by Gregg Loomis
He had said too much, the old man was sure of it. He was going to be found dead in the pensione that represented his entire life’s savings. He would not only crawl to Saint Peter’s, he would take every bit of money paid by the accursed German/American and put it in the poor box as thanks for his deliverance.
The man with the gun spun on the heels of his work boots and left the old man gaping after him. He had been spared. A good thing, too. Had the bastard with the gun remained one second longer, the old innkeeper would have had to attack, snatch away the gun and shoot him with it like the American policeman he had seen in the film on television. What was it the American policeman had said? Oh yes: “Go ahead, make my day.”
3
Umbria
Two hours later
Off the Auto Strada, they passed a cluster of motels that would have been at home anywhere along an American interstate. They followed a procession of trucks through modern Orvieto before turning off the main road and beginning the climb uphill.
Orvieto was the only hill town Lang had ever visited that was not hilly. Instead, the old walled city perched on top of a rock formation that was flat on top, a geological phenomenon any resident of the American Southwest would recognize as a mesa. There was little traffic. Tourists had not yet discovered the place, although the huge empty parking lot below the main piazza gave an indication of the citizens’ aspirations.
Winding through the narrow streets, Lang guided the BMW into the Via Maurizo and the Piazza Dumo, a square dominated by the cathedral. The late morning sun danced along the gilt mosaics covering the facade of the exuberantly Italian Gothic building. Unlike the more famous towns of Tuscany to the north, there were few cars on the square. Lang parked and held the bike steady as Gurt swung a long leg over the seat to dismount.
They entered the narthex of the church, standing still while their eyes acclimated to the dim light. Inside the nave, candles flickered in side chapels, shadows giving movement to frescoes. A brightness came from somewhere beyond the choir, the raised platform where the transept crossed the main body of the church.
An elaborate altar held more candles, their wavering light making Christ seem to writhe on His cross. To the right of the sanctuary, another side chapel blazed with electric floodlights anachronistic in a setting centuries old. The floor was covered with dropcloths. Brushes, putty knives and bottles of pigment were scattered everywhere. Even the clutter did little to detract from richly colored figures tumbling into the abyss, that favorite of Italian frescoes, the Final Judgement.
No matter whether painted by Michelangelo, Bernini or some other artist, the subject always reminded Lang of late Friday night at a singles bar.
On scaffolding halfway up the wall of anguished souls consigned to damnation (or those who would sleep alone), three men were examining one of the figures. Two wore overalls. The third was in a paint-splattered cassock.
“Fra Marcenni?” Gurt called.
The man in the cassock turned. He could have been one of the saints pictured throughout the church. His white hair stood around a pink circle of scalp, catching the powerful light in an electronic halo. He was small, about the size of the pensione’s owner and about the same age.
“Si?”
“Do you speak English?” she asked, shading her eyes as she looked up at the top of the scaffolding.
The halo shook: no.
Gurt fired off a burst of Italian.
The monk smiled and replied, pointing behind Lang and Gurt.
“He says he’ll come down in a minute or two, that he’ll be happy to speak to us. We are to enjoy the art of this magnificent church while we wait.”
Lang’s lack of interest in religious art applied equally to the magnificent or otherwise. So, instead of feeding coins into boxes to illuminate the paintings in the various chapels, he amused himself by deciphering the Latin epitaphs marking the tombs of prelates and nobility who had contributed generously to this church. The burial places of the poor, no doubt, had long since been forgotten.
The meek might someday inherit the earth but it will be one that doesn’t remember them.
Lang studied a small glass vial embedded in the altar, trying to ascertain what holy relic might be enshrined there. A nail from the True Cross, a finger bone of St. Paul?
He never found out.
Gurt took him by the arm. “Fra Marcenni is taking a break. We’ll have coffee on the square.”
The good brother preferred wine.
They sat alfresco at a table only a few yards from the massive doors of the cathedral. Gurt and the monk exchanged what Lang supposed were the banalities of commencing a conversation with a stranger.
