We all fall down, p.22
We All Fall Down, page 22
He led me inside the empty Warming House and sat me down at the long table. Don Marco explained that all of the brothers, except those in prayer or in the scriptorium, were participating in the construction. He told me that there were no newly afflicted monks, and they had not buried another man in seven days.
I expressed my genuine happiness over the order’s turn of fortune. Then I raised the subject I had come to discuss and asked whether he had had opportunity to speak to the Archbishop.
I have, yes, he said.
I cannot thank you enough, Don Marco, I said with my head deeply bowed.
Your gratitude is not in order, Doctor Pasqua.
Was he not amenable to your intervention?
The Archbishop possesses an iron will. He is not a man to be easily persuaded. Especially by an old monk.
What did he say about the Jews?
I would not describe his opinion of them as high. However, he did not indicate to me that he wished any particular ill will upon them.
Someone has.
How so?
I recounted the earlier happenings in the Jewish quarter. As I spoke, the good humor drained from Don Marco’s countenance.
This not the way of God, Don Marco said with great disappointment.
It does, however, appear to be the way of the flagellants.
Are you certain the Archbishop was even aware of the murderous intentions of those savages?
No. It is no more than speculation on my part.
I had best speak to the Archbishop again.
I would not ask it of you a second time, I said. Besides, I doubt you would have any more success than on the first.
Perhaps not.
However, there is one more favor I hope to impose upon you.
What is it, good doctor?
The Jews of Genova, I said. I worry that the flagellants have not finished their business with them. I fear for the safety of my friend’s family.
I did not even need to ask. The smile returned to his lips. Of course, my son, he said. Our humble church is a haven to those in need, as all churches are meant to be. Believer or nonbeliever, they are all welcome here at San Giovanni.
Chapter
Forty-Eight
Alana finds Claudio in his hospital room, standing at the bedside and packing a knapsack. He still wears the same blue robe, but he’s no longer connected to any intravenous lines.
“Are you taking a trip?” Alana asks.
“Yes, thank God.” Claudio grins. “I have been ‘sprung.’ Is that the right term?”
“If you happen to be a character in a fifties gangster film.”
“I’d rather be trapped in one of those than stay in this room for another minute.” He laughs. “My quarantine period is over as of this evening.”
“And you’re fully recovered?”
“Like a new man.” He flashes a thumbs-up sign. “Like someone who has been given a second chance . . . to ruin his life all over again. What do you think?” He winks. “Want to get married?”
Alana laughs, her mood improved by his presence. “So what’s so urgent about the diary?”
“It’s incredible. Truly incredible.” Claudio pulls his tablet computer out of the bag and motions to the bed. “Come. Sit with me.”
They sit side by side as Claudio scrolls down a screen filled with bullet points. “I have read it twice,” he says. “I didn’t have time to type out a proper translation, but I have made notes. Will they suffice for now?”
“Of course.”
“This doctor, Rafael Pasqua, he was such a wise and thoughtful man.” Claudio sounds reverential. “And brave! You have no idea the hell he went through.”
“Tell me.”
He consults his notes. “Pasqua was a local barber-surgeon. He was thirty-six years old when the plague struck Genoa in the winter of 1348. He started his diary on the very day he buried his wife. He never expected to survive the plague. Pasqua recorded his observations only for the sake of science and history.”
“That is some dedication.”
“You have no idea, truly,” Claudio says. “It’s bad enough for us now, but we can’t imagine what it would have been like in Pasqua’s time. So much superstition and ignorance! They didn’t have a clue what caused the plague. Some blamed astrology, others the apocalypse. Even Pasqua—who was very enlightened for his day—thought it came from some kind of miasma or evil vapors.” Claudio pauses to check his notes again. “Every day, Pasqua would see one victim after another in his surgery. He lanced buboes, treated wounds, and did what little he could for the other symptoms. And the scale of this epidemic! Pasqua writes that on one day alone, more than six hundred people died in Genoa. I looked it up. The population of the whole city was little more than a hundred thousand at the time. They ran out of places to bury the dead. And gravediggers to do the work. Eventually they simply dumped the bodies in the harbor.”
“This is fascinating, Claudio, truly,” Alana says, beginning to overheat under her hood. “But how does any of it apply to our situation?”
“Indulge me,” he says with a mischievous grin. “I’ve been alone in here with my thoughts for too long.”
She nods. “Go on.”
“People weren’t the only victims of this epidemic. Soon the whole social order began to decay. Without laborers and farmers, the economy fell apart. Crime became rampant. Relatives abandoned loved ones. Eventually people turned on each other, looking for scapegoats.”
“They usually do, in bad times.” She thinks again of the slain Turkish teen. “Even today.”
“Pasqua himself, he was deeply involved.”
“In the scapegoating?”
“No, the contrary,” Claudio says. “Inevitably, Pasqua contracted the plague. He was nursed to health by another doctor and his family. A Jewish family. In those days, the Church was everything. And not very tolerant of outsiders, especially Jews.”
“I can imagine.”
