The seated man lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. It was inscribed TO ALDO, FROM K. ‘I prefer more planning.’
‘Of course. So do I.’
‘I didn’t hear you objecting.’
‘That wasn’t one of his people. It was K!’
The seated man leaned forward in surprise and exhaled a plume of smoke which floated off and merged with the wafting diesel fumes. ‘He called you himself?’
‘Couldn’t you tell by the way I was speaking?’
The seated man drew on his cigarette so deeply that the smoke penetrated the deepest reaches of his lungs. When he breathed out he said, ‘Then tonight she dies.’
Elisabetta Celestino was shocked at her own tears. When was the last time she’d cried?
The answer came to her in a vinegary rush of memory.
Her mother’s death. At the hospital, at the wake, at the funeral and for days afterwards until she prayed for the tears to stop and they did. Even though she was a young girl at the time, she hated the wet eyes and the streaked cheeks, the awful heaving of the chest, the lack of control over her body and she vowed to banish henceforth this kind of eruption.
But now Elisabetta felt the sting of salty tears in her eyes. She was angry at herself. There was no equivalence between these long-separated events – her mother’s passing and this email she’d received from Professor De Stefano.
Still, she was determined to confront him, change his mind, turn the situation around. In the pantheon of the Università Degli Studi di Roma, De Stefano was a god and she, a lowly graduate student, was a supplicant. But since childhood she’d possessed a gritty determination, often getting her way by peppering her adversary with a fusillade of reason and then launching a few piercing missiles of intellect to win the day. Over the years many had succumbed – friends, teachers, even her genius father once or twice.
As she waited outside De Stefano’s office at the Department of Archeology and Antiquity within the heartless Fascist-style Humanities Building Elisabetta composed herself. It was already dark and unseasonably cold. The boilers weren’t putting out any perceptible heat and she kept her coat on her lap draped over her bare legs. The book-lined corridor of the department was empty, the volumes secure in locked glass-fronted cabinets. The overhead fluorescent lights cast a white stripe on the gray-tiled floor. There was only one open door. It led to the cramped office she shared with three other grad students but she didn’t want to wait there. She wanted De Stefano to see her as soon as he rounded the corner so she sat on one of the hard benches where the students waited for their professors.
He kept her waiting. He was almost never on time. Whether it was his way of demonstrating his position on the totem pole or just scatterbrained time management, she was uncertain. He was nonetheless always appropriately apologetic and when he finally did come rushing in he spouted mea culpas and unlocked his office door hurriedly.
‘Sit, sit,’ he said. ‘I was delayed. My meeting ran over, and the traffic was dreadful.’
‘I understand,’ Elisabetta said smoothly. ‘It was good of you to come back tonight to see me.’
‘Yes, of course. I know you’re upset. It’s difficult, but I think there are important lessons that in the long term will only help your career.’
De Stefano hung up his overcoat and sank into his desk chair.
She had rehearsed the speech in her mind and now the stage was hers. ‘But, Professor, here’s what I’m having great trouble with. You supported my work from the moment I showed you the first photographs of St Callixtus. You came with me to see the subsidence damage, the fallen wall, the first-century brickwork, the symbols on the plaster. You agreed with me that they were unique to the catacombs. You agreed the astrological symbology was unprecedented. You supported my research. You supported publication. You supported further excavation. What happened?’
De Stefano rubbed his bristly crew-cut. ‘Look, Elisabetta, you’ve always known the protocol. The catacombs are under the control of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. I’m a member of the Commission. All publication drafts have to be cleared by them. Unfortunately, your paper was rejected and your request for funding to mount an excavation was also rejected. But here’s the good news. You’re broadly known now. No one criticized your scholarship. This can only work toward your benefit. All you need is patience.’
She leaned back in her chair and felt her cheeks flushing with anger. ‘Why was it rejected? You haven’t told me why.’
‘I talked to Archbishop Luongo just this afternoon and asked him the same question. He told me the view was that the paper was too speculative and preliminary, that any public disclosure of the findings should await further study and contextual analysis.’
‘Isn’t that an argument for extending the gallery further to the west? I’m convinced, as you are, that the cave-in exposed an early Imperial columbarium. The symbology is singular and indicates a previously unknown sect. I can make tremendous progress with a modest grant.’
‘To the Commission, it’s out of the question. They won’t support a trench beyond the known limits of the catacomb. They’re concerned about larger issues of architectural stability. An excavation could trigger further cave-ins and have a domino effect that could lead back into the heart of St Callixtus. The decision went all the way up to Cardinal Giaccone.’
‘I can do it safely! I’ve consulted with engineers. And besides, it’s pre-Christian! It shouldn’t even be the Vatican’s call.’
‘You’re the last person to be naive about this,’ De Stefano clucked. ‘You know that the entire complex is under the Commission’s jurisdiction.’
‘But, Professor, you’re on the Commission. Where was your voice?’
‘Ah, but I had to recuse myself because I was an author on the paper. I had no voice.’
Elisabetta shook her head sadly. ‘Then that’s it? No chance of appeal?’
De Stefano’s response was to splay his palms regretfully.
‘This was going to be my thesis. Now what? I stopped all my other work and immersed myself in Roman astrology. I’ve devoted over a year to this. The answers to my questions are on the other side of one plaster wall.’
De Stefano took a deep breath and seemed to be steeling himself for something more. When it came out it shocked her. ‘There’s another thing I need to tell you, Elisabetta. I know you’ll find this somewhat destabilizing and I do apologize, but I’m going to be leaving Sapienza, effective immediately. I’ve been offered a rare position at the Commission, the first non-clergy Vice-President in its history. For me, it’s a dream job and, frankly, I’ve had it up to here with all the bull I have to endure at the university. I’ll talk to Professor Rinaldi. I think he’ll make a good adviser. I know he’s got a full plate but I’ll persuade him to take you on. You’ll be fine.’
Elisabetta looked at his guilt-ridden face and decided there was nothing more to say besides a whispered, ‘Jesus Christ.’
An hour later she was still at her desk, hands resting in her lap. She was staring out the black window onto the empty parking lot behind the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, her back to the door.
They crept up in their crepe-soled shoes and came into the office unseen.
They held their breath lest she should hear air escaping from their noses.
One of them reached out.
Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.
Elisabetta let out a short scream.
‘Hey, beautiful! Did we scare you?’
She wheeled her chair around and didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry at the sight of the two uniformed policemen. ‘Marco! You pig!’
He wasn’t a pig, of course – he was tall and handsome, her Marco.