A Season for the Dead (27 page)

46

She stood outside the main door, beneath the vine veranda, marveling at the evening. The heat of the day had dissipated. Fireflies now danced through the twisting shapes of the olive trees that crouched on the moonlit horizon. They were all quite drunk, even Marco. The champagne had been followed by white wine, then red. It was as if the house had infected them with its spirit, as if its rich, hidden memories had woken from some dream and come to inhabit them. The coming day would exorcize these happy ghosts. She knew that had to happen. Still, Sara Farnese was grateful for the fleeting gift they had each received at Marco’s prompting. The timing was welcome. The nightmare of the city was still real. There were hardships and trials ahead but they were not insurmountable. There was hope. There was the possibility of redemption in the light which shone in all their faces that night.

Bea took Marco to his bedroom and did not emerge again. Nic, perhaps to cover his embarrassment, had dragged the sleepy, stiff Pepe out for a final walk around the grounds. Sara could hear him talking to the men at the end of the drive: slow, lazy chatter, not the whispered, feverish talk men had when things were going wrong. They all deserved a respite from Gino Fosse. It wouldn’t last. That was impossible. Yet even the shortest break seemed like a miracle. It gave her space to think, to breathe. Here, beyond the grip of the city, safe in the cool darkness of the farmhouse, surrounded by people who didn’t judge her, didn’t look at her as if she were a different kind of creature, Sara felt briefly content in a way she did not wish to analyze.

Hadn’t Marco himself said it? Nothing stayed the same. The world was in flux, always. This was its gift; this was its burden too.

She stepped onto the dry, hard ground and kicked at it with her shoe. It was impossible to believe anything could grow in such conditions. She knew nothing about gardening. Bea was probably just as ignorant. But with Marco’s guidance, which would, she felt sure, be exact and exacting, something would take root here. It would become fertile and one day bring forth produce, though she knew she would never be there to witness it.

Nic stepped out of the darkness, from behind one of the few living things near the house, an old, wizened almond tree. The leaves rustled lightly in the breeze. He looked happy. She was glad, for him and for Marco. Something had passed between the two men, some unspoken pact, that night. There had been no news from the policemen at the gate. Perhaps the distant city was quiet. Perhaps Gino Fosse slept easy, the demons gone from his head, if only for a little while.

The dog stepped forward, cocked a leg and peed profusely on the trunk of the tree. They laughed.

“The wisdom of dogs,” Sara said.

Pepe came to sit tamely at their feet. “Or the ignorance,” Nic answered. “He doesn’t know what lies ahead. He doesn’t understand what there is to anticipate.”

“And because we do that makes us wiser?”

“I think so. But not happier perhaps.”

The dog’s eyes closed behind dry, wrinkled lids. He looked like Marco, she thought: gray and wasting.

“It’s not enough for them to be alive,” she said, patting the old fur. “They need to live. Happy birthday, Pepe.”

The dog stared at them both, then fixed its gaze on the door with a firm deliberation.

An awkward silence fell between them. Sara turned and let them in. The dog ambled across the threshold, found its bed in the kitchen and curled its frail body into a lazy apostrophe.

She watched the animal settle, knowing Nic couldn’t take his eyes off her.

47

The dogcatcher’s van was parked inconspicuously outside the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina in a small piazza north of the parliamentary area where Alicia Vaccarini had dined with Gino Fosse the day before. The site had been associated with the martyr Lorenzo since the fourth century although a temple, probably to Juno, had existed there long before, its columns, crowned by medieval capitals, reused in the dark portico that gave onto the square. The delicate illumination of the piazza now outlined the plain triangular pediment and the Romanesque bell tower, much like the one on Tiber Island, behind. In spite of its location next to the Via Corso, the church retained a modest, fetching dignity. Gino Fosse was unable to forget the place for entirely different reasons.

This was, he knew, where the cycle began, where the doubts which first rose in his head in the dark belly of San Giovanni hardened, became real and demanded action. One week ago to the day Brendan Hanrahan had phoned him, sounding amiable, sympathetic, wondering why Denney had reacted so ruthlessly to what was, in truth, a minor infraction. Hanrahan suggested they meet, take a short tour of the city, visit some places which would, he believed, intrigue him.

Thirty minutes later the Irishman had pulled up outside the tower in the Clivus Scauri inside one of the black Mercedeses Gino Fosse knew so well. Then, as a chauffeur drove them around the city, the Irishman introduced him to Lorenzo’s tale. Now, in the van with Arturo Valena screaming pointlessly to the howling of the dogs beside him, he could still recall the moment the poisonous worm locked its jaws hard into his soul. Perhaps Hanrahan had noticed it. The Irishman missed very little. Perhaps he had even wanted it there, feasting.

It had been a scalding, airless day, the first to give a hint of the heat wave that was to come. Hanrahan ordered his driver to take a circuitous route passing the Villa Celimontana, the public park close to the Clivus Scauri.

