Ring of Fire

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Having said goodbye to Ilda with a world of thanks, they walk down into the nearest subway station, looking for a map of the streets of Rome. “Line B,” says Harvey, the first one to find the address. “The last stop.”

  “Will that leave us enough time to come back for pizza?” Sheng wonders, the bag of newspapers in his hand and the backpack on his back.

  The others don’t reply.

  When they get out of the subway, night has already fallen.

  The sun has set behind the hills and the buildings look like ant farms along the street. The cars zoom by, their headlights shining through the night. Many of the streetlights are still off, while others are now blinking on, as if they were exhausted. The asphalt smells of dirt and stray dogs.

  Elettra, Harvey, Mistral and Sheng walk along slowly, lugging the four plastic bags stuffed with newspapers. “Do you think the professor actually read all this stuff?” asks Sheng. “And in all these different languages?”

  “I don’t know,” replies Elettra, the keys clutched in her hand. “But I guess we’ll find out real soon.”

  “Nasty little place,” remarks Harvey. “Even worse than the Bronx.”

  The kids walk along tall walls covered with graffiti.

  “This is it …,” Elettra whispers after a while.

  They’ve stopped in front of the shabby-looking front door to a small gray four-story building, which looks like it’s been squeezed in between other cement constructions. The closely set terraces are thick with satellite dishes. Through the windows the intermittent glow of televisions flickers. The street is dark, narrow and covered with potholes. The remains of a motorbike are still chained to the only working streetlight. “Not exactly a great neighborhood …,” whispers Mistral, looking around with concern.

  Harvey clears his throat, discouraged. “This building looks like it could topple over any second,” he says.

  “Are you sure this is the right address?” Sheng asks. “Because, if you ask me, it doesn’t look like anybody lives here. …” All of the building’s windows are sealed off with aluminum shutters, making it seem more like a high-security prison than an apartment building.

  A car zips down a nearby street, its muffler rattling as if it were in the throes of death.

  “In any case, I say we get off the street,” Elettra suggests. She climbs up the steps separating her and the main door to the building. On the intercom panel is a single listing, handwritten on a piece of tape. “It’s the right address …,” says Elettra softly. “Take a look.”

  Drawn on the piece of tape is a ring.

  * * *

  They buzz twice but get no answer. Elettra pulls out the set of spare keys and unlocks the main door, which opens up with a creak. Lying in the dusty entranceway are dozens of envelopes that have slid across the old, cracked tiles all the way up to the inner stairway. The railing is made of old black wood. A bicycle has been abandoned on the ground. Everything smells of mold.

  Elettra finds the light switch and flicks it on.

  Overhead, a crooked ceiling lamp sputters and then turns on with a groan. The harsh light reveals walls eroded by dampness. Metal pipes in various sizes make their way down the stairway to disappear belowground. The electrical meters look like plastic mushrooms growing out of the plaster.

  “I’m not going up there …,” says Mistral.

  “I think it’s better to go upstairs than stay here …,” Sheng says in a hush.

  “You think the stairs will hold our weight?” asks Harvey.

  “I’ve never seen anything more intimidating,” Mistral says.

  “Come to Shanghai and I’ll show you the junks!”

  “Anybody home?” Elettra calls out toward the stairway. Not hearing any reply, she leans over the railing and looks up. “What floor do you think he lived on?”

  “If you want me to take a wild guess,” says Sheng, “given that we’ve got to drag these bags up with us and there’s no sign of an elevator … I’d say the top floor.”

  “I think you’re right,” the girl replies, starting to climb the stairs.

  Harvey shuts the door leading out to the street. “But let’s make this quick.”

  “Pizza,” Sheng reminds everyone, as though it would be a sort of reward.

  They climb the stairs in silence, trying not to look around them.

  When they reach the first landing, the lights let out an electrical squeal.

  And then they go out.

  “There aren’t any light switches here,” Elettra groans, feeling the wall.

  “Or windows, either,” says Harvey, bringing up the rear.

  “In the dark again!” mutters Sheng. “This is getting to be a habit.”

  “Did you hear that?” whispers Mistral.

  “Hear what?” Harvey asks her.

  “The noise the lights made! It … it was really creepy.”

  “They’re just lights.”

  Mistral clenches her fists. “It isn’t normal,” she insists. “Stairway lights never shut off after only a few seconds.”

  “It’s an old system in an old building,” says Harvey. The pessimistic yet logical Harvey seems calmer than the others.

  “Wait for me here …,” orders Sheng. He rests his bag of newspapers on the ground and slips the backpack off his shoulders. He goes down the stairs and returns to the entrance, where he flicks the first light switch.

  “There’s nobody living here at all …,” says Elettra.

  Except for Sheng going down the steps, they can’t hear any footsteps or voices or water flowing through the pipes. The stairway is cold, dark, abandoned.

  “Oh, man,” grumbles Sheng a moment later. He fiddles with the light switch beside the front door and then gives up. “Looks like it’s dead.”

  “Houston, we have a problem …,” recites Harvey.

  Elettra turns around in the darkness. She has the impression she’s seeing the American boy’s eyes glimmer in the dark, as if he is looking back at her. “Light just isn’t on our side, it seems …,” she whispers.

