Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  Someone was sitting there in the dark, behind its balustrade. He ought to have been able to see her, too. Was he looking in the other direction at this moment? She could vaguely make out his silhouette, but nothing else.

  Alarmed, she kept very close to the facade so that he couldn’t see her from above. If she was going to get past this house, she would have to pass several open doors, as well as a gaping hole where there had once been a window.

  She reached the first door, then the second. Someone had painted the words DONNE and UOMINI over the doors, as if they were public toilets.

  A figure came out of the third door and barred her way.

  Rosa raised the revolver.

  The man, in a leather jacket and jeans like the other two, held up his left hand reassuringly. He was holding a submachine gun in his right hand, with its muzzle pointing to the ground. His long black hair fell over his shoulders.

  She was still wondering what to do when he shook his head and gestured to her to follow him.

  “What—”

  He put a finger to his lips.

  “Rosa.” Pantaleone spoke up again. She had almost forgotten about him.

  She put the cell phone in front of her mouth like a microphone. “Not now.”

  “I assume you’ve met Remeo,” said the old man. His voice sounded distorted, with a crackle in it.

  “Remeo?” she repeated.

  The man with the submachine gun nodded. “Quiet, now. Come with me.”

  Instead, she put the cell phone to her ear again. “Who is he?”

  “How do you think I know what Cesare gets up to?” asked Pantaleone. “Remeo is my man in his camp. An informer, if you will. He told me they’d picked up Alessandro. And where they’re keeping him and the girl. He’ll take you there.”

  She still didn’t trust Pantaleone, let alone this henchman of his, who was obviously working for both sides. But she had no choice.

  Taking no more notice of her or the gun she was holding, Remeo turned and went into the house. She hesitantly followed him inside. The soles of her shoes crunched on broken glass. The narrow corridor had a back wall, but through another door she could see that there was nothing left behind it. After a couple of feet the ground fell abruptly away. Old linoleum hung in rags over the edge.

  But Remeo was not on his way to the back of the house. He went down a flight of stairs to a cellar. Reluctantly, she followed him through pitch-dark rooms. They finally reached the open air again on a bank below the ruined building, where tilting piles of rubble were overgrown with bushes. They were making their way through a crevice in the rubble when Remeo suddenly stopped, pointing to three houses a little farther down the slope. In the moonlight, and at this distance, they looked almost intact. Their former gardens had merged into a jungle of dense undergrowth.

  “It’s the middle house,” her companion whispered. “The back door is open. There are several men patrolling the road outside it. And at least one in the house itself. Probably in the kitchen, or what’s left of it. Your boyfriend is on the second floor, the room at the end of the hall. There’s no lock, only a bolt on the outside of the door. If they catch you and shut you in there, no one can help you.”

  There wasn’t much for her to remember, but she went through each piece of this information separately in her head.

  “Where’s Iole?”

  “She was in the house with him, but they took her away.”

  “Where to?”

  He shrugged.

  Pantaleone’s crackling voice came again. “You may have to decide between them.”

  If he said any more about her decision she’d scream. Even here.

  “Thank you,” she said to Remeo, and set off. After she had gone a couple of steps, she looked over her shoulder.

  There was no one on the slope behind her.

  The tangled jungle that the tiny garden of the house had become in recent decades offered adequate cover. Remeo had been right. The back door was unlocked, and she probably had him to thank for that, too. Very close, beyond the bushes, a generator was chugging noisily. It smelled of burnt fuel and oil.

  On tiptoe, she slipped into the house and made her way along a narrow corridor. A staircase led to the floor above. The banisters had disappeared.

  Light fell through an open door near the entrance. Glasses or bottles clinked inside the room. A man’s voice was hoarsely singing along with an old Italian hit on a radio.

  Revolver in hand, Rosa stole up the stairs. The steps under her feet seemed to be smeared with sticky resin that clung to the soles of her shoes. It felt like an eternity before she reached the top.

  The singing stopped short.

