Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
—Mark Twain
Summer 1914. Italy
The beach was purple-stained with the ejaculated protective sepia ink of a panicked school of marooned cuttlefish.
The boat pulled up adjacent to a jetty only slightly less dilapidated than the one they had left in Split. No one welcomed them, other than a bouncing, barking shaggy dog. Judging by its appearance, it was descended from a rare mélange of scraggy, easily pleased hounds. The mutt appeared to be enthusiastically awaiting someone it knew well. It wagged its tail feverishly until it took a swift head count of the strangers on board. Its excitement abated, but only marginally.
Cicero’s sunken features rose toward the horizontal.
The captain threw a rope to the deck and leaped over onto the wooden slats, which looked like they were about to give way. He aimed a flying left leg at the animal, offering a crude curse: “Idi u kurac,” and threw the loop over an erect plank. The dog backed off, but only slightly. It seemed used to abuse from the natives. Yet there were still two humans on the boat who had not yet tried to crack its ribs, and its instinct told it to persevere.
Johan sensed what was coming next. Cicero was first off the vessel, the skipper being kind enough, albeit begrudgingly, to offer a helping hand to the feeble lad who was still in pajama bottoms. Johan was left to find terra firma himself, which he was especially careful to do, given the priceless contents of the kit bag. Cicero was face-to-face immediately with the hound, having his chops licked and already talking as if he owned the dog.
“He’s hungry, Johan. And look at him, he has different-colored eyes.”
Johan was outnumbered, six legs to two.
The mutt’s faithful head, that of a sheepdog, reached as high as Cicero’s knee. His scruffy, fuzzy coat (and torso) was a terrier’s. He had one wise and tolerant eye, like that of a retriever, and one argent silver, as keen as that of a husky. Despite the goo and the gunk collected in the corners of these eyes, they pierced Johan’s. The dog’s immediate future was assured. Johan knew Roman history and was not going to enter into a scrap with a determined Cicero.
“What’s his name, Cicero?” he asked.
Johan was now embracing the spirit of the adventure. He had made Cicero (and now a mutt) happy. He was encouraging every cell in the young scamp’s frame to forget his woes, and by transference, perhaps selfishly, the same of his own cells. For despite his curriculum vitae, Johan Thoms was still very much a boy.
“His full name in royal circles, in the European courts, is the Frequenter of Tree Trunks and the Master of a Thousand and One Fleas, but I shall call him Alfredo!” Cicero checked under the creature’s groin to see what hung or did not hang there.
“Yes! His name is Alfredo! And he likes you, I can tell.”
Johan gently rubbed his pal’s crown, now grown to the texture of an old tennis ball.
“Come on,” he said, “we need to get you some shoes! And your new best friend needs some lunch.”
Cicero reached up, grinning, and tapped Johan in the midriff, in recognition of his teasing.
The gruff skipper of the boat had turned his back on the pathetic sight by the tiny breakers and puffed on a rolled cigarette.
“How far to the first town, please?” Johan asked him.
“Maybe an hour for you.”
The pair, with their new canine pal, headed toward what looked like a road to the hinterlands.
Johan thanked the skipper for the journey.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he replied. “You would still be on the other side had I not had thirty to take back tonight.”
Johan chose to ignore the gibe.
Cicero, however, piped up. “Thank you, sir. And Alfredo says thank you, too.”
The skipper grunted and stubbed out his butt end.
“Bad man,” said Cicero. “So little kindness in the world today. So very little thought for others.” Johan racked his brains as to where he had heard that line before.
* * *
Cicero (the First) had lived in the century before Christ in Rome. He was a self-made man, born penniless and without family connections. He had no soldiering abilities, only a burning ambition to succeed.
He also had a magnificently intelligent and fiery wit, and had overcome the massive hurdle of a debilitating stutter as a child to become one of the finest orators ancient Rome had ever known, if not the finest.
He strove, against all odds and conventional wisdom, toward a life no one who had seen him as a young boy would ever have believed. Cicero had put this down to the power of his mind, which he was convinced, and later proved, could not just overcome his own mental doubts and physical ailments, but convince dozens, hundreds, thousands of men to act upon a single word of his.
Even as a newcomer to the Senate, he would weave his magic around politickers and the most Machiavellian of old brains. He was a performer, a showman, feeding off the adulation of his admirers, who, either willingly or begrudgingly, ended up as one, united at his feet.
Cicero, the original Homo politicus, was a survivor.
