The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 17

Too long, David thought. It was all taking him too long. While his sister lay dying, he was stuck here, thousands of miles away, struggling to find an antique looking glass that might, or might not, hold the key to her salvation.

When he’d made his regular call the night before, Sarah was actually back home, but she still sounded so weak. Dr. Ross had gotten her into the new protocol, and while it was too soon to tell if it would work, at least she had not rejected the new drug. “And they say that’s a very good sign,” Sarah said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “Tolerance has been a problem with a lot of other candidates.”

David had done his best to sound enthusiastic, too, and so had Gary, who chimed in on the extension, but sometimes David felt that they were all just acting a part for each other. Gary had asked him if his new promotion had come through, and David had said, “If I’m lucky with my assignment here, I don’t see how it wouldn’t.”

Sarah said she knew it would-she had always been his biggest booster-and when David hung up, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours, which might explain why he was having trouble staying awake. The late-morning sun was spilling through the clerestory windows of the reading room in the Accademia di Belle Arti, and taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes and yawned.

For the previous three days, he and Olivia had been holed up in their alcove at the Biblioteca Laurenziana, combing over the various drafts and versions of Cellini’s manuscripts-his treatises on sculpture and goldsmithing, in addition to the many copies, some in his own hand, of his unfinished autobiography. They were searching for any mention of La Medusa, or anything like it, which might point them in the right direction. But there had been nothing so far.

In an attempt to hurry things along, David had left Olivia in charge of the Laurenziana research, while he had taken this ten-minute journey to the Piazza San Marco, and the Accademia library, where the Codice 101, S-yet another draft of Cellini’s life-was kept. David knew the director here, Professor Ricci, from his days in Florence as a Fulbright scholar, and though David had thought he was an old man then, Ricci was unchanged, still shuffling around the echoing halls and cloisters of the library-founded by Cosimo de’Medici himself in 1561-in his bedroom slippers, with the bottoms of his pajamas peeking out from under the cuffs of his trousers. His skin was as yellow and crinkled as very old paper.

“So you are going to write about our Benvenuto?” Ricci said, in that proprietary way that Florentines displayed toward their legendary artists as he deposited the original manuscript on the desk in David’s carrel. “The Laurenziana, they have some fine things over there,” he said, sniffing, “and that Dr. Valetta, he will go on. But they are attached to a church, after all, not a museum.”

David had the distinct sense that there was a cross-piazza rivalry here.

“Superstition reigns over there,” Ricci concluded, “while reason alone prevails at the Academy.”

David had to smile. “Actually, I’m not writing about Cellini himself,” he confessed, “but looking for evidence of something he made. A mirror with the Medusa’s face on one side.”

Signor Ricci scratched the gray stubble on his chin, and said, “I never heard of such a thing. He made the Medusa only once, for the great statue of Perseus.” Shaking his head, he said, “No, no, you must be mistaken, my friend.”

It was the last thing he wanted to hear. Unless it existed, and he could find it, he would never be able to hold Mrs. Van Owen to her promises. For one thing, he would not be able to lay claim to the money-she had offered no consolation prize-but more important than that, he could never insist that she fulfill her solemn oath… to save his sister’s life. It was a slim reed to cling to, but he didn’t have any other.

As Signor Ricci wished him good luck, and meandered off, David opened the Codice 101, S, with weary hands, and read the all-too-familiar opening invocation: “All men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand…”-but he felt little hope of finding anything new. Although the manuscripts differed by a word or two here and there, they were all close copies, and detailed the same adventures, and the same miraculous acts of creation. Studying them had been a necessary step, but where, David wondered, was he to go next?

He carefully turned another page-the copyist had used a deep black ink that had faded to brown-and let his eye course down its length, looking for anything new, any anomaly, anything to indicate fresh passages to distinguish this copy from all the others. And after working so closely with Olivia Levi, he found it strange to have no one there to consult, or commiserate, with. Although scholarly work was generally solitary in nature, he’d quickly gotten used to having company and exchanging all kinds of ideas. Olivia was open to any suggestion or query, no matter how off-the-wall, and in nearly every case she could top it. She had a vast field of reference-there was almost nothing David could bring up that Olivia didn’t already have a firm opinion about-and she was willing to talk all night. He found himself lonely, missing her quick wit, her erudition, and-if he was completely honest with himself-the nearness of her, perched, knees up, in the next chair, her nose buried in a book. Once, she had caught him, lost in thought and simply staring at her, and she’d said, “Don’t you have work to do?”

