The Chapel

by Michael Downing

  I said, “Toby with a T.—a doctor?”

  Toby with a T. yes, of course, and silver hair and, let’s admit it, a silver tongue—plus, a sterling reputation, to say the very least. Toby had been a longtime colleague of Simon’s at the University of Texas Medical Center in Houston before Simon had moved to Boston. Simon had consulted Toby on Mitchell’s initial diagnosis, and it was only after the terrible tragedy with Toby’s daughter—Simon remembered her as a black-haired beauty, even as a little girl, and happy, he would say if he were called to testify in court, truly happy as a child—well, it was after that when Toby announced he would be taking some time off in Italy, and Simon eventually put two and two together and realized Toby would be traveling with the same group Mitchell had picked out, and that’s when Mitchell had Simon put him in contact with Toby, who, gracious as ever, had kept in touch with Mitchell until, well, right through the winter and till the end, and what occasioned this call was, well, Toby seemed not to be returning calls, which was entirely reasonable under the circumstances, but Simon had received a rather urgent request from an old mutual friend.

  I scrolled down through my recent calls and recited T.’s cell-phone number, and for no good reason, I tugged the curtains closed, as if someone who wandered down my way would be able to see me as I was now seeing myself. I knelt down and pressed my forehead against the cool plaster wall next to the curtain pulls.

  Yes, Simon did have that mobile-phone number, and he had left a few messages, but he was hoping I might be willing to pass on a more personal message to Toby, as their mutual friend was involved in something of a legal nature best not inscribed or recorded on the public record, so perhaps I could get a pen and paper and copy down the name of the mutual friend?

  “I won’t see him—not for days, at least, maybe weeks. Maybe never, really,” I said. That much was true. It was also true that I had been the object of pity, and not just because my dress was a mess. For T., and surely for Ed and Matteo, too, I had been a charity case. “I’m afraid the doctor and I have opted for different forks in the road,” I said. What a relief it must have been for T. to get my text and think of me at the Gardner, back on the other side of the world, freeing him at last from his obligation. “I wish I could tell you where he’s headed, Simon, but I am not certain he hasn’t opted out of the tour entirely, set off on his own.”

  Simon was not surprised. He didn’t want to be indiscreet and wouldn’t say more.

  “The doctor has been remarkably solicitous,” I said, “just like a real friend.” I pressed my forehead hard against the wall until I could feel the imprint of the rough plaster surface on my skin. “This legal business with your mutual acquaintance—did someone die?” I regretted the slightly hopeful note in my voice.

  No, no, no—complicated, counterclaims, confidentiality. No concern of mine from this moment forward, Simon assured me. Ciao!

  Ciao, indeed.

  Ciao, Simon. Ciao, Florence. Ciao, Toby.

  THE ONLY HALFWAY REASONABLE THOUGHT I COULD MUSTER for half an hour was the impossibility of explaining to Rachel why I had ditched not only the tour but my entire wardrobe in Padua. I had no luck at the front desk when I tried to get an estimated date for the return of my four dresses, so I headed for the chapel. I had nowhere else to be.

  A sharp, dry breeze was blowing down Largo Europa when I stepped out of the hotel, and Rachel’s red bag nearly got away from me. That wind flew right up under the cuffs of my jeans, inflating my thighs and almost lifting me out of my shoes, as if I were filling up with helium. A man’s gray felt hat blew by on the sidewalk, but no man followed. My limo had also been blown away, saving me the bother of trying to translate my change of plan into Italian for the driver.

  As I turned to venture forth, the young valet who’d stopped me earlier that morning, when I was on my way out to meet T., swung open the lobby door and asked if I needed a cab.

  I told him I had been looking for a limousine.

  He asked me if I was checking out.

  I told him I was staying until tomorrow.

  He asked if I was checking in.

  I would have sworn we were both speaking English. I reminded him that I was staying at the hotel with the EurWay tour.

  He assured me that all of the EurWay guests had checked out, and they were taking the train to Florence this morning.

