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people from devils : his hat alone had done many miracles.
    But my father liked most the miracle of the hostel and the wilderness.
    Vincenzo had been riding through the wilderness on his donkey praying very hard and he and the donkey were near exhaustion from the prayers when suddenly they arrived at the front door of a beautiful well-appointed hostel : Vincenzo went in : it was as beautiful inside as out : he stayed in it overnight : the service, the food, the bed were all very agreeable and gave him exactly the respite he needed to go on next day with his sojourn through the wild places full of infidels and unbelievers : next morning when he got on hisdonkey, that same donkey was like one 10 years younger and had no fleabites and wasn’t lame any more : off they went, and it was 6 or 7 miles later when the morning sun first hit his shaven head that Vincenzo realized he’d forgotten his hat.
    He turned the donkey around and they went back over their own hooftracks to the hostel to fetch it : but when they got there there was no hostel and his hat was hanging on the branch of an old dead tree in the exact same place where the hostel had been.
    This miracle was one of the reasons housebuilders and wallmakers wanted Vincenzo Ferreri a saint : they planned to claim him as patron.
    My father prayed to him every morning.
    I thought of my mother telling me the stories of some of the miracles of Vincenzo, her arms round me, me on her knee.
    Vincenzo, petitioned by me, had made no difference to her going or her coming back
    (clearly I had petitioned wrongly).
    I thought of my mother’s French-sounding name :I thought of the French shape that means the flower her name meant.
    Francescho, I said.
    Not
Vincenzo? my father said.
    He frowned.
    Francescho, I said again.
    Myfather held his frown : then he smiled in his beard a grave smile down at me and he nodded.
    On that day with that blessing and that new name I died and was reborn.
    But – Vincenzo –
    ah, dear God –
    that’s
who my sombre saint is on the little platform with his eyes averted and the old Christ over his head.
    St Vincenzo Ferreri.
    Hey : boy : you hear me?
St Vincenzo
, famed across all the oceans for
making unhearing people hear
.
    Cause listen, when Vincenzo spoke, even though it was in Latin the people whether they knew any Latin or none at all knew exactly what he was saying – even people 3 miles away could hear him as if he was speaking right next to their ears in their own vernacule.
    The boy hears nothing : I can’t make him.
    I’m no saint, am I? no.
    Well good that I’m not, cause look now, here’s a very pretty woman, well, from behind at least, stopped in front of my St Vincenzo
    (4 to 1, and she chose me not Cosmo)
    (just saying)
    (not that I’m being prideful)
    (another miracle, that she did, thanks be to St Vincenzo)
    and since I’m no saint I can have my own closelook at her, from the back, from her bare neck just peeking through her long white-gold hair down the line of her spine to her waist then down to her bit-too-thin behind –
    but so’s that boy, look at him sitting up at attention, I swear he felt her come into the room cause
I
felt the hairs on
his
neck stand up when he saw her glide through the door over the floor like the room was incomplete without her, he saw her before I did, like struck by a shaft of lightning, and look at him now watching her settling her feathers in front of Vincenzo : I can’t see what his eyes are doing but I bet you they’re wide open and his ears and brow forward like goathead : plus I can tell from his back, he knows her already : boy in love? The old stories never change : but in love with this woman? Nowhere near his equal in years, far from it, even from behind I can tell she’s decades ahead, more than old enough to be his mother : but she’s not his mother, that’s clear, and has no idea he’s there, or his ardour, even though something between them’s as strong as hatred or a ray of heat