“With your mother?”
“I haven’t heard from her for about three months. I’ve called her from time to time, when I could get through, but … well, we never had too much to say to each other.”
She spoke on the telephone only rarely. “I’ll write to you,” she said. — “What are you going to write to me? In Rome there hasn’t been regular postal delivery for a long time.” — “What nonsense. Letters are still delivered everywhere.” — “Mother, believe me, not here.” — “I’ll write to you,” she said, and hung up.
Sometimes I thought she was no longer in her right mind. Perhaps it was all a bit too much for her. She could no longer keep up.
“Do you love her?”
“She always made it really hard for me. When you ask me so directly—I like her, but love … hm, actually no.”
He made a note on his computer.
“You have siblings?”
“No.”
“Any other relatives? Uncles, aunts?”
“No.”
“Your paternal grandparents?”
“Dead.”
“Friends with whom you are particularly close?”
“Friends, yes. Fellow students. But no committed relationships.”
I didn’t mention Bernd. At that point we had slept together just three or four times. I had no idea how our relationship would develop.
Falcotti nodded. “You seem to be someone who manages well alone. That’s important.”
“Why?”
“Our project involves missions that must sometimes be performed by individuals operating completely on their own. Possibly without outside help.”
“Fieldwork?”
“Yes, something like that.”
That was unusual.
“But fieldwork is usually conducted by teams,” I asserted.
Falcotti placed his fingertips together. “Unfortunately, that will not be possible in this case.”
“Will this work be abroad? I mean, outside Italy?”
“Yes. Mainly. But I ask you to understand, Signorina Ligrina, that I cannot disclose any details to you before it has been decided whether you will be among the final candidates.”
“Sounds mysterious, Signore Falcotti.”
He shrugged meaningfully.
“Will this potentially be a permanent job?”
“It will potentially be a permanent job.”
Should I get my hopes up? It would be premature—the disappointment would then be all the more intense.
“That will be all for today, Signorina Ligrina. Thank you for answering my questions so openly. I appreciate your cooperation, especially as I am prohibited from giving you further information about the nature of our project. Should the preselection committee choose you, we will arrange a personal interview. In the meantime we would like to ask you to submit to a thorough medical examination at the polyclinic on Piazza Sassari. Ask for Professor Pietro Dalmatini and make an appointment. The examination is, of course, free of charge. The expenses will be paid by the institute.”
* * *
I WAS NOT granted the privilege of meeting Professor Dalmatini personally. I had to content myself with a young assistant doctor named Dolfredi, who had a thin, overhanging mustache and had eyes only for his equipment. An old nurse, who lavished her motherliness on me, patted me incessantly. I had to lie down naked in a body-shaped tub lined with white plastic. The doctor then gave me an injection in the back of my hand. The last thing I knew I was sliding through a gleaming chrome portal into the maw of a machine; then I was suddenly knocked out. When I came to after two hours of unconsciousness, I was lying safely and cozily in a recovery room on a rolling bed. My clothes were next to me on a chair. Someone had taken care to cover me with a quilted blanket. Doctor Dolfredi? I flung the blanket off me and got dressed.
He actually knocked before he came in.
“Yes?” I asked gruffly.
Doctor Dolfredi looked at me with surprise, then gazed questioningly at the computer screen on his wrist.
“Oh, this will take a few hours,” he said, holding up a chip. “They want to know a lot about you.”
“Who?”
He examined thoroughly the label on the plastic-wrapped chip. “Istituto Pontificale della Rinascita della Creazione di Dio, San Francesco,” he read aloud. “The Pope himself!”
His mustache rose as he smiled, revealing a thick mouth with soft, pink, saliva-moistened lips, which I could never stand on men. He bared his buckteeth, between which the mashed remains of a tramezzino were stuck.
“If he even knows about this Istituto,” he added.
I glowered at him. His revolting smile disappeared.
* * *
AFTER THAT I heard nothing for several months. It was impossible to avoid the impression that the whole Rinascita Project had been abandoned.
