The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  Simon lies gray and motionless just outside the entrance to the tunnel. Elgin is thumping on his chest and then breathing into his mouth. I rush on ahead of my litter-bearers and kneel down next to Elgin just as Simon’s chest spasms, his ample belly rippling as he begins to cough.

  “Thank God,” Elgin says, his voice shaking, and then, noticing me, “If I lost one more person on this project, I might not get any more grants.”

  I lift my hand to slap Elgin in the arm, but then I notice that his face is as white as Simon’s under the grime and I squeeze his arm instead.

  “Agnes?” I ask, afraid to hear his response.

  “She’s okay,” Elgin answers, pointing with his chin toward the villa. “She’s right over there.”

  I look over his shoulder. Agnes, dusty but apparently unhurt, stands at the mouth of the tunnel. I rush to her, certain she must be in shock, but when I get to her she seems calm and collected. She’s holding a flashlight with a steady hand, shining its beam through a broken gap in the wall about three yards from the entrance.

  “Agnes, thank God you’re all right,” I say, grabbing her arm, which I see now is scratched and bleeding under the layer of grime. “But you have to get out of here and go with us to the hospital—” I stop when I see what’s beyond the hole. A painted swan hovers on the opposite wall. When I move closer I see that the walls are covered with paintings and that the space isn’t another tunnel, it’s a stairway leading down into the ground. “Wow,” I say. “It must have led under the villa and it seems to be completely intact.”

  “It’s carved out of rock,” she says, in a girlish wispy voice that sounds strange coming from her soot-covered face—like the voice of an angel emanating from the mask of a gorgon. “These walls must be three feet thick.” She stops because we hear Simon moaning behind us. “Simon’s coming to?” she asks.

  “Yes, but he’s still badly injured and you—” I scan her up and down, looking for injuries, but except for a few scratches and a torn shirt sleeve, she looks fine. “You still should go to the hospital to make sure you don’t have a concussion. Did you get hit on the head?”

  Agnes reaches the hand that’s not holding the flashlight and rubs the top of her head, more like a sleepy toddler trying to wake up than someone who’s been hurt, but then, I think, her baffling affect might be the result of a blow to the head. “Um, maybe, it all happened so quickly, but yeah, I think something did graze my head. But Simon’s the one who really got hit hard by a big rock. Are you sure he’s okay?”

  “I’m not sure at all. We’d better get both of you to the hospital.”

  She nods slowly, like a person in a dream. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.” Then she turns and walks out of the tunnel. I follow, giving one backward glance to the painted swan, which seems to be hovering in the space above the hole, feeling irrationally that it will escape before I get a chance to see it again. I remind myself it’s been waiting there behind that wall for centuries. It will wait one more day. I turn and join Elgin and Agnes, who are both kneeling next to Simon. He appears to be breathing, although raggedly. His eyes flicker open for a moment, but he groans and closes them again.

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Elgin says. “There’s an ambulance on the way, right?” Elgin turns to me, his face imploring.

  “Yes, it should be here any minute,” and then I mouth, “Where’s Lyros?”

  “He ran upstairs—leaving me to do mouth to mouth with Simon here when he stopped breathing. I guess that’s what being a billionaire’s all about: getting other people to do your dirty work.”

  Simon opens his mouth as if to say something, but all that comes out is a hoarse rasp that sounds as if he’s drawing breath through a cheese grater. Agnes winces at the sound and pats Simon on the shoulder. “Don’t try to talk, Mr. Bowles. Here’s Mr. Lyros now.”

  I turn and see John Lyros, his laptop case strapped across his chest, coming down the stairs. At the same moment I hear the sirens approaching.

  “Where’s Maria?” Lyros asks.

  “She said she had a family emergency and had to go,” I answer.

  “Damn, I was going to suggest she go to the hospital with Simon and Agnes and that you go back on the boat with Elgin. But you can probably handle the Parthenope yourself, right, Elgin?”

  “Well, yes, but…” Normally I would expect Elgin to leap at the chance to take control of such a luxurious boat, but he seems oddly reluctant.