  “Not today, at least,” Harvey answers. “Should we keep going? After all, it’s just a stairway.” With this, they all start to make their way slowly up the stairs in the darkness.

  On the fourth floor, a tiny window looking out onto the street lets in a faint glow, barely strong enough for them to read the sign on the only door to be found: PROF. A VANDER BERGER.

  “So he really was a professor,” says Sheng.

  Elettra rings the doorbell. A low-pitched sound echoes through the deserted building. A few seconds later, the girl slides the key into the lock and opens the door. Wafting out of the apartment is the strong smell of tobacco and paper. Flicking the switch, she finds that the lights work. “Thank goodness,” she sighs.

  But her sigh of relief is cut short the moment she steps inside.

  It’s frightening.

  SECOND STASIMON

  “Hello? Vladimir? They’ve killed Alfred.”

  “Are you joking? No … That’s impossible!”

  “But it happened, I tell you. It’s in the papers, on the front page.”

  “All he had to do was set things up. That was the easiest part! Of course, he was the … the weakest of us all.”

  “Alfred wasn’t the weakest.”

  “Yes, he was. And you know it. Do you remember the wolves? He was convinced he was being followed. He was obsessed with the idea that he was being followed.”

  “It seems he was right.”

  “Did he at least manage to …?”

  “He delivered the briefcase. He was killed right after that.”

  “Do you think that’s what they were looking for?”

  “I’m certain of it. Someone is after that briefcase. But who?”

  “Not me. And not you.”

  “There are three of us, Vladimir. …”

  “Then you’ve just answered your own question.”

  “Can’t we get in touch with her?”


  “The last time I heard from her she was in China. Two years ago.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, it means she talked.”

  “Yes, she talked.”

  “But who did she tell? And why? Even she knows that once it begins no one is to interfere. … Who’s behind this, Vladimir?”

  “I don’t know, believe me. Things have gotten out of control. …”

  “Are the children in danger?”

  “I don’t know. I need … I need to check. Maybe I could make a phone call.”

  “Make a hundred of them, then. Otherwise, I’ll find a way to stop everything.”

  14

  THE APARTMENT

  THERE ISN’T ANY FURNITURE OR PICTURES OR CARPETS. ALL THERE is on the other side of the door leading into Alfred Van Der Berger’s apartment is a hallway lined by two tall walls of books stacked all the way up to the ceiling. And in the middle of the hallway are other books, arranged one atop the other to form columns, stools, tables, shelves. Magazines, newspapers, pamphlets and notebooks fill every square centimeter of the apartment. Some of the columns are low, others taller than a meter high, while still others reach the ceiling. The piles of books only leave room for a single narrow passageway, barely wide enough to walk through.

  “Man …,” whispers Sheng.

  There isn’t even space to put down the bags they picked up from the newsstand. The air is stale and musty. The ceiling light seems totally incapable of illuminating the chaotic mass of papers.

  “If you ask me, he could’ve used a bookcase,” Sheng adds.

  “If you ask me, he was totally crazy,” mutters Harvey.

  Mistral shakes her head, flabbergasted.

  Elettra takes a few steps into the hallway and feels the floor tremble beneath her feet. “Oh, man …,” she murmurs, staring at the masses of books. “There are so many of them!” There’s dust everywhere. She runs her fingers over the spines of the books. Old leather-bound volumes, economic textbooks, paperbacks, titles in Italian, English, Russian, Portuguese. Light covers, dark covers, photographic books, lettering in gold and others as black as pitch. “It can’t be …,” she murmurs, delving into the jungle of books. “The whole apartment’s like this.”

  The hallway leads into two rooms, both completely packed with books. There isn’t even any furniture, just narrow passageways between the publications, which all come together to form one massive maze.

  Mistral follows behind her friend slowly. All around them is the stagnant odor of dust mixed with paper and tobacco. “Don’t touch anything …,” she whispers. “Don’t touch a single thing.” She’s afraid that the flimsy construction might collapse on top of her at any moment.

  Harvey is about to shut the apartment door behind him when Mistral begs, “No! Leave it open. Otherwise we’ll suffocate!”

  Harvey nods.

  “Let’s leave these bags outside,” suggests Sheng. “I mean, I don’t think anybody is going to steal them from us. …”

  “What’s this?” asks Harvey, stepping into the hallway.

  Hanging beside the door is a little board, written on which are two columns of numbers that have progressively been crossed off.

  “That looks like the professor’s handwriting …,” remarks Sheng. “But what does it mean?”

  “I have no idea,” mumbles Harvey. “Bills to be paid, maybe? Or the number of books in here?”

  “It looks like a couple of countdowns.”

  “But the second column goes up and then down again.”

  “It might be some sort of diet,” Mistral guesses, slowly walking back to them. “My mom keeps a chart like that on the fridge.”

  “You think the professor was on a diet?” Harvey grumbles dubiously.

  “The woman at the newsstand said he was really thin …,” Sheng remembers. “All skin and bones. I mean, even when he was alive.”

