I was beginning to doze off on the bench when some police showed up in a little blue and white car and shooed me along. They were nice enough about it, though I couldn’t understand a word they said.
I really needed a nap, though. With the time difference it was only about six o’clock on the east coast, but I was running on fumes.
I went down this narrow, cobbled street called the Via dei Corridori. There were scooters and apartment buildings to my left and what looked like a low castle wall with bricked-in arches to my right. The wall looked just like the castle walls I used to doodle when I was eight, fighting slots and all. It was weird seeing plastic dumpsters juxtaposed against all that medieval architecture.
The Via met up with this larger street that curved around a massive set of columns that opened into a large open space just beyond. At this point I was just looking for a place to crash. I crossed the street, passed through the columns and … whoa! There was this giant obelisk in the middle. This was freaking St. Peter’s Square.
I sat down on some steps and just gawked, blown away by the immensity of it. There were scads of people wandering about. I wondered, what were the odds that one of them was Karla? I would have prayed if I thought that had any possibility of increasing my chances, but instead I just sat there in a daze, hunting through the swarms of faces for the one I sought.
I saw another policeman roust some bums on the other end of the steps and I knew I was going to be next, so I retreated, looking for someplace a little less public and exposed. By that point, even the dumpsters on the Via dei Corridori were looking attractive. I found an alley leading to a courtyard with some pocket gardens packed with parked Vespas.
I spread some paper on the ground and cozied up to a rosemary bush, only to be awakened a few minutes later by the end of a broom handle that some witch of a lady jabbed into my ribs.
I moved on to the next courtyard, found another space in the deep shadows beneath a broken street lamp and did the same. My arms were my pillow and this time the locals left me blessedly alone.
***
I was awakened by bells. Massive bells. Earth shuddering bells. There was an old woman watering flowers on the balcony above me, sending withering glances my way. I rolled over, my face coming inches from some dog poop and rose up. I smiled and waved at her before moving on, eyes crusted and all groggy. I’m sure I looked drunker than shit, though in truth I was more sober than a nun.
I couldn’t even see the sun yet, but I knew it was up because though the buildings remained dark, they were silhouetted against a brightening sky. Street lamps flickered off as I wobbled down the alley, heading to the St. Peter’s Square and the source of the ringing.
I found a fountain with a drinking spout. It seemed sketchy to drink from such a place, but I had seen other people doing it, so I rinsed my mouth and swallowed.
While I was at it, I dunked my head and rinsed my hair, wishing I had some soap. One of these days I would have to bite the bullet and find a cheap hotel room if such a thing existed in Rome, otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to tolerate being in my own skin. Being a clean freak and homeless was a frustrating combination.
I had to pee really bad, but there were too many people around to just let loose on some wall. I saw a crowd lining up to get into St. Paul’s so I joined them, figuring they might have public restrooms in there.
I was wondering how steep the admissions charge would be when saw there was no one selling tickets. The line was just for security. They were checking purses and having people empty their pockets.
I had nothing to worry about. I had no weapon of any sort, though it might be prudent to pick one up if I was going to continue sleeping out on the streets.
When I finally got in, I made a beeline for the restrooms near the bag check area. I freaked when I saw myself in the mirror. I looked like some victim from a concentration camp. Where my hair wasn’t plastered to my skull, it stuck straight out. I had a beard like the fur on a mangy dog, and my clothes were all smudged and blotched with dust and grease.
I was pretty much to myself the whole time in that washroom, and it was a good thing because it gave me a chance to do some pretty intensive cleaning up, even though all of the soap dispensers were empty. I must have gone through a hundred feet of paper toweling and I still looked like crap when I was through.
I peeled my shirt off, rinsed it and wrung it out. The dingy water I squeezed out of that thing disgusted me. It went against all instinct to put that rancid rag back on over my relatively clean skin, but I sucked it up, promising myself I’d get a new outfit by the end of the day and get this set of clothes laundered. There were gift shops nearby, but I wasn’t about to get myself a Pope John Paul T-shirt, never mind that Benedict creep. My new wardrobe would have to wait.
I went into a stall and checked the wad of cash in my pocket. It was all there, all fourteen hundred or so. All this skimping had to stop. It was time to invest in making myself human again, and that meant buying more than a slice of pizza.
I left the washroom and started to leave, but the enormous void I could sense behind me pulled me in like a vacuum. The sheer size of the basilica’s interior stunned me. You could fit a good-sized village under here.
I wandered around, looking at all the sculptures and chapels tucked away along the sides. I reached this place with a barrier where a guard was letting a few people in a time to go down to a group of pews tucked down at the end. They were dwarfed by all the space around them. It was like someone tried to stick a church inside a massive cavern.
I started to walk away. I had no interest in attending any mass. For one thing, I wasn’t Catholic, and for another, I didn’t believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, even despite (or maybe because of) my experiences in Root. The only faith I had was in the certainty that the universe was a very weird and mysterious place.
But this huge awning caught my eyes. It was about a hundred feet high with spiraling columns that look like something straight out of nature, some massive set of Kraken’s tentacles frozen in place as they twisted and writhed.
The guard let me in past the barrier. I’m not sure why. I sure wouldn’t have, if I were him and saw myself in a queue. Maybe I looked like I needed to pray.
So I went up to this awning thing for a closer look. Its surface was dark brown. Twisty, viny things threaded their way up to the canopy. I felt this sort of déjà vu happen, certain I had seen some semblance of this before in Root. Some of the facades of Luthersburg had columns like these. I wondered if Karla had anything to do with their design.
I thought at first that the columns were carved of wood—massive boles, felled by barbarians in some primeval forest, trees that may have held gods themselves for the pagans who worshipped there, but the placard told me they were clad in bronze, which almost impressed me more because it meant this was the spawn of a single human’s imagination. Turned out, some guy named Bernini created the thing, and it was called a ‘baldacchino’, whatever that was supposed to mean.
When I walked around the back, a shiver ran through me. High above the altar, framed by a writhing mass of sculpted humanity, was that window with the alabaster dove. It was glowing faintly and it seemed a miracle that it glowed at all because all the morning light was striking the other end of the basilica.
I went to the backmost pew and knelt, not because I was overcome with any urge to pray, but because everyone here in the sparse crowd was kneeling. I ignored the mumbo jumbo going on at the altar and stared up at the dove.
Karla’s replica, as compelling as I found it, did little justice to the real thing. Its placement blew me away, smack amidst a tangle of battling, struggling, groping angels and demons, with little cherubs floating above the fray. And at the center of all that chaos, a pure and simple bird landing in a starburst of alabaster, bloodied at the edges, brilliant at its core, like a beacon of hope in a mad world.
Once again, my inspiration came hand in hand with a curse. The hope that it gave me that I was getting closer to Karla in the flesh pulled me ever farther from Karla in the spirit.
