Upon A Pale Horse

THREE The Italian

Antonio Carvelli read the paper as he sipped his postprandial espresso at the sidewalk café on the bustling viale Regina Margherita where he religiously retired after his exhausting lunch, taking in the young female students with an appreciative eye over the top of the day’s newspaper. Pigeons dodged the hurrying pedestrians with typical Italian fearlessness, much as jaywalkers made a sport of being narrowly missed by racing traffic on the boulevards.

Two stunning brunettes clad in pants as tight as second skins meandered by, their rapid-fire discussion lost to him as a delivery truck ground its gears, the diesel engine roaring as the hapless driver struggled to find third. One of the pair’s gaze darted at his position, catching his look, and smiled in a way that clearly indicated that he had not a chance in hell of ever seeing anything more of her.

Carvelli sighed and returned to his reading, his study of the local fauna concluded, at least for a time. He’d read the long article on the jet crash in the United States, noteworthy in Italy primarily because nineteen Italian tourists had been lost, and then moved to lighter fare, skimming over a long editorial parsing the finer points of some proposed immigration legislation as he digested his meal. The stance of the author was clearly anti-Muslim, voicing the popular opinion that immigrants should be free to do as they liked, as long as they conformed to the local norms and didn’t try to convert Saint Paul’s into a mosque or force everyone to wear veils.

Two more pages, and he was confronted with the bare upper torso of an aspiring starlet rumored to be the companion of a top government minister — not necessarily a scandal, even though he was married, because, well, look at her. It was freely understood that men were only human and could be ensnared every time if tempted with succulent flesh, especially if accompanied by alcohol. The minister had of course denied everything, which was obligatory, but nobody believed him, and the corners of Carvelli’s mouth tugged upward into a small smirk as he studied her profile. He knew the man in question, and if he could muster the energy to take that on, more power to him.

The waiter returned, seeing that Carvelli’s cup was empty, and placed the check on the table as he cleared it, as was his custom with the professor. Carvelli folded his paper, stood, and fished in the pocket of his immaculately tailored navy gabardine slacks to extract a wad of bills. After leafing through them, he left a generous tip. His time for introspection over, he proceeded down the sidewalk, back to his office on the campus of La Sapienza, Università di Roma, where he’d been a professor as well as a research scientist for the last three decades.

A stiff breeze tousled his thinning, graying hair, worn long. He donned a pair of sunglasses as he walked, traffic streaming by, everyone in a hurry, on Roman time, where the lifestyle was to rush madly. But it was a lifestyle he was accustomed to, and which he wouldn’t have traded for anything — it kept him alive, feeling young and vital, even as fifty disappeared in his rear view mirror and sixty became an ominous immediacy rather than a distant destination.

Twice divorced, he kept a small apartment near the university where he spent the week before retiring to his family’s country estate on weekends, usually with a young conquest in tow. He knew he was a stereotype, the lecherous academic who was only too willing to participate in the experimental phases of his students’ educations, but he didn’t care. Life was short, and after two failed attempts to understand the insanity of his mates, he was now a confirmed bachelor, and happier for it. His peers could snigger all they liked — he had no complaints, and only wished he’d gone down that road a decade earlier.

Carvelli turned the corner and glanced up at the front gates of the university grounds — his second home, where he’d spent most of his adult life after a brief period in the private sector, which hadn’t suited his temperament. He’d inherited a fair amount of money when his parents passed on; he was one of three siblings, all legatees to a dynastic fortune of no small proportions, so he didn’t have the innate drive to climb a corporate ladder in pursuit of filthy lucre. The only thing that had ever interested him was the research side of his work, and developing a better arthritis salve hadn’t been his cup of tea, no matter what the pay.

As head of his department, most of his time was spent in the lab, which was as it should be. His career was punctuated by frequent publication of his abstracts and periodic books, all in his areas of specialty — epidemiology and virology. His latest had been a local hit, tracing the history of malaria and the more interesting story of the companies that had fought to develop anti-malarial drugs, only to see their innovations squashed by larger competitors who didn’t want a cure cutting off their revenue from lucrative treatment patents.

That was another aspect of his work he found redeeming: He wasn’t afraid to tackle controversy, and he was somewhat of a celebrity for his maverick nature and colorful condemnations of the status quo. While it was a headache for the university administration, he was now viewed as iconic, and his cynical barbs and willingness to spout off to the press his opinions on public health policy had endeared him to the citizenry, if not always to his fellow faculty members.

The afternoon flew by as he immersed himself in his work — highly speculative research into a possible cure for liver cancer involving stem cells, pioneered in his lab and now being developed by a mirror team in France and another in Germany. If early results were borne out in more comprehensive clinical trials, it could be a breakthrough that would mean an end to the disease during his lifetime, and a crowning achievement in an already noteworthy career. Unlike many of his peers, he wasn’t consumed by taking credit for advances — he was confident he would be recognized when the time came, as he had been fourteen years earlier when he’d shared the Nobel Prize for his work on antiviral drug development. He was regularly consulted by large pharmaceutical companies because of his open, curious stance. Ironically, he earned five times his academic salary consulting for them, though it occupied only a scant few minutes of his time every month.

Hours drifted by, and when the daylight that streamed through his window was replaced by the soft glimmer of lamps, he put aside the sheaf of reports and rose from behind his desk. The halls were quiet now, classes long since over, and he looked at his watch with a silent curse. He’d lost track of time again, and it was already seven-thirty — later than he would have liked, given the date he’d agreed to with his latest paramour. It was a fifteen-minute walk to his building, but he wanted to shower and deal with a few errands before meeting her, and he’d be hurried now, a state of affairs he’d hoped to avoid.

