On the Fifth Day (12 page)

It had never occurred to Thomas that there would be a Christian presence here as early as AD 79, and he said so.

"There's a house," she answered, "though it's not open to the public, that has an engraving on the wall. It's what they call a magic square. There are five Latin words arranged in rows one on top of the other and they read the same horizon

tally as vertically."

"What does it say?"

"It's not what the words say that is important," she said.

"It's a kind of an anagram. You rearrange the letters like this."

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She squatted on the dusty ground of the triangular forum, shaded by trees and, picking up a stick, scratched into the ground:

P

A

A

T

O

E

R

P

A

T

E

R

N

O

S

T

E

R

O

S

O

T

A

E

R

Thomas considered it. He had enough church Latin to rec

ognize the two key words she had arranged in the cross:
Pater
Noster.
Our Father.

"It forms the first words of the Lord's Prayer," said the nun, leaving a pair of Os and As to add the Greek alpha and omega, the Beginning and End, referring to Jesus. "It's how the early Christians secretly announced their faith to each other."

Thomas wasn't sure. He was skeptical of literary codes, the reduction of complex and ambiguous meanings to simple and secret meanings. It was a strategy some of his students had found appealing and he had done his best to disabuse them of it: "Literature is complex and plural in its meanings,"

he always said. But there was no denying that religions, espe

cially persecuted religions, used secret symbols that were in

tended to have a "correct" reading. Maybe this was indeed 82

A. J. Hartley

what had so interested his brother. For all Roberta's enthusi

asm, he found the idea a little disappointing. They walked through to the theaters. Thomas had expected something like the Coliseum, but its humbler Pompeian equiv

alent was nestled just within the walls in the far northwestern corner of the town. They certainly wouldn't make it that far be

fore the site closed. The two theaters they saw were remarkable and clearly still usable structures, one broad and grand, seating perhaps five thousand, the other not even a quarter that size. Thomas climbed to the top of the stone seats and sat there for five long minutes, taking in the view down to the marbleflagged stage area and outward over the city. He liked the inti

macy of the place and the fact that most of the tourist groups never made it this far, particularly this late in the day. But the more he sat there, the more the thought recurred that he didn't know what he was looking for, and that it might be best to think of this trip as a kind of farewell to his brother. By the time he had rejoined Sister Roberta, it was time to leave.

"You'll have to come back to see the Temple of Isis," she said, leading him back round through the triangular forum.

"Sorry."

"That's okay," he said. "I have no particular plans for the next few days. I can come back."

But in his heart, he doubted that he would, and he saw in her eyes that she suspected as much.

The shops out front sold the usual tourist stuff: postcards, plaster replicas of statuary, Priapus bottle openers, guide

books, and local handicrafts. One place marked itself out from the rest with a selection of replica weapons from ancient Rome, including gladiatorial equipment. In the center of the display was a familiar
gladius
, or short sword, and a mailed glove called a
cestus.

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So Parks was here,
he thought,
and picked up some sou

venirs with which to terrorize Chicago . . .
Roberta had to return to the retreat house, so Thomas dined alone at a little restaurant a stone's throw from the harbor: mussels, linguine with anchovy pesto, and a carafe of a light, fruity red. Midway through the wine he considered going for a run, but his leg had begun aching again after all the walking in Pompeii. He abandoned the idea and immediately felt better. He had an ice cream dessert called a
tartuffo
to celebrate, and ended the evening with a shot of grappa.

Back at the Executive he had been in his room several min

utes before he noticed that things were not precisely as he had left them. A pouch on his bag that he had left unzipped had been carefully closed. The arrangement of tickets and luggage tags and the stub of his boarding card--things about which he was neurotically organized--had been reversed. He wanted to put this down to the maid, but he knew the room wouldn't be cleaned till he had spent a night there. That someone had gone through his room, and with care, made one thing clear: what

ever trouble he had encountered in Chicago had followed him across the Atlantic.

CHAPTER 19

Thomas woke with a new energy, some of which came from anger. He didn't like being spied on and poked at, he didn't like the way he had been turned away by the old priest at the re

treat house, and he was sick of not knowing what was going on. He told the concierge, a middle-aged man whose face sug

gested a constant boredom touched with impatience, that someone had been in his room.

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"That is not possible, sir," the Italian said with a dismissive shake of his head. "The keys are all kept here."

The keys were large and metal with heavy brass fobs trimmed with burgundy cord. They sat in a set of wooden cub

byholes above the concierge's desk.

"But if you had to step out for a second, anyone entering the hotel could take a key."

"Then they would be caught on the camera," said the concierge, as if this proved his point.

"Maybe we should take a look at it."

"Was something stolen from your room, sir?"

"No, but that hardly seems the point."

"I would say, respectfully, of course," said the concierge,

"that it is entirely the point."

"May I speak to the manager?"

The concierge sighed in muted exasperation.

"I will look at the tape this afternoon," he said. "If anyone took the key, I will let you know."

Thomas nodded his agreement and then said, "Can you make a phone call for me to Sister Roberta at Santa Maria delle Grazie, please?"

"The place around the corner?"

"Yes."

Another sigh and a slightly disbelieving glance out the glass doors into the street, as if looking for the reason that this tiresome American couldn't walk the fifty yards to the retreat house instead of having him phone them.

Sister Roberta seemed surprised to hear from him.

"Listen," said Thomas. "I need to come and look at my brother's things, but I don't want to get thrown out on my ear."

He explained quickly what had happened last time, and the concierge listened unapologetically, raising his eyebrows at the absurd scrapes his guests got into.

"If Father Giovanni will let you in, that shouldn't be a problem," said the nun, a little unsure of herself. "Monsignor 85

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

Pietro has gone to say mass at his parish church, so I guess the coast is clear."

