“So,” Tibor said, “you did not come to Rome just to tune an organ. Not exactly.”
“What is that?” Louiza said, standing and reaching for the canister in Malory’s hand.
“The Pip,” Malory answered. “Do you remember?”
He knelt down beside Louiza in the narrow trough between the pew and the rail in front of it, and opened the lid and held the Pip between his thumb and his middle finger. And as he did, a magnetic force teased the fingers with the Pip closer to Louiza. A magnetic force that made resistance impossible, a magnetic attraction drew Malory’s hand towards Louiza’s belly and drew towards the Pip the unmistakable shape of another hand, a tiny hand from within Louiza’s belly, a hand that rose to press and touch the Pip.
“Fututi pizda matii!” Tibor’s voice joined Malory’s amazement, but in a timbre more attuned to the phenomenon at the second pew to the right of the aisle in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The Pip was caught in a perfect intersection between Malory and Louiza and that tiny hand. Malory’s gaze floated up beyond Louiza to the dimly lit Madonna of Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation, the fresco he had seen in postcard miniature propped up against Antonella’s biscuit tin. Louiza was — there was no doubt about it — Malory’s pregnant Madonna. And Malory — and Tibor too, for that matter — would have stayed motionless in worshipful wonder of this Madonna if an unholy cry hadn’t, at that moment, erupted from Louiza’s mouth, accompanied by a splash of water on the paving stones of the church.
“Malory!” she screamed, and fell into his arms, her teeth — fine and white and sharp — digging through the corduroy sleeve of his jacket as Louiza clamped down during the first contraction.
Malory knew enough to know that Louiza was going into labor. He knew enough to know that there were better delivery rooms in Rome than the nave of Santa Maria. And he knew that it might have been easier for all concerned if Malory had led the way and his new friend, the giant Tibor, had provided the muscle and heft to the gasping weight of Louiza. But Malory also knew that his arms alone should wrap themselves around the back and thighs, should press Louiza’s damp hair beneath his chin and lift her up from the paving stones of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
And yet the weight—
“The Pip,” Louiza whispered into his ear as the contraction eased and her jaw released his jacket. “By your foot …” Sure enough, there on an uneven square of marble, illumined by the morning, the Pip glowed with anticipation of the journey. Malory bent to retrieve the shining seed.
And mirabile dictu, with the Pip in its canister in his Kit Bag, Louiza’s body, sweating and panting in temporary relief, felt no heavier to Malory than a bottle of claret or Isaac Newton’s Principia as he followed Tibor towards the door out of the church and into the piazza.
“Fatebenefratelli!” shouted Tibor, striding ahead. “We take your Principessa to meet my Principessa.”
“Principessa?” Louiza mumbled into Malory’s left ear.
“And maybe,” Tibor roared, “we save a few lives!”
1/6
HERE WERE MANY THINGS THAT LOUIZA WANTED TO SAY TO MALORY.
It had been a long time since Louiza had spoken to anyone about anything. During her months by the river in Cambridge, she rarely saw the Cottagemates. The problems she picked up and the solutions she returned so occupied the many studies and corridors and niches of her mind that she was well-insulated against what her father called “the universal human need for conversation.” But the pull from the cottage to the church of St. George, the sight of Malory, first on the towpath by the Cam and then graveside with the vicar, the journey to Rome and the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva by train, plane — how and with what she could barely remember — the necessity of the trip as strong as the kick of life inside her, made Louiza realize that for months she had been holding mouthfuls of vowels and consonants for him, for Malory. As if she had been frightened that if she wasted these words in public conversation, she would lose the air in her lungs, the chords in her throat, the lift in her tongue, that special language only she and Malory shared that had first led her to talk about i and u in the dusty afternoon rays of the organ loft.
There were many things that Louiza wanted to say to Malory.
Not about the cottage, which was boring and, in any case, she couldn’t understand. Not about the Cottagemates either, or the change in the seasons along the river, or even the change in her own season.
She wanted to tell him about the problems. Not the solutions, the problems.
She had begun to feel, particularly in the past few months as her own secret had grown inside her, that she was seeing something, becoming aware, recognizing a pattern in the problems they were bringing her in the mornings, the problems that were left for her on the kitchen table.
They were all problems about origins: equations about sources, about where things came from. Louiza knew, of course, from a life in the countryside of East Anglia, about chickens and eggs, about the grunts of sows birthing in straw and muck, about lambs born in forgotten ditches and discovered only after the thaw in the recovered memory of lone sheep. She knew that the movement inside her was generated by something more biological than a chance meeting one spring afternoon in the organ loft of a village church. She even knew something about the various theories of the origins of the universe, about the physical forces unleashed by the Big Bang. And her father had an Anglican word to explain all origins.
What she wanted to tell Malory was more elemental than God.
“I saw—” she began.
Malory stopped just outside the door of the church on the piazza of Santa Maria sopra Minerva as Louiza’s contraction dug into the back of his neck and an exposed piece of his left wrist. He wanted to tell Louiza that it would be all right, that she was going to be fine, that he was with her, that he would stay with her, that he would never leave her again. But half his body was resetting its muscles after the run down the nave of the church into the piazza, and the other half was wincing at the pain in his own neck and wrist. What little attention he had left was surprised by the statue of the elephant carrying the obelisk in the center of the piazza. Malory could have sworn that the night before, when he had knocked on the door of the Dominican monastery, the elephant had been painted an enamel midnight blue, as rich as the ceiling of the nave of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. But now — there was no question, even though he was half-starved of oxygen — the elephant was the crimson of the cardinals whom Fra Mario believed forse oggi would choose a new pope.
“I thought—” Malory began.
“Make no mistake, Malory,” Tibor said. “There is a war going on.”
“War?” Malory asked.
“Three hundred and something years ago, Fra Domenico Paglia, the Grand Poo-Bah of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, found an Egyptian obelisk buried in his blessed cloister, a scrap from the time of the Romans. So, Fra Domenico decided to erect this puli in front of the piazza and held a competition to design an all-purpose obelisk holder. One of the finalists was Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Mister Baroque, the drinking buddy of four or five popes and a couple of dozen cardinals. The other — surprise, surprise — was Fra Domenico himself. Bernini won, of course. Fra D. was an amateur who only had time for a bust or two when he wasn’t condemning heretics. But that didn’t stop him from showing Bernini who’s boss. He offered Bernini some divinely received structural advice, how the weight of the obelisk would fracture the thirteenth and fourteenth lumbar vertebrae of the elephant. Bernini knew Fra Domenico was weak on the anatomy of pachyderms. But he also knew that the Dominicans were the Hounds of God and would bite hard if he didn’t lend at least one ear to this inquisitorial engineer.