The Wonder Chamber

by Mary Malloy

  “No,” Carmine said with a wonderful gesture of his hand. “This is a very Italian story. Construction started in the fourteenth century and continued for about two hundred and fifty years, at which time, according to some sources, there was a fight with the church authorities in Rome and they just stopped building.” He pointed to either side of the edifice. “It was supposed to have the side wings that would give it the required cruciform shape, but neither they, nor the front surface, were ever completed.”

  “I find that rather astonishing,” Lizzie said. “No one ever thought to try to finish it in the last three hundred years?”

  Carmine shrugged in that way that she had now come to accept as a peculiarly Italian gesture. “Oh I think there were attempts, but you see the results before you. You must go inside sometime, though. Among other things it has a meridian line, a brass marker in the floor that runs almost the length of the church. Go at noon,” he continued. “The sun comes in through a lens in the roof and hits the line, marking the date.”

  They talked comfortably for more than an hour about Bologna and things to see. Carmine was a wealth of information and had such a musical voice that Lizzie loved listening to him. He told her of a project he was working on to compare as many images of St. Petronio as he could identify. The saint, he explained, was always shown holding a model of the city in his arms.

  “He is the patron saint of Bologna,” he said, “the bishop in the fifth century. When various artists either painted or sculpted him, they never tried to capture what the city looked like in the time of St. Petronio, but rather depicted the city as it looked in their own time. It is always enclosed within its medieval walls, but the configuration of the towers changes over time and I think I can see and describe the built history of the city in this way.”

  “When were the towers built?” Lizzie asked.

  “In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Come,” he said, laying some money on the table and leading her across the square to the front of the church. In the carving of the saint above the door he pointed out the features he had been describing.

  Lizzie asked him about the brick towers, which were a defining feature of Bologna, and he told her that they had been built by the principal families, for defense against Germanic invaders.

  “There were probably 180 of them in the thirteenth century,” he said. “I think less than twenty survive and the most famous are the two we passed on the Via Zamboni.” He pointed out those two towers in the model held by the saint above the door. They were recognizable by their close juxtaposition, and by the decided incline of one of them.

  They passed a wall with a series of portrait photographs printed onto ceramic tiles. “It’s a memorial to resistance fighters in the war,” Carmine explained.

  Lizzie thought of Gianna Gonzaga, who had been in the Resistance and was executed by the Nazis. She stepped over to see if there was a picture of her and found herself disappointed when she didn’t find it.

  “Are you looking for someone particular?” Carmine asked.

  Lizzie described what she had learned of Gianna.

  “Was she married?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Lizzie answered, struggling to remember back to the conversation at Tony Tessitore’s house when he had described the trio of Patrizio, Gianna, and Gianna’s husband Archie working for the Resistance. “Her husband’s name was Archie,” she said, pressing three fingers against her forehead, as if it might make her brain work more efficiently. “Archie, something that starts with a C.”

  She walked a few steps backwards along the wall and scanned the photographs of people with surnames starting with the letter C. “Giuseppina Cussetti,” she said softly. “Here she is.”

  Looking back at her was a young woman with large dark eyes. Her hair was parted in the middle and hung to her shoulders. She had a slight smile on her face, almost like the expression on the face of the Mona Lisa that had inspired so much discussion over the centuries.

  “How very very sad,” Lizzie said. She turned to Carmine and explained the little she knew about Gianna. “I was told that her body was thrown out of a truck onto the plaza in front of her house. That she had been raped and beaten to death.”

  Carmine put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Such terrible things happened during the war,” he said. He suggested they have a drink and then asked what her plans were for dinner.

  “I think I’m supposed to get my meals on my own,” she said. “It is a strange situation at the house.”

  “And we haven’t even talked about the collection yet,” he said. “Let us have a glass of wine and then dinner.”

  “I won’t be keeping you from your family?”

  “No, only from my cats, and sometimes they have to be reminded that I am the boss and my world does not actually revolve around them.”

  He had pronounced it “I amma da bose,” and Lizzie found it completely charming. By the end of the evening they each felt they had found a friend, and Lizzie looked forward to working with Carmine both here in Bologna, and in Boston, where he expressed a desire to go when the exhibit was mounted.

  “It is my impression that Cosimo Gonzaga can be persuaded to pay for almost anything having to do with this exhibit,” Lizzie said. “Though I’m not exactly sure what his motives are.”

  “Well I can tell you that there is no shortage of money there.” Though they had become friendly, Lizzie didn’t push him to say more about their sponsor.

  It was a short walk from the restaurant to the Piazza Galvani, which was directly behind the church of St. Petronio.

  Lizzie asked Carmine about the statue of Galvani and was told that the building across the square from the Gonzaga house was the original home of the University of Bologna. “Galvani taught there,” he said.

  “I love the statue, with him trying to balance this pile of books.”

  He said that he had always liked it too.

  “The building is now the Archiginnasio Library,” he continued. “You should go in there too. It was damaged by a bomb in the war, but they have done a great restoration, and it has the original autopsy theatre where I think Galvani probably worked. He was a physician.”

