The Miracle

A Comedic Novella

By Andrew Burward-Hoy

Third Draft

The Miracle                                                                                                “…and Satan came

                                                                                                                     also among them.”

                                                                                                                                          Job 1:6

Part I

Chapter I   And the Smell

    Early one morning, the sun danced its merry fingers playfully over the recesses and mountains of Bartolomeo’s bed, around six am. It was Bartolomeo’s bed, despite the insistences of his wife, who customarily reminded it was theirs. The banter was normally associated with morning coffee, and generally ended with an agreement to talk about it some other time. On this occasion, as Bartolomeo lapsed between deep dreams of a girl on his lap, reminiscent of his wife at the age of fifteen, and the delightful yellows and warm rouges of half-closed eyes, a faint trace of something, which upon a second inhalation became an odour, slowly grew, until Bartolomeo rose in his bed with a start. He glanced to his left and looked to his right, as his black moustache slowly distorted into a grimace. It was the smell of oily, rancid and deeply penetrating fish. Looking around his bedroom, Bartolomeo saw the customary staccato play of beams of rectangular sunlight and the bounce of this warmth filling the dark white walls.

    Bartolomeo’s wife opened her eyes and let out a scream. She threw the single sheet off of her and stood for a moment, her back facing Bartolomeo, until she slowly whirled around, her head angled upward, until it settled on her husband. “Bartolomeo! You bastard. How many times have I told you not to flirt with Francesca.” Bartolomeo immediately told her it was nothing. It’s not Francesca. It’s something else. Bartolomeo assumed, rightly that the pescivendolo’s beautiful daughter would never, at least not yet exchange any words with her father. The odour was too strong to be coming from the street. No, it must be coming from within the house. Lifting up the sheet that covered him, and allowing himself a moment of paranoia, Bartolomeo thought the odour came from his body. Apologising to his wife, gesticulating wildly from where she stood near the open bright window, he moved rapidly to the bathroom, threw off his underwear and undershirt and after waiting for the warmth to flow from the tap, turned the brass knob and stepped under the hot showerhead. He frothed himself. A moment later and relieved, his wife, naked, walked into the bathroom and nonchalantly stepped under the showerhead as well. She said nothing but asked for the large green bar of soap and the two lathered themselves for a good twenty minutes. A heavy application of shampoo decided it for the couple and after succeeding at drizzling all of the lather and soap bubbles off of themselves, leaving nothing more than the delightful, lingering odour of scented shower soap, they quickly dried each other, dressed, and proceeded to prepare breakfast. The children away, a Sunday, Bartolomeo and his wife, just as the traces of soap and coffee and bread and tea began to fade, the pungent, ghastly, strange ghost of rancid fish gripped their nasal passages once more. The two closed their eyes. A disturbing silence. A car horn. A breaking of a plate. And slowly the sound of running feet. Two men began to argue, and a child began to scream. Bartolomeo opened his eyes first. He reached for his wife’s hand and she too opened her eyes. Bartolomeo slid his chair back and he walked to the television set. Small, delightfully bright yellow, and anachronistically black and white, the tube warmed and settled on the hand kerchiefed face of the president. “Ghastly remains of fish have washed ashore all over the beaches of Italy. The situation remains serious. The citizens are to remain calm, as top experts conduct their work. All are to avoid the beaches. A heightened level of emergency is to remain in place from this point onward and for the foreseeable future. It is the duty of every citizen, to remain calm and to pray to God for the safe and customary resolution to the problem. Your country loves you. Your president loves you. Your God loves you. Thank you very, very much, and I will inform the people of Italy of the steps being taken even as I speak, a little later, after lunch sometime. Thank you all.”

    Bartolomeo, as the president spoke, placed himself in the dark wood chair, closest to the television set. As the emergency broadcast returned to the first Italian soap opera of the day, Bartolomeo twitched with his face, his arm on the table. His wife, feeling rather humbled, apologised to her loving husband, and who in customary fashion replied, “Niente. Niente.” Bartolomeo, thinking, strummed his fingers on the breakfast table. “I think, my dear, we are the victims of some sort of algae bloom,” he said. It was a probable guess. And the heat from the growing sun seemed to confirm such an idea to him and his wife. The noise outside continued to grow. As collective realisation began to sink in up and down Italy, screaming and outrage, arguing in the streets, the suspicions of foul play began to shape, augment and evolve into occasional groans, the sounds of men and children clearing their nasal passages, coughs, and the intermittent, heavy retching sound. It was a nightmare. It wasn’t long before the phone rang, as Bartolomeo’s friends began to methodically check in with him to see if he was all right. Leopoldo said the odour in the business district caused some light car crashes and the trains weren’t running. Pietro, by the main piazza, said the water was off, and Giorgio, further to the south, said he had glimpses of the beach, where he said men in white uniforms, covered head to toe at the end of the street, right near the beach, alternated between yelling at old men to stay away and unloading enormous orange and green hoses and equipment for what purpose he hadn’t yet figured out. Meanwhile, police vans circulated with horns blaring, almost the entire morning, as if, he said, behaving in the erratic character of birds caught unawares by a sea lion; Bartolomeo didn’t understand. Odd. Bartolomeo thought. Pietro finished by stating that he was contemplating dropping off Bartolomeo’s two sons, later, around six in the evening, as the police had told everyone within a perimeter—unrolling police ribbon half a kilometre further north. Pietro promised Bartolomeo that if the ribbon was still there at six, he’d pay the police officer to let him pass. Bartolomeo thanked him and he passed the phone to his wife so that she could speak to her two sons. Fifteen minutes later and for the moment relieved, Bartolomeo came round to the table and grabbed his wife from behind, he rocked her slowly and sang a rather silly tune popular on the radio. Bartolomeo’s wife was certain it was a jingle by American Sam Cooke. Perhaps ‘Don’t know much about history”. Finally, he said, enough. He kissed her on the cheek and he pulled his arms away. Comforted, his wife in her culottes and pink, close fitting undershirt made her way upstairs to get dressed. For the moment, everything was fine. Bartolomeo would get dressed by nine, and he and his wife would arrive just on time for the morning’s Mass. 

*

At nearly the same time, very far to the north, near to the border with Switzerland, a dark shape, still obscured by the mountains to the east, walked slowly but with buoyancy down and around and away from the Italian low-mountain town, and turned at the intersection to his left, and proceeded to walk further down the two-lane street. A car, approaching from the opposite direction, and still with its headlights illumined, perhaps having driven all night from Bologna or Milan, slowed at the sight of the walking creature until the car stopped and popped into a bad gear, starting again with a jolt, and the gears ground, as it quickly accelerated again—the driver turning the steering wheel frenetically until the small, yellow car sped on its way.

*

Hours later, at around eleven o’clock, the strength of the June sun was already blasting down into the great Vatican square—chasing the remaining shadows into submission. The starlings, unusually loud as can be imagined, given the enormity of the crisis, and the equally troubled coos of the hundreds of pigeons that morning, fought, it seemed, for places to hide. Unlike their custom of settling upon the many rooftops and collecting the offerings, the bird baths, the fountains, and the normal sounds that so many in Vatican City had grown accustomed to for the season, the birds at the hour took on the apparition of enormous, undulating, dark schools of fish, as if deep under the ocean, forever moving and unsettled, constantly aflutter. Coupled with the nerve-wracking cacophony from the many beaks, the central rooms and private dwelling areas of the residents of the Pope’s living areas at the Vatican, dropped the occasional spoon, rustled one too many coffee cups and plates, and generally, despite their internal prayers, couldn’t escape the idiocies of the birds’ noises without notice. The Pope, newly dressed for Mass, placing the Pontiff’s ring on his finger again another time, and much to the pleasure of unseen eyes, suggested to his top men a slight alteration to the morning Mass. Agreeing, the customary cardinal walked away to deliver the edict, and for a slow few moments, order was restored to the Pope’s quarters.

    By the time Bartolomeo and his wife arrived at Mass, embarrassingly, most worshippers had already taken their places in the palatial and glittering interior without too much trouble. Car congestion had been the enemy, and Bartolomeo had to uncustomarily offer some off the cuff suggestions to cars, next to and in front of him, on how to unblock a uniquely nasty bottleneck. Outraged and hot, his wife blushed and they took their seats far in the back, amidst the humble faces of the congregation on this upsetting and frightening beginning to the day. Not since the earthquake last Spring had Bartolomeo’s wife seen the elderly—particularly—so nervous, some, many, clutching their rosary beads. When the Pope finally came into view with his staff mounted by a crucifix, amidst the standing throng, an unusually undisturbed countenance, despite the horrendousness of the emergency broadcast by the president, possessed his face. Forever the man of grace and stately poise, a duo that had attracted a growing mass of believers as of late, to grow ever so slightly larger—at least within Central Rome’s periphery—these past two years, couldn’t hide for some a degree of apprehension, among some, at the nature of what would develop under the Pontiff’s care over the next few decades, and not five years, or three years or even ten years.

    The Mass done, the faithful moved politely, in columns, to the exits, and the young couple, one tall, moustached, thin about the nose, aquiline in the cheeks and chin, darkly suited, and his wife, raven-haired, grey-eyed, and still possessing the stately thinness that had earned her the euphemism of Isabella’s little twin (after Rossellini’s successes in the eighties) Bartolomeo’s wife Emanuella and Bartolomeo, her husband, having said their prayers, climbed into their small Fiat and waited for a good opening in the traffic to leave.

*

The president of Italy, true to his promise (as was his fashion ostensibly, and almost always with the people of Italy and especially in the first few years), spoke with alacrity, most thinking that the progress of removing dead fish from the beaches was the cause—and this perhaps by design—and as his improvisational talk with the nation progressed, his arms spoke of optimism and a need for patience. The sad truth was that despite such necessary blustering and verbal support, structures to the collapsing patience of the nation, to the bitter presence of dead and hopelessly rancid fish in the air, along the boulevards, in the houses and apartments, and in the fields, all seemed to be worsening. The president’s speech over. At about three o’clock, and still echoing in the heads of the citizenry by six in the evening, car horns, screeches of cars and frustrated screams, and by seven the crying of children and wailing elderly began to advance all over Rome. The noise, intoxicating the nerves to a frenetic and rising level, went unnoticed on the radio stations and televisions. What had begun at approximately six on a Sunday morning had intensified, and the nation was getting impatient. So many, many had thought wet towels and drapes along the cracks of doors and window seams might lessen the smell. But it was useless. After about five hours of this, the point at which most citizens of Rome had charged themselves with the technique described, morale began to fade and, sadly, among the elderly, already taxed by the heat and ritual Summer fuel costs, things began to grow quite bleak.

    When Bartolomeo returned from seeing his mother to the north of the city, in an affluent suburb apartment made possible by her dead husband’s fortune in national banking, even the air-conditioning system which could on hot days be employed, offered absolutely no consolation to the poor woman. He helped her with her laundry while there, and made himself comfortable to her favourite globular spheres of fresh mozzarella that he too loved from the fromagerie he had known as a boy, along with his two sisters a long, long time ago.  It was just too sad that the smell seemed to infiltrate the pale water itself, discolouring and obscuring the taste in the nostrils as well as the palate. His mother cried, “As if the mozzarella was not bad enough, it has to taste like your father’s failed fishing escapades when you were just a little boy.” Giving up, Bartolomeo kissed his mother on both cheeks, gave her a loving hug—as was their fashion—and hesitating a moment, looking at her, he turned to advance down the enormous grey marble staircase and she told him in parting she would call him when her father’s ghost left the area. He stopped midway down the staircase, brown paper bag filled with a few things she had given him, nodded his consent, and she then waved good-bye. He yelled that he’d call her in the morning.

    Returning to his apartment, Barto called her again and told her that the entire country was sitting through this so she shouldn’t worry that he decided to return to his wife. She agreed. A momentary crisis averted, he expressed his love for her and said again that she’d hear from him again soon. Before hanging up, he suggested possibly changing the air filter if he has the time, in the morning. Bartolomeo hung up.

