The Fig Boy: A Fable

1. Sorrowful Mystery​

Antonia Benedetti couldn’t stop the baby fighting its way out of her, just as she couldn’t stop it from planting itself inside her in the first place. Her failure to uproot the damned thing, however, wasn’t from lack of trying. After nine desperate months trying to get the baby out, the irony wasn’t lost on her that she now stumbled through the Piazza Rusticucci trying to hold the child in. Rhythmic contractions in her abdomen warned the child would be coming soon and she could hold her sin no longer.

Two thousand excruciating steps from the Vatican, the Piazza Rusticucci was part of a maze of nondescript streets and densely packed shops that ran west from where the Pont’ St Angelo crossed the River Tiber. A trough for livestock stood at its centre, next to a fig tree, while on its east side was a modest church with a tiny belfry. For Antonia’s purpose this humble church, Santa Caterina delle Cavallerotte was too new to be important. It housed none of the bones of saints or shards from the True Cross that each year brought thousands of pilgrims to Rome from all over Christendom.

Tonight she needed a miracle. Tonight she would settle for no less than the Pope.

Around her drunken villagers stumbled through the streets in mottled dress, laughing, collapsing and pulling up, only to collapse again. Throughout the Piazza glass clinked, bottles poured and music rolled down the cobbled stones like spilled beads. Antonia rounded the high Vatican wall to find the square aglow. Women in silk gowns and feathered wigs twirled with golden gods, falling stars or the Sun in rich brocade. And masks. Too close and too bright. Masks that split faces in half. Masks that looked of death and masks that hinted at folly. All brought forth in Antonia a sense of dread, as if every face behind those masks knew her fate and were secretly laughing at her.

The pregnancy was cursed from the beginning. Too much blood. Not enough growth.

“It won’t be human,” the midwife told her. Antonia knew it was true. The baby would be like Nuno. Nuno with the twisted spine. Nuno who was blamed for the fire. Nuno who screamed for his Mama while the Cardinal dragged him from Basque. Basque rejoiced in the loss of a demon. Antonia’s mother mourned the loss of her son. She was later found naked and broken beneath the chapel spire.

She had jumped.

Antonia couldn’t jump. She could never be so brave.

Antonia fought through the thick crowd of checkers and stripes but was forced to pause at the center of the square. In the midst of the madness five year old beggar child, Uccello, stood nude in the fountain scratching her matted black hair with a horse brush so violently blood dripped between her eyes and behind her ears. The girl's mouth hung open, but her crow-like screams could not be heard above the riotous festival. Her free hand flapped wildly, like a bird with a broken wing. Antonia lurched back, throwing her basket in front of her belly. She knew to give Uccello her distance.

Every year in March, when all of Italy indulged in the decadence of Carnival, a troupe of ragged gypsies would set up their tents in the Piazza and with great fanfare and banging of drums they would present the deformed and depraved: Fair Xaninos from Spain with silver moonbeam hair; the ancient Soafra from Ireland, withered fairies switched with human babies; or the broken trolls of Scandinavia, with their curved spines and bulbous heads.

But, the previous year when the shabby troupe packed their tents and kicked their donkeys towards the East they left something foul behind, a four-year-old girl. Because of her inability to speak, her strange pigeon toed walk and incessant hand flapping Antonia was sure the child was possessed by an aviary demon. After spending her first lonely night screeching on the damp bricks of the square, the tiny girl became known in the Piazza as Piccolo Uccello, or “Little Bird”. Like most little birds, the villagers fed the child crumbs from afar but Antonia warned them not to let her into their homes lest whatever demon possessing her seek a more suitable nest in their own young.

Antonia reached for the loaf of dry bread she kept in her basket and threw a chunk into the fountain. The offering was less of charity, and more to keep peace. If she could satiate the demon in Uccello then she might keep her own child safe. Her gesture went unnoticed. Uccello continued to scream her inaudible scream. Antonia turned towards the high steps of the chapel. She would be purified tonight.

A lithe gentleman, whose strong roman nose protruded beneath the feathers of a golden eagle, held the oak door open. Slipping inside Antonia barely missed colliding with the thick chest of the sculptor who resided below her flat. The squat man staggered back, red faced. Behind him Cardinal Biagio de Cesena, scarlet robes flying, shouted something incoherent about figs. The usually ill-tempered sculptor glistened from eyebrow to ankle in a thick blue powder.

