The Night Villa (22 page)

The Ospedale Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili is an old cavernous building near the Piazza Cavour, built originally in the sixteenth century for those suffering from the then incurable disease of syphilis, which the Neapolitans had christened “the French disease.” (The French returned the favor by calling it the Neapolitan disease.) Not a particularly cheerful history, I think, as Agnes and I follow the paramedics carrying Simon past doleful plaster madonnas and black-robed nuns. He looks frightened as he’s whisked through doors where we’re not allowed to go. I try to explain to a passing nun that we want to stay with our friend, but she takes one look at Agnes, who has turned as white as the plaster saints on the walls, and reaches out a black-robed arm to steady her as she begins to sink to the floor. Agnes responds by screeching and clutching at me.

“Please don’t leave me alone,” she hisses in my ear. “I hate hospitals…and
nuns.
”

“Don’t worry,” I say, a little shocked at Agnes’s outburst, “I’ll stay with you.” I smile at the sweet-faced elderly nun and tell her in Italian that we’ll follow her. I hope she doesn’t know enough English to have understood what Agnes just said. She turns around without a word, her long black habit dusting the floor, and leads us to a private room. Above the door is another one of the ubiquitous saints—this one, I notice, has the same crown of waves as Agnes’s little statue. I’m about to point it out to her, but Agnes balks when she sees the narrow whitewashed room with its narrow metal cot.

“Why is she taking me to a room? I’m not going to have to stay here, am I?”

“I think she just wants to make sure you don’t fall down and hurt yourself,” I tell Agnes. The nun returns with a bowl of water, cotton gauze, and antiseptic. “Just try to relax. I’ll stay right here.”

I sit next to Agnes on the cot as the nun swabs her cuts gently and efficiently. Through the whole procedure Agnes shakes like a leaf. Why in the world, I wonder, is she so afraid of nuns? I went to parochial school myself until eighth grade, when M’Lou finally convinced my grandparents to let me go to public school, and I’ve encountered my share of unpleasant nuns. I’ve also known some remarkable ones, including my eighth-grade Latin teacher, Sister Francis Genevieve, who inspired me to study the classics. But Agnes was raised in a Baptist family. It’s unlikely she had any experience of nuns growing up. Has her Baptist minister father filled her with horror stories about the Catholic Church? I’ve experienced a fair amount of prejudice against Catholics in East Texas, so I suppose it isn’t impossible.

Still, Agnes’s reaction seems extreme. Her shaking gets so bad at one point that the struts of the metal bed clang like bells. The nun steps back, looking critically at Agnes, and then says in perfect English, “She seems to be going into shock. I’m going to get the doctor.”

When they return the nun stays in the doorway and lets the young—and handsome—doctor examine Agnes’s head. He can’t find any sign that she suffered a blow, but he says that her behavior is alarming enough to warrant an MRI and overnight observation in the hospital.

Since I’m not allowed to accompany Agnes to the MRI lab, I tell the nun that I’d like to check up on Simon. She shows me to a waiting room and tells me someone will come tell me when Simon gets out of surgery.

I sit there for over an hour feeling totally useless and wishing that I at least had the Phineas transcripts to read while I’m waiting. Anything to make me feel like I’m doing something. The only “reading material” I have is the peculiar cards I was sent in the mail. I take them out and examine them: a moon, a man falling off a ladder, and a masked man. Could the man falling off the ladder represent some kind of accident? Could it have something to do with Simon getting injured in the tunnel? But then, how would the person who sent them know Simon was going to get hurt today?

“Do you play the lotto?” a voice asks me in accented, but carefully formal English.

I look up at a young man sitting in the row of chairs across from me. He’s wearing a navy suit and tie, his hair neatly combed, as if he’d been on his way to the office and made this detour to the hospital of the incurables unexpectedly.

“Scusa?”
I say, even though he’s addressed me in English. I’m not even sure he was talking to me. “Lotto?”

“Yes,” he answers, stubbornly sticking to English. “You call it the lottery in America. My cousin lives in New York and I visit him in summer last year. I see the lottery there. Long lines”—he spreads open his arms—“many people hoping to win the…the jackpot?”

