by M. J. Rose
“What’s happening?” Malachai asked.
“Someone I can’t see or talk to has control over me and is force-feeding me his poor, sick soul.”
Next to Josh, solemnly, Malachai bent down to the water, made a cup with his hands, filled it with water and, with his eyes closed, drank it as reverently as if it were holy water and by ingesting it, he might have a vision, too.
Josh turned away.
He knew how desperately Malachai wanted to experience what he had and how much the older man envied his affliction, and it shocked him to see him like that instead of in control, clever and razor-sharp.
Coming out into the clearing, they headed back toward the crowd for a last look around for Gabriella, even though Josh knew that with the tomb shut down, she wouldn’t be here. It was a last futile effort.
A carabiniere was approaching, and when he met up with them he spoke quickly in Italian. From his tone and his gestures it was clear that he was chastising them and ordering them off the premises.
“We only speak English,” Malachai said.
The policeman pointed toward the barricades where the field ended and the cars were parked. “Go now, please.”
“We were leaving, anyway,” Josh muttered, not caring what the cop picked up from his inflection. They walked back toward their waiting taxi. Everything was wet and muddy and the whole place bothered him now. He just wanted to get away. From the tomb, from Rome, from the fucking insane thoughts inside his head.
When they were three feet from the barricades a little girl of six or seven, with curly black hair and olive skin, broke free from her mother and ran right up to Josh and, throwing her arms around him, broke into tears.
Her mother came running after her, shouting her name, which was Natalie, but the little girl ignored her, holding tight to Josh as if she was trying to keep him tethered to the ground.
“Do you speak English?” Malachai asked the mother.
“Yes. Yes, I do.” She had an accent but spoke very well. “I’m Sophia Lombardo.” She wore jeans and a leather jacket, and she had the same black hair as her daughter and very blue eyes that were filled with concern.
“Natalie,” she said as she put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. She murmured something to her in her native tongue.
The little girl jerked her shoulder away, and against his legs Josh felt her whole tiny body stiffen and her arms grip him.
“Is she all right?” Malachai asked.
“We were watching on the news this morning the report about the tomb and the terrible accident, and she became very agitated and said she wanted to come here. I said it wasn’t possible—she had to go to school and I had to go to work—but she became hysterical. She never has tantrums, this was different. My husband and I became worried. I’m not a mother who gives in, but she was so upset, in so much pain, all because of the news report.” Sophia was bewildered by her daughter’s reaction.
“I think I can help her. Would it be all right if I talked to her?” Malachai asked. “Does she by any chance speak English?”
“Oh, yes, she is bilingual. Her father, he is British.”
Malachai crouched down on his knees so that he was eye level with Natalie, murmuring in the soft, singsong voice he used with the children. “Don’t be afraid, Natalie. Don’t be afraid. Not you.”
With each word, the sobbing slowed, and when she was calm he asked, “Tell me what’s wrong. Why are you so upset?”
“She…” The sobbing started anew.
“It’s all right. Go slow. I can help, I promise.”
“She was…my…sister….”
“Who was, Natalie?”
“I’m not Natalie,” said the little girl, who was still gripping Josh’s leg.
“Who are you?”
“Claudia.”
“And how old are you, Claudia?” Malachai asked.
“I’m twenty-seven.”
Chapter 36
Sophia Lombardo interrupted before Malachai could stop her. “She’s always played this little game that she’s a woman named Claudia.”
“For how long?”
“Ever since she could talk.”
Malachai looked at Josh above the child’s head and then back to the little girl. “So you are Claudia?”
She sobbed. “Yes.”
“And what happened to your sister?”
“She was in the tomb. She was not supposed to die at all…but she did…and she never saw her baby again.”
“That’s very sad, and I’m sorry,” Malachai said very seriously. “Was the baby all right?”
The little girl nodded her head and the curls went flying. “I took care of the baby.”
“That was very good of you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
The child looked at him with some confusion. Whatever spell she’d been under broke. She let go of Josh’s leg, backed up and looked down at the ground shyly, as if she were suddenly embarrassed.
“Do you remember what we just talked about, Natalie?” Malachai asked her.
She nodded.
Josh felt his camera on his chest. He wanted to look at this child through the lens, but he didn’t want to scare her. He caught Malachai’s attention and pointed to the Leica. Malachai whispered his request to her mother, who nodded.
“Can I ask you two or three other questions?” Malachai asked. “It would help me a lot and it might help you, too. I know many children who remember being other people. I know how to make it hurt less.”
Natalie looked up at her mother, who nodded yes.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“And would it be okay if my friend took your picture? It would mean so much to me.”
She looked up at Josh and beamed. The idea of him taking her picture appealed to her.
“So, do you hear Claudia’s thoughts often?” Malachai asked.
“Once in a while. Mostly when I am going to sleep,” she said.
Josh focused. It was there. The iridescent white light streamed off her shoulders and arced into the atmosphere, dissipating as it fanned out.