  Rosa scuttled around a corner at the top of the stairs. She heard loud footsteps in the kitchen, then in the corridor.

  She held her breath. Listened and waited.

  Nothing moved down below. Until she began to think no one was there now. But then she heard a cough, and footsteps walking back into the room. The radio was turned down, and the man did not begin his tuneless singing again.

  A naked lightbulb lit the second-floor hallway. Four of the five doors were open. Only the last, at the very end, was closed. Someone had used a chunk of wood to make a bolt with a medieval look to it. It rested in fittings that had been screwed to the door itself and the wall beside the frame. Scraps of brownish wallpaper hung from the ceiling like dusty cobwebs. They blew eerily in the draft as Rosa passed under them.

  As soon as she raised the cell phone to her ear, she could hear Pantaleone’s voice.

  “I’m in the house,” she whispered. “Just outside Alessandro’s door.”

  She distrusted her own feelings; she was torn between the confusing closeness she had felt when Alessandro, in his panther form, sat beside her at the end of the abandoned expressway, and her anger with him for leaving her behind at the palazzo like some silly little girl he’d picked up in a bar.

  Soundlessly, she reached the end of the hall. The wooden bolt was heavy, and she had to put the revolver and cell phone down on the floor to lift it out of the fittings with both hands. The scraping of wood against wood sounded much too loud in the silence.

  Very, very cautiously she propped the bolt against the wall. Picked up the revolver, but left the cell phone lying there. Placed one hand on the old-fashioned doorknob.

  “Alessandro,” she whispered as she turned it. “It’s me. Rosa.”

  There were footsteps on the stairs behind her.

  Then quiet singing…

  BLOOD FLOWS

  SHE LET GO OF the doorknob again and swung around, arms outstretched, holding the revolver in both hands. She aimed it down the hall as if she knew what she was doing. In fact she was trembling rather than taking aim.

  A man came up the stairs. He reached the upper landing, carrying a steaming glass of hot milk. In his efforts not to spill the liquid, he still hadn’t noticed her. He switched the glass from hand to hand so he wouldn’t burn his fingers.

  He was still fifteen feet away from Rosa when he looked up.

  The glass fell and broke on the floor. Milk splashed over the dirty linoleum.

  “One squeak out of you and I fire.” She hoped he didn’t notice how the revolver shook in her hands.

  The man came closer.

  “Stay where you are!”

  This time he obeyed.

  “Do you have a gun on you?”

  Slowly, he opened his jacket with one hand and showed her the shoulder holster.

  “Pull up the zipper on your jacket.” She dared not tell him to take the pistol out and drop it on the floor. She didn’t know how quick he might be. “Very carefully,” she said.

  He was a head and a half taller than Rosa, and twice as broad. “You’re the Alcantara girl.”

  “Zip up that jacket.”

  “Okay.” He followed her instructions without trying any tricks. His face was not unattractive, almost humorous.

  Finally he began moving again, arms rais
ed by his sides.

  “Stay where you are.”

  “And then what?”

  Good question. The hall was too narrow for her to make him pass her and go ahead into the room. And she couldn’t lock him in one of the other rooms either, because he would alert the guards outside through the window.

  “You know,” he said quietly, taking another step toward her, “there’s only one thing for you to do. You’ll have to shoot me.”

  She aimed the gun at his face.

  “Can you do it?” he asked.

  “I’ll shoot you in the stomach. If you don’t bleed to death, the pain will kill you.” She’d once heard that in a Western.

  “Then you’d better aim at my stomach.” He dropped his left hand and patted his jacket. Her eyes instinctively followed his movement. In the same split second, she realized that she had made a mistake.

  His right hand went swiftly behind his back, to bring out a long hunting knife. He must have been carrying it behind him on his belt.

  Without a word, he lunged at her.

  She pulled the trigger. The silencer swallowed up the sound except for a high whistling.

  The man staggered as if he had been punched, stumbled back against the corridor wall. Something wet gleamed on his left shoulder as he turned to her again, his face distorted by pain.