“Uh, yeah, I mean, no, I don’t play it,” I say. Ely had, though, I remember. Although I always thought he was more interested in picking number combinations than in winning money. “Why did you think I did?”

“Those are
smorfia
pictures,” he says, pointing to the cardboard tiles. “They are used to, um, how do you say?…to read the dreams. Each one means a number.” He picks up the card with the moon on it and turns it over. “Ah, someone has taken the number off the back.” He shows me the back of the tile, and I see that the paper backing is rough, as if one layer had been peeled away. I look at the other two and see they both are missing their backings.

“The moon is six. I remember because my aunt Angelina once dreamed she looked up at the moon and saw her brother Tito’s face in it, so she played a six and a thirty-seven—for brother—and fifty-nine for La Casa because the dream was in the house where she grew up. And she won! But then my uncle Dominic took all the money and bought a fishing boat and the boat sank! My aunt said it was because her brother Tito could never keep a lira in his pocket and so the boat had as many holes in it as her brother’s pocket.”

I nod at this long story of the inevitability of fate. How could you avoid it? It was Oedipus all over again: fleeing his hometown because the oracle tells him he’ll murder his father and marry his mother but neglects to mention that his parents aren’t the people he grew up with but the ones he’ll meet out on the road. Or like me: coming all the way to Italy to get away from Ely and finding him here. I’m sure now that this is Ely’s handiwork. A system that attaches numbers to dreams is right up his alley.

“So each one of these cards has a number?”

“
Sì,
from one to ninety-nine,” he tells me. “And also a name. This one”—he points to the middle card—“is called La Disgrazia. It stands for seventeen, which is always an unlucky number. These cards are from a game, like your American bingo, called Tombola della Smorfia. I bought one for my niece last Christmas.”

“Where can I get one?” I ask.

The young man—Gianni, I soon learn—gives me directions to a nearby
farmacia
that usually carries the game. He then confides to me that he’s in the hospital because his fiancée is having her appendix removed. When I wish her a quick recovery, he responds, “I am sure we will both have good luck now.” He taps the card with the moon on it. “Six is my lucky number. And then this last card, the masked man, it means a stranger. You see: it’s lucky that I met you!”

I tell him I’m sure it’s lucky I met him, too. When I see John Lyros enter the waiting room I get up and shake Gianni’s hand. I want to avoid him mentioning the Smorfia tiles to John and, given Gianni’s volubility, I realize he’s likely to recount our whole conversation. Mistaking my eagerness to be gone, Gianni winks at me. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to make your husband jealous! Or my fiancée.
Ciao,
signora. Don’t forget to play your numbers.”

As I approach John Lyros, I can’t help but smile, picturing the couple we make in Gianni’s eyes. Although he’s still wearing his khakis and dusty shirt from the dig, something about Lyros exudes wealth and confidence. I notice that women look at him and then at me when I join him.

“I’ve been waiting here to find out how Simon’s doing—” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“Simon’s out of surgery,” he says. “He’s still in critical condition, but he’s expected to recover.”

“Thank God,” I say. “I should go back and check on Agnes then—”

“I just came from her room. She’s sedated and resting comfortably. There’s really nothing we can do for either of them right now. I thought we could go get a bite to eat and then check in on them later before catching the ferry back to Capri. I bet you’re starving.”

As soon as he says it I realize I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I
am
starving. “Okay,” I say, “but would you mind waiting while I run into a local
farmacia
for a few things?” I say
things
in a way I hope Lyros will take to mean private
female
things so he doesn’t offer to accompany me, which he doesn’t. Instead he tells me he’ll be waiting outside the main entrance of the hospital.

I buy the Tombola della Smorfia game in the pharmacy. The cover shows a game board divided into little squares with pictures like the ones on the tiles I’ve found. I’d like to look at it right away, but I don’t want to keep Lyros waiting.

When I get back to the hospital entrance, I find John Lyros standing outside. He’s holding open the passenger door of a bright red Alfa Romeo.

