FIVE

Saint Christopher and the Vicolo del Polverone

WE DO NOT SUFFER BY ACCIDENT.

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Inside the black limousine, the Sardinian-born driver, Jean-Paul (whose mother had been a devoted Francophile), glanced in the rearview mirror at his two wealthy American tourists. Each stared bleakly out their respective windows, which gave him a chance to gawk at them. Despite the fact that they were obviously unhappy, Jean-Paul felt quite satisfied that they belonged together. They were a handsome pair, these two—they matched, and not in the creepy brother-and-sister style of some couples; they would make nice babies. It occurred to him that he would quite like to watch them making babies.

Jean-Paul glanced apologetically at the small medallion of Saint Christopher bobbing just below his rearview mirror, hoping that the saint had not intercepted his lascivious thought. Of course he knew this was ridiculous—Saint Christopher knew everything he was thinking—but instead of submitting to his default guilt position, Jean-Paul felt a small flash of rebellion. Christopher had been letting him down all morning, leading him from one traffic jam to another; maybe it was time to remind the holy big cheese who was driving whom around Roma.

In the backseat, Meg watched the ancient ruins whizzing by, planning the menu she would have served had her sixteen-year-old son, Campbell, submitted to her plans for a sit-down six-course birthday dinner on the tennis court for 120 rather than the small Australian-themed barbecue by the pool on which they eventually compromised.

The shape of the large field that they were passing penetrated her consciousness. “Circus Maximus,” she said to no one in particular. The elongated oval-ended racetrack was almost obscured by overgrown grass, but she could still imagine the thundering of the charioteers. She turned to Alec and registered the slight sagging of skin around his jaw. No point mentioning it; he’d never agree to a nip and tuck. She was going to say, “This is what I love about Rome. You can drive through two thousand years of history like it’s an everyday event.” But she didn’t. Instead she said, “Maybe we should try to find that hotel with the kissing concierge. What was his name?”

By the time Alec turned from his window, she was looking out hers.

“Bronco,” he said.

“Bronco!” she exclaimed to her own reflection.

“Please don’t pretend to forget. It’s extremely irritating.”

Ah, we’re playing it like this, she thought.

In the driver’s seat, Jean-Paul was also extremely irritated. He had already turned off the Via Appia Nuova to avoid a traffic jam, only to get stuck in a crawl on the Via Appia Pignatelli. Now he was having to duck and weave through traffic one might expect in peak hour but not in the middle of the day. Up ahead, cars were grinding to a halt, unraveling his brilliant plan to skirt around this side of the Centro Storico. Jean-Paul avoided looking directly at the saint dangling in the peripheral vision of his left eye, but clearly someone had heard someone else thinking things they didn’t mean to think and were now being punished for thinking. Well, he (Jean-Paul) wasn’t taking it. Particularly from someone who wasn’t a real saint anymore anyway.

Abandoning his plans for the Via Luigi Petroselli, Jean-Paul changed gears, threw a left and a right, and roared victoriously onto the Lungotevere that shed its name for a new one every block or so as it curled its way along the banks of the river Tiber. Meg noted the Tiber on her left and could hear the roar of the current as the river split into rapids around both sides of Tiber Island. They were a little off-course, weren’t they? Ah, what did it matter? She had already paid for the limousine online; this was on the driver’s dime, not hers. She was happy to enjoy the sights. And besides, she was not going to be distracted and let Alec’s mean little comment fall by the wayside. She knew he had been waiting for her to respond and had deliberately left him hanging in the air.

Finally, she turned and, smiling at a point slightly above the top of his head, said, “Are you sure it was Bronco?”

“You know what his name was,” he said.

“I prefer you when you’re jealous. You get this really interesting edge.”

“This is not an interesting edge,” he replied. “This is fear of death.”

Indeed, Jean-Paul was driving very fast, even for a Roman. When the traffic once again slowed before him it was the last straw; Christopher was clearly toying with him, and he would not be toyed with. So he peeled the limousine down the Via Giulia, running a red light and beeping at two young nuns in battleship-gray habits who had stepped onto the pedestrian crossing. The sisters leaped backward onto the sidewalk. Ha! thought Jean-Paul, smiling into his rearview mirror.