*

    The sun having set, blues and golds gave way to rhapsodic greys, yellows and ambers and a slow advance to blackness eventually overtook the city. In time, with the loosening of the heat, a resolution, a resolve, as was want for the people of Rome, and an uncomfortable calm rolled up and down the peninsula, and even the children with wet cloth stuffed up their noses began to quieten substantially—even if the horror began to augment as the night grew. The solitary, dark figure, spotted here and there outside of Milan, began to reach with a supernatural speed that was all his own, the introductory towns and piazzas that circulated quite a few kilometres outside of the central city limit. As the evening lights from the porticos, balconies, the streetlamps and of course the building interiors gripped the night’s stranglehold and, in some cases, wrestled it beyond reach, the creature approached. As it walked, the streetlamps seemed, as if to honour his presence—as did the store lights, car lights—to dim almost imperceptibly, politely as he walked. Or was it a ‘he’ at all? In time, it was a mild but unusually cold wind that invited the thing in. A café, almost empty, with well-kempt mosaic floors, black lacquer tables and antique leather furnishings, lounge seats, gold-coloured railings along the tops of dark lacquer booths and equally framed, large mirrors almost everywhere, quadrupled the apparition’s image as he walked in. The café workers, overtaken by a numbing calm, acknowledged his presence as they would an old town resident who hadn’t taken the time to drop by for over ten years—but was well-known in town anyway; stung by a softening nonchalance as they were, upon his entrance, the creature went almost unnoticed, as he politely sat down at a table, his back away from the street, and rested his free hand—at least most afterwards agreed that it was probably a hand—on a staff of indescribable size and shape. This particular café was open all night. And as the night denizens began to move into the café interior and went about their businesses, they too were nonchalant, numb and unassumingly oblivious to the strangeness of the solitary being near the front. And this was to last the entire evening, until the night and early morning supporters of the ‘club’ left.

    Brown and dark-red glows began to flow like an enormous fog, into the street and through the clear windows across from the being in the café. It was at about this time that a single prostitute with her daughter entered the café, and perhaps due to the intelligence of the little girl—no more than seven—or perhaps due to her unnaturally advanced acclimation to uncommonly things, spotted the creature, who had remained awake all night. She approached it, to no more than ten feet away and without taking her eyes off of him (?), she, without watching herself, lowered her young lower frame into a wood chair. Hours later, when she told her mother what she saw, the mother wrote a lengthy description that she foolishly gave to the police. The description was much the same, though less eloquent, than what is described below. Apparently, over the noise of French radio, as apparently was the custom at this café, and as a French comedian was commenting that the Hexagon had tolerated the rancidity of cooking tomatoes for centuries, he thought the Italian people should accept for a few days the ‘pouffiasse’ that is these dead fish rather well, and the women presenters laughed, for it wasn’t so much what was said but the accent on the necessary word ‘pouffiasse’ that ignited peals of laughter. The thing, as the little girl described it, seemed to chuckle, very quietly, at this joke, as it began to undulate its chest like a sort of staccato; short breaths of air were quickly drawn in and out and released. As it was stated in the police report, in time, the early morning employees soon changed the radio station to Italy’s most popular radio station, for the month of June anyway, and Italians, young, fresh-mouthed, did their best to laugh at the crisis. At least most in Italy agreed yesterday it was a crisis and not a state of emergency as the president announced, and the principal party opposing the president said it was an outright embarrassment. The radio announcers revealed that polls conducted throughout Italy at ten am recorded that 86 percent of Italians of all ages thought it was disgusting, and at three in the afternoon, 17 percent of Italians thought it was an outrage, and at six in the early evening Silvio Berlusconi reported that he killed his wife. Again, to this, the apparition chuckled and emitted a guttural snort with mucosity of some decibels. Insulted, the little girl tried her best to make a mental note, a visual recording of this monster, for posterity, she said—and this recording, below, resembled the following: upon its head, protruded what apparently were two rather large horns. On the left, growing out of the upper temporal and parietal bones, a handsome conical mountain goat’s horn of a dark beige. On the right, a ram’s horn, a few centimetres larger in girth than its cousin to the left and spiralling inwards, until the horn’s small, almost sharp point protruded forward handsomely and slightly outwards away from the face. Above the face and head of the beast—which was written as being about the size of a large boar’s head or maybe a mountain gorilla—had, as can be expected, thick, fibrous and enervated black fur often coming to sharp points near the horns and along the column of the head leading from the wrinkled forehead along the top of the head and around the back, amidst a virtually missing neck. Strangely, near both horns, almost imperceptibly were noted very tiny but sharp spike-like horns that seemed closer in function to hair or fur than as being osseous and fixed, as they responded in kind to the movements of the fur; any hunter supporting this observation that animals’ fur in places, becomes raised and bristling, if alarmed or alert; the same phenomenon, being present on short haired canine pointers and such. As for the other necessities of the senses, the being had two large, flat and grey-brown ears that looked like a hybrid of a common chimpanzee’s ears and those of a large bat. In this sense, the outer helix resembled the flat and straight appearance of the latter, and the inner helix and tragus like the former. As for the nose, the little girl was at pains to describe it, which encouraged the idea that perhaps it was unusually small and insignificant. She told her horrified mother that it wasn’t like a boar exactly, and it obviously wasn’t like a human being’s nose—and this went on for a few minutes—until the girl simply said she couldn’t remember. The teeth, large, pointed, had two excessively large upper and lower canines that the girl said looked like they were jealous of the horns on its head. To this the policeman said, io non capito.

    At a given point, the little girl felt of a sudden to have lost her clear vision of the creature. Recovering, and receptive to being so overcome, she thought that maybe this was one of the creatures she’d seen, called an American superhero. In front of the creature at the café and confidently remembering an introduction to a science fiction film she had seen on late evening programming, she asked the creature, “Citizen! What is your name.” The creature with its many eyeballs, but uniquely with the five on the left side of its face became, as with the flash of a sudden fainting spell from a heat stroke, wild-eyed. All five momentarily but methodically looked in different directions as if they each individually were looking for something. Before again relaxing its eyes, the creature emitted a bold fart from its backside. It had eleven eyeballs. Five, as has already been spoken of, on either side of the large, massive head, and a purported single eye at the back of the head. The first police officer who read this, thought this sounded far-fetched. What’s more, the eyes were not even remotely binocular. Some eyes movements struck the little girl as being conjoined in movement, while most seemed to dart about the place—lingering at intervals on objects in the café—including pretty girls and men on the street. Interestingly, accompanying every eye, including the eye at the posterior, were, as can be imagined by anyone reading this description with an understanding of mammalian physiognomy, pairs of eyelids. One upper lid, without the fatty tissue that is often befitting most binocular eyes, and a lower lid. The lower lid, some dark brown, others mottled black and still others closer to a sort of dirty pink, were encumbered by deep and pudgy wrinkles as those of an octogenarian. This loaned to the countenance of the animal something almost sad at times. The little girl said to her mother that as the ten eyes moved and blinked about, she at times felt angry, sometimes livid, momentarily horrified, awkwardly happy, and sporadically sad for the thing. When the animal looked quickly, at times, to people walking by, she glimpsed the posterior eye looking at her. The police complimented the mother, on visually recording the subtlety of her little daughter’s testimony that each eye, at times, was accompanied by the understandable moistness and trickling that sometimes goes unnoticed by the elderly, usually near the membrane which even this thing appeared to possess in every eye: a conjunctiva. At the right corner of the five eyes, on the left side of the face; and at the left corner on the five eyes on the right and discernible at both corners on the large eye at the back of the head. The black fur retreated or thinned at the eleven eyes, but long, black whisker-like individual hairs darted about with an apparent life of their own. Growing fatigued, the police read on, as the prostitute’s descriptions were lengthy and the voluminous description of her daughter’s testimony continued—on the arms, chest, and the partly obscured legs in a relaxed posture beneath the black, shiny and square table the thing sat behind. Two arms, possibly a withered third, she said. And they were clothed in a frayed and somewhat dirty suit jacket that at one time might have been of some worth. The little girl said many of her mother’s clients often wore similar suit jackets—and were sometimes even more uncared for than the creature’s. The police laughed. The prostitute’s child made a guess that it was of an Armani cut. When asked by police if the beast wore a shirt under the suit jacket, she said definitely not. The creature’s black fur seemed to infest the folds of a thick neck and upper chest but retreated from a big and undulating abdomen that contracted and expanded as it breathed. Returning to the arms, the wrist and hand of the left arm appeared to have the complexion and scales of a large reptile, with large claws on a slightly malformed hand. Intrigued and scrawling something on a piece of paper next to them, the police asked if it had an opposable thumb and the little girl said she wasn’t sure. The right arm was a man’s wrist though, as was beneath the cuff, a man’s hand, and this was all that she said. After a description that began to bore, of the legs, that connoted any of the many paintings of Satan throughout Europe that any European could have described ad nauseum, the two police officers, out of politeness to what they thought was really just a half-crazy prostitute and her ingenious little daughter, ostensibly, passed back the stapled pile of papers to the mother. Horrified, the prostitute snatched angrily the papers, placed a white hand kerchief over her mouth to obstruct the smell of dead fish and walked out with her daughter. The police lobby empty, the police officers looked innocently at the double doors the prostitute passed through and a few moments later, the more attractive of the two officers made a hoarse sound in his chest of convulsive laughter.

Chapter II       The Goat

     The large trucks arrived this second day of the crisis, a Monday, on time, and at close to two hours after the president relayed the news that gas masks in warehouses throughout northern and parts of southern Italy would be available to the citizenry at the price of twenty-five thousand liras a set. The set being a gas mask with leather head-covering and a boxed pair of single filters. No more.

    The young men in unbuttoned dark suits jumped heroically out of the truck and closed the doors behind them, as if in unison. Yelling to the streets’ passers-by, crowds amid the awful and augmenting smell of rotting fish assembled over the coos and cheers of not a few grateful girls (that no one had ever seen before). Climbing over the guardrails to the vintage trucks, the men in various areas throughout Italy, in an organised fashion, lifted the tarpaulins covering the merchandise and started passing masks and filters to the people below. How much? Some asked, to which they were more often than not met by bright smiles with only a hint of mischief lingering in their faces, “Not much. Forty-five! Hand delivered, direct to you signora, signor. Straight from the government, to you!”

    By Monday’s nine o’clock am hour, cities and towns started to report that thousands of people were seen wearing masks up and down the peninsula, some bought at designated government centres and others from large hand-delivered trucks; more in the north than in the south voiced displeasure at the fit. As for whether it remedied the intensity of the smell, some agreed that it did completely, others not so much, while many others still complained that they could still smell the fish. Radio stations vibrated with addresses and a few phone numbers (amidst insistences that masks be bought only at government centres and not by camion or truck due to government shortages) and these arranged by district. All, announced by young ebullient voices on the principal stations. And in time the sidewalks, parks and piazzas, among the tourists, one, two, and then threes and fours, and soon tens and twenties of Italians in gas masks began to resemble some sort of popular apocalyptic American videogame. Groups of men, not exactly out of place, at any time of the day or night in Italy, were spotted assembling with enormous books of liras, dollars and euro notes. Counted and passed around on the street, the assembled soon vanished and little boys in their Sunday best uniforms played the role of dispute settlers, diplomats and ‘offer takers’ between various boroughs to ‘mop up’ any remaining sales as the morning came to a close. As the illustrious odours of noon began to cheerfully seep out of the cucinas’ vents throughout Italy, and by about twenty past two, some agreed you could almost imagine that the smell of decaying fish wasn’t that bad, sitting on park benches, or walking a retching dog (most, sadly, without gas masks on as it was almost immediately concluded that even on the largest dogs the gas masks just didn’t fit properly). Many in the restaurants joked that it would take until the middle of the afternoon to satisfy passing food through the masks in some way, and some made efforts to do so by pureeing a few dishes and inserting thin straws, for a few. Pureeing dogfood proved more problematical. Still others without masks tried to pass the time with prayers and bible readings with their priests, most using the now anachronistic remedy of moist toilet tissue up their nostrils. Job was popular, as was Galatians, and others thought upon suggestion from those more familiar with the Bible that parts of the five books of Moses would do as a starting point. At the same time, some consoled themselves with television clips of variety shows and brief news updates of Muslims en masse offering midnight prayers in Mecca and in parts of the Middle-East in honour of the Italian people. Elsewhere, Jainists sent letters, and elsewhere in Burma, monks assembled in horrified numbers to accomplish nobody knew exactly what—they’d find out later that evening, all were certain.

