by Sam Christer
Arria is here, of course. Sweetest Arria. She will be among the first to remember me at Parentalia. Was not Dies Parentales made for women with faces as sad as Arria’s?
The urn they have fashioned for me is a cheap one. From its lack of elegance I know already that they will not carry me to my husband’s tomb.
I am pleased. Lying with him in death would be even more unpleasant than in life.
I shall not wait for him beyond the three canine heads of Cerberus. I pray to Pluto that his wasted flesh sticks in their jaws and is chewed for eternity in Hades.
Before me I see my sisters. The others of the spirit world. Those who have for ever been and will for ever be.
They are the keepers of the secrets.
The prophetesses. The betrayed. The goddesses.
They surround me as the mortals take my burned remains to their dank resting place in the Columbarium. Here among the shelved peasantry is my place in the potted history of poorest Rome. My niche in society.
No ornately engraved plaque marks my spot. No statue or portrait. Nor any message of love.
Just a number.
My sisters and I wonder if beyond the grave they can hear us laughing.
The number is X.
10
Rome
It’s Saturday morning, so at least Valentina is spared the indignity of walking into a packed office and explaining why she looks like a victim of domestic violence. She can barely begin to think of all the sexist jokes there would be at her expense. Hopefully, by Monday, some good make-up and judicious head-bending will get her through the day without too much embarrassment.
For now, though, the bathroom mirror is telling a different story.
Although the swelling is going down, her lips still look awful. Bloated and discoloured, as though a Botox injection has gone horribly wrong. The prisoner’s head butt has left a very unattractive scab on her lip.
And all this on the day of her big date.
Not that she’s thinking of her celebratory get-together with Tom Shaman as a date. She keeps telling herself that they’re ‘just friends’.
But of course, there’s always the possibility that he feels like she does.
She checks the clock on the wall of the small kitchen in her apartment.
Midday.
Four hours before Tom’s plane lands and she needs to be at the airport to pick him up. Valentina takes another glance in the mirror.
Maybe some of the swelling will have gone down by then.
She decides to coax an espresso out of her coffee machine and turn her attention back to work.
Earlier that morning she spoke to Federico and learned that there was still no trace of a victim.
Assante had already set up a rudimentary incident room and had ensured that all local hospitals had been called. No one with a missing hand had been treated.
Valentina checks her cell and fixed-line phones and finds that there are no missed calls.
She rings the local station and asks to speak to the custody suite.
They tell her that the woman prisoner slept most of the night. No doubt knocked out by sedatives. She refused breakfast. A doctor saw her mid-morning, and within the next hour she’s due to be moved to a secure room at the Policlinico Umberto for a full psychiatric assessment.
It takes another twenty minutes of calls and an extra espresso to find out that the medical examiner working the case is a woman, Professoressa Filomena Schiavone, and she happens to be in the morgue at the Policlinico working another case. With a little luck – and a quick dash to the hospital – Valentina will catch her.
The short drive to the Quartiere San Lorenzo is pleasant enough. It’s late October and the leaves are falling; rugs of reds and oranges have been thrown down by giant maples and sycamores filtering the day’s golden sunlight.
Policlinico Umberto 1, to give it its full name, is the largest public hospital in Italy and one of the largest in the world. Named after the Italian king who ruled from the late 1870s, it’s academically and physically intertwined with the famed Università La Sapienza, and as a result is so large it’s really a city within a city.
After a few false turns, Valentina finds signs to the morgue near to the unit for tropical diseases over at the Viale Regina Elena entrance. It’s almost opposite the gates where she came in.
She parks and walks past several patients in gowns smoking in the doorways to distant wards.
She enters the mortuary block and freshens up in a staff washroom before walking the final few metres to the professoressa’s office area.
A cluttered desk is attended by a bespectacled but pretty young woman who Valentina suspects is a student from Sapienza. She dutifully calls through to the medical examiner and then relays to Valentina a message that the ME is just finishing and will give her twenty minutes of her time if she meets her down in the scrub area.
Almost an hour passes before the doctor has finished ‘finishing’.
Filomena Schiavone is a small woman in her early sixties with tight curls of white hair, piercing blue eyes and an impatient look on her grandmotherly face. ‘Remind me – who are you? Why are you here? The girl minding my phones wasn’t very clear.’ She strips off her greens and drops them in a laundry bin. ‘I have a lunch date in an hour and I don’t want to look like a drowned poodle, so be quick.’
‘Captain Morassi.’ Valentina produces her ID.
‘Put it away. I believe you.’ The ME glances at her. ‘What have you done to your face? You look like a trout.’
Valentina puts her fingers to her lip. ‘I got hit by a woman prisoner. She was arrested near Cosmedin in connection with a severed hand that I believe you took possession of.’
The ME laughs. ‘Took possession of. How sweet. You police officers do mangle our language. It was sent to me in a plastic bag, packed with ice. Someone obviously hoped it might be sewn back on to whoever lost it. I examined it, made notes and put it in the fridge.’ She opens a long metal locker and gets out a simple but stylish black maxi dress.
‘What do you think? Too dull? I have a Grecian-drape affair upstairs, just back from the cleaners.’
