Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  ‘It is mine, sir, although I don’t own it. I’m merely its custodian while I reside on this Earth. When I perish, another will come forward and occupy the Villa and perform my duties. Good fortune with your war. Please don’t return here again. We have no need of war.’

  Had Vincenzo been carrying his pistol, his new acquaintance might well have been shot immediately and on the spot – a warning to these peasants that the power of Rome and the people of Italy are not to be trifled with. But he was without a weapon on that day and there were a lot more of them to contend with alone and unarmed. He departed in a foul mood, his blood pressure up and his ire fully engaged.

  On the long trek back to his barracks in Como, Vincenzo contemplated the fate of the village. He would return with his men, of course, and punishment would be imposed as was clearly merited. Examples would have to be made and that arrogant chap with whom he had spoken would be summarily executed in the village square by him, Vincenzo Molinari, personally.

  Vincenzo fantasized about that moment, the moment he would extinguish the life of that rude peasant. Gun to his head, he would terrorize the poor man until, after likely wetting himself, the man would beg for his life and the lives of his soon-to-be-executed family members. Such pleasure he would certainly experience unlike anything else he could possibly imagine. Then, unsated by just a few deaths, he would turn his attentions to the villagers and mountain folk in and around Gensarii. They would suffer not just that day but for years to come for their affront to his authority.

  In the real world, Vincenzo did not relish the report he might have to file to his superiors at the garrison. It might seem as though he was easily turned away by a single backward peasant in a remote village without a proper name. He would be the butt of jokes, humiliated among his peers and stuck in Como for the duration of the war.

  Unthinkable.

  Not a problem, he thought. As the only one from the garrison who was there, his report would be far more sympathetic – to him. As the only human being a party to the conversation with his soon-to-be lifeless friend, Vincenzo felt certain that his report would present the facts in a light far more favorable to his reputation as an up-and-comer. What did it matter anyway? This minor blip in history would soon be over and forgotten.

  Vincenzo returned to the Como garrison and dutifully reported his futile attempts to convince the locals of their duty to God and Country. ‘Provincials’ muttered one Officer. ‘Traitors and ingrates’ said another. To his commanding officer Vincenzo humbly acknowledged that he had barely escaped with his life and that it was his duty, his sacred duty, to return to this village and teach its inhabitants a lesson about respect, loyalty and honor. To Il Duce and the People of Italy.

  His commanding officer enthusiastically agreed, assigning a squad of twenty-five men to assist Vincenzo in making this situation right. Vincenzo promised his superior he would not be disappointed. A few days to journey there, a few days back, and maybe a day or so to round up the dissidents and clean up the village was all he would need.

  A young man with promise, his commanding officer thought. We need more men like him.

  That night Vincenzo drank a bottle of a wonderful local vintage, found and enjoyed the hospitality at the local ‘house’ and then proceeded with his men the next morning in the direction of the remote village of Gensarii. They arrived four days later around noon.

  Chapter 4

  Bennett continued his tale, with Alan still not understanding the man’s point in telling this story. Alan already knew that nothing he would learn from Bennett’s strange story could change his mind. Still, he was there to listen to any claimants to Lot 721, as instructed by his associate in Seattle. So, he did.

  ***

  Men with automatic weapons took up positions around the village, a vantage point from which they could see who was coming and who was going. Everything appeared as before with no signs of armed resistance in evidence or noted. No one attempted to leave nor did anyone even seem to take much notice of Vincenzo and the other new arrivals. The villagers went about their business, speaking in that same ancient and unknown dialect he had heard before. It annoyed Vincenzo that he couldn’t understand these peasants, so he loudly shouted at the locals to run up to the Villa and fetch the man in charge.

  This they did.

  Vincenzo had his men search the village for weapons, just in case the apparent bucolic setting was a trap. But they found little other than relics of some past conflict, few of which even still functioned. Vincenzo was pleased. He felt safe in the knowledge that he could carry out his carefully choreographed fantasy and only his men would be the wiser. Fear would keep them in line; of that he had little doubt.

  Standing impatiently and arrogantly with hands on his hips in the middle of the small village square and feeling very much in control, Vincenzo awaited the arrival of the mystery man he had met before. The man arrived as stealthily as before and presented himself promptly.

  ‘You’re back I see,’ the peasant man said. ‘How may I assist you today?’

  Vincenzo spied him carefully, marveling that either this man didn’t understand his predicament or was inhumanly cool in the face of death.

  ‘I’m here today Mr. ...?’

  ‘Paulo, just Paulo.’

  ‘As you wish … Paulo. I have returned today with the full authority of the Italian State to, in effect, inventory this region. All men between the ages of fifteen and forty-five must register for military service, and we wish to know if you have been faithfully paying your taxes to Rome as required by law. The penalty for failure to do either is immediate conscription on one hand and immediate confiscation of assets and land on the other. Failure to cooperate is vastly more serious, so I recommend that for both your safety and that of your people you fully cooperate. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, of course I understand, but this will take very little time. The village has no young people at all; they live with their families in the surrounding mountains in communities much smaller and more scattered than our little town. They periodically come down for market day but rarely pass the night in town. As for goods or wealth, we have none. Please look around but you will find I’m being truthful. We are poor and live in harmony with nature. We adapt and have adapted for centuries to our humble life here in Gensarii. We want for nothing but have nothing of value that would in any way matter to you.’