“Perdon, Signor Buonarroti-,” she started but stopped when he raised his blue arm toward the raucous in the square. 

“I can’t work like this.” He bellowed. “You see me?” He opened his arms, lowered his blue beard to her face, and widened his eyes. “This is lapis lazuli, Signora. This paint costs more than gold.” 

“Paint, Senor? I thought you were a sculptor?” 

“Sculptor. Painter. Candlestick maker. What is it to them? They know nothing.” He spat at Cardinal de Cesena. “Only figs. Figs. They know nothing.” 

“Figs, Signor?” 

“Shall we ask the Signora, Painter? Shall we ask her opinion on your...,” A master at condemning the damned on Sundays, Antonia had never seen de Cesena at a loss for words. “...Conception?” The Cardinal marched towards them, his own face red, his hooked nose illuminated in the chapel’s candlelight like an orange beak. 

A contraction tightened Antonia’s womb. The chapel walls softened into pools of light and stone. Breathing through the pain she reached for the green wool in her basket. The brightest green wool in Rome. Everyone would admire the baby in the perfect green hat. De Cesena pulled her elbow. 

“Come, Signora, and tell this blasphemer where his painting belongs.” De Cesena guided her toward the back of the rectory where scaffolding blocked the Chapel wall. When he pulled away the sheeting she gasped. 

In vivid detail and breathtaking color the painter had depicted the last judgment of man. A clean-shaven, muscular Christ hovered at the center of a Lapis Lazuli sky surrounded by golden light. Antonia recognized all the Saints surrounding Christ- Catherine, Alexandria, Peter and even Bartholomew, holding a flaying knife and what appeared to be his own rubbery skin. To Christ’s right the righteous clamored for a place in the clouds, while on his left horned demons pulled sinners toward a muddy earth. 

Antonia couldn’t pull away from the grotesque and magnificent scene. She stared, wide-eyed, lingering longest on one man, a damned soul at the moment of full knowledge and grief of his punishment. He cowered in shame, even as two demons dragged him downward and a third reptilian creature bit into his thigh. 

The horror, however, was not the worst of the painting’s offense. Far more grotesque was the nudity. Every man and woman in the entire milieu was nude. From commoner, to noble, to saint to Christ himself, everyone was equalized in his nakedness. Stripped bare of his clothes. Stripped bare of his rank. The thought horrified her. Chaos in flesh. 

Antonia’s heart pounded, her face flushed. She looked away. 

“Tell him, Signora.” The Cardinal demanded. “Tell him where this filth belongs.” 

“I need to sit.” Her face froze. Her knees disappeared. The Cardinal turned to the painter, who stood, shimmering blue, admiring his wall. 

“It’s disgusting. This is the work of the bath houses or taverns.” 

The tight ball beneath her fingers hardened. 

“Please.” She said. “I need to see the Pope.” 

“We deal with this tonight. Like Adam and Eve. We will cover it all.” 

“But please, I need to see him tonight.” 

“Tomorrow, Signora. Tonight we must cover this up.” 

The Cardinal led Antonia back to the festival, locking the door behind her. She scanned the masked dancers below. What were they hiding, behind those masks? Did they think the devil wouldn’t find them? Suddenly her heart jumped. Something floated in the fountain. Little Uccello floated in the darkness just below the surface, her thin arms hung at her sides like a bird in flight. Antonia hobbled towards the child, one horrific thought on her mind - The demon. What if Uccello drowned? Where would the demon go? So many people danced around the fountain. So many nests for a little bird to hide. 

Antonia screamed for the people to get back but masked villagers only swayed and spun while she hauled her enormous self into the water to grip the limp Uccello. Waves of agony seared through her thighs, collapsing her knees and sending her crashing into the fountain. 

Freezing water washed over her nose and mouth. Lord, I offer unto Thee all my sins and offences, which I have committed before Thee... 

When the pain passed Antonia pushed the lifeless girl off her and dragged her onto the square. 

