The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  I fall to my knees, searching for Elgin and Agnes in the spume and splinters from the crash, afraid they’ve been hit by the boat, but Elgin’s just a few feet away from the now broken dock, treading water on his back, holding Agnes in a lifesaving grip. I find a rubber bumper hanging from the edge of the dock and toss it to them and only then do I look up and scan the water for Maria and Ely.

  “What in the world got into Maria?” I say. “Why does she care so much about The Golden Verses?”

  “It’s not The Golden Verses she wants,” Lyros says. “She thinks it’s a Christian gospel that Phineas was carrying. But she’s a fool; they’re going to drown each other and anyone who tries to get in between them.”

  I’m forced to agree with him. We get Agnes onto the dock where Lyros keeps an eye on her. Elgin, though, swims away from the dock toward the struggling pair. He throws an arm around Maria’s neck and begins pulling her back toward the dock. It would work, only Maria won’t let go of the strap of the canvas bag, which has come over Ely’s head but not out of Ely’s grasp.

  “Let it go,” I scream. “The scroll’s ruined by now anyway.” But even as I say it I can’t help wondering what George’s spectrograph might still be able to decipher. Perhaps that’s what Maria and Ely are thinking, too, because neither will let go of the bag. Maria is holding on with her right hand, and she uses her left to backhand Elgin in the face—a blow so hard I’m afraid it will knock Elgin out. It doesn’t, but it does make him release his hold on her. At the same moment, Ely lunges at Maria to wrest the bag away. They both go under. The surface roils and bubbles as if a whirlpool were sucking them under, and then there’s a sudden calm and the water goes still.

  In the awful silence that follows I stare into the water, trying so hard to see below the dark surface that I don’t notice at first that Lyros and Agnes have come up behind me. I turn around to warn Lyros not to let Agnes get away, but when I see Agnes’s face I realize that escape is the last thing on her mind. The grime from the tunnels has stained her face the color of bronze, out of which her blue eyes stare at the water like the glass eyes of ancient statues. Then something quivers there—a look of hope—and I turn back to the water to see what’s emerged. It’s not Ely, though, it’s Maria, spitting water as Elgin pulls her back to the dock.

  “Ely’s at the bottom,” Maria sputters. “He won’t let go of the scroll.”

  From beside me I hear a high wild cry—a sound like the screams Persephone’s maidens might have made when Demeter turned them into sirens—and Agnes rushes past me. I reach out to grab her—my fingers clasp onto the strap of her backpack—but she peels herself out of it, as easily as if she were shedding old skin, and dives into the water. Elgin is still trying to hold up Maria. I see on his face that he’s torn between who he should save. I kneel down on the dock to help Maria up and shout at Lyros to go after Agnes and Ely.

  “And get killed myself?” Lyros says, helping me pull Maria out of the water. “After what they’ve done?”

  Before I can tell him what I think of him, Elgin catches my eye. In that moment’s look I know that he’s thinking about the fight we had under the Porta Marina when I accused him of being a coward. I open my mouth to tell him no, I didn’t mean it, I don’t want him to risk his life for Ely and Agnes, but he’s shouting at Lyros and Maria not to let me follow. He surface dives into the water, disappearing so fast it’s like he’s been swallowed up by the sea.

  We stare into the black water, like children watching a Magic Eight Ball waiting for it to reveal their fortunes. Then I see something white rising up and lean farther over the edge to see if it’s his face, but it’s only a scrap of paper. A note sent from the underworld. A single word in Ancient Greek: Nemesis. Retribution.

  Every night for the next seven I dream that I am drowning. I feel the weight of sea water pressing on my lungs and watch the bright azure water darken to twilight blue. I awake drenched in sweat, gasping in the airless dark, and for a minute I think I’m still in the pit where Iusta died. I have to turn on all the lights and reassure myself I’m not underground. I’m just at the Hotel Convento where the nuns only pretended that they had been buried alive.

  On my seventh morning in Naples, Silvio, noticing the shadows under my eyes and my generally haunted look, takes pity on me.