Catching his eye, Alec said, “Slow down please, driver.” And then, recalling their initial exchange in broken English, searched for some Italian words that he hoped meant slowly or softly and added, “Dolci, dolci.”

Why is he saying “sweets”? Jean-Paul wondered. Did the American signore want to stop at a bakery? There was a very good forno not far in Campo de’ Fiori. Without slowing, he turned to look at Alec. “Signore?”

Meg was no less concerned that the driver had completely turned away from the road to address them, but her pleasure in Alec’s fear was greater than her own fear. Smiling at her reflection, she said helpfully, “You appear to be ordering dessert.”

Alec signaled frantically at Jean-Paul, gesturing in staccato circles. “Regardez la rue! La rue!”

Making a mental note to treasure this moment always, Meg said, “I don’t think he speaks French.”

This was correct. If only Jean-Paul’s mother had been with them, she would have been able to translate perfectly.

Realizing his error, Alec scrambled for some more Italian. “Um. Via. La via dolce!”

Finally, Jean-Paul turned back to the road but continued the conversation in the rearview mirror. “Ahh. La Dolce Vita! Si, signore, they make this film in Roma. Not here. On the other side, the other side!”

Alec looked across at his wife; she was limp with laughter.

“Help me,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. This is how everyone drives here. When in Rome, you know.”

“Signora?” asked Jean-Paul, assuming she had been talking to him.

“My husband was saying how he enjoys your driving. He likes going fast.”

“Oh, fast, vroom, vroom,” said Jean-Paul. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Faster?”

“Oh, yes, please,” said Meg.

Jean-Paul put his foot down; Meg felt the exhilarating acceleration; Alec looked slowly, murderously across at his wife.

Up ahead, a busload of French Jesuits stopped and started to disembark, smack-bang in the middle of the Via Giulia. There was no way around them without running over a few, an idea that Jean-Paul entertained for the briefest of moments. He knew that Christopher was behind this latest obstacle and frankly found the gaggle of black-frocked priests in white collars a tad predictable. Not to be outdone by his meddlesome saint, he suddenly turned the wheel, and the limousine’s tires squealed across the cobblestone as they roared in to narrow Vicolo del Polverone.

This is where disaster struck.

Thirty meters up the Vicolo del Polverone on the left-hand side, a dusty blacksmith’s window displayed a beautifully forged baby’s cradle and a set of portable iron steps, ideal for accessing the top of a tall bookcase. Next door, a cavernous store sold vintage furniture, mostly art deco, but with some pieces dating back to pre-Christian times.

At that moment they were taking delivery of a large Chinese urn of uncertain and possibly scandalous provenance. The current owner of the urn, who identified herself only as “Maria” to the owner of the vintage store, had inherited it from her father, who claimed it was a gift from Princess Orietta Pogson Doria Pamphilj. Maria’s father had worked as a domestic, specializing in hand polishing (with beeswax harvested from the family estate) the floor of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj that took up an entire city block on the Via del Corso in the center of Rome. One day, in 1956 or 1963—Maria’s father had forgotten which—when part of the roof collapsed after a heavy snowfall, Maria’s father worked tirelessly through the night (with the other servants presumably) to clean up and rescue what was left of the broken antiquities below. As a sign of her undying gratitude, the princess presented him with a large blue-and-white Ming Dynasty urn.

Even as a little girl, Maria felt there was something fishy about this story. As an adult she suspected her father had probably pilfered it in the chaos after the ceiling collapsed; it would not have been out of character. All these years later, more than half a century after it had been “gifted,” the urn remained uninsured. This puzzled Maria until it came into her hands, and she realized that to insure it, she would need to have it appraised—and if she had it appraised, certain unorthodoxies about its provenance might be established. So the giant urn sat in a corner of Maria’s small apartment until, like many of her contemporaries, she started to feel the financial pinch of living in Rome and decided to sell it. Discreetly.