Another tightening came as soon as she stepped from the water, but this one brought with it a pop and the sensation of warmth running down her legs. Antonia flipped the girl over and shook her, screaming into her ear. Over and over she shook the child until Uccello convulsed and water erupted from her mouth and nose. The beggar rolled over on the flat stones and gasped for breath. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Antonia shook the gasping girl. “Don’t you know to you could drown?” The girl choked and flapped her hands, her wild dark eyes rolling backwards in pain. 

Limp in her arms the little girl felt so like Nuno. Five years old. The same thin arms. Too quick to fight. “What is wrong with you?” Antonia screamed. “What is wrong with you?” Tears pricked behind her eyes. She clung to the child until a burning so intense consumed her womb she released her hands from the girl to grip the baby pressing its way out of her. 

A gush of wetness flooded her legs. Expecting to find a pool of water Antonia instead discovered a large wash of blood. Thrusting her arm toward the fountain she tried to steady herself, but missed. The bloody Uccello ran for cover in a crevasse she had built herself at the back of the Caterina. 

Antonia collapsed to the stone, barely conscious of the cries of the partiers calling for help. Pressure built between her thighs and a guttural grunt escaped her throat. Gasping between screams she felt the baby emerge with a wet pop. Her abdomen hardened again, pushing the child even further into the Piazza. Antonia reached under her dress to pull the slippery child to her breast, took her first look at the deformed boy, and fainted. 

*

2: Luminous Mystery​

The wool would not stay together. Antonia sat on the settee, knitting the new green hat, every stitch a prayer. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name... why did you do this, you bastard? Matteo, three days old, lay wrapped in a blanket in a cradle, hidden at the furthermost part of the house, waiting to be saved. 

When Antonia was a child her father had taken her to Laguardia, inland of her home in Basque, to see a miniature war: A checked board where two opponents could sit across from each other and battle with tiny knights and kings without any bloodshed. To her father, this invention was sure to generate more peace than his Holiness the Pope himself, but young Antonia was distracted by a desperate need to pee. Unable to drag her father from his turn at the game she emptied herself in the square, and, mortified, tried to cover the evidence with her shawl. 

Antonia felt much like that now. Like she had urinated in public, and no matter how she tried to cover it the smell remained. The puddle remained beneath her feet. The child slept at the back of the house more out of a sense of obligation to disguise the smell than to keep the boy a secret. Everyone already knew. 

Every now and again Antonia stopped her work to imagine herself stroking his wrist. Feeling the warmth of his sunny cheeks. Kisses on her fingers became kisses on his toes. She would reach into her lap, forgetting it was empty. Her heart would stop then and her tears would flood and the green hat would blur. Green, which was Nuño’s favorite color. Green, like the leaves on the figs she used to pick for him. Her husband Duccio had gone to get the Cardinal. They would be back soon. She needed to hide the boy’s head. While he slept she stitched, soaking her prayers into the wool. 

Below the window, a patchwork city of tents rose above the muddy cobbled stones. Paying customers threw bread at Xaninos locked in cages; trolls chained to pikes; Dwarves juggling blazing wine bottles. Changelings her mother called them. The stories went these beasts were changed with human infants shortly after birth. Some beasts, like the Xanino’s couldn’t feed their own young. The trolls used human girls as brides for their princes. And some, like Nuño, were the spawn of the devil and lacked human souls. 

Antonia sang to her sleeping boy when she recognized a tune she knew. The other ones she made up. Mostly she tried to avoid looking through the glass. The Piazza was so far down. It would be too easy to raise the broken child in her arms, turn toward the sunlight and let him go. 

There were footsteps on the landing but she didn’t move. Instead she stitched, clacking her needles together... save my baby...save my baby... to find nothing but loose wool in her hands.

“It’s his head,” Duccio said, swinging open the door to let the Cardinal into the flat. “And his spine is completely -,” Duccio’s grey eyes met Antonia’s. She smiled at her bull shaped husband. At night Duccio held her too tight and wept into the back of her neck. He came to bed too late and rose too early and when she woke sobbing she found him staring with vacant eyes as if the ceiling were shooting stars. She reddened when de Cesena glanced at her, lying on the settee in her nightdress, tangled hair loose about her shoulders like a nymph’s. 

“I only have a minute,” De Cesena didn’t even remove his hat. “I must see to Buonorrati.” 

“Please be gentle with him.” Antonia said, and then, “It’s only a little swollen.” 

In the back bedroom Antonia had created a small shrine on a table with white candles bought from the Santa Catarina and a glass vial of holy water. 