“It’s wonderful that you can do that. Is there something that Claudia needs you to do for her?”
The blue eyes lifted to him, and in them was gratitude. Not a child’s appreciation. It was the look of a full-grown woman who had suffered profound loss.
Josh took her photograph before she answered Malachai, while she was just still looking at him, absorbing the offer. For a few moments he felt more like himself than he had in days. The camera connected him to who he had been before the accident. Holding equipment, doing his job, everything else fell away. The music of the machine, its clicks and whirrs, steadied him, and the disjointed zigzags of dark emotion that had been weighing him down for days lifted. In the viewfinder he could see that Natalie was relaxing, too. Keeping up a steady stream of easy dialogue with Malachai, she seemed to have forgotten the anguish of only a few minutes ago. Josh had seen this before. Malachai connected to the children he worked with in a way that really did seem like magic. Communicating with them about their pain, frustration and disturbing hallucinations, he almost always was able to soothe them.
It was a gift, Josh had told him.
Malachai had answered that if it was, it had come out of grief and wasn’t worth the cost. When Josh had pressed him to explain, he’d shrugged it off. “I learned about sadness when I was too young for such a lesson, so I relate to what these children are going through.”
He didn’t explain what kind of sadness.
Josh and Malachai walked with Natalie and her mother back to their car. Sophia put some music on the CD player, sat Natalie in the front seat with a doll, and then stood outside with them and asked what had just happened.
Malachai stepped away with Sophia to explain, and Josh focused his camera on Natalie again. The haunted look in her eyes disappeared as she concentrated on undressing her doll and redressing her in what looked like an ancient Roman costume. The mother-of-pearl
nimbus was still there.
“Natalie, come down and say goodbye like a big girl,” Sophia said after she’d finished talking to Malachai.
Natalie climbed out of the car, shook Malachai’s hand and thanked him. He pulled a small silk frog out of their handshake and delighted her with it as a gift. “How did you do that?” she asked, starry-eyed.
“It’s magic,” he smiled.
Josh hadn’t seen the trick coming. He was never looking in the right place at the right time.
The little girl turned to Josh to show him the toy. As soon as her eyes rested on him they filled with tears and the smile disappeared from her face.
Malachai knew what had just happened before Josh did. “Natalie?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You’re Claudia now?”
“Yes. And my sister…my sister…” She was crying hard now and couldn’t get the words out at all.
“What happened to your sister? It’s okay to tell me. Maybe I can help you,” Malachai said, but Natalie was focused on Josh, who leaned down to her level.
“What was your sister’s name?” Josh whispered.
“Sabina,” she said. “And she can’t breathe.”
The small voice was a child’s, but in his ears the one word sounded like a volcanic explosion spewing forth and burying him under its white-hot lava.
“That was a long time ago, Claudia. She’s at peace now,” Malachai said.
Natalie was still looking up at Josh. “We loved her so much, didn’t we?” she said to him.
“Yes, we did,” he whispered, shivers creeping over every inch of his skin.
Chapter 37
Rome, Italy—Friday, 3:25 p.m.
Josh collected the bouquet of flowers, bottle of wine and two giant stuffed animals that he’d asked the concierge to procure for him while he was packing and got into the waiting town car he’d ordered. He had a pilgrimage to make on his way to the Fiumicino airport.
The stop was only a fifteen-minute detour, but he gave himself an extra ninety minutes so he wouldn’t need to rush.
Under a grape arbor, the girls were having what appeared to be a tea party with their dolls, but they stopped to stare at him as he got out of the car with the gifts and started up the walk. They didn’t recognize him, but then he hadn’t expected them to. It had been more than a year since he’d come to their house after the funeral on what must have been the saddest day of their lives.
“Mama! Mama!” the smaller of them called as she ran ahead to announce the visitor’s arrival. As he approached, the elder sister, Dianna, eyed him suspiciously and positioned herself to the left of the door almost as if she were, ironically he thought, standing guard.
Tina greeted him warmly and then told both her daughters that it was all right and to go back outside—or at least that was what Josh thought she said with his limited knowledge of Italian. Cecelia made a move to leave, then stopped, turned around and asked her mother a question. Tina laughed, reached into a cabinet, pulled out a box of cookies and handed it to her.
“She is too smart and knows just when I am too busy for an argument.”
Sitting at the kitchen table while Tina fetched a vase and filled it with water, Josh asked how she was doing. She used a combination of gestures and accented English to tell him that things were getting better, blushing a little when she said it.
“I’m glad for you. And for the girls, too. To hear their mama laugh sometimes.”
Arranging his flowers, she pushed an iris in front of two pink tulips. “I think about him every morning, every night and ten times between, but I don’t always cry. What surprises me, though, is how sometimes I still forget. One of the girls will do something and I’ll think that I can’t wait till Andreas gets home from work to tell him.”