  “If I remember correctly, she said he weighed under sixty kilograms, just like this,” Mistral notes, pointing to the last number written on the board.

  “And before that, he weighed sixty, sixty-five …” Harvey checks the entire column. “At most, seventy kilos.”

  “So what does the first column mean?”

  Mistral shakes her head. “I don’t know, but …” She pulls out her sketchbook and patiently copies down the two series of numbers.

  “I think I found the kitchen!” comes Elettra’s voice from the depths of the apartment.

  “Let’s go take a look,” Sheng proposes.

  * * *

  Elettra moves around on her tiptoes to avoid the unpleasant feeling of walking on nothingness. She’s already gone through what might be the dining room, which is filled with stacks of books and newspapers.

  The kitchen is a narrow little room where the air barely circulates. There are dishes piled up in the sink and magazines stacked up on all the shelves, their pages damp. On the refrigerator is a map of Rome, stuck there with four magnets in the shape of spaceships. The professor used a red marker to draw circles around certain areas of the map. He also wrote the words:

  It will begin on December 29th.

  One hundred years later.

  Mistral walks in, looking like a ghost as she emerges from the darkness of the dining room. The moment she steps foot in the kitchen, she feels like she can barely breathe. “What did you find?” she asks Elettra.

  “Just this map,” she answers. “Rome. The professor wrote that it would begin on December twenty-ninth. Which means he knew it right down to the day.”

  Mistral shakes her head. “Can we get out of here? This place scares me.”

  But Elettra is still studying the map. “He circled Trastevere …” she says, pointing to the district where her family’s hotel is located. “Along with Parioli and Esquilino. Those are three of the neighborhoods that the blackout affected yesterday, on the twenty-ninth. … So did the professor know? Had he predicted it? Was that the sign that it had all begun?”

  Mistral’s stare gives no answer to her questions.

  “Elettra? Mistral?” Sheng calls from some other room in the apartment. “Come here. …”

  “I think I found something!” Elettra cries out, taking the map of Rome off the fridge.

  “Us too!” calls Sheng. “Come take a look!”

  Mistral doesn’t wait for him to repeat himself. She grabs hold of Elettra’s hand and pulls her out of the room. “What did you find?”

  “Stars,” replies Harvey. “Stars, everywhere.”

  The ceiling of the professor’s room is covered by a map of the sky, composed of dozens of sheets of paper carefully positioned one beside the other. Dotted lines join together the brightest stars, creating glowing figures with ancient names: Draco, Orion, Hercules, Canis Major, Auriga, Ursa Minor, Polaris, Ursa Major. Some of the stars are circled in red, like boats in a game of battleship.

  “It looks like the professor was studying the stars,” Harvey comments, sitting down on the mattress to stare up at the ceiling. There are slightly fewer books around the bed, and the air seems more breathable.

  “Together with a million other things,” adds Elettra.

  “Do any of you understand astronomy?” asks Sheng.

  “Not me,” sighs Harvey. “But I can ask my dad. That’s what he teaches at college.”

  “So the professor was studying the stars to discover … what?”

  “The … the secret, I guess. The Ring of Fire. To find it you need to use the map, and by looking below you find it above … or something like that,” summarizes Mistral, leafing through her sketchbook filled with notes.

  “Oh, that explains everything!” Sheng exclaims ironically.

  “What could be this important?” wonders Mistral.

  “Something other people are looking for, too … a secret they mustn’t discover … but something that people are willing to kill for …,” Sheng murmurs.

  “ ‘Search below and you shall find it above’…,” recites Elettra. “Above us are the
stars, right?”

  “And below?”

  “The floor,” Sheng answers.

  “So what’s on the floor?”

  “Us. Plus tons of books.”

  “And big red circles …,” Elettra notes, pointing at a series of marks made on the few areas of the floor that aren’t covered with books.

  “What could those be for?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. She walks out of the bedroom to check the rest of the house. “But there are other ones in the hallway.”

  “They look like circles on a treasure map,” Sheng comments. “You know, like ‘X’ marks the spot!”

  “I don’t get it,” says Harvey, giving up. “I don’t get any of this. Maybe … maybe we’re going too fast. Maybe we should get the book we found in the library translated first. Or reread the professor’s journal more carefully.”

  Sheng pats his backpack. “It’s all here, safe and sound.”

  Mistral points out a book resting beside the bed to Harvey. “Take a look at what he was reading.”

  The boy reaches over the bed and picks it up. He brushes away the dust and tells them, “I think it’s been a while since he last read this. It’s entitled Naturales Quaestiones. It’s about comets. And it’s by Seneca.”

  Sheng snaps his fingers. “Nero’s tutor!”

  “That’s the one,” confirms Harvey, thumbing through the pages. “It’s all written in Latin, in case any of you know how to translate it. …”

  “So let’s summarize,” says Sheng. “We’ve got a tooth, a thing the professor calls a wooden map, four toy tops, an incomprehensible book in Greek and an incomprehensible book in Latin.”

  “Very well put,” cackles Harvey.

  “And finally, there are some mysterious ‘thems’ out there who’ve killed the only person who could explain how we can piece all these things together. Am I forgetting anything?” concludes Sheng.