  Lizzie said that she knew that from reading a label about him in the museum.

  The logical next step for them was to schedule a time to look at the collection. As they stood in front of the Palazzo Gonzaga Lizzie repeated what she had told Carmine at dinner, that Patrizio’s dementia made him very unpredictable. “Unfortunately,” she said, “we have to be prepared for him to object to having any part of the collection moved to Boston for the exhibit.”

  “Is he ever out of the house?” Carmine asked.

  “So far no, but this is only my second day here. I’ll ask Pina or Cosimo about it tomorrow.”

  They exchanged phone numbers and as Lizzie entered Carmine’s number in her cell phone she realized that it was after eleven o’clock. “I should have called Pina this evening,” she said. “I never told anyone where I was going or when I would return.”

  “Do you have a key to the house?”

  “I do,” she said. “I know I would never be able to get Patrizio’s attention from the front door, and frankly his housekeeper Graziella scares me.”

  He walked her to the door and waited until she opened it, then kissed her on both cheeks.

  “I look forward to making a plan tomorrow,” he said, and Lizzie said that she did too.

  The key moved easily in the lock and she stepped into the courtyard. There was a light on in the dining room, which sent a diffuse yellow light across the space, and a few smaller lights on in other rooms, which Lizzie thought either Pina or Graziella must have left for her to find her way around. She thought again that she should have called Pina. If Patrizio, or even Graziella, found her sneaking around the dark house she might get another blow.

  She used
the flashlight on her cell phone to find her way up the stairs to the piano nobile and found a lamp on in the Entrance Hall. There was a smaller staircase that continued up to the next floor of the house, but it was not the one that Pina had originally used to show her to her room, and Lizzie did not want to be finding a new route in the dark. There was another lamp on in the Chinese Salon, and that was enough to guide her through the Yellow Salon to the back corner of the house where there was another staircase. This was also where the small elevator had been installed for Patrizio, who no longer had the ability to climb stairs.

  The staircase had a silk rope rather than a railing and Lizzie felt along the length of it as she followed the curve of the stairs and reached the top floor. Her room was down the long hall that ran the length of the dining room on the floor below, around the corner and halfway down another long hallway.

  She walked as quietly as she could. There was a soft light from the doorway of the small chapel, which Pina had pointed out to her the afternoon before, but then the door was closed. Now it was open slightly and she heard Patrizio’s voice in prayer. Lizzie put her eye to the opening and looked in. There was a lovely altar surrounded by a marble railing and lit by several dozen candles. A small chandelier of angels held up a crown filled with some gentle light source, which glowed above the bowed head of the old man.

  There were no pews. Instead there were eight individual bench seats, built into small cabinets with attached kneelers. Patrizio occupied one that was in the back row and neither in the center nor on the end. It must have been his accustomed spot when there were more people who used the chapel regularly. Lizzie remembered reading in one of Maggie’s letters that she had attended daily mass there with her mother-in-law. Perhaps she had continued that tradition with her children.

  There was something sadly poignant in seeing the old man alone in the chapel, and Lizzie was again struck with concern about the impact that taking the collection away, even for a few months, might have on him.

  Walking softly to her room, she thought about what this house must have been like when Patrizio was a child. Lizzie had already fallen in love with Maggie Gonzaga and was convinced she must have been a wonderful mother. With six children in the house it would have been an active place, full of life; how different from the situation now.

  When she was comfortably in bed, she took up Maggie’s letters again. From 1912 to 1914 they were filled with news of her growing family, and her increasing familiarity with and love for the house, which she described in wonderful detail. In a letter from June 1914 to her mother, Maggie acknowledged the receipt of the telegram that informed her of the death of her father, and stated her plans to return to Boston for the funeral with Lorenzo and her two small daughters. There was a gap in the correspondence for more than a year after that. Lizzie knew that she had stayed in the U.S. for the birth of her oldest son, Adino.

  She turned off her light and got out of bed. Standing at the window she looked into the courtyard. The lights were still on where she had left them around the piano nobile. Opposite her, a light came on in Patrick’s room and Lizzie saw Graziella guiding the old man to his bed. She got back under her covers and opened her computer. In the file of family photos she looked for images of Gianna, first as a child, then as a little girl with a pageboy haircut, and then as a young woman. There were several pictures of Gianna and Patrizio, who had been handsome in his youth. One of the two always had an arm wrapped around the other. Eventually another young man appeared in the photos and at some point he was in every picture of Gianna. Jimmy had been careful to attach a caption to each picture from the notations on the back, and the second young man was identified first as Arcangelo Cussetti and then simply as Archie.

  There was a picture of Gianna sitting on the railing of the courtyard staircase in an outfit that might have been a costume to play Juliet. Her mother stood beside her with an arm around her shoulders. Archie and Patrizio were both wearing doublets and tights and had swords with which they pretended to threaten each other as they fought their way up the stairs. Maggie and Gianna looked at them with great smiles of amusement.