Signalling for a second glass, the old monk said something to Gurt and looked at Lang.
“He would like to see the picture we have come to ask about,” she translated.
Lang handed it across the table. “Tell him I need to know what it shows.”
The monk stared at the Polaroid while Gurt spoke. He replied and Lang waited impatiently for the English.
“Three shepherds are looking at a tomb.”
Lang had never considered this possibility for the enigmatic structure. “The woman, who is she?”
The old man listened to Gurt and crossed himself as he replied.
“A saint, perhaps the Blessed Virgin herself,” Gurt said. “She is watching the shepherds at the tomb, perhaps the tomb of Christ before He arises.”
Swell. Lang had come all this way to understand another religious painting. Although the tomb of Christ had always been pictured as a cave, one from which a stone could be rolled. The difference was hardly worth the trip.
He was reminded of the two shipwreck survivors floating in a lifeboat in a fog. Suddenly, they see shore and the figure of a man.
“Where are we?” shouts one of the men in the boat.
“At sea, right off the coast,” comes the answer.
“Imagine that,” the other man in the boat says. “Running into a lawyer out here.”
“Lawyer?” his companion asks. “How the hell do you know he’s a lawyer?”
“Because the answer to my question was absolutely accurate and totally worthless.”
Like the old priest’s answer.
Brother Marcenni must have sensed Lang’s disappointment. He took a magnifying glass from somewhere in his cassock and squinted at the picture before speaking again to Gurt.
“He says the letters on the tomb are in Latin, written without spaces in the manner of the ancient Romans.”
This was again telling Lang he was at sea. “That much I knew.”
As though understanding the English, Brother Marcenni read in a slow, quivering voice, “Et in Arcadia ego sum.”
“Makes no sense,” Lang said to Gurt. “Both sum and ego are first person. Sum means ‘I am’ and ego is the first person pronoun.”
Gurt looked at him as though he had grown another head.
Lang shrugged apologetically. “Latin is sort of a hobby.”
“I never knew that.”
“It didn’t seem relative to the relationship. We usually communicated in grunts and groans. Ask the good brother if sum and ego aren’t redundant.”
After treating Lang to a glare that would have singed paint, Gurt and the monk exchanged sentences. He gesticulated as though his hands could solve the mystery.
Finally, Gurt nodded and said, “He says the second denotation of the first person is perhaps for emphasis. The phrase would translate as ‘I am also’ or ‘I am even’ in Arcadia but is peculiar usage. Perhaps the artist was speaking alle . . . alle . . .”
“Allegorically,” Lang supplied.
“Allegorically. As if he were saying, ‘I am here also,’ meaning that death is present even in Arcadia.”
“The tomb of Christ is in Canada or Greece? Ask him how that might be.”
In reply to Gurt’s question, the monk motioned the waiter for yet another glass of wine and laughed, hands moving expan
sively.
“He says the artist, Poussin, was French. The French are too busy with women and wine to be exact about geography. Besides, Arcadia was frequently symbolic for a place of pastoral peace.”
Or anything else, by Lang’s observation.
Since he had to drive back down that curving road, Lang was drinking coffee. His cup had gone cold and he motioned to the waiter as Brother Marcenni produced a metrically numbered straightedge and began to measure the Polaroid. He turned the picture sideways and upside down, nodded and spoke to Gurt.
“He says this is not only a picture but a map.”
Lang forgot about warming up his coffee. “A map? Of what?”
After another exchange and much waving of hands by the monk, Gurt answered, “Many of these old paintings were maps. The shepherds’ staffs are held at an angle that forms two legs of an equilateral triangle, see?” She pointed. “If we draw the third leg, the tomb is in the center. That means the painting, the map, directs the observer to the tomb itself, wherever located.”
“He’s sure?’
Another question in Italian.
The old man nodded vigorously, laying the straightedge along one axis of the picture, then another.
