As soon as I stepped inside I was so pleased that Dr Chakrabarty had asked me to come along, because it really was pretty incredible to be standing here.
And I don’t know if it was Gladiator’s fault, but I couldn’t help but imagine myself with armour on and a sword in my hand and one of those Darth Vaderesque masks over my face, about to step into the ring and fight to the death. Even though on the way over Dr Chakrabarty had told us that the real gladiators didn’t usually fight to the death, not unless they’d put up a pretty gutless effort. It was only then that the mob would start baying for their blood.
As we walked along the path, Dr Chakrabarty didn’t stop talking, though again what he was saying was really interesting. He told us that the arena itself, which had been made of a wooden floor covered by sand, was no longer there and what we could see below us was in fact the hypogeum. It was in this subterranean network of tunnels and cages that the gladiators and animals were held before the contests began. He also told us that the hypogeum was connected by tunnels to a number of points outside the Colosseum.
I noticed that a group of people were discreetly following us, discreetly listening.
If Dr Chakrabarty ever stopped teaching he could be a tour guide, I thought.
We’d reached one of the other entrances to the arena, and Dr Chakrabarty was telling us how some dude called Trajan celebrated his victories in Dacia in 107 AD with contests involving 11,000 animals and 10,000 gladiators.
I took out my iPhone to take a photo and it was snatched from my hand. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, I took a long time to react. But when I spun around I could see the thief, a kid – he was maybe twelve or thirteen – wearing a grey woollen cap, running full tilt.
I went to take off after him. But he passed another kid, a bit older, this one wearing what looked like a brand-new pair of Nikes.
I didn’t see Woollen Cap slip Nike anything, but something told me that he had, that Nike was now in possession of my iPhone. So I made as if to chase after Woollen Cap.
‘Hey, that kid just stole my phone!’
But as I passed Nike, I went to grab him instead. Unfortunately Nike squirmed out of my grasp and got free. And now the chase was on.
Nike was small and he was fast, and more than that, he was totally used to running on this surface, these irregular flagstones. As I scampered after him I realised how stupid it was: all I had to do was turn an ankle and I was out of the meet. But you just don’t go swiping a person’s iPhone.
And then there was the fact that we were at the Colosseum – the Colosseum, for chrissakes! It was the last place you wanted to be punked by some kid.
So when Nike suddenly changed direction, ran through a barrier that said Ammissione Victato in Italian and No Admittance in English and disappeared down some dimly lit stairs, I had no hesitation in following him.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the sound of those Nikes on the stone. Deeper and deeper into the hypogeum we went. The stairs stopped and there was a passageway and I had his silhouetted figure in my sights again. The flagstones here were even more irregular, and again I questioned my sanity – one mistake and I was out of the meet.
But now that I could see him, I increased my pace.
There wasn’t much light here, and it smelt, well, ancient. And, remembering what Dr Chakrabarty had said, I wondered if the gladiators had been led through here, to and from the arena. And whether the stones beneath my feet were still imbued with their sweat, their blood, their piss. The passage ended and there were more stairs going down.
Deeper and deeper Nike went. Deeper and deeper I went.
And another passageway.
There was even less light here, and the flagstones under my feet were broken.
Iron doors on either side led to dingy, dusty cells.
The prison, I thought.
Where the gladiators were locked up at night.
And through all the pumping adrenalin, I was feeling something else now – fear. It was time to stop, to go back the way I’d come. It was only an iPhone, after all.
Right then Nike looked around.
It was only a glance but it was enough, because I could see the amazement in his face: how had the turista managed to keep up?
And I knew I couldn’t stop now.
I knew I would get him.
The corridor ended at a heavily padlocked iron gate.
He was trapped.
Remembering how slippery he’d been, I kept my distance, ensuring he didn’t slide under my arm.
‘The phone,’ I said. ‘I want my phone.’
His hand went into his pocket.
Okay, now he’s going to give it up, I told myself.
But when his hand reappeared he wasn’t holding a phone, he was holding a thin-bladed knife.
With a flurry of deft moves he diced the air in front of his face. If his aim was to the scare the hell out of me, he succeeded.
Because the stakes had just got a whole lot higher – this wasn’t about an iPhone, or not making the meet, this was about getting cut here, deep under the ground, slowly bleeding to death because nobody would find me. This was about dying in the hypogeum.
So it really was time to give this up.
It was only an iPhone.
But then I saw it, on the ground, just a metre to my right: a rusted piece of iron. Maybe one of the bars from the padlocked door. I shuffled towards it, my eyes not leaving Nike. Leant over, picked it up. I tapped it on the ground a couple of times. It was rusted, but it was solid.
The odds weren’t so one-sided now.
We were in the hypogeum, not in the arena. There weren’t fifty thousand people watching us. There was nobody.
But I was a gladiator.
Not Russell Crowe, he was just acting; this wasn’t Hollywood, this wasn’t a movie. I was like one of them, the real gladiators.
Men forced to fight for their lives.
