Only when she nodded did he reach down to offer a hand. She took it and pulled herself up. Tears continued to course down her cheeks, and, taking a place on the bench, she wiped at them as if they were the cause of her shame. She sat as if she’d been offered just a few inches on a ledge high above the street.
When she lifted her eyes to Antonio, he saw the telltale flood beyond tears that, in combination with her evident sweats and the flush of her skin, made clear she was in the savage grip of withdrawal. He would have to get her to the brain doctor, who came twice a week to treat the heroin addicts by injecting them with cocaine.
The girl grasped his hand as if to keep from falling off that ledge. Antonio sat with her. Soon, in her weariness, she leaned against him, letting her head fall against his large shoulder. When he put his arm around her, she snuggled in. She fell asleep. They remained like that for the better part of an hour, slow-passing moments for him during which, again, he could lie back in the feeling that at last he had found his daughter. The living Christ had nothing to do with it.
He remembered sitting in the public garden in Arles, watching a worker bent over her plants. As it happened, she had been surreptitiously watching him. She wore the green canvas apron of the town’s crew that maintained the lanes and pools, not to mention the camellias, lilacs, and bearded irises that Van Gogh had immortalized. That it was a garden made their coming together seem both foreordained and good. Very good, as God observed of the garden primeval.
Her name was Marie. She showed him how the silvery blue-gray of dwarf junipers emphasized the apricot tones of the peonies. She showed him the satin lime undersides of water lilies. His eyes were opened. That first time—who was leading whom?—they went from the garden to a seamen’s hotel. After all the nudes he had seen in paintings and in marble, he had begun by wanting only to see her in that way. Once she showed herself to him, though, the cosmic creation itself was reduced to her breasts, the well between her thighs, the invitation her legs made—and the purity of his own responsive ardor. To call this lust, he understood at once, there was the sacrilege. Adam was right.
Yet Marie had made him feel torn in two, as if, against Genesis, another man were being ripped out of his ribs. He became a second person, even while the first stood by, a witness. Ecstasy: from the Greek, to stand outside oneself.
And according to her own report, something like that happened to Marie. Sin had nothing to do with it, nor did vows, nor even Christ. Their double life began in a double moment. When she became pregnant, it seemed less wrong to marry, with all the lies that made necessary, than to part. Later, he was accused of having deceived her, but it was not true. She knew from the start that he was a priest, and she agreed to share him with his parish in Marseille, a two-hour drive away in his old Citroën. Back and forth he went, celibate priest here, family man there. The secret was safe from everyone but her. Marie lived it, too.
That acids from this arrangement were all along devouring the very core of her came as a complete surprise to him. Sin. Sacrilege. Remorse. Regret. Self-condemnation. Marie hanged herself from a beam in the shed behind the house in Arles. Their daughter, Sophie, found her corpse. Sophie was fourteen. Antoine had then found it impossible to keep from her the truth of his other life, which, when she learned of it, seemed to Sophie another death. She disappeared. His sin, he saw for certain, was unforgivable.
Did Marguerite d’Erasmo know of his disgrace before she’d had the solicitor dispatch the letter? He could not be sure. Mother Abbess had come to him after Matins that winter morning months before, informing him both that the Cistercian foundation would be removed from Casa dello Spirito Santo to the sister convent attached to Santa Maria della Vittoria, and that his services as chaplain would no longer be required. So the German priest had succeeded in his Vatican manipulations, in acquiring the extraterritorial monastery on Via Sicilia and in punishing Antonio for refusing to help him do so. That Mother had learned of her chaplain’s canonical status as an excardinated priest of restricted faculties seemed clear from the brusqueness of her dismissal. He didn’t blame the woman for resenting the fact that, without her knowledge, her community had been a wayward priest’s place of penance—the Casa his own personal penitentiary. Their years on opposite sides of the one communion rail apparently counted for nothing. Mother informed him that she had been in contact about his status with the Vicarius Urbis, the office of the cardinal vicar, to whom, she announced, he was solemnly obligated to report at once.