“He’s sure. Shepherds’ staffs, soldiers’ swords, other objects that are straight were often used as clues. It would not be a coincidence that two legs of the triangle would be at geometrically correct angles.”
“A tomb’s located between the staffs of two shepherds?” Lang was skeptical.
Gurt shook her head. “No, no. Notice the trees lead from the mountains in the background? If you continue the line of those trees, they reach the tomb, too. Trees also frame that jagged gap in the mountains, see? Brother Marcenni says that if you were in this place and lined the mountains up to match the painting, you would be standing where the tomb was.”
The monk interrupted.
“He says it is also significant that the background is not as he remembers it, that the Poussin painting with which he is familiar was different. It would not have been unusual in the artist’s day to do several similar works.”
None of this had convinced Lang. “He’s telling us that this painting was done as a map to Christ’s burial place in Greece?”
Gurt again spoke in Italian. The old man shook his head, crossed himself again and pointed to the picture, the sky and himself.
“He says of course not. The Holy Sepulchre is in Jerusalem and has been empty since the third day after the crucifixion when Christ rose before ascending into heaven. The tomb in the picture could mean anything, a treasure, perhaps where a vision appeared to someone. When the painting, or the original from which it was copied, was done, symbolism was fashionable, as were hidden meanings, puzzles and secret maps. If you knew where those mountains were, perhaps in Greece, you might find whatever the tomb symbolizes.”
This was a little better than telling Lang he was at sea.
“So,” he said, “that’s why my sister and nephew died. Someone wanted to make sure they didn’t figure out they had seen a map leading to treasure, or something worth killing for.”
“Or dying for,” Gurt said. “Like the guy who jumped.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Lang was trying to guess what was worth that long step from his balcony. The monk regarded his empty glass wistfully, stood and bowed as he spoke.
“It’s time for him to get back to work. Those lazy plasterers will do nothing unless he is there,” Gurt translated.
Lang stood. “Tell him he has sincere thanks from this heretic.”
Gurt’s translation made the old man smile before he turned and crossed the piazza.
Lang sat back down and drained the dregs of his cold coffee. “I’d say somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody lives long enough to figure out that picture.”
Gurt gave the square a worried glance. “I’d say you better do as you Americans say, watch your ass.” Her face wrinkled. “How do you do that, watch your own ass, without straining your back?”
4
Orvieto
They drove downhill, the narrow mountain road unwinding in front of the BMW like a black ribbon. Even with Gurt’s weight on the back, the machine bragged of its stability as Lang braked, downshifted and accelerated through each curve. The combination of precise engineering and a place to test its limits occupied his attention. He had even forgotten Gurt’s arms around him, breasts pressed against his back, sensuous even through leather.
There was no guardrail. On the right, Lang could see occasional treetops and roofs of the town far below. His view across the Umbrian valley was virtually unobstructed, a patchwork of shades of green until it reached smoky hills on the horizon. Twice he saw a large bird below, wings outstretched over the farmland as it coasted along thermals. On a motorcycle, he thought, I’m almost that free.
To his left, Orvieto was disappearing behind its walls until there was nothing to see but a bank of dirt or retaining stones.
He was never sure what pulled him from the euphoria of the day, the scenery, the company. He only knew he was surprised on one of the short straight stretches to see the BMW’s mirrors filled with a truck. Not the eighteen-wheeled behemoth of American interstates, but large enough to fill its half of the road. Behind the cab, a load on a bed was covered by canvas, its corners flapping in the wind as though the truck, bed and cargo might suddenly take flight.
Where had it come from? Either Lang had been totally distracted from driving or the truck was moving far too fast for the twists of the tortured road.
Lang leaned into a sweeping right-hand turn and set up for a hairpin to the left. No doubt about it, the truck was gaining on them, swerving all over the road as it struggled to stay on the pavement. Lang could see the bed swaying wildly, almost enough to turn the rig over. He listened for the hiss of air brakes, a sound that didn’t come. Maybe the driver was drunk or the brakes had failed. No sober, sane person would risk running off the road where the shoulders between asphalt and empty space were so thin.