“Wow,” I say, sliding into the leather seat, “this isn’t a rental, is it?”

“No.” He shifts gears and steers around the crowd of teenage boys that have assembled to admire the car. “I bought it last month, but it’s really no use to me on the island so I’m keeping it in a garage here. It seems a shame, though. I haven’t been able to take it out on the open road.” He turns to me, those lavender eyes glinting. “Would you like to take a drive?”

And of all the questions I’ve been asked today this one seems the simplest, and least mysterious, to answer. “Sure,” I say, adjusting the seat to a more comfortable position. “Why not?”

I
nstead of heading south toward the more glamorous destinations of Sorrento and Amalfi we drive north toward the Phlegraeon Fields.

“I know a great little seafood place near Baia,” John tells me, “and the area’s less touristy than the Sorrentine Peninsula.”

“Maybe because of the name. I’ve always thought ‘Phlegraeon’ sounded like a skin rash. The translation—the burning fields—isn’t much more appealing.”

Lyros laughs. “You’re right, but let’s not suggest an alternative to the tourist board or the place will be swamped. The ground
is
geologically unstable. Although there hasn’t been a major eruption in the area since 1538, the ground level of the port of Pozzuoli moves up and down when the magma beneath the sea level surges. You can still see sulfurous vapors coming out of craters and cracks in the ground. That’s why the Greek settlers thought it was the entrance to the underworld.”

“Basically, you’re taking me to Hell for dinner.”

He half turns to me, smiling. “Yes, but I promise to bring you back.”

“Hm, easier said than done. As Virgil says,
Facilis descensus Averno.
”

“The way to Hell is easy,” John translates, his eyes darting between me and the sharply curving road.

“But the way back isn’t. Look at poor Euridice—thrown back into the pit because her husband, Orpheus, couldn’t resist a backward glance.”

John steals another look at me. “True. I might have a hard time keeping my eyes off you during the trip.”

I blush at the compliment, surprised at how quickly he’s taken the conversation from geology to mythology to flirtation. I’m not sure where he means to take it next—or how far I want him to go. Now that his eyes are back on the twists of the road, I study his profile, noticing the bump in his nose where it looks like it was broken and the faint scar near his jawline. It’s not a pretty face, but it’s a strong one—like a Roman general who’s been in the field. And those eyes. When he turns those lavender eyes on me, I find myself not wanting him to stop…at least not yet.

“Well, I’ll just have to lead the way,” I say.

He keeps his eyes on the road, but I see his lips curve into a smile. Then we go into a tunnel and I can’t see anything.

When we emerge from the tunnel, the Gulf of Pozzuoli is before us, its calm blue expanse, cradled protectively by Cape Misenum, belying the surging magma beneath. “That’s where Pliny the Elder watched the eruption from,” I say, pointing to the cape, glad to be back in the safer realm of ancient history and geography for the moment. I turn my head back to look in the direction of Naples and Vesuvius, trying to imagine what the view would have been like on that fateful morning. A cloud like an umbrella pine was how Pliny the Younger described the emissions that issued out of Vesuvius in his letter to Tacitus describing his uncle’s death, but I can’t see the volcano from this angle.

“We’ll have an excellent view where we’re going,” he says. “And hopefully a more tranquil one than Pliny’s.”

“Good,” I say as we follow the coast road to Baia. “After all the excitement today, I could do with a little tranquillity. I have to say I’m really surprised—and a little embarrassed, considering I recommended her for this project—that Agnes would be foolish enough to go into those tunnels.”

“What makes you think it was Agnes’s idea?” he asks, his eyes flicking off the road for a moment to look at me.

“Oh, I didn’t…I mean, I thought it was probably Simon’s idea, but I’m surprised she would go along with it.” I glance at him and see that his eyes are back on the road. “Why do you think Simon was willing to risk his life and Agnes’s in those tunnels?” I ask.

