Septimania Read online

  Louiza’s contraction subsided, her grip on Malory’s neck and wrist loosened. She giggled.

  “I like your girlfriend,” Tibor said.

  Malory smiled down at Louiza, trembling and chapped, her hair, damp from exertion, pasted to the whiteness of her cheek, but smiling up at him all the same.

  “Showtime, kids!” Tibor squeezed Malory’s shoulder and set off at a jog towards an alley at the far corner of the piazza. With the new-found strength of an elephant with an obelisk on its back, Malory lifted Louiza once again and ran. From Piazza Minerva, Malory followed Tibor down the narrow Via dei Cestari, past the windows of the liturgical boutiques, where ecclesiastical dandies ran up diocesan expense accounts with accessories for their altars and sacristies. Malory pressed Louiza’s face into his chest away from some of the more explicit artifacts—the portraits of Jesus straight off the covers of romance novels and body-building mags, the altar cloths woven with raised scarlet threads as if freshly washed in the blood of the lamb, the crowns of thorns, the boxes of 14-karat nails.

  At Largo Argentina, Tibor stopped the cars and motorini for Malory to ford the rush hour traffic and then raced ahead down a narrow vicolo to the massive door of the Palazzo Caetani on the Via delle Botteghe Oscure. Caetani, Palazzo Caetani—Malory knew the name. When the vicar mentioned something about an inheritance, Malory’s inheritance, he’d named property in Rome. A villa, or was it a palazzo? It couldn’t possibly be something this cold and massive, with an entryway ten, twenty, maybe thirty feet high, the name Caetani etched in testamentary capitals above the door. But the name Caetani, Palazzo Caetani troubled Malory’s memory as he hefted Louiza around the side of the building and followed Tibor down a narrow slalom of Cinquecentos and Citroens. He knew the name.

  “Malory?” It was Louiza struggling to say something against his chest.

  “Yes?” Malory said, pausing halfway down the alley, where a drainpipe bled a green stain of neglect on the side of the palazzo. “Tibor, wait!” he called, and crunched his ear down towards Louiza’s mouth. “What is it, Louiza?”

  “Biscuit,” Louiza said.

  “Biscuit?” Malory leaned in closer, wondering what he had heard.

  “Biscuit,” Louiza repeated. But before Malory could ask whether she was really hungry and he should stop at a café on the way to the hospital and was this really wise, Louiza screamed and writhed in another contraction. Malory held onto her as she opened and closed and squirmed and changed shape and form like—which one of the Greek water gods was it, Malory tried to remember, in which one of the Greek myths?

  And in his own struggle to remember, another memory shot its way to the surface of Malory’s sweating brain. Biscuit. Biscuit tin. Antonella’s biscuit tin. Caetani. Palazzo Caetani and Antonella’s biscuit tin and the small black-and-white television set in the Maths Faculty on Selwyn Road and the voice of Anna Ford.

  “Aldo Moro.” But now it was the voice of Tibor, who had run back from the bottom of the alley and stood with Malory. “This was where they found him. Like I said, there’s a war going on.”

  Malory remembered the TV footage he’d watched with the sobbing Antonella—the crowd in the alley, the Palazzo Caetani, of course. And the cherry Renault 4, boot open, the assassinated Prime Minister curled up in his own fetal drama.

  “Louiza wants a biscuit,” Malory said. Louiza’s body slowly relaxed, and the moisture from the latest contraction left a stain against Malory’s corduroy lapel.

  “And I want a coffee,” Tibor said, “and half a bottle of grappa. But there isn’t time.” And Tibor put a large paw on Malory’s shoulder and propelled him forward, down the alley.

  “Biscuit later, Louiza,” Malory murmured. He felt her nod, or at least felt her nose bury itself between two buttons of his shirt until it pressed its wet, friendly intimacy into his chest.

