The Cusanus Game

  On the street the dead had been lined up along the convent wall below the entrance. The line kept getting longer. Some of them had no more faces, others were charred down to their hips; blackened ribs poked through the ruptured skin of the torsos. Their hands had been bound behind their backs with wire, a gasoline-filled car tire hung around their necks and ignited. “Kentucky” was what this ghastly method of execution was named—after the American fried chicken. Stavros had explained that to me; I had not wanted to believe it. He was down below, walking along the line of corpses and scrutinizing every single one with an expert eye.

  Suddenly I sensed that Bernd had come up behind me. He thrust his hands under my T-shirt and kneaded my breasts as he pushed his stiff member between my legs and began to pant excitedly. I broke free of him and shouted with disgust, louder than intended, “Let me go! You’re no better than those fascists!” With a violent movement I wiped the tears from my face. “That turns you on, huh?”

  He stared at me with astonishment, and his erection dwindled. “Hold on a second! What’s the matter with you?”

  “How can you be thinking … about fucking at the sight of those corpses?”

  He brushed his long blond hair from his face and looked morosely out the window.

  “Most of those people are looters and murderers. Moros. They’ve been making the city unsafe for weeks.”

  “Most of those people are simple country boys from the Mezzogiorno who have been driven from their land by the drought. They were desperate and hungry,” I replied.

  “Then they should report to one of the aid organizations. They’ll get ration cards and a place in one of the refugee camps.”

  “That’s coming from you, of all people? You should really know better! The population of Europe declines by two million each year. What happens to all those people?”

  “Most of them die of cancer.”

  “And thousands die every month on the coast. Supposedly attacked and killed by feral dogs. Meanwhile the Praetorians are directing the movements of those semi-intelligent killer beasts by computer.”

  Bernd shrugged. “They keep the illegal immigrants at bay, don’t get their hands dirty, and save on food for the animals too.”

  “Ugh!”

  Bernd spread his arms. “That’s just how it is. How can we change it?”

  “What kind of country has this become? I’m ashamed. People are murdered in cold blood. Like them down there. Look at them! No one even thought of protecting them. Or did you hear a EuroForce helicopter last night?”

  “They were probably otherwise engaged.”

  “I’m sure of it. One crow doesn’t peck another’s eyes out. They’re all in cahoots. And these poor people were left to the Hobbits and the Praetorians with their killer dogs. It’s fun, a hunt like that! They wore down their victims with vibrasound and deceived them with battlefield holos so that they sought cover where there was no cover, and then they picked them off like rabbits. That’s how it goes!” I sobbed.

  Bernd looked at me helplessly.

  “You’re right. That’s how it goes,” he said faintly.

  A woman in the convent courtyard had sunk to her knees, raising her fists in an accusatory fashion and exclaiming curses. One of the nuns put her arm around her and tried to comfort her. One after another the ambulances started and drove away with howling sirens. Others arrived.

  “There’s no way you can go on living here, Domenica. You can move in with me. Birgit definitely won’t have anything against it.”

  “Oh, thank you for the generous invitation. Did you ask her permission, then?”

  The thought of his arrogant sister, who never spoke anything but German with him, only intensified my helpless anger. At times like this, I could imagine them doing it with each other, he and that beautiful woman who aroused the desire of all men but didn’t let any of them near her.

  “I’d rather not chance her slamming the door in my face. I’ll find something.”

  He shrugged and got dressed. “I’ll help you move.”

  “Not necessary. I’ll manage.”

  All morning ambulances came and took away the injured amid howling sirens. There must have been more than a hundred. Then—much more quietly—the dead. There had been forty-six, Stavros told me later. Mainly Italians from the south, maybe a dozen Albanians and Africans.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T HARD to find an apartment. Luigi took care of it for me. He asked me what I wanted and plunged into the Net. Five minutes later he gave me half a dozen addresses. I chose one and he finalized the contract with the landlord’s ICom.