At the table’s head stood a miniature sculpture of the virgin, hand carved years earlier by Duccio in an effort to woo his pious wife. 

Beyond the candles, a heavy smoke created by hundreds of jars of incense filled the room. The outline of a tiny open window could be seen against the far wall, creating a bright square in the otherwise total darkness. 

“To smoke out the demon.” Duccio explained. He led the Cardinal through the haze toward a cradle he had built himself, but when he removed the thin blanket from the child’s face Antonia screamed and fell backwards into the table, dousing three of the candles. Cardinal de Cesena lifted the child from its wrappings and carried it beyond the smoke into daylight. 

“That’s not my boy.” Antonia cried. “That’s not my child.” The infant the cardinal was holding was in fact not like any child she had ever seen for the entire baby, from scalp to toe, was entirely made of fig leaves. 

It had the shape of a human infant. A round head, limbs, fingers and toes, but that was where the similarities ended. In every other way the child was a sort of fig plant. Layer upon layer of thick leaves encased the tiny body, and from each digit on its hands and feet protruded small and delicate branches. Instead of hair the child grew a thin wisp of emerald moss that fluffed from the top of his head in a light cloud. 

De Cesena preformed his ritual of the cross and placed one finger beneath a fresh green leaf on the child’s abdomen. Bile burning her throat, Antonia rose to stop him, 

“Please,” she whispered, “Don’t hurt it.” The Cardinal pushed his finger further beneath the leaf, pinched it with his thumb and pulled. As if he were skinning the child alive the infant opened its green mouth and screamed with such rancor the windows of the flat cracked like ice.

Antonia collapsed against the window. She needed to breath. Below the patchwork city teamed with money spending patrons. Crowds gathered around a troll fighting a strong man with a nail-spiked club. Four scaled Xaninos with silvery hair writhed naked against poles dug into the ground. People lined up and down the piazza, reals clutched in their fists; the toll to live a nightmare. She looked up. 

“He’s been switched,” she whispered, thinking of the distant square in the darkness. The open window at the back of the room. “They took him.” Gasping, she fought against her husband’s arms, pointing toward the canvas tents below. “A changeling....” The Cardinal examined the strange thing again, this time positioning himself at a table in the sunlit kitchen to get a proper look. “The gypsies...” Antonia pushed out the windows, opening the flat to the street below. The cardinal carried the child to the stove. 

“He must be destroyed.” 

“No,” Antonia screamed, lunging for the boy, “Let me take him to the gypsies.” 

“He’s a minion of hell.” 

“It’s the only explanation. Maybe they will switch him back.” Antonia snatched the child from the Cardinals’ arms, careful not to disturb his little leaves. The Cardinal clasped her wrist in his talon like hand. Blood rushed to her cheeks. She clung to the boy with one arm, and knelt as best she could. “Please.” She begged. “Please...” Below the music continued. De Cesena’s attention was pulled to the window. 

“Damn,” he said, peering into the street. Antonia shifted her eyes from the floor. 

“God damn,” de Cesena grunted, and dropped Antonia’s hand. Buonarroti shuffled through the masses on the street towards the Vatican with the golden eagle from the chapel. Antonia recognized the straight lines of his nose. Buonarroti reached for the man’s hand, stroked his fingers then placed his own hand in the small of his back. De Cesena cursed before making for the door, his billowing robes illuminated in the sunlight like an angel with blood red wings. He turned, 

“Two days, Sinora. I will destroy him in two days.” 

*​

Beasts on leashes, beasts in cages, beasts in ropes and chains. Antonia hid the fig boy’s face in her breast and cast her eyes to the muddy street. The clouds promised rain. The air was thick and damp, though there was a breeze that helped.

Dodging groping hands and gnashing teeth she made her way to a shabby patchwork tent at the back of the piazza. Villagers paid a real to see the demon freak show. Antonia planned to trade. 

“How’s the child, dear?” Antonia missed a step. A hand touched her back. It was the baker-women, brown as her bread, smelling like yeast. She held something out in her withered hand. Antonia smiled and nodded, not slowing down. 