  Vincenzo didn’t trust his words. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong, but he couldn’t discern what it was. The man was hiding something, and Vincenzo would ascertain the truth no matter how long it took.

  ‘Where is your Priest, I wish a word with him? Perhaps he can clarify certain troubling matters. Fetch him now,’ Vincenzo demanded.

  ‘We have no Priest, sir. There has been no Priest in our village for over six hundred years. Not since our conversion from the old ways. We are alone here, in every respect, and it has always been thus.’

  ‘What is in the Villa then? You’re hiding something of value there I’m certain. Tell me what it is.’

  ‘We have books and papers, old furniture from a bygone era and modest stores of local wine. Nothing more.’

  Vincenzo could see that Paulo was telling the truth and that his story of forcible expulsion from the village at great risk to his safety was quickly unravelling. ‘We shall see’, he said, ‘take me to the Villa at once.’

  Vincenzo turned to his men, who stood a respectful distance from their commander, and barked out orders to resume the search of the village and surrounding areas. He ordered them to camp outside the village at nightfall and post guards.

  A search of the Villa and the grounds turned up nothing whatsoever of any real value. As the sun began to set on that fine fall day in 1938, Vincenzo began to wonder what secrets lay there. As a liar and deceiver of some note and accomplishment himself, he could sense when something wasn’t quite right.

  Just as the sun set, the last man searching the grounds of t
he Villa arrived and reported in. Vincenzo expected nothing but an empty report.

  ‘Sir, I thought I saw something at the back of the olive grove against the mountain cliff. I searched along the cliff line and found a cave, or entrance to something in the mountain. The entrance itself was barred by an iron gate and tightly locked and secured.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought about returning to report this to you, but the walk was long, so I shot off the lock and entered the cavern. It was dark, so I lit a torch at the entrance and looked in. I’m sorry sir but all I found were many thousands of crates filled with books and papers and such. Nothing in Italian, just some foreign looking words and symbols. It was getting dark, so I thought I had better come back immediately and report in. What would you like me to do, sir?’

  ‘Collect everyone on the grounds and send them back to the village. Pick two men to remain here with me in the Villa. We’ll have a closer look in the morning. Oh, and find Paulo and send him up to me right away. I’m curious to know what secrets we have uncovered in this miserable backwater.’

  Paulo had little to add except that he would cooperate fully and show Vincenzo everything in the ‘Village Library’ as he called it.

  ***

  In the morning, Vincenzo woke up well after sunrise, unusual for him. He must have enjoyed more than he intended of the potent local spirits he consumed the night before. He called out first for his lieutenant, then for the sergeant, but got no answer. He felt clammy and urgently needed to bathe. He had much to do today and there was at least one execution on the schedule, perhaps even a few more. A thorough search of the Library would likely reveal the secrets of these peasants, as paltry and insignificant as they seemed to be.

  He heard no noises save the wind gently caressing the trees outside his open window and birds chirping and squawking as they are want to do in the early light of day. Now furious at being unattended, he stormed downstairs in search of his subordinates. They were nowhere to be found.

  Instead, he found Paulo and several of the local villagers. Young villagers. There were supposed to be none, at least none close by.

  Paulo said, ‘Come Colonel, it is time for you to leave again and go home. This time I ask you most politely, and I stress the importance of this courtesy, to leave and never return. This region, my homeland that we call Gensarii, is not for outsiders. There is nothing for you here and you are no longer welcome.’

  ‘I have twenty-five men armed and surrounding your village, Paulo. I don’t think that I can accede to your request, as gracious as it appears to be. I’m now the legal authority here and you would do well to respect my word, which is as law to you.’

  ‘Colonel, sadly I must report to you that your men are all dead. Well almost all, at any rate. We have sent your Lieutenant Saldini home to Como with an escort to assure that he leaves our territory and arrives with our message.”

  ‘Message? What message, you peasant fool?’ Vincenzo didn’t really believe this peasant buffoon, but a modest level of fear and apprehension was rapidly setting in.

  ‘A message to your commander, a Colonel Marchese. And of course, we have sent a private message to the Archdiocese, reminding them of our agreement.’

  ‘The Archdiocese, an agreement? What agreement? What has any of this to do with me?’ His voice was panicked and his bravado rapidly waning.

  ‘Why everything, Vincenzo. Everything. Better that you had spoken to a parish priest before returning to us but then who knows if you would have listened to him anyway. You have your modern ways and ideas; ours are old ways and, well, not all are wrong and outdated. But then who can ever know what to keep and what to leave behind? You understand, don’t you?’

  He paused, as if expecting an answer. Then he continued, ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘So here we are Vincenzo, you and me. One whose only request was to simply be left alone; the other, one who threatens the destruction of an entire local culture. Perhaps you thought that we would idly sit by and allow you to work your great evil. So now, Vincenzo, you must leave us, and we will go back to life as it has always been here and that will be that. As I warned you yesterday, this region is dangerous, and things may happen here over which I have no control.’

