I pause on the threshold for a minute, stalled by the immobility of those blanket-shrouded legs and the peaceful cadences of the nun’s voice.
“To say of anyone’s heart that it stood still is physiologically inexact. The heart does not stand still. It has to go right on working away at the old stand, irrespective of its proprietor’s feelings.”
I recall suddenly something that Ely’s mother told me. When his brother, Paul, was sick, Ely had read to him. Wodehouse, maybe, or the Hardy Boys. Who knew? When the young nun sees me she gets to her feet and comes to the door. “Sophie?” she asks.
When I nod, she smiles. “I’m glad you’ve come. He asks for you day and night…. It’s okay,” she adds when I still don’t step into the room, “he’s still weak, but your visit will do him good.” She thinks that I’m afraid of finding Ely frail and damaged and she’s right, but not for the charitable reasons she probably credits me with but because I’m afraid it will make it harder to hate him, and right now hating him is the closest thing I’ve got to a religion. I’m afraid of letting it go. I summon up an image of Ely leaning over the pit before he and Agnes left me there and, holding on to that image like a talisman, I step into the room.
Ely turns his head toward me. He’s so pale that for an instant all I see are those luminous black eyes surrounded by the darkness of his hair, and I think of the skull lying on the floor of the pit. The pit Ely left me in, I remind myself again as I take another step into the room and position myself at the foot of his bed.
“You can have Sister Julia’s seat.” Ely motions to the straight-backed chair on the other side of the bed. “I’ve been wondering if she leaves a warm spot when she gets up. She always seems to hover an inch or two above it.”
“I’m sure she’s flesh and blood like the rest of us, Ely,” I say, making no move toward the chair. “We can’t all be saints.”
His lips, thinner and paler than usual but still curved and pretty, pull back as though in pain, but then he forces a smile. “No, we can’t. I’m beginning to see that now.”
In spite of my resolve not to give him so much as a smile I laugh. And then I realize when he blushes that he wasn’t joking. He’d really thought he was on the road to some kind of enlightened state.
“Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me that you’ve finally figured out you’re not a god?”
Ely looks down, his eyelashes casting inky shadows on his white cheeks. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry about leaving you in that pit. And also…I wanted you to know…that time in the grotto…” He looks up to see if I’m registering which time in the grotto he means. I’m furious at myself when I feel the blood rise to my face. Then I’m furious at him again. “I just wanted you to know that wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Oh, so you and Agnes didn’t discuss seducing me? What a surprise.”
He winces again. “Actually, I did talk to Agnes about what happened. I told her I was falling in love with you again.”
“Well, no wonder Agnes wanted to leave me in the pit,” I say. “She wanted you all to herself. That doesn’t really explain you going along with it.”
He shakes his head. “I told myself I was doing my duty, that it was for a higher good. But I see now that any cause that would make me do something so evil couldn’t be a good cause.”
“Bravo. You must have aced Ethics 101.”
“I don’t blame you for being bitter. I just wanted you to know that I’m renouncing the Tetraktys.”
“That’s convenient now that the FBI is investigating them. So what next? Has Sister Julia converted you to Catholicism?”
I’ve meant it as a joke, but when he lowers his eyes and blushes, I realize I’ve hit upon the truth.
“She’s been a great solace to me. She’s even promised to visit me in prison.”
Of course, I think, leave it to Ely to find an acolyte wherever he goes. First me, then Agnes, now Sister Julia. “Good,” I tell him. “I see you’ve got everything you need, so I’ll be—”
“But I don’t have everything I need,” he says. “I need your forgiveness.”
I’m struck by how young he looks, like the boy who lost his idealized older brother, and it’s like I can see the big yawning emptiness that’s inside him—a pit darker than the one he left me in—and I realize that I would never have been able to fill that. He needed something bigger to fill that gaping hole.