The woman followed. “Are you well?” But Antonia didn’t stop. She knew what was coming and her stomach churned. “For the darling,” the woman whispered through a toothless smile, and handed Antonia a honey torta. The kind with the slivered almonds on top. The kind her mother used to buy for Nuño. Antonia wanted to hit her. She wanted to scream and shake her and push her frail body onto the cobbled stones. But instead she said, 

"Thank you," and took it with trembling hands. When the woman turned to view a hunch backed troll Antonia threw the sweet to a cage of pale girls covered in iridescent scales. One girl caught it with pointed teeth and winked. 

At the back of the piazza a patchwork tent flap opened. A skinny brown hand beckoned her inside. 

The tent was filled with smoke, but not the incense Antonia was used to. This smoke came from an open fire in the middle of the hut. A large iron cauldron hung beneath two stakes, from which poured a hot cat piss cinnamon smell, the worst Antonia had ever experienced. Nauseous, she pulled her shawl over her face and took shallow breaths to keep from gagging. Next to the gigantic pot, on the back of a wooden chair, perched a sparrow woman. 

Standing the women would have come to Antonia’s waist. Where her feet should have been were narrow wrist bones and brown curved hands, which reminded Antonia of the skinny wrists of the birds she often fed out her window. She wondered if this fragile woman could be Uccello’s distant ancestor. The woman had a pointed, determined face, the face of a woman who has had to fight, something or other, in some way or another, for a long time. Antonia held out the fig boy. 

“He’s yours.” She said. The woman rustled the feathers of her spotted wings, descended from her perch and pulled the thin blanket off the boys face with wrinkled lips. She sighed and flew back to her broth at the fire.

“I can’t take him.” The woman’s voice had a high chirpy quality, like she struggled to speak without coughing. 

“You have my boy here.” Antonia insisted. “This one is yours.” 

“He’s not got long.” The woman said, grasping a large wooden ladle with her teeth. “He’s got the curl already.” Antonia saw it was true. A dull grey darkened his once fresh green leaves, and the exterior layer curled inwards. “Please,” Antonia whispered. “Please, you have my boy.” 

“I ain’t got your boy miss.” The woman continued to stir the pot of putrid fluid with the ladle in her mouth. “And I can’t take that one. He don’t got more than two days left.” Antonia stared at the woman but could think of nothing to say. 

For some reason she thought of the fairy tale of Bluebeard’s egg. She was the virgin, the stolen egg bleeding into her hands, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t staunch it. The blood poured down her arms. Down her gown. Bluebeard would come stomping down the hall and find her, covered in her shame and disgrace and she would find herself in the dungeon with the bones of all the other wives he had hidden in the darkness. 

“You want your boy back?” The woman finally asked. Antonia nodded. “I’d say you plant the boy. Them”ays the way with these ones. You plant the boy and his momma will come for him.” 

“Plant the boy?” 

“By a fig tree is best, like the one in the square. His momma will come for him.” 

“I’ll get my boy back?” 

“Ay,” the woman chirruped, “She’ll come.” 

*​

3: Joyful Mystery​

Antonia left his little green head out, so he could breath. His shrieking smashed windows, frightened livestock, and relegated all the members of the Piazza indoors with wool stuffed in their ears until his mother would come and bring Matteo home.

The clouds kept their promise and fat droplets clung to the leaves of the fig tree, every few minutes gathering in weight until they showered the infant with long streams of freezing water.

For some reason the boy’s crying hurt more than just Antonia’s ears. Though what they did hurt, she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t say his cries decimated her heart, or her soul, or any other matter of poetic body parts used for centuries to determine suffering. His cries shattered something deeper than flesh. His cries were like fingers, plucking the strings of her self, but only plucking the bad notes.

She stood in her open kitchen window, allowing the rain to soak into the floor, debating whether to tie herself to a chair to prevent herself from rescuing the pitiful beast. Instead, she busied herself by baking tortes, straightening the furniture, dusting the shelves behind the glassware, and coming back to the growing puddle below the window. When she could handle it no longer she pulled the ball of loose green yarn from it’s place next to the settee and tried to knit. But his shrieks caused her mind to stumble on the prayers and green wool fell from the frantic needles in long strands.

Then there was silence.