  She wanted desperately to talk to Malory, to tell him about the problems. But she couldn’t, weak with the pain and the effort and needing sleep and a biscuit, maybe two, and some tea, and a way to ease this thing, this problem out of her womb and into this world. But what world? The world in her vision was Malory’s damp shirt, the walls of Renaissance palazzi as Malory carried her through the streets of Rome, the occasional bit of sky. Broken columns, amalgamated brick and stone of crumbling houses, a square block of roof, and then a sky that opened up as Malory carried her towards the river, figured more as variables in an equation than as points on a guided tour of Rome. They were all part of another problem of origins, like the problems they had brought her in the cottage. If she could only solve this problem, Louiza thought, then maybe, just maybe, the pain would go away.

  There would be time, she was sure of it. There would be time to take pencil and paper and sort it all out. As blurred and bumpy as the journey was, Louiza felt a comfort in Malory’s arms. She was rescued. Malory had come and rescued her, even if she had been the one who had traveled—she still couldn’t remember how—across the Channel and half of Europe to find him in Rome. He was with her now, carrying her past elephants and down alleys, carrying her and their child. Had she told him? Of all the many questions, the one that had an answer was whose child she was carrying. It was Malory’s, could only be Malory’s. They would be together, the three of them, she and Malory and the child, bound in that indelible equation i = u.

  But where in that equation was there space for the baby? Louiza raised her face towards Malory, Malory of the determined eyes, Malory of the unfailing plod and steady breath, who was trotting after Tibor, following him past the buzz of motorcycles and the rush of water mixed with the diesel of autobuses. The equation was perfect with Louiza and Malory, but with Malory and Louiza alone. Louiza = Malory, Malory = Louiza. Maybe that’s why this baby inside her was causing such pain, up, down, inside and out. It didn’t fit. The baby didn’t fit in the equation.

  There was another equation that troubled Malory.

  October minus March equals seven. Seven, not nine. Not the nine months of human gestation, but the seven months since he had made love to Louiza in the organ loft of St. George, Whistler Abbey, which, although they seemed like an eternity to Malory, didn’t add up. Wasn’t twenty-eight weeks much too early? Was Louiza’s baby premature? Or worst of all, had some other organ tuner climbed into Louiza’s loft two months before him?

  “There it is,” Tibor shouted at Malory as they shuffled across the Lungotevere through the fallen leaves of the plane trees. Malory saw an island in the middle of the river, a fortress of an island, a stone boat floating, against the rules of all physics, in the middle of the river.

  “What is it?” Malory puffed after.

  “L’Isola Tiberina. The island of the Tiber!” Tibor shouted into Malory’s uncomprehending face. “The best goddamned place to have a child on Earth. Follow me!”

  “Ah,” Malory said. And armed with little more knowledge than before, Malory struggled over a stone bridge to the Isola Tiberina following Tibor as he turned right beneath an Art Nouveau awning: Ospedale Fatebenefratelli.

  “Buona sera.” A nun nodded at him. “Sua moglie?” Malory was on the verge of stopping and asking which way it was to the maternity ward, when he saw the sign Maternità and turned left.

  “Malory!” Tibor shouted at him from the opposite direction. “Forget the signs, this is Italy.” At a slightly slower pace, Malory carried Louiza into one courtyard, full of visitors squatting on plastic benches or stretched out on old newspapers along the wall. They jogged around a makeshift bar of charcoal burner and clothesline holding pages of the day’s L’Osservatore Romano, through another arcade and into a second courtyard that turned back in the direction of the bridge. Malory looked hopefully to the signs on the left-hand staircases, but most of them were either unintelligible or prefixed with pessimistic onco’s and cardio’s.

  “I told you,” Tibor said, running for a staircase in a far corner, “no signs! This way.” Malory followed Tibor up a staircase one flight, then two.

 
“Almost there, Louiza,” he whispered her name, setting his courage to the verge of overheating with the thought that he, Malory, was on the cusp of fatherhood.

  “Malory,” Louiza said, “you’ll stay with me, won’t you? You’ll stay?” She had forgotten about the equations, forgotten about the problems. The contractions had focused her mind on this miraculous man who was carrying her—was he really big enough to do that?—carrying her in his arms.

  And Malory—Malory didn’t know what the rules were, barely knew where they were, but he pulled Louiza tight, his cheek pressed to hers, her breath hot and wet in his ear. And if it were possible, he felt the Pip in the Kit Bag pull her in even tighter as he floated, yes floated with the long-sought Louiza in his arms down the hallways of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli.