I sigh. I feel the air moving in and out of my lungs. For the first time since the shooting, they don’t feel too small. When the pulmonologist back in Austin told me that eventually my damaged lung would expand to fill my chest cavity, I hadn’t really believed him, but now I feel my lung opening up inside me, filling the empty space on my left side. What the doctor didn’t warn me about is how much this first full breath hurts. It feels like my chest is cracking open to make room for my expanding lung. It makes me think of that moment in the myth when unfaithful Demophoon finally comes back to Thrace and embraces the almond tree that Phyllis has become and the tree splits open as Phyllis forgives him. Maybe that’s what I feel inside my chest, the pain of letting go of all that righteous anger.
I look down at Ely. He seems far away, as if he’s in the underground pit and I’m the one who is about to seal him inside to die. I try to summon up the hatred I walked in here with, but it’s gone. I don’t feel anything for him at all.
He’s letting you go, a voice—Odette’s voice—inside my head says, the least you can do is return the favor.
“Okay,” I say, answering Odette’s voice out loud. To Ely I say: “If that’s the last thing you need from me, you’ve got it.”
I walk back to the hotel, climbing the steep slope of the Vomero like it’s nothing, just to feel the power of my recovered lung. I wonder if there’s a patron saint of lungs. If so, I should go light a candle to her—or him. I consider stopping back at my room to Google “Patron Saint of Lungs” on my laptop, but then decide to just go to the little chapel beside the hotel. I’m sure whatever saint it’s dedicated to will do.
Although I’ve sat in the church every day in the last week, I’ve never bothered to see what’s it’s called. The pantheon of Catholic saints means little to me, since I swore off saints after my mother died. I’ve enjoyed, though, sitting in the nave held up by its ancient columns and the shadowy shapes on the wall that, no doubt, tell some story in some saint’s life. I notice today when I enter the chapel what I’ve never noticed before: the first paintings on the right-hand side of the nave depict the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Not totally uncommon in this city, I think. In the Chapel of San Gennaro, vials of the saint’s blood are believed to liquefy on the anniversary of the 1631 eruption, and the Napolotani still pray to the saint to calm the furor of Vesuvius. Perhaps this chapel’s saint also plays some role in the history of the volcano.
I follow the paintings down the aisle. They show a woman leading a band of shackled slaves away from the erupting volcano. The saint, depicted as a young girl in Roman dress, parts the clouds of volcanic dust with her hands and treads over hot lava, which turns cool at the touch of her feet, enabling her followers to cross to safety. The next painting shows the saint presenting a statue of Mary and baby Jesus to a pagan priest at the steps of a temple. The pagan priest is then shown casting away a pagan statue and embracing the madonna and child instead. I cross over to the left side of the church, noticing that the terra-cotta madonna above the altar is the same as the one in the pictures. On the left side, the paintings show the saint, grown older, healing the sick, founding a convent and then, on her deathbed, rising to heaven where she takes her place alongside Mary—a Mary who has been made to look here much like the statue above the altar. It’s only when I come to the last painting that I realize I’m not alone in the church.
“She lived to the ripe old age of ninety-seven, if you can believe the life in this pamphlet.”
I turn around. Elgin is seated in the third pew from the front. I leave the aisle and sit next to h
im, checking to see that we’re the only ones in the church before speaking. “I guess she was rewarded for a life of good works,” I say. “Are you thinking of following in her footsteps to ensure your longevity? I thought you swore by oatmeal and rowing as your stay-young plan.”
Elgin laughs. “I’m sure Santa Justina would approve of good diet and exercise. She was renowned as an herbalist, healer, and marathon walker. She once walked as far as Sorrento to collect a certain herb to heal a Roman magistrate’s wife, which convinced the magistrate to convert to Christianity.”
“Santa Justina?” I ask.
“Yes, didn’t you know that was the church’s name? You’ve been coming here every day—” Elgin stops when he realizes he’s given away the fact he’s been watching me, but I am too preoccupied to tease him for it. I get up and approach the altar.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Elgin says, following me. “The statue reminds me of Greek Tanagra figurines. A pagan goddess of some spring given new life as a madonna.”