“The man has a terrible temper sometimes,” he confided to Gino. “Denney, I mean. I imagine he blames it on the stress, Gino. But we’re all under stress now, aren’t we?”

Hanrahan had dead eyes, a dead face. Gino Fosse knew why they used him to fix things. Nothing was beneath Hanrahan. He was relentless, patient, forever planning.

“Note the fountain.” Hanrahan gestured as they rounded the park entrance. Gino admired the stone boat with its generous waterspout, uncertain about Hanrahan’s intentions.

“An old priest from Limerick took me on this tour when I first came to Rome. Now I wish to return the favor to you. To take you through an entire episode of our glorious history, Gino,” Hanrahan declared. “I’m a bureaucrat, not a churchman, so pay attention and forgive any errors, though I think I know this story well enough to be true to it throughout.

“Let’s imagine,” he continued, in the manner of a teacher, “that today is August the sixth in the year of our Lord 258. The emperor is Valerian, no friend to the Church at all. Lorenzo, a Spaniard and one of the six Christian deacons of Rome, is standing on the grass over there handing out money to the poor, money he has gained from selling some of the Church’s gold. Valerian has heard of this, decided he wants to wet his beak too, and demanded that Lorenzo show him the remainder of the Church’s rich treasures so that he may claim his imperial share.”

Fosse had not been sleeping soundly. The incident which led to his banishment from the Vatican continued to bewilder him. He had behaved no more badly before. Hanrahan was right. The punishment seemed out of kilter with the crime.

“For three days Lorenzo has assembled a crowd close to where the fountain now stands and is giving out alms. He’s surrounded by the poverty-stricken and aided by supportive fellow Christians. When Valerian’s soldiers come and ask him for the emperor’s gold, Lorenzo gives them not a penny. Instead, he points to the assembled crowd and declares, ‘See! Here is the treasure of the Church.’ ”

“Sounds like he was asking for trouble,” Fosse had observed.

“Quite,” Hanrahan agreed. “And he got it.”

He pointed to the Palatine passing to their left, on the opposite side of the road. “Had we time, we could still follow Lorenzo along every stage of his impending martyrdom. He was dragged through the Cryptoporticus passage, up there, which you may walk today, to a trial, the verdict of which was already decided. We could go to the church of San Lorenzo in Fonte, in the Via Urbana, see the cell in which he was incarcerated and the fountain he used to baptize his fellow prisoners. After that we could visit San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, built over the humble chapel Constantine himself erected to mark the martyr’s burial place. In San Lorenzo in Panisperna, close by, we could stand on the site of his death and admire a vivid fresco of him receiving the martyr’s reward, though this is a work that’s perhaps a little too realistic, I think, for a young man’s taste.”

Hanrahan had been wrong there. Gino Fosse had found these strange depictions of martyrdoms fascinating. He had spent hours in the church of San Stefano Rotondo, not far from the Villa Celimontana, watching the workmen renovate the startling images on the walls there. These pictures spoke to him, saying something he could not quite understand. On the martyrs’ lips, as they endured their agonies, there was some cryptic eternal secret they could share across the centuries if only he knew the key.

When they had reached San Lorenzo in Lucina and fought their way through the lazy crowds of shoppers into the small church in the square, Hanrahan had stood him in front of Reni’s
Crucifixion
and asked what he thought. Fosse was indifferent. It seemed, he answered, romanticized, unreal. A man would not die on the cross quite so prettily. Hanrahan had grinned with pleasure and pointed out the monument marking the grave of a French artist Fosse barely knew, Poussin. “Another romantic,” Hanrahan declared. “You know Caravaggio?”

“Of course,” Fosse replied. “He’s wonderful. He paints real people.”

“Quite,” Hanrahan agreed. “This idiot”—he kicked the Poussin monument—“derided him for his ‘partiality for ugliness and vulgarity.’ By which he meant, of course, Caravaggio’s willful attempt to portray humanity as it was, not as seen through a pair of rose-tinted spectacles. We mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking we’re more than we are, Gino. Caravaggio was a thug and a lunatic and he knew it too, just as well as he understood his genius.”

Fosse had agreed and Hanrahan had led him into the Fonseca chapel, where the Bernini busts sat like decapitated, frozen heads on their plinths. They then returned and spent a few minutes in silence on the hard seats in the nave.

Finally, Gino Fosse asked the inevitable question. “What happened to Lorenzo?”

“Dead, of course,” Hanrahan said with a mock mournfulness.

Fosse had been in no mood for black jokes. He was mildly disturbed. He had been looking into a small side chapel which contained a strange, glinting object. An elderly man was on his knees in front of the iron railings which separated it from the nave. He seemed intent on the odd, metallic frame beyond the bars. Then something had moved there. A rat, he was sure of it. And, in the shadows, a half-visible figure too, dressed in a dark-red cardinal’s robe, looking much like Michael Denney. A man who may, in some way Gino Fosse could not quite envisage at that moment, be some kind of martyr too.

“Of course he’s dead,” he told Hanrahan. “But what happened?”