To my knowledge, the initiative for it had originally come from John XXIV, who had displayed a strong commitment to environmental issues. His successor Paul VII certainly did not have much interest in the Creazione di Dio when he wore the tiara that he had bought back from an impoverished sheik in exile with donation funds. Instead, he set to work developing Castel Gandolfo into an impregnable fortress, had deep underground galleries driven into the mountain walls surrounding the lake, in which he planned to store the treasures of the Vatican Museums in order to protect them from the dangers of the new mass migration and preserve them for posterity. His building zeal was too great for his weak heart.
Finally, Paul VIII did not attach particularly great importance to the Creatio or the art treasures; he was much more concerned with his personal security. Soon after assuming office, he moved his residence to Mantua, only to relocate shortly thereafter to Salzburg. As a Hungarian, he probably felt more at home there. In Austria jubilation burst out; South Tyrol, Friuli, and Slovenia had been annexed to the state territory, and now the Holy Father was residing in Salzburg. For the Romans, however, the Pope was from that point on as dead as his predecessors, and some Italian cardinals demanded his deposition. The little people called him Papa Coniglio, Papa Coward.
Perhaps he had decided to abandon the Rinascita Project. And Falcotti was entrusted with other tasks.
I spoke to fellow students who had applied too. No one had heard anything more about it, and all inquiries regarding a Vatican institute of that name came to nothing. Nothing could be found on the Net either. It seemed no longer to exist, had disappeared without a trace—and with it Bertolino Falcotti.
“A papal miracle,” Birgit commented mockingly.
I no longer had high hopes, but somehow I could not entirely believe that Signore Falcotti had taken leave of us in this impolite way. Had something happened to him? Was he traveling?
III
Ghost Towns
For nothing is found in time except the now.
NICOLAUS CUSANUS
How many of the residents of Rome had remained? A hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand, as the Capitol claimed? Or was it only fifty thousand? The fact was that the water and power supply had broken down in the southern districts. The green tank trucks of the AMNU drove with armed escort to Borgata, Ostiense, and Garbatella, and the fire department roared down Cristoforo Colombo but usually turned around without having achieved anything, because it was shot at. Over Cecchignola and Torrenova there were often black columns of smoke, and the smell of burning car tires frequently reached the city center.
Life went on, at least in the center, but the quartieri at the periphery had become more villagelike. People moved closer together, clustered around public fountains, small markets, parishes, formed supply and security associations. In between were ghost towns.
And no one knew exactly how many people still lived behind the high walls and wrought-iron gates of the countless tiny monasteries, where they safeguarded their relics, documents, and folios.
The unthinkable had very gradually become thinkable: The Caput Mundi, the center of the world, might one d
ay have to be given up. An outrageous idea for many. And this time the armed hordes were coming from the south. They said it was the Moros, the blacks, the Africans, but it was people from the Mezzogiorno, whose vineyards had been scorched and whose livestock had perished of thirst in the blazing heat as the breath of the desert wafted toward their fields.
* * *
WHEN THE HOT wind blew up Via di San Grigorio and the Colosseo stood out like a somber fortress against the cinnamon-colored sky, in which the sun no longer had a definite place, breathing in the lecture halls and laboratories became a torment. Around eight in the morning, the thermometer was already at one hundred degrees. We took our Wallet PCs and Notepads and tramped through the sand between the dried-out palms in front of the Facoltà di Ingegneria on Via Eudossiana. The “Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale”—what lofty plans we once had! We stopped in the shade of the wall behind the dust-covered car wrecks, on the roofs of which feral cats slept, and sought refuge on the cool marble slabs of San Pietro in Vincoli. While outside the hot breath of the future could be felt, heralding the arrival of Africa, inside wafted the cool air of the past.
There, Nico, I encountered you for the first time, where under the pale grave slab, bordered with a band of black and pink marble, your bones lie:
NICOLAVS D’CVSA CARD.