‘First date or second date?’
‘First.’
‘Then it looks most appropriate.’
‘Appropriate. Va bene. I am in possession of an appropriate dress.’ She undresses and steps into it. ‘The hand is a woman’s right hand, severed at the wrist. All the carpal bones have been cut. Cut very badly. It wasn’t a clean dismemberment at all.’ She puts the fingers of her left hand against the wrist of her right hand. ‘It was hacked off. The first blow came here, near the thumb area. The second was made from higher, above the top of the wrist, parallel to the knuckles. I suspect the arm was turned back and more chops attempted from the first area below the thumb, until finally the hand separated rather raggedly from the wrist. Nasty. Very bloody and nasty.’ She pulls out two pairs of shoes from the bottom of the locker ‘Stilettos or pumps? What do you think?’
11
The easyJet plane from Paris into Rome Ciampino arrives late. It hits the tarmac just before five p.m., or almost seventeen hundred hours, as Valentina has grown accustomed to calling it.
It takes twenty-five minutes for Tom to clear customs and baggage control, and when he appears she almost doesn’t recognise him.
He’s dressed in a brown leather jacket, ribbed brown sweater, faded blue jeans and smart brown cowboy boots. His hair is much longer than she remembers, and unless she’s mistaken, his chiselled face is shadowed with a hint of designer stubble.
Tom can’t see her.
She’s hidden in a dense crowd of expectant families and taxi drivers holding signs with the names of businessmen they’re picking up.
‘Tom! Tom!’
His head turns. Now he spots her.
He swings his suitcase her way and within seconds she throws her arms around him and buries her head against his face. He squeezes her tight and then holds her by the wa
ist like he’s admiring a giant bouquet of flowers. ‘You look amazing. Wow! I bet you’re the hottest capitano the Carabinieri have ever seen.’
‘Grazie.’ She strikes a pose for him and smiles. ‘And you look good too. But what happened? Someone take a punch at you?’
Tom looks embarrassed. ‘A long story.’ He points to her mouth. ‘I could say the same. Have you been brawling with your new bosses?’
She touches her face self-consciously. ‘Sono stupido. A prisoner hit me with her head.’ She slaps a palm on her forehead. ‘She just went crazy in her cell. I’ll tell you in the car.’
The traffic isn’t good and the journey from Ciampino on the south of the city to Valentina’s apartment off Via Annia Faustina gives them plenty of time to catch up on things. She tells Tom all about the strange happenings the previous night in Cosmedin, and he tries to explain his bruises and busted lip.
‘So you have some money to spend on me,’ says Valentina mischievously. ‘I think tonight you can pay for dinner. It can be your punishment for behaving like some drunken teenager.’
Tom protests that he was championing the cause of vulnerable French youths against a seasoned bully, but somehow the reasoning doesn’t seem as sensible as it did last night.
Valentina squeezes the little Fiat into a gap between a Smart car and an old Ford Fiesta that looks like it’s never been washed. She links Tom’s arm and leads him through an iron gate in a long brick wall that cordons off her apartment block.
One set of stairs later, she opens the front door to her tiny apartment and instantly wishes she’d made more of an effort to tidy up.
‘Nice,’ says Tom, ‘small but very nice.’
‘Liar. It’s horrible.’ She abandons her jacket and handbag and heads straight to her treasured DeLonghi coffee machine. ‘Are all ex-priests bad liars?’
‘It’s possible,’ he concedes, standing by her settee, not sure what to do with his suitcase.
She switches on the machine and smiles at him. ‘Now we’re inside, I have something to ask you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You need to come over here to answer it.’
Tom drops his jacket over the case and steps into the kitchen area. She puts a finger gently to his damaged lip, almost as though she’s inspecting it. ‘Is your mouth too sore to kiss me a proper hello?’
‘A proper hello?’
She doesn’t let him prevaricate any longer. She tilts her head and gently kisses him. The unharmed corner of her lips touches the unharmed corner of his. A kiss as light as the fluttering wings of a butterfly.
Neither of them close their eyes. It’s like they’re watching each other unwrap long-awaited presents.
Tom’s hands find her waist.
She lets the tip of her tongue run sensually along the length of his dry lip.
The contact is minimal but electrifying.
They press together, so close they can feel nothing but the warmth of each other.
Somewhere in the room her phone rings.
Valentina tries to ignore it.
Tom slowly kisses the side of her neck.
She goes weak at the knees.
The phone trips to the answering function. ‘This is Lieutenant Assante – Federico. I tried your cell phone and left a message. Forgive me calling your home, but we have an incident at the hospital with the woman we arrested. I really need to talk to you urgently. If you can’t reach me, it may be because I’m already leaving for the pysch unit and I don’t have hands-free in my car. Ciao.’
12
I am blessed by Her now.
Blessed by Mother.
In death She became life so that in ashes I may become spirit.
The spirit of Mother and those of my sisters are with me.
Henceforth they will always be with me and I with them.
This is how it is meant to be – how it was written – how it will always be. We are followers of the Great Books and writers of the future. Their word is our truth and our words are the truth of their tomorrows.