  ‘You lie! Where are my men? What have you done with them? I demand to see them immediately!’

  Vincenzo mustered what little courage he held in reserve. He was becoming weak and thirsty. His pistol was missing, and his men absent. He feared the worst and was quite correct in doing so.

  ‘I will be back, Paulo. And I will raze this village to bare earth. You will suffer greatly, and I will enjoy your death immensely.’

  ‘Come now Colonel, it is time for you to leave. Your things are waiting for you in the village. You may say goodbye to your comrades one last time.’

  Paulo walked beside Vincenzo, with a few the villagers immediately behind him. There was no escape and Vincenzo feared he would be fortunate to reach Como alive. They walked down the path toward the Chapel, and the little village square nearby. As they rounded the Chapel, twenty-four neatly wrapped bodies in funerary fashion lay before him, arranged in rows. Blood soaked through the pure white sheets, and no other features were visible.

  ‘We are peaceful by nature but ancient in our ways. We did not wish this end to come about, but then I warned you. The Cardinal will understand, of course, and he has been informed that our agreement has been violated as well as the consequences thereof. Your superiors have been similarly warned away through the offices of Holy Mother Church, but, then again, we expect no better response from them than we experienced with you. We will continue to adapt as has always been our way.’

  The man continued, ‘Return to Como and tell the townsfolk what you have seen here in Gensarii. It would have been better had you asked them before coming but that isn’t what God intended. Now leave quickly and heed my warning never to return.’

  Chapter 5

  Vincenzo didn’t return to Como. Frightened by the events of the past twenty-four hours, he quickly departed glancing back in fear frequently as he ran. He ran as if pursued by angry townsfolk with pitchforks. But the townsfolk had taken little notice of him when he was present in town; they quickly purged him from their collective memory after his abrupt departure.

  Just after night fell, Vincenzo stopped to drink from a refreshing meadow stream amid a pastoral setting of great natural beauty. He was away from that hell hole, he thought, and that insane Paulo. He would rest the night and fantasize himself to sleep, mentally constructing the revenge he would extract on those wild animals.

  It wasn’t to be however. Vincenzo’s body was found six weeks later, badly decomposed and presumptively consumed by predators. Cause of death couldn’t be immediately determined but what was left of his scattered, bloodless remains were collected and sent back to Rome for proper burial.

  No one in Como in 1938 would comment on the Village of Gensarii, Vincenzo, Paulo or the missing soldiers. Later, after an intense search of the Village and the surrounding remote and mountainous region, no peasants or inhabitants could be found. The Villa and the Village had been abandoned and the crates in the cave, if they had ever existed, had mysteriously disappeared without a trace.

  Chapter 6

  Bennett paused briefly, then continued his narrative. “In the intervening years between 1938 and today, my extended family has been searching, without success, to locate the survivors of Gensarii and, more importantly, recover the Village Library contained in those crates. It is those crates which we believe you now have in your possession, Mr. Sarmiento. Lot 721. We would like them back. They don’t belong to you and you are well aware of this. They are of no consequential value whatsoever to you but are immensely valuable to my family. And my people. They contain the rich history of my ancestors.”

  Alan thought for a moment, then said, “Mr. Bennett, I am truly touched by your story and irrespective of the whether it contains a single so
litary ounce of truth, let me suggest that you have absolutely nothing to be concerned about here. Let me explain.”

  He paused, as if waiting for a comment from Bennett, then said, “My job is to process data; that is, any media format that can be digitally copied, transcribed and uploaded into the DataLab Project mainframe, what we call the DL Main. Through a special process developed to ‘acquire’ large volumes of raw data, we’re able to rapidly scan and upload in readable and retrievable format vast quantities of random information. This information was initially in the form of books, manuscripts and the like, and the capture and uploading were reasonably easy to accomplish. Much library information was already digitized anyway. That’s just a download/upload.

  “Later, the project expanded to include all sorts of new data, such as newspapers, magazines, primary source materials, diaries and other documents, whether deemed reliable or not. Speeches, political tracts, notes from obscure clubs and fraternal organizations and you name it, it all comes in. So, what I do is acquire data wherever I find it, in accordance with my budget and internal guidelines. I search for data, find it and buy it. We process it, as I will explain later, and then we’re done with it. After that, if the primary source documents have any other commercial value or historical importance, we sell it, give it away or destroy it. All processing is done strictly according to guidelines established by Congress. What happens to the primary documents supporting the uploaded data after that is none of my concern.

  “This data, usually marked by project lot number, comes to me at the regional processing center in Tucson from wherever the primary source materials are found. Could be anywhere. I don’t personally read anything, save anything or have anything to do with the actual processing of data, all of which is done off site from my little office.

  “Most data are paid for by funds transfer of some sort, usually check or wire transfer. Occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, a regional guy like me, with funds disbursal authority, will use his or her own personal funds to purchase items of smaller value. Rarely, and I mean very rarely when the situation demands, I’m authorized to purchase items in danger of destruction or imminent loss. I have used my own financial resources only once and that was several weeks ago. For Lot 721.