Hanrahan stood up. Gino Fosse followed him to the bars of the side chapel, standing next to the praying man, his head hurting. There was no mistake now. A rat was moving underneath the altar, scampering in and out of the light. At least it appeared to be alone. The figure in red was gone and he knew it was simply some strange creation of his imagination.

“When Lorenzo failed to find any gold, the authorities were very cross. All the normal punishments seemed somehow inapposite for a crime of this nature. So he was sentenced to be roasted to death over a slow fire while strapped to an iron grill so that he was, very gradually, cooked.”

Fosse watched the shining eyes of the rat gleam from the shadows.

“What?”

“Think of Tertullian,” Hanrahan said. “ ‘The blood of the martyrs . . .’ Lorenzo was among the bravest, which is why he’s named in the Canon of the Mass. Several Roman senators converted on the basis of his courage alone, believing that God must have spared him the true agony of his martyrdom, since he was in good humor throughout the entire ordeal. The poet Prudentius later wrote that he laughed and joked for the duration, telling his torturers at one point, ‘I’m done on that side; turn me over, and eat.’ ”

The kneeling man rose and walked away, cursing under his breath.

“The grill is preserved,” Hanrahan said with a sudden dramatic gesture. “There. You may admire it.”

Fosse followed the direction of the Irishman’s arm and saw the cruel iron structure in its enclosure, finally realizing what it was.

Afterward, Gino Fosse had checked out this story. Hanrahan had been truthful, after a fashion. The gridiron was, some believed, a later invention. Prudentius was not born until eighty years after the event. In all probability, Lorenzo had been beheaded like most of those who figured in the early, bloody history of the Church. Perhaps all the martyr stories he had heard in Rome—Bartholomew carrying his skin, Lucy with her eyes on a plate, Sebastian shot full of arrows—were inventions too. There was no way of knowing and never would be; no archaeologist had dug up the evidence, as they had in Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Everything was conjecture, dependent on faith; without it, Lorenzo became simply a character in a fairy story, a player in a fourth-century tale from Grimm designed to cower the gullible into submission.

Then Brendan Hanrahan had leaned over and whispered in his ear, the close, hoarse whisper of a man in the confessional. The words burned in Fosse’s brain. The rat scuttled across the floor in front of the altar once more. In his mind’s eye—and he knew this could not be real—Cardinal Michael Denney really did lie on the rack now, over a slow flame, like that of some country barbecue, grinning at them both and laughing through a dead mouth, asking, “Am I done yet? Are any of us done yet? Will
she
be here soon? Is
she
getting hungry too?”

It had occurred to him that there were so many stories concerning instant conversions, from Paul onward. The Church reveled in them. Yet there must be some counterbalance to these: events, sights, sounds, perhaps even an odor that, in an instant, destroyed a lifetime’s faith. How many Catholics had walked into Belsen and walked out atheists? How many, on a more mundane level, had felt some darkness enter their soul while walking down the street, put one foot in front of the other and found their previously held beliefs had vanished forever? That they had lost twice over, had spent half their life in ignorance and would spend the rest in the solitary despair of knowing there was no salvation and never had been?

He looked again. There was no cardinal roasting slowly on the rack. Only the rat, darting across the iron bars, bright eyes glittering back at him in the darkness.

A rat could steal away the last few remnants of your faith, snatch it from your mouth, then shred it to pieces with its sharp, sharp teeth, slowly, silently in some dark, dusty corner away from the sight of man. It was always the small things, the unexpected things, which would kill you.

Recollecting all this with a grim precision, Gino Fosse shook his head, wishing the memories would disappear forever. They clouded his judgment. They stole from him his determination. There was no time for thinking, only action. He’d just killed two cops, something he’d never envisaged when this began. There would be repercussions. This was, he thought, the precursor to the end. Events were circling around him like crows eyeing a coming meal. Within the next twenty-four hours, everything could surely be accomplished. It was a welcoming thought. He was growing tired of the game. He was impatient for its inevitable resolution.

How quickly that happened depended on what he did next. Denney had proved himself a stubborn man, unwilling to run, to let himself be exposed to risk, in the face of the most severe provocation. There had to be a final exertion, a turn in the savagery none of them expected.

Gino Fosse rubbed off the white makeup, as much as he could. He wore his old clothes again: jeans and a black T-shirt. He was sweating like a pig. The night was unbearably close. The city felt like an oven. He felt conspicuous, as if the darkness were full of eyes, glittering rodent eyes, greedy human ones, glancing feverishly in his direction. He stuck his head outside the van window. The piazza was empty. A few lone figures wandered down the Via Corso, past the shuttered shops and the flashing neon signs in the windows.

He picked up the sack of keys he had stolen six days before from the administration office in the Vatican when he called to pick up the rest of his belongings. He sorted through them until he found the set marked for the church. He had reversed the van so that the rear door was tight against the locked entrance into the building. No one would see Arturo Valena being dragged inside. Behind those heavy wooden doors, in this deserted part of the city, no one would hear what then ensued.