* * *
On they marched toward the town, with Cicero on Johan’s shoulders again, more because of the boy’s lack of footwear than because of tiredness. Cicero was energized, and would far rather have had his new furry pal within the easy reach of his undernourished mitt. Next to them, at a polite heel, Alfredo dressaged proudly, eyes checking left, then right. If any of his canine buddies were watching, they would know that he had new mates and was about to get a dishful of offal or some bones. Much like Johan pulling out of Sarajevo station in his new Schneider’s garb, eager to be seen by all who knew him, Alfredo, too, could be pompous.
They wandered into the town to a series of suspicious looks, for they were an unlikely trio:
They sat at a café, which looked closed. If it was indeed closed, Johan would have the opportunity to find footwear, even some clothes for the boy. If it was open, he would do the same, but leave some food in front of his new pals and have some waiting for him upon his return.
It was open.
After ordering eggs, bread, and water for themselves and bones for Alfredo (for it was all the café had to offer), Johan left. He returned within fifteen minutes with a bag of improvised clothing, which Cicero gladly donned in a bush. He came out in sandals, an old school shirt, and blue shorts, with a slightly too large kepi tilted on his head.
Once sated with food and drink, they sat by the roadside, waiting for a ride to somewhere, which took its time in arriving. Ever the compromising politician, Cicero maintained a perfect balance of attention to Alfredo and Johan as they waited. This made Johan smile once more, which he realized he was doing more than he had for a while; but this in turn then only made him remember. He reached for a cigarette and lit it. In the town, he had given the newspaper seller a wide berth, and even sang to himself (avoiding silence, as his father was doing at the very same moment) when within earshot of any updates from the world. If his mug shot had appeared in any edition, then it had not been matched to his guilty face, which was a relief. He took another drag of his smoke and sucked down into his lungs any thoughts that were thinking of ruining his day. It was the reality of the repercussions of his actions on June 28, 1914, that made him leave, he reminded himself; his stupidity, shame, and guilt when the world was at his feet, not on his shoulders. This was not just self-preservation; out of sight, out of mind; delusional.
Sometimes madmen know things. Johan Thoms sensed that he was being hunted, that he was a wanted man. This was very true, but not quite the way he imagined. He knew he had to keep moving, but as he sat by the roadside, Johan noticed patches of marigold7 growing wild in the field opposite. He recalled the long summer days ten years before, when his father and he would walk for hours through the lush countryside around Argona, collecting brambles and berries for Elena to make into sugary jams and pies. Drago had then been a keen botanist and naturalist, always testing his young lad on the names of plants on their treks.
Rosebay Willowherb, Burdock, Teasel, Comfrey, Rosehips, Horsetails, Feverfew, Hawthorns, Evening Primrose. Poplar, Maple, Pine, Oak. Johan always struggled to recall these. But Marigold, Calendula, Johan had always remembered.
He picked himself up from the rock on the side of the road.
“Where are you going?”
“Something for us. In that field.” Johan recognized he had just spoken in the manner of Potiorek. He was taking control.
Cicero took a couple of weary steps. The hound feigned polite curiosity by raising one eyebrow, then the other.
“You see a girl you like, boss?” Cicero yelled, joking.
Johan picked buttery orange flowers and returned in less than ten minutes with his kit bag stuffed.
“Are you all right?” Cicero asked.
“Bugger me! Will be soon. Look! My old man used to swear by this stuff. It is magical.”
“You need it,” was the lad’s only response.
“But, Cicero! Your pals the Romans used this stuff for medicine, for cosmetics, you name it. My father used to go on about it all the time. Probably is doing so right now. Probably boring the pants off some poor unfortunate in the village, telling him how it is not only a flower, but pretty damned useful, too. It’s really called calendula, because it flowers on the first of every calendar month. It must be the first today. You may set your watch by this stuff. He used it for cuts and bruises, headaches, as an antiseptic, an anti-inflammatory, and for his nerves! Even helps to stop bleeding. He would take bags and bushels of it to our school for that poor old nurse to heal warts, scrofula, fevers. Doesn’t need good soil either. As tough as old boots.”
Johan now seemed convinced it would save both Cicero and himself. Cicero had not inquired into the reasons behind Johan’s mental problems. He knew his friend should be kept away from newspapers. He came to the conclusion that he was either wanted by the law, a deserter, or delusional and avoiding the one story that was engulfing Europe. The first shots of the Great War in Europe had already been fired, a few days earlier, on August 21, 1914.