“Sometimes I still pick up the phone to call my father to tell him something—and he died almost twenty years ago.” He frowned. “I’m not sure that was the right thing to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“No, it is fine.” She positioned the vase in the middle of the table and then offered Josh wine or coffee. He said he’d love some coffee and she turned on the espresso machine.
“And you? You are better, too, no?” she asked.
“Yes. Much better, thank you.”
She turned away from her preparations and faced him, studying him for a few moments. Then she shook her head. “Not all better, though. It’s still in your eyes. I know what happened that day only from being told. I didn’t actually see it. I think in some ways you have it worse.”
Andreas Carlucci had been the security guard at the checkpoint right outside the Vatican, who had been caught in the blast that had almost claimed Josh’s life. The two of them were at the same hospital, in rooms next to each other. Tina had stayed at her husband’s side during the week he fought for his life, and every evening before she left to go home to her girls, she would stop by to see Josh. Swimming in and out of his drug-induced haze he would look up and see her, an angel standing by his bed, her long black hair framing her face, head bowed, eyes closed, whispering a prayer for his recovery.
Josh was released the day before Andreas’s funeral, and although he was still dizzy and in constant pain, he’d gone to pay his respects. It was the first time, but not the last, that he’d wondered whether, with two children and a wife, it might have been better if Andreas Carlucci had been the one to make it.
The same thought occurred to him now, watching her as she poured the coffee.
“It was nice of you to come and visit,” she said as she handed him a cup. “Are you in Rome for work?”
He nodded. “My first time back.”
“How was it? Did you have any—” She broke off, not sure of the words in English. “Backflashes?”
“Flashbacks?” He smiled but avoided the question. “Do you and the girls need anything?”
She shook her head. “We have his pension, plus I have gone back to work part-time. My parents help me out with the girls, who like having them around.”
“They look wonderful. I was thinking, before I leave, would you like me to take pictures of them? Of all three of you?”
Josh photographed the two girls and their mother in their garden with the afternoon sunshine shining down on them. At first the children were shy, but after he gave them their stuffed animals they relaxed and started having fun, laughing and posing and losing all inhibitions.
“Do you have pictures of our father from before the accident?” Dianna asked him suddenly.
Josh hadn’t thought she knew who he was.
“I do, yes. I have several.”
“Can we have them, please?”
“Of course. I should have thought of it before now,” Josh said, including Tina in his response. “I’ll send them as soon as I get home.”
And then Dianna picked up her doll and resumed playing with her sister.
All the shots Josh had taken in the seconds before the bomb exploded featured Andreas arguing with the woman who turned out to be a suicide bomber, insisting she let him inspect the baby carriage. No one in the family would get much joy from seeing how aggravating his last conscious moments had been.
“One minute they’re playing, the next inconsolable and then back to playing. Kids bounce back so fast,” Josh said to Tina as she walked him out to the waiting car.
“I think it’s because they aren’t afraid of grief the way we are….” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry. Maybe my coming here wasn’t a good idea after all.”
“No. It was a very good idea. And a very kind one. I am glad to see you. So what if I cry? I always knew that Andreas’s job was dangerous. I was afraid that if he died, I would die, too. Now that I’ve found out I can live without him, I am not scared of so much.”
Josh didn’t know what to say. But Tina did. She took both his hands in hers, bowed her head, closed her eyes and intoned the words that had sounded like music to Josh when he had first heard them in
his hospital room as he swam in and out of the pain medication, and sounded like music to him still.
Chapter 38
Flight 121 left Rome two hours late, at four-thirty in the afternoon. During takeoff, the seventy-year-old man in seat 29B sat hunched over his worn Bible, reading page after page of the Book of Genesis. The man next to him gave him a few curious looks and then tried to ignore him, but every once in a while he looked back. When the plane had been airborne for forty minutes, just as dinner was served, an announcement asked Mr. Meyerowitz to identify himself. At first he was startled to hear the voice saying his name in front of all these people. He felt his heart lurch inside his rib cage. Then he remembered he’d ordered the kosher meal and this was routine. He turned on his seat’s call button, and minutes later a sweet-looking brunette with very red lipstick brought him a boring and bland dinner of dried-out chicken and watery vegetables.
When she came to take the tray away, he was polite and circumspect to her.
“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Meyerowitz?” He wanted to tell her he wasn’t hard of hearing and that she didn’t have to lean forward and articulate so carefully, but instead he just nodded. “I would very much like some tea. With sugar.”
After he finished his tea, the man took a break from the Bible to nap, but he slept fitfully. Under the blanket he gripped his briefcase, and he kept waking up to look at his watch and check the time.
It wasn’t doing any good to keep checking. They would land when they landed. If he was a magician he’d make the flight take one hour instead of eight—but he’d still be just as nervous. If he could just relax and concentrate on being calm. He was prepared. He knew all the rules and regulations. Nothing would go wrong. Closing his eyes again, he focused on lowering his heart rate and evening his breathing. Within minutes his nerves had smoothed out.