I, like them, was scared, but I would not give up now. My sweat would join their sweat. And maybe my blood would join their blood.
He came at me, just as I knew he would.
Delicate steps, his centre of gravity low, the knife writing cursive in the air in front of him.
As he did, I reminded myself: the bar was for defence, not attack. Because if I swung at him I would leave myself open and his steel would find a way in. He came out at me low, which I didn’t expect.
I’d thought face or guts, but he came much, much lower than that.
And I took time to react. I could see his arm thrusting, the glinting knife, but for some reason I was frozen. The tear of fabric, and steel nicking flesh, my flesh.
Pain, and I stepped back, bringing the bar down hard on his wrist.
But the wrist wasn’t there anymore.
And the knife was coming at me again.
Higher this time.
Towards my throat.
A hand on each end of the bar, I brought it up high. New steel hit old iron, sparks flying.
And he rocked back.
Surprise on his face – how had that happened?
And I knew there was a window, the briefest of moments where he was vulnerable.
Two competing voices in my head.
The bar is for defence, not a weapon.
The briefest moment of vulnerability.
I swung the bar, a short arm jab, aiming for his hand.
He moved, but so did I, and the bar caught him flush on the side of the head, and he dropped.
The knife flew out of his hand.
I kicked it so that it flew under the locked gate. Nobody could use it now.
I was on him in a flash, a knee on each shoulder, a hand on each of his hands.
He struggled to free himself but it was useless; I was too heavy for him.
I wondered what the mob would’ve said.
Thumbs down? Kill him?
And why not?
He’d threatened with a weapon, so if I killed him, that was about as
primal, as gladiatorial, as it got.
And nobody would find out – not deep down here.
It was like he could see what was going through my mind, because his eyes filled with terror and he struggled further.
But there was no mob.
‘My phone,’ I said. ‘I want my phone.’
His eyes indicated his pocket.
I let go of one of his hands.
He understood, prising the iPhone out of his pocket and handing it to me.
I put it in my pocket.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get up now, so no funny business, okay? I go my way, you go yours.’
‘Niente polizia?’ he said.
I shook my head – niente polizia.
The last thing I wanted to do was spend half the day at an Italian police station while an Italian plod pecked away at a computer with two fingers.
One. Two. Three. I stood up quickly and stepped away from him, the iron bar still in my hands.
I watched as he slowly got to his feet.
‘Niente polizia?’ he said again.
‘Niente polizia,’ I said, quite pleased with my new-found facility with the Italian language.
He did that thing that I’d only seen Europeans do, like a half-shrug, and scampered off down the corridor and up the stairs.
The adrenalin that was still pumping through my bloodstream wanted me to charge back up the stairs after him.
I knew that there was no need to hurry, however. Especially as I could hear Nike’s echoing footsteps; he wasn’t planning an ambush somewhere.
Finally, when I reached the top, I could see Seb and Dr Chakrabarty talking to two polizia.
‘Hey, I’m okay!’ I yelled out to them.
When he saw me, Seb came running over, got me in a big old boy-hug.
‘Dude, you’re okay,’ he said.
Dr Chakrabarty was a bit less tactile in his response.
‘I was extremely worried.’
After giving some details to the polizia we were free to go.
SUNDAY
SAN LUCA
The next day, it all went according to plan. First training, which was just a light run. A very quick lunch back at the Olympic Village. Then we were free to do what we liked. So I caught a taxi to Stazione Termini, where I bought a ticket on the high-speed train to Siderno on the Calabrian coast.
While I was on the train I googled San Luca. I found out that it was founded in 1592 and for much of its history the town had been extremely isolated with no road to the coast. I also learned that it was considered to be a stronghold of the ’Ndrangheta. During the 1970s and 1980s their main activity was kidnapping rich people and holding them for ransom. By the time the train pulled into Siderno, I wasn’t so sure about my trip to San Luca; it didn’t exactly sound tourist-friendly. Still, I’d come all this way.
From outside the Siderno station I was able to catch a bus, the bus that was now rattling up the road, headed for San Luca.
On either side olive trees clutched at the stony ground. I doubted whether this landscape had changed much at all since Dominic Silvagni had done the deal and made his way to Australia. I wondered what had been going through his mind as he passed this way. Was he exhilarated, ready to go out into the world, or was he apprehensive about what he’d just done, the deal he’d made?
I felt a flash of anger: what an idiot he’d been, signing that paper!
But that was all it was – a flash – because I realised that maybe I would’ve done exactly the same thing if I’d been him.
The bus dropped down a gear; the engine sounded like a singer in a death metal band. The road was getting steeper and the ground even stonier, the olive trees more gnarled.
There were only a couple of other people on the bus – two old women clad in black, and they hadn’t lifted their eyes during the whole trip.
We pulled over and the two women got off.
‘San Luca?’ I said, though I couldn’t see a town.
‘No,’ said the driver.
The bus kept going higher.
‘Perché stai visitando San Luca?’ the driver said, keeping his eyes on the road.
