The Reincarnationist

Chapter 23

Rome, Italy-Wednesday, 3:10 p.m.

The light changed to green, a car horn blasted and the priest crossed the street past a row of vendors, giving cursory glances at their merchandise. If he made eye contact with any of them it wasn’t visible to any strangers who happened to see the middle-aged, overweight cleric. Twenty yards farther, he huffed as he climbed the few steps at the bottom of the Via Vittorio Veneto next to the Piazza Barberini and entered the dingy church of Santa Maria della Concezione.

No one at the sidewalk cafés across the street paid any attention to him as he disappeared behind the wooden doors. The church wasn’t nearly as popular a pilgrimage destination as the Vatican or the Pantheon. Compared to Rome’s grand and glorious houses of worship, a visit to the crypt at della Concezione was a macabre adventure, though, so it had its share of tourists. Another priest walking in didn’t attract any notice.

The change from the bright afternoon to the dark interior took some adjusting to. The church was musty and lackluster except for the gold cross glinting above the nave. He looked at his watch. Stepped up to the font, dipped his fingers into the basin of holy water, crossed himself, walked up the main aisle, entered a pew, knelt down and prayed for a few seconds. Or at least it appeared that he was praying.

He was really keeping his eye on his watch. The tour, he knew from the guidebook, would begin on the hour. His heart jumped around in his chest.

After six minutes passed, he lifted his head, stared at the altar, got up and made his way to the back of the church, where the curious gathered.

The scent was different down in the crypt, but the ancient smell of dirt and moisture was not unpleasant. The smell of antiquity, he thought. A monk with a dour face escorted the six of them down a narrow corridor, through iron gates and into the five chambers of the underground cemetery that contained the remains of four thousand Capuchin monks.

But not buried remains.

Every wall and each ceiling was covered with baroque decorations made up entirely of the monks’ dried out and bleached bones. Altars, chandeliers and clocks: everything a human relic.

He barely listened as the monk who led the tour droned on, explaining that la macabra composiziones in the series of tableaux had been made out of the bones of the dear departed monks dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that the spectacle had not been created to inspire fear, but, to encourage prayer and meditation.

This was not his first visit to the crypt, yet he still was amazed that the thousands of skulls, ribs, teeth, leg and arm bones, pelvises and vertebrae had lost their semblance to human remains and became the medium the artists had employed to create their spectacle.

When the tour ended, he obediently followed the other tourists up and out of the church and into the street, careful to watch the crowd scatter. No one lingered on the steps; everyone dispersed. After being certain they had all walked away, he strolled to the corner and passed the same group of street vendors he had walked by before going into the church. This time he slowed and took more notice of them.

The first sat behind a table covered with cheap Italian souvenirs: Leaning Towers of Pisa, bronze St. Peters, refrigerator magnets of the glorious Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The next table had been transformed into a handbag and briefcase store. Leather goods of every imaginable shape and color were lined up invitingly, and the proprietor was doing a brisk business. The third vendor was selling cheap costume copies of very costly jewelry. Prevalent were thick gold chokers featuring facsimiles of Roman coins. There were also silver and gold ropes studded with pearls, and hanging earrings encrusted with faux diamonds. Surprising quality for street goods.

He fingered a silver necklace. Six glass gemstonelike pendants hung from the heavy links. Rubies, emeralds and sapphires.

“Gucci,” the vendor said.

The priest nodded. A smile passed his lips. “Gucci? Really?”

“Good copy.” The vendor spoke in heavily accented Italian. “Not expensive.”

“Do you have three of these? Identical ones?”

The vendor nodded and reached under his table to pull out first one, then another and a third, each in a box with the word Gucci stamped on it in a similar typeface to the one the high-end retailer used. Almost but not quite exact. Close enough so that most people wouldn’t notice it unless they had the real thing to compare it to.

The price was negotiated and paid. The vendor slipped the bills into his apron and watched as the priest put the necklaces into his briefcase and walked off.

Continuing down the block, he turned the corner and then entered the next café he came to, where he ordered a cappuccino in honor of the dead friars.

He put the briefcase on the bar and rested his elbows on it.

He was almost positive that no one had followed him to the church. He’d made sure of that. Certainly, no one had followed him into the crypt. And it didn’t appear that anyone had been loitering nearby, watching him buy the bargain tourist fare.

The coffee was strong and hot, but he finished it quickly and went to the men’s room, where he pocketed all the jewelry and put the faux Gucci boxes back into his briefcase.

Back out on the street, he strolled, stopping often to look in store windows, checking on the reflections to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

If they tried to take the briefcase from him, he would put up a struggle. But he would let them have it. What he wouldn’t let them have was what was in his pocket.