rest room. I then went to the Bronx branch of the New York Public Library on the hunch that it cannot but have a rest room. Yes, it had. But an African American of massive proportions was occupying it – he hadn’t latched the door. I think he was talking to himself. I waited in the reading room for more than half an hour reading nearly everything there. But each time I went up to the toilet I could hear the gentleman talking. I asked the lady in charge if she could help me. She knocked on the door a couple of times, then opened it a bit and peeped in, said, ‘Oh! I’m so sorry!’, returned and told me, ‘Sir, he’s still busy. You’ll have to wait.’ She then took pity on me and enrolled me as a member of the Friends of New York Public Library society and gave me a pen engraved with the society’s name. I still keep it as a precious memento of that extraordinarily busy gentleman.

With this alibi I return to Vatican. I was wandering about in the city drinking in with a first timer’s passion the sights and sounds. Rome is almost a sculpted metropolis. Monuments, sculptures and ornate remnants of history await one at every turn. I remember standing for a long time staring at the balcony of Palazzo Venezia from where the butcher Benito Mussolini used to address crowds of hysteric followers. It was from this balcony that he declared war on Britain and France in 1940. I thought I heard his screams of hate and fascist frenzy reverberating from the Palazzo walls. I remembered how Hitler too was a screaming, raging, maniacal orator. I also remembered how after the war Mussolini and his mistress were hunted down by the people, shot, and hung upside down in a public square in Milan, their bodies mutilated. Apparently, dictators do not win all the time. A time of reckoning awaits them all.

I do not know how I landed in the Apostolic Palace gardens soon after. Today you’ve to pay a hefty fee to visit any part of the Vatican gardens. In those days entry must’ve been free, or a penny-pinching traveler like me wouldn’t have found himself in it. The Apostolic Palace is the Pope’s official residence, whose construction started in the 13^th century and finished in 1605. (Pope Francis decided not to live there and found his accommodation at one of the Vatican guest houses – House of saint Martha.) The Apostolic Palace gardens is a picture-perfect, elegant, stately garden, manicured to the last little blade of grass. It’s a classic European garden and like all of them there’s a coldness about its beauty. It’s all too structured and hand-made, yet grand and overwhelming. It’s separated by a high wall from the Apostolic palace.

I had carried in my shoulder bag a couple of bottles of water when I set out from my room, water being an expensive commodity in Rome, like in most of Europe. I had finished a bottle during my walks in the city. Now I sat down on a bench in the garden to eat my lunch of sandwiches, packed by the nuns of the convent where I lived. (Many Roman convents let out rooms for additional income.) They had been extremely kind to me and tried their best to make me understand Italian. It was clear they thought not knowing Italian was a cardinal sin.

I think the whole purpose of my going to the garden was to sit down quietly, eat lunch, rest a while and get back to sightseeing. I drank more water, ate my lunch, rested a while and was getting set to move out when I realized I needed to answer the first call of nature – in simple words, pee. My stomach was full, so was my bladder. I needed to relieve myself before I hit the city – in fact, whether I hit the city or not it had to be done. I thought for a while. I realized that if it had to be done, I was perhaps in the best place, considering how vast the garden was and how few the visitors. I also knew that what I wished to attempt could turn into a clumsy affair if caught. I was sure to be arrested or at least detained and heavily fined for peeing in a public place. My not knowing Italian was going to make it all the more complicated. If I did, I could have pleaded ignorance and sought forgiveness. But my body wasn’t going along with these thoughts.

I therefore got up and took a stroll around to check the lie of the land vis-a -vis people, especially gardeners and/or police. I was particularly scared of gardeners. They are merciless when it comes to intruders/disruptors of their empires. There were none in the vicinity. The possibility of camera surveillance did not strike me and I doubt if that was common then. I then carefully studied the trees, shrubs and bushes for a suitable cover for my act and found a large bush of tall plants close to the wall of the Apostolic Palace. I went there, hung around a bit pretending to look at this and that, and, suddenly slipped behind the bush and performed my mission upon the wall of the Palace. In a jiffy I was back, looking every inch a harmless tourist.

It was when I had sat down and heaved a sigh of relief that I realized the gravity of my act. I, an unbeliever, had just desecrated the residence of the Envoy of God! True, an outer wall isn’t the same as the residence, but it’s a matter of how you interpret it. Theology is a complicated affair. Theologically the outer wall could easily have been interpreted as part of the residence. In which case I had committed a grievous sin, and my being an unbeliever added to the gravity. It was an unspeakable sin because who would want to speak to others about such a shameful act. It took me all these years to confess it. Looking back, I think I hold a unique record. Because I doubt if anyone else has performed the deed I did, before or after, upon the Apostolic Palace.

Coming back to Pope Francis, it’s nice to wonder how he would’ve reacted (if he were Pope then) if I had been caught by the gardeners and produced before him. I think he would’ve had a good laugh and said, ‘It’s human to pee when the urge is upon one. Hope you enjoyed it. Have a good day in Vatican.’
Paul Zacharia is a well-known Indian writer and columnist.