  Her hands were trembling more than ever. There was nothing she could do to stop them.

  He lunged again. The knife was as long as her forearm, and its blade shone in the light of the naked bulb.

  Suddenly there was someone beside her. A cool hand touched hers, gently taking the weapon from her fingers. She let go of it. The man was looking incredulously past Rosa.

  “Alessandro?” she whispered.

  But it wasn’t Alessandro. Iole stood there instead. Unruffled, she aimed the revolver at the man—and pulled the trigger.

  This time the shot knocked him off his feet. When his back and head hit the floor, Rosa saw the coin-size hole in his forehead.

  “There,” said Iole, pleased, as if she had finished a difficult piece of needlework.

  Pantaleone’s voice was shouting in agitation from the cell phone on the floor. “What’s going on? Rosa? Are you all right?”

  She ignored him. Iole, in front of her, had let the hand holding the revolver sink and was looking down at the dead man. She wore a white dress and smelled of soap and shampoo. Washed and dressed up to make a pretty quarry for the hunters to chase.

  Rosa hugged her, and felt the butt of the gun behind Iole’s back as she returned the embrace. They both had tears in their eyes, but neither girl shed them.

  “Have they done anything to you?” asked Rosa.

  Iole shook her head.

  Rosa gently took the gun from her hand. “Did your father teach you to use that?”

  “My uncle,” she said. “Augusto.”

  “Is Alessandro with you?”

  “No.”

  Rosa looked doubtfully through the open door. No trace of him. Was it the wrong room? Maybe the wrong house?

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” she told Iole, although she wasn’t sure who had just saved whom. She avoided looking at the dead man. Iole, however, took two slow steps toward him, put her head to one side, and examined him.

  With her left hand, Rosa picked up the cell phone again, keeping the revolver in her right. “Pantaleone?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Have you freed the girl?”

  “Yes. But that wasn’t what you and your friend Remeo told me.” She wasn’t going to say that she had expected to find Alessandro, not here in front of Iole. But the old man knew exactly what she meant. “I’m fed up with you and your tricks.”

  “The girl is free. That will have to do.”

  “This is another of your tests, right? To see if I’m made of the right stuff to lead the Alcantaras.”

  “You’ve just passed it.”

  “You said I’d find him here.”

  “Steer clear of him,” he said forcefully. “The Carnevares aren’t like you and me. He’ll bring you nothing but pain and grief.”

  “You can leave that to me.” She looked at Iole, who was crouching beside the body, touching the lifeless face with her fingertip.

  “You will do as I tell you now.” The old man’s voice was sharp. “I am your capo, and you will obey me.”

  “The hell I will. Play your little games with Florinda and Zoe if they’ll go along with them.”

  “Forget him, Rosa. Run to the car with the girl, get out of there, both of you. You still have a chance. But it won’t be long before someone notices that the girl’s missing.” He hesitated briefly, and then added, “Just now, when you were otherwise engaged, I was sent a message. The tribunal has made its decision.”

  “So early?” There was a tinge of bluish light outside the open doors. The sun would be rising in a few minutes.

  “As soon as the tribunal opened, Cesare withdrew his accusation,” Pantaleone said. “Your sister called a few minutes ago and told me. Cesare said that you were indeed to blame for his son’s death, but you didn’t pull the trigger yourself. So he got in ahead of my witnesses, avoiding a decision that would have damaged his reputation and been a bad start for a capo of the Carnevares. This way, however, he’s shown everyone that he submits to the laws of the dynasties and would be worthy of the title of capo. At this moment, the tribunal should be suggesting that the Carnevares would do well to elect him their new leader.”

  “There’s another possibility,” whispered Rosa, looking at the revolver in her hand.

  “Yes. There is.”

  “He knew I’d try to free Iole. He knew Carnevare blood would probably flow.”

  “Which it obviously just has,” commented Pantaleone.

  “And this time no one will believe I didn’t fire the shot.” She took a deep breath and turned to the girl. “Iole, do you know who that dead man is?”