“But for Pasqua it was personal. You see, he fell in love with his colleague’s daughter.” Claudio describes Pasqua’s relationship with the Jewish family, and how he struggled to protect them from deadly persecution. He pauses to look over his notes and then nods to himself. “There is one other big coincidence between his experience and ours.”
“What’s that?”
“Pasqua spent a lot of time at the San Giovanni Monastery.”
“The monastery again.” Alana shakes her head in surprise. “Why? What was he doing there?”
“At first he went to tend to the ill brothers.”
“What do you mean, at first?” she asks, sensing significance. “What changed?”
“This part is . . . what’s the expression . . . mind-blowing! When Pasqua fell sick himself, he went to San Giovanni to find antiserum.”
“Antiserum? In the 1300s?”
“It seems the clever monks had noticed that some of the rats inside the monastery had stopped dying. As if they were immune to the plague.”
“Immune?” The word runs through Alana as viscerally as an electric shock.
“Yes,” he says. “The monks, they viewed these rats as a sign from God. They worshipped them. Like the relics of some long-dead saint. The abbot, Don Marco, even had them build a pen and assigned a monk to watch over the rats. But the first few rat keepers—or the Custodi di ratti, as they referred to them—died from infection. You see, these rats were still contagious. So the monks built a special place to house them safely away from contact with the rest of the brothers.”
“The monks deliberately preserved infected rats?”
“Yes.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Two reasons. One, despite the deaths, Don Marco believed the presence of the rats offered the brothers a kind of paradoxical protection from the plague itself.”
Alana sits up straighter. “And the other reason?”
“To preserve the rats for the next time God needed to punish man for his sins. Or as Don Marco put it . . .” Claudio uses a finger to scroll down his laptop’s screen. “ ‘For when atonement is again required.’ ”
“Atonement? Jesus!” The hairs on her neck bristle. “These monks were storing the plague like an incubator in a lab? So it could be released again?”
“Yes, but they also might’ve been housing the cure,” Claudio points out. “When Pasqua became sick, he reasoned that if he drank the blood of these rats, he might get better, too. It apparently worked for him. You see? A primitive form of antiserum, no?”
Alana’s heart leaps in her throat. She’s not thinking of antiserum or curses. “Where did the monks build this rat sanctuary?”
“Under the monastery.”
“Like a crypt?”
“Precisely! It was sealed off. The brothers installed a hole to feed the rats, but the crypt went deep enough to safely isolate them from the rest of the monastery. Thus protecting the animals and the monks.”
“And also preserving the plague,” she mutters. “Oh, my God!”
“What is it, Alana?”
“Don’t you see, Claudio? An enclosed ecosystem for rats who carried the plague but were immune to it themselves.”
“You do not think . . .”
“Yes. Yes, I do. The healthy rat Justine found was also carrying plague. She said it was different from any known breed. What if it was a direct descendant of those rats the monks buried under their church over six hundred years ago?” Her voice goes hoarse. “Claudio, what if the time for atonement is now?”
Alana bids a hasty goodbye to Claudio and hurries out of the isolation ward. Their discussion about the medieval monks reminds her of Juliet’s comment about the well-groomed “religious lunatic” that she and Lalia had encountered in Scampìa. As soon as she clears the decontamination station, she extracts her cell phone and dials Sergio. “The surveillance cameras, Sergio,” she says by way of greeting. “The ones mounted on the walls all over Scampìa.”
“What about them?”
“Can you get your hands on the footage?”
“All of it?”
“If need be, yes.”
“Even if we could, Alana,” he says, exasperation creeping into his tone, “the number of agents and hours it would take to go through all of that video . . .”
“So narrow it down. Can you check the footage on the day Juliet and her friend Lalia ran into that ‘religious lunatic’ she told us about? Juliet should be able to give you the approximate time and location.”
“Perhaps,” he says. “But Juliet’s story changes by the hour. The drugs . . .”
“I know, Sergio. Maybe it’s not related, but it can’t hurt to track down an image of this guy’s face. Figure out who he is and what he was doing there.”
Sergio is silent for a moment. “I will see what I can find out.”
After she hangs up, she tries Byron’s mobile number but only gets his voice mail again. She assumes he’s still tied up at City Hall.
Just as she reaches the automatic sliding door exit, Nico calls to her from behind. He jogs over and greets her with a kiss on both cheeks. His stubbled chin grazes her face. But his proximity and familiar scent have little of the previous impact.
“You disappeared, Alana,” he says.
She eases out of his embrace. “I was in Naples most of the day, Nico.”
“Yes, the new case. Tell me.”
“Cases.” She summarizes what she knows of the two new victims in Naples. “But there’s a breakthrough here in Genoa. It could be even more relevant.”
He frowns. “What is it?”
“The diary Claudio translated.”
“How is that related?”
Alana tells him about the medieval rats that were immune to the plague and how the monks sequestered them under the monastery in a subterranean sanctuary.
Nico’s eyes go wide. “Could the rats survive down for centuries?”
“That’s what I intend to find out. I’m on my way to see Justine now.”
“I will come with you.”