    Cell phone usage was problematic for business professionals, as lifting the mask had to be done at least a dozen times throughout the afternoon and beginnings of late mid-day. And many a phone call had to be put off altogether, angering millions of women throughout Italy.

    Rosalina and Benedetto, two Manhattanites with a radio show on America Free Europe announced with a degree of bombast that was beyond their American station, that at polls close, 45 percent of the Italian population had bought gas masks. Pausing momentarily to reflect, the two added that the other approximately 55 percent of Italians without gas masks stated that they had faith that they could hold out indefinitely until the plague lifts—but the Mafia said this had a possibility of error of 50 percent. Rosalina and Benedetto laughed. Bartolomeo, arriving a bit late for work at the post office, and on the phone with Pietro, thought the joke on the radio in bad taste. At three o’clock in the afternoon, as the uncomfortable digestion of lunchtime meals began, a wave of unspoken despondency began to infect the quick looks of workers, the stomachs of so many, and by three-thirty some began to betray their feelings with quick, frustrated gestures, pointing fingers and the like.

    Meanwhile, in the Vatican, God appeared to the Pope in the form of a goat. The president of Italy, after finishing his lunchtime meal, and observing the data on his computer of sales of gas masks arranged according to sectors of Italy and with another click of a button arranged as bar charts and pie charts, he picked up a phone and asked to be transferred to the Vatican—the Papal Palace.

    After necessary and exigent greetings, the president levelled immediately with the Pope that the situation was critical: the smell, according to measuring equipment, found that harmful particles of the chemicals found in rancid fish were slowly rising across most parts of the peninsula. His fears were for the elderly, who, he thought, were beginning to suffer enormously because of the ordeal. Many were too old, with tired lungs, to endure the thin air of gas masks and quite frankly, something had to be done, short of official mass evacuations of the elderly and new-born. The Pope listened. The president added that some of the ordinary people had, despite efforts to dissuade them, started to exploit the situation. Tremendous revenue potential awaited the troublesome, including what the president said was being labelled in English as diaspora trafficking. In addition, and without going into too much detail, he worried about, as a result of this, a growing disproportion in ‘gross domestic product’ should these businesses not relent soon; tourists, thousands, and many of them women in particular, with the rail services down in many places, due to worker protests, were being smuggled out, amidst some outright kidnappings, and many without carrying the things they carried and bought. In short, the president said, and perhaps in closing, he needed the Pope to say something. Something that he hoped might temporarily staunch the tide of services, business opportunities, counterfeiting, scams, smugglings, etcetera, in Italy. It was getting embarrassing. After words of comfort from Isaiah, which the president was almost certain was from Isaiah forty in particular, the Pope sermonised briefly that God would provide, even if Darkness were to consume the Light, for a time. It was comforting, and spoken from a very high place—a very high place indeed—but ultimately, as the president was a president of the practical and less so the spiritual, and with a degree of sinking of heart, the president politely dismissed himself from the Pontiff’s kindness with an appropriately gracious thank you, and the two important men of Italy parted, with the click of a phone line.

    It was only about fifteen minutes later that the Pope heard, lost in thought, and resolutely meditating on what he would say to the people, the sound—subtle, but then becoming distracting—of bits of creosote falling from the chimney, fifty-two feet away, on the other side of the resplendently marbled chamber, filling the space.

*

    Three thirty-seven in the afternoon, in Florence, brought with it a commotion. Little children, throwing small stones, had been caught on phone cameras. The police, informed, sent a few men to look immediately into it. There had been no calls of injuries in the Florentine outskirts. Arriving, the police in plain clothes took some photos and talked to children and adults still lurking here and there throughout the areas. There were five incidents in close proximity to one another. The distal side of Ponte Vecchio was one of them. Assessing that there had been no harm done, with no profiles from Florentine hospitals of victims of stonings, the teams retreated to their stations to look at the photos and analyse the at times reluctant testimonies. The elderly didn’t want to talk, but some children described a funny-looking man with a large stick. No arrests, as yet, were made. After about two hours, the teams met around chairs in their respective offices. All concluded that it could be verified that a strange man, probably a foreigner, angered or scared the children, who, usually young boys, responded to their fears by throwing some small rocks at the man, or men, but more likely a single man. The only area provoking doubt over a single man theory being in the remotest area, where the man didn’t run but instead kept walking when approached, disappearing minutes later. The children in all areas reported being paranoid and energetically scared. Descriptions, apart from a walking stick, were vague. Conducting routine reports of sightings of ‘strange’ individuals being written and uploaded to national police servers, in Rome, Lieutenant Maiano, on orders from his captain, after a peculiar sighting of an almost extra-terrestrial nature near Switzerland, trusted his capable lieutenant the man for the job. At about six-thirty in the evening, a Monday, Maiano stumbled upon an odd scanned report that had just popped up. From Milan, from written testimony gleaned at about nine o’clock in the morning, a prostitute daughter’s mother wrote an extensive ‘sighting’ of a strange thing in a café, very early that morning at seven o’clock. Lieutenant Maiano, thinking it a bit ridiculous as he couldn’t understand how the man or ‘thing’ outside Milan could get to Florence so quickly, filed back to another two men who he thought more likely to be suspected of being the figure in Florence. He printed the two reports and left for the day. Unknown to Maiano, until the next morning, someone, before leaving the station, printed the other report, the prostitute’s report, and added it to the two other reports.

*

There was a scuffle from within the base of the chimney. The Pope watched with an alarming curiosity. And afterwards, a goat’s hind leg protruded and retracted quickly from view, as if trying to regain its balance. A white goat dropped, intact and shaking itself, walking out into the high-ceilinged room. The goat approached the Pontiff. Opening its mouth, as it advanced, it said, “The people of Italy and throughout Christendom have three days to do these things.” Horrified, the Pope of Rome beseeched the goat, “By whose order do you say such things?” The goat, untroubled, continued, and clipping the Pope’s question ever so slightly, it said, “They have three days.” The Pope, confused, looked down momentarily at the marble floor to re-examine his sanity and said, “What?” The goat approached a few more paces, passing as a silhouetted shape in front of the strong light from the window to the Pope’s left and said, “Christendom is awash in fake holy relics. They are to be gotten rid of. The people of Italy and throughout Christendom have three days to do these things.” The Pope paused and thought for a moment. He said, “Which ones?” but immediately observing what he was saying, he, to a goat of all things, the Pope then said angrily, as if feeling completely ludicrous and regaining a composure that some would have said was a bit unbecoming, immediately added, and quickly, “If you be from the God of Abraham, prove yourself to me.” Unaffected the goat without pausing walked a quarter of a circumference around the Papal chair and quoted what the Pope knew immediately to be, and to his horror, the first sixteen verses, to the book of Matthew: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; and Judas begat Phares and Zar-a of Thamar; and Phares begat Es-rom; and Es-rom begat Ar-am; and Ar-am begat A-min-a-dab; and A-min-a-dab begat Na-as-son; and Na-as-son begat Sal-mon; and Sal-mon begat Bo-oz and Ra-chab; and Bo-oz begat O-bed of Ruth; and O-bed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the King; and David the King begat Solomon of her that had been of the wife of Ur-i-as; and Solomon begat Ro-bo-am; and Ro-bo-am begat A-bi-a; and A-bi-a begat Asa; and Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat O-zi-as; and O-zi-as begat Jo-a-tham; and Jo-a-tham begat A-chaz; and A-chaz begat Ez-e-ki-as; and Ez-e-ki-as begat Ma-nas-ses; and Ma-nas-ses begat Amon; and Amon begat Jo-si-as; and Jo-si-as begat Jech-o-ni-as and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: and after they were brought to Babylon, Jech-o-ni-as begat Sa-la-thi-el; and Sa-la-thi-el begat Zo-rob-a-bel; and Zo-rob-a-bel begat A-bi-ud; and A-bi-ud begat E-li-a-kim; and E-li-a-kim begat A-zor; and A-zor begat Sa-doc; and Sa-doc begat A-chim; and A-chim begat E-li-ud; and E-li-us begat El-e-a-zar; and El-e-a-zar begat Mat-than; and Mat-than begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” “O Heavenly Father!” The Pope said and he was overcome, and became prostrate.

    Afterwards, the Pope picked up the phone. It was left to ring several times in the president’s office before he moved to pick it up. Without hesitation, he said, “Holy Father, the situation is desperate…” and he continued before the Pope immediately broke in, “I’ve received a message.” The president, noticing the severity of tone and the unusually marked solemnity of the Pope’s voice, after a pause said, holding the phone, “Go on.” The Pope responding said, “Holy relics of an enormous quantity are to be destroyed, throughout Christendom.” The president broke into laughter, “You must be joking.” There was a silence on the phone. The president held the line for a full ten seconds and he reached to light a cigarette. He lit it and exhaled, before asking the Pope, “Are you still there Holy Father?” “Yes, I’m still here.” “Well…I mean…really! You must be joking, Holy Father.” The Pope could be heard making an almost inaudible tapping sound on his desk before adding, “All unholy relics—in other words fake holy relics—are to be found, and destroyed.” The president listened, motionless, for a moment, and then scooted his chair in. He picked up a pen and, listening to the Pope on the other side of the phone, and at moments shaking his head, continued writing what the pope then added on the other line.

*

    Along a quiet road, sunlit and hot, amidst the rancidity of fish, a solitary figure approached. It came from the north and seemed to be advancing, carefree with a tall, thin staff as its guide. Accessing a run-down train station amidst the irritated chirping of crickets, the two goat hooves clopped along up the stairs and, buying a ticket, walked through the doorway to the platform. He sat down. The platform, abandoned for the most part, he thought of anything and everything before reminding himself, and fishing a small, crumpled piece of paper out of his suit jacket pocket, pulled a modest pen out of a right pocket, and with his large and awkward left hand holding the paper, wrote some suggestions for dinner. Sausage, cheese, a small flask of Chianti, bread, and chocolate. Clicking his pen closed, he placed the pen back in his pocket, crossed his legs and waited. In time, he grew bored and began to shift his weight a bit. Looking around a few times, to settle himself again and finding a comforting thought, he began to slowly rock the leg placed over the other, metronomically back and forth. The smell of decaying fish, putrid and revolting, made his eyes water, and pulling out a hanky, he blew his nose. Letting out a sigh, he waited.

*

    Bartolomeo sat in the salon, towel over his head, right across from the antique radio. His wife yelled if he was all right, as he sat, head down, motionless. His wife found a half-effective remedy with the last remaining pince-nez water blocking device Bartolomeo could find—almost leading to a fight at the cash register some few hours beforehand—at the farmacia. It was pink. Bartolomeo was beyond this, moving instead to open cologne bottles, sprays and wet towels—aspirin was effective too. He sat, head down, with a glass of Porto in his hand. The two idiots Rosalina and Benedetto, two Manhattanites on America Free Europe Radio, had caused a sensation with an American comic imitating an angry Neptune and many, probably the old and the very young, had tuned in to hear it. He wasn’t sure if it was his age, his job, his wife, the Porto, the time of day, Francesca, his aching head, or all of the above, but he couldn’t find anything funny to laugh at. “Francesca hasn’t called. That’s rather funny don’t you think, my love?” Emanuella moaned. “They’re probably out of fish.” Barto mumbled. One of the unmentionable things that had plagued Bartolomeo for three weeks involved an incident with the Fish King’s delightful sixteen-year old daughter Francesca. It was unforgivable. While talking to her, after the delivery, he complimented her on her jeans—the fit in particular—and she unzipped herself and dropped her jeans, mid-thigh, just enough to show the fit of her brown legs and sheer pink panties. What was unforgivable to him was the fact that he became nervous, thinking that the claxoning of a car horn in front of the pianoterra apartment was Emanuella’s. And he hesitated. Francesca, sensing his hesitation, and fear, pulled up her jeans and quickly made her way out. She closed the door from the kitchen, oblivious, as Barto raised his hand delicately for her to stay. Consoling himself a few days afterwards, he turned his thoughts to the Song of Solomon, finding comfort in the teaching that a strange woman is a dark pit. Bartolomeo couldn’t agree more.

