All this would come at some stage in that grey place called the future, which revealed itself a little day by day, like a shape emerging from one of the all-consuming mists that sometimes enshrouded the Aventino in winter, making it a ghostly world, unfamiliar to him, full of hidden, furtive noises and unseen creatures.
An elephant could hide in that kind of fog, Alessio thought. Or a tiger, or some kind of beast no one, except Piranesi in his gloomiest moments, could imagine. Then he reminded himself of what his father had said only a few days before, not quite cross, not quite.
No one gains from an overactive imagination.
No one needed such a thing on a day like this either. It was the middle of June, a beautiful, warm, sunny morning, with no hint of the fierce inferno that would fall from the bright blue sky well before the onset of August. At that moment he had room in his head for just a single wonder, one he insisted on seeing before he went to Santa Cecilia and began the day, as befitted a school dedicated to the patron saint of music, with a chorus of song in which he made sure his own, pitch-perfect voice was always uppermost.
“Alessio,” Giorgio Bramante said again, a little brusquely.
He knew what his father was thinking. At seven, tall and strong for his age, he was too old for these games. A little — what was the word he’d heard his father use once? — headstrong too.
Or perhaps, as his grandmother once said, he recognised himself in his son. They were alike, or so some claimed. And, at the party, his father was the one who picked out the parcel with the glasses, hoping, perhaps, to bring the event to an end as quickly as possible. So it was only right that he bear some accountability for the toy.
Alessio was unsure how old he was when his father first introduced him to the keyhole. He had soon realised that it was a secret shared. From time to time others would walk up to the green door and take a peek. Occasionally taxis would stop in the square and release a few baffled tourists, which seemed a sin. This was a private ritual to be kept among the few, those who lived on the Aventino hill, Alessio thought. Not handed out to anyone.
The secret was to be found on the river side of the piazza, at the centre of a white marble gatehouse, ornate and amusing, one of the favourite designs, he had no doubt, of that man with the moustache who still lived in his head. The upper part of the structure was fringed with ivy that fell over what looked like four windows, although they were filled in with stone — “blind” was the word Giorgio Bramante, who was fond of architecture and building techniques, used. Now that he was older Alessio realised the style was not unlike one of the mausoleums his father had shown him when they went together to excavations and exhibitions around the city. The difference was that the gatehouse possessed, in the centre, a heavy, two-piece door, old and solid and clearly well used, a structure that whispered, in a low, firm voice: Keep out.
Mausoleums were for dead people, who had no need of doors that opened and closed much. This place, his father had explained all those years ago, was the entrance to the garden of the mansion of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, leader of an ancient and honourable order, with members around the world, some of whom were fortunate enough, from time to time, to make a pilgrimage to this very spot.
Alessio could still remember first hearing that there were knights living nearby. He’d lain awake in bed that evening wondering if he’d hear their horses neighing in the warm summer breeze, or the clash of their swords on armour as they jousted in the secret garden beyond Piranesi’s square. Did they take young boys as pages, as knights in the making? Was there a round table? Some blood oath which swore them to silent, enduring brotherhood? A book where their good deeds were recorded in a hidden language, impenetrable to anyone outside the order?
Even now Alessio had no idea. Hardly anyone came or went from the place. He’d given up watching. Perhaps they only emerged in the dark, when he was in bed, wide awake, wondering what he’d done to be expelled from the living world for no good reason.
A Carabinieri car sat by the gatehouse most of the time, two bored-looking officers inside ostentatiously eyeing visitors to make sure no one became too curious. That rather killed the glamour of the Knights of Malta. It was hard to imagine an order of true gallantry would need men in uniforms, with conspicuous guns, to watch the door to its grand mansion.
But there was a miracle there, one he’d grown up with. He could still remember the days when his father used to pick him up, firm arms beneath his weak ones, lifting gently, until his eye reached the keyhole in the door, old green paint chipped away over the centuries to reveal something like lead or dull silver beneath.
Piranesi — it must have been him, no one else would have had the wit or the talent — had performed one last trick in the square. Somehow the architect had managed to align the keyhole of the Knights’ mansion directly with the basilica of St. Peter’s, which lay a couple of kilometres away beyond the Tiber. Peering through the tiny gap in the door produced an image that was just like a painting itself. The gravel path pointed straight across the river to its subject, shrouded on both sides by a tunnel of thick cypresses, dark green exclamation marks so high they stretched beyond the scope of the keyhole, forming a hidden canopy above everything he could see. At the end of this natural passageway, framed, on a fine day, in a bright, upright rectangle of light, stood the great church dome, which seemed suspended in the air, as if by magic.
Alessio knew about artists. The dome was the work of Michelangelo. Perhaps he and Piranesi had met sometime and made a pact: You build your church, I’ll make my keyhole, and one day someone will spot the trick.
Alessio could imagine Piranesi twirling his moustache at that idea. He could imagine, too, that there were other riddles, other secrets, undiscovered across the centuries, waiting for him to be born and start on their trail.
Can you see it?
This was the ritual, a small but important one that began every school day, every weekend walk that passed through Piranesi’s square. When Alessio peered through the keyhole of the mansion of the Knights of Malta, what he saw through the lines of trees, magnificent across the river, was proof that the world was whole, that life went on. What Alessio had only come to realise of late was that his father required this reassurance as much as he did himself. With this small daily ceremony the bond between them was renewed.
Yes, the young child would say, day after day, earnestly squinting through the narrow metal hole, trying to locate the vast white upturned coffee cup across the river hovering mystically in the bright air, a solid if mysterious fact in the world around them, one that never changed, one that predated their own existence and would stay with them forever through never-ending time.
Yes. It’s still there.
The day could begin. School and singing and games. The safe routine of family life. And other rituals too. His birthday celebration was a kind of ceremony. His entry into the special age — seven, the magical number — disguised as a party for infants. One where his father had picked out the stupid present from the lucky dip, something that seemed interesting when Alessio read the packaging, but just puzzled him now he tried it out.