  Lizzie placed her computer on the bedside table and looked at that picture until she drifted off, at which point the machine also went to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Theresa Kenney was an undergraduate at St. Pat’s 1938-42. After she graduated, she became a teacher at St. Pat’s Prep and worked there until she retired in 1986 and then she moved to Florida. She died in ’96. I can’t find any evidence that she was married or had children.”

  Lizzie was still in her room as she read the email from Jackie, which had been sent the previous day. It was eight o’clock and the house was silent. Once again she didn’t know if there was a time when she might begin her work, or if Patrizio was again going to be a problem. She decided to call Pina.

  “I’m confused,” she began, “with how I am to proceed with my work here. I met with Carmine Moreale yesterday and we’d like to start assessing the condition of the pieces that might be traveling to Boston.”

  Pina answered that she had spoken to her Uncle Cosimo after yesterday’s incident and that he suggested that maybe Patrizio should be taken out of the house while Lizzie worked. He wanted her to feel free to do what she needed to do, and didn’t want her to worry about being in any danger if Patrizio were to have another violent outburst.

  “How will you proceed today?” Pina asked.

  “I’ll play things as they come,” Lizzie answered. “If Patrizio is willing to work with me I’ll do that this morning; if he isn’t I’ll go out and do some research at the University Museum.”

  She hung up the phone and answered Jackie’s message. “Can you find a picture of Theresa Kenney and tell me if she looks anything like me?”

  It was a dangerous game to pretend to be someone else, especially someone about whom she knew nothing, but if Patrizio once again confused her with Theresa Kenney, Lizzie would use it to communicate with the old man.

  As she walked past the chapel door to the stairs, Lizzie once again heard Patrizio at prayer. She took a deep breath, pushed open the door and went in. Moving slowly and with as little sound as she could, she sat on one of the seats and bowed her head.

  The light this morning came from three stained-glass windows that caught the morning sun and sent a few rays into the room. In some places the colors held their individual intensity, and a beam of blue or gold picked out the details in wood and marble carvings around the altar. Mostly the colors were diffused into the air, in a heady mixture that left Lizzie breathless.

  It was several minutes before the old man turned and looked at her. She nodded and whispered, “Hello, Pat.”

  He looked confused for a moment, and then said in English. “Who are you?”

  Her voice caught for a moment in her throat as she reconsidered the lie she was about to tell. “Theresa Kenney,” she whispered hoarsely. “Your friend from St. Pat’s.”

  Patrizio put his hands on the railing of the kneeler and pushed himself up; she immediately stood and went to help him. He took her hand and kissed it. “Have you forgiven me?” he asked.

  Lizzie gave a confused nod. Clearly there was a more complex story here than just classmates in college.

  “I made such a terrible mistake,” he said. His next words were in Italian and then he seemed to catch himself and returned to English. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Embarrassed at the game she was playing, Lizzie found she could not look at him and her eyes instead moved around the chapel. The night before when she had looked in, the altar was covered with candles, but they had all burnt out, leaving wax dangling from the tall silver candlesticks in slender teardrops, and laying in hardened disks on the marble of the altar. Nothing on the surface of it looked like what she remembered from the seventeenth-century sketch, but under the altar the corpse looked just as it had in that sketch, and in th
e photo from the 1950s. It lay behind a panel of glass.

  Patrizio saw where Lizzie’s gaze was focused and said something about the man being a martyred Crusader knight. “He was killed on his way to Venice.”

  “Was he a member of your family?”

  “Oh no. We claim only one saint, Aloysius. This man died here in Bologna and was buried in our parish church, St. Paolo Maggiore. When this chapel was built, relics were needed and St. Paolo’s wanted more room than it had, so he was transferred here.”

  Lizzie continued to look around and Patrizio pointed out columns brought from Constantinople during the fourth crusade that had also been moved here from St. Paolo Maggiore. There were a number of reliquaries, mostly in niches on either side of the altar. Lizzie had always thought that a few of these would add to her exhibit and now that she actually saw them she was even more convinced.

  “May I look at the reliquaries?” she asked tentatively, ready to back away instantly if Patrizio showed any misgivings.

  He opened the door in the marble railing as an answer and gestured to the inner part of the altar. There were at least forty large reliquaries and dozens of small ones visible there; the largest were more than two feet tall and some had full arm or leg bones visible. Many were in the shape of the saintly body parts that they held, including arms and heads. Lizzie had seen many reliquaries before, but still found the juxtaposition of human body parts, precious metals and gemstones somewhat jarring. The artistry and expense that had gone into the creation of the container, compared to the morbid earthiness of the contents, was simultaneously fascinating and repellent.

  If she could choose three of these for her exhibit, they would be a huge hit in Boston, and Father O’Toole had already said that he would arrange with the cardinal to transport them if there was any problem. She began to make a mental list of the ones that would have the most visual impact, by either the impressiveness of the artistry and materials, or the shock of the bones.