Gravedigger for the Cadaver Synod

Fiction about Popes

ONE OF YOU SMELLS TERRIBLE.

So they come around and says I have to disinter the previous pope. I says no, in fact I don’t. They says yes you do. I says, who says? They says, the pope says. I says, the current pope? They says, that’s the one. So I don’t ask more questions but grab my tools and get to it. I dig the poor decaying thing out of the earth and I says, alright, here you go. There’s your dead pope. And they says now for the fun part. I says, terrific, you fellas look you could use a laugh. I’m going home to my wife. They says, no you aren’t done. And I sighs and says, let me guess, so says the current pope? They says, that’s right. So I sighs and says, well? They says, bring the old pope down to the papal court. I says, east side of Piazzo San Pietro, by the trough? They says not there, that’s the old court. New one’s a bit south of that, near the gallows. So I bring this poor pope, been in the ground seven months, bring him to the new papal court. It’s not pleasant. The smell, you can’t believe. These fellas are smiling, watching me put down the thing. I don’t even ask, I just turn and walk away. Now hold on, they says. I says, what does our pope ask of me now. They says, one last thing. Put these on the one you’d brung. And it’s the clothes. You know the ones I mean. Pope clothes. Vestments. Holy things. I says, now listen, if you want this unholy thing done you know very well how to do it yourselfs. They laugh. Bet you’ll do it, they says. Go ahead, dress the pope. I says, the dead one. Right, the dead one, they says right back, in an unkind way. And I says, it’s not right and I won’t do it. I’d buy me a ticket straight to hell. Don’t worry about hell, they says. Seems you’ve plenty of concerns right here in this life. And I says nothing. They don’t says nothing neither, but I know what they would says, which is I have that wife at home. And I look at the decaying thing before me. What’s unholy is treating the living like the dead, or the dead like they’s still alive. Made your decision, they says, as I go reaching for the garments. I do what I’d been told, dress the corpse in the pallium and the fanon and everything else. The stench is, there’s nothing worse, and I’ve smelled it all. The bugs and worms crawled out of the stinking limbs of the past pope’s bones. And I whispered to myself, from earth we is borns and earth we remains, but only to myself, as the men were laughing and laughing and telling me to make sure I balanced the pope hat just right on the dead pope’s rotting head. When it was all said and done I heard the new pope put the dead pope on trial and stripped him of being pope pastwise, so in fact he was never pope at all, which maybe that made what I’d done a bit less unholy, or likely it was all the same. Then they cut off the three fingers poor Formosus used for blessing and tossed his remains in the river, thankfully beyond my area of concern. And I’ve never told a soul what I’d done to this man, not even my wife.