  The apartment was only ten minutes away from the institute on Via Merulana, right behind the Terme di Traiano. The landlord, one Signore Paolini, was happy to rent for four hundred euros a three-room apartment for which he would have gotten five times that amount ten years earlier. He had put up his wife and his two small daughters with relatives in Bergamo—for safety reasons, as he confided in me—and amused himself with an Austrian woman, who seemed to be a relentlessly cheerful spirit, with upswept blond ringlets, always smiling, trilling, and giggling—and dressed in hideously patterned baby-pink pantsuits. But she still didn’t manage to dispel the deep sadness that dwelled in Signore Paolini’s dark eyes and in the corners of his drooping mustache.

  “Rome is dying,” I said to him the next morning when I paid the rent.

  Signore Paolini counted the money; the cigarette in the corner of his mouth gave off smoke into his eyes, and he squinted. He looked at me and nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. His bony figure only half filled his shabby coffee-colored bathrobe.

  “Gern hab ich die Frau’n geküßt…” a jaunty tenor belted out in German from the squalid speaker of a portable radio on a small table with a crocheted tablecloth next to the kitchen door.

  “Who is dying?” asked his girlfriend from the kitchen.

  My landlord dismissed her question with a weak movement of his hand and let out a rattling cough.

  “Who is dying?” she wanted to know.

  He gave me a sad look, blew the smoke out his nostrils, and stubbed out the cigarette in an overfilled ashtray. His fingers were yellow with nicotine.

  “I am,” he grumbled, “if you keep pestering me with your questions.”

  His girlfriend stuck her head out the kitchen door.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She waved to me with freshly painted nails.

  “You grouch,” she said to Signore Paolini. “Light me a cigarette.”

  IV

  Imaste Dio

  Clocks had two functions, in my view. The first was to tell people what time it is, and the second to impress on me that time is a mystery, an unrestrained, boundless phenomenon that eludes understanding and that we, for lack of better options, have given a semblance of order. Time is the system that must ensure that everything does not happen at once.

  CEES NOOTEBOOM

  I called a taxi and went to Via Garibaldi to get the rest of my belongings. The driver could not be persuaded to wait for me and drove off as soon as I got out. With surprise I noticed that the trash in the hallway was gone. The overstuffed mailboxes had been emptied; the floor was not only swept, but even mopped.

  “Stavros! Did you do this? You’ve earned a bottle of ouzo.”

  No answer. I went to the back and cast a glance into his small cubbyhole, which served as his living space and bedroom. Stavros wasn’t there. He must have gone shopping or was having a drink somewhere.

  I went upstairs and packed the rest of my things in two big travel bags—clothing, shoes, and linens in one; computer, books, DVDs, CDs, and chips in the other. For my kitchenware I had gotten a moving box; on top was the big porcelain vase I had been lugging around with me for many years. It was glazed midnight blue, with magnificent white herons strutting around, sheltered by bamboo branches—a memento of my father. He had brought it back from a trip at some point; perhaps a Korean business associate had given it to him. In any c
ase, I cherished it. In autumn I always filled it with long dry grass, in early spring with broom flowers, to entice the season’s arrival ahead of time.

  When I had carried everything down, Stavros still wasn’t there. Should I leave him a message? No, I wanted to say good-bye to him in person, thank him, and present him with a bottle of ouzo that Vasilios, a Greek student, had obtained for me through connections.

  The street was deserted under the hot, hazy sky. Someone had washed the blood, the ashes, and the soot of the corpses from the pavement. The water had long evaporated. Somewhere a woman was weeping. The gate to the convent was open. It was usually closed, so I went through with curiosity. It was Sister Anna, tears running down her face. Two priests stood with her, talking to her reassuringly with serious expressions. A dark car was parked in the courtyard.

  They had not yet noticed me. I backed away and turned to leave.

  “Signorina Ligrina!” Anna called after me. “There you are.”

  I stopped, turned around, and approached her. “Yes, Sister?”

