A Season for the Dead

Ten

The man wore a black suit and dark glasses. He was muscular and probably middle-aged, though he wore such heavy clothing, in spite of the heat, it was difficult to tell from what was on show. For the life of him, Gallo could not figure out his accent. Southern? Sicilian maybe? He didn’t want to try. There was something serious about him, something that said you just did your job, did it well, got your money, then walked away.

The car struggled through the traffic out to the motorway which led to Fiumicino airport and the coast. He had jazz playing on the music system: Weather Report, with Wayne Shorter’s sax wailing like a banshee.

Gallo knew Ostia well. He’d taken many parties around the old port area and the ruins of the imperial town. “Who are they?” he asked.

“Who are who?” the man in the black suit grunted.

“The people I’m supposed to entertain.”

“Visiting college professors. Not archaeologists themselves, but people with an interest. I hope you know what you’re talking about.”

“No problem.”

The car turned off the motorway early. Gallo was puzzled.

“Aren’t we going to the town?”

“Not first. There’s another area that got cut off from the meander by a flood hundreds of years back. The Fiume Morto. The dead river. You know it?”

“No.” Gallo felt his good mood start to wane. No one ever went to the dead river except hardened diggers. It was just mud and mosquitoes. “You might have told me.”

The black glasses looked at him. “I heard you were a clever guy. You can make things up if you want. What does it matter? It’s all show business. Don’t worry. It won’t take long. After that we go to the town. Then you run on autopilot, huh?”

“Yeah, right.” Gallo scanned the flat land of the Tiber estuary.

The stink of the marshes came in with the air-conditioning. It was chemical, lifeless and made the back of his throat turn dry and start to ache. There was nothing ahead, not a bus, not even a car. Gallo looked at the man again. He was wearing black leather gloves. Odd in the heat.

The driver turned to him again. “You’ve heard of Tertullian?”

Gallo laughed dryly. “Oh, wow. What a sweetheart that guy was. Really full of joy and light. What was that wonderful line about women? ‘Tu es ianua diaboli.' You’re the doorway of the Devil. Boy, do the feminists love that one. What a twisted dude."

The man at the wheel was watching him and, in spite of the sunglasses, Jay Gallo could tell there was something severe about him, something cold and immovable. “I was thinking,” the man said, “of another saying.”

“What?”

“'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.'”

Gallo turned to look at the man. Maybe he wasn’t as old as he first thought. He moved with the ease of someone about his own age. The glasses, the clothes seemed to be there to age him. The travel business, Jay Gallo thought. What a way to earn a living.

The mention of Tertullian had put Gallo in full flow. It was rare he got a chance to display his erudition with someone who might begin to appreciate it. “These early Christians. You know what puzzles me? How did anybody sign up for this thing? What was the point?”

“You mean why did Tertullian call for people to be martyrs?”

“No! Why did the poor suckers take him at his word? Why die just for some… idea?”

The dark glasses thought about that. “You’ve seen the Caravaggio in Santa Maria del Popolo? St. Peter’s Crucifixion?”

Gallo knew the church as well as he wished. It was a minor star in the galaxy of Roman sights. A chapel by Raphael, a touch of Borgia history and two famous Caravaggios, all in the perfect Renaissance piazza the tourists loved because it sat at the end of the tawdry shopping street, the Via Corso.

“Yeah.” He recalled a striking large canvas of the saint about to be crucified upside down. The cross was being pushed and pulled upright by three largely unseen workers who could have come straight out of any sixteenth-century tavern. Peter stared at the nail running through his left palm with a determination, almost pride, which Gallo never could understand.

“That tells you everything. Peter’s executioners believe they’re raising the means of his cruel death. In truth, with each inch they build higher the foundations of the Church, as the saint clearly realizes.”

Gallo waved a hand as if to say this was obvious. “Yes, yes. He’s a martyr…”

“Furthermore,” the man continued, “he’s bathed in the light of Grace, which even shines on his murderers. He goes to his death out of duty, and happily because he knows there is a better life awaiting him in Paradise. This is a transformation he seeks. He knows he goes to Heaven.”

“Crazy…” Gallo grunted, shaking his head.

The dark glasses stared at the empty horizon ahead.

Gallo smiled and thought of another Caravaggio, in the Borghese, and the story behind it, one that always went down well with the Americans. “Anyway, Caravaggio didn’t believe that crap himself. Look how he paints himself as the severed head of Goliath. When he did that, my friend, he was under sentence of death himself, for murdering a man during a game of tennis. He painted his own head there to acknowledge the Pope’s hold over him and beg forgiveness. He had good, practical reasons to be scared. And he was. You don’t see him expecting salvation there. Just the grave. And oblivion.”

“You’re a cultured man,” the driver said, to Gallo’s obvious satisfaction. “What happened to the painter?”

“He got his pardon. Then died on the way back to Rome. Ironic, huh?”

“Possibly. Or apt. Perhaps that was his punishment.”

But Jay Gallo wasn’t listening. There was something he had to say, something important. “And here’s another irony. Tertullian didn’t even take his own advice. He was no martyr. He died in his bed at a hundred and two or something. Hypocrite.”

Then he remembered the Vatican license plate on the car and added quickly, “Not that I know the first damn thing about religion, of course.”

“Just history.”

“That’s right.”

Jay Gallo looked around. They had parked by the low muddy waters of the river. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Or anything to look at either. All the usual places to visit were a good half mile or two away. He wished there was somewhere he could buy a beer or a good coffee with grappa in it. He wished the place didn’t stink so badly of chemicals and pollution.

“They’ll be here soon,” the man said, seeming to read his thoughts.

The jazz album came to an end. He hit the button on the radio, removed the CD and carefully put it away in a case he kept on the dashboard. It was an odd action. For some reason it made Gallo think the car wasn’t his at all. “We can still continue our interesting talk while we wait, can’t we? You’re right about Caravaggio, I think. He did have good, practical reasons to be afraid. But you shouldn’t exclude him, or Tertullian, or any of us, you and me, from being agents of God’s will. That would be presumptuous, surely, even for one who knows nothing about religion?”

“Really?”

“You don’t think God uses only those who believe in Him as His instruments? What about Pilate? What about Herod?”

It was only then that Jay Gallo considered his position seriously. He was sitting by a remote stretch of the Tiber with a man he didn’t know, waiting for a tour group who wanted to see… what exactly?

There wasn’t a single archaeological artifact in the vicinity as far as he was aware. Maybe they’d turn out to be bird-watchers instead. Maybe they were reviving that long-lost art form, the snuff movie.

He looked at the man in the seat next to him. If it came to it, Gallo thought, they were evenly matched. The man was stockier but older, maybe, and he gave him something in height. What was more, Jay Gallo had been in plenty of barroom brawls over the years. He knew how to look after himself.

“Are you jerking me around?” he asked the man in the dark glasses.

“Mr. Gallo?”

“Is this some kind of a joke?”

The man thought about it. “'The blood of the martyrs…' Does that sound like some kind of joke?"

Gallo swore under his breath. The man was starting to annoy him. “Why do you keep saying that crap? What the fu—”

A black fist, hard as iron, came out at him, flying fast, and caught him full in the eye. Jay Gallo’s head snapped back, his vision tunneled into blackness at the edges. There was little pain; more an absence of sensation. Then, in the limited focus he possessed, something darted at him again. The solid leather shape connected with his nose, there was the sound and the sensation of bone breaking. A warm, salty trickle of blood began to run down his throat.