"He says the letters on the tomb are in Latin, written without spaces in the manner of the ancient Romans."
This was again telling Lang he was at sea. "That much I knew."
As though understanding the English, Brother Marcenni read in a slow, quivering voice, "Et in Arcadia ego sum."
"Makes no sense," Lang said to Gurt. "Both sum and ego are first person. Sum means 'I am' and ego is the first person pronoun."
Gurt looked at him as though he had grown another head.
Lang shrugged apologetically. "Latin is sort of a hobby."
"I never knew that."
"It didn't seem relative to the relationship. We usually communicated in grunts and groans. Ask the good brother if sum and ego aren't redundant."
After treating Lang to a glare that would have singed paint, Gurt and the monk exchanged sentences. He gesticulated as though his hands could solve the mystery.
Finally, Gurt nodded and said, "He says the second denotation of the first person is perhaps for emphasis. The phrase would translate as 'I am also' or 'l am even' in Arcadia but is peculiar usage. Perhaps the artist was speaking alle… alle…"
"Allegorically," Lang supplied.
"Allegorically. As if he were saying, 'I am here also: meaning that death is present even in Arcadia."
"The tomb of Christ is in Canada or Greece? Ask him how that might be."
In reply to Gurt's question, the monk motioned the waiter for yet another glass of wine and laughed, hands moving expansively.
"He says the artist, Poussin, was French. The French are too busy with women and wine to be exact about geography. Besides, Arcadia was frequently symbolic for a place of pastoral peace."
Or anything else, by Lang's observation.
Since he had to drive back down that curving road, Lang was drinking coffee. His cup had gone cold and he motioned to the waiter as Brother Marcenni produced a metrically numbered straightedge and began to measure the Polaroid. He turned the picture sideways and upside down, nodded and spoke to Gurt.
"He says this is not only a picture but a map."
Lang forgot about warming up his coffee. "A map? Of what?"
After another exchange and much waving of hands by the monk, Gurt answered, "Many of these old paintings were maps. The shepherds' staffs are held at an angle that forms two legs of an equilateral triangle, see?" She pointed. "If we draw the third leg, the tomb is in the center. That means the painting, the map, directs the observer to the tomb itself, wherever located."
"He's sure?'
Another question in Italian.
The old man nodded vigorously, laying the straightedge along one axis of the picture, then another.
"He's sure. Shepherds' staffs, soldiers' swords, other objects that are straight were often used as clues. It would not be a coincidence that two legs of the triangle would be at geometrically correct angles."
''A tomb's located between the staffs of two shepherds?" Lang was skeptical.
Gurt shook her head. "No, no. Notice the trees lead from the mountains in the background? If you continue the line of those trees, they reach the tomb, too. Trees also frame that jagged gap in the mountains, see? Brother Marcenni says that if you were in this place and lined the mountains up to match the painting, you would be standing where the tomb was."
The monk interrupted.
"He says it is also significant that the background is not as he remembers it, that the Poussin painting with which he is familiar was different. It would not have been unusual in the artist's day to do several similar works."
None of this had convinced Lang. "He's telling us that this painting was done as a map to Christ's burial place in Greece?" '
Gurt again spoke in Italian. The old man shook his head, crossed himself again and pointed to the picture. the sky
and himself.
"He says of course not. The Holy Sepulchre is in Jerusalem and has been empty since the third day after the crucifixion when Christ rose before ascending into heaven. The tomb in the picture could mean anything, a treasure, perhaps where a vision appeared to someone.
When the painting, or the original from which it was copied, was done, symbolism was fashionable, as were hidden meanings, puzzles and secret maps. If you knew where those mountains were, perhaps in Greece, you. might find whatever the tomb symbolizes."
This was a little better than telling Lang he was at sea.
"So," he said, "that's why my sister and nephew died. Someone wanted to make sure they didn't figure out they had seen a map leading to treasure, or something worth killing for."
"Or dying for," Gurt said. "Like the guy who jumped."
They sat in silence for a. moment. Lang was trying to guess what was worth that long step from his balcony. The monk regarded his empty glass wistfully, stood and bowed as he spoke.
"It's time for him to get back to work. Those lazy plasterers will do nothing unless he is there," Gurt translated.
Lang stood. "Tell him he has sincere thanks from this heretic."
Gurt's translation made the old man smile before he turned and crossed the piazza.
Lang sat back down and drained the dregs of his cold coffee. "I'd say somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody lives long enough to figure out that picture."
Gurt gave the square a worried glance. "I'd say you better do as you Americans say, watch your ass." Her face wrinkled. "How do you do that, watch your own ass, without straining your back?"
4
Orvieto
They drove downhill, the narrow mountain road unwinding in front of the BMW like a black ribbon. Even with Gurt's weight on the back, the machine bragged of its stability as Lang braked, downshifted and accelerated through each curve. The combination of precise engineering and a place to test its limits occupied his attention. He had even forgotten Gurt's arms around him, breasts pressed against his back, sensuous even through leather.
There was no guardrail. On the right, Lang could see occasional treetops and roofs of the town far below. His view across the Umbrian valley was virtually unobstructed, a patchwork of shades of green until it reached smoky hills on the horizon. Twice he saw a large bird below, wings outstretched over the farmland as it coasted along thermals. On a motorcycle, he thought, I'm almost that free.
To his left, Orvieto was disappearing behind its walls until there was nothing to see but a bank of dirt or retaining stones.
He was never sure what pulled him from the euphoria of the day, the scenery, the company. He only knew he was surprised on one of the short straight stretches to see the BMW's mirrors filled with a truck. Not the eighteen-wheeled behemoth of American interstates, but large enough to fill its half of the road. Behind the cab, a load on a bed was covered by canvas, its corners flapping in the wind as though the truck, bed and cargo might suddenly take flight.
Where had it come from? Either Lang had been totally distracted from driving or the truck was moving far too fast for the twists of the tortured road.
Lang leaned into a sweeping right-hand turn and set up for a hairpin to the left. No doubt about it, the truck was gaining on them, swerving all over the road as it struggled to stay on the pavement. Lang could see the bed swaying wildly, almost enough to turn the rig over. He listened for the hiss of air brakes, a sound that didn't come. Maybe the driver was drunk or the brakes had failed. No sober, sane person would risk running off the road where the shoulders between asphalt and empty space were so thin.
Lang searched ahead for a turnoff, even a space between paving and mountainside. There were none. Straight drop right, perpendicular rise left. Nowhere to go.
Tiny, cold feet of apprehension began to walk up Lang's back. The truck got bigger in the mirrors.
The bike made a right-hand turn and entered a straightaway of perhaps two hundred yards. Its mirrors no longer reflected the entire truck. Lang could clearly see the prancing lion of Peugeot on the grill. Over the hiss of the airstream, he could hear the truck driver shifting through higher gears.