He’d been so flustered, he hadn’t known what to say.

Olivia laughed and said, “It’s okay. You may be American, but you are also Italian.”

She was bringing that out in him more and more each day.

David was about midway through the manuscript at hand, his eyes beginning to glaze over, when he heard the sound of Signor Ricci’s slippers and looked up to see him tottering under a stack of loose pages and cracked binders. Just before he almost toppled over, the old man managed to deposit them on David’s carrel and steady himself by catching the back of a chair.

“What are these?” David asked.

Ricci, taking a second to catch his breath, said, “Nothing you’ll find at the Laurenziana. These are the household accounts of Cosimo de’Medici.”

Though he didn’t want to appear ungrateful, why, David thought, would Ricci think these would be of any use? Why should he care how much wine or butter or wheat was consumed?

“Including the art and jewelry commissions,” Ricci explained, as if reading his mind. “If Benvenuto made anything for Cosimo or his wife or his family-like a looking glass-it would be listed somewhere in here. The Medici kept careful records of everything they spent, and everything they received.”

That they did, and for the first time in weeks, David felt a sudden surge of optimism. If nothing else, it was a fresh avenue to explore. Ricci could see that David was pleased, and his face cracked open in a nearly toothless smile. “Go to it,” he said, patting David on the shoulder and teetering off. “And be sure to tell people where you found what you needed.”

Putting the Codice aside, David cleared a space on the carrel and began to systematically go through the ledgers, skipping quickly over the shopping lists of comestibles and the other household goods, and zeroing in on anything having to do with the purchase of art supplies-marble, brushes, paints, plaster-or metals, such as copper, bronze, silver, gold. Punctuating the lists of raw materials were finished works, separately bracketed, and David was stunned to see the purchase of world-renowned works by Leonardo and Andrea del Sarto, Botticelli and Bronzino, recorded for the first time. On one page, he found a shipment from Palestrina, describing a “stone torso of a boy” that had been unearthed by a farmer’s plow. Was this the torso that Cellini had written about in his autobiography, the one that the ignorant Bandinelli had scorned but that Cellini had later refashioned into a Ganymede?

The dates were neatly inscribed, in a spidery but still quite legible script, at the top of each page, and David began to turn to the most promising sections, the years in which Cellini was most regularly employed by the duke. Theirs had been a volatile relationship, and when they were at loggerheads, Cellini had often taken off for Rome, or for the court of the King of France, before coming back to his native town. The Perseus statue had taken him nine long years to complete-from 1545 to 1554-and for most of that time he was begging for his pay, or for supplies, and sparring with the duke’s accountants, who were forever asking him what was taking so long.

Part of the problem was the constant distractions he had had to deal with. The duke’s wife, Eleonora de Toledo, was often peeved with Cellini-his social graces were somewhat lacking-but she recognized his immense talent and was forever pestering him for his opinion on one thing or another; in his book, he’d written about his falling-out with her over a rope of pearls, and the time she’d try to lay claim to some of the figures designed for the pedestal of the Perseus. Still, if it was a looking glass that Cellini had made, David figured there was a good chance it had been made for her, and probably before he had ever created the remarkable Medusa now in the piazza. It was hard to imagine an artist like Cellini scaling down. Once he had made the definitive Gorgon, he would hardly be inclined to do another, and in reduced proportions besides.

David studied the pile of ledgers and papers that the Academy director had left him, looking for the volumes from the mid-1530s, a period when Cellini had been steadily employed by the duke. Finding a couple, he put the other books on a neighboring table and concentrated on scouring the endless lists for jewelry and other items a duchess might have ordered. And though it was slow work, he did find them-lists of bracelets and earrings, adorned with pearls and precious stones, ornaments for her hair, amber combs and brushes, rings with short descriptions, such as “acanthus motif, sapphire,” or “gold band, diamond pave.” The duchess was vain, and very particular about the design of everything she commissioned… which was one reason David found the idea of a mirror in the shape of the Medusa so strange. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fetching image-far from it-but perhaps that was its purpose. Perhaps it was meant to be defensive. Italians were always wary of il malocchio, the evil eye, and a mirror in this grotesque cast might have been considered the perfect way to ward it off.

