by A. Sparrow
I looked up the location of each address on the indexed, foldout maps in the back of the directory. The first one—Allesandro Raeth—I could rule one immediately. He lived way the heck out of town near this big, round lake called Lago di Bracciano. There was no way a person living there could stroll to the Vatican to attend a mass. It must have been a half an hour train ride at least.
On my second swing, I hit it the ball out of the park.
Raeth, Edmund e Hanna
00192 Roma (RM)
Via Dei Gracchi,
1806 39738988
That place was practically on the doorstep of Vatican City and just a few streets beyond the neighborhoods I had checked out the night before. Maybe I wasn’t such a dummy after all.
It was maybe two blocks from the Vatican Museum, six or seven from St. Peter’s Square. I just sat there with my finger on the map, trying to keep my heart from galloping off without me.
I copied the address down on a piece of scrap paper I fished out of a waste basket and sketched a rough map.
I went ahead and did my due diligence, checking out Raeth number three—some guy named Gunther. He lived near a place called Re di Roma, a neighborhood east of the city center and nowhere near the Vatican. He could be disregarded for now.
There was a telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen. “Anybody mind if I made a local call?” I said to no one in particular.
“If it is in Roma, it is okay,” said the guy at the stove, who was boiling water in two giant pots while two young women cut homemade pasta on the kitchen table.
I dialed the number and a creaky old man answered. “Pronto?”
“Um … hi. Is uh … Karla home?”
“Mi scusi?”
“Do you … speak English?”
“Non capisco. Mi Diaspace.”
“Anybody in your house speak English?”
“Ask them ‘Quelcuno parla inglese?’” suggested one of the pasta cutters.
“Hai chiamato il numero sbagliato!” said the old guy. The line clicked off before I could repeat what the others told me to say.
“He hung up,” I said.
“We can call back and speak for you,” said the cook.
“That’s okay. I’m thinking maybe I should go there in person.”
I looked around at all these nonchalant faces, everyone acting like there was nothing odd at all about some American kid who wasn’t even part of their protest making himself at home in their headquarters. This was such a different world. I couldn’t imagine this ever happening in Ft. Pierce.
I left the apartment, and trotted down the stairs out into the alley leading to the Piazza. The crowd around the encampment had grown even larger. There were more police as well.
I looked around for Angelica. I just wanted to thank her before moving on. People were carrying around Styrofoam cups with some kind of thick soup with rice in it. Whatever it was, it smelled wonderful. I gravitated towards the queue where they were dishing it out.
Two muscular guys wearing sport coats over tight T-shirts came out of nowhere and grabbed my arms. They steered me away from the encampment, towards a narrow alley thick with trash cans.
“What the fuck? Let go of me!”
One of the guys pulled the passport out of the inside pocket of my hoodie.
“È lui.”
I snatched my passport back. “Who the fuck are you?” They pinned my arms behind my back and twisted, yanking me towards the alley.
One of the Black Bloc guys saw what was going on and sprang into action, ripping the banner from his pole. Wielding it like a bat, he came after my assailants, shouting: “Poliziotti in borghese!”
A whole gaggle of his buddies, men and women came swarming off a low wall where they had been loitering. They all wore black, some with bandannas and knit caps covering their faces, a couple with those ‘V for Vendetta’ masks.
The guy with the pole ran down blocked the alley and the others swooped in and surrounded us.
One of the guys who had me reached into his jacket. A tire iron came swinging around and smashed his wrist. He roared with pain and collapsed to his knees. A gun clattered against the cobbles. A girl shrieked and kicked it under a dumpster. A booted foot caught the gun man in the ear and knocked him flat.
Strong, gloved hands helped peel me from the other guy’s grip. Red-faced and bug-eyed, he fought like a demon, spitting and clawing, letting loose a string of the raunchiest expletives Italy had to offer, I’m sure.
A crowd of police came charging over, pulling on their vests and riot helmets as they ran. The Black Bloc-ers shoved my attackers against some trash bins and formed up into a line, bracing themselves for the assault.