“Can you tell which one?” I ask.
Elgin tilts his head to one side and squints at the statue. “I’d have to get a closer look at that crown she’s wearing.”
I step around the altar and reach up to the statue.
“Hey!” Elgin hisses, “I didn’t mean now. Are you nuts? I’ve just spent the morning testifying to the Ufficio that I would never knowingly endanger a cultural artifact.”
“I’m not going to take it.” I gingerly lift the clay statue out of its niche. “I just want to take a look. It feels light. Weren’t these clay figurines usually hollow?” When I turn the statue over, Elgin gasps and places his hands around mine, cradling both the statue and my hands. Although there’s no chance I’m going to drop this statue, I don’t object. It feels good to have his hands over mine.
I smile. “And don’t they often have a vent in the back so that the clay fires evenly? See, there’s a circle inscribed in the clay? It looks like there was a vent that’s been filled with wax. Have you got a pocketknife?”
His eyes widen. “Jesus, Sophie—”
“Gosh, Elgin, I didn’t know you were so religious. I’m not going to deface Isis, I’m just going to look inside her.”
“Isis?” He looks down at the statue’s crown. It’s made of waves. I see something click in his eyes. “The statue Phineas gave Iusta…Iusta? Do you think…?”
“Justina would be the Italian version of her name. Maybe she survived the eruption after all and brought the statue here. I don’t know, but maybe if we look inside she’ll tell us.”
Elgin takes a quick look around the chapel and then pulls a red Swiss Army knife out of his pocket.
“I knew I could count on you to be prepared,” I say. “Do you want to do the honors?”
Elgin nods. He slips the tip of the knife between the dark crust of wax and the clay and, with one quick flick of his wrist, loosens the wax plug like he’s shucking an oyster. I lift the wax away—noticing that it smells like incense—and peer inside. And see nothing. Elgin turns the statue over and gives it a shake and a slender cylinder, no thicker than my little finger, slides out and into my hands.
“Jesus,” Elgin says for the second time as I unroll an inch of the delicate papyrus. Only when I see the paper flutter do I realize how hard I’m shaking. “We’d better sit down,” Elgin says.
I nod and he leads me to the first pew. We both know we should wait to open it, but our hands are already unfurling the scroll. It’s so delicate it feels like we’re forcing open a rosebud, but nothing cracks or breaks so, with Elgin holding one edge with his left hand and me holding the other with my right, we open the papyrus until it lies flat on our laps. Elgin reads the first four words out loud.
“I, Petronia Iusta, free woman…”
Later, I will realize that the scroll, exposed to the air after so many centuries sealed away, had already begun to fade. By the time we get it to Maria at the Archaeological Museum and she places it under protective glass, the letters will be all but illegible to the naked eye. But for the next half hour that we sit here, side by side, our heads bent over the one page, the words are as clear as day.
I, Petronia Iusta, free woman, do set down this confession of my free will having come to the end of a long, but not blameless, life. We are admonished to confess our sins in church. This is the way of the light, Barnabas tells us. But while I have confessed to many individual sins—idolatry, unlawful copulation, even murder—I have never told my full story. I know that having omitted this duty in life, I have condemned myself to an eternity of darkness, nor do I trust that this accounting in silence and darkness will alleviate my sentence. Rather, I give these words as an offering to the Holy Mother and entrust them to her vessel for safekeeping. Let her, another woman, judge me as she will and hold or disclose these words as she sees fit.
