He flipped back to the letter. There, Russo, too, conceded that he could make no further headway using the customary carbon-based techniques.
But Carter’s next stop would have been to do an analysis of the surrounding rock formation, and try to figure out what the fossil was, or could be, based on the age, and mineral composition, of the rock it was embedded in. Apparently, Russo had come to the same conclusion: “Studies of the contiguous rock are contained in Appendix B.”
Again, Carter checked Russo’s work, and again he could find no obvious error or omission. Russo was doing things by the book. But the results, once more, were absolutely baffling. The rock was igneous, basaltic, heavy on the pyroxene, that much was clear. But judging from its stupendously high silica content, striations, and density, it had been corkscrewed toward the surface of the earth from an almost unimaginable depth and temperature. Inside the rock, as a reminder of its tortuous progress all the way from the asthenosphere through the upper mantle, there remained an inordinately high content of trapped, volatile gases. Carter sat back in his chair and thought about it for a second. What they had here, in effect, was an immensely durable and dense lithic specimen, which could also, if handled incorrectly, explode in your face like a homemade bomb. A powerful homemade bomb.
No wonder Russo was hesitant to proceed without plenty of consultation.
The problem, Carter could see, would be to find a way to remove the fossil in as intact a state as possible from the volatile material to which it might be indissolubly wed, without setting off that bomb.
“In the cardboard folder,” Russo wrote, “you will find photographs of the fossil in situ.”
This was what Carter had been waiting for. When the photos had first spilled out, he’d purposely put them back; he didn’t want to look at them until he’d read over the other materials and seen what was what. Now, knowing what had already been ascertained—or, in this peculiar case, left hanging—he was ready to look at the visual evidence and see for himself. He leaned forward and opened the folder on the table.
The top picture was so beautiful, it could have been something from a travel brochure. In the foreground, there was nothing but blue water, with a slight chop, and in the background a wall of craggy gray cliffs with cypress trees up top, bending in the breeze. At sea level, barely discernible in this shot, was the mouth of a cave, still partially submerged. Carter glanced at the back of the photo, where Russo had dated it and printed “Lago d’Avernus, cave, from approx. 150 meters.”
Carter laid the photo facedown on the table and lifted the next one in the stack.
This one was from much closer up—the opening of the cave was rough and jagged, and two divers’ heads, wearing goggles and clamping down on snorkels, were off to one side. On the back, it said, “Mouth of cave,” which was hardly necessary, but appended to it in parentheses was, “Did you know I could scuba dive?” Carter smiled. No, he hadn’t known Russo could scuba dive.
The next few photos were from the interior of the cave and were clearly lighted by a high-intensity, handheld lamp. There was a bright, shadowy glare off of the wet walls and ceiling; the rock glittered like pyrite and diamond. But Carter could see nothing of the fossil.
He picked up the next shot—and this time his breath stopped in his throat. In the harsh, bright light shed by the lamp, which was partly visible in the upper left corner, he could now see the bones embedded in the rock. He’d seen thousands of such photos, of fossils from all over the globe, but never anything quite like this; the first thing he was reminded of, oddly enough, was Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, painted on the Sistine Chapel. This fossil—its claws, or talons, or fingers, gnarled and distended—summoned up the writhing figures from the artist’s vision of Hell. It was almost as if this creature—there, Carter thought, he’d just used the very word that Russo had resorted to—was in extremis, suffering beyond endurance, struggling to break free. A portion of its limb was detectable, or at least the vague outline of it was, but that was really all. And yet Carter still felt the most visceral and overwhelming reaction.
There were several more photos, from varying angles, but they revealed nothing more of the fossil; the rest of it was simply buried in the rock. In the next set of shots, the fossil itself was carefully draped and covered, while workers in wet suits actually demarcated a section of wall, drilled bore holes for pressure release, and with jackhammers, electric drills, and hand picks laboriously cut loose the rock. In the last of the on-site shots, a research vessel with a crane mounted on the rear deck was hauling away the slab of rock, now secured to a platform made from six huge yellow pontoons. Russo and the other diver, their masks off but still in their wet suits, stood on either side of the slab, their legs spread and their hands resting on the rock like big-game hunters being photographed with their trophy kill.
In the last photograph from the folder, the slab was seen in what appeared to be an open courtyard, under a plastic canopy, supported by what looked like half a dozen steel sawhorses. On the back, Russo had written, “Hall of Biological Sciences, University of Rome,” and then the specimen statistics. “Fossil block measures 3.5 meters long, 3.5 meters wide, and 2.5 meters deep.” Or, in feet, about ten by ten by seven. Its weight, measured in metric tons, was 1.25—or, in Carter’s quick mental calculation, roughly 3300 pounds. By any standards a massive, and massively unwieldy, specimen.
Carter put the last photo down and picked up Russo’s cover letter again. The final line said, “It is my considerable opinion that the unusual characteristics of this specimen suggest it may be of great, scientific importance.”
You could say that again.