  “Look what has happened,” she sobbed. “It’s terrible.”

  She took me by the arm and led me through the entrance into the corridor of the convent. The blue-gray and white marble-tiled floor was littered with shards. The whole glass facade facing the convent garden was shattered; the wall opposite it was riddled with bullet holes. In the reception area to the left of the entrance, next to the wooden telephone booth, I saw a large, blackish, sticky stain, on which flies had gathered.

  “This is where they shot Signore Vulgaris.”

  “Stavros?” I gasped.

  My chest constricted. I looked around in horror. There were shards everywhere. Someone had spray-painted the outline of his head and upper body in bright orange on the wall, on the tiles the outline of his legs and his weapon. Here he had died, not three yards from the convent’s Com system. “How on earth did this happen? Who was it?” I asked in dismay.

  “We don’t know. We were attacked this morning. What godless barbarians! They killed Sister Oeconomica in her office and took all the money. Sister Carlotta and little Magdalena they shot down in the kitchen. They were brought to the clinic.”

  A cherrywood-and-glass case in which the Christ Child had stood—the life-size figure of a blond boy of about ten with a halo and a sash over his arm raised in blessing—had been reduced to rubble. Tatters of satin hung on the worm-eaten laths of the smashed rear wall. Pieces of the gilded aureole lay scattered over the floor; the statue had been mutilated beyond recognition. The white sash, embroidered with golden letters spelling IO SONO L’AMORE, lay over a severed hand.

  “They killed the Savior,” the Sister sobbed. “He died for me.”

  I saw that she was trembling all over. It wasn’t fear; it was a fit of religious ecstasy. She kneeled down on the shards and crossed herself.

  “He bears my wounds,” she declared shrilly, spreading her arms. “He is a miracle!”

  My chest felt tight. I sensed all sympathy dying away in me, for I could not share such feelings.

  “Sister, I … It was too much for you. Come on,” I said.

  I helped her to her feet and supported her. She staggered alongside me. We walked down the corridor. Glass crunched under my shoes. Soberly, I took a closer look at the destruction. Another pool of blood with the outline of a human figure in bright orange. Farther back, outside the door to the mother superior’s office, a third.

  The looters must have possessed incredible firepower. The walls displayed hundreds of bullet holes. I cast a glance into one of the alcove-like small rooms. A large glass case, which had contained a blue, white, and gold-painted Madonna with child and a dusty little bouquet of dried flowers, was also destroyed. The Christ Child was gone. The Madonna’s head was missing. Worm-eaten wooden splinters jutted out of her chest and neck. Next to that a gutted ancient television set; a pious amateur craftsman had replaced the screen with a glass window, behind which a depiction of the Annunciation could be seen. It was unscathed.

  We returned to the entrance hall. High up on the wall hung a double portrait: two ovals of Jesus and his mother in the style of the sentimentalized Sacred Heart devotion surrounded by a gilded frame. Christ pulled open his red robe and exposed his pierced heart.

  Stavros did not exhibit his wounds. The ravaged battlefield of the Aegean War, which he bore on his chest, had been plowed anew.

  “What a world!” Anna sobbed. “What a time! Oh, Holy Mother of God, help us!”

  In the convent garden, a fountain burbled. Birds chirped. The clematis nodded in the light breeze, which wafted through the shot-up windows. The rosebushes so fondly tended by the sisters were in full bloom and exuded their fragrance. How many afternoons had I spent on this island of quiet in the middle of the city, sitting at one of the stone tables and reading?

  Destroyed. The convent would be closed.

  It had been four men. Stavros must have noticed the attack and rushed to the rescue. He had cornered and shot dead three of them. The fourth must have hidden in the convent garden, lying in wait for him as he tried to fight his way to the telephone to call for help. How often had I told him that he should pin an ICom to his collar? He would have been able to order an automatic distress call and stay under cover. As it was, the fourth had picked him off through the window and had escaped.