     Sitting now in the salon, he finally emitted a chuckle at Neptune emitting what sounded like a genuine, and horrible flatulence, and Bartolomeo raised his head. The white wet towel pulled down over his head” with the weight of water absorbed into it; amidst his semi-closed eyelids and his moustache, he struck himself as a sort of prophet or a Ricardo Montalbán, maybe a Dr. Zhivago, Omar Sharif, with a loose-fitting head scarf. The fan in the corner whirled silently on. The radio skit over, and the slow drone of a solo guitar piece, a radio intermezzo, by Rodrigo, Barto picked himself up and moved to the kitchen, the towel still over his head. Putting the empty glass down, Barto pulled a paper-towel off the rack and after moistening it religiously, methodically under the tap, he inserted two meticulous squares from it up one nostril and then the other. A white goat walked in from the salon, very politely smelled the floor a bit and shook its head and looked at him. “Emanuella! There’s a goat in the kitchen.” The goat looked to the staircase and back at Bartolomeo. “Emanuella! There’s a…” The goat cut him off and said, “She’s upstairs. She can’t hear you, Barto.” Barto flinched. Grabbing with his palms and fingers the counter behind him, his back away from the goat, Barto said, “Why, perchance, is there a talking goat in my kitchen?” The white goat raised his head and said, “You are to contact Pietro Savantori, your friend. You are to tell him to release his findings on the Shroud of Turin, the ones he misplaced.” Bartolomeo paused a few seconds. He started hitting irritably the palm sides of his fingers under the kitchen counter ledge. Stopping, he said, “OK.” Barto added. “Is there anything else?” The goat said yes, and continuing, said that Savantori was to contact the Papacy and ask for forgiveness afterwards. That was all. The goat followed by saying, “…after he informs the government.” Bartolomeo, as was his fashion, fathomed the remark and his two eyes widened. “That’s not a problem. I’ll do what I can. He listens to me you know.” “I know,” the goat said. The goat asked him if he could use the back door and Bartolomeo said that was not a problem. “Thank you for your time, Barto,” the goat said, and Barto said, “Niente.” And when he finished saying this, the glass of empty Porto in his hand, Bartolomeo felt odd. The goat was gone at this point. Bartolomeo moved quickly to the phone, a cordless, and called Pietro. Pietro picked up almost immediately—sounding rather shaky.

*

    The view out the train window was so pleasant. The train and its passengers had reached the outskirts of Rome by five in the early evening and the ruins of Ancient Rome, made so popular by so many artists and his favourite, Camille Corot, greeted him with a few sightings here, a few there, the train passing into and out of large valleys and crossing small and large streams, before the first structures of the suburbs of Rome began to take hold of the view, as far as the eye could see. Next to him, and after the train conductor predicted the amount of time until arrival, he glanced casually at the man next to him, reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

*

    The creature had always liked the film Gigi. He remembered the first time he saw it, a long, long time ago, and he thought of one of the closing moments of the film, a dream sequence, now, as he walked the northern outskirts of Rome. A pleasant, flat Roman road, his staff in his hand, he hobbled carefully along on the expanse of poplars, trees he didn’t know the names to and he didn’t suppose he ever would, and he felt hot, the mid-afternoon sun on his back, and for a time, even the rancid fish troubled him less, for a time, and he remembered other places he’d been to, in Greece—seaside fisheries and fishing boats—and such memories did indeed provide if not an apology, then an excuse, for the putrefaction that filled his three nostrils that day. Something about an algae bloom he had overheard, or a Mediterranean acid growth, others had conjectured, that forced hundreds of thousands of dead fish onto the beaches, up and down both the east and west coasts of Italy. America Free Europe Radio was a riot. And as a ridiculous flatulence from a fake Neptune finished, and a beautiful solo guitar piece from a composer he used to know the name to, or maybe it was the heat, calmed for as minute his aching feet. Greenfields, tarnished here and there by a general lack of colour, as was normal for the season, stretched on and on, on either side of the road for at least ten kilometres. Three more kilometres down the road, the creature switched off the radio, as small buildings began to appear, here and there, he thought the noise might prove too unsightly.

    Another five kilometres down, or so he estimated, he found a clearing of what he thought looked like Eucalyptus trees amidst the dying aura of the sun. He sat against one of the trunks and set the radio down, a small black one, and raised the antenna. Eventually, after some car commercials the creature paid no attention to, the familiar tune announcing an emergency broadcast came on.

    “…the people of Italy, the faithful of Christendom, to the many, many loved ones of fair and beautiful Italy. Solemnity implores me to measure with cautious forbearance the words of optimism I unveil to the government, its divisions and offices, and to the people of our dear country. This afternoon, in consultations with our leaders, I beg those of a more disbelieving nature to show too the forbearance with which we are all endowed, and express patience at this, an unusual message, to the people of Italy. A message that I hope, in its fulfilment, even though faulty in logic and reason, offers the certainty of an uplifting of spirits in this trying time. To begin again, in consultation with our leaders, and with the blessings of the Papacy, in our beloved Vatican City, I have this decree that I transmit to you, the people, with the hope that though seemingly superfluous, it may cleanse, even if by fire, the morals of all Christendom…”

    Meanwhile, in a bar outside of the president’s palace, further down the street, a septuagenarian walking his small beagle on a leash entered in from the front just as three men on bench seats at the bar overheard the president’s words. “He’s mad,” said one. “It’s the fish,” said another. A young woman, wearing a gas mask and polishing glasses asked what all the fuss was about. “He’s asking the people of Italy, and all of Christendom, to find fake holy relics and destroy them immediately,” one said. There was laughter, which subsided, and then a fat man in the corner said upon reflection, “I didn’t know he was religious.” This time only one man who probably had too much to drink in him uproariously laughed and was quickly silenced. The president, almost apologetic, but using firm hand gestures, finished by saying, “at this, a seven o’clock on a Monday, over a day since the crisis began yesterday morning at approximately six o’clock. And this must be completed, immediately. Someone at this point switched off the television. “Horrifying,” the fat man said.

    The creature having heard the words of the president, breathed out. He thought but perhaps was wrong, that he noticed a very minor fading of fish odour, for just a minute or two—but this may have been his imagination. Putting away his radio, he disjointedly raised himself, one leg having fallen asleep, and after leaning another hand against the tree and waiting a few minutes, grabbed his staff and walked through the heavy grass to re-join the slender, stone road. After about a mile, or if you’ll forgive me, two kilometres, he felt his normal self, a hardy creature, though aging, and he soon felt wonderfully good.

    It wasn’t long before he felt he wasn’t quite alone anymore and he quickened his pace. He looked behind him, nervously, and seeing nothing, turned back around and continued walking. But soon he again felt he wasn’t entirely alone and started walking quickly again. “You walk too fast,” he heard someone say. And he looked down to his side. Relieved, he realised he had picked up an approximately four-year old barnacle with tiny feet. “Where are you going?” the little blonde girl said. The creature ignored her. “What’s your name?” she asked. He looked at her with one eye and said, “I’m mortal mind.” Not understanding, she walked along with him for another few seconds and said, “Are you the Antichrist?” He looked at her with two eyes this time and started to laugh. Eventually she wandered off and away down a road where her mother allowed her to walk along, as long as she made sure to stay on the right side of the road, so the bicycles didn’t hit her. And in time, she reached a bar that her mother, in gas mask, had finished polishing the evening bar glasses to. “I’ve just met the Antichrist,” the little girl said. “Don’t be a silly girl. Go inside and wash your feet, they look dirty,” her mother said, and without questioning, the little girl walked through the dark, back entrance and clumsily ascended the stairs.

    The septuagenarian, the woman’s father, placed his empty beer glass on the counter, “What are we going to do?” she said. “Well it has to be done, I’d say. It’s a worthless trinket anyway.” “I’ve always found it revolting,” she said. The old gentleman limped over to a comfortable chair and picked up a traditional Italian guitar leaning next to it. Pausing at first, the old man strummed a delicate tune, and as he did, he told her to go upstairs and get the tooth. Without interrupting his playing, she asked him if she could flush it down the toilet. “Probably best to burn it,” he said, and with that he played on, before pausing. He said quietly, “Oh dear,” and then he began playing something else. 

Chapter III     The Police Report

   It was half past six, a Monday evening. A woman clad entirely in black was screaming on the television set. She was Spanish, and upon hearing news of what she heard, she erupted with anger along with many, many others, in France, America, South America, Central America, Mexico, parts of Quebec, parts of the rest of Canada, and Africa; many areas throughout the world opined their disbelief, at the madness at what was heard by the president of Italy. “It’s an outrage!” was said by some, and many threw their anger at their local priests—who by this time had heard so much, and remained silent. Some in the clergy announced the impossibility of the president’s demand and said that such a thing should be requested by the heads of the Church and not by a government body. The blow-up was astounding. Within hours, prints of the president’s face were glued to bodies in effigy, half-burned and smouldering. Many said that the president was insane to make such a request at such a time during what is no doubt one of the most terrible environmental disasters to befall the Italian peninsula in recent memory. It was as this continued that a female police officer saying she had heard enough, turned off the television set. Quiet returned once more.

    Despite the smell, she opened a window of the Roman police station and birds, startled, flew in many directions. “Do you think this is the work of the Devil?” she asked, looking out at the dying sun. “You know better than to say something like that,” Lieutenant Maiano said, and he leaned over the desk to extinguish his cigarette. “Good. We have work to do,” he said and placed the small dossier on his lap and started reading. He leafed through each face and write-up with care. It was such a minor incident—the five consecutive stonings near or outside Florence. No one harmed. Maiano huffed finally and shook his head. The captain had said that the descriptions were quite unbelievable. A man? With goat legs? Finally, Maiano leaned forward and prosaically picked up the only other dossier. “Is that the prostitute’s description?” the female police officer said, her hair pulled back catching the rays from the fading sun. Maiano replied, “yes, the mother’s version of it.” Responding in kind, she said, “After saying what you just did, how can you possibly take it as an example?” “Because, my dear, we live in a strange world,” pausing, he continued, lighting another cigarette, “We live in a world where the barriers between what was impossible and what is possible don’t exist the same way they once used to.” Losing interest, she walked behind Maiano and looked at what he was reading. “Ten eyes?” and then she placed the former page back and looked again, “The horn of a ram?” “Yes, it’s bizarre isn’t it. The description reminds me very much of Durer’s knight, on horseback, in the company of death and the devil,” Maiano said. “Yes, I know the one you mean…” the female officer continued, “…I mean could it be probable? Could this indeed be Satan?” The lieutenant guffawed, “Yes it’s possible. Hand me my pistol, I need to point it at my head.” And she hit him lightly. She pulled a cigarette from his packet on the desk and lit it. “That’s very unladylike,” he said. Lieutenant Maiano suddenly came over rather tired and he stopped what he was doing and looked out the window. It was as Maiano began to fall asleep, looking out his window, in his chair, watching the dark blue sky of almost pitch night, that the phone rang. He leaned over with his chair and picked up the receiver. “Pronto.” There was a pause of a few beats. Startled, he leaned forward and clicked his fingers for a pen or pencil. Writing down the address, he glanced up at her and hung up the phone. “We have our Durer apparition, picked up just outside Rome, two hours to the north-east,” and Maiano grabbed his suit Jacket, whistling in a slight, undulating tone.

    Taking the police elevator to the ground floor, the two officers, Maiano and the woman, stepped to the waiting black unmarked, and window-tinted automobile. Driving under the portico bridge, at the end of the cobbled square, Maiano with his driver turned right and disappeared.