A coat of arms on the wall, which shows a fat red crayfish served on a spade-shaped tray sitting on a netlike placemat made of red strings and tassels, Cryfftz, Krebs, crayfish, an Astacus astacus, which has long since disappeared from the rivers of Central Europe—and with absolute certainty from the Moselle. Above it, on the broad, colored bas-relief by Andrea Bregno, you kneel, on the left, with folded hands, at the feet of St. Peter—the broad-brimmed traveling hat, as big as a wagon wheel, leaning against your body. Opposite you an angel with golden wings and glad tidings. This was my favorite spot: The grave of Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus—as he was named after his birthplace of Kues.
* * *
AFTER MOVING OUT of the Città Universitaria on Piazzale San Lorenzo, our institute was at first situated in the small box of a house at the foot of the tower of the Borgia dynasty on the northwest corner of Piazza di San Pietro in Vincoli, where the members of the Facoltà di Impianti Nucleari previously had their laboratories. Here Ettore Majorana had done his research, the brilliant nuclear physicist who disappeared mysteriously and whose fate was never cleared up.
We had moved into the monastery on the west side of the piazza, which had offered Lebanese Christians refuge during the Muslim fundamentalist persecutions in Beirut. They had returned home after the Peace of Rabat, and the Technical University had acquired the building. With the large dormitories, the spacious corridors and staircases, it seemed more like a hospital from the century before last. From the high ceilings decorated with stucco hung Oriental lamps made of openwork brass, which served the purpose of illumination less than they did that of archiving decades of dead insects.
In the basement corridors stood dozens of high beds made of brass tubing, which—according to the ingenious system of a custodian—had been stacked crosswise up to the ceiling in order to save space. Countless mattresses quietly moldered away. Two or three of the beds were always ready for use, because ever since the Parco di Traiano, once a popular “getaway” for students, had turned into a wasteland in which not a blade of grass grew, they went off to the basement when they wanted to be undisturbed. Or they crept into the church of San Pietro, where those who had been raised strictly Catholic got an extra kick by doing it at the feet of the horned Moses, who, the tablets of the law clamped under his arm and indignant at so much sinfulness, looked away with darkened brow.
I lay on my back on the cool marble slab. Bernd sat next to me and typed on his Palmtop, while I lost myself in my thoughts. This Nico—had he been like Bernd when he was young? I imagined him tall and lean; narrow face, straight, aristocratic nose. But he had actually been the son of a river boatman, a successful merchant named Krebs—spelled Cryfftz in his native dialect—which means crayfish. He had retained the name, had borne the crayfish on his coat of arms. He had always been proud of his simple origins. Ultimately, he was named curial cardinal and vicar general of Rome by Pope Pius II; thus he held the second-highest ecclesiastical office as the Pope’s representative.
What moved such men to join the clergy, to place themselves in the service of the Church and the Holy See? To renounce having a wife and children? Certainly, in his day, it had been the only way for a gifted young man to study, attain education, and rise in the hierarchy of society. Or had it been his religiosity, the decision to do something for God’s Creation, for the Church, which, responsible for His kingdom on Earth, at that time was in a desolate state, in danger of failing to fulfill God’s mission? I decided to delve deeper into the life and work of that impressive man.
If I were to encounter him here and now …
I closed my eyes and ran my hand along Bernd’s lean, tanned thigh, on which silky blond hair sprouted.
“Hey!” said Bernd, moving away from me as I slid my fingers into his shorts.
“Take me,” I said.
He looked at me with a mixture of horror and disgust.
“Are you crazy?”
“We wouldn’t be the only ones…” I replied, gesturing with a nod to Rita, who was sitting on Eduardo’s lap with her eyes closed and gyrating her thin hips.
Bernd stared into the semidarkness of the nave and took a while to grasp what was happening in the opposite aisle under the side altar with the painting of St. Augustine by Guercino. He jumped up.
“All of you must be nuts! Here in the church!” he snarled, gathering up his things and running to the entrance.
“They’re going to elect you pope!” I shouted after him, frustrated and disappointed—and angry with myself.
Rita turned her head toward me, without pausing for even a moment in her sensual rhythm. I sank back on the cool, smooth stone and breathed deeply. Soon the Astacus astacus would drive its claws into my sinful flesh as a punishment.