‘Sorry, I don’t speak Italian,’ I said.
‘Why you come San Luca?’ he said, his English broken but not so broken that it didn’t work.
‘My family comes from here,’ I said.
‘What your family’s name?’
‘Silvagni,’ I said.
‘Silvagni,’ he repeated, but with the right stresses in the right places.
‘That’s me,’ I said.
He turned around; it was the first time I’d really looked at his face, and I wished I hadn’t, because there was something scary about it.
Not scary as in scar-down-his-cheek scary, but scary as in intense, as in the way his dark eyes seemed to devour me.
Finally he said, ‘Yes, you look same Silvagni.’
I wasn’t sure whether look-same-Silvagni was a good thing or a bad thing.
The driver turned his attention back to the road, which had become even steeper. He changed down another gear. If the engine was a death metal singer before, it was a Mongolian throat singer now.
The barren landscape was host to more buildings; it was starting to look like San Luca town might be around the next corner. I noticed that the driver was talking on his mobile. Okay, there were a million reasons for a driver to talk on his mobile, but I could only think of one: he was telling everybody that there was a look-same-Silvagni on his way.
What was the expression Luiz Antonio had used that first time at the Block? Carne fresca, that was it. Fresh meat.
Calm the hell down, Dom, I told myself.
We definitely were in a town now.
And again, it looked like it hadn’t changed that much since my grandfather with all the greats had left it.
Cobbled streets, stone houses clinging to the side of the mountain. There was what looked like a checkpoint up ahead. We stopped and two soldiers, guns slung casually over their shoulders, came aboard.
They looked hard and shiny and not to be messed with. They walked up the aisle, checking under the seats. When they came to me they stopped.
‘La fua carta di identità, per favore?’ said one of the soldiers.
The bus driver said something to him in Italian.
‘Your ID, please,’ he said.
I took out my passport, handed it to him.
As he flicked through the pages he said, ‘And why have you come here by yourself?’
I explained to him how I was in Rome for the World Youth Games and that I had the day off, so had decided to have a look at the village my father’s family was from. He nodded as I said this, as if what I was saying was all very reasonable.
‘You’re Silvagni?’ he said, and again the right stresses were on the right syllables.
It was like for the last fifteen years I’d been this other person, this other Silvagni, but now I was Silvagni.
He handed me back my passport and said, ‘Be careful in this town.’
‘I will be,’ I said.
‘You cannot be here at night,’ he said. ‘It is not safe for you.’
Okay, now he was freaking me out.
He said something to the driver in Italian. The driver said something back.
‘He is leaving at 5.45 pm. You make sure you’re on this bus when he does.’
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll be here.’
He and his comrade left the bus, and as we continued on into the town I was feeling very, very vulnerable.
I looked through the window. I could see what looked like a skatepark at the end of an alley. A couple of kids skating.
There weren’t many people around, and those who were seemed to be a variation on the same theme: female, old, dressed in black. Like those cockroaches that scuttled about in the lane behind Taverniti’s. But I’d come all this way now, I had to venture outside.
So that’s what I did.
W
hen we stopped I ventured down the aisle, ventured a ‘See you at five forty-five,’ to the driver and ventured outside. The bus lurched off, and as I watched it disappear around a corner I was sorry I’d done so much venturing. The first thing I noticed was the air – it was crisp, clean, the sort of air you want when you’re running.
Well, that’s a good thing, I thought.
But that good thought was followed immediately by a bad one.
This is a very creepy town.
There was something about it that made the hairs on the back of my neck come to attention.
I could see what looked like the piazza, the town square, up ahead, so I headed for that. Nothing seemed to be open and I wondered if it was some sort of holiday. There were none of the usual old men sitting at tables, drinking coffee and playing backgammon. None of that. Just the cockroaches scuttling. And when I came close to them, they seemed to scuttle even more quickly.
It was getting frustrating and my thoughts were all over the place. I sat down on a low wall next to a fountain and tried to get my mind into some sort of order.
Okay, what was I here for?
I was here to find out about my ancestor.
Where would be the best place to do this?
A library, maybe?
Okay, where was the library?
I didn’t know.
How could I find out?
Ask somebody, one of the cockroaches.
But they probably didn’t speak English.
Then ask them in Italian.
But I didn’t speak Italian.
No, but my iPhone did.
I took out my iPhone and entered the English phrase, Can you tell me where the library is?
Got the Italian translation.
Mi puoi dire dove la biblioteca è?
The next time a cockroach passed me I said, ‘Scusi.’
She looked at me.
‘Mi puoi dire dove la biblioteca è?’ I said, or attempted to say, because she gave me the blankest of blank looks.
So I hit the text-to-speech button.
‘Mi puoi dire dov’è la biblioteca?’ said my iPhone.
This time she understood.
‘Tutti i libri sono lì,’ she answered, waving her hand at the church.
And I understood as well: The books are in there.
‘Grazie,’ I said, and she continued on her way.
Fetch the Treasure Hunter Page 9