Carter leaned back in his chair and glanced at his watch. To his surprise, it was almost midnight already. And then his eye fell once more on the photo taken inside the cave, the one where the creature seemed to be clawing its way out of the very rock. It was an image he knew he’d never be able to shake. He got up, turned off the lamp, and then, before going to bed, found himself stopping to turn the photo over so that it was face down on the table.
Now why, he wondered, vaguely disappointed in himself, had he done that?
SIX
“It must be difficult for you, coming back home after years away,” Dr. Neumann said, touching her fingers together and studying Ezra with her carefully neutral gaze. “How is that going for you?”
How was it going for him? Fine, Ezra thought, just fine—as long as everyone stayed out of his way and left him alone to do what he had to do. “It’s an adjustment,” he said, figuring that was a perfectly okay response, neither negative nor positive.
“I’m sure it is.” She smiled and stayed silent, but he knew that trick—it was one of her psychotherapeutic smiles, designed to bring you into her confidence, and the silence was supposed to become so awkward that you leaped in to fill it, revealing all sorts of secret stuff in the process. Nope, not much had changed, he reflected; even the abstract prints on her office walls, the low hum of the radiator unit, the positions of the two chairs they were now sitting in. He felt like he’d gone back in time, twenty years, to when he’d first had to see her. Right after the headmaster at the Horace Mann School had informed his parents that Ezra, despite his astronomically high scores on the IQ and standard achievement tests, was not, well, fitting in. Academically or socially.
“How are you getting along with your father? Has that improved any?”
“We keep out of each other’s way,” Ezra said, “as much as we can.” Which was true—his father was either at his offices on Madison Avenue, wheeling and dealing for some small portion of the city that he didn’t already own, or off at some society function that Kimberly had dragged him to.
“And you’ve got a stepmother, too, now, don’t you? I think I remember reading in the paper that your father had remarried.”
Now, Ezra thought, she was being disingenuous. Of course she knew his dad had remarried. She probably knew more about his comings and goings than he did; in al
l his time in Israel, Ezra had scrupulously avoided the New York newspapers, and he’d never let on to anyone, unless he had to, that he was Sam Metzger’s son.
“Yes, he has got a new wife. Her name’s Kimberly,” he said, his fingers nervously twisting the top of the plastic bag in his lap. When, he wondered, would be the opportune time to broach the real reason he’d made this appointment?
“What’s your relationship with her like?”
Ezra almost couldn’t answer at all; he was so weary of all this, he didn’t want to have to go through this drill, answer all these pointless questions about his family and his feelings and his future. He’d made this appointment because he was running out of his medications, and unless he could get the prescriptions refilled, he was going to have a very hard time concentrating on his work. Or getting to sleep. Or controlling his mood swings. He just needed some refills.
“She’s all right. I don’t see much of her, either.” Then, because he thought this might go over well with the good doctor, and because he felt he had to show just a little more interest, he added, “It’s more like having an older sister in the house. She’s just a few years older than I am.”
“Is that so?” Dr. Neumann said, nodding her head slowly. “How interesting.”
Damn, Ezra thought. She’s interested. Now he’d inadvertently opened up a whole new can of worms; Neumann would be able to milk that remark for several sessions. And when would he ever get her around to the point of this one?
“How do you think that’s affected your relationship with your father? If you had to characterize Kimberly’s effect on that, would you say that she’s provided a bridge, or created a dam, between the two of you?”
“I’ve never thought of it in either of those terms,” Ezra said, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice. He could see no end to this avenue of thought. Neumann could keep on coming up with dumb metaphors and pointless questions indefinitely. He fingered the bag on his lap once more, and this time Neumann deigned to take notice.
“I feel you’re distracted, Ezra,” she said with some asperity, “that there’s something else we need to address and get out of the way. What’s in the bag you’re holding?”
Ezra tried not to appear too eager as he hastily untied the loop on the plastic bag. “These are the bottles from the medications I’ve been on while I was living in Israel,” he said, taking out the bottles, their labels written in Hebrew on one side and English on the other, and putting them on the little table next to her chair. “All I need, I think, are some refills.”
Dr. Neumann took her reading glasses off the table, put them on, then started picking up the prescription bottles. “Your doctor over there was named Stern?”
“Yes, Herschel Stern.”
“I’ll want to get in touch with him, and see his records.”
“That’s fine. I can give you his numbers.”
“But I can probably refill these for now,” she said, glancing at what he recognized was his Xanax bottle, “and we’ll make any adjustments that we have to, once we’ve made some progress with our therapy.”
As far as Ezra was concerned, they’d already made all the progress he was interested in. But now was not the time, he knew, to say so. As she reached for her pad and began to scrawl the new prescriptions, his heart soared.
Outside, Uncle Maury was leaning against the parking meter, having a smoke. “How’d it go?” he asked, tossing the cigarette into the gutter. “You finally sane?”
“I will be,” Ezra said, brandishing the sheaf of prescriptions.
On the way home, they stopped at the first pharmacy they passed, and while his order was being filled, Ezra roamed around the store picking up all the other things on his list, from surgical gloves and isopropyl alcohol to Q-tips and talcum powder. The rest of the supplies he’d need—a drafting table and computer chair, acetates, X-Acto knives and sable brushes, a magnifying glass—had all been delivered that morning, and had only to be properly arranged and put to use. He could barely wait to begin.