My sisters lead me through the darkness to Her house, to the great temple that lies at the magical confluence of three pathways in a womb-shaped clearing.
It is gated above ground and guarded below by the Galli.
I can hear drumming, dancing and chanting as we enter.
The Korybantes pound spears against shields and stir the air with their nimble steps.
A deep thumping beat flows through the bodies of all those gathered. We are touched by the unseen.
Mother has become the rhythm.
Mother the heartbeat.
She becomes the air and penetrates our skin.
She flows through our blood and our organs and makes us quiver with Her power.
My heart trembles as Her sound presses into me.
Mother is invisible, like the start of the rain.
Mother is all powerful, like the pull of the ocean.
Mother cleanses and renews us throughout our life and our death.
The sisters of the mortal world look frightened.
They should not.
Mother will care for them. Mother will transform them.
Feet apart, they stand in innocence and clumsily begin their incantations. Uncertain hands touch genitals, wombs, hearts and foreheads.
Hesitant fingers stretch to the sky and reach out to Her.
Soon She will reach out to them.
We will eat from the drum.
We will drink from the cymbal.
We will be immortal.
This is how it is written.
This is how it will be.
13
Valentina rings Federico back but only gets his voicemail.
She’s left with no choice but to head off to the hospital.
Her long-dreamt-of moment of intimacy has been ruined, and a part of her fears it may never happen again.
Work certainly has a way of screwing with your personal life.
She hangs up and turns back to Tom. ‘Sorry.’
His lip is smeared shiny red, and from the salty taste on her own lips she realises it’s blood. Her blood. The realisation is strangely exciting.
‘What’s wrong?’ He stands in a no-man’s land between before she kissed him and what happens next.
‘I have to go. Emergency at work. All that clichéd stuff.’
He smiles. ‘I understand. I guess clichés are clichés because they get said so often.’
Small talk. The moment’s certainly gone. She gathers her stuff and heads for the door, sensing a trace of awkwardness in the air.
She’s still cursing Federico as she fires up her Fiat and drives to the Policlinico.
It’s an awful place to navigate around. Most of the multi-storeyed buildings seem to be salmon-coloured with green shutters. Hilly roads open up into smart areas of lawn, and some giant palms and occasional flagpoles make the place look almost like a holiday hotel that’s seen better days.
Inside, a maze of depressingly dark corridors lead her to the psychiatric unit, where she finds Federico the Interrupter sitting in the reception area looking over notes in a pocket book.
‘Buonasera,’ grunts Valentina. ‘I hope this is every bit as urgent as you said.’
The Lieutenant looks up and is startled to see his boss in a fetching floral dress, wearing make-up and with her hair down. ‘Buonasera. I see I ruined something. Scusi. I’m afraid it is important. Our prisoner has told us her name.’
Valentina’s not impressed. ‘Oh, bene.’
‘She even wrote it in my notebook for me.’ He swivels it around so she can see.
‘Cassandra? What is this?’ She scowls at him, ‘She writes down I am Cassandra and you call me out on a Saturday night to get only a Christian name. You could have told me that on the phone, Federico.’
‘I could. But that’s not the point.’ He flicks through several other pages. ‘Take a look at all this. She damn near filled my book with her writing. Read it and the
n see if you still want to kick my balls for dragging you out here.’ He thrusts the notebook at her.
Valentina takes it and peers at the old-fashioned handwriting: I am Cassandra, a proud and noble descendant of the house of Savyna, and I am not afraid to die.
The woman’s handwriting is creepy. It’s been done with such pressure on the pen it looks intense, violent, almost as if it’s been carved into the paper.
The people of Cosmedin have come out in force today. Out for me. They line their piss-soaked streets and drip like grease from the windows of their shabby tenements, screaming and spitting at me as I am paraded before them.
Valentina can’t help but speed-read the rest. Key lines jump out at her: I will take my secret to the grave … the secret I shelter within my bosom … this terrible ceremony … La Bocca della Verità … I see only the basket and in it my severed hand … My secret is safe.
‘She wrote this in front of you?’
Federico nods.
‘And did this obviously deluded woman explain any of it?’
He shakes his head. ‘She still hasn’t spoken. Hasn’t said a word.’ He takes the notes back, turns a page and points out another section. ‘Read this.’
Valentina takes it from him.
The thief looks at the strange stone he’s plundered, a dull black triangle on a plaited cord, and is dumbstruck by disappointment. Fool. He’ll never know what it’s worth.
She wrinkles her nose. ‘I don’t understand. Is all this hand-severing about some petty theft?’
‘No,’ Federico hands over a plastic bag, ‘It’s about this.’
Valentina’s eyes widen.
Inside is a triangular black stone on a necklace made from rope. ‘Bizarre. This is the necklace from the woman’s story. Fact and fiction are all messed up together.’ She glances around. ‘They’ve certainly got her in the right place.’ She hands back the evidence bag. ‘Where did you get it? Wasn’t she searched at the police station?’
He folds it up and replaces it in his pocket. ‘She was, but they didn’t find it.’
‘What? Those idiots missed something around her neck?’
