Think, Francesco, think. But he didn’t know what to do, except what he was doing.
The operator left him on hold too long, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of hanging up. He couldn’t stop. Finally someone answered on the other end of the line. No news. They couldn’t help him. Fury mixed with apprehension overcame Francesco.
‘Listen up. I know she was called by someone in the Vatican,’ he lied. ‘I saw the priest who came to get her. You have an hour,’ he emphasized, raising a finger, ‘one hour to give me news. If not, her face is going to be on all the lead stories of the international news media, and I’m going to accuse you of kidnapping a British citizen. Do you understand? I’ll turn the eyes of the world on you. One hour.’ Francesco was fed up.
The operator maintained the same serene, routine voice and said she’d communicate the message to the proper party, wished him good night, and hung up.
Tears filled his eyes, but didn’t fall. He covered his face in his hands and took a deep breath. He was exhausted. He looked at his wristwatch. It was two thirty in the morning. He got up and went to the window, drew the curtain back, and looked down. There was no sign of the Mercedes or Sarah. The pavement was wet, parked cars covered with drops, but it was not raining. On the other side of the street he saw the steps leading to the engineering school and the Church of Saint Peter in Chains, where the chains that had bound Saint Peter on his fateful journey to Rome could be found, as well as a monumental statue of Moses by Michelangelo. The steps passed below the palace of the Borgias — Rodrigo, Cesare, and the beautiful Lucrezia — who in other times wandered through these streets, masters of Rome, but Francesco didn’t think about this. He ignored the history of the building on the other side of the street.
Where are you, Sarah? he asked himself.
He felt like waking up the whole place with a huge outcry, but Sarah might just saunter into the room at any time without a mark, calm, with her usual composure, calling him an idiot for entertaining these fantasies. He remembered her nausea and dry heaves, and felt tightness in his chest.
Outside there was little movement. A car or two passing in the direction of the Piazza dell’Esquilino, a car coming down Via dei Fori Imperiali. Rome slept the eternal sleep of night, disordered layers of time flowing together. The streets, plazas, alleys, avenues, and all the roads came together in Rome, this millennial city, and no street ended in a dead end. There was no better city to disappear in than this, where everything was connected, like arteries in the human body.
The phone ringing on the bed startled Francesco so much that he jumped. He immediately grabbed it and looked at the screen. An unknown number. Tonight was not going to be easy. He took a deep breath and answered the call.
22
Of all the professions exercised on the surface of the globe, none was as peculiar as Ursino’s.
For forty years he had carried out his illustrious office from Monday to Friday, sometimes Saturday, but never on our Lord’s day of rest, since if He rested on the seventh day, who was Ursino to do differently?
He was grateful to Pope Montini, recorded in the rolls of history as Paul VI, for having designated him for such a prestigious and picturesque role.
He had the privilege of working in the apostolic palace on the ground floor in a room called the Relic Room. It contained thousands of bones of accepted saints celebrated by the Holy Mother Church and sent them to new churches built every year throughout the world. These relics, diligently sent in small quantities by Ursino, were what gave sanctity to the new place that without a bone, without the mystery of something used or touched by the saint, would be nothing more than a space without divine aid, a temple in which the name of the Lord could not be invoked, at least not by the Roman Catholic Church, since it would be invoked in vain.
Whenever possible, Ursino took care to send a relic of the saint that the new church celebrated. A piece of Saint Andres’s tibia if the church was dedicated to him, and if one existed in the thousands of drawers that filled the giant cases with such relics. Of course, that most sacred archive contained only one of Saint Andres’s fingers, part of a skull, and pieces of the cross on which he was martyred, all sent to Patras, where he was patron, decades ago.
He was diligent, yes, but the Milanese Ursino had a fault. He wasn’t very sociable, perhaps from spending so much time alone caring for the relics, the requests, and the new sacred bones that arrived less frequently now that there were fewer saints. The protocol had become so difficult that today it was extremely hard to pass from the level of sinner to the society of saints.
Although he would deny it if asked, the requests for relics were fewer now, too. Forty years ago he had more than one request a day: a piece of Saint Jerome’s radial, a splinter from Saint Margaret’s wheel, or Saint Nicolas’s metatarsal — back when he was a saint, not long, since he ceased being one under Paul VI. Now Ursino passed weeks in which all he did was organize the immaculate archive of relics so that he knew exactly where something was stored in the immense cases that guarded such sacred content.
In earlier days the schedule was tight for the amount of work he had. Lots of discipline, rules, and organization were necessary to fulfill all the requests and sanctify thousands of Catholic churches around the world. Now he had the luxury of looking through the shelves and inventing things to occupy his time.
A portrait of Pope Benedict dominated the wall near his dark oak desk. Working in front of the wall, he often looked at it. He was an austere figure, unhappy, without joy, or charisma, but a good man. He had dealt with him a few times over the course of the last twenty years, and knew that the Holy Father was a very educated, intelligent man who wanted only to improve the church.
‘Is it too late for an old grump?’ Ursino heard a friendly voice behind him.
The Milanese didn’t turn around, and continued to sort some of the vertebrae of Saint Ephigenia, a contemporary of Jesus, into some small linen bags.
‘I can ask the same. Has the Austrian iceman come to see me?’
‘I had a meeting that lasted all night, and now I’m going to rest,’ Hans Schmidt explained.
Ursino got up, approached Schmidt, and embraced him. ‘It’s been a long time, old friend.’ He held up a linen bag. ‘I’m waiting for a telephone call.’
‘Late, it seems.’
Ursino pulled out a chair and invited Schmidt to sit. ‘Are you still running around with crazy ideas in your head?’
‘What do you call a crazy idea?’ Schmidt asked.
‘I read your writings. A little avant-garde for me. The idea of the observer over the thinker made me nervous.’
Ursino sat in his chair and sighed.
‘They’re ideas,’ Hans replied without further elaboration.
Ursino sniffed and stuck a finger in his nose to remove what was there. Forgivable manners for someone who worked alone for decades, and surely not a sin in the eyes of our Lord God. ‘The idea that my thoughts were not my own went over my head. I couldn’t understand it.’
Hans smiled. ‘Have you ever done something that was contrary to the will of your inner voice?’
Ursino thought a few moments in doubt and rubbed his chubby belly. ‘Yeah.’
‘Your inner voice is the thinker. That which didn’t hear the voice is the observer, or… you.’
‘Are you telling me I’m two people? One is already too much for me,’ Ursino joked impolitely with a grin.
‘No, Ursino. We’re only the observer,’ Schmidt explained, ‘but we think we’re the thinker, and we’re prisoners of our thoughts when ultimately our thought is simply a reasoning to help us from a practical point of view.’