  This probably explained why my limo driver had disappeared, but not why all memory of me had blown down the street with that stray hat. I assured the young man that he must remember me, Signora Berman, and my friend Shelby, who had been waiting for me at the buffet breakfast this morning.

  He nodded enthusiastically and said, Shelby! Si, si, si, Signora Shelby sadly was gone with the rest of the EurWay guests, and was I checking in? He pointed to the reception desk.

  I walked away, and ten minutes later I found my access to the chapel blocked by a motley assortment of day-trippers. Dozens of tourists were milling around the paved path outside the visitor center, jockeying for seats on the oversubscribed green benches, consulting their guidebooks and phones, and evidently wishing they had made advance reservations—or, at least, wishing they had attempted to book a time slot so they would have known in advance that the chapel was again closed to the public for the afternoon. This information was posted, in very small type, in several languages, on several pages taped to the inside of the glass double doors, so I found myself waiting in line to confirm what was painfully evident every time someone turned away from those doors and uttered her disappointment or his rage or something about Mussolini making the trains run on time.

  When I made it to the front of the line and bent to read the fine print, the news did not get better, but the view did. Inside the empty visitor center, marooned in the middle of the white space and seated at a table with a stack of folders and a big sign that read CPOCH, was Sara, looking as beautiful and bored as ever. This made sense. The English on the signage was clearly her work—the diction and syntax impeccably imperfect, and absurdly lucid. I tried to get her attention by wagging my gold-sealed letter of approval from the Commune di Padova, but she didn’t respond. Despite the complaints muttered behind me by tourists eager to confirm their bad luck, I held my ground long enough to pull out my phone and take a photograph of a particularly delightful patch of Sara’s prose.

  Chapel access not possible to you Wednesday post noon. On the days of this week Thursday including Sunday, you may like to see many Inspectors and experticians and world famous scholastics of the widest possible stature present on the grounds and interiors of the Cappella Scrovegni. These are saving this masterpiece of all-time for generations that come. Promising by Saturday, the chapel can be accessible to the public in areas between the antechamber and the altar (seen as the middle portion of the nave). A global view of the famous fresco cycle shall be enjoyed by all visitors on these days.

  As my camera clicked, I realized there was no one left to share the joke, but the flash of my camera had brought Sara to her feet and quickly to the door. She was saying something—quite a lot of it—in Italian, and I waved my letter and assured her I was not planning to photograph any of the frescoes, and she opened the door, locked it behind me, and hustled me over to her little table.

  I said, “I don’t want to put you out or get you into trouble.”

  She said, “Si, si, si, professore, you are no trouble.”

  She was wearing a little white cotton blouse—a teddy, really, with some simple eyelets at the neckline, which traced a teasingly chaste line just above her breasts. Her long hair was tumbling around one of her shoulders. I said, “You look especially beautiful today.”

  She pretended to examine my letter, and that’s when I noticed two uniformed guards milling around the gift shop. She said, “Inglese?”

  I said, “Yes. Am I the only one here?”

  “No, no,” Sara said, sliding her finger down a long list of names. “Many have come before and for sure some come even after you.” She didn’
t sound thrilled by my timing.

  “I really don’t have to go into the chapel today if it’s a bother,” I said. “Really, it’s okay.”

  “The chapel is closed, of course.” Sara handed me a heavy white folder labeled Centre for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (CPOCH). She said, “This folder I am handing you now has for you a name tag and agenda in the chosen language for your benefit.”

  The guards were slowly drawing nearer, but Sara didn’t seem to notice. I’m sure she thought men drifting toward her was the law of gravity. I said, “Sara—” I stopped because she did not look up. “Sara? This folder must belong to someone.”

  “Si, si, si,” she said. She looked a little confused, and more than a little annoyed.

  I blamed my outfit. From her seat, Sara was forced to stare at the expandable waist of my stretchy jeans, which, with a navy cardigan and a trench coat, constituted my only outdoor option while my dresses were laundered. I said, “My name is Elizabeth.” I heard the crepe soles of my comfortable walking shoes squeak against the marble floor. “Berman.”