He was up to June 1, 1538, and about to take a break and call Olivia for an update on her own progress, when his eye happened to fall upon a notation, in that same spidery hand, at the bottom of a page.

But it was listed not as a commission, but simply “ dalla mano dell’artista.” From the hand of the artist.

“ Parure,” it said, “ in argento.” Or silver. This sort of thing-a matching set of jewelry, usually including a tiara and earrings and bracelet-would surely have been right up Cellini’s alley. And though he did not yet see any mention of a mirror, it would have been a likely component. “ Con rubini ”-with rubies-was added to the general description, and though David’s sketch of La Medusa indicated no such jewels, they might have been destined for any one of the various pieces.

But it was the last words, hastily scrawled in the margin, which made his heart thump in his chest.

“ Egida di Zeus motivo.” Aegis of Zeus motif. According to classical mythology, the king of the gods carried a shield, or aegis, that had been a gift from Athena. And on that shield, David knew, was emblazoned the head of the Medusa. “ Un faccia a fermare il tempo ” was also appended there-a face that can stop time-the very phrase that was used in The Key to Life Eternal to describe the mirror. Not a face to kill, not a face to turn its observer to stone. A face to stop time.

At last, he felt he had stumbled upon the trail of the thing itself, that he had found some recorded proof-outside of the papers that Mrs. Van Owen had provided-suggesting that La Medusa had indeed seen the light of day, that it was more than something Cellini had simply sketched, or claimed to manufacture.

But if that were the case-if he had succeeded in making the Medusa -why in the world would he have given it away, much less to a duchess who was no particular favorite of his? The Key to Life Eternal claimed that the Medusa could grant the gift of immortality. Cellini would never have given such a creation away.

Nor, however, was he one to waste materials or labor. David remembered a passage from the Key, where Cellini had written of the torment he’d endured constructing La Medusa, and of the casts he had made prior to hitting on the right one: “ Il bicchiere deve essere perfettamente smussato, il puro argento: un unico difetto, non importa quanto piccola, si annulla la magia del tutto.” The glass must be perfectly beveled, the silver welded; a single flaw, no matter how tiny, will undo the magic of the whole. David was now confronted with two possibilities-one, that Cellini had made the Medusa and, after discovering that it did not work, repurposed it as a present to a wealthy patron. Or that he had simply bestowed on the Medici an early cast, a reject, one that he had never intended to imbue with the waters from the sacred pool at all.

And wasn’t that just like him, to muddy the trail of something valuable? The same man who had created an optical illusion in his most famous statue, or who had made strongboxes with coded locks, who kept the greatest advancements of his trade to himself, and limited the secrets of his sorcery to the unpublished Key, was not likely to leave his most ingenious achievement baldly exposed.

Cellini was a trickster, and David had to figure out how, over the centuries, this particular trick played out.

He quickly turned to the next page, which began with an account of some marble imported for a bathhouse. He jumped ahead several leaves, past some other mundane expenditures, until he found a later annotation, made in another hand, saying, “ Un regalo al de’Medici della Catherine, sul decimo del settembre 1572.” Or, a gift to Catherine de’Medici, the tenth of September, 1572.

“ Lo sguardo del maggio ottentute proteggere suo da tutti I nemici .” May the gaze of the Gorgon protect her from her enemies.

Cosimo himself had made the annotation-his initials were boldly inscribed below the note-and he had sent the piece to his niece, who had married into the royal family of France, and become queen. No one at that time in history, David knew, was more besieged by her enemies than the Queen of France, who, facing an insurrection from the Huguenots, had ordered the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 23 of that same year. In reality, the purge had lasted weeks, during which time thousands of her religious enemies were rounded up and slaughtered all over France. It was later said that the wicked Italian queen had followed the advice of her countryman, Niccolo Machiavelli, who warned that it was best to kill all your enemies in one blow.

David fell back in his chair, trying to sort through it all. If this was indeed the one and only Medusa, then it could not have the powers Cellini had claimed or he would not have given it away… unless he’d had no choice. Could the duke have forced his hand? There were a hundred threats and forms of torture the Duke de’Medici could have employed. And perhaps the phrase, “from the hand of the artist,” did not so much mean a willing gift as a tribute pried from an artisan unable to refuse or resist.