  “Good. Sophie, why don’t you go in the ambulance with Simon and Agnes? I’ll meet you at the hospital with my car.”

  “Dr. Chase doesn’t have to go with us,” Agnes pipes up. “I can look after Simon.”

  “And who will look after you?” Lyros asks.

  “Really, I’m fine—” Agnes begins, but Lyros is already walking away to let the paramedics into the site and lead them down the ramp.

  “Really, Dr. Chase, you should go back to the island with Dr. Lawrence. I’ll be fine.”

  “I wouldn’t think of leaving you alone,” I say. “I’m sure Dr. Lawrence agrees.”

  Elgin looks at me and then at Agnes. “Dr. Chase is right, Agnes,” he says, then switches his gaze back to me. “Someone needs to keep an eye on you. Perhaps Dr. Chase can do a better job of it than I have.”

  He’s still angry with me for blaming him for bringing Agnes here. Well, too bad, I feel like saying, look at what’s happened.

  The paramedics strap Simon to a stretcher and carry him up the ramp toward the street where the ambulance is waiting. They try to make Agnes lie down on a stretcher, but she insists she’s well enough to walk. Still I insist on walking by her side with my arm around her in case she feels faint. When we’re all in the ambulance, John Lyros sticks his head in to confirm with the driver that we’re going to the Ospedale Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili.

  “Doesn’t that mean the hospital for the incurables?” Agnes whispers in my ear. “Is Simon really that bad?”

  I start to explain the origin of the hospital’s name, but a noise from Simon distracts me. He’s struggling with the oxygen mask that’s strapped over his mouth, his eyes darting from me to Agnes. I squeeze his hand, pretty sure what he’s trying to ask. “It’s okay,” I tell him, “Agnes is okay and you’ll be fine, too. We’re getting you to a hospital.”

  He squeezes my hand again, this time so hard that I inadvertently pull back. Abruptly, he wrenches his hand from mine and bats the oxygen mask away from his face. When he opens his mouth, though, the only thing that comes out is a sibilant hiss—the sound a tire makes when it’s been punctured. I snap my head up and yell at the paramedics.

  “His lung!” I say, pointing to Simon’s chest while I try to remember the word in Italian. But it’s not necessary. It’s obvious right away to the paramedics that one of Simon’s lungs has collapsed. I move back as they converge on him with needles and tubes. I can see by the color returning to his face that they’re able to keep him breathing, but he rides the rest of the way with the oxygen mask over his face and eyes tightly closed. Agnes takes my place by his side, holding his hand and telling him over and over again that he’s going to be okay. I spend the rest of the trip with my hand over my own chest, trying to ease the sympathetic tightening I’d felt there when Simon’s lung collapsed.

  The Ospedale Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili is an old cavernous building near the Piazza Cavour, built originally in the sixteenth century for those suffering from the then incurable disease of syphilis, which the Neapolitans had christened “the French disease.” (The French returned the favor by calling it the Neapolitan disease.) Not a particularly cheerful history, I think, as Agnes and I follow the paramedics carrying Simon past doleful plaster madonnas and black-robed nuns. He looks frightened as he’s whisked through doors where we’re not allowed to go. I try to explain to a passing nun that we want to stay with our friend, but she takes one look at Agnes, who has turned as white as the plaster saints on the walls, and reaches out a black-robed
arm to steady her as she begins to sink to the floor. Agnes responds by screeching and clutching at me.

  “Please don’t leave me alone,” she hisses in my ear. “I hate hospitals…and nuns.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, a little shocked at Agnes’s outburst, “I’ll stay with you.” I smile at the sweet-faced elderly nun and tell her in Italian that we’ll follow her. I hope she doesn’t know enough English to have understood what Agnes just said. She turns around without a word, her long black habit dusting the floor, and leads us to a private room. Above the door is another one of the ubiquitous saints—this one, I notice, has the same crown of waves as Agnes’s little statue. I’m about to point it out to her, but Agnes balks when she sees the narrow whitewashed room with its narrow metal cot.

  “Why is she taking me to a room? I’m not going to have to stay here, am I?”