  “Today I send up the mechanic to your room,” he tells me as I enter the breakfast room. And then, waving a reproving finger at me: “You should have told me your air conditioner was not working so well.”

  “Did you hear that?” I ask Elgin as I join him at a table near the edge of the terrace. “I guess the air-conditioning repairmen’s union is finished striking.”

  “Now if only we could get the taxi union to see reason,” Elgin replies with a wan smile. It’s a nice change from the haunted look he’s worn since he brought Ely and Agnes up from the water. He told me later that when he found them at the bottom of the harbor Agnes had entwined her body around Ely’s and when he tried to pull her away she had fought him. He had thought that if he saved Ely first, Agnes would follow, but she hadn’t. She must have lost consciousness. By the time Elgin went back down, her lungs had filled with water. Later, being loaded in the ambulance, she hadn’t regained consciousness.

  “Do you have to go back to the excavation police today?” I ask.

  He manages another small smile at my name for the Ufficio Sequestri e Scavi Clandestini and also for the waitress who brings him a cappuccino with a heart drawn in the foam on the top.

  “Yes,” he says, “I have to explain one more time not only how a thousands-of-years-old papyrus scroll found its way out of the Villa della Notte and into the Bay of Naples, but also how it was torn to shreds by the two people who wanted it the most.”

  “Let Maria explain that part.” I dip a lemon cornetto into my foamy coffee. “Or Ely.”

  Elgin frowns. “How did you know he had regained consciousness? Did you call the hospital?”

  “I did not!” I say so vehemently that a German couple on the other side of the terrace lift up their heads from their guidebooks to stare. “No,” I whisper, angry at myself when I feel the blood rising to my face. It’s shame over looking once again like an ugly American, but Elgin will think it’s an admission of guilt. “The hospital called me. It seems, well,” I flounder, realizing that I’ve trapped myself into a worse admission than calling the hospital. Elgin is still staring at me. I look away from him and toward the bright blue bowl of the bay to avoid the recrimination in his eyes. “It seems Ely still had me listed on his insurance as his emergency contact.”

  I steal a look at Elgin. His jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscles on the side of his face pulsing. “Really?” he says. “What about his parents?”

  “Parent,” I say. “His father called me two days ago. Ru—Ely’s mother died three years ago.” I sip my cooling coffee and look back over the Neopolitan rooftops, focusing on a swag of brightly colored laundry to keep from crying at the memory of Howie Markowitz’s voice when he told me about Ruth. “He told me he wasn’t coming to Italy. He blamed Ely for Ruth dying.”

  Elgin nods. “So that’s one more death on Ely’s head. The hospital didn’t ask you to see Ely, did they?”

  “No,” I say, tossing the rest of my pastry crumbs to a swallow that has alighted on the terrace. “But the doctor who called me said he’s been asking for me.”

  “You’re not going to see him, are you?”

  “Of course not!” I say, again loudly enough to draw the German tourists’ attention. They must think we’re a married couple having a fight. The thought makes me blush again and I see that Elgin’s face is red, too. Since that kiss in the tunnel, Elgin hasn’t touched me. I wasn’t even sure if he remembered it. But now the sultry morning light between us ripples with unvoiced longing. Against the backdrop of blue sky and bay, his eyes are the hot azure of the water in my dreams, before it darkens to twilight, and make me feel, for a moment, as giddily breathless.

&nbs
p; “I’ll never forgive him for everything he’s done,” I assure Elgin, “but I have to go to the hospital to sign some forms.”

  “Fine,” Elgin says. “Make sure one of them’s a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form. I’m still sorry I gave him mouth to mouth.”

  I have to take a funicular and then a bus to reach the hospital. Silvio offers to find me a private car, but I decline because that seems wrong to me during a strike, and besides, I’m in no rush. On the way to the funicular station I step into the little church next to the Hotel Convento. I come here almost every day to light a candle for Odette. Although she wasn’t Catholic, I think she’d approve of this modest little church.