One way or another, though, this mirror had gone to France-where Cellini himself had spent a good deal of his life, in the employ of the French king-and it was the only one whose trail David could now follow. As a gift to the queen, it would naturally have become a part of the royal jewels. For all David knew, it was still a part of whatever remained of that once-impressive collection. Whether it had the powers it was reputed to possess, or not, it was what Mrs. Van Owen had sent him to find-and find it he would. Shaking it loose, for any amount of money, from the French patrimony, seemed an utter impossibility-even for someone of Mrs. Van Owen’s resources-but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. For the moment, he just wanted to share the news with Olivia and get cracking.

With facsimiles of the two pages, produced by a copying machine carefully calibrated to work in low light and heat, tucked away in his valise, he raced back to the Laurenziana. He could have called Olivia on the way, but he wanted the pleasure of seeing her face when he presented his discovery from the Medici account books. In addition to the more personal feelings for her that he could no longer deny, he had also come to value her opinion-and approval-more highly than anyone else’s. She was a true eccentric, there was no denying that, quirky and volatile, but she was also one of the most widely read and original thinkers he had ever encountered. Most of her scholarly papers and monographs-and she had shared a few with David-were unfinished and unpublished, but they betrayed a wealth of knowledge on subjects ranging from the philosophy of Pico della Mirandola to the evolution of the early European banking system. It was as if her mind could not be focused on one subject long enough to see it through to its natural conclusion. Instead, she would get distracted and follow some beckoning side path-invariably finding something valuable there, too-without ever bothering to get back to her original argument.

But when David burst into their alcove, Olivia wasn’t there. She might have been sleeping late that morning-David knew that she was a night owl-and it was also possible that she was off leading one of her tour groups. David was paying her a stipend out of Mrs. Van Owen’s account, but Olivia had plainly stated that she wanted to keep her other sidelines alive. “Otherwise, what do I do when you leave me to go back to Chicago?”

With each passing hour, David found such a thought more distressing… and harder to imagine.

But neatness, he would concede, was not one of her many virtues. She had left her yellow notepads, covered with long columns of dates and figures and names, scattered on the table, along with several broken pencils, some crumpled tissues, and a stack of old, leather-bound books that David hadn’t ever seen before.

None of them, he discovered, were by or about Cellini.

When David opened the first one, and did a rough translation from the Latin, he was surprised to see that it was called A Treatise on the Most Secret Alchemical and Necromantic Arts. Written by a Dottore A. Strozzi, it had been printed in Palermo in 1529.

The one under that-really just a pair of worm-riddled boards, with a loose collection of parchment sheets held between-had no title page at all, but after glancing through some of the text, David could see that it was a manual of stregheria, the ancient witchcraft that predated the Roman Empire. As late as the twelfth century, many of the Old Religionists, as the followers of the pagan gods were sometimes called, had dutifully masqueraded as Christians while secretly continuing to worship the ancient pantheon. They had simply accepted the Virgin Mary, for instance, as yet the latest incarnation of the goddess Diana.

He had just picked up the last book on the stack, a vellum-bound treatise, also in Italian, and entitled Revelations of Egyptian Masonry, as Revealed by the Grand Copt to one Count Cagliostro -at least this count, a famous mesmerist of his day, was familiar to David-when Dottore Valetta appeared in the alcove, a red silk pocket square blooming from his jacket. “Where is your confederate today?” he sniffed.

“I’m not sure,” David replied, scanning the table quickly to see if Olivia had left him any note from the day before. It was then that he noticed the old yellowed cards-clearly the precursors to the same library request cards he and Olivia were using-that had been hidden under the pile of books. The director saw them, too, and before David could even say a word, he had snatched them up and quickly riffled through them, glowering.

“Her old tricks,” Valetta fumed. “Signorina Levi is up to all her old tricks.”

“What tricks are you talking about?”

“Wherever she goes, she likes to stir the pot… to make trouble. She has tried to make this particular kind of trouble before.”

David was utterly baffled. “What was she doing?” David asked. “Checking to see who had consulted these sources before we did?”

Slipping the cards into his pocket, the director looked at David as if he wasn’t sure he could trust him anymore either. “She hasn’t told you her theory? Or why we have barred her from further use of the Laurenziana?”

“No. She hasn’t.”

Now the director looked as if he regretted saying as much as he had, or giving her ideas any further airing.