Thomas thanked her, feeling a little guilty for testing the conscience of someone he knew so slenderly, even if he thought there was no cause for moral anxiety.

She met him at the front door with Father Giovanni. The young priest seemed unsurprised and untroubled by Thomas's return, and led him back down to the storage room with the smallest of nods.

"Padre Pietro is unnecessarily strict," he said with a shrug.

"And old. Old men can be . . . what is the word in English?"

"Difficult?" suggested Roberta.

"Stubborn?" said Thomas.

"Stubborn," agreed the priest. "Like a donkey, yes."

He twisted the wrought-iron handle of the door and showed them in.

Thomas knew immediately that the boxes had been tam

pered with. The books were all there, but there was no sign of the handwritten pages and journals.

"Some of it's missing," he said.

"Could anything have been moved for safekeeping?" said Sister Roberta to Giovanni. Thomas thought this less hopeful than naive, and he felt a flush of irritation.

"Where might Father Pietro have put them?" he asked, pointedly.

"Now Thomas," cautioned Roberta, "we don't know . . ."

"Father?" Thomas cut in.

"I suppose he could have taken them to his room, but I can

not search there."

"How about if I do that?" said Thomas, still grim.

"I'm afraid I could not permit it," said the priest.

"Where is his room?" demanded Thomas. "Upstairs, right?"

"Please, sir," said the priest. "Thomas. I have tried to be of assistance, but this is going too far."

Thomas kept walking. At the top of the stairs he did a quick assessment and marched up another flight to a third 86

A. J. Hartley

story that overlooked the courtyard on the inside. The doors up here were numbered: guest rooms. He strode past them as Giovanni and Roberta hurried to keep up, each urging a cau

tion he didn't feel capable of. On the far side he found two doors marked with the priests' names. As he put his hand on the handle there was a split second when Father Giovanni seemed to be contemplating some more drastic action. The two men's eyes met and the moment was broken only when Thomas clicked the latch.

"Unlocked," he said.

"Padre Pietro has, I am sure, nothing to hide."

"We'll see."

Sister Roberta's face had fallen.

"I will take nothing that doesn't belong to my family," said Thomas, and pushed the door open.

The room was small and surprisingly bare, even for a priest's room. There was a bed, a desk, a dresser, a cross on the wall. It looked no different from the guest rooms.

"This is it?" said Thomas, knowing already he would find nothing here. "This is all he has?"

"He does not always stay here," said Giovanni. "He looks after a small parish in another part of the city. Sometimes he stays there."

Thomas peered under the bed, opened a drawer of under

shirts. Nothing. Then he saw the fireplace.

It was a small hearth probably designed for coal. Now it was heaped with the blackened remains of paper.

"Kind of warm for a fire," said Thomas, "wouldn't you say?"

But he felt no triumph, only a hollowing dismay.

"When will Father Pietro be back?" said Thomas.

"I do not know," said the priest.

"Would you tell me where he is?"

"He was going to his church and he said he had to go . . . somewhere else."

The priest's hesitation, and a certain hunted look in his eyes, caught Thomas's attention.

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"Where?"

"A place called the Fontanelle," said Giovanni. There it was again: a palpable discomfort, as if saying the word upset him.

"Could I find him there?"

The priest laughed, a short, unconvincing bark.

"No, you couldn't get in."

"Why not?"

"It is not open to the public. Fortunately."

"Fortunately?"

"Father Pietro will be back this afternoon," said the priest, a hint of pink rising into his sallow cheeks. "If you wish to speak to him, I suggest you do it then. I don't see what you can expect him to say, but . . . okay."

"What's the Fontanelle?" said Thomas. "I got a guidebook, but there's no reference to it, even though there are almost a hundred pages on Naples."

He was sitting at a small pizzeria a couple of blocks from the harried and unsettling railway station with Sister Roberta. He had a
quattro formaggio
pizza unlike anything he'd ever had in the States--rich with cream and a sharp, salty blue cheese--and was washing it down with some nameless red wine from a glass jug.

"I've never heard of it," she said. "Why are you interested?"

"Father Giovanni seemed uncomfortable talking about it,"

Thomas shrugged. "That intrigues me. And anything involv

ing Father Pietro seems worth further scrutiny."

She frowned, apparently not too happy with his assessment of the old priest.

"You don't know for sure that those ashes were your brother's papers," she said, sipping mineral water.

"True," said Thomas. "But I'd like to know why he didn't want me looking at them in the first place, even if he didn't go on to burn the lot."

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"Priests can be protective of their own," she said. "The monsignor is a deeply spiritual man. He gave a homily on the Immaculate Conception shortly after I arrived. I didn't understand most of it, of course--my Italian is not good enough--but it was a beautiful sermon, full of devotion and piety. At the end he was close to tears at the thought of Our Lord being conceived without sin, then entering this dread

ful world . . ."

Thomas shook his head irritably.

"What?" said Roberta.

"I just don't get it. Any of it."

"The business with the notebooks or . . . ?"

"Priests. Nuns. Religion," said Thomas, his exasperation fi

nally getting the better of him. "Come on. We're going to miss our train."

CHAPTER 20

Father Pietro was kneeling in the front pew of the chapel con

cluding his Angelus prayer to himself, his lips whispering the familiar words, his mind trying--without much success--to focus on their content. As soon as the prayer was finished, he sat down.

"Perdonami, o' signore."

Sorry, Lord,
he thought.
I'm distracted. Again.
It had been this way for a while, and he wasn't the only one to feel it. Giovanni had shed what little closeness the two of them had shared when the young priest first arrived, had be