Whether it was only her tone of voice, or the accumulation of insult from across the Tiber, or a final verdict on his own unworthiness, he went over an edge, silencing for good his own ferocious argument with himself. He had already resolved to have nothing further to do with the cardinal vicar when the solicitor’s letter arrived.
Marguerite had, in absentia, signed over the leasehold of her father’s house in Parioli to him, on the condition that he put it at the service of Roman women and children. Funds for the provision of services would be supplied. There was no need for those services to be defined, nor any reason for Antonio—what redeeming joy he felt just to know that his princess was alive somewhere!—to do anything but agree. Working with a matron retired from the Bambino Gesù Hospital, Antonio needed only a matter of weeks to outfit the house with obstetrical instruments, birthing beds, cradles, scales and weights, linens, stainless steel vats, and kitchen equipment. Midwives who had been working for devalued lire in ill-equipped clinics were happy to accept his offer of room and board, and payment in cartons of American cigarettes. Any pregnant woman who presented herself was welcome. Word spread among Rome’s prostitutes that the d’Erasmo house was safe. To the once elegant neighborhood came the humblest women in Rome.
By now, seventy-four children had been born there, and from the looks of the girl on the bench next to him, it would soon be seventy-five. If she could hold on, perhaps this wraith’s misery would be transformed—as was his own when, only days ago, Marguerite herself had at last appeared. She had come to the door and pulled the bell as if she were one from the streets. But in her blue uniform, the high color of her face, the poise with which she held herself, and the soft smile with which she greeted him, her ownership of all that she beheld was implicit. The one room in the house that had not been given over to the women and babies, besides his own cell in the attic, was her father’s study, which, according to the lawyer’s instructions, had been kept as it was. No surprise, then, when Marguerite claimed it for herself, pronouncing the divan suitable to sleep on. In the study they sat together that first night, surrounded by books and family photographs.
It was soon apparent that, for reasons of her own, Marguerite could not explain where she had been or what she had been doing. He understood that, rather than lie to him, she would tell him nothing. So it was that their lifetime habit was reversed, and it was she who did the sympathetic listening, he the confessing.
Her only pointed questions, when she finally put them, were about Roberto Lehmann.
Eight
Reds
THE EXPLOSION CAME in the middle of the night, and though General Peter Mates was hard asleep almost three blocks away, it woke him up. Reds, he thought, fucking Reds.
He knew a bomb when he heard one, and his first assumption was—headquarters. His cognac-induced bleariness was instantly replaced by a concentration of senses. He threw the satin sheets aside and, stark naked, went to the half-open floor-to-ceiling window, where filigreed curtains wafted in the warm night air. Behind him, his pretend contessa snatched at the sheets as if they offered cover from whatever was about to fall.
The sky to the south, above the Quirinal Hill, was red, and Mates thought at once, Not headquarters, but the palace of the king. He threw the window wide and leaned out over the railing without a thought for his nudity. He could make out the dark forms of structures and landscape high above. The Quirinal was the tallest of Rome’s hills, the site of the greatest patrician palazzos, including Victor Emmanuel
’s. Before the kings, popes had lived there for three hundred years. Yes, the royal residence, Mates thought, that’s what the Reds would hit.
Then a second, equally violent detonation clapped—a boom to rival the first, followed by a low fading roar. The red in the sky brightened, pure color projected onto the screen of the clouds. Seconds later, Mates felt a blast of air against his face, chest, balls. Only then did he realize that he was unclothed. He backed away from the window. When had he felt this knot in his chest before?
Slovenia. The bomb-bay plunge into the night abyss; the heart of existence caring nothing for him or for anything he valued—not even his own fleeting pleasure inside the faceless woman behind him. Here it was: the coarse fact not just of his coming extinction but of the Eternal City’s, too; all of life coming and going—like that!