But David wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily. “So you have to tell me. If you don’t, I’ll make sure she does. What’s this theory of hers?”

It was clear that Valetta was choosing his words carefully when he spoke. “Signorina Levi believes that my predecessors at the library were Fascist sympathizers and collaborated with the Nazi regime.”

David was nonplussed.

“And let me hasten to add, she has never summoned any credible proof of these charges. She simply throws them around,” the director said, whisking his hand through the air, “like confetti. And without any regard for the damage such accusations could do to the reputation of this institution.”

While it was true that Olivia had never confided to him anything of this nature, David did not have much trouble imagining it. As an Italian and a Jew, whose own family had been decimated by the Fascist regime, Olivia might well have formulated such a theory. And Mussolini had indeed thrown in his country’s lot with the Third Reich. But how this theory of hers had anything to do with the books of black magic that were also sitting on the table, David had no idea.

Nor did he have time to ask Dr. Valetta before they both heard Olivia explode from the end of the long gallery.

“What is he doing here?” she said. “Get out of there!” she shouted, and two or three researchers looked up from their seats in horror at this gross breach of decorum.

Storming into the alcove, her familiar overcoat flapping wide, her dark eyes darted around, swiftly taking in the dismantled stack of books, the loss of the borrower cards, and the look of confusion on David’s face.

“I can explain everything,” she said to David.

“I already have,” Dr. Valetta put in dryly.

“Oh, I’m sure you have.” Turning back to David, she said, “This man is just a functionary, another cipher”-she snapped her fingers to indicate what a trifle she was dealing with-“like all the others, who did the bidding of their overlords. Who knows who he really works for? God save us from the bureaucrats who clung to their desks while the Huns sacked the city!”

“All right,” Valetta said, “I’ve heard it all before, and I don’t need to hear it all again. Pack your things, Signorina, and get out of my library-”

“ My library?” Olivia exclaimed.

“-and understand that you will never again receive permission to enter here.”

“But I am employed by Signor Franco,” she said, holding her hands out toward David.

“I don’t care if you are sent here by the Pope himself. You’re not getting in.” The director turned slightly, to block out Olivia and address solely David. “You are welcome to continue to use our facilities, so long as I believe you are confining yourself to legitimate fields of study. And as long as you are working alone.”

David was incensed himself. No one had ever suggested censoring, or even monitoring, his work. “What are you saying? That you plan to approve, or disapprove, of my requests for material from now on?”

“Absolutely. And from that I will know whether or not you’re pursuing your own ends, or trying to assist Signorina Levi in hers.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“That’s necessity.”

“Then you won’t be seeing me here again, either,” David said, calling his bluff. In point of fact, he had already decided to follow the mirror, copy or not, to France, but it didn’t hurt to make a bold stand. “And I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Van Owen that her donations would be better spent elsewhere.”

For a second, Dr. Valetta looked stricken. “As I have said, it is only Signorina Levi who has broken-”

“We’ll be packed and gone in five minutes,” David said, turning his back on him. Even Olivia looked surprised at this turn of events. “Gather your things,” he barked at her, and she quickly swept her pencils and pads into a pile on one side of the table.

Once that was all done, they walked in shame, like Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, down the length of the reading room, past the astonished stares of the other occupants, down the steps, and out into the courtyard, where Olivia immediately wheeled on him, and said, “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry. It was only while you were at the Accademia. I just wanted to tie up some loose ends on an old project of mine.”

“Don’t we have enough to do already?” David asked.

“I wasn’t going to get another chance.”

“To do what?”

“To prove that the Nazis had a special place in their hearts for Florence… and why.”

On the one hand, David was surprised that this was where she had been going, but on the other, it suddenly made perfect sense and brought together many separate strands of her research and proclivities.

“The Nazis not only looted Florence of its art,” she said, as they walked toward the Piazza San Marco, “they also pillaged its books and libraries and monasteries, searching for secrets that would add to their power.”

“Like ancient Egyptian rites?”

“Don’t laugh,” she warned. “Hitler believed in the occult. His top officers believed. The Third Reich was as mystical as it was military. No one must ever forget that.”

But much as David would have liked to stop and explore her theories further, right now he was trying to focus on their next move. “Where did you park your car?” he asked.

“I didn’t. It’s out of gas.”

He lifted his arm and waved for the first cab coming by.