  “I think she just wants to make sure you don’t fall down and hurt yourself,” I tell Agnes. The nun returns with a bowl of water, cotton gauze, and antiseptic. “Just try to relax. I’ll stay right here.”

  I sit next to Agnes on the cot as the nun swabs her cuts gently and efficiently. Through the whole procedure Agnes shakes like a leaf. Why in the world, I wonder, is she so afraid of nuns? I went to parochial school myself until eighth grade, when M’Lou finally convinced my grandparents to let me go to public school, and I’ve encountered my share of unpleasant nuns. I’ve also known some remarkable ones, including my eighth-grade Latin teacher, Sister Francis Genevieve, who inspired me to study the classics. But Agnes was raised in a Baptist family. It’s unlikely she had any experience of nuns growing up. Has her Baptist minister father filled her with horror stories about the Catholic Church? I’ve experienced a fair amount of prejudice against Catholics in East Texas, so I suppose it isn’t impossible.

  Still, Agnes’s reaction seems extreme. Her shaking gets so bad at one point that the struts of the metal bed clang like bells. The nun steps back, looking critically at Agnes, and then says in perfect English, “She seems to be going into shock. I’m going to get the doctor.”

  When they return the nun stays in the doorway and lets the young—and handsome—doctor examine Agnes’s head. He can’t find any sign that she suffered a blow, but he says that her behavior is alarming enough to warrant an MRI and overnight observation in the hospital.

  Since I’m not allowed to accompany Agnes to the MRI lab, I tell the nun that I’d like to check up on Simon. She shows me to a waiting room and tells me someone will come tell me when Simon gets out of surgery.

  I sit there for over an hour feeling totally useless and wishing that I at least had the Phineas transcripts to read while I’m waiting. Anything to make me feel like I’m doing something. The only “reading material” I have is the peculiar cards I was sent in the mail. I take them out and examine them: a moon, a man falling off a ladder, and a masked man. Could the man falling off the ladder represent some kind of accident? Could it have something to do with Simon getting injured in the tunnel? But then, how would the person who sent them know Simon was going to get hurt today?

  “Do you play the lotto?” a voice asks me in accented, but carefully formal English.

  I look up at a young man sitting in the row of chairs across from me. He’s wearing a navy suit and tie, his hair neatly combed, as if he’d been on his way to the office and made this detour to the hospital of the incurables unexpectedly.

  “Scusa?” I say, even though he’s addressed me in English. I’m not even sure he was talking to me. “Lotto?”

  “Yes,” he answers, stubbornly sticking to English. “You call it the lottery in America. My cousin lives in New York and I visit him in summer last year. I see the lottery there. Long lines”—he spreads open his arms—“many people hoping to win the…the jackpot?”

  “Uh, yeah, I mean, no, I don’t play it,” I say. Ely had, though, I remember. Although I always thought he was more interested in picking number combinations than in winning money. “Why did you think I did?”

  “Those are smorfia pictures,” he says, pointing to the cardboard tiles. “They are used to, um, how do you say?…to read the dreams. Each one means a number.” He picks up the card with the moon on it and turns it over. “Ah, someone has taken the number off the back.” He shows me the back of the tile, and I see that the paper backing is rough, as if one layer had been peeled away. I look at the other two and see they both are missing their backings.

  “The moon is six. I remember because my aunt Angelina once dreamed she looked up at the moon and saw her brother Tito’s face in it, so she played a six and a thirty-seven—for brother—and fifty-nine for La Casa because the dream was in the house where she grew up. And she won! But then my uncle Dominic took all the money and bought a fishing boat and the boat sank! My aunt said it was because her brother Tito could never keep a lira in his pocket and so the boat had as many holes in it as her brother’s pocket.”

  I nod at this long story of the inevitability of fate. How could you avoid it? It was Oedipus all over again: fleeing his hometown because the oracle tells him he’ll murder his father and marry his mother but neglects to mention that his parents aren’t the people he grew up with but the ones he’ll meet out on the road. Or like me: coming all the way to Italy to get away from Ely and finding him here. I’m sure now that this is Ely’s handiwork. A system that attaches numbers to dreams is right up his alley.

