“The Pip, Malory,” Tibor repeated. “Did you bring the Pip?”
“Why?” Malory asked. The vision slunk away into the trees around the pond. The air grew light. Malory breathed. “It’s only an apple pip.”
“Then you won’t mind giving it to me?” Tibor asked. “If it’s only an apple pip.”
“Why the Pip?” Malory said.
“For a performance.” Tibor squeezed Malory’s shoulder with a pressure that seemed both kinder and more insistent than before. “A performance tonight. One show only, I promise. You’ll get it back.”
“Tibor”—Malory surprised Tibor with the shift of register and cadence—“there was a baby. Back then. In Rome.” Malory had one more question before he could feel entirely free. “A few years later, Settimio told me that the press, the public thought Cristina had a stillbirth in Rome, a miscarriage, uterus ravaged from Bucharest abortions. But that isn’t the truth, is it? Cristina had a baby. That day I met you. She did, didn’t she?” The Ospedale Fatebenefratelli. Louiza. Cristina. Images that hadn’t faded during his hermitage. “There was a baby. Is Ottavia that baby?”
“Has it occurred to you, Malory,” Tibor said, his hand dropping from Malory’s shoulder, “that maybe Ottavia is Louiza’s baby?”
“Louiza?” Malory repeated. Of course the thought had occurred to him, in that fraction of a moment when Ottavia first found him in the Villa Septimania. But he had filed it in the cabinet where he kept similar thoughts, like waking up one morning ten inches taller or with a PhD.
“Who had a baby in Fatebenefratelli, Malory? Cristina? Louiza? You? Me? Who are the fathers? Who are the mothers? ‘Oh the streets of Rome,’” Tibor sang:
are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
Malory remembered Sasha and his guitar, the Dacia, the first warm night of Rumanian friendship in Rome. And Tibor’s voice, if not completely in tune, still closer than ten minutes before:
You could almost think that you’re seeing double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
“And the baby?” Ottavia appeared. Had she been standing with them all along, hidden by her smallness? “Who was the baby?”
Tibor laughed — impossible to know what image from what Fellini that laughter hid. “You, Ottavia,” he said, “were the one we pretended was our daughter. When it was convenient.”
“On Family Days,” Ottavia said.
“And other days. Ones you didn’t see.”
“But not when I needed.”
“No,” Tibor said quietly, “maybe not. Maybe I have been wrong. Eternally wrong.”
“What’s the matter, Tibor?” Malory asked.
“I lack the Pip,” Tibor answered.
“Why the Pip?”
“You told me the story of how your Virgin Louiza, your mathematical Eve, found the Pip and not only tuned your organ, but tuned your organ!”
“Tibor, Ottavia is …”
“So … isn’t it possible that there is a power in that Pip? Isn’t it possible that, if you are descended from King David and Charlemagne and who knows how many other Grand Poo-Bahs, that your Pip is the great-grandson of that original apple from that original tree? That your Pip holds the sum of all human knowledge? And isn’t it just possible that if I swallowed the Pip with a glass of the purest rainwater, I will not only find out why I make La Principessa and Ottavia and everyone around me — and I’m including you, Malory — so unhappy? But maybe, as a bonus, the Pip will raise my pickled limp puli like Lazarus from the dead and I’ll get laid once more before I die?”
“Tibor,” Malory said, “it’s just an apple pip. If it had been able to solve anyone’s problems, don’t you think it would have solved mine?”
“The Pip, Malory. I need the Pip.” Tibor placed both his paws on Malory’s shoulders. There was such a frightening lack of harmony in his voice — not even close to the F-sharp of twenty-three years earlier, a far more desperate sound oozing from Tibor’s throat.
I have come so far, Malory thought. I have left the Villa Septimania for the first time in decades. My anger is gone, my sense of betrayal is gone. Who knows where Louiza is, if she is even alive. If I need to bring any part of the world into tune, the way I had promised my mother long ago, it is this part, this TiborTina, with Tibor, Cristina, and their daughter, my wonderful new friend, Ottavia.
And the Pip is in my pocket. What harm could it do?
“Here you are, Tibor,” Malory said, pulling the old 35-millimeter canister out of a vest pocket. He shook the Pip. A dry rattle in the throat of the canister. Malory couldn’t bear to open the top and look.
Tibor stepped back, releasing Malory from his grip. With one shaking hand, he took the canister from Malory, with the other he opened the top.
“I will not turn fifty, Malory,” Tibor said. “Je refuse.” And with that, he tipped the canister to his mouth and swallowed the Pip.
Malory couldn’t move. Tibor couldn’t move — although Malory’s paralysis was due to shock and Tibor’s due to the explosion he expected would release his body from its pain. Only Ottavia realized that performance was just that — performance.
“Tibor,” Ottavia took his elbow. “Are you okay?”
“I suffer,” Tibor whispered. A large patch of sweat had gathered below his right breast. His entire face was wet. “I suffer from Septimania.”
Malory looked at Tibor breathing heavily, two, perhaps three inches away. He wondered whether anyone had been as close to Isaac Newton — at the end of his life or ever — as he was at this moment to Tibor. And he wondered — was he right to give him the Pip?
“Come. Let’s prepare the vongole,” Ottavia said, looking up at both men. “Go to the kitchen, I’ll pick some parsley and pepperoncino and meet you there.” The girl stared into Malory for a moment. Malory felt there was a message he was missing, but by the time he thought to ask for a translation, she had run up the steps of the terrace and around the far side of the house.
“Twelve steps,” Tibor said. “How easy she makes it seem.”
Malory looked after Ottavia, and looked at Tibor looking at Ottavia.
“When Dante was up the culo of Satan, all Virgil had to do was show him a secret tunnel, and twelve lines of terza rima later he was back in the land of the living.”
And then Malory saw the plastic bag sticking out of Tibor’s pocket. And out of the opening of the bag, a handle of a gun.
“Tibor,” Malory said, “what’s that?”
“A bag,” Tibor said, taking it out of his pocket. “A gun. Here …” Tibor handed the gun to Malory. “I don’t imagine you’ve ever held one.”
Malory had no idea that a gun was so heavy. But he knew that he must not give it back to Tibor.
“Don’t worry, Malory,” Tibor smiled. “Ottavia is safe. We are all safe. I’ll put the gun inside the house.” Tibor began to reach for the gun, but stopped as he saw Malory flinch. “Or if you prefer, you can hold onto it.”
Malory set the gun carefully back into the plastic bag Tibor held out to him, and put the bag on a low table by the pond.