I squirmed away and sprinted across the Piazza, dodging through the confused crowd, some people fleeing, others coming to watch or join in the action. I caught a glimpse of Angelica emerging from a tent, craning her neck to see what the commotion was about.
“Thank you!” I shouted, though she was probably too far away to hear me.
***
With quick, long strides, I made my way towards the river like a soldier on a forced march, headed for victory. I kept peeking over my shoulder for those two assholes who had tried to nab me, but there was no sign of them. I couldn’t believe the lengths those jerks from Cleveland were going to make their point.
I followed the crude map I had drawn, tacking up one block and down the next until I spotted the metal street sign in black and white, tacked onto the corner of a brick building. The Via dei Gracchi was a narrow, tree-lined canyon of a street that ran through a bunch of seven story apartment buildings. Pizza shops, cafes and little boutiques inhabited the ground floor.
Number 18 was accessed through a pair of huge, brown doors, half again my height, with brass knobs oddly placed smack in their middle. This was no tenement building by any means, but a far cry from the upscale digs I had encountered closer to the river.
I needed no key to get into the glassed-in foyer where a bank of mailboxes lined one side and buzzers for every apartment filled a panel across the way. The floor was littered with adverts and old newspapers. It smelled like onions and old cigars inside.
The panel with the buzzers was a complete mess, with names missing, names scrawled out and new ones written in. Some of the handwriting was hard to decipher, but nothing looked anywhere close to ‘Raeth.’
I refused to be denied. I would find her even if I had to camp out on this stoop. I was certain this was the right place. The phone book couldn’t have been clearer and the location matched everything I knew about Karla, which admittedly, was very little.
And then I noticed that of the thirty-odd buzzers on the panel, only seven lacked labels. I suppose I had about a fourteen percent chance of pressing the correct one at random.
So I gave it a go, starting with the second floor, pressing the only unmarked buzzer on that tier, giving it a good long push. Such an ugly sound it made—something between a chainsaw and a mosquito.
When nothing happened after a minutes, I pressed it again. When again there was no response, I moved on to the next.
This time there came a crackle followed by the voice of a young woman.
“Che cazzo vuoi? Chi sei?”
Even though the little speaker distorted her words, I could tell she wasn’t Karla.
“Hi. My name is James. I’m looking for—”
“Ottenere scopata! Uscire di casa mia!”
The big brown doors creaked open behind me, letting in a blast of street noise and diesel exhaust. A harried-looking middle-aged woman slipped inside with a little white dog on a leash, and a cloth bag packed with produce from the market.
“What was that? Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Vai via o chiamerò la polizia!”
The speaker clicked off.
“What is going on?” said the older woman, juggling her mail. “Why are you bothering Rosa? Are you one of her boyfriends?”
“
Not at all. I’m actually looking for this girl named Karla. Her last name is Raeth. Would you happen to know her.”
The woman’s eyes got all shifty. She set her jaw and grinded her teeth. “What do you want from her?”
The dog leapt up and planted its paws on my knees, panting. I rubbed its head behind the ears.
“Nothing. I’m ... just a friend.”
The woman put down her groceries and pulled a key from her purse to unlock her mailbox.
“How interesting. Karla is not the sort I would expect would have male friends. Especially an American.”
“So, you know her. She does live here?”
The woman shrugged. “Well, she used to. The father, he took a new job. Out of the country. He is an engineer, I believe.”
My heart crashed. “Which … country?”
“Can’t say for sure. He is Austrian by birth, but I can only speculate.”
“Christ! I can’t believe it.” I thought I was going to faint with frustration. My reaction worried the dog, who went cringing behind its master. I wanted to melt away into nothingness.
“Perhaps its best for both of you that you do not find her,” said the woman.
“Why would you say that? Do you realize what I’ve gone through to get here?”
