A Season for the Dead

Fifty-Seven

The church was in a medieval lane that ran from the Corso Rinascimento, by the side of the Piazza Navona, into the square of the Pantheon. Years ago, city authorities had raised the pavement at each end and turned it into a dark, narrow corridor for scurrying pedestrians who walked in the shadow of the high Renaissance buildings on both sides.

The unmarked police car crossed the Tiber into the dawdling traffic of Vittorio Emanuele, the two men in the front seats arguing about where to park. Michael Denney sat in the rear and closed his eyes, listening, thinking. Then he turned and looked around him. It was impossible to judge but somewhere in the snarl of traffic winding its way out of the Vatican there had to be others. For a moment he thought he glimpsed a Fiat saloon with the brown face and silver beard of Falcone in the rear. Then it flashed past, slipping away over the river in front of them.

He listened to the plainclothesmen getting nowhere nearer a conclusion, then said, “Just park in Rinascimento. It’s closest. I won’t be long. You’re police. I guess you won’t get a ticket.”

The two sets of sunglasses looked at each other. One of them, the man in the passenger seat, turned and asked, “You’re sure you want to go to this place at all? We can take you straight to the airport if you want.”

The driver swore under his breath, hissing at his colleague. The bass roar of approaching thunder rattled down the river and shook the roof of the overchilled car.

“I’m sure,” Denney answered. “This is my church. No one knows it better. And it’s arranged, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to get you boys into trouble.”

They were silent after that. As they passed the Oratorio dei Filippini, the sky abruptly darkened and thick, black rain began to fall, slowly at first, as if uncertain of its intent, then in heavy, driving columns that rebounded from the pavement. The city looked like the bowl of some fantastic fountain designed by a drunken Bernini. The driver flipped on his headlights. It was now as gloomy as night. He screwed up his eyes and looked for the turning. Denney patted him on the back, guiding, giving advice. The black Mercedes pulled in at the end of the lane. Denney looked along into the black cavern which led to the church, seeing nothing but people racing for shelter from the deluge.

He tugged his jacket around him, took hold of the suitcase below their line of sight and said, “Ten minutes. Are you coming?”

“We’ll see you to the door,” the driver answered. “They said to let you have some privacy inside. Only one way in, one way out of that place. So I guess we trust you. Let’s face it.” The black glasses peered at him. “Where are you going to go?”

His companion said nothing, looking out at the downpour in the street.

Neither of them seemed much minded to remove the sunglasses, in spite of the weather.

“Where indeed?” Denney replied, patting the driver on the back again before opening the door and stepping out into the rain, holding the case out of sight as best he could, hiding it with his body. The two cops followed and immediately dashed under the paltry shelter of a nearby building.

Michael Denney stood motionless for a moment. The rain drenched his gray hair in seconds. He didn’t care. He was free in Rome for the first time in over a year. It made his head feel light. It was a delight beyond anything he could ever have expected. He looked around him. He was the only human being not trying to escape the torrent from the gloomy sky above. It would be so easy to walk away, to try to escape. But the two cops were young. They could soon retake him.

And, as they said, where would he go? He walked along the lane, in the center, not minding how wet he got. The cops dogged his footsteps from a distance, dashing from place to place to avoid the storm. Finally he reached the door to the church.

Denney closed his eyes, remembering her, trying, too, to remember himself all those years ago. A time when he understood a little of the word “love.” So much had been lost in the intervening years.

He threw the little case into the corner, satisfied they hadn’t seen it. “Ten minutes,” he yelled through the rain. “You’re sure you won’t join me?”

“Absolutely sure,” the one who’d been in the passenger seat bellowed back. The driver struggled with a cigarette. The flame of his lighter looked like a frail beacon trying to hold back the night.

Two successive claps of thunder burst over their heads. They pulled their jacket collars up and leaned hard into the wall, staring at nothing but the black stonework with water streaming down its face.

Michael Denney smiled at both of them, then stepped inside, picked up the case, turned left, away from the interior of the church, and walked into the small vestibule. It was, as he had hoped, empty, and just as he remembered it. Even the old sofa, where they’d made love so many times, was still there. He walked to it, touched the ancient, dry fabric, remembering the feel, the scent of her, all those years ago.

“I was a fool,” he said softly to himself. Even so, a small inner voice said, she was dying already. As they coupled with such ecstatic delight on the dusty sofa, the worm of sickness was beginning to turn somewhere inside her. Had they married, she would still be gone, leaving him with two children to raise, no career, and an exile from his own family.

It would have been worth it, Michael Denney thought. Just for those few short years. Even so, a part of him said that what had happened was for the best. In this place, his route of his life forked in two possible directions, and bitterness lay down both. At least there was a part of her still in his life now, though she was not undamaged, for which he was entirely to blame.

“I’m still a fool,” he said. He put the suitcase on a chair and opened it. Then he took off his jacket, removed the long priest’s surplice and pulled it over his head, letting the black gown fall down toward his ankles. He went into the case again, came out with the hair coloring and dabbed it carefully on his silver head, rubbing in the dark dye, running it through his locks with his fingers, wiping his hand with a cloth when the job was done. He looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had an unnatural sheen to it. Apart from that and a few extra lines, he could have been the priest he was more than thirty years before, ministering to the poor, deprived Irish areas of Boston. An anonymous man. One who hardly merited a second glance.

He smiled at this image of himself. Then he looked up at the boxes on the wall which had, as he hoped, not changed in three decades.

Methodically, working quickly, knowing there could be no delay, he began to turn off the lights in the church, one by one, leaving the switch covering the vestibule till last. Finally he threw that too and San Luigi dei Francesi fell into darkness. From beyond the door he heard noises: cries of surprise in the interior, fear perhaps, and a loud report, like a bulb bursting. Or perhaps a gun. A few people made for the door immediately. The storm had shut down the city by now, he guessed. There would be little light. Caravaggio would have recognized the scene.

When he walked out into the nave it was illuminated only by the spare, warm candlelight of the offerings in the chapels. Something was happening. There was fear in the darkness. Then it occurred to Denney he had forgotten one thing. The switch for the meters on the paintings was separate from the rest. He had left it turned on. Sure enough, there was a round, rich sea of light on one of the canvases: The Vocation of Matthew. It reflected on the image and threw back a waxy yellow tint onto the confused faces of the visitors who had gathered to admire the work.

Then the ancient mechanism of the light meter worked its way through the coin. The switch was thrown. Night consumed the belly of the church, partly rent only in places by the guttering flames of the votive candles.