At home, Ezra was delighted to discover that everyone was out; even Gertrude was grocery shopping or something. He hurried down the hall, locked his door behind him, and then immediately got to work rearranging the place. Aside from clearing away some things from the nightstand to make more room for his reading matter, he left the actual bedroom pretty much as it was.
The adjoining chamber, which had once been his play-room, was where he’d decided he’d do his actual work. First he emptied out the bookcase, which still contained most of his books from high school and college, everything from Catcher in the Rye to the Norton Anthology, and then he dragged the empty bookcase over to the window. When his reference collection arrived from Israel, he’d put it there.
Then, where the bookcase had been, he set up the drafting table; fortunately, it didn’t take too much work: attaching the legs, getting the top elevated to just the right angle, clamping the lamp on. The drafting table and chair now stood away from the windows, as far from the natural light as they could be—and that was good. Sunlight could do a lot of damage to materials as ancient as the ones he would be working on.
Finally, he’d need something to hold his tools and things, and his eye alighted on an old wooden chest that had once contained his toys, next to the closet. He bent down to open it and wasn’t at all surprised to find his old model planes and comic books and bongos—how he’d driven his parents crazy with those!—still stuffed inside. He closed the chest and dragged it over to the side of the drafting table, put the bags of brushes and rubbing alcohol and surgical gloves on top of it, and then stood back to assess his handiwork.
Not too bad, he thought. In fact, more than serviceable.
Now there was nothing standing in his way. He could begin again on his work.
He went into the closet and reached up high on the top shelf, behind the extra blankets. His fingers found the cardboard tube he’d hidden there and drew it down. Although what the tube contained weighed very little—measurable in ounces, not even pounds—that’s not how it felt as he cradled it in his arms. It felt as if he were holding something of unimaginable weight and significance. It felt as if he had climbed to the very summit of Mount Sinai, and he was holding in his hands the stone tablets once entrusted to Moses himself.
For all he knew, he was.
SEVEN
Even though Carter’s call wasn’t due for another hour, Giuseppe Russo wasn’t taking any chances; he was going to wait by the phone. Not that venturing outside right now would have been a very appealing prospect, anyway. It was dusk in Rome, and from the narrow windows of his office, on the top floor of the Hall of Biological Sciences, he could already see a huge bank of billowing clouds, dark and angry, buffeting the olive trees and sweeping over the ancient ruins on the Palatine Hill. The storm front had been blowing west from the Adriatic Sea for days, and now it appeared ready to unleash its fury.
Russo settled himself into the rickety desk chair—not an easy task, given his size and the frailty of the old oak chair—and lighted another Nazionali. God, he was tired. It was all he could do to trudge to his lectures every afternoon, and then back home at night. He couldn’t even remember when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. No, that wasn’t true. He could remember. It was the night before he’d ever laid eyes on the fossil from the cave. The fossil that now resided in the courtyard downstairs. And even though part of him believed that this find would make his reputation, another part, growing all the time, wished that he had never so much as heard of it.
He blew a cloud of smoke toward the faded velvet curtains; a few preliminary raindrops spattered the window. He couldn’t understand it. He had been to dozens of dig sites; he had handled thousands of fossils and bone fragments, many of them human; but he had never felt anything like this. A nagging unease, a palpable sense of dread. Ever since his fingers had touched the wet talons, if that was indeed what they were, in the grotto of the Lago d’Avernus, his mind had been troubled and
his spirits had fallen. At night, he tossed and turned in his bed, and his dreams, when they came at all, were nightmares. Several times he had walked in his sleep, something he hadn’t done since he was a child—awakening once, curled up like a dog, under a table.
With a kitchen knife clutched in his hand.
He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on his desk and closed his eyes for just a second. He had to consider how he was going to make his case to Carter, how he was going to persuade him to join in this vast but curious endeavor. The mounting wind rattled the windows in their lead casements, and the red velvet curtains rustled in the draft. Like a boat unmoored, his mind began to drift. The radiator in the corner hissed, giving off more noise than heat, but under these sounds he thought he heard something else: a distant, irregular clanging. The sound of metal striking stone. He tried to ignore it, but the sound was so persistent he knew he’d never be able to rest or concentrate until he’d found out what it was and put a stop to it. Where, he wondered, was Augusto, the custodian, and why hadn’t he taken care of it?
Weary and annoyed, Russo went to the top of the stairs and listened again. The sound was definitely coming from below. The stairs were worn marble and elegantly curved, a reminder that the building, now a part of the university, had been erected centuries ago as a private palace for a Medici descendant. Right now as darkness fell on a Saturday night, it was deserted and only a few overhead lights were left on; it would be Russo’s job—or Augusto’s, if he was even still here—to turn them off before leaving.
Russo hated to stray so far from the phone, but the clanging sound came again, and he had to make sure it was nothing serious. He lumbered down the stairs, one hand on the finely wrought iron railing, and into the large vestibule on the ground floor. There was no sign of Augusto, or anyone, but the great arched doors that led to the courtyard were open and creaking in the wet wind.
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