  As I light the candle I thank her, as I do every day, for guiding me out of the pit. Today I pause when I’m done, the lit match still in my hand. “I’m going to the hospital,” I whisper, “but not to see Ely. Please don’t tell me that I have to.” I wait another second, but the church, and the inside of my head, are silent. “Good. Then we’re agreed on that.” I blow the match out, my breath condensing in the air like smoke. Only when I’m outside do I wonder how that could happen in this heat.

  At the station, I let the first funicular go without me because it’s too crowded, and then when I switch to the bus I feel like even its labored, un-air-conditioned progress through the jammed city streets is getting me to my destination too quickly. When the bus passes the Archaeological Museum, I consider getting out there instead. I could spend an hour in the quiet company of Maria Prezziotti, who is working there in the epigraphic collection on a fourth-century AD calendar of festivals. She confessed to me a few days ago that the reason the Vatican had agreed to help fund the Papyrus Project was because certain scholars believed that the scroll Phineas had carried from the East was an early Christian gospel. “I thought Petronia Iusta was interested in the scroll because she was an early Christian,” she told me. The fact that she’d been right about that part gave her little consolation now that the scroll has been destroyed. She’d retreated to the dusty, airless vaults of the Museo Archaeologico to pore over ancient marble inscriptions. Right now, it seems like a more appealing destination than the hospital for the incurables, but then I remember that John Lyros might be with her.

  One of the things I haven’t mentioned to Elgin is that while he was testifying at the Ufficio two days ago, John Lyros came to see me. He wanted to make sure I understood that while Ely’s claim that he was the leader of the Tetraktys wasn’t true, he’d lied when he told me he’d never heard of the Tetraktys. Not only had he belonged to the group at one point, he had donated quite a bit of money to them. “I thought their dedication to Pythagoras was inspiring. I read the sermons your ex-boyfriend wrote on The Golden Verses. He believed that if the original writings of Pythagoras could be found, a new world order would come into being. These sermons were so galvanizing that even though they were delivered by one of the didaskaloi while Ely sat by in silence, the community made Ely their magos. That was a year ago. I began to see how fanatic the group had become and decided to sever ties with them—but I wasn’t able to regain the money I’d given them. Apparently, it was enough money to finance Ely’s trip to Italy. I should have realized when Simon told me that he’d seen Agnes walking in Pompeii with a young dark-haired man it was Ely. Instead I dismissed him as paranoid. I’m afraid Agnes overheard our conversation that night on the sea steps and decided to silence him. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to do with me, but if you change your mind, I’ll be working at the Archaeological Museum for a few days helping Maria in the epigraphic collection. Come visit me.”

  Although John Lyros’s lapses in judgment are no worse than mine I stay on the bus until it passes the long facade of the museum and reaches the Piazza Cavour. Silvio told me that the hospital was only a block away from the San Gennaro entrance into the old city.

  I find the hospital easily enough and miraculously I also find the administration offices, where I sign a sheaf of forms permitting the hospital to do whatever they want with Ely. Each time I sign my name I say to myself, “There! I’m done with you!” but still I walk out of the office with my head bowed, as if I’d just abandoned a puppy at the pound. I’m so reluctant to meet anyone’s eye that I bump into the first person I pass in the hall: a thin boy with lank blond hair.

  “Sorry,” he mutters. “I mean, scusa.” He brushes the hair out of his eyes as he passes me and I’m startled by an unexpected glint of turquoise.

  “Sam? Sam Tyler?” I ask, catching up to him in the hallway. “It’s Sophie Chase. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” He continues down the hall, so I fall into step beside him. “I’m staying until we can take Agnes back to Texas. Her parents are too freaked out to deal with it. I figure it’s the least I can do.”

  “Sam, none of what happened was your fault—”

  He freezes me with a look without breaking his pace. “Not my fault? I took her to her first Tetraktys meeting. She didn’t want to go—said her parents thought everything New Age was demonic. But I thought it would do her good to let her see that not all religion fit into her parents’ narrow definition of right and wrong. You know her father actually used to make her pray to be forgiven for being born a bastard and a Catholic?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” I have to double-step to keep up with him, his anger fueling his pace. “That’s an awful way to grow up.”