Within minutes, Mates was dressed in khaki trousers and an olive-green T-shirt and was out into the night, running toward the Quirinal Palace. With no awareness of having snatched it from his bedside drawer, he was carrying his service pistol. When he reached the boulevard, he saw that, instead of toward the left, the explosion had occurred to the right. Not the Royal Palace. What then? Fuck. He was already breathing hard. Sirens were sounding, and the red glow of the low sky told him that the detonating fire had caught. He could feel its warm wind against his face. Ahead on the broad sidewalk, he saw a group of people silhouetted against the roaring flames of a burning building. What building? And whose bomb?
As he ran, he calculated, grinding through possibilities: the CLN, the Action Party, the PCI, the Green Flames. The power of the two detonations suggested serious military ordnance. The Garibaldi Brigade, resistance veterans. Palmiro Togliatti, Luigi Longo. Reds.
Drawing close, approaching as the first fire truck came screeching onto the scene, Mates realized where he was—the British embassy. Fuck. He stopped.
Flames were licking at the topmost cornices of the four-story structure. Half of the façade had crumbled into a pile, and room interiors were exposed, ornate furniture and frames on walls illuminated by the glowing fire. Just then a groan went up, trumping the low roar of combustion, and before he felt yet another force-blast on his face, he sensed the coming down-pressure. Sure enough, pop . . . pop . . . pop, the exposed second floor gave way and collapsed. Heat rolled out in a billowing puff of dust, debris, eye-stinging cinders. The British embassy. The gears of his mind were jammed. It made no sense.
“Jews,” the Englishman said. It was moments later. Mates had joined about a dozen bystanders, two of whom were Brits, quickly on the scene from their nearby quarters. A second fire truck had arrived, and the firemen were uncoiling hoses, deploying ladders. Three or four police vehicles had stormed onto the scene. Somehow the police had already erected sawhorse street barriers. The night was alive with the chaos: whistles, further sirens, the ferocious barking of an unseen dog.
“What did you say?” Mates asked.
“Bloody Jews,” the man repeated. “Has to be.”
“The Yids have an air force?” the other Englishman said, looking skyward as if he expected to see an Avro Lancaster with a white Star of David painted on the fuselage.
“You stupid arsehole,” his companion sneered. “That blast took out the wall, not the roof. It came from the street.”
From what Mates could see of the worst damage—the first floor cratered at the entrance—the man was right, though the fire had clearly picked up fuel inside the building and would reach the roof soon enough. Haganah, he thought, his inbred calculator clicking on again. Irgun. Palmach. Stern Gang. High-powered ordnance pilfered by the king’s own Jewish Brigade Group. But the underground Zionist war was being fought in Palestine, not here. British Mandate police stations were being bombed, tax offices, rail yards. Palestine, he thought again, not Rome. Mandate officials targeted, Cairo perhaps. An attack here made no sense.
Mates realized that one of the British bystanders was staring at his pistol, and only then did he see what they saw—a lout in his undershirt, nothing but dog tags on his chest. He pulled the shirt out from his belt, into which he then tucked the gun, and covered it with the shirt. “Who’s in charge?” he asked.
The Brit nearest him pointed to a black Rolls just then weaving through the sawhorses and being waved by Italian police into the chaotic circle. “That would be His Excellency.”
“The ambassador?” Mates asked. “But why isn’t he inside?”
“He doesn’t live there yet. Engineers are still posting girders in the residence wing. Construction. No one lives in the embassy yet, thank fuck. Not tonight.”
The second Englishman grimaced. “Cipher clerks?”
“Christ,” the other said.
Mates had met the ambassador at a glittering party in the Palazzo Venezia, and he approached him now as if he, Mates, were in uniform. Hand extended, he said, “Hello, Sir Noel. It’s General Mates. My quarters are nearby. I heard the bombs.”
The ambassador, dressed in shirtsleeves and open collar, was clearly startled by Mates, but his dazed expression suggested that he was startled by this entire disastrous affair. Before he could respond, his attention was snagged by a fire official, a hulking figure in black canvas overalls and helmet, who strode up, hammering away with a barrage of questions. Seeing the Brit’s confusion, Mates began to translate. “He needs to know where to look for people. What floor? How many are inside? Where are they?”
At first the ambassador seemed to understand Mates no more than the Italian, but then his face went bright with recognition and relief. “No one,” he declared. “No one is in there at this hour. The building is unoccupied at night.”