  “Fututi pizda matii!” Tibor shouted for the fifth time that morning. “Eccoci qua! Here we are!” Tibor stopped at a door much like the others. A variety of nurse-like nuns or nun-like nurses kept a steady flow down the slow lanes of the corridors as Malory tried to catch his breath. And with that announcement, Tibor turned the handle and pushed the door wide open.

  Breathless as he was, Malory stopped breathing for more than a moment at the radiance that embraced the three of them. Even Louiza raised her face towards the glow that came from inside. The room that opened up to them was at the forward-most point of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, the prow of the ship. It was a triangular room of sunlight and marble; an altarpiece window on starboard and another on portside made the room seem like it was carving a wake of light through the Tiber towards the Ponte Garibaldi and, in the far distance, the dome of St. Peter’s. And the sun from the windows made it nearly impossible to see the few contents of the room—an armchair, a low table, a pair of beds.

  A nun appeared from behind the door.

  “We’ve been expecting you, my dear.” An English accent. The sister guided Malory to the bed on the left. She pulled down the covers and smiled. Malory, in his exhaustion, accepted both accent and invitation as he would a pair of scones and a cup of tea. He met the sister’s smile and set Louiza gently on sun-warmed sheets.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered through the sweat and the matted hair.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” the sister said, easing Louiza’s grip from Malory’s neck. “We’re just going to clean you up and help you into something more comfortable. You’ll want to look your best to greet your new baby, won’t you?”

  In the Roman sunlight, filtered only by the umbrella pines outside the window and a bit of curtainy lace, Louiza was as angelic as any of the creatures he had seen dancing in the dust of the organ loft that afternoon back in March. Some might say Louiza needed a serious wash-up after her cross-continental hegira. But to Malory, there was no more best than how she looked.

  “Thank you.”

  Not Louiza’s voice.

  Malory turned. He hadn’t seen anyone else in the room when he’d entered, but now he turned to the new voice, and saw on the other bed a figure intercepting the force of the sun from the far window. The figure, a woman, didn’t so much deflect the current of light from the window as draw it inwards. A long braid wrapped around one shoulder onto her breast, she was a vision in gray—gray hair, gray eyes as if she had captured all the color of the sun, determined to transform herself into the black-and-white heroine of a movie by Fellini. It was a gray that shone like the scales of an enchanted fish, a half-seen mermaid, a transparent stream, the hidden, veinless back of an autumn leaf. The hair was pulled away, back from the cheekbones, as impossibly sculpted and Slavic as any Pietà. At the heavenward end of her left cheekbone, a soft mole led Malory to the woman’s eyes, which waited in serenity for Malory’s full attention. Gray-haired as she was, the woman could not have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old.

  “Thank you.” The woman smiled at Malory with a softness that pushed the corners of her eyes into Siamese feathers, although it may—Malory thought later—have been only the smoke from a Gitane between her fingers that she handed up to Tibor. Could you really smoke in Italian hospitals, and just before you were due to give birth? But what stopped Malory short was the sound of the woman’s voice. It shared not only the same Eastern European tones as Tibor’s, but also its uncomfortable dissonance. The sound that came to Malory’s right ear was gentle with undertones, he thought, of lavender and ambrosia, though he was only vaguely aware of what ambrosia might be. But at the same time, the “thank you” that came into his left ear was nasal and unsettling, like a sorceress from a Brothers Grimm tale scratched out in Cyrillic.

  “You’re welcome,” Malory said. “But thank you for what?”

  “For rescuing my husband.”

  “Ah,” Malory said, “you are La Principessa.”

  “And I am the Count of Monte Cristo!” Another voice entered the room, another accent—American, a male voice. The man belonging to the voice was tall. Red-haired, in a full-bodied lupine way that made him seem twice as tall as Malory, with red hairs protruding from his cuffs and running down onto his knuckles. He was wearing tan khakis, a pink-striped shirt, a blue blazer, and a pair of soft, expensive moccasins that seemed out of place with the white coat draped cavalierly over his shoulders. Malory hoped that this was the standard uniform for obstetricians in Rome.