Lang searched ahead for a turnoff, even a space between paving and mountainside. There were none. Straight drop right, perpendicular rise left. Nowhere to go.
Tiny, cold feet of apprehension began to walk up Lang’s back. The truck got bigger in the mirrors.
The bike made a right-hand turn and entered a straightaway of perhaps two hundred yards. Its mirrors no longer reflected the entire truck. Lang could clearly see the prancing lion of Peugot on the grill. Over the hiss of the airstream, he could hear the truck driver shifting through higher gears.
The idiot had no intent of slowing down.
Taking his left hand from the handlebar, Lang tapped Gurt’s leg and pointed behind. He heard a German expletive over the roar of the truck’s engine. She squeezed him tighter.
The bike shuddered as its fiberglass rear fender shattered and Lang braced against the impact. The bastard intended to run them over! He opened the throttle to the stop.
How had they found him? How could they have possibly known he was driving a motorcycle to Orvieto? Lang shoved the questions from his mind. Right now, he needed to concentrate on keeping the Beamer on the pavement.
If he could beat the truck into the next curve, it would either have to slow down or be flung off the side of the mountain by centrifugal force. Too bad he wasn’t on a machine known for speed rather than comfort.
He sensed the massive bumper inches from the rear wheel again as he swung wide, the better to straighten the line through the curve. The bike’s speed pushed it to the outside, well across the center line. If something were on the other side of the blind turn, headed uphill, they would meet it head-on. A risk he had to take or be crushed.
They flashed through the shadow of the hill, relieved to finally hear the snort of air brakes as they reentered sunshine. They had gained a hundred feet or so.
Lang tested the throttle again, making sure it was still as open as it would go. The grip was wet with sweat a
nd his hand slipped. He wished he had found a pair of gloves.
The mirrors were empty only for a second until the ugly snout of the truck poked around the turn like a beast seeking prey. Lang was trying to remember the trip up, how far he and Gurt were from the bottom. If they could make it to a flat road where the Peugeot would not have a downslope to add to its speed, even the BMW’s indifferent acceleration would leave the truck behind.
If.
The truck closed the gap again, its engine bellowing in triumph. The motorcycle simply could go no faster.
Gurt shifted. She had to know movement could destroy the balance of the bike, send them flying into space. Lang wanted to turn around and scream at her to be still but he couldn’t take even that brief second away from watching the road. Not at this pace.
He felt one arm clasp around his chest while Gurt seemed to be bending over. The Krausers. Christ, this was no time to be searching through the saddlebags for something she might have forgotten to bring!
Lang could see in the periphery of one mirror as she stood on the rear pegs and turned to face the truck, using the arm around Lang to sustain her balance. The interruption of the BMW’s airstream, the added resistance of her erect body, made the front end shimmy. Had Lang not needed to fight to maintain steering, he would have risked taking a hand off the bars to snatch her back onto her seat.
Not that it mattered. The grille of the truck looked like a chrome mouth about to open and devour them both. And there wasn’t a damn thing Lang could do.
One, then two pops were snatched away by the wind, muted both by helmet and rushing air. A blowout! Lang instantly anticipated the loss of control that came with losing a tire at high speed. Instead, there were three more sounds, a shallow noise like slow clapping. The BMW’s only wobble was from Gurt standing in the airstream.
A flick of his eyes from the road to the mirrors saw the truck rapidly receding, the sun a million diamonds on its crazed windshield. In near disbelief, he watched its swerving increase in ever larger curves until, amid a wail of protesting rubber, it launched itself over the side of the road like a huge rocket. It seemed to hang in emptiness before its nose pointed down and it was swallowed by space like the souls in the fresco. Lang thought he felt the road quiver with a series of impacts downhill.