The deeper they meandered westward into northern Italy, the less likely it was that Johan’s identity would be revealed, or so Johan believed. He calculated the precise statistical permutation required for those chasing him to track him down (from the rear, at least), and with each crossroads or split in the road, the length of those odds increased. However, his fear declined in inverse proportion to his guilt. Every silver lining had a cloud for him, in those days.
The dubious-looking triumvirate soon found themselves trundling in the direction of Milan in a pickup truck driven by a young married couple on a carefree honeymoon. Their only company in the back of the vehicle was the couple’s suitcases, an old trombone, and some straw. The groom resembled Rudolph Valentino. His Latina bride was a creature of rare natural beauty in a scarlet-and-white dress to the knee, charcoal hair to her shoulders, and wise ebony eyes.
Johan tried not to think of Lorelei as Scarlet spent most of the journey tucked into Rudolph’s torso in the driver’s side.
(Ernest was reminded of Clark Gable in It Happened One Night.)
“We will stay in a hotel tonight,” announced Johan, much to Cicero’s delight. Alfredo looked up into Cicero’s eyes, whining, somehow able to decipher Serbo-Croat. Cicero’s expression fell.
“Yes, him, too. Of course!”
“Can we get our own car as well? Then we can go where we want and when.”
Johan choked. The thought of sitting behind a steering wheel, using a gear stick, made him shake ever so slightly.
“What is it?” Cicero asked. Johan was already lighting a cigarette, quite a task as the truck was struggling with potholes and hardly out of a raw second gear. The awkward clunking change of gears further frayed Johan’s nervous system.
Cicero changed the subject. “Will we be in Milan today? Will we be in Milan today?” He kicked Johan’s shin.
“Milano? No, no way,” Johan said, shaking his head and catching up with himself.
Cicero searched his friend’s face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Johan took a deep breath and decided to face his fear.
“Yes, we will buy a new car in Milano. Or in the next big town.”
He turned to face Cicero.
“I’ll need a damned map. I do know that much for sure!”
Cicero dropped off to sleep within minutes of putting his head on the straw. Alfredo did not need a second invitation to join him. Johan watched over them both, his new family. Before long, he was away, too, the odor of the marigold filling his senses.
When they awoke, it was to the slowing of the vehicle and the din of a crowd. Johan and Cicero peered over the side of the truck. They were in a small dusty market town. This was Forlì, forty miles to the southeast of Bologna, past Rimini and the tiny principality of San Marino. They were still 180 miles from Milan.
Alfredo stretched himself and seemed to smile up at his new owners, happy that his earlier adoption hadn’t been a dream. Cicero scratched the hound’s back, which made him stick his tongue out with each rub, much to the lad’s amusement. It was approaching dusk as Rudolph Gable-Valentino let down the back flap of the truck for them to exit. He was keen to disappear with Scarlet, but offered the use of his truck and straw as a bed for the night.
“Thanks, my friend,” Johan managed in his north-of-basic Italian, “but I made a promise. This little guy needs some comfort tonight.” He gently ruffled Cicero’s ever-fuzzening crew cut.
“No problem. Good luck to you both. Sorry, the three of you.” He smiled before skipping off to the nearest hostel with his bride in tow. This made Johan sad and lonely to the pit of his stomach. What would Lorelei be thinking right now? He did not know if it was his shame or hers that was fueling his flight.
Johan felt a tug at his shirt. Two dark eyes stared up at him.
Johan struggled a smile to feebly chase the memories away, and they headed off toward the market square in search of a bed.
* * *
When they found a spot to stay (Rossi’s of Forlì) with a decent rate and an owner who welcomed the hound (whom the proprietor called Poochini), Johan asked for hot water and some old glass jars. The clean-shaven, dapper owner, Signor Rossi, kindly obliged the odd request and invited them into his kitchen, despite mutterings from his wife, who was house-sized, with the physique of an unfinished sculpture.
“Fatta beetch. Blood-a typ-a, ragu!” Rossi muttered. “She would-a even-a make-a a bloody boa cona-stricta choke-a.” This made Cicero weep with laughter when Johan translated.
They all sat in his kitchen, darkened by the glare of the low sun. It had cool tiles, and colored glass in the windows. To Johan it felt of a different age. Cicero just watched wearily now as Johan got busy. He boiled water and added sugar to some, and cut the petals and flowers of the marigolds into different proportions and piles. He marked some of the jars with a symbol foreign to Cicero. The boy fell asleep with his head on the table in the middle of the kitchen, as Signor Rossi watched Johan silently in amazement.