Which is how it came to be carried from a van by a sweating, round-bellied courier, just as a black limousine screeched around a corner and hurtled toward it.

Jean-Paul could see a large man grappling with a big vase inside the van. He could see the wooden ramp reaching from the ground to the van and made a quick estimation that he could squeeze past, clearing a couple of centimeters on each side. He did not, unfortunately, account for the gray bicycle with the straw basket chained to a street sign at the point where the vicolo narrowed to a single car width.

“Watch out!” Alec shouted.

Just as he was about to hit it, Jean-Paul clocked the bicycle and veered left. Two seconds later the left front wheel of the limousine connected with the ramp leading to the van, causing the car to roll to the right as it sped forward. For a moment it seemed the black car was trying to mount the white van in some bizarre mating ritual. At the top of the ramp, the terrified courier reeled backward, thrusting the urn forward to protect himself. It seemed to leap from his hands, counterattacking the attacking vehicle.

Inside the limousine, the world flipped onto its side. Jean-Paul screamed. Meg fell on top of Alec. The right side of Alec’s head slammed into the car window. The car window cracked.

Outside, the urn hit the cobblestones and shattered.

Inside, Jean-Paul started to cry. Still attached to the rearview mirror, Saint Christopher swung victoriously over his head. Meg pulled herself away from Alec and looked at him. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving. There was blood on the window near his head. He was unconscious—or dead. Meg slapped him hard. His eyes fluttered open.

“For fuck’s sake,” he said quietly.

*   *   *

The seventh and final king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, reigned from 535 B.C.E. until the revolution in 509 B.C.E. In the process of maneuvering himself to power, he had arranged the murder of his predecessor, his brother, and his wife. He was a tyrant so despised by his people that they established the Roman Republic, intending never to be ruled by his like again (ha!). Historians will tell you that the king fled Rome and lived comfortably in exile in the court of Aristodemus at Cumae, where he died in 495 B.C.E. I will tell you what really happened.

Tarquinius tripped down the steps of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus fleeing a mob of angry Romans and broke his neck. Despite the fact that he was already dead, they gave his body a thorough beating, dragged it across the city, and hurled it into the Tiber. In time, debris and silt accumulated around His Dead Highness and formed the foundation of what would become the Isola Tiberina. As it grew, the story of Tarquinius slipped into the mist, merging with myth and legend, but because of the darkness associated with its founding events, Romans avoided the island.

When a plague ravaged Rome in 293 B.C.E., the authorities used the island to isolate the contagiously ill, but it quickly overflowed with the sick and dying. Running out of room, the Roman senators consulted the Tiburtine Sibyl, who suggested they enlist the help of Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing and medicine, by building a temple in his honor. All agreed that this was the most practicable solution.

The plague passed, the temple was constructed, and the island began to forge a new identity as a place of healing. In 998, the emperor Otto III built a basilica on the ruins of Aesculapius’s Temple, and in 1584, Pope Gregory XIII called the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God to Rome and asked them to run the Hospital of St. John Calybita there, upstream from the basilica. More than half a millennium’s service later, it is still known as the Ospidale Fatebenefratelli. This cracks me up. It’s not so funny in Italian, but when you translate it into English, it’s the hospital of the Do-Good Brothers.

“The do-good brothers?” spluttered Meg Schack, when she was informed they were taking Alec there. “Sounds like a boy band!”

The ambulance driver exchanged a raised eyebrow with his white-uniformed companion and focused on the road ahead. They wailed down the Lungotevere and across the Ponte Cestio, the bridge connecting the south bank with Tiber Island and the hospital. Pale-skinned tourists and dark-skinned hawkers of knockoff designer handbags scattered from their path. The ambulance screeched to a halt. Meg shot out of its rear doors and raced through the swinging doors of the emergency ward.

Wild-eyed, she shouted, “Dottore! Dottore! Pronto! Pronto!”

A large male nurse wearing white scrubs and a navy-blue cardigan grabbed her immediately and tried to force her into a wheelchair.

“Not me, you idiot!” she hissed.