  It had not been Moros, but most certainly specialists from the Balkans, who stole sacred art in Rome at the behest of galleries and private collectors in the Far East and overseas, especially Mass utensils, altarpieces, statues, and incunabula. What they had expected to gain from the attack on this impoverished, small convent, which had sheltered and fed pilgrims to Rome for two hundred years, was a mystery. Cheap altar utensils made of zinc, statues made of wood and plaster, painted with loving care, but without any aesthetic value.

  “Rome is dying,” I said hoarsely to the two priests standing in the parking lot in the convent courtyard and waiting for Anna. They looked at me uncomprehendingly and somewhat reprovingly. Then they told Anna to pack up her personal things. She would be housed temporarily in a different building, until it was decided what would happen.

  Anna and I pressed our cheeks together to say good-bye. Finally I too could cry.

  * * *

  I WENT THROUGH the whole house, ringing the doorbell at every apartment. No one opened the door. A few apartments were unlocked; they were empty. Rats had moved in; they had gnawed away at boxes and plastic bags to build their nests. Everywhere I was confronted by the acrid smell of their excretions. On the stained carpet were dried-up droppings. In the bathrooms cockroaches rustled. I opened the window in the stairwell. The rear courtyard was covered with dozens of shiny black plastic garbage bags, which bore the AMNU sign of the city administration and would probably never be picked up. Many of the bags had been gnawed at; their contents had decomposed and putrefied. Between them crawled rats. It stank horribly. Fat flies buzzed around like stray bullets and crashed against the windowpane. I held my breath and hurriedly closed the window, but the whole house had long since inhaled the effluvium. It seemed to have crept into the walls and to adhere to the wallpaper like a sticky exhalation. It revolted me.

  I went downstairs to Stavros’s apartment and pocketed the CDs with the patriotic songs of his favorite composer. It was important to me to honor his memory in that way.

  When I stepped onto the street, three teenagers were about to shoot at my vase with an AeroBlaster; they had gotten the vase from the hallway of the house and placed it on the front steps.

  “What’s this all about?” I shouted at them.

  “Do you want to buy it, signora?” the leader asked with a grin, a kid, maybe fourteen years old.

  His incisors looked like spade blades in the upper jaw of his thin, pimply face. His left fist was tattooed with a blue scorpion. He raised it at me, as if he wanted to transfix me with that gesture.

  “It belongs to me,” I snapped at him.

  The boys la
ughed.

  “Five hundred euros,” the leader demanded impassively, pumping his weapon.

  I restrained my anger and decided to play along.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty euros. You go buy yourselves some ice cream and leave my vase alone. Okay?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Fifty.”

  The vase burst into pieces. Bamboo branches plummeted from the midnight blue sky and buried the strutting herons. I cried out with anger and pain, rushed over, and grabbed the neck of the vase, which had remained intact.

  “A thousand,” said the boy, pumping his weapon again and pointing it at me. Suddenly I was afraid. Now he’s going to shoot, I thought. The tiny hard plastic shuriken, propelled by air pressure, were not able to penetrate deep into the skin, but they caused painful bruises even through clothing. And if they hit you in the eye …

  With a howl I hurled the neck of the vase into his face—with the absolute certainty that I would at that same moment feel the sharp plastic granules tearing the skin off my cheeks. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes. The boy was licking the blood from the corner of his mouth, where the broken piece had hit him. He had lowered his weapon. The other two fellows had backed away a few paces. Silence.

  “You’ll make a brave Hobbit!” I exclaimed scornfully.

  He grinned at me and raised his fist with the scorpion.

  “I’m a Praetorian,” he declared, too proud to wipe the blood off his chin, then turned around and walked away. His sidekicks followed him. Bodyguards. Führer pose. Oh, God! Always the same dumb male games.

  Crying, I sat over the shards of my vase on the steps leading up to an empty house.

  “Call me a taxi,” I said to Luigi through my sobs.

  “Please repeat,” he replied.