  Sara said, “Prego, Professore Berman.” She had no idea who I was. She did give my footwear a disapproving glance.

  I said, “From the Hotel Arena?”

  Sara’s nostrils flared and her eyes widened. “In the folder I am handing over to you, professore, is the map needed for the short walk to any hotel you have selected and the ceremonial dinner as sponsored by the Centre this night.” She stopped to answer a phone call and then quickly ordered one of the guards to go to the front door and let in a group of three middle-aged men standing at the entrance, who then lined up directly behind me. Sara said, “We are done with you, I think?” and dismissed me with a wave.

  I shoved my way through the scrum of disappointed tourists at the front door. It didn’t please me that I hadn’t made a lasting impression on Sara, but, frankly, neither had much of what she’d been taught about English grammar. In truth, with the notable exception of T., Sara had treated all of the EurWay tourists with the kind of diffidence often feigned by service workers who consider themselves superior to the people who are paying their wages. Maybe I would have been worth remembering if I had tipped her? But as I walked the now familiar route back to the Hotel Arena, it occurred to me that maybe Sara had remembered me but refused to admit it. Maybe she had meant to snub me. Surely, she had noticed how much time I spent with T. Even when they were enjoying a clandestine dinner, I probably featured prominently in his stories about his day’s adventures in Padua. How annoying for her. How confounding.

  By the time I walked up the marble steps into the hotel lobby, the initial sting of being snubbed by Sara had softened into something else, something like compassion. Or pity. The long-haired Irish kid was at the desk, and in my new spirit of generosity, I stopped and asked if he could change a ten-euro note for me. I realized I hadn’t tipped him, either.

  He said, “Coins or two fives?”

  “Five coins and a five,” I said. When he handed me the change, I slid two coins back toward him. “I forgot to tip you.”

  He said, “No charge for making change, ma’am.”

  “No, earlier—in my room, this morning—I didn’t have a tip prepared,” I said.

  “This is for housekeeping, then?” He placed his index and middle finger on the two coins. This made the tip seem mingy.

  “No,” I said, though I realized I had not tipped the maid for cleaning 414 before I moved out. “That’s for the laundry.”

  “We haven’t any coin-op machines,” he said, “but I can arrange to have laundry collected from your room.” Either he had no memory of me or he was blinded by his hair, which was hanging well below both eyes. He seemed content to keep his gaze hidden. “You are staying with us?” He pointed to the white folder I was holding under one arm. “For the conference?”

  If I denied this, I knew it was likely that I would end up being checked in for the third time and moved to yet another room, so I nodded, accepted the two coins he slid my way, and rode the elevator back to my new, spacious quarters with the balcony designed to accommodate burglars and Peeping Toms. I put the chair out to signal my desire not to be disturbed, and after an unpleasant encounter with myself in the floor-length mirror, I traded my stretchy jeans for the white robe. I turned on my phone, and while I waited for it to come back to life, I debated whether I should text Ed a summary of my sad story or just call him with a surprise invitation to dinner. Like so many of my choices lately, this one was made for me. Ed had never called or emailed me, so I had no way of contacting him, short of banging on the door of the basilica.

  THE DEAD—I MEAN, THE REALLY DEAD ONES—CAN’T TELL you anything you don’t know. It took me several hours, a lot of furious pacing, more than a few bouts of tearful self-recrimination, plus two extraordinarily pricey little bottles of white wine to understand this. But the message I had received from Mitchell from beyond the grave, courtesy of Dr. Simon Allerby, was not news. Mitchell almost never knew what I wanted, what would please me, because I almost never wanted exactly what he wanted, which registered with him as indecisiveness, or diffidence, or vindictiveness, or clinical depression. As a result, most of his gifts, and almost all of the plans he made on our behalf, were basically prescriptions.

