Day Three - Wednesday

“INCIPIAMUS!” grunts Foster amid the clamor of gossip. “INCIPIEMUS!” The children from the catholic school are peering in through the upper windows of the cafeteria – it’s recess. “AHHhhhhh…. The screaming children do not disturb us – DA-vid!” sings Reggie, “What is it in Latin DA-vid?!” Parvuli… clamantes… “Come on, perturbo” – nos non perturbant? Now the passive. Now another way – 4 more ways to say it! Inquietant! Obturbamur! Conturbamur! Now – “IT WILL NOT HAPPEN that we are disturbed by the screaming children and we will miss them when they will have gone in a week! Desidero – to miss! With UT! Jo-oe!”

“OK! With school having been closed?? Easy stuff – the children know this; German shepherds on the street could understand this… you think Latin is OOHHHH!” he gestures wildly, “you think it falls from the sky? Noooooo! It was invented by the prostitutes and their clients on the STREEEEEET…” (And the ladies, he tells us, around Termini are so nice – they give money to the program! He grimaces sweetly.)

Day C (Wed. and Fri.) is reserved for the rather strange mix of Ecclesiastica Latinitas – Carmina; et Exempla Temporis Artium Renatarum. [Ecclesiastical Latin – Songs; and Examples of the Time of the Arts Having Been Reborn, i.e. the Renaissance.] We begin with Erasmus’s own translation of the New Testament from the Greek, and Reggie offers his own view of what the Catholic Church nowadays can do with the Vulgate. Not quite carta purgatorium (a favorite phrase of his, meaning toilet paper) but – “If they had followed Erasumus there never would’ve been a Protestant revolution! But down the street here they’re they’re they’re they’re STUPID! The world is in flames but NO ONE CARES because everyone is waving flags and jumping around like IDIOTS… … St. Thomas Aquinas buh buh buh buh … using a Bible that was what? For the birds! For the BIRDS I tell you dearies, it was so corrupted…” He scandalizes the devout Catholics in the class (not for the first time) elucidating a change in the new Catholic translation of the Vulgate (rev. 1997?): all those Marys stomping on serpents, he tells us, are for the BIRDS. Because it’s not ILLA anymore, it’s ILLUD. She doesn’t step on the snake, her SEED does – ILLUD, he intones. ILLUUUUD. So you can throw out those statues dearies, just throw them out. He loves this, he revels in it. Revels with his voice of gravel.

And then, he melts. In the Juniores class it was C-5, a title of a prayer Pro moriendibus, for those dying – he mentions he’s lost maybe ten friends in the past three months. “And you can go hold their hands, my dearies, but what else are you doing to do, HMMMM? SAY something! PRO MORIENDIBUS! This is a nice one... Well, ok then, let’s move on.” And then, later – “Let’s sing,” he says. In the Seniores section, we’re on Page C-3, mode seven. A Gregorian chant. “You ever sing Gregorian chant? Noooo, of course not … because you don’t like it? Well neither do I. You’re not Christian? Well neither am I. But this is Latin my friends, living Latin. We’ll sing it together. This one is just … lovely. For the dying…”

In paradisum: deducant te Angeli:
In tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,
Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem,
Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat,
Et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
Aeternam habeas requiem.

[May the Angels lead you into paradise,
May the Martyrs take you up in your arrival,
And lead you into the Holy City of Jerusalem,
May the Chorus of Angels take you up,
And with Lazarus, once a pauper,
May you have eternal rest.]

“I always cry when I sing this,” says Reggie, “You remember… Remember those who have died. OK, let’s sing it again. And no crying.”

And we sing, our voices echoing off the walls of the tiny cafeteria of the Catholic school a parvulis clamantibus non perturbati...