“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” he says, “I’m the one who should be embarrassed. Ah, here’s where we turn off….” He turns the car ata sign for Lake Lucrino—famous in ancient times for its oyster beds—and we climb into low hummocky hills on a narrow twisting road that demands all John’s attention. He turns in at an entrance that is nearly hidden behind oleander bushes, driving down a lane bordered by tall hedges alive with small brightly colored birds and tiny white flowers. I smell jasmine and salt and hear birdsong and breaking surf. The lane opens up to a promontory overlooking the sea and a low stucco building with a green clay tile roof. Next to the building is a patio set with wrought-iron tables.

“Is it open?” I ask, noticing that the patio is empty. There’s only one car in the driveway.

“Oh yes, I know the owner,” John says, parking the car. “But it’s a little early for dinner. We could take a walk first—there are some ruins along the ridge here—if you’re not too tired.”

“Not at all,” I tell him. It’s true; although I should be exhausted from everything that’s happened today, when I open the car door and smell the sea and the sharp tang of rosemary and pine in the air, I don’t feel tired at all.

We walk up a narrow dirt trail behind the low building. The path is steep for a bit, and rocky—John offers his arm over the rougher parts—but then it flattens out on the top of the ridge. I see the remains of a tile floor beneath the grass and a few low stone walls.

“A Republican villa,” John says, “probably built around Cicero’s day when this area became popular as a retreat for wealthy Romans. Not as fancy as the ones closer to Baia”—he points down toward the fishing village below us—“but it had a pretty view.”

I nod, speechless at just how perfect the view is. To the east, I see all the way across the Gulf of Pozzuoli to Naples and the cone of Vesuvius. To the south is Cape Misenum and the deep blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Below us lies Lake Lucrino and a little farther west another lake, which I guess is Lake Averno and which the ancients believed was the entrance to the underworld.

“You were going to tell me why you thought it was your fault that Simon went into the tunnels,” I say, sitting down on the stone wall.

John sighs and sits next to me. “Yes, I think I may have given him the idea to look for something there. You see, I’ve wondered whether the eighteenth-century tunnels might lead us to the stairway that went down to the underground passages and the sea grotto. In the plan of the villa we found there’s an entrance to the stairs from the lower courtyard. But then the rest of the plan is blank. It doesn’t show what was on the level beneath the lower courtyard. When I read Phineas’s description of seeing Iusta swimming below the terrace and his conjecture that there must be a sea grotto on the lowest level, I felt sure that there must be a way to find those stairs.”

“And you mentioned that to Simon?”

“I’m afraid so. He came to me the night before last concerned there might not be much more work for him because he’s almost finished the paintings in the courtyard. I told him that it depended on what we found next, that I’d like to reproduce the murals in the lower levels, but obviously we couldn’t do that until we uncovered those levels.”

I think about the little bit of the conversation I overheard between the two men. It didn’t sound like they were talking about their business arrangement, but then, I only overhead a small part of the conversation. Still, I’m sure Lyros is leaving something out of his account of the conversation: certainly the part where he admonished Simon for indulging rumors about cults and sacrifices.

“So you think Simon was looking for a way into the stairs?”

“Why else would there have been a collapse? Those tunnels have been there for centuries. He must have been doing a little tunneling himself—boring holes into the walls hoping to find the stairs to the underground passages—and he managed to undermine one of the supports. It’s ironic, really.”

“Ironic?”

“Yes. The cave-in he inadvertently caused
did
uncover the stairs. And from the glimpse I had of that painted swan, I think we’ll find some spectacular murals. But it doesn’t look as if Simon will be in any shape to reproduce them any time soon.”

“That is unlucky,” I agree. “For Simon, at least.”

“I’m afraid this isn’t the first stroke of bad luck the project’s had.”

“You mean the shooting in Texas?” I ask.

“Actually I’d call
that
a tragedy, not bad luck. I was thinking of smaller bits of bad luck: tools have gone missing from the site, a strange stain appeared on the north courtyard wall, and right after that noxious fumes started emanating from the tunnels. On July 10, a workman fell off a ladder—” I think again of the cardboard tile of the man falling off a ladder. Is that what the cards are about? A warning that the Villa della Notte is cursed?

