“Up to the paradiso of the altar of the Ara Pacis.”
“Orphans as angels.”
“Politicians and priests as the Damned.”
“Refugees and homeless as refugees and homeless.”
“Mostly Rumanians.”
“Rumanians have a colorful history with Rome.”
“I’m sorry,” Radu said, “that we can’t take you up the outside of Trajan’s Column. The whole history of Trajan’s slaughter of the Rumanians …”
“Dacians …” Sasha explained.
“His battle with the Dacians …”
“Two battles, two wars …”
“Brought them back to Rome as slaves …”
“Like us …”
“Fututi pizda matii!” Radu stopped and turned on Sasha and continued for thirty seconds in unbroken Rumanian.
“Excuse me,” Malory said, taking advantage of the pause to catch what little breath he had. “Who are you?”
Radu stopped. He pushed his oversized glasses straight on the bridge of his nose.
“Tibor didn’t tell you about the Bomb Squad?” Sasha asked.
“The Bomb Squad?” Malory wondered whether it was a mistake to leave the Driver below.
“We came out of Rumania before Tibor and Cristina.”
“Cristina?” Malory asked.
“La Principessa,” Radu explained.
“Back in Rumania, everyone was in the army. But because we are artists, we were drafted to clear mines out of the Delta of the Danube.”
“Mines?” Malory asked. “Artists?”
“Artists are expendable,” Radu explained. “But we are also very good.”
“Sasha was very good,” Radu said, starting up the stairs again. “He is guitarist. He has good ear. But Tibor was best. His nose …”
“Anything,” Sasha added. “Tibor can find anything. Music. Women. Just look what he found today.”
Malory emerged from the staircase onto the platform at the top of Trajan’s Column and looked down onto the rubble below. The sun was thinking about calling it a night, but hundreds, perhaps a thousand people had shown up at the base of Trajan’s Column. A host of women in World War I nurse’s aprons and starched hats were trying to create some order, corralling the would-be actors into pens.
“Who are those nurses?” Malory asked.
“They are the Nurses.” The note was a low F-sharp. The paw landed on Malory’s shoulder. “Also artists. And there,” Tibor pointed down into Trajan’s Forum to a woman sitting on a block of fallen marble like a princess on a camp stool, surveying the triage, “is La Principessa.”
“Tibor,” Malory said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I’ve been looking for you, Dante.”
“Malory, actually,” Malory said.
“Dante,” Tibor said finally. “You will play Dante in my production. You explained,” he turned to Radu and Sasha, “didn’t you?”
“We didn’t get to that part.”
“Fututi pizda matii!” Tibor said, but then turned and smiled at Malory. “You and me, Malory. We are both of us, like Dante said, nel mezzo del cammin, in the middle of the road of life. When I found you, when you found me up in the organ loft of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, we were both stuck in the middle of the autostrada with Cinquecento and motorini whizzing around us.”
“Tibor …”
“We were midway between the starry ceiling of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and certain death on the flagstones. You caught me with your metal hook before I fell …”
“Tibor …”
“But you. I couldn’t catch you. You are still lost. Like Dante. La Principessa saw it when you arrived at the hospital. You still need to make the journey. You are Dante, don’t you see, Malory? You need to be Dante, and I will direct you. I will be your Virgil B. DeMille!”
“Tibor,” Malory said, stepping back from the paw to gain perspective. “I’ve been looking for you for two weeks. Since that night at the hospital, at Fatebenefratelli, with Louiza and your wife — Cristina, is that right? I was only gone for an hour or two. You weren’t there when I got back.”
“So,” Tibor said. The sun dipped below the crest of the Capitoline Hill. Malory saw something dim. Or rather, he saw that he had pushed in the stop that closed off the bellows of the Rumanian giant. “Sasha, Radu,” Tibor whispered. “Go down. Send them home. Auditions are over.”
“Tomorrow at the same time?” Radu asked.
“Go,” Tibor whispered, but it had enough force to send his Bomb Squad down the spiral staircase. Malory waited for the footsteps to fade.
“Tibor, did you and Cristina leave the hospital with your baby?”
“Malory,” Tibor said and leaned over the railing, looking down onto the expectant actors and actresses, “does that look like a woman who left the hospital with a baby?” Malory took three steps towards Tibor and peered a little more gingerly. Cristina was sitting immobile on the marble block, her gray head catching the last of the sun, lunar still within the flickering motion among the ruins.
“Suor Anna thought not.”
“And Suor Anna is?” Tibor kept looking down, his wrists loose over the railing.
“The nurse who wheeled Cristina down to you in the cortile. I spoke with her the next day. She said that as soon as you and I left, the English nurse and the American doctor wheeled Cristina and Louiza to another room, an operating theater. An hour later the English nurse came out with Cristina in a wheelchair. She told Suor Anna to bring Cristina down to you in the cortile. She saw you a little while later, walking across the bridge to Trastevere.”
“So, you know,” Tibor said. “Why all the questions?”
“I don’t know what happened inside the room, inside the operating theater.”
“You tune organs, Malory. What do you think happened?”
“I think there were complications. I think Cristina had her baby, your baby. I think, perhaps, that there were reasons — maybe Roman reasons, maybe financial reasons why she couldn’t stay in the hospital with the baby. I think you went back to see the baby the next day. I think you brought it home a few days later.”
“Roman reasons,” Tibor said. “Why not Rumanian reasons?”
“What are Rumanian reasons?”
“I told you in the church, in Santa Maria on top of the Goddess of Wisdom, what I told La Principessa. If it is a girl, she must go away before I fall in love with her. If it is a boy, I will strangle him with my own hands.”
“But you didn’t mean …”
“Malory,” Tibor turned to him. “Go home. Go back and tune your organs in your country where the Theory of Evolution, the Primal Urge to Reproduce, the Social Contract and The Rule of Law and Newtonian Physics are still practiced by honest citizens. In my country — the country I carry with me that makes my back crack with the pressure and the poison — all those were burned a long time ago in a ditch that is still smoldering with a puzza that would turn your stomach if you ever visited.”
“You left the baby?”
“We saved a life,” Tibor said. “I told you at the church. I needed you to come to help me save a life.”
“You also told me not to worry,” Malory said. “When Settimio”—Malory stopped, part of him already sensitive to discretion—“when I left with those men, you told me you would stay there, you would look after my Louiza, you would wait for me.”
“So,” Tibor said, “you have come to punish me for putting the welfare of my Principessa over a promise I made to an English organ tuner I met only one hour earlier? Wouldn’t you do the same with your Louiza?”