“I can see it’s time for me to be scooting along,” she said sharply. She pushed the scooter off its stand, popped the clutch, and accelerated onto Via Triboniano, which borders the west side of the piazza.
The attendant’s remark got her thinking about the first time she had rented a scooter in Italy. She was in Florence and observed to an English painter she had met that “The young women seem so spirited, so—”
“Fulfilled,” he offered somewhat smugly.
“Exactly,” she said. “They’ve been liberated. They have jobs, incomes, careers.”
“And motor scooters,” he added with an enigmatic smile. “They have motor scooters.”
Melanie didn’t understand.
Hze teased her mercilessly, and refused to explain, prompting her to rent one. And then she understood: the cobblestone streets, the steady vibration, the stimulating sensation building. As a teenager, she’d made a similar discovery galloping bareback across the New Hampshire countryside on her chestnut colt.
The airy dome of Capella di Sant’Ivo — the fourteenth-century church in Palazzo di Sapienza where Pope Boniface VIII, a Machiavellian churchman who wielded the power of his office with unscrupulous abandon, founded the University of Rome — shimmered in the afternoon light as Melanie approached on her scooter.
The state-funded institution, directly across the Tiber from the Vatican, bestows degrees in the full range of arts and sciences. In 1935, the University was awarded modern accredition and moved to more spacious quarters. Nevertheless, records are still kept at the Sapienza, which now houses the State Archives.
The courtyard between the two massive wings was clogged with traffic as Melanie cruised the grounds on the motor scooter in search of the records office. The ride and the cold air had reddened her complexion and lifted her spirits.
A sign that read UNIVERSITA L’UFFICIO REGISTRAZIONE got her attention. She backed off the throttle and steered the Motobecane into a parking area that looked like a motor scooter convention. She hurried up the steps of the administration building and, after a few wrong turns in the maze of corridors, found the Records Office.
The room had Renaissance proportions and had once been a refrectory. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, its plaster darkened from centuries of burning tallow, stood several cluttered desks, rows of file cabinets, and a modern glass enclosure that created a private space for the supervisor.
Melanie paused to evaluate the student clerks behind the service counter, and approached the one she judged had the most easygoing nature of the three.
The young fellow looked up from the file cards he was methodically alphabetizing.
“Prego signora?” he said.
“Si,” she replied. “Parla inglese, perfavore? You speak English?”
He held his thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart. “Capisco un po’—I think,” he replied, breaking into the friendly smile she had anticipated.
Melanie smiled back, relieved. “I’m trying to find someone,” she said slowly in a louder than normal voice, making the assumption — for whatever reason most people do — that comprehension increases with volume. “He was a student here in the late thirties.”
“Thirties?” the clerk exclaimed.
He wasn’t a day over nineteen, and as far as he was concerned, she could just as well have said 1300s.
“Yes, the years just prior to the war. His name’s Deschin. Aleksei Deschin.”
Melanie took a piece of paper and pencil from the counter, and began neatly printing the name.
In the rows of gray steel cabinets behind them, another clerk was filing document folders that were in a wheeled cart. Marco Profetta had no reason to pay attention to their conversation — not until he heard Melanie say, “Deschin.” His eyes flickered at the first mention. He mused when she repeated it, then coolly resumed his filing chores, covering his reaction.
Melanie finished writing Deschin’s name on the slip of paper, and handed it to the clerk.
He stared at it blankly for a moment.
“You do have records that go back that far, don’t you?” she prompted optimistically.
The young clerk shrugged, and splayed his hands.
“Can you find out? Is there someone who might—”
“Aspetti un momento,” he said, interrupting her. He turned from Melanie, crossed the room, and entered the glass enclosure. A slim, fashionably attired woman was working at a computer terminal.
Melanie couldn’t hear what was being said. But she could see the clerk explaining, and the woman responding with a pained expression, and making quick little negative movements with her head. Melanie decided it was time to be more assertive, and walked around the counter to the glass enclosure.
“Tell her I’m trying to find my father,” she said, addressing the clerk. “Tell her it’s very important.”
The supervisor looked up with a slightly piqued expression. “I’m sorry, but we can’t accommodate you,” she replied coolly, in excellent English. “Current records are on the computer. Those from recent years, though inactive, are filed here as you can see. But anything from before the war—” she let the sentence trail off, shaking no with the same quick movement of her head she had used with the clerk, then resumed, “—they would be almost impossible to retrieve.”
“But you do have them,” Melanie said, undaunted.
“Some,” the supervisor reluctantly admitted. “But it could take days, even weeks, in the archives just to find the proper volume. If it wasn’t destroyed in the war. I’d like to help you, but—”
“Then please hear me out,” Melanie interrupted in a desperate voice. “The only thing I know about my father is that he was a student here. That and his name. Maybe the records were destroyed in the war. Maybe he was destroyed in it,” she added glumly. “Or maybe he fell out of bed twenty years ago and broke his neck. I don’t know. Look, I realize the chances of finding him are pretty slim. But I have to try. I have to find out as much about him as I can. And I have nowhere else to start. Nowhere. You’re all I’ve got. I’d appreciate whatever help you can give me.”
The supervisor was visibly touched, her expression more sympathetic now. “Perhaps Gianni can find the records for you,” she said, shifting her look to the clerk.
“I have class,” he said, glad to have an excuse to avoid the dank, musty caverns beneath the Sapienza. He turned to Melanie, and lifted a shoulder in an apologetic shrug. “Ciao, Signora,” he said as he left.
Melanie thought for a moment, then brightened with an idea. “Suppose I look for them?” she said, turning back to the supervisor. “If the records are in the archives, I’ll find them, believe me. I don’t care how long it takes. Would that be okay?”
The supervisor considered the suggestion for a moment, and smiled. “I don’t see why not.”
“Thank you. Really, I can’t tell you what this means to me,” Melanie said.
“There is a form you must fill out first,” the supervisor said, reverting to a more businesslike manner. “We are very cautious about releasing data on our alumni, and to whom.”
She got up from her chair, and stepped to the opening in the glass enclosure.
“Marco?” she called out to the clerk who was still filing documents in the rows of steel cabinets. “Marco, venga qui?”
Marco didn’t look up from the folders in the cart immediately. When he did, he pointed to himself, indicating he was uncertain she was addressing him.
“Si, Marco,” she replied. “E mi porta un forma requisizioni?”