  Sam shakes his head. “I should have known she’d latch on to whatever group offered her some sense of belonging. By the time I realized how bad they were, she was hooked. When I refused to go to the meetings with her, she took Dale—”

  “And took him out to New Mexico during spring break?”

  “Yeah. When she came back without him, I thought: Good, maybe he’ll be the fanatic and she’s over it. But I hadn’t realized that she’d fallen for your ex.”

  I nod. I’ve imagined over the last week that the story Ely told me about the sweeping initiate pausing in the doorway to listen in on the machinations of the magos and his didaskaloi were true—only the initiate was Dale and the magos was Ely. What Dale overheard were Ely’s plans to place Agnes with the Papyrus Project as a tool to acquire The Golden Verses from the Villa della Notte in Herculaneum before Elgin Lawrence and his Papyrus Project could get it. In other words, Agnes wouldn’t be coming back for Dale that summer; she would be going to Italy instead—and with Ely. That was when Dale decided to go to Austin and stop the Papyrus Project in the only way his damaged brain could come up with.

  Looking at Sam, it occurs to me that I spent the last five years of my life thinking what he’s thinking now—that I should have been able to save the person I loved. I try to think of some way of telling him what a hopeless mission it is, but he stops suddenly at a doorway and I realize that I’ve followed him not to an exit but to Agnes’s room. Beyond the door is a whitewashed room as bare as a nun’s cell and a figure swathed in white lying on the bed. A nun in a black habit sits in a chair beside the bed.

  “Don’t they even have a police guard on her?” I ask.

  Sam looks at me as if I were crazy. “Does she look like she’s in any shape to make an escape?” He gestures toward the bed as he enters the room and I find myself following him, curious in spite of myself to see exactly what shape she is in. When Elgin had found her and Ely entwined at the bottom of the harbor he’d had to pull Agnes away from Ely to bring him up and he’d inadvertantly broken her arm and her collarbone. By the time he went back for Agnes and brought her up she had stopped breathing. Paramedics had arrived by then and they took over the job of trying to bring her back to life, pounding her chest so roughly that they broke all her ribs.

  As I move closer to the bed I see that her torso is encased in a white cast and her head is held motionless by a stiff metal collar. Her face is as white as the walls of the room, but her eyes are burning with awareness. Her lips move to form words—my name, I think—but no sound comes out. Her vocal cords, I heard, w
ere also damaged by all the seawater she swallowed.

  “How long will she have to be like this?” I ask.

  “The doctors say six months.” Sam takes the chair that the nun vacates for him. “It’ll be a long haul, but they say it’s really a miracle she didn’t sustain brain damage from lack of oxygen. She’s expected to make a full recovery.”

  The nun leans over Agnes to adjust her IV tube and I see Agnes’s eyes following her motions and then flicking anxiously between me and the nun as if she were trying to tell me something. Remembering how Agnes had felt about nuns the last time we were here I imagine the message is something like Get me the hell out of here! I move a step closer to the bed so that Agnes has a clear view of my face. “I’m glad to hear that,” I say. “She’ll be able to stand trial then.”

  After I leave Agnes’s room, I become hopelessly lost. When I bump into the same nun who had treated Agnes the night we came here with Simon, I almost hug her. I tell her I’m trying to find a way out and she takes me by the hand and leads me through a maze of cavernous hallways full of curious echoes—the ghostly moans and wails, I imagine, of centuries of syphilis patients slowly losing their minds. We finally stop at an open doorway of a patient’s room. I turn to her to explain that she’s made a mistake, but she only smiles and turns away, her long black habit making a rustling sound like wings beating the air.

  Before I can follow her, a voice from the room says my name. It’s Ely’s voice.

  I can still walk away. From where I stand all I can see is the bottom of the bed with Ely’s legs covered by blankets. Another nun, this one younger than my guide, is sitting at the foot of the bed. She has a book open on her lap and is reading aloud. At first I think it must be the Bible, but then I realize it’s P. G. Wodehouse. With a pang, I remember how much Ely had loved those novels before he’d given them up for books on astral projection and transmigration of the soul. How had the nun known? And where had she come by a P. G. Wodehouse novel?