Outside, they weave through the reporters, ignoring the questions shouted at them. They turn a corner and step inside the little café behind the hospital. Justine is already seated at a table by the window with a teacup in hand. She giggles as they sit down on either side of her. “Damn it, girl! Guessing which date you’re going to show up with is harder than predicting the next Super Bowl champ.”
Alana ignores the barb. “We need to talk about the rats,” she says.
“Yes, we do! We discovered something else really interesting today. You know how I told you that Vin Diesel could never have—”
Nico’s face scrunches. “Vin Diesel?”
“The big alpha male rat from the park that I dissected,” Justine says as if it should have been self-evident. “Anyway, we know Vin was immune to the plague, right?”
“Yes,” Alana says.
“So I thought the only way he could be carrying Yersinia would be through the infected fleas on his back.”
“It’s not?”
“No, ma’am!” Justine taps her hand above her eyebrow in mock salute. “His entire skin was colonized with the bacteria. Millions of them. You know, the way human skin is colonized with all those staph and strep bacteria that live on us but hardly ever cause infection?”
“So you’re saying this rat was a true carrier of the plague?” Alana says. “With or without fleas onboard.”
“Exactamundo.” Justine nods proudly. “So, what did you want to ask me about the rats?”
Alana relays what she just learned from Claudio about the rats and the crypt.
“Holy shit!” Justine cries. “You think Vin Diesel might have been a direct descendant of those medieval plague rats?”
“Is that even possible?” Nico asks. “A colony of rats living under the monastery for all those centuries?”
“It sure would explain a ton!” Justine says. “Like why he had such different markings and teeth from contemporary Genoese rats.”
“And also why he was immune to the plague,” Alana says.
“But how could rats survive trapped down there for so long?” Nico asks.
“Find me another mammal that comes even close to being as resilient as the rat!” Justine looks from Nico to Alana. “Have either of you ever heard of the Heterocephalus glaber? AKA, the naked mole rat.”
Alana and Nico share a blank stare.
“Not that easy on the eye, your basic naked mole rat,” Justine says. “Not a stitch of hair. Bald as the real Vin Diesel. And with two sausage teeth that would embarrass even a British dentist. Ugly! But these suckers live under the ground twenty-four-seven in Africa. Some of them don’t surface once in their whole lives. And they don’t live in any cushy underground gangsta crib. Nah, they get by in the tight burrows that they dig themselves that are up to ten feet below the ground.”
“How do they survive?” Nico asks.
“They’ve got freakishly good adaptive skills. They don’t need light. And they can function at a fraction of the oxygen level other mammals do. They get most of their food from eating the roots of vegetables while still in the dirt. And they have this awesome social structure where each nest has one queen rat who calls all the shots. How great a gig would that be? She doesn’t even have to see how ugly all the males are that she mates with. Kind of like Tinder for the blind.” Justine laughs. “And while most mice or rats live one to four years, even in captivity, naked mole rats can live up to thirty.”
Nico holds up a palm. “But surely, Justine, these creatures evolved over millions of years, not a few hundred?”
“My point is, McDreamy, this is what rats do. Adapt. They have this uncanny ability to maintain a steady-state population, even through cannibalism and infertility when need be. So, if you’re asking me whether a colony of rats who were living in a protected underground enclosure could survive hundreds of years down there? Then I’d say: hell, yeah!”
Alana hops up from the table. “Thanks, Justine.”
“Where are you off to now?” Justine grins. “Not another date?”
“Sort of.” Alana grins. “With a monk.”
Nico follows her out of the café and hails a cab for them. Alana shows the driver the address in the Sestri Ponente District on her cell phone.
“You are convinced?” Nico asks her.
“Of what?”
“That our outbreak comes from these rats the monks buried back centuries ago?”
“Not convinced, no, but leaning that way.”
“It does not explain Naples,” he points out.
“True. It doesn’t even explain Parco Serra Gropallo or much of the rest of the spread through Genoa. That required human intervention.” She bites her lip. “So it seems to me the next step is figuring out who else knew about the crypt and these rats.”
“Aside from Brother Silvio?”
“Yes.” Although at this point she’s not willing to discount anyone or anything.
After a quiet few moments, Nico reaches out and lays a hand on her forearm. “I meant what I said last night, Alana.”
“Which part?”
“All of it,” he says, his stare painfully intense.
There was a time when those same words might have melted her, but now they only evoke a pang of melancholy—the happy memory of a time that can never be recaptured. “Nico, what we had was incredibly special. But us? Now? That’s impossible.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Your home is here. If not with your wife, then, of course, still with your kids. Mine?” She shakes her head. “Mine is elsewhere.”
Nico releases her arm and flashes her a smile tinged with wounded bravado. “I suppose it’s for the best.” He lets go of her wrist. “I wouldn’t survive a week in Brussels, anyway. It’s so boring, it makes Genoa seem like Las Vegas.”
The cab drops them off at Brother Silvio’s building. They mount the steps to his apartment. The black-robed monk answers the door with as welcoming a smile as ever. Alana introduces Nico, and Silvio ushers them into his apartment. He again clears the papers from the chairs and insists that his guests take a seat, but he remains on his feet. “How can I be of assistance?”