    From within the vehicle, the lieutenant overheard some nonsense from the radio about the Shroud of Turin being debunked and, grimacing, he asked the police driver to turn it off. Two hours later, after fighting the steady but eventually clearing traffic outside of the capital, Maiano’s car took a deserted roundabout and passed through the other end, to a small, relatively busy and dusty, suburban road outside of Tuscany—to the south. The police station was packed with cars. “What the hell is this shit?” Maiano said. He told the driver to blare his horn and idle the car. Soon, a police officer came out to talk. He said it was a mess inside. They would have to park down the street. Maiano said to hell with that, remove one of your officer’s vehicles. Twenty minutes later, Maiano, fuming, the police car pulled into the newly freed parking slot, and both he and the driver got out. “This had better be good,” the driver said, to his comrade and Maiano added that he didn’t have much patience for this. “Trust me Lieutenant, you won’t be disappointed,” an officer opined, greeting the two men and they walked into the station from the back, passed a row of doors leading to cells, until they reached a corridor leading to an empty room with a desk and chair. “What’s his name? Does he have I.D.?” “Carl Samuel Robinson. U.S.,” he added, “Is your name a real name?” “What, Maiano?” “Yes.” Maiano paused, “Yes, I’m a distant relation.” “Very impressive,” the officer said and the two walked to a door, to the side of the room that Mr. Robinson was in. Within, a long desk along a wall contained a square plastic bucket with a wallet, a U.S. passport, and a small radio with an antenna. His wallet had almost five hundred euros, forty-five liras, and a bankcard to a U.S. bank with the customary liaisons on the back of the card. “So, what do we know?” “Well, he’s polite. His Italian is rotten and his breath is even worse. He won’t say anything except that he has an appointment to the south. Nothing more.” “What did the embassy say?” “We spoke to an African woman who after a pause hung up the phone.” “Bitch. Anything else?” The officers said that was all. Pausing a few minutes, looking over the passport and the radio, the Lieutenant said, “All right,” and the officers escorted him to the door. Opening it, Lieutenant Maiano walked in. The creature that was Carl Robinson sat without his pole, in a chair, behind a desk, and he hadn’t touched his coffee cup. The complimentary coffee had stopped steaming many minutes ago, and the creature was actually rather pissed off. Maiano put one leg up on the desk and leaned his weight into it, looking at the thing. The thing said nothing, but three of his eyes watched Maiano, as Maiano put his leg on the desk, two eyes watched the door, and the remainder stared fixedly at the lieutenant. “Who did this to you?” The lieutenant said. The three eyes that were looking at his thigh looked at him, then looked at Maiano’s thigh again, before looking at Maiano again. “GM,” Maiano said. The creature stopped, and stared, before losing interest and again wandering his ten eyes around the room. After a while, the three eyes looked again at Maiano’s thigh, and again at the lieutenant. Getting the idea, the lieutenant slowly stood—removing his thigh from the table. Maiano sighed. After a beat, knocking his ring finger lightly against the metal table, he left the room.

    “Well, what are we going to do?” one of the more brazen, plain clothed police officers asked, stirring his coffee as he stood. “Release him,” Maiano said, “But,” he added, and they understood by his gesture what he wanted them to do. Twenty minutes later, the creature was given back his belongings, politely, which told the creature much, and the creature made his way out, making sure his radio still worked. The lieutenant was stunned; the prostitute’s written account of the thing that the lieutenant supposed was a man, was very accurate. He silently applauded the relations between prostitutes and their children, and walked out of the station, with the driver following behind. Lieutenant Maiano opened his flip phone and phoned home. He asked for the phone number of the prostitute outside of Milan; he could use a vacation for a day or two and, besides, rumours were that the smell wasn’t so bad near the Alps, with its frequent breezes. After talking for twenty-five minutes, to the mother of the girl, the prostitute, he made arrangements to meet her, sometime while her child was at home, Maiano said, preferably, and she agreed. Eleven o’clock in the morning. The lieutenant, upon entering the car, asked the driver to take him to the airport and he and the lieutenant drove away and down the street.

*

    The apparition, the being, the thing or simply the man, if you prefer, found his way out of town, and decided to skirt as best he could around the city of Pisa proper, preferring the glorious harmonies of silent roads and night insects to guide him. Kilometres down the road, first one, and then another of a variety of Italian hobos followed him. One, about a half a kilometre behind and eventually the creature lost sight of the other one. The creature in the company of these vagabonds, marched all night and the vast stretches of road were smooth for the most part. And, having spent so much time at the police station many hours beforehand, this had given his aching legs and sore hooves a chance to heal. At about three o’clock in the morning, a Tuesday, he lost sight altogether of the hobos behind him, and he was relieved to be alone, which he was for the rest of the early morning. Ultimately, and feeling restored for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he held out a thumb and got a ride from a loquacious, twenty-something girl for at least three to four hours in kilometres—south. She seemed untroubled by his appearance, but he smelled alcohol so he wasn’t surprised at all.

*

    The plane touched the tarmac at the Milan airport at one o’clock in the morning, a Tuesday, and for a forty-eight-year-old lieutenant with bad legs from too much basketball as a young man, it was late. Taking a taxi to an airport hotel, he reckoned he’d have to rent a car and drive two hours, at the most in the morning, to meet with the prostitute. In truth, he felt slightly nauseous from all the recent movement and retired immediately to bed. Within minutes it seemed, it was dawn again and feeling extremely refreshed, he dressed and bade a rental car to wait for him at the elaborate and, he thought, rather gaudy hotel entrance. The vineyards erupted quite suddenly as he found a clearing upon full sunrise, and he contented himself with the wonderful smells of grapes in an ardent fight with the smells already mentioned.

    Not surprisingly, the prostitute, when she opened the door, as he expected, made his eyes roll back in his head some, and he greeted her with the slightly informal kiss on both cheeks, and she invited him in. Her young, auburn and grey eyes—healthy—invited him to the couch and he sat and pulled out a small micro-recorder. As the prostitute called for her daughter, he opened his suit jacket pulling a small pad out, and they began. As he arrived half an hour too early, he was contented that, by end of it, he finished by being fed by her and he left her after two glasses of wine at about one thirty in the afternoon, of that Tuesday afternoon. In his car afterwards, with a long, lonely drive ahead, he listened to the recording. Embarrassingly, he started getting excited again but calmed himself by shifting his weight. Her remarks, the testimony of her daughter, always pleasant with a strong Milanese accent, stood out in ways that he hadn’t expected. A largely facile interview with no other intention than to fill in a few blanks, he finally put the micro-recorder away and concentrated on the road. He had no doubt the police station staff would find interesting things to say about it, when he would play it for them, later that day upon arrival in Rome again. Honestly, Lieutenant Maiano felt good, and his heart beat to a calm rhythm that contented him the entire length of the path back to the airport. He was synchronised to a feeling and mindset as old as time itself, and he complimented his good fortune that he arrived just in time to catch the four o’clock flight back. He made a quick call to his wife and told her he would be back in time for supper, around eight o’clock that evening. He had a suitcase at his desk, in Rome, with the necessary change of clothes and there was, of course, a shower at the station as well.

*

    Carl Robinson, if that was indeed his name, had three eyes on the road ahead and his other eyes surveyed a spectacular view of a cavernous valley—far to the south. Pockets of lighter paddocks of grass were interrupted on either side, by the almost orange earth, plunging into a cavernous river basin. A soft light blue river trickled between the slopes, emptying into a massive valley, announcing the vast flat areas and shapes of Southern Italy.

*

    The prostitute ended her day with Lieutenant Maiano at one thirty, and she immediately ran to the suspended mirror to look at herself. Her cheeks were still alive from the excitement an she touched them with her palms. She was still a young prostitute, completely clean, and after the meeting with the lieutenant she once again asked herself if she should stop—as she had done when she was eighteen. Uncustomarily, this time, she didn’t call her friends, and as young girls generally do, she began to dance. She danced from the hallway to the large living area and any would have guessed she looked very, very good doing it. Compulsively, she threw her black dress off of herself and then moving to her bed, she collapsed on her side and started to laugh.

*

Barto looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and fixed his hair. Emanuella had broken a plate and between the two of them she agreed—it was her idea at any rate—to spend the rest of the week with her parents, three hours away. Francesca was cold, at first. Barto reached the third time, after a call at twelve, another twenty minutes later, and a third ten minutes later, and she picked up. “Sure,” she said, and within minutes she strode like a calf through the kitchen entrance and wrapped her arms around him. He picked her up under the thighs and carried her part of the way up but she started squirming like a little girl with her top and threw it off of herself, exposing her delicate bra and brown arms. Unzipping her jeans, he wriggled them off of her scrawny form and played for a few seconds under her panties, and finally hoisted her young frame up the remaining few steps, into the bedroom. Seating himself on the edge of the bed, he placed her before him, between his two legs. He admired at length her slender young arms, the small bracelet, her elegant thin fingers, before she unclasped her bra, exposing her small breasts. He kissed her. Slowly, in time, perhaps twenty minutes, he and she together quickly unburdened her of her unusually thin and sheer pink panties. Barto wanted to remember this and he sat and watched and explored her body like a Greek sculptor would a creation he had almost completed and now took the time to admire as his miracle, the flesh so alive, the limbs so real, the vulva so intoxicatingly present. Finally, he surrendered himself to feeling, and admired her pubis, lifting her up onto the bed and suspending himself over her with her legs apart. Two hours and twenty-eight minutes later precisely, after three trips downstairs for milk, so to speak, Barto did something that would later prove to be fatal. Or at the very least fatal in the company of a sixteen-year-old miracle like Francesca, and with this in mind, we join both, in a shower, down the hall sudsing themselves like a little boy and girl. The mistake happened when Barto allowed his little sculpture to wander downstairs. She placed a light green shower cap on his head, as he finished washing himself. Very quickly, as is normal for young people, Francesca reappeared, snapping pictures of him, with her iPhone, as he jumped out of the shower to chase her down the stairs. She had—at least according to the nightmarish sound file click of her iPhone 7—gotten away with at least two photos; eight megapixels. His time in Heaven quickly descended into Hell. It was only as Francesca reached the other end of the kitchen that she bumped into Emanuella—arriving through the kitchen door. Barto, following quickly from the rear, and half-covering himself with a. loose green towel, a shower cap on, and still covered in soap suds, Barto had the good fortune to think quickly and motioned over Francesca’s back, to his wife Emanuella, to grab the iPhone. That iPhone was firmly in the hands of Francesca. Emanuella, not knowing what to think exactly, obeyed her husband’s command, and dutifully snatched the camera. Francesca turned to Barto again, and, looking hurt, momentarily, and with some hesitation, quickly fled through the half-opened kitchen door and disappeared. Barto stood for a moment looking at his wife, Emanuella looked at the iPhone, and walked beside her husband, and slowly, gave him the iPhone. “I want you to know…: she said, “that I hate you.” And she walked with affected dignity upstairs.

    Bartolomeo carefully placed the iPhone down on the counter and paused for a few seconds, before he did his best not to laugh outrageously for fear of being heard, upstairs.

    Emanuella made faces at Bartolomeo for hours after that. Many months, later in the future, Bartolomeo would still think of Francesca. But in June of that year, a Wednesday early morning, he, in conversation with his loving wife, sat at the kitchen table and simply admitted to her that he couldn’t stop thinking of Francesca. There was a long silence and Emanuella tried, at a moment, to hold back a tear. Finally, she opened her mouth, and said to him, “Fine Barto, I’ll allow you to be with her, but I have to be present the whole time.” Barto was motionless, with both hands around his coffee cup. It was many seconds later, as he sat motionless, he was certain, that he heard the thunderous metronome of a bouzouki playing in his head.