I was born of a freed woman in the household of her former master, Gaius Petronius Stephanus, but since I was a child I was told that I was free because my mother had been freed before my birth. In gratitude for her manumission and in the hope that I would gain the advantages of wealth, my mother allowed me to be brought up in the household of the Petronii. I was treated as a daughter by Gaius Petronius, who taught me to read and write in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and was given free rein of his copious library. All was well until I was ten years old and Gaius’s wife, Calatoria Vimidis, finally brought forth her own children. She began to resent my place in the household and to see me as a usurper of her children’s birthright. Quarrels with my mother ensued and my mother chose to leave. She wished to bring me as well, but Gaius and Calatoria wished me to stay—Gaius out of genuine fondness, I believe, but Calatoria out of a wish to thwart my mother and to use me as a nursemaid to her own children. My mother had to bring suit in the courts to wrest me from the clutches of Calatoria and luckily she won.
My mother and I prospered in the business of raising and selling oysters and we lived in peace for seven more years—like the seven years of fat foretold in the Bible by Joseph—but then calamity befell us. My mother grew suddenly ill and died. I have always suspected that she was poisoned, as a slave of Calatoria’s was seen leaving our house just before my mother fell ill. Suspicious as well was the fact that Gaius Petronius died soon after. Her husband’s funeral pyre was hardly cold when Calatoria Vimidis brought a suit that claimed me as her lawful property—along with the property of my mother, which I had inherited. She claimed that I was born before my mother’s manumission and therefore I had been born a slave. As witness she called on a slave of her own household, Telesforus—the same slave whom I suspected of poisoning my mother. He testified that I was born before my mother was freed. Later, I discovered that Telesforus had been given his own freedom in exchange for this lie, as well as a share in my mother’s fortune, taken from me along with my freedom. Although I fought this judgment in the courts of Rome, I was eventually returned to the custody of Calatoria Vimidis. I confess that from that time on I harbored in my heart a hatred for my mistress and the determination that I would do anything to be free again.
I was given an opportunity to gain my freedom by agreeing to take part in a pagan ceremony. I was not forced to engage in this ceremony, but chose of my own free will to play a role in order to obtain my freedom even though my role included tricking and stealing from my mistress’s guest, Phineas Aulus, and engaging in lascivious seduction. Phineas Aulus had in his possession a valuable scroll written by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras that my mistress wished to own—but not to pay for. In return for stealing this scroll from Phineas’s room, I was promised a document attesting to my freedom, but when I presented the scroll to Calatoria she said I would not have the document until after the rites. Afraid that Calatoria might still go back on her promise, I decided to steal the document, which I knew she kept in the same hiding place as the scroll, and enlisted the help of Phineas Aulus.
When I had obtained the letter and the scroll, I took Phineas back to the chamber where I knew
he would be brutally slaughtered. I could, at that moment, have told Phineas the truth and saved him, but an evil thought had come into my head, namely that I could leave with the rare scroll and use it to buy myself a life of comfort. I left him in that chamber to die.
I made my way to the surface by following at each turning the “better” sign and shunning the “evil” one, but at each crossing I could not help but feel I was choosing evil and fleeing the good. When I reached the last crossroads—the one marked by the faces of Night and Day—something kept me from turning down the final path to the surface. I would like to say it was the voice of God that turned me back, but that would be untrue. I heard a voice, but it was the voice of my mother reminding me of what I had been named for—justice—and that I would be betraying my name if I left Phineas Aulus to die.
I hurried back down the tunnels afraid that I would be too late. I could hear the voices of Calatoria and her maenads, wild in their lust for blood, approaching the Chamber of the God. When I neared the entrance to the chamber, I saw a man enter. It was Telesforus, who had poisoned my mother and betrayed me. I knew that his job would be to subdue the victim before the women arrived. I followed him and as he raised a cudgel to bash in Phineas’s brains I drew out of my bag the iron bar that I had left for Phineas to open the door to his chamber, and which I took with me when I left him there to die, and brought it down on Telesforus’s head.
May God forgive me for the sin of killing that man. Although I told myself it was to save Phineas, I knew in my heart I did it in vengeance for the wrong he had done to me.
Phineas jumped up from his bed and demanded to know what was happening.
“Calatoria and her women are coming to destroy you,” I told him. “Quick, change clothes with this man. We’ll put him in your place. In this dim light, the women won’t know the difference.”