I’m distracted from this thought by something else John is saying. “…and then there are the triangles showing up on everything.”

“What triangles?” I ask, my skin prickling.

“Since May we’ve been finding triangles on everything. One was spray-painted on the site gate in Herculaneum and one on the door to the villa on Capri the next day. I’ve found three stamped on our mail and one punched into the tires of the institute’s truck, and just two days ago there was even one scratched into the side of the
Parthenope.
”

“What kind of triangles?” I ask, cutting short his list.

“Oh,” he says, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s one I found today. It came with the mail.” He removes a postcard—the kind that’s blank on one side—and hands it to me.

The triangle is formed of ten dots, each one printed in red ink. A tetraktys.

“Do you know what this is?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “but I think you do. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, then, we’d better eat while you talk. You look a little pale. Shall we?” He offers his arm for the walk down to the restaurant and I take it. Suddenly I’m feeling unsteady on my feet.

“I’ve always thought that if I had been paying more attention it wouldn’t have happened,” I tell John Lyros on the patio of the restaurant. The waiter has brought us a ceramic pitcher filled with crisp white wine and scattered a handful of tiny fried fish and calamari over the brown butcher-paper-covered table, sprinkling them with coarse sea salt and lemon juice before discreetly retreating at a look from John. I can see that it will be a leisurely dinner, giving me lots of time to tell my story. Even the sun seems to be hesitating in its descent over Cumae, the sky melting in slow degrees from bright blue to lavender to indigo. “But I got pregnant and that’s all I was really thinking about. By the time I realized that Ely had joined the Tetraktys, he was already deeply involved.”

“What happened to the baby?” John asks.

“I went into premature labor on the day I found out about the Tetraktys. We lost her, Cory, three days later.”

“I’m sorry,” John says, grimacing.

I nod and look out over the water. For a moment I smell sulfur and I can feel the prickle of cottonwood spores on my skin. I remember Ely’s face when he came out of the Tetraktys house, how I saw myself transformed by his look into a monster. A siren, I think now, one of Persephone’s companions punished for her carelessness. If I’d been paying closer attention Ely wouldn’t have drifted into the Tetraktys. If I’d been enough for him, he wouldn’t have needed it.

“Surely that must have been sufficient reason for him to leave the cult.”

“No,” I say. “He felt more than ever that he had to figure out why we’d lost Cory and that the explanation somehow lay in numbers. He thought the day of her birth—June 17—was unlucky…” I falter, remembering suddenly that Gianni had said the same thing. He said that the middle card—La Disgrazia—stood for the number seventeen, which was considered unlucky.

“Huh,” John says, “that’s interesting. The Romans thought seventeen was unlucky, too.” He takes out a pen from his shirt pocket and writes a Roman numeral on the butcher paper: XVII. “See, if you rearrange the letters you get the Latin word
VIXI.
”

“I lived,” I translate. “The perfect tense of the verb to live. What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, as you know, the perfect tense always refers to an action
completed
in the past….”

“Oh, so it means ‘I’m dead now.’ I see.” I wonder why John Lyros knows such a thing. Is he, like Ely, obsessed with numbers? It seems an odd coincidence, but I push it away. After all, in addition to studying classics, Lyros also studied mathematics and founded a computer software company. It makes sense that he’d be interested in numbers. “Well, Ely didn’t mention that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew it. He was obsessed with numbers and had an uncanny memory for them. He remembered the exact date of every important event in his life, and if you gave him any date, in the past or the future, he could tell you what day of the week it fell on.”

“He might have been a talented mathematician—” he begins.

“Or suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder,” I finish for him. “I wanted him to see a psychiatrist. He did just once. When the doctor suggested taking an antidepressant, he balked and refused to go back. He wouldn’t medicate away ‘his gift,’ as he called his ability to see number patterns. He thought it was the only way to see the world clearly. He thought Pythagoras had had the same gift: an ability to see mathematical patterns in the natural world and so make sense of the world, to discover its laws, in a way no one else could have.”