Antonia’s heart stopped. She rose. Then froze. Step. Freeze. She ran to the window. The boy lay quiet, asleep, his tiny head cradled in the arms of Uccello. It flashed in Antonia’s mind that perhaps Uccello might feast on the boy, pulling him apart leaf by leaf like an artichoke. But instead she hummed a lullaby in a tune Antonia didn’t recognize. The tone, however, she understood completely.

Something inside Antonia shifted, and she knew, that even in a million years, when humanity was gone from the Earth and a new breed of holy experiment roamed the ruins of Rome they would still, and for eternity, have the same tone of tenderness when they sang. The music that calms suffering, she realized, must come from the angels themselves. But if Uccello knew to sing the songs of the angels, and she didn’t, then what sort of beast did that make her?

The thought made her sick.

She couldn’t leave the boy in the rain. She would find Matteo, but not like this. Barefoot and half dressed Antonia burst from her flat into the muddy grey square determined to dig up the child.

She stopped ten feet from Uccello. The girl continued her strange ethereal hum, stroking the fig boy’s head. The leaves on his face were now totally withered and curled, and deadened to a dry brown grey. Antonia stepped toward the pair, nestled together under the fig tree. Uccello frowned at Antonia’s advances.

“I’m so sorry.” Antonia said. Though she wasn’t sure whom she was talking to. “I will take him now.” Uccello continued to hum. “Please,” Antonia said. “I will keep him safe.” Uccello reached her stubby fingers around the boy and started to dig, stopping four inches into the ground to stroke the boy’s withering back. Antonia stepped closer. Uccello squawked her crow scream and jumped on her toes. Antonia lunged for the boy digging him up with her fingernails, clutching his muddy leaves to her chest. But, when her fingertips grazed his back she felt something strange protruding from his shoulder blades, and when she turned him around she discovered two flesh covered bones, sprouting the new down of pure white feathers.

*​

“You told me —,” Antonia screamed, her chest heaving, “You told me his mother would come for him.” The sparrow woman continued to empty her ladle of broth from the cauldron into a dwarf’s bowl. When the man grunted and stomped his feet she stroked his forehead and helped him reach for the spoon.

“It’s here Simon,” she whispered, guiding his hand with her mouth. “It’s here.” She looked back with warm brown eyes to Antonia and the ball of leaves in her arms and said,

“Looks to me like she did.” Antonia’s stomach seized.

“You meant me.”

“He has no other mother, I believe?” The woman turned away and busied herself pouring another ladle of broth for a Xaninos at the table, a beautiful girl whose pink eyes shifted continuously to Antonia, though never making eye contact.

Antonia wanted to grab the sparrow woman by her fluttering wings and snap them. She wanted to throw the woman into her own bubbling pot of putrid broth.

“You lied to me. How did you know I would go to him? How did you know I wouldn’t leave him to freeze? He could have been killed.”

“You are his mother.” The woman replied. “You wouldn’t let those things happen.” Antonia pulled her shawl around the boy’s shoulders. His little leaves were grey now. Dusty. His little wings had grown. They jutted from his back at least the width of her hand, stiff white feathers poking from bone and flesh. The old woman sighed, and gestured to the crowd of beasts eating in the tent.

“Do you think we search the world, like knights in stories, hunting out these beasts, Signora? We don’t.” She shook her feathered head. “We don’t find them in caves or enchanted forests or lost kingdoms. We find them here, in Piazza’s like this one, abandoned by their families. Left to starve. We find them cold, afraid — alone.”

She nodded toward the squat man, sipping broth, every spoonful a chore as his arm trembled and his body shook. “There are no trolls in Scandinavia, or Xaninos in Spain. They are children, like your boy, who are different perhaps, but not monsters. We take them in, we feed them, we give them a family but this is no life, Signora. This is no life for a child.” The flap behind Antonia shifted, and a boy about ten stumbled into the tent, his spine bulging from his back so he was forced to crawl on all fours. Antonia staggered back.

“Nuno....” The name sounded strange when said aloud. She had said it in her mind so much it now sounded hollow when released. Like smoke.

“No,” the woman said. “This here is Fionn. His mamma paid us to take ‘im in Ireland. Said he was a demon.” Fionn crawled to the table next to the dwarf and smiled a toothy smile at Antonia. “Do you know a boy like him, Signora?” Of course he wasn’t Nuno. Nuno had black hair that shone like glass. Nuno had alabaster skin and hazel eyes. This boy was red. Red and freckled.