He threw on his blazer and wrapped a lightweight white wool scarf around his neck, and stepped out into the hall. He paused to re-lock the door, and started when he heard an echo from down the long corridor, near the stairs — the rustle of clothes, perhaps, or maybe just the stiffening wind blowing through the ill-fitted windows, worn by the eons and as leaky as the Roman treasury. He looked up and peered down the dark passageway, but didn’t detect anything troubling — the area was empty, as far as he could tell.

Even with the security provided by the university patrol, it wasn’t wise to venture into dark, empty spaces at night in Rome, so he headed towards the main stairs at the other end, near the elevator, which had been out of service for a month. His footsteps reverberated off the ancient plaster walls as he descended to the main floor, where he could expect a few people to be lounging around, waiting near the security station for their rides to arrive. The sense of foreboding lifted as he rounded the banister on the second floor landing, and was forgotten by the time his feet touched the ground floor, sounds of murmured conversation drifting up to him from the front entrance foyer.

“Good night, professor,” Max, the head of night security, called to him as he pushed through the tall wooden doors, hundreds of years old and burnished, rounded, and scarred by countless generations of students bustling through them.

“Night, Max,” Carvelli replied over his shoulder, hands thrust into his jacket pockets against the spring evening chill.

He traced his way through the streets, past a seemingly endless procession of humanity intent on getting to important destinations as quickly as possible. Garlic and basil drifted in the air, the distinctive pungent perfume like an olfactory advertisement for the small restaurants along the way that were already packed with diners, early birds who had hoped to beat the dinner rush. His mouth flooded at the aroma, the promise of tonight’s date tugging at his imagination, hungry for food and then hours of athletic frolicking with a young lady a third his age. He grinned to himself as he walked, and an old woman carrying two faded cloth shopping bags eyed him distrustfully, as though he was some kind of lunatic, which he supposed some would argue he was. Eight blocks from the university he turned the corner onto his street, the apartment only a few hundred yards further. He dodged the refuse bins that his neighbors had put out for collection the following day, holding his breath as he moved past the containers — an automatic response from his childhood, now almost unconscious from years of conditioning.

At his building, he looked around before unlocking the front door, and then mounted the stairs to his third-story pied-a-terre, relieved to finally be home.

On the landing, a man in a sharp business suit descended from the floor above him — a visitor, not one of his neighbors — and Carvelli was raising his keys when the man spun and drove a syringe into the back of his neck. He felt a stab of pain and cried out, but the man’s black-gloved hand had clamped over his mouth, muffling it, even as another man came running up the stairs from the second floor.

The dark passageway blurred as a sensation like floating weightlessly swept through his limbs, and then everything dimmed before it went dark.

When Carvelli came to, he was sitting in his dining room, his arms bound behind him with some sort of soft fabric — maybe a necktie, he thought, as he fought to regain full awareness. His assailant was standing by the table, arms folded across his chest, studying him impassively, his eyes dead as a shark’s.

“My wallet’s in my jacket. I don’t have anything of value other than the cash and credit cards,” Carvelli said, his words sounding slurred to his ear, probably the result of the drug.

“That’s fine. Very good. But we’re not here to rob you, professor,” the man said in a surprisingly feminine voice, the tone soft, his consonants sibilant with a latent lisp. “We’re here to discuss your meeting schedule.”

Carvelli’s eyes darted from the man to his companion by the window, the curtains drawn, the only illumination in the room provided by the overhead lamp. “I… I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps. But I want you to think. Who were you supposed to meet with this week?”

“Meet? What do you mean, meet? Nobody. I don’t know what you’re asking.”

The two men exchanged a glance that chilled Carvelli’s blood, and his pulse quickened as he read the intent in their expressions.

“Really. I don’t understand the question. I’m not trying to be difficult,” he tried again. This was some sort of mistake. It had to be. Why were two thugs mugging him in his own house, talking in riddles?

“Are you quite sure, professor? Or should I say, doctor? That’s right. We know all about you. Now let’s try again. Did you receive any calls over the last week? Maybe from a foreigner asking questions, or wanting to meet?”

“A foreigner? I really have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Who are you people? What do you want?”

His interrogator shook his head, a humorless smile playing over his face, a cold thing at home in a graveyard or a slaughterhouse, cruel, no amusement in it.

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy, professor.”

Carvelli’s body was found two days later. When the police broke into the apartment it had already begun decomposing, aided by the warm water in the bathtub the professor had decided to make his final resting place. Long slashes on each arm had stained the water red, and a hastily scrawled note on the kitchen table explained his inability to go on anymore in the face of the insurmountable depression he’d been battling for months.

The postmortem was perfunctory, no evidence of foul play apparent. The funeral service filled one of the larger cathedrals, the revered man honored by his friends, co-workers and students, as well as a Who’s Who of dignitaries from the government and pharmaceutical industries. Everyone agreed that it was a shame such a brilliant mind had decided that the cold embrace of death was preferable to one more day on the planet, but then it was impossible to predict these things, and it was best to remember his notable accomplishments and contributions to the human condition rather than dwell on the manner of his passing.

Two days later an impassioned editorial from the nation’s highest medical authority argued for greater investment in mental health, using the professor’s last act as a cautionary tale about the risks in ignoring a problem that could affect anyone, at any time.

It was, as were all such editorials, routinely ignored by a populace weary of being taxed to death by an administration as profligate in its waste as it was larcenous in its diversion of funds to cronies and pet causes.

A week later, the incident had been forgotten, and another scandal involving a porn starlet and the president occupied the front page, the passing of an academic lacking the necessary weight to warrant a more than transient position in the news.