Mates translated. The fireman turned to head off, but Mates grabbed one of his belts. “Aspetti!”
And to Sir Noel he said, “What about cipher clerks?”
“No. No. Our code rooms moved. Division HQ, not here. Not yet.”
Mates released the fireman, who rushed away, happy to have no further need of these fools. The ambassador turned to his aide, a bright young major who had somehow managed the complete uniform—peaked hat, braided shoulder aiguillettes, swagger stick. Like a steam trap blowing, Sir Noel exploded at this underling: “Goddammit! I told London this was no place for the Cyprus operation! Goddammit, I told them. Cyprus should be managed from Athens, Istanbul, not here.”
The major muttered his “indeed so”s as the ambassador slumped, facing the inferno, watching the destruction of his dear-bought personal dominion. The Brits had no further use for the Yank in his undershirt.
Just then, across the street, Mates saw the familiar form of an open American jeep. Up, and with an arm draped over the windshield, the driver was Rossini. Mates went to him. Rossini wore a properly solemn expression, but he cut it with a self-satisfied toss of his head. “I thought you might need me, General.”
Mates hopped in. “Back to the Barberini,” he said. “I’ll get dressed. Then take me to Warburg. You know where he’s billeted?”
“Yes, Sir.”
At Warburg’s apartment, near the Piazza del Popolo, neither sound nor fury had carried over from the distant Quirinal Hill. The plaza was deserted, the night was still. It was not yet four a.m. From the curb, Rossini pointed to a window, saying, “Second floor, left.” Mates, now in a pressed khaki shirt with a star on each collar, took the stairs two at a time. Banging on the door, he wondered if he’d find Warburg in bed with a woman—a little night baseball, why not? Maybe that was the real reason he’d bailed out of the Barberini, which, in the end, had been fine with Mates. When he had just returned to that suite, reeking of smoke from the embassy fire, Veronica was gone, thank God. Night baseball? Sex with Veronica was like striking out the pitcher.
Warburg came to the door in his underwear. “Peter. What the hell?”
“Sorry, Warburg. But something’s happened. You’ll want to let me in.”
While Warburg dressed in the other room, Mates paced a small oval in the main digs. The place was minimally furnis
hed. File cartons were stacked in four distinct columns. Scrawl-ridden graph paper was tacked to one wall, and taped to another was a map of Europe, stuck all over with colored pins. Papers littered both a field desk and a dinner table. The space had more the feel of a sales office than a living room. Not a place to entertain. So, no woman. Not a chance. Should have known.
Warburg reappeared in his gray flannels and a second-day white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. He removed papers from a chair for Mates, then crossed toward the kitchenette. “I’ll put the coffeepot on.”
A few minutes later they were seated opposite each other, a cleared corner of the table between them. On the corner were their cups and an ashtray. As soon as Warburg had waved out the match they’d both lit from, Mates said, “Your friends bombed the British embassy tonight.”
Warburg was too surprised to react.
Mates continued, “A major detonation. Two blasts. Brought the front exterior wall down, four stories’ worth. Ignited a fire that’s roaring away right now. I’ve just come from there. The whole building will fall.”
“My friends?”
“Jews. Zionists. Palestine.”
“Here? In Rome? Impossible.”
“Shall we step outside? You can see the glow from the street. Shows all over the city.”
“How do you know—Jews? Zionists? What about—?”
“Anarchists? Revolutionaries? Reds? Syndicalists?” Mates forced a smile. “We’d still be talking Jews, right?”
Warburg did not respond, not a muscle.
Mates said, “The embassy was the organizing center for Cyprus internment camps.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it? I just heard the Brit ambassador ranting about Athens or Istanbul being places to run Cyprus from, but Italy is where Jewish refugees still muster, no? Like a glacier from the Alps sliding south, plunking down in Rome if they can, awaiting their chance for the great aliyah. Isn’t that what you call it? And isn’t that your work now? Sneaking Jews onto tin cans bound for Jaffa?”
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