“No.” Antonia’s mouth felt dry. “I don’t.” The sparrow woman fluttered to Antonia who shivered in the open flap of the tent. Rain poured behind her, puddling at her feet. The old woman pulled the shawl away reveal the shriveled grey face of the fig boy. “Find it in your heart to love him, Signora.” She lifted her beady bird eyes to meet Antonia’s wet ones. “Please love him. Have faith in your boy.” She said. “He has faith in you.” 

Antonia arrived home to find the Cardinal and Duccio at her flat playing the gypsy game her father thought would save the world. Duccio’s eyes were red. He did not look up.

“Have you seen this marvelous invention Signora?” The Cardinal called to her, “A war with no bloodshed.” Antonia stared at the checks alternating on the flat wooden board. The entire world was in a perpetual state of war not just between armies, but also between order and chaos itself. Between God and the Devil, the spirit and the flesh. Antonia thought of the painting on the wall of the chapel. All those naked people scrambling for forgiveness. Redemption. For peace. This was the universal conflict, which would not be resolved until judgment day.

Antonia held close the wiggling bundle of leaves and realized that the most powerful sorts of wars were the ones with no bloodshed at all. The wars inside our homes. The wars inside ourselves.

De Cesena rose from his position at the bloodless battlefield and reached his robed arms toward the child. Antonia pulled him to herself and stepped back onto the landing.

“I won’t jump.” She found herself whispering. Her poor mother. She had been so brave.

“Give the beast to me Signora, we will deal with it accordingly.” The Cardinal stepped forward. Antonia trembled on the landing. So warm. Everything was so bright. The Cardinal’s robes practically glowed. Antonia stepped back again.

“I won’t jump.” She called out, barely audible in the pouring rain. She could not be judged for this. When the cardinal took his third step toward her Antonia screamed, “His name is Matteo.” Then gripped the child and ran.

4: Glorious Mystery​

Freezing rain splashed her legs and blood from birth ran down them, but Antonia continued to run. She didn’t know how far de Cesena was behind her, or even if he was behind her at all. All she knew was her legs had never felt so limber. Her heart so strong. She rounded the corner of the Piazza, dodging the paying patrons of the festival, smiling at the fig boy. But when she ran past the wall of the Vatican she stopped.

Uccello lay screeching beneath a large black net, surrounded by men with clubs.

“No,” Antonia screamed, “No.” She elbowed her way through the crowd and threw herself over of the flapping child.

“Get back, bitch,” someone yelled, “We’re killing the demon.”

“No,” Antonia screamed. “No.” Scrambling she felt for the edge of the net with her free hand, and finding it, grabbed Uccello’s thin ankle and pulled. Something heavy struck Antonia’s back. She collapsed onto Uccello, protecting her tiny body with her own. When she caught her breath she gripped the girl under her free arm and ran for the chapel. Dodging clubs and stones, Antonia ascended the high steps, and slipped between the doors.

Inside the painter was cleaning pots.

“Please,” Antonia begged, her back pressing against the wooden door. “Please hide us.” The painter glanced at the riot out the window and nodded. He ushered Antonia and the two children behind his scaffolding, and laid a large sheet to cover them.

*​

When Antonia felt she could hunch no longer he gestured them out. Night had fallen on Rome. Antonia propped against the wooden scaffold, the fig boy asleep at her breast, and Uccello shivering under her free arm. The lithe man with the Roman nose rested by the chapel doors. He was waiting, obviously, for Buonarroti to finish.

Before them the painter’s magnificent fresco rose to the ceiling, everyone nude. Everyone equalized in his nakedness. Stripped bare of his rank. Exposed before God. Antonia thought of the Carnival masks. What were they hiding that everyone didn’t already know?

For the first time Antonia lifted her eyes and realized how large the chapel was. In that moment, surrounded by demons, the angels, and God himself Antonia felt as if she was at the center of the universe. The beginning of creation. The apex of space and time.


She looked to the painter cleaning his brushes.

“Do you believe in demons Senor?” He said nothing for a moment.

“I believe,” he started, “That the only demons are the ones we make ourselves.” He gestured towards his fresco. Painted in fleshy pigments was Minos, the judge of hell. Surrounded by demons, Minos’ strong body dominated the depiction of suffering and Antonia smiled to see that the painter had painted the exact likeness of Cardinal da Cesena on the demon’s face.