Part II

Chapter IV    The Antichrist

    The following pages constitute a chronicle of the vices of the alleged Antichrist, Denis Nostriani of the Bronx, New York. At the age of two, after being given a Native American costume, for Halloween, the alleged Antichrist snuck under the dining room table during dinner and shot his sister in the leg with a popgun. The following Summer, he distributed thank you cards that he had fabricated and gave to the elderly, bearing the signature of the Devil. At three, he developed an obsession with the Viking mythological system, and, convinced that he was the god Thor, destroyed his father’s favourite coffee table with a carpenter’s hammer. And again, in another incident, and suffering from a weight problem that would take his entire life to eradicate, the boy’s father, in the nick of time, saved the Antichrist from throwing himself off of their Bronx apartment roof with a towel tied around his neck, like a cape. A litany of small vices followed, usually involving a lifting of little girls’ skirts, and when the Antichrist was four, while visiting friends, he bit so strongly into a five year old girl’s buttocks that she had visible teeth marks that lasted for sixty-five minutes—the parents of the two children ceased to associate with each other soon afterwards. Unusually intelligent, and fearing the precociousness of the boy, he was sent to a professional all boys seminary preparatory school, at the insistences of his father, who at birth, had already decided on the ecclesiastical vocation for the boy. At the age of six, in another flare-up, but noted by his teachers for his brilliant imagination, the Antichrist started rumours throughout the school that women foresaw the founding of the Milton Hershey chocolate company in 1894, ushering in new freedoms, including new possibilities in the indulgence of chocolate bars over the years—beginning a decades-long wave of corpulence among American women. The Antichrist claimed that Kiwi women from New Zealand were smarter than their American counterparts, by a whole fifteen IQ points, forcing men to pass the woman’s right to vote at an astonishing year of 1893. A full year before Milton Hershey founded his chocolate company, in 1894. The teachers, though voicing deep concern over the boy’s comfort with lying, excused the treachery, time and again, due to the absurdity of his claims, and his inadvertent talent at making people laugh. Becoming mildly depressed at the age of nine, the Antichrist took comfort, to an alarming degree, in chocolate cakes, strawberry shortcake, steak, potpies, volumes of Coca-Cola and Sprite and in chocolate Hershey bars. At the close of the year, his Antiholiness was a full two kilos over his normal body weight. And finally, after a rash of influenza that struck the all-boys school, sending them home, on a Monday morning, amidst his parents’ concern over a growing report on the news about an environmental crisis in Italy, the ten-year-old boy had an epiphany. Denis claimed for the first time and to the shock of all in the room, that he was the Antichrist. Sitting in a comfortable chair, watching television, Denis heard a voice. “Okay. Okay. This is what you’re going to do, kid. Now, Denis, I have the distinct honour of informing you that you’re the Antichrist,” it said. And Denis heard two men’s staunched laughing to his right, with nothing there, as he sat watching television. Trying to recompose themselves, the two invisible voices tried to shush themselves, and added, “now Denis, you’re going to tell your father that you’re the Antichrist and you’re going to start preaching from this day onwards.” Once more Denis heard invisible laughter and he immediately stood up, “I’m the Antichrist!” Horrified at the insistences of the boy, and losing patience, the father telephoned his cousin, who as it turned out, and with the full knowledge of the boy’s father beforehand, was the son of the Archbishop of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, on the East Side of Manhattan. Stupefied by the claims, the following transcription of the relatively long discussion between the Archbishop and the purported Antichrist I now lay bare, for all to see. Sadly, the other version of the talk, faithfully recorded by the Archbishop, and sent to the Vatican, by post, sat in a cardinal deacon’s post office box too long. But this wasn’t a great loss, as the Archbishop’s recording sadly wouldn’t have aroused much more than laughter. But, due to the severity of the boy’s claim, with the full knowledge of the boy’s fame growing throughout the family, the Archbishop, after receiving the alarming phone call from his son, at approximately nine-fifteen in the morning, agreed to meet the boy. The Archbishop was unshaken by the boy’s claim and understanding the seriousness, wholeheartedly agreed that it finally would be a good idea to meet Denis, and to straighten his ways. It was agreed that after lunch a rendezvous would be appropriate. With the Archbishop’s lingering recollections from his most recent ‘livre du jour’ on the Chancellor Adolph Hitler’s final meeting with the President Hindenburg on his desk, he awaited the boy with the wild claim. The ecclesiastical leader was tired. His very old eyes had seen so much, and the errant ways of so many. At two o’clock, the deacon opened the door to the private quarters of the grand-uncle of the purported Antichrist. The Archbishop took a long, deep breath, and he looked out at his view of a cherry tree, in the partly covered courtyard, through the cathedral’s small French-paned window. The little boy strode in with the deacon behind—the deacon’s hands on the little boy’s shoulders. “Ah, so here’s the little troublemaker,” the Archbishop said, and with a gesture of the hand he bade the two to come in. “Man, that is the greatest desk,” the little boy said, and he walked forward and picked up a pen on the desk and started clicking it in and out. “Do you have any cards?” Denis asked. The deacon was horrified, but the Archbishop forever strong, calmed his assistant with a gesture of his palm. “So, Denis,” and to this the Archbishop rose and motioned for Denis to follow him. They moved to the other side of the room. Two large faded and red leather chairs positioned on either side of an antique globe of the world (mounted into a cherry wood base) awaited the two.

Denis walked up to the globe, and gave it a quick spin. After having taken their seats, the Archbishop, comfortably reclining into one of the chairs and crossing his legs, told Denis that he has been wanting to meet him ever since he heard about the incident with the voices, telling him that he was the Antichrist, and added that Denis had a very concerned uncle who had called him that very morning about it. And quite frankly, the Archbishop added, he just couldn’t say no. Continuing, he said that he had never met the Antichrist before, so this was a real treat. Denis, having beforehand understood the importance of the occasion, insisted to his mother that she prepare for him his Sunday pinstripe white shirt, which he wore, on this occasion, under a dark grey suit, his hair slicked back. Denis’ father objected to the hair, but Denis said that he’s the Antichrist so he could do what he liked. Horrified, his father had yelled at Denis’ mother that Denis wasn’t his, which upset the poor mother. Denis then rushed out and apologised, but Denis still slicked his hair back with a comb, later, in the car with his mother. Now, Denis heard the words of his great-uncle, and his eyes lit up, at the warmth. Putting his hands together, and folding his legs in the chair, Denis told the man that he was happy to finally meet him, because his New Testament studies at school last year got him into a lot of trouble with three kids, and he almost got into a fight because of it. Interested, and with an expression resembling sadness of his face, and with a moment of slight despondency, the Archbishop asked Denis to explain. Denis got up off his chair. He placed his hand on the globe. He began to talk, “Father, beginning in Matthew, Matthew thirteen in particular, I began to develop a theory, on the life of Jesus that I hadn’t heard of before. Denis stared off, toward the open room. Intrigued, the Archbishop listened. Continuing, Denis added, “What I didn’t understand were the disciples. Beginning in thirteen, Jesus, in Nazareth, upon seeing a multitude approach, starts for the first time speaking in parables, and a few versus later, climbs into a boat—presumably out of fear. Jesus’s disciples are horrified that their rabbi is speaking in parables to the multitudes and the chapter ends, with Matthew stating, and I quote, “…and he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Denis laughed. The Archbishop, feeling the onset of a headache, asked him to go on. Denis stoked his seriousness once more, “And then Father, there was the incident in Matthew eight, with the Roman soldier and his purportedly dying servant—or slave,” Denis eyed the Archbishop, “Jesus told the Roman soldier that—after the Roman’s invitation to follow him back to his house to heal the slave—he would not, but his faith had already healed his servant, and this was so,” Denis turned to the Archbishop with a smile, “Much later, when Jesus senses his end, he tells his disciples that they should watch it, because they know not at what time the Son of Man cometh—a reference to himself. Apparently, Jesus, much earlier, claimed to fulfil the Law, as the implied legitimate Messiah of the Jewish people, but then, for unrelated reasons, back-peddles, calling himself, even emphatically it seems, The Son of Man.” “Not God,” The Archbishop groaned. “Now in our Biblical History class,” Denis continued, “I was taught that the people of Judea, under the corruptive yoke of the Romans, were scattered, a people diseased, belaboured by temptation, and cast asunder by the might of the conquering Romans. If this is true, and this is the heart of my theory, well…” Denis continued, “Well then, why would the Roman leaders of Judea allow ‘rumours’ of the legitimacy of a sole heir to the throne of David (or any heirs for that matter) to wander Judea free as lambs in a field? Would the Roman wolf allow that?” The Archbishop didn’t answer. “Wouldn’t the Romans, like Herod, see to it that every potential unsanctioned leader of the Jews be found and killed, even and especially if it meant humiliating the Jews in the process, staunching any hopes whatsoever of a rising king. Disgracing, humiliating any potential heirs.” The Archbishop interjected, “So your suggestion, or theory as you put it consists of the idea that Christ, the Son of God, was marked from birth, as his father Joseph belonged to the House of David, as stated in Mark.” There was a half-minute long pause. Denis looked at the Father, and thought about it, before smiling and saying, “Well…yes.” Denis walked over to the Archbishop’s desk, in front of the window, as a pale blue light glowed from without, and continued, “Now, if Jesus was marked from birth, and to all accounts Jesus was a handsome man—and I have no doubt he was,” and Denis’ body language changed, his hands in his pockets and leaning in slightly, Denis seemed to ask by the gesture, for a response from the Archbishop. And at this point the Archbishop coughed and said, “Yes. This is probably true.” The Antichrist continued, turning, “It would have been very titillating to the ladies of Judea. After all, Ted at school is the great great great nephew of a president, and he gets all the girls. So, if Jesus was a catch, then so many boys would have done anything to get Jesus in trouble—especially if competition for females in Roman conquered Judea was high. And even this from boys at a very young age. Now, if that might be true, then Jesus might have chosen a profession unlikely to provoke too much envy, in a sort of feigned humility, and proceeded with quiet life, studying the Scriptures, Rabbinical Law, etcetera. But enter the Romans who—emboldened by rumours from the Jews, Roman spies, and many Judean women’s chitter-chatter, prostitutes—decide to look into it. Ha-ha! They see that, lo and behold, a very handsome man, well-built, and an heir to the House of David might be a good candidate for a cross!” The Archbishop, slightly beleaguered, looked at the boy. Denis continued, “Now if this is true, then maybe Jesus figured out that he was marked? Being a Jew and therefore afraid of his God more than, well, anything, he decides, God rest his soul, to take it on the road.” The Archbishop, to this, grew momentarily interested, “Explain,” he said. Denis continued, “Well, he, as a kid, supposedly taught the rabbis. So, he must have been real crackerjack with the Scriptures. I mean, so, like, when he knew the Romans wanted him, so, he decided, like, since he was already marked and dead anyway, he’d do his best to unite the tribes of Israel, like Steven Biko did in South Africa, always hunted, watched, but building support among the downcast Jews, those caught in the yoke of Roman oppression—as well as some of the wealthy as well. He knew that he was going to die, but with his well-raised understanding of Jewish Law, and Holy Scripture, he maybe thought he’d really stick it to the Jews and the Romans, spies, embedded within the corrupt crowds and multitudes; many coming eventually to hear him preach—and many probably laughing.

    The Archbishop, a steady clear-eyed man by nature, foresaw the next part, and raising his head with a hint of contempt, asked Denis with a lingering, pained smile, “And the miracles, Denis?” Denis smiled and putting his hands in his pockets, said, “Well I haven’t figured that part out yet, and I don’t think anyone will. But I’ve been thinking that if he attracted crowds everywhere he went, no doubt lunies, criminals, profiteers, women (get it?), and pranksters would have wanted to be a part of the spectacle, of seeing an heir of David do his thing and wanted to be a part of it.” The Archbishop told him frankly, “You need medication, Denis. But no matter. Don’t tell anyone, do you hear me? Anyone, what you’ve told me here this afternoon.” He paused and dropping his hands by his sides, he lowered himself into his office chair once more, and he looked at Denis a long time. Taking one of his hands, he gripped the boy’s chin between his index finger and his thumb, “Such an intelligent boy.” He shook Denis’ head from side to side, with the fingers of his hand. The Archbishop turned again to his desk, “Now this, dear boy, is what we’re going to do…” The Archbishop picked up a pen and wrote down an address, and a phone number, after glancing briefly at a vintage rolodex. “I’m sorry to mention this Denis, but hearing what you’ve told me, your father will be very upset. But take heart, call the man on this note and don’t say anything of what you’ve said to anyone, as I’ve already told you.” The Archbishop passed the piece of paper to the boy and the Archbishop summoned the deacon. Escorting the boy out, the Archbishop paused a moment, before picking up the phone. He was so tired. Someone picked up and the Archbishop said, “I think I’ve found the Antichrist.”

    Denis strode out, feeling really good. His mother, waiting, calmly, in the deacon’s office, politely rose from her chair. After exchanging a few words with the deacon, and after the deacon complimented the boy’s stage-presence in front of the Archbishop, the mother blushed a few shades darker in the cheeks, thanked the deacon for his time, and the mother and boy walked out down a corridor and out onto a side street. Not long afterwards, Denis’ mother, at home and curious, grabbed the little boy’s note from his Sunday best pant pocket and she called the number. “Hello, this is the Centre for Studies of the Criminally Insane,” she heard a voice message say, and the mother, horrified, hung-up. She yelled for her little Antichrist.