  “Dario Carnevare,” said Iole. “Alessandro’s second cousin.”

  Pantaleone groaned quietly. “That’s the second breach of the concordat he can throw up at you. And who knows whether it will be the last, if you don’t get out of there right away.”

  “He’s been taking me for a ride.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And he knows I’m here. Now, at this moment.”

  “Very conceivably.”

  “And you knew that Cesare would lure me here.”

  “I only took it into consideration. I wouldn’t have let you fall into his trap if there had been no way out of it. So if you hurry, you can do it. Cesare made a mistake, in spite of everything. He ought to have taken treason into account when he made his plans. Let that be a lesson to you, Rosa—double-dealing is your constant companion. But Cesare has no idea that two of his men in Gibellina are on your side. He feels confident, the fool!”

  “Two men? Remeo, and who’s the other?”

  “You may meet him if you go to your car now, at once!” He was obviously tired of this discussion.

  So was Rosa. “I’m getting Alessandro out of here first.”

  “There’s no time to—”

  She hung up. After a moment’s hesitation, she switched the cell phone off and put it in her pocket.

  “Rosa?” Iole had risen to her feet and was smoothing out her white dress. She looked rather dazed.

  “We have to go.” Rosa took her hand and led her away from the body, over to the stairs.

  “Rosa. I know where he is.” Iole smiled, but she looked strangely distracted. “I know where they took Alessandro.”

  Ten minutes later, at the outer edge of the monument, Rosa was anxiously watching Iole move away, a patch of white in the dawn twilight. If she kept going in that direction, she couldn’t fail to see the Mercedes. Rosa had described the place where she had left the car and made the girl promise to hide near it and wait for her. If Rosa wasn’t back by full daylight, she
said, Iole must set out on foot. Two hours’ walk down the road would take her to the nearest village.

  At the moment Rosa couldn’t do anything else for her. The northern route seemed to be reasonably safe. The Carnevares, and others who had come to Gibellina for the election and the hunt that would follow it, had left their cars in the valley south of the ruined village. In the dim light of early morning, Rosa had seen them some way farther down the slope. She thought, and hoped, that Iole could get away unnoticed on the inhospitable and winding road to the north.

  Several men were preparing for the hunt in the concrete alleys of the monument, setting up floodlights and generators. Rosa crouched in the tall bushes, assessing the best way to avoid Cesare’s henchmen.

  Time was short. The sun was coming up over the hills in the east, turning the sky a fiery red. Morning mists rose from the surrounding valleys, dispersing among the untended vineyards. Rosa set out on a wide detour around the concrete labyrinth on its western side. Ducking low, she ran up the slope, taking what shelter she could find in the bushes and the rubble. No one had yet realized that Iole had disappeared. It was possible that Remeo was covering up for her down there.

  Above her was the lonely rough-hewn stone farmhouse that she had seen when she’d first arrived. It stood on the slope above the monument, apparently unoccupied.

  So far she had seen only a single patrol, and avoided it easily enough. All the other men were busy putting up floodlights, laying cables, and preparing a large festive table in the shelter of the mighty rocks at the edge of the monument, out of the wind. Crates of wine were carried, clinking, up a path that ordinary cars couldn’t manage; wooden benches and folding chairs were set up. A huge barbecue with a spit big enough to hold a whole calf was being hauled up the hill by four men. Rosa had a horrible idea of what the long spit was intended for.

  Was this the way the Arcadian dynasties had helped the savage lusts of antiquity to survive into the present day? What barbarity would there be if the Hungry Man regained control of the dynasties again, reviving King Lycaon’s cult of cannibalism?

  As she climbed the last part of the way to the house, she wondered again about Cesare’s motives. It seemed strange that he wasn’t mounting a search for her. Unless, it suddenly occurred to her, he had indeed given orders for one, but they had never arrived at the Gibellina monument. If so, Pantaleone’s second informer must hold high rank within the Carnevare clan—high enough to countermand Cesare’s message.