“This man, Edmund—the father—he is not a good man. He is dangerous. Not good to his daughters. Cruel. I am so relieved he is no longer my neighbor. But I feel so sad for those girls … having to deal with him.”
“What is he? An alcoholic or something?”
“Worse,” said the woman. “He is a fundamentalist—a Lefebvrite from the Society of St. Pius X. And not only that, even among them he is an extremist. I would not be surprised that he would start his own sect.”
“So Karla has a sister? What about her mom?”
“Hanna left the family years ago. It is a crime she couldn’t take the girls with her, but the state granted him custody. She was … damaged … psychologically.”
“You have no idea where they went?”
“Who knows? Germany? Argentina? The world is full of safe harbors for lunatics.”
I took a deep breath and tried to gather my composure, but there was nothing to gather. I was coming apart as surely as if I were made of unraveling thread.
I muttered a thank you and stumbled out through the big, brown doors. My head reeled. I thought I was going to throw up.
I paused halfway down the steps and stared into the traffic on the main street just around the corner. The light turned green and a phalanx trucks and trolleys raced ahead. It wouldn’t be hard to time it right and dash out there. That mass of metal would just sweep me a way like a bug under a broom.
The woman stepped out onto the landing. “Are you okay?”
Her words yanked me back from a verge. “I’ll … be fine.”
“Listen, I take it back. I hope you do find her. You seem like you care deeply. But you be careful around that Mr. Raeth. Edmund can be a demon.”
Chapter 30: Lockdown
I wafted down the streets and sidewalks like a runaway balloon, with no direction or purpose, guided only by a fickle wind.
I crossed streets without looking, ignoring the screeching brakes and bleating horns and yet I flinched at every stranger who walked too close, at any jogger who veered in my direction. I didn’t care if something bad happened to me, but it did matter how. I didn’t want to give those jerks in Cleveland the pleasure of taking me down.
Somehow, I gravitated back towards the Vatican. I’m not sure why. Heathen that I was, I had no rational reason for going there, but I kind of, sort of knew the place now. And so it called to me. That wall and dome were my beacons and I was a pigeon flying home.
I passed between the encircling columns into St. Peter’s square and across the flagstone plaza to the central obelisk. But once I reached the center of the square, I was still not satisfied. An excruciating unease churned in me—very much like pain, but without the physical hurting—and it begged for relief.
I looked up at the great, studded dome of the basilica. That was where I needed to be, if nothing else, to have a quiet place to think.
I surged across the flagstones, shuffled through security and rushed into the basilica, looking neither left nor right at the masterpieces on display, making no signs of crosses, no gestures of humility or respect as I waited my turn at the cordon to penetrate the depths of the dome and reach those pews under the lonesome, alabaster dove.
And there, despite myself, I prayed in the wishful way a little kid talks under his breath to a fallen star or to an array of smoldering birthday candles. And you know what I wished for. I had no hope it would be granted.
One would have thought if any place on earth was holy enough to keep me out of an infernal place like Root it would be here, but those roots came twining up out of the pew in full view, I assumed, of the tourists and pilgrims. Was it a miracle, I wondered, to be transported in public to Hell’s doorstep?
I was wide awake and fully aware of every inch of my journey down through the catacombs, my molecules gliding through dirt and stone like elementary particles, and then a twist and a turn through something not even made of this earth.
A musty smell pervaded my senses, but was quickly replaced by notes of ginger and lemon. I found myself in a heap of pillows and rolled-up futons. An alabaster dove still loomed above me—only this one wasn’t Bernini’s, it was Karla’s.
***
“Karla?” I scrambled to my feet, all lightheaded and giddy. “You here?”
I was thrilled to have made my entrance directly into her dome, and not have to fight my way out of another pod out in the tunnels. I wasn’t sure what it meant, coming here instead of there, but in any case, it was progress.
“Karla?”
When she didn’t answer, I pawed gently through a pile of rumpled blankets to see if she might be snoozing beneath, but she wasn’t there.