*

     The screaming of women in front of the modest bonfire was deplorable. Sticks of wood had been brought in by truck and effigies of the president of Italy lay smouldering and mostly burned. Lieutenant Maiano, under-slept, arrived by police van at the first sight, as immigrants, women, and children, and a handful of striking workers from the local bank clashed, causing a ruckus. Dispersing the crowds with loud horns, the tired lieutenant inspected the three smouldering bonfires of effigies of the president, and one burning Italian flag as well. The photojournalists published photos of the cleaning crews, scooping up ashes amidst the burned remains of straw-stuffed bubblejet prints of a smiling, Italian man affixed to a straw face. Amidst the ashes was another effigy, of what appeared to be the Pope as well. Two more incidents as well followed in sporadic fashion, as the day progressed. Engineered chiefly, it seemed, by the usual troublemakers, and after reports by local news, arrests were made. It grew from there. As news of the incidents spread to the internet, the pictures, and first few comments of the primitive bonfires, written in Italian, and French and English, ignited the servers all over the world. As word spread of the president’s words, coupled with easy clicks of hyperlinked articles down on MSN, America’s AOL, Yahoo as well as many other news sites, perhaps the drama of it, the draw of fire proved too much for many. The constant juxtaposition of “President of Italy Calls for Destruction of Holy Relics Throughout Christendom” almost right next to “Burning Effigies of the President of Italy Ignited All Over Rome” proved too much to resist for so many. By the middle of Tuesday, in Rome, and with its corresponding time differences all over the world, effigies cropped up to be burned of the president in Milan, the Banlieues of Paris, then Madrid, Seville, and once this had started, effigy burnings began in back alleys of Rio, Buenos Ares, San Salvador, Mexico City, as well as many other cities throughout the world. The International Space Station started the task of photographing the small plumes, the pockmarks of hot flame as the astronauts in their celestial home traversed silently the planet, for posterity. Seeing the opportunity, the opposition parties to the elected president’s cabinet in Italy began carefully to seize the bull by the horns and made suggestions that the president dissolve his cabinet and recant his ludicrous request of Christendom. 

    Meanwhile, a large area, corresponding to other areas throughout Italy had been set up to accept fake holy relics from the populace. This unfortunately proved rather banal work, as reluctant workers tasked with the collection of such things, sadly, were found to be capitalising on the finds, and wads of cash in various currencies were discretely exchanged in places. But, thousands of fake holy relics had been collected—despite the problems, and by Tuesday evening, around eight o’clock, five thousand two hundred and sixty-five purported holy relics were now in government hands. Fearing the accidental burning of a genuine holy relic, holy water was sprinkled over the remains before the relics were incinerated throughout the advancing night.

    The president wisely decided, despite the uproar, to remain quiet. His wife saw him in his study, many times that day, absorbed in thought but steady. His only sign of weakness: three glasses of Chianti—by day’s end. Ultimately, a practical man, he, upon reflection, regretted his early Tuesday remarks but was grateful that he, in history lessons of the future, would be commended for taking attention away from the Church, in what even he had to admit was a strange situation.

    By three in the morning, as many old women crossed themselves, counted rosary beads, and old men worshipped, many in silence, many sound asleep, internet links began to crop up on the successful destruction of fake relics throughout Italy. And as can be expected, the international furor, in combination with coordinated efforts to quell unrest, the furor, by Wednesday morning began to subside. The International Space Station, using high-definition lenses caught photographs of long trails of grey smoke throughout South America and published the best on the internet. Countless throughout the world, despite the lull in effigy burning, still refused to relinquish their religious relics and a general détente, in some people’s minds ridiculous, prevailed. Many scientists throughout the world and doing their best to measure their words, noted  how something as seemingly small as a call to rid Christendom of fake holy dead people’s body parts, bits of fabric and string, parts of crosses, etecetera could have erupted into such a worldwide spectacle, a phenomenon, and some even laughed that it served as a justification for an upper class in societies within the civilised world. This comment however was disparaged by the clergy, as they pointed out that many of the educated upper class possess holy relics. The only rebuttal to this argument being that as they could afford them, then the upper class should keep them. The English upper class, apparently, in the words of Sir Peter Bolton said, “How true,” and he laughed. As word leaked online that fifteen arms of St. Luke were rounded up around the world, forty-five teeth of St. Jude, and eleven feet of the apostle St. Paul, as well, finally, as could be expected of people who stare too long at a bright screen, many began to laugh. And intermixed with the deafening chatter back and forth on the phenomena, people started talking about how to verify the legitimacy of a relic. The American History Channel seized on the happenings, and at the same time as Canal Plus, and as its European equivalents did as well, re-aired broadcasts on the archaeology of the Holy Lands and the painstaking efforts to record ‘for the historical record’, the approximate dates of artefacts found in archaeology, past and present. Also, interesting programmes aired on the process of carbon dating. Chinese television stations, no strangers to such programmes, agreed to air Mandarin subtitled old programmes on the Jewish people and the claims of the Old and New Testaments, in relation to scientific fact. And, as all of this was going on, far to the south of his starting point, a sole, unwitting figure with a staff, approached a small southern Italian town on the outskirts of Naples, very far to the east, and looked to find somewhere for a glass of water.

*

    The creature, the thing, the apparition, or Carl Samuel Robinson—as he was known to the police south of Tuscany—strode into town, and finding a small, unassuming cafe, at a fork in a small road delineated by an island, he sat down. A curb in the middle demarcated the bifurcation of a road and he sat, and asked, in broken Italian, for a glass of water. Unsightly as he was, the cafe owner behind the counter looked at him, as he wiped the bar. He motioned with a gesture of his hand for his daughter to get the stranger some water from the back. It was late, and most having returned to their homes for dinner, a lone man wearing black sunglasses and listening to a small radio on the table next to Carl was the only person in the small cafe.

    Seconds later, a tall, well-built boy, and then two others stood at the front of the cafe. They hooted and hollered, ostensibly, at the creature, to come out of the cafe. As the cafe owner and his daughter who came out from the back were holding a glass jug of water, the creature got up off his chair, and grabbing his pole, moved to the cobblestone street entrance. He took up a position in front of a black lacquered lamp post at the centre of the island curb. Holding his pole provocatively, the creature made a sound that almost sounded like the Italian word for let’s go, “Andiamo.” The boys laughed, and ran away, down a street and to the side. The creature relieved, stood his pole upright and placed his free hand to support himself against the lamppost. The first stone didn’t hit Carl. It flew by his head and down one of the bifurcated streets. The second stone did hit Carl, in the head, and he let out a very loud yell. The boys at this point mocked him by yelling “Andiamo,” and threw stones. One large stone pelted the creature in the back, and another struck his thigh. He gripped the lamppost and proceeded to collapse, his legs crouching down beneath him, as if he were about to prepare for a pounce, which was not the case. One more stone hit him in the horn, the ram’s horn, which hurt less and he looked up; the boys began to encircle him. Carl thrust at one of the boys with the end of his staff and the boy recoiled backwards calling Carl an idiot. The boys laughed. As could be expected, the woman at the cafe tried to disperse the boys and succeeded—approaching the creature with a jug of water. A stone, clean and straight, shattered the glass jug, and the woman shrieked and recoiled. Pieces of glass scattered throughout the creature’s facial hair and upper body. The creature looked down the street as the boys fled, suddenly without explanation. Alone, and moments later, the frightened daughter, and her father, holding a glass of water reappeared. The cafe owner yelled something in the direction that the boys fled to, and he heard laughter. The creature tasted the magnificent, sweet and clean water and he closed his eyes. “Grazi mille,” he said, in his guttural way, and the cafe owner pulled a serviette from his waist pocket, telling him, the creature, that he was bleeding, in Italian. Although Carl couldn’t catch all of it, he was later cognizant to the fact that the man told him that there was a rapid transit train four blocks away, pointing, and he should think about leaving. Looking defeated, the creature, going by the name of Carl, steadied himself once more on his feet and walked away, down the narrow street to the right of the lamppost and the island curb. The cafe owner and his daughter heard him scream in exasperation and he walked beyond their line of vision, and disappeared.

*

    Barto said, “He looks handsome on the television.” He had no idea Pietro was so photogenic. The news had started twenty minutes beforehand, and after hearing that the president’s car had been pelted by rotten fruit, an amusing bit of news—from the United States—added levity, as the effigy burning, contrary to intention, showed signs of making the president a sensation in Satan’s Realm. Apparently, and this leaked by sources, the popular men’s magazine Gentleman’s Quarterly asked the president if he’d like to be on the next cover. After a smirk from the news anchor, the news story featuring a thirty-second news clip from a pre-recorded conference with Pietro, talking about his recantation of scientific findings regarding the dating of the artefact, the Shroud of Turin, filled the screen. Emanuella too said he looked handsome and Barto was a bit irritated. He looked at her as she had her tongue firmly planted in her cheek as she watched the television. The news segment over, Emanuella turned the channel with the remote, to the culture channel, just as a commercial of sorts advertised a long, two-hour documentary to be aired that night, at nine, on the archaeology of the ancient dynasties of Egypt.

*

     The creature caught the evening high-speed train at nine. Direction: north. The toilet water on the train was terrible, and he chose, like others, between stops, to stand in the connecting, enclosed areas between train cars. The train conductor ignored him after the creature gave him a ticket, found in a rubbish bin at the train station, two hours beforehand. Fearing the worst, when the train reached its terminus, he locked himself inside the toilet of the train car closest to him. He remained standing and occasionally seated on the toilet seat for an hour and a half, as the train idled and slowly made ready to shut down. Finally opening the toilet door, it was almost completely unillumined, and suppressed in a thick darkness—the only lights being from the train station platform and the small almost decorative string of lights where the car’s seats met the floor. Walking out onto the platform, which was also empty, the creature known as Carl Robinson, followed the cement train station platform into the massive station. Walking down the stairs, he veered to his right, down a street, walking quickly, and fled.

    Walking out onto the stairs of the train station’s marble staircase, a figure in pleated trousers and matching jacket exhaled the last of his thin Italian cigarette, extinguished it with the tip of his foot, and proceeded to follow.

Chapter V     The Miracle

    The goat appeared from a side street, two blocks from Vatican City. Walking past the barricades and through the gates, priests high above, saw the solitary goat walk across the large open courtyard and stop, just as the dawn sun began to compete with the shadows of the night.

    Within the Papal Palace, a cardinal in red, knocked politely on the Pope’s door and told him there was a goat on the grounds here to see him. The Pope laughed and said, “Very good, very good.” Three minutes later and from within the Pope’s private quarters, a door opened to a smiling, rather disbelieving cardinal as he held the door open, and the goat walked in. “O Heavenly Father,” the Pope said and continued, “Fake holy relics have been destroyed within the Holy City and to a smaller degree all over Christendom. Do such measures satisfy your decree?” The goat became visibly unsettled. It walked a few brisk paces around and finally said, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” The Pope responded, “Exodus 20:4, yes I know it.” There was a long pause. “Well I’m sorry Heavenly Father. Your flock is a fickle flock. Many have obeyed but, for some…” “Who?” God said. “Women, those of weak mind, children, old men, many, many find themselves unable to, incapable of parting with their relics. They comfort them.” “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” “O Heavenly Father,” the Pope answered, in kind, “They do not hate you, if I can be permitted.” The goat looked at him. The Pope continued, “The world is big, and many find comfort in such relics, not in your stead, but due to the fact that they feel neglected or looked over by your Grace.” The Pope bowed his head and stepped back a few steps, praying he had not been too inappropriate. God said, “Very well. This afternoon, around five o’clock, I will provide to the flock of my stable, a miracle, to offer solace, to offer hope, and to offer proof that the God of Abraham, the God of David is with them.” The Pope looked at God, humbly. God continued, “As a consequence of this miracle, I once again demand obedience to my demand that all unholy relics be destroyed throughout Christendom, or there will be consequences,” the goat said, and he walked to the window closest to him, transformed into a small bird, and took flight, passing through the open window.