I looked to the left—and saw that the winged Grim Reaper on the wall, adorning the tomb of Cinzio Aldobrandini, was staring at me with blazing eyes, the bony fingers of his right hand wrapped in a strangling grasp around an hourglass. I jumped with fright. It must have been the lighting in the church that made the eye sockets blaze bright white. He looked terrifying.
Rita and Eduardo strode toward the exit, Rita smiling abstractedly, Eduardo rubbing morosely with the ball of his thumb at a semen stain on his jeans.
* * *
SUMMER SOLSTICE. AS they did every year, the Hobbits organized big parades. Tents, campfires, songs. Hobbits appeared only in “packs.” Never alone. Alone they were cowardly. United they were cruel and dangerous. They “cleansed” the city, hunted for “Moros.” And the Praetorians supported them in this. The police remained invisible. EuroForce stayed out of it.
For several nights already, the dull drumming and singing of the “pack” on the Gianicolo could be heard. The fires blazed, silent vigils were held. For the remains of the West? Hobbits in droves with pointy gray felt hats, earth-colored loden jackets or cloaks, with knives in the wide leather belts on their lederhosen: hunting knives, army knives, and double-edged daggers, to crusade against the Moros, to hunt, mutilate, and kill them.
During the day, the race of dwarves was nowhere to be seen. Did they crouch in their musty caves, in the root system of crude Nordic mythology, in their cartoon world with electronic icons of the forever bygone and forever resurgent? Their underground realm was the vast labyrinth of the Vatican bus station inside the Gianicolo, a dark, deserted network of concrete caverns in which abandoned bus wrecks from the states of Eastern Europe rusted away. In them they had discovered ancient, blood-soaked, half-decayed flags, relics of long-forgotten battles, which pilgrims from Poland and the Baltic states had brought with them to have them blessed by the Pope but which had remained unblessed after the death of John Paul II. Wi
th them they covered their “fallen heroes,” and on them they swore loyalty and obedience to their leaders.
On the night of June 22, the hunt was on. When darkness fell, the shooting began, and it lasted through the whole night. Constant shouting and the frenetic barking of dogs could be heard, and a wild drumming that was recorded by synthesizers and amplified so intensely that the windows rattled and you could almost feel it in your skin.
Between the backyard of the house in which I lived and the summit of the hill there had once been a botanical garden, which had belonged to our institute, but at some point all the trees had been cut down. They had been sick from exhaust gases, it was claimed, but Stavros had shaken his head and said that the motive had been to have an open field of fire from the police station, so that no one could sneak up within throwing range. In any case, the trees were gone—and, in the meantime, so was the police station.
Bernd had stayed at my place. We had made love in the darkness. No one turned on the light at night, for fear of drawing fire—even if only from hobby snipers in the neighborhood. Sometimes flashes of light blazed over the roofs and lit up the facades of the houses, and glaring reflections crisscrossed the ceiling with stroboscopic patterns.
At midnight we opened a bottle of sparkling wine. It was somewhat warm, because the power had been out all day. The alcohol, the flashes of light, and the incessant drumming turned us on. Only toward morning did I fall asleep in exhaustion.
The howling of ambulances woke me. It seemed never-ending—half a dozen. They must have been parked nearby. The rhythmic blinking of their red lights swept across the ceiling. The drumming had gone silent. The shooting had ceased. Bernd was asleep. I stood up and opened the curtain a crack. It was a vision of horror. I had never seen anything like it. The victims of the night’s combat were being brought down from the hill. It must have been a real battle, a war.
On Via Garibaldi seven white and red ambulances from the Policlinico of the Città Universitaria over on Via Tiburtina were parked in a row. Doctors and helpers bustled about. In the courtyard of the convent, medical teams attended to the injured. The nuns—only eight or nine still lived on the vast premises—had opened the wrought-iron gate. The small front courtyard, which usually served as a parking lot for guests and visitors, had turned into a makeshift field hospital. A priest strode from one stretcher to the next, before they were lifted up and pushed into the vehicles.
The Cusanus Game Page 5