Rena craned her neck around the door and peered into the nave of the
church. "He's kissing the Book," she reported. "It will be perhaps
twenty minutes yet."
Her father said mildly, "I am in no hurry. It is good to rest here.
Though truthfully, Mr. Wills, I thought I had been rested sufficiently
by your Company."
I think we were all grateful for the rest. It had been a hectic drive
up from Anzio. Even though Rena's "friends" were thoughtful people,
they had not anticipated that we would have a legless man with us.
They had passports for Rena and myself and Benedetto; for Zorchi they
had none. It had been necessary for him to hide under a dirty tarpaulin
in the trunk of the ancient charcoal-burning car, while Rena charmed
the Swiss Guards at the border. And it was risky. But the Guards
charmed easily, and we got through.
Zorchi did not much appreciate it. He swore a ragged blue streak when
we stopped in the shade of an olive grove and lugged him to the front
seat again, and he didn't stop swearing until we hit the Appian Way.
When the old gas-generator limped up a hill, he swore at its slowness;
when it whizzed along the downgrades and level stretches, he swore at
the way he was being bounced around.
I didn't regret rescuing Zorchi from the clinic--it was a matter of
simple justice since I had helped trick him into it. But I did wish
that it had been some more companionable personality that I had been
obligated to.
Benedetto, on the other hand, shook my hand and said: "For God, I thank
you," and I felt well repaid. But he was in the back seat being brought
up to date by his daughter; I had the honor of Zorchi's company next to
me....
There was a long Latin period from the church, a response from
the altar boy, and then the final _Ite, missa est_. We heard the
worshippers moving out of the church.
The priest came through the room we were waiting in, his robes
swirling. He didn't look around, or give any sign that he knew we were
there, though he almost stepped on Zorchi, sitting propped against a
wall.
A moment later, another man in vaguely clerical robes entered and
nodded to us. "Now we go below," he ordered.
Benedetto and I flanked Zorchi and carried him, an arm around each
of our necks. We followed the sexton, or whatever he was, back into
the church, before the altar--Benedetto automatically genuflected
with the others, nearly making me spill Zorchi onto the floor--to a
tapestry-hung door. He pushed aside the tapestry, and a cool, musty
draft came up from darkness.
The sexton lit a taper with a pocket cigarette lighter and led us down
winding, rickety steps. There was no one left in the church to notice
us; if anyone had walked in, we were tourists, doing as countless
millions of tourists had done before us over the centuries.
We were visiting the Catacombs.
* * * * *
Around us were the bones of the Christians of a very different Rome.
Rena had told me about them: How they rambled under the modern city,
the only entrances where churches had been built over them. How they
had been nearly untouched for two thousand years. I even felt a little
as though I really were a tourist as we descended, she had made me that
curious to see them.
But I was disappointed. We lugged the muttering Zorchi through the
narrow, musty corridors, with the bones of martyrs at our elbows, in
the flickering light of the taper, and I had the curious feeling that I
had been there before.
As, in a way, I had: I had been in the vaults of the Company's clinic
at Anzio, in some ways very closely resembling these Catacombs--
Even to the bones of the martyrs.