“Where are we going?”

“To your place.”

Olivia looked surprised but not displeased.

“You have to pack a bag.”

“Why?” she asked. “Where do you think we are going?”

“To Paris.”

A white Fiat taxi cut across three lanes and jolted to a stop. She slid over in the backseat, David joined her, and the cabbie took off for the Piazza della Repubblica, the tinny sound of ABBA emanating from his radio. After a minute or two, Olivia couldn’t contain herself any longer and said, “What is in Paris that is so important?”

He opened his valise as the cab hung a sharp left, throwing her up against his shoulder, and showed her the facsimile pages from the Medici records. As she scanned the pages, he explained in a low voice how he had come across them, and why he was so sure it was La Medusa they referred to.

Olivia’s dark eyes absorbed every word and notation before she nodded solemnly, and said, “Then it does exist.”

“Or at least it did.”

“But what if, as you said, it’s just a copy?”

“Without the original to compare it to, who’s to say? I was sent to find it, and that’s what I intend to do.” What he did not say was what he felt in his heart, as surely as he could feel it beating. This was the real Medusa, and returning with it to Mrs. Van Owen would seal their bargain. He believed in it, like so much else now, because he had to. For his own sake, and Sarah’s.

“If it went to France,” she said, thinking aloud, “then it would have become a part of the crown jewels.”

“Exactly,” David replied. “Until the Revolution.”

“When it was turned over to the citizens of the French Republic.”

With Olivia, David never had to finish a thought. As the cab beat a path through the swarming, horn-blaring traffic, Olivia stared silently out her window and David, his mind going a mile a minute, was trying to organize the next leg of his journey and wondering how fast he could get it done. Taking out his phone, he quickly began scanning for flights to Paris. Cost was no object, but timing might be. Olivia would have to collect a few things, he would have to go back to the Grand for his own belongings, and then they’d need to get to the airport.

“How long do you expect me to stay on this job?” Olivia said.

“As long as it takes,” David said, concentrating chiefly on his cell-phone screen. Alitalia had a flight at three that they might be able to make if they hurried.

“But why,” she said, with an uncharacteristic hesitancy, “do you want me?”

“My French is really rusty,” David replied, before thinking.

And he could all but feel her fold in on herself.

And what made it worse was, it wasn’t even true. He just didn’t know how to tell her what he was really feeling and thinking. Here he was, on a desperate mission to save his sister, and he hadn’t confessed even that to her yet. He had so much to tell her that he didn’t know where, or when, to start. And in the back of a hurtling cab, it seemed like the worst possible time.

“Olivia,” he tried to begin, “I do need your help with this work. If anybody can help me cut through the thicket of the French archives and bureaucracy, it will be you.”

“So that’s the reason?” she said. “You just need me to help you with your… quest?”

God, he had gotten off on the wrong foot again. His French wasn’t nearly as rusty as some of his other skills.

The taxi had stopped at a busy crosswalk, but the driver, fed up with the unimpeded flow of pedestrians, leaned on his horn again and to a chorus of jeers, plowed through a narrow opening and sped on. Normally, David would have been appalled at such recklessness, but today he was thrilled.

“And this person you work for-” Olivia ventured.

“Mrs. Van Owen. A widow, in Chicago.” He knew he was painting a more staid portrait than was warranted. “Very rich. She’ll continue to pay for everything.”

“You say she is willing to do anything to get this Medusa.”

“Yes.”

“But you?” She looked at him intently now. “Why do you want to find it so much?”

“I’ll get a big promotion,” he said, not wanting to get into the whole story yet. Not here, not now. “And I’ll be well paid.”

She frowned, and, shaking her head, said, “No, no, no.”

Not for the first time, he felt like she could see right through him.

“You are not someone who works for money.”

“I’m not?” Pretending otherwise.

“No, you are like me. We don’t care about money,” she said. “We only care about knowledge, and truth. If we cared about money, we would do some other kind of work than this. We would be bankers.” She said that last word as if she were saying swine.

Overall, he took her point.

“No, what we do,” she concluded, “we do for love. There is some love at the root of this-always-and it is personal, too. That is what is pushing you.”

It was as if she’d shot an arrow right into his heart. He longed to tell her about the real stakes he was playing for-he ached to unburden himself of the truth about his sister and the strange promise of his mysterious benefactor-but he was afraid he would sound crazy. Even to someone as open-minded as Olivia.