Johan nudged his friend awake. A range of finished jars stood in front of the boy.
“This one is for you,” he announced, pouring the contents of a particularly first-piss-of-the-day-colored jar into an eggcup, then a different one for their host.
He knocked back one from a third jar for himself.
“O! Nectar of the Gods!”
Cicero slugged back the potion. Alfredo leaped up and licked the sugary remnants from the corners of Cicero’s slightly less gray lips.
* * *
They spent a luxurious night in clean sheets with four pillows each.
When Johan woke, he told himself that there was no going back. Neither in time, nor in a brand-new Packard down a cul-de-sac. When a madman turns a corner into a dead end, there is no reverse gear.
They would head west into the sunset. On the outskirts of Forlì, Johan bought a car.
* * *
The potion was working. Given that he had not yet found the elusive Blue Rose of Forgetfulness or experienced its supposed wondrous properties, Johan had considered the other options, of soaking himself in booze or in the comfort of women’s bosoms. He had sampled, too, the cushion of a hospital ward and its narcotic escapes. It was, however, in an innocuous garden plant, once adored by his father, that he found a major element of Cicero’s physical salvation and at least a dulling of the side effects of his own guilt and shame. Wherever they stopped, the natives no longer eyed Cicero as a freak or a dying wretch. The boy was finally afforded the lack of stares that most of us take for granted. Johan’s nerves improved marginally and he slept more soundly. He twitched far less, and began to turn to the potion when he felt an episode of his dark madness looming.
They became marigold experts. They knew what each combination of petal and stamen did, in what measures, taken orally or externally. Whenever they saw any in a field around the first of each month, they stopped and collected all they could. They administered each other’s doses until Cicero knew more than Johan. They filled the backseat of the car, which Alfredo gladly used as a bed. The flowers cured his fleas, but not his cute insolence nor his dog breath.
Cicero had the idea of selling the excess, when they had one, to local apothecaries, disclosing very little of its makeup, merely its wondrous healing properties. It was a good business, and although they did not need the money, Johan encouraged the boy. It was a fine diversion, and self-reliance was a great lesson.
They continued their journey to the west, out of Italy, past Marseilles and into Spain, skirting the majestic Pyrenees by Port-Vendres and Cerbère. They made slow progress in the cool of the morning and in the early evening, avoiding the heat of the day.
They ate like Spanish kings and overnighted in comfort in Gerona, Lerida, Zaragoza, and then the elevated cool of Soria. Each night they devoured their favorite dish of roast piglet. Cicero tasted wine for the first time—a delicate number from Bilbao suggested by a one-eyed, three-toothed waiter named Jesús.
That was until they reached Segovia, an exquisite and crumbling citadel to the northwest of Madrid, in the middle of September 1914. Johan spent a night drinking local grog and dangling his pipe-cleaner legs from the immense first-century Roman aqueduct that ran through the ancient hill town. He enjoyed the company of a frisky Spanish rascalita who had taken a liking to him. As he walked back to his digs in the early-morning light, he stopped for a coffee. It was there he found out about the gruesome slaughter of the Battle of the Marne. The newspaper headline (accusing emetic negligence on the part of those in charge of a brave body of men) read:
LIONS LED BY DONKEYS
Johan sat down on the steps of the medieval cathedral. For the first time, he considered the possibility of the salvation that he might find over either shoulder, in the church. He remained with his wonderings until he felt the (weirdly comforting) tongue of Alfredo traverse the diagonal of his face, which had been warming in the glare of the morning sun, catching them up from the east.
Sarajevo, August 28, 1914
My dearest J.,
I will be leaving the President tomorrow. Novac has insisted that I stay at his town house, which is most generous. Srna has agreed, of course.
I will find you, Johan Thoms. I do promise you that, for there is something you need to know; something which would certainly bring you to me without delay. Please make it so, and soon, you lovely fool. I shall remain that sweet syrup to the vampire’s lips.
Yours, with all my love,
Lorelei xxx
Ernest finished the next brief letter in the stack and observed old Johan. He slipped the note back into the aged, powder-blue envelope.
“You must have gone to her! You must have replied!”
“It was not that easy, though I wish it had been. I did not see these letters for a long time. And not before this world was to take an even more vicious turn . . .”