    The Pope was relieved. He walked to his desk, picked up a bell and rang. All throughout Rome, bells rang. The Pope appeared on Italian television to tell all of Christendom that God Almighty, our Heavenly Father, was going to be offering a sign to his flock, at approximately five in the afternoon. He knew not where, he knew not what, precisely, but had complete faith that all who believe in such things approach with humbleness before God and hand over the fake relics to be destroyed. Faith, the Pope said, originates with love toward God alone and not through the conduit of things and objects of apocryphal origin. The television broadcast over, very quickly, the cable stations of the world erupted with translations of the broadcast in many languages and very quickly afterwards, cell phones were alight with excerpts of the Pope’s speech. Women walked along, sat on benches, down sidewalks, on buses and trains, in metro stations, in cities, on public transport vehicles, in billions of cars, and in countless buildings and homes looking at their cell phone screens. Likewise, the eyes of billions were transfixed to plasma and LCD tv’s, desktop computer screens, laptop screens, film screens, calculators, stock exchange tickers and many other things. After about three o’clock, many permitted themselves the luxury of other things to do. Many did not see the Pope’s broadcast and still others, due to bad translation, missed the heart of it. Still others, many old women, especially, openly denounced the Pope and insisted they had experienced religious signs and miracles because of their relics and adamantly refused to give them up. Millions of people of many different faiths throughout Christendom, and the world, began to generate talk on their phones and computers, and televisions of what God intended, and where, and it droned interminably for hours. Comics in the United States uttered countless blasphemies to the eyes of some and some said it was just a Papal joke. The broadcast occurred just hours before late night comedy shows aired in many places and the show hosts were alight with comments. The volume of news feeds over the skies of many cities waiting and watching throughout Christendom with cameras, the talk, the endless links to “What was your favourite miracle in the Bible?” or “Who’s your favourite superhero prophet?” or “Who turns you on the most in the Old Testament?” became too much for many, and eventually some, like the monks to a mass chanting ritual in Thailand, simply turned off their televisions, computers and cell phones altogether. Communications jammed in several cities. And this was just as well, as people in the streets of South America and Central America, in particular, became tired of all the noise from church bells, computer transmissions, car horns, of this, that, and the other, and all the talk. Women in particular, with their boyfriends, were alive with talk and dares, and older people became tired and, though enthusiastic to discover what the sign from God was going to be, soon retired to their homes, to listen to some music instead.

    At about this time, four-thirty in the afternoon, in Rome, a man with goat legs in a battered and increasingly dirty jacket sat down in a beautiful Roman park across the street from a fountain, just in front of a ripening plum tree. He was alone, the sky growing overcast for the first time in days that Summer, and he, when settled, took inventory of his situation. Twenty-five minutes beforehand, he checked his balance on an Italian bank ATM. 550.50 euros. Carl became upset but was consoled by a man who said he had the same amount in his account. It sadly would not at all likelihood be enough to last him his journey and he later, on the bench, put his head down momentarily and started to laugh to himself. It was moments later that a very tall, elegant young Roman woman with short black hair, in Summer dress and sandals, sat at a bench very close to him. She unwrapped a sandwich and started to eat. Carl licked his lips and teeth. His stomach groaned. Making occasional glances at the woman eating the sandwich, he heard a light breeze pick up, crinkling the wax paper of the woman’s sandwich from time to time. To distract himself, Carl took out his radio and placed it by his side, switching it on. He couldn’t find any station, but static, and losing his patience, turned it off. She wrapped up the paper and put it beside her. He lost track of time. The woman finished her sandwich. Carl watched the fountain in front of him froth and foam, with great shoots of water rising up. He permitted himself the luxury of looking over to his left, at the woman again. The woman still sat, calmly, with an almost strange perfidiousness—her legs crossed. She had a small tattoo on her left inner olive-skinned ankle and Carl leaned in, almost imperceptibly, to get a better look. Air raid sirens sounded, harsh and loud, as a dull fury and whooshing sounds began to pick up in the air—seemingly everywhere at once. In enormous schools, they fell over the domes, over the rooftops, into the streets: enormous some of them, fish falling on Rome. As they landed, the fish jumped and flapped as if drawn, just moments ago, from the sea.

    The being looked up at the sound, and he and the woman next to him saw first ten to twenty and then hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of fish fall, in waves, like sheets of rain over the city. The being, horrified and hungry, exasperated, held up his middle finger to the white sky. A relatively large halibut landed at his feet. The woman shrieked and told the creature to take shelter with her under the tree. The smell of fresh fish intermingled with what the creature now perceived was the woman’s sweet cologne and with it, the odour of fresh plums on the tree. The woman looked at him, terrified, and said in English, “Fuck me.” Carl looked at her, and grabbed her. He turned her around, with the dull sounds of falling fish hitting the grass around them and some filtering through the trees and he lifted her Summer dress up onto her lower back. She had no panties on. Pausing, he took one of his hands and grabbed her left buttock—soft, malleable and tender to the touch. He grew aroused, moments later, and penetrated her after just a few seconds of searching with his member. He closed all of his eyes. He exhaled and started moving inside of her as she began to sigh, measure for measure with his movements. It didn’t last long, but to the creature, due to the immediacy, it was as if he had passed another lifetime between the cleft of her bottom. He stayed with her, inside of her, for what as I’ve already mentioned, seemed like an eternity, until, little by little, his spent member retreated and he pulled himself from the excited vagina of the young woman. Lowering her dress, she ran quickly away, confused, as by this time the fish had stopped falling for the most part. The being’s nostrils filled with the long, protracted odour, just like the smell a few days ago, but much sweeter this time, and he dwelt in the haleine and the warmth of his senses—the odour of fresh fish, and the ocean.

     The people of Rome rejoiced, as televisions and cell phones switched back on, and the people called and tried to find if the same thing occurred everywhere. The fish fell only on Rome. The first disparagements came from Paris, many there saying it was the Americans; the Americans with enormous cargo planes, circling over Rome—proof of which could be found with the fact that air raid sirens ignited all over Rome moments before the attack. For if it was a miracle, Paris said, the fish would have fallen on them. Meanwhile, back in Roman restaurants, kitchens hummed with the fevered activity of chefs barking out orders to their kitchen staff, pouring fish stock, and they chopped large pieces of tuna, whale-meat, swordfish, mackerel, goby, halibut, handled molluscs of all different sizes and shapes, chopped salmon, perch, octopus, enormous clams, sturgeon, seabass, trout, grouper, mullet, sea cucumbers, herrings, anchovies, squid, different varieties of shark and many, many other types of fruits of the sea the whole time laughing that an enormous swordfish had been caught jumping out of the river, amidst the exhaling blow holes of enormous sea beasts, to the east of Rome. Music as well began to fill the streets of central Rome. Many, deeply full of themselves, quickly sought to find the right sort of people to be seen with, as photographers started taking photos almost everywhere as the trains began carting Italians and tourists in from neighbouring towns almost immediately after word reached beyond the confines of Rome of what had happened. Traffic congestion was horrible, with all the routes to Rome blocked well into the night, which made the Roman’s laugh that the freshest fish was theirs, and theirs alone, for the time being at least. All seemed to ignore the reality that days before, Rome had been trafficked on all streets by citizens in gas masks and this all seemed largely forgotten to all but the most bitter-hearted of the city, who languished in their homes and sulked quietly to themselves, watching all on television. The irony of the miracle was that throughout the world, so many denied the miracle, or said it was the Americans up to something, and many Americans laughed and gloated to themselves that yes, it was probably them, which didn’t affect their appetites or those of many throughout the world, and most simply started to forget the whole thing, and went about the business of doing their jobs once more. And all, as a sort of stupendous display of collective wisdom, were found to say that a miracle was not such a miracle if it didn’t happen to them. The French applauded.

Chapter VI   The Polls

    The first poll to be conducted, most agreed, in South America and the United States, was the most telling. It asked, Did the miracle impress you to surrender your holy relics, if you have any, or would you ask that God do something else instead? The results of the poll were neither decisive nor conclusive: 46 percent of those polled said yes, 37 said no, and 17 percent of those polled were undecided. What was curious was that as pictures of wine flowing in Rome began to colour the internet, accompanied by happy faces and the first pictures of fish cooked on plates, the poll results, conducted again, were markedly different: only 13 percent said yes, 86 percent said no, and 1 percent were undecided. The poll was conducted in fourteen capitals throughout Europe, America and South America. Interestingly, a poll in El Salvador was telling. When asked if the phenomenon was a miracle or a curse, El Salvadorans said 100 percent it was a miracle. When asked why, all those polled said the fish were a symbol of womankind, and hence it was a miracle. Bogota, Columbia five days later said that it was only partly a miracle, as it fell only over Rome, with 46 percent saying it was a miracle, 35 percent a curse, and 19 percent saying they didn’t care. Sociologists, the great acolytes of polling, began to say that it was probably a miracle, but people should understand that polls were not an exact science, and that there is usually a margin of error of ten to twenty-five percent in almost all polling.

    The next poll ignited interest, all throughout New York City. It asked, if the miracle occurred in New York City, would you eat the fish? This poll rang true, at 85 percent no, 5 percent yes, and 10 percent absolutely not. Pictures of the miracle, officially endorsed by the Church, began to filter in, and the next round of polling began. Women in all places were spotted, ducking into cafes, bistros, and restaurants, some while on their bikes, looking at the photos and examining the latest poll numbers. One asked, Do the photos look genuine to you? 86 percent said yes, 9 percent said no, and 5 percent said they weren’t sure. Orders throughout Christendom emanating from the Church, instructed boxes at churches to be available, to collect ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ fake religious relics from the faithful. At the day of the latest poll, with the 86 percent saying yes, around the world was amassed five hundred and sixty-six relics of many different sorts. As the day progressed—and this was attributed to Photoshop tinkerers and some adepts of the programme—new photo-edited digital images from the original Church advocated images began to appear. Most were stupid, but some showed women falling over Rome, or vegetables. The most popular were the women falling over Rome. Still others began to show cannibalistic gargoyles and clowns falling over Rome. And once more the same poll question was asked, but slightly different in tone: Do these photos look fake to you? The poll, closely watched in many parts, came in at 8 o’clock on a Wednesday evening. It showed 46 percent said no, 25 percent said yes and 29 percent said they weren’t sure. Sociologists quickly said there was an error of eleven percent, but were too busy to post the new poll numbers, or forgot altogether.

    Of the relics collected, fourteen had to be returned, as they belonged to the wrong religion, and six were toys, and hence not legitimate. On the second day of collecting the fake holy relics, worldwide, only two hundred and eighty-five were collected, but 87 people later changed their minds, and took the relics back. There were a few fistfights. The total then became one hundred and sixteen relics.

    A new round of polls became popular, over the ensuing ten days. The first poll had a rather arrogant question, according to some, Does a miracle occur for some, but to the expense of everyone else? When collecting the numbers for the poll, two days and three hours later, the results showed 10 percent said yes, 1 percent said no, and 89 percent said they weren’t sure. The next poll, from a data research centre in Des Moines, and in a more light-hearted tone asked, Do you want God to offer you a miracle personally? Enthusiastically, the poll results, as predicted, came in throughout Italy as 46 percent yes, 25 percent no, and 29 percent didn’t care. The same question, when asked in Portuguese and Spanish, showed a likewise predictable result. 85 percent yes, 10 percent no, and 5 percent said they didn’t speak English, or other things. Elsewhere, in India, in another poll that reached parts of Pakistan and China asked, if you believed in God, would you believe the photos from the Church. Politely, those polled said 5 percent yes, 4 percent no, and 91 percent said they already believed in God. The Church was actually rather pleased by this, and Buddhists, Jainists, Sikhs and Hindu leaders received invitations to Rome, to enjoy themselves, and have fun.

    How many gods would you like to see in Heaven? soon followed, with 95 percent saying all, 2 percent saying none, and 3 percent saying some. Another poll conducted three weeks later asked, Is god a polytheistic god? This came up with 10 percent no, 14 percent said yes, and most others hung up the phone. Most of these polls appeared on either AOL, MSN, Bing or Yahoo and originated from poll conductors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Losing interest, many people online said they were getting sick of polls and asked if more intelligent questions could be asked in the future.

    One of the last polls to be conducted throughout Christendom fell on a Tuesday and closed on a Friday. It asked, How many of your family think the ‘miracle’ was fake? When poll numbers were calculated the numbers came out to be 10 percent said, their entire family; 45 percent said, most in their family; and 45 said, one in their family and no one said, none in their family.

*

    A Sunday, weeks after the miracle, the Pope wrote in his study at his desk. He heard the bells faintly in his ears, and a voice, like the goat’s, as if it originated from within his mind alone, was heard in his head. “My son,” the voice said. The Pope stopped what he was doing and slowly leaned back in his chair. “What is your bidding Holy Father?” “What has occurred since the miracle? Does my flock obey me?” The Pope reddened a bit in the cheeks, “Quite frankly most…do not.” There was a rather prolonged pause. God finally said, “This is a