  Typically, my discovery of Mitchell’s elaborate scheme to orchestrate my Grand Tour would have occasioned several days of depression and reflection, a lot of reverse engineering, and then damage control. This time was different. Although I was humiliated, I was also very hungry, and one of the unadvertised benefits of the afterlife seemed to be a kind of reverse polarity that made me more attentive to me and less interested in the impression I made on others. Plus, while reviewing my dining options, I realized that as long as I avoided Matteo’s pizzeria, there was little chance of my encountering anyone I knew, which took the sting out of the public aspect of my shame. And, frankly, after I’d shimmied back into the stretchy jeans and hazarded a glance in the mirror on the back of the closet door, it was hard to maintain a sense of indignation about anyone else injuring my pride. The damage was done.

  My phone dinged, and I couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t feel alarmed or betrayed if I admitted I was still in Padua, so I dug into my suitcase for a dining companion and pulled out the paperback of The Name of the Rose, which I had yet to even pretend to read. Mitchell had put that book in my Christmas stocking—“Background reading for the layperson in anticipation of the Italian Journey.” He had nestled it in with a collection of mind-numbing herbal teas and a tiny halogen Don’t Wake Your Neighbor bedtime reading light. When my phone dinged yet again, I ditched Umberto Eco, grabbed the CPOCH folder, and headed for the hotel dining room.

  The restaurant was almost empty, but there were only a few spots for me to choose from, as most of the tables had been reserved, strung together in front of the windows and set with gold chargers, red napkins, and green bottles of prosecco tilting in silver ice buckets. As a waiter approached, I shuffled through the folder to be sure I wasn’t accidentally inviting myself to the CPOCH dinner Sara had mentioned. I was relieved to discover the conference dinner was scheduled for eight in a restaurant near the basilica, so I was safe on that score, but I did turn up a blue-and-white ID badge with Mitchell’s name printed in bold italic script, and after I was seated next to the only other solo diner, I also found a copy of a registration form completed by Mitchell in November with details of his Harvard affiliation, his status as a “Scholar/Sustaining Member” of the Centre, and the time and location of lectures and panel presentations he had elected to attend.

  Mitchell had never mentioned CPOCH or the conference. Had he hoped I would travel ahead to Florence while he indulged the fiction of himself as a Dante scholar? I looked through the other stapled papers, but I didn’t find any more evidence of his intentions. What surfaced instead was the memory of watching T. lean in toward Ed as I approached from the café down the street on the afternoon of Ed’s disastrous lecture. They h
adn’t wanted me to know what they’d been discussing, and I guessed now that Ed had tried to persuade T. to tell me the truth about Mitchell’s role in our meeting. When I thought about our conversations on Tuesday, before and after our lunch with T., I was sure that Ed had wanted to confess but couldn’t bring himself to betray T.’s confidence. That was hardly a sin. It simply meant he was a better friend than T. deserved or a better priest than I understood. These memories gave way to Matteo and our chance meeting in the alley. It was easy to imagine Matteo’s version of that event, his thinking he had stumbled into an opportunity to do exactly what T. had asked him to do—be kind to the old girl. I couldn’t fault Matteo for seizing his chance to bestow on me his biggest favor.

  It was T. who mystified me. Not his secrecy—he hadn’t told me his name, so I wasn’t surprised that he’d kept quiet about his private arrangement with Mitchell. But I just could not imagine what Mitchell and T. had found to say to each other for four months.

  A man said, “Skipping the dinner?”

  I fumbled for the menu and said, “I’d like pasta. Is there a special?” When I looked up, I caught the glance of a waiter far across the room, and he smiled and came swiftly to my side, blocking my view of the diner at the next table, who must have asked the question that startled me.

  The invisible man said, “The tagliatelle is supposed to be great.”

  The waiter nodded his agreement.

  I nodded.

  The waiter said, “Tagliatelle al ragù.” He was eyeing two younger waiters fussing with the flatware on the banquet table, obviously envying them their assignment. “Vino?”

  That I understood. “No. Water is fine.”