The Reincarnationist

Chapter 35

It is a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

It was raining at the site but not hard enough to discourage the crowd of three or four dozen sightseers and protesters. The grass was matted down and muddy from having been trampled. A patrol car with two officers inside sat by the side of the road like a warning sign.

Malachai and Josh circumvented the throng, trying to get a glimpse of the field and the entrance to the tomb, but the wooden lean-to was gone. On the spot where the makeshift structure had stood above the hole in the ground were flat wooden planks.

The tomb had been closed.

Josh’s chest tightened. He had known loss before, but never a deprivation that was tied to so much promise.

“Hope hangs on too long sometimes,” his father had told him once. They were in the darkroom. The illness had not yet felled the tall, strapping man. Josh was still in denial about the looming disease that would change both of their lives so drastically.

“With it goes possibility,” Ben continued. “We can manage the darkest nights and the longest drops as long as we think someone might be waiting for us with a lamp to light our way or with a net to catch us when we fall.”

Josh felt the air undulate around him and shivers shoot up and down his arms and legs. Once again, while he stood perfectly still in one dimension, he was being sucked down into that vortex where the atmosphere was heavier and thicker. He was back in the darkness, in the tunnel, unable to breathe, the panic gripping him and not letting go.

“Did you know that suffocation is supposed to be one of the most painful ways to die?” Josh asked Malachai, who put his arm around the younger man’s shoulder and led him away from the field and from the crowd, toward the grove of trees beyond and behind the site.

The rain had let up. Indicating a log, Malachai said, “Sit down. You’re white as a ghost. What happened to you back there?”

Josh heard his own voice as if it was coming up from underwater, miles down deep. “I couldn’t breathe. For a second everything went black and I couldn’t get a goddamned breath. I was on my hands and knees in that tunnel again, in total darkness, and I couldn’t get out fast enough.”

“Was it then or now?”

Josh shook his head. It might have been either. It didn’t matter.

They sat quietly for a few minutes while Josh concentrated on the present. On where he was now. His name. The date. The time. Where the clouds were in the sky.

“I’m okay now.” He stood up, but instead of heading back where the taxi was, he found himself walking toward the forest.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s a stream back in here. I need to wash my face. It’s healing water. I’ll feel better.”

Malachai stared at him the same way he had in the cab when Josh had mentioned his “brother’s” murder, the way he had stared at him in his office the first day they’d met when Josh had told him a young man named Percy had once lived-and died-in the building that now housed the foundation.

“Did you walk out there the other day with the professor?”

Josh shook his head.

“How do you know what’s there?”

“I’ve seen it.” The implication was clear; he didn’t need to explain it.

“How much of it do you remember?”

“More than I could back in New York. Since we’ve been in Rome, whole scenes from the past have been playing out in my mind.”

“So you haven’t walked here yet?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me what we’ll find, other than a stream?”

Josh shut his eyes. “Giant oaks, a pond where we bathed, a clearing covered with pine needles. A rock with a crevice in the shape of a crescent moon.”

They had hiked for a quarter of a mile when, in the leafy shadows, they came up to the oaks and then the brook.

Kneeling down, Josh scooped up water and washed his face. Then he dipped his hands back into the rushing water and this time drank it down.

“What do you know about this place?” Malachai asked, amazement and curiosity mixed together in his voice.

“It was a sacred grove. A holy place and one of Julius’s responsibilities. It’s also where…” Josh stumbled over his words, not because he cared how he sounded but because it was still too new and too raw and he didn’t trust himself to be able to talk about it without becoming emotional. Confronting these images was complicated enough without acknowledging the maelstrom of feelings they aroused. Yes, of course, the pictures that showed up in his mind were interesting, worth discussing, curious, but the loneliness they triggered, along with the guilt and the eternal longing, were unbearable.

“What’s happening?” Malachai asked.

“Someone I can’t see or talk to has control over me and is force-feeding me his poor, sick soul.”

Next to Josh, solemnly, Malachai bent down to the water, made a cup with his hands, filled it with water and, with his eyes closed, drank it as reverently as if it were holy water and by ingesting it, he might have a vision, too.

Josh turned away.

He knew how desperately Malachai wanted to experience what he had and how much the older man envied his affliction, and it shocked him to see him like that instead of in control, clever and razor-sharp.

Coming out into the clearing, they headed back toward the crowd for a last look around for Gabriella, even though Josh knew that with the tomb shut down, she wouldn’t be here. It was a last futile effort.

A carabiniere was approaching, and when he met up with them he spoke quickly in Italian. From his tone and his gestures it was clear that he was chastising them and ordering them off the premises.

“We only speak English,” Malachai said.

The policeman pointed toward the barricades where the field ended and the cars were parked. “Go now, please.”

“We were leaving, anyway,” Josh muttered, not caring what the cop picked up from his inflection. They walked back toward their waiting taxi. Everything was wet and muddy and the whole place bothered him now. He just wanted to get away. From the tomb, from Rome, from the fucking insane thoughts inside his head.

When they were three feet from the barricades a little girl of six or seven, with curly black hair and olive skin, broke free from her mother and ran right up to Josh and, throwing her arms around him, broke into tears.

Her mother came running after her, shouting her name, which was Natalie, but the little girl ignored her, holding tight to Josh as if she was trying to keep him tethered to the ground.

“Do you speak English?” Malachai asked the mother.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” She had an accent but spoke very well. “I’m Sophia Lombardo.” She wore jeans and a leather jacket, and she had the same black hair as her daughter and very blue eyes that were filled with concern.

“Natalie,” she said as she put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. She murmured something to her in her native tongue.

The little girl jerked her shoulder away, and against his legs Josh felt her whole tiny body stiffen and her arms grip him.

“Is she all right?” Malachai asked.

“We were watching on the news this morning the report about the tomb and the terrible accident, and she became very agitated and said she wanted to come here. I said it wasn’t possible-she had to go to school and I had to go to work-but she became hysterical. She never has tantrums, this was different. My husband and I became worried. I’m not a mother who gives in, but she was so upset, in so much pain, all because of the news report.” Sophia was bewildered by her daughter’s reaction.

“I think I can help her. Would it be all right if I talked to her?” Malachai asked. “Does she by any chance speak English?”

“Oh, yes, she is bilingual. Her father, he is British.”

Malachai crouched down on his knees so that he was eye level with Natalie, murmuring in the soft, singsong voice he used with the children. “Don’t be afraid, Natalie. Don’t be afraid. Not you.”

With each word, the sobbing slowed, and when she was calm he asked, “Tell me what’s wrong. Why are you so upset?”

“She…” The sobbing started anew.

“It’s all right. Go slow. I can help, I promise.”

“She was…my…sister…”

“Who was, Natalie?”

“I’m not Natalie,” said the little girl, who was still gripping Josh’s leg.

“Who are you?”

“Claudia.”

“And how old are you, Claudia?” Malachai asked.

“I’m twenty-seven.”