  “Are you Louiza’s—” Malory began to ask, but the nurse jumped in.

  “Doctor, I thought the fathers might go down to the cortile for a coffee, while we prepared the ladies.”

  “Excellent!” the red-haired American boomed. And the vibrations of the boom had an effect on Malory’s knees and drew him to his feet. “You gents grab a coffee while I check up on your wives.”

  “Malory!” Louiza called. He could see that something about the red-haired doctor clearly terrified her. But it was time for Malory to be a man, to be a father, to do the manly thing and let the professionals take charge and he would be back for the birth and the life and Louiza in the five minutes it would take for the nurse to run a washcloth across her pale skin and change her into something more appropriate for new beginnings.

  “It will be all right,” Malory whispered to Louiza. He bent down and scooped a strand of hair, black with sweat, behind Louiza’s ear. Her lips were chapped with exhaustion. But the warmth of her kiss removed all doubt. Louiza was here, the child was here. The equation was balanced. But as he followed Tibor into the hall and the red-haired giant of a doctor winked and closed the door behind him, a jerk from his Kit Bag made Malory turn. The red-haired American, the plate of scones at the Orchard. Was it the same red-haired American who had bought him tea at the Orchard when he’d first lost Louiza, Malory wondered? Had a demon followed him? Had he once again played a false note?

  1/7

  IGNOR MALORY?”

  A new man took his elbow in the corridor. Tall, tight-fitting dark suit, sunglasses, good shoes, hair combed back in ranks of well-oiled centurions. Italian, Malory thought. The director of the hospital, or maybe a chauffeur.

  “Please,” the man said, “you must come with us.”

  “Us?” Malory said, turning back to Louiza’s room.

  A second man appeared from the same nowhere as the first. He wasn’t barring Malory’s way back to Louiza’s room, but he was present in a way that rearranged Malory’s center of gravity. Even shorter than Malory, he was dressed in a long, night-blue woolen coat. The hint of cufflinks and a double Windsor at the collar suggested a formality that Malory hadn’t seen in either the Master and fellows or the porters that served at High Table at Trinity. The afternoon light from the far end of the corridor sprinkled the man’s face with a Roman dust that softened his silver hair. The maze of lines and shadows that ran from eyes to smile, made Malory think the man was as ageless as his grandmother, Old Mrs. Emery.

  Of course! Malory shook off the anesthetic charm of the maternity ward. This was the man his grandmother had written about, the man who would tell him about his inheritance. Malory looked again. The clari
ty of his eyes, pale, past blue, a color nearly newborn in its transparency and openness, led Malory to understand that the man, the men came from a world where numbers and ages were counted according to a different system, a system that might prove invaluable to Malory, with an uncertain future and a new family on the other side of the door.

  “Signor Settimio?” Malory said, thinking—how fortunate! He and Tibor could have a coffee in the cortile with Signor Settimio and his Driver. Signor Settimio could hand over whatever bank account and safe-deposit trinkets that Mrs. Emery had left to her neglected grandson. And then Malory would be free to welcome his child into the world and spend the rest of his life with Louiza.

  “Settimio. Simply Settimio,” the man said, the words almost sung in a tenor accent, somewhere between Puccini and Britten. “Eternally at your service.” He bowed his head and, it seemed to Malory, also his right knee as his left hand went to his heart. Malory looked to the younger man with the sunglasses to see whether the appropriate response was a laugh or a giggle. But the other man’s head was also bowed. Towards Malory.

  “Please,” Malory said. “Prego, thank you, grazie,” running through his full vocabulary of Italian. “You are, you were a friend of my grandmother’s, of Mrs. Emery. May I offer you a coffee down in the cortile?”

  “There is not time for a coffee. I have much to tell you, mio Principe,” Settimio said—the Principe flummoxing Malory as much as the rejection of the coffee. Was everybody in Rome a principe or a principessa, like Tibor’s gray-eyed wife? Settimio raised his head and turned to the man with the gloves. “We must go.”

  “I’m sorry,” Malory said, “I need to stay close by …” He paused, searching for the word to most accurately describe Louiza and his necessity. “If this is about my inheritance, certainly it can wait until tomorrow. I’m staying at Santa Maria …”