The dome was so quiet, surely I would have heard her breathing. But all I could hear was water dripping from a tap and the nearly inaudible gurgles of some distant Reaper.
The dome was a mess. Karla usually kept it so neat. Someone—Luther?—had ransacked the place. Her earring tree lay upended, its jewelry scattered everywhere, crunching and bending underfoot.
More of Karla’s weavings seemed to be coming undone, and that included the dome itself. Walls that had been smooth were now corrugated with individual strands of pencil-thick roots. Some roots had broken free and hung dangling in coils throughout the room.
I rummaged through the debris on the floor—various tapestries and embroideries, some so finely rendered they looked just like watercolor paintings and photographs. Others, much cruder, had disintegrated into a mass of individual strands that wriggled like a bunch of maggots.
I was probably looking at a record of her progress as a Weaver, from her earliest, childish and least stable efforts to some truly masterful work on par with my glass giraffe. She had a box of miscellaneous tools that were indiscernible in heft and detail from the real thing. If these were Karla’s doing then she was a much better Weaver than she made herself out to be.
I studied the pictures and designs for insights. The old, maggoty stuff was mainly simple flags with crosses on fields of red, X’s on fields of blue—basic geometric designs on which she practiced her art.
Intermediate in skill were her landscapes. Rolling, denuded hills and long lakes or fjords seemed to be a common theme. They could have been depictions of the lake country in northern Italy or Scandinavia.
The most adept images seemed to revolve around a little girl in blondish pigtails who looked sort of like a younger Karla, especially around the eyes. I found another picture that showed her holding hands with an older girl whose face was smudged out. Could this be Karla and her little sister?
There were a few pictures of an older woman whom I took to be Hanna—Karla’s mother. The woman’s expression haunted me—so flat and empty. I could pla
inly see the wish for death in those eyes. There was nothing at all of her father Edmund, except perhaps some abstract but disturbing renderings of monsters that could have easily represented Reapers.
One of the more advanced embroideries had an ‘I’ superimposed over an ‘H’ with a smaller ‘S’ swirling around the ‘I,’ like a snake on a caduceus.
HIS?
As opposed to HERS?
ISH?
In rapper slang, that meant ‘shit.’
IHS?
Wasn’t that some kind of shorthand for Jesus?
There was nothing under the dome with any writing beyond those three letters, nothing that told me where Karla had come from or where she had gone.
I found my kilt and white shirt neatly folded on a stool, put them on and opened the hatch to the tunnel that led to Luthersburg, startled to find the tunnel all clogged with dangling, writhing roots. The walls had been shaggy before, but this was ridiculous.
I brushed against some roots and they all sprung up and stiffened into spikes, all pointing toward me.
“What the heck?”
Gooey lobes like frogs’ tongues dribbled down between the spikes and adhered to my face and neck. I ripped them away in disgust and stumbled back. Crouching down, I could see the sitting room at the other end of the tunnel through a jungle of spikes. A machete would have come in handy, but in lieu of that, I dropped down on my hands and knees and crawled.
Spikes jutted and jabbed at me as I picked my way slowly along. One shot out and got me good, puncturing my side and drawing blood. I lashed out and snapped it off. The broken end went limp and inched away.
Knobs then began to form on the previously smooth floor and grew into spikes. I was crawling on a bed of nails! My fury peaked.
“Bastards!” I screamed in frustration.
Every nob on that floor softened and collapsed under my gaze, surprising the heck out of me. But as soon as my attention wavered, the nobs regrouped and reformed. I scrambled ahead, diving and rolling into the sitting room when I reached the end of the tunnel.
When I reached the sitting room, I was shocked again. The door the square was still there but was now merged seamlessly with the wall. The window was now flush with the plaster and had gone all grey and opaque.
The door still had a knob, and the window a latch, but when I tried opening them, but the changes proved no illusion. This was a solid wall now with only visual traces remaining of its former portals. Apart from the knob and latch, it could have passed for a painting of a room with no view.