  “So each one of these cards has a number?”

  “Sì, from one to ninety-nine,” he tells me. “And also a name. This one”—he points to the middle card—“is called La Disgrazia. It stands for seventeen, which is always an unlucky number. These cards are from a game, like your American bingo, called Tombola della Smorfia. I bought one for my niece last Christmas.”

  “Where can I get one?” I ask.

  The young man—Gianni, I soon learn—gives me directions to a nearby farmacia that usually carries the game. He then confides to me that he’s in the hospital because his fiancée is having her appendix removed. When I wish her a quick recovery, he responds, “I am sure we will both have good luck now.” He taps the card with the moon on it. “Six is my lucky number. And then this last card, the masked man, it means a stranger. You see: it’s lucky that I met you!”

  I tell him I’m sure it’s lucky I met him, too. When I see John Lyros enter the waiting room I get up and shake Gianni’s hand. I want to avoid him mentioning the Smorfia tiles to John and, given Gianni’s volubility, I realize he’s likely to recount our whole conversation. Mistaking my eagerness to be gone, Gianni winks at me. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to make your husband jealous! Or my fiancée. Ciao, signora. Don’t forget to play your numbers.”

  As I approach John Lyros, I can’t help but smile, picturing the couple we make in Gianni’s eyes. Although he’s still wearing his khakis and dusty shirt from the dig, something about Lyros exudes wealth and confidence. I notice that women look at him and then at me when I join him.

  “I’ve been waiting here to find out how Simon’s doing—” I begin, but he cuts me off.

  “Simon’s out of surgery,” he says. “He’s still in critical condition, but he’s expected to recover.”

  “Thank God,” I say. “I should go back and check on Agnes then—”

  “I just came from her room. She’s sedated and resting comfortably. There’s really nothing we can do for either of them right now. I thought we could go get a bite to eat and then check in on them later before catching the ferry back to Capri. I bet you’re starving.”

  As soon as he says it I realize I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I am starving. “Okay,” I say, “but would you mind waiting while I run into a local farmacia for a few things?” I say things in a way I hope Lyros will take to mean private female things so he doesn’t offer to accompany me, which he doesn’t. Instead he tells me he’ll be waiting outside the main entrance of the hospital.

  I buy the Tombola della Smorfia game in the pharmacy. The
cover shows a game board divided into little squares with pictures like the ones on the tiles I’ve found. I’d like to look at it right away, but I don’t want to keep Lyros waiting.

  When I get back to the hospital entrance, I find John Lyros standing outside. He’s holding open the passenger door of a bright red Alfa Romeo.

  “Wow,” I say, sliding into the leather seat, “this isn’t a rental, is it?”

  “No.” He shifts gears and steers around the crowd of teenage boys that have assembled to admire the car. “I bought it last month, but it’s really no use to me on the island so I’m keeping it in a garage here. It seems a shame, though. I haven’t been able to take it out on the open road.” He turns to me, those lavender eyes glinting. “Would you like to take a drive?”

  And of all the questions I’ve been asked today this one seems the simplest, and least mysterious, to answer. “Sure,” I say, adjusting the seat to a more comfortable position. “Why not?”

  Instead of heading south toward the more glamorous destinations of Sorrento and Amalfi we drive north toward the Phlegraeon Fields.

  “I know a great little seafood place near Baia,” John tells me, “and the area’s less touristy than the Sorrentine Peninsula.”

  “Maybe because of the name. I’ve always thought ‘Phlegraeon’ sounded like a skin rash. The translation—the burning fields—isn’t much more appealing.”

  Lyros laughs. “You’re right, but let’s not suggest an alternative to the tourist board or the place will be swamped. The ground is geologically unstable. Although there hasn’t been a major eruption in the area since 1538, the ground level of the port of Pozzuoli moves up and down when the magma beneath the sea level surges. You can still see sulfurous vapors coming out of craters and cracks in the ground. That’s why the Greek settlers thought it was the entrance to the underworld.”

  “Basically, you’re taking me to Hell for dinner.”

  He half turns to me, smiling. “Yes, but I promise to bring you back.”