Root (32 page)

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.

Chapter 29: Occupy
Roma

I walked all the way back to the Spanish
Steps, to that Occupy encampment where I had seen some people using
laptops. I had no interest in protesting anything, I just wanted to
see if someone would let me borrow their computer for a minute,
just long enough for a quick Google search.

Search terms: Raeth and Rome and
Karla.

I had hoped I could find some electronics shop
or library on the way over so I wouldn’t have had to resort to
this, but no dice. Where was an Apple store when you needed
it?

The encampment seemed to have grown since the
day before. Every bit of space on the grassy islands was now taken
up by tents and awnings. There were also more police on the scene,
some arrayed in a sparse cordon in front of a bank. Another group
milled about near a bus, pulling on riot gear. They joked around
with each other, not looking stressed in the least.

I hovered on the edge of a group of people
sharing a card table. A girl in a floppy hat kept glancing over at
me while she engaged in an intense discussion with a guy typing
frantically on a MacBook Air. She patted her friend’s shoulder and
approached me directly, her eyes quick and sharp.

“
Sembri perso. Posso
aiutarla?”

“
Excuse me? I … I don’t speak
Italian.”

“
I say you look lost. Are you
okay?”

“
Um … yeah. I was just hoping to
borrow someone’s laptop … just for a second … to do a quick web
search?”

“
Um … maybe later, okay? Now,
Gaetano is updating the web site. We are busy planning a big
action—a solidarity march for Occupy London. They are evicted from
St. Paul’s last night. But right now we are too few. We need more
people to come. You will march with us, yes?”

“
Um … sure.”

“
You are American? Are you the
visitor from Occupy Boston?”

“
Um, no … I’ve actually never been
to Boston.”

“
Wall Street? Zuccotti
Park?”

“
Sorry, no. I’m actually from
Florida.”

“
Oh, interesting! I never met anyone
from the southern Occupations.”

“
Yeah, well. Neither have
I.”

That last comment didn’t seem to register with
her, thankfully. A girl wearing pink from head to toe got up from
one of the laptops. A guy, also in pink, immediately took her
place.

“
Hey, would you mind if I had a
crack at one of those? I would only need a minute.”

“
Yes, but I am telling you, now is
not a good time. Caterina and Bruno are trying to get the live feed
working. But you could join our media committee. You would have
more access this way.”

“
Um … well …. “

“
I am Angelica, by the
way.”

“
James.”

“
Are you hungry?”

“
Not really. Not yet.”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Where have you
been sleeping?

“
Last night? Kind of … on the
street.”

“
Tonight you will be in a tent. Yes?
And I think you could use a bath. Come with me.” She took me by the
hand and led me over to a guy with long gray hair, all scraggly and
thinning on top. They spoke to each other in Italian. He gave me a
once-over with this grave but kindly look in his eyes and handed
her a key.

“
Come. We have a place for you to
wash. And some clothes we can give you from people who
donate.”

She marched across the piazza with long
strides for someone so petite. We passed a group of folks all
dressed in black who were congregating against a wall. Some wore
bike helmets and fingerless gloves. One woman was soaking kerchiefs
in a plastic basin filled with wine vinegar. One man carried a
hand-painted sign bearing slashed A for anarchy over a slogan in
Italian.

“
These guys. Are they with you … or
against you?”

“
Good question,” said Angelica.
“They are Black Bloc. Sometimes they are helpful. But usually they
just make trouble. But we will not turn them away. Tomorrow we will
need everybody we can get.”

“
What’s the sign say?”

“
Police attack. We fight back. They
come today, hoping for a mob so they can do some
smashing.”

“
So what do they like to …
smash?”

“
Banks, usually.”

“
Really? Why?”

“
Because the bank hurts the small
people, stealing houses, giving bonus. I can sympathize but I don’t
believe in the smashing. The public, they see only them and they
turn against us.”

There was another guy in shades standing by
himself, leaning against a scooter, watching everybody go by very
carefully. I thought he might be a journalist or something, but he
wasn’t taking any notes. He glanced at me, looked down at his phone
and started following us. What the fuck?

Angelica led me down this very narrow alley
and through a door that seemed much shorter and narrower than
usual. It made me think of hobbits even though the door wasn’t
round.

A dim and narrow stairwell led up one floor to
an even dimmer and narrower hallway lined with apartments.
Cardboard boxes were stacked along the wall. A group of people
stood chatting outside an open door.

“
Ah! You see, I don’t even need the
key. Somebody is here.”

“
Where are we?”

“
Vincenzo’s apartment. He is sharing
with the movement. Storage. Headquarters. Showers. I think you
need, yes?”

“
Oh, cool! That’d be
nice.”

“
Your shirt. What size?”

“
Um … medium … I guess.”

She fished around the boxes and pulled out a
purple T-shirt with a giant 99% printed in white.

“
I am sorry, there are no pants. But
we do have lots of these.” She handed me a couple pairs of white
tube socks. “And here is a towel.”

She yelled into the apartment. Someone
responded from the bathroom. The door burst open and a bearded guy
bustled out, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“
It is free for you. Go and wash and
then, when you come back to the camp, we will find you something to
eat, yes?”

“
Gosh, thank you. This is awfully
nice of you guys.”

“
Now go and get clean! I am tired of
people calling us the dirty hippies. Yes?”

***

The water pressure in that shower was a little
lacking, but at least it was hot and there were all these bottles
of herbal soap and shampoo to lather up with. All that fruity
aromatic essence made me feel clean inside and out.

I washed my jeans next, scrubbing them with a
brush, wringing them out and then putting them on and toweling them
down. I was getting used to wearing damp clothes—literal wash and
wear. My socks, underwear and old T-shirt were beyond salvaging. I
stuff them all down a trash can. My hoodie was a little dusty, but
not too bad, considering.

I found a stick of deodorant in the medicine
cabinet. I would have been disgusted if some stranger borrowed
mine, but I was desperate. I smeared on twice as much as I normally
used because who knew when I’d next get the chance to
wash.

I pulled on my fresh, new socks and T-shirt,
raked my fingers through my hair and opened the door to find a
bunch of ‘smelly hippies’ queued up with their towels. A girl with
a frizzy Afro smiled and took my place.

I glanced around the cluttered apartment.
There were people cooking in the kitchenette, a couple snoozing on
the sofa.

“
Where’s … Angelica?” I
said.

“
She goes back to the camp,” said a
guy mousing around a widescreen iMac.

He was doing something with Google maps and
seemed so into it, I didn’t dare ask to borrow his computer. My
eyes fixed on the thick, yellow book he was using as a mouse
pad.

“
Holy crap. Is that a telephone
directory? Mind if I borrow it?”

“
Sure. Go ahead,” said the guy,
sliding it out from under his mouse.

My hands trembled as I opened it up to the
‘R’s.’

I found hundreds of Rossis and Russos. I
flipped through the pages to Raffaeles, dreading what I would
listed find under Raeth. Would there be dozens to sort through, or
worse, maybe none? Rome was such a big city. When I ran my finger
down the page, I had my answer.