“That’s Cardinal de Cese –“

“Ci. If there really were demons, Sinora, I imagine Cardinal de Cesena is as close as one could get.”

Antonia kissed the fig boy.

“Do you believe in miracles, Signor?” The painter glanced at the man waiting at the door. The man blushed.

“Ci, Sinora. Miracles I do believe in.” The man smiled and looked at the floor. For the first time Antonia noticed his shy green eyes.

“Will you allow them to paint the fig leaves? Will you allow them to cover all this?”

“Oh, they will paint them, whether I want them to or not. They will cover the truth. But the cover is only a token gesture, and the truth is obvious to all who choose to see it.” With that, the painter covered his last pot of paint and descended the vast scaffolding.

“Good night, Signora.”

Alone in the chapel, Antonia breathed in the bundle of leaves nestled in her arms. The fig boy squirmed, and shook his tiny wings, extending them outwards, before turning his green head towards her breast and closing his eyes. She held him close and kept her breathing even lest she wake him.

“I had a brother, once.” She whispered to the tiny bundle. “He was Nuno.” Beside her Uccello, now asleep, shivered and whimpered. Without disturbing the baby at her breast Antonia used one hand to loosen the laces at the back of her dress.

“He was only five but I remember him. I remember he liked almond torta. I remember he liked me to sing. I remember he would have fits and mother would have to– “ The tears poured from her eyes now. They dripped onto the floor of the chapel, onto her breast. With one fluid motion she pulled the dress from her shoulders and slid it around her legs before placing it, like a blanket over the shivering Uccello. Naked, Antonia cradled the infant back in her arms.

“They took him.” She said. “He had fits, and they took him.” Antonia sobbed and the echo of the cry through the vast stone chapel frightened her. “He was only a boy.” The baby stirred. His wings rustled. Antonia released her grip. The fig boy fluttered against her bare arms, and for the first time she saw that where the wings protruded from his tiny shoulder blades the fig leaves had begun to peel.

Antonia stared at the bundle of withered leaves. So dry they shook with each of her ragged breaths. With a shaking finger she reached under one of the grey leaves and pulled. The leaf came away in her hand, revealing more dry leaves beneath. Again, she pulled a leaf away, and again it came off easily. Antonia’s tears ceased as she peeled away more and more of the tattered leaves until finally she discovered skin. Pale and thin, her little Matteo shivered without his covering.

“My boy.” She whispered, pulling him to her face, burying her mouth into his cool flesh. “My boy. My boy.” The child felt so limp. So limp and so naked and so perfect.

They stayed like that. Mother and son. The moon rose behind the windows of the chapel, disappearing behind the stone walls before appearing again at the next opening. Antonia never slept, instead she knitted a fine green hat, each stitch a prayer, for her little fig boy who was not a fig boy at all. And not sure whether to laugh or cry or scream she did all three, sometimes separately and sometimes together, waking Uccello in the process until the chapel was filled the sounds of a diabolical choir. The song of a woman re-born.

When dawn arrived little Matteo grew restless, his tiny wings shuddering and flapping. Antonia placed his new little hat on his head, and held him close, trying to warm him. Using all her strength the mother gripped her son, but his wings pushed against her and soon she was forced to release him. Despite his mothers sobs the boy flew like a sparrow to the open window of the chapel and outwards towards the rising sun.

When Cardinal de Cesena arrived in the morning to check on the work of the painter he was taken aback to find Sinora Antonia Benedetti, naked in front of the Last Judgment, her face stained with tears and her arms upraised to the sky. The girl Uccello lay asleep in her lap.

Over the years more fig children would be born into the Piazza, but Antonia Benedetti would teach the people to peal away the leaves and find their child nestled inside. Some of the children would follow the path of Matteo, sprout wings and fly into the clouds, but many more survived and thrived in the tiny community. The legend would go that while the Santa Caterina delle Cavallerotte did not house bones of saints or fragments from the True Cross, the piazza contained no shortage of miracles. And if you asked about the fig boy the story would start with:

His name was Matteo.

He wore a green hat.

*NOTE: I wrote this story for my daughter, who has autism like little Uchello, and for all the misunderstood children with deformities and disabilities throughout history.