“If we are going to do this thing together,” Olivia said, “from now on you are going to have to tell me only the truth.” As the cab slowed down to check the street addresses, she pressed him. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“On the right,” Olivia said to the driver. “Next door to the cafe.”

They got out of the cab, went inside, and climbed three stories of rickety steps with worn carpeting; it made his own place, David thought, look pretty good by comparison. On the third floor, Olivia stopped at a door decorated with a postcard of the Laocoon and put the key in the lock. Something seemed to surprise her, as if the lock had already been turned; but she opened it and stepped inside.

Even with the curtains drawn, David could see the chaos. And when Olivia flicked on the lights and saw her books strewn across the floor and a wooden perch of some kind toppled over, she said, “Oh my God.”

It was plain she’d been burglarized, but it wasn’t so plain that the thieves were gone.

“Hold on,” David said, stepping in front of her and moving cautiously toward the next room. As he approached the half-open door, he thought he heard some commotion inside, and was about to back off when something gray suddenly flew smack into his face, wings fluttering wildly, before careening off into the living room.

“Glaucus!” Olivia cried.

And then David heard another noise-a muffled groan-from the bedroom. He pushed the door wider with one finger and saw a man with a gag in his mouth, half-on and half-off the bed. His hands dangled above his head, tied with a phone cord to the bedstead. Dried blood was caked all over his face and neck.

As David rushed to his aid, Olivia appeared in the bedroom doorway, and said in horror, “Giorgio?”

By the time the ambulance had come and gone, and the police had finished interviewing Olivia, it was too late to make any of the flights David had hoped for. As far as the carabinieri were concerned, it had simply been a break-in, and the old boyfriend had come back to collect his stuff at just the wrong time. Olivia said she was missing some cheap jewelry, but that was about it. “I’m just glad he didn’t take any of my books,” she told the cops. “They’re the only valuable things in here.”

For much of the time, David had sat outside on the stoop, thinking and keeping his own counsel. It didn’t seem to have occurred, even to Olivia, that this could be anything more than a burglary gone awry. But to David, who had been nearly run over at the skating rink, it seemed like some very odd things had been happening since he’d gotten mixed up with Mrs. Van Owen. And was this one of them? Or was the strain on his nerves just getting to him? He checked his watch again, recalculating how quickly he could be on his way to Paris.

And when the last police car pulled away, Olivia settled down beside him and said, “Giorgio and I broke up a few months ago. He’d been on a sabbatical in Greece.”

“Then you’re okay?” David said, draping an arm consolingly around her shoulders.

She sighed, and fumblingly lighted a cigarette.

“You don’t need to stay here to look after Giorgio?”

“Him?” She blew out a cloud of smoke in disgust. “Let his new girlfriend do that.”

David felt like an immense weight had been removed from his heart. He was ashamed to admit it, even to himself, but ever since Giorgio had turned up in the apartment, he had been wondering where things stood between Giorgio and Olivia. What if she was still in love with him? “So,” he said, “does this mean you would still consider going to Paris? There’s a TVG, leaving in ninety minutes. We could still make it.”

But Olivia didn’t answer at first; in fact, it was several seconds before he realized that she was shaking, then quietly sobbing. He hugged her tighter, as the shock of what had just happened at her place sank in. The police were gone, her apartment had been ran-sacked, her old boyfriend was on the way to the hospital. David, who was so good when it came to talking about an edition of Dante, was again at a loss for words. The lighted cigarette hung, neglected, from her fingertips, before it finally tumbled onto the broken steps. But when she lifted her dark eyes, wet with tears, to his own, he knew-for once in his life he knew-that words weren’t what was called for. He pulled her closer and touched his lips to hers. There was no response, and her lips were cool. Her eyes remained open and inquisitive.

“I need you,” he said.

“Because I speak French better than you?” she said, with a troubled, uncertain smile. Her shoulders were still quivering.

“ Je vous aide,” he said flawlessly, “ parce que je t’adore.”

And now, when he kissed her again, her shoulders were still, and her lips were warm. And they clung to each other, sitting in the middle of the broken steps, saying nothing. For David, burying his face in her dark hair, feeling her arms wrapped around him, it was the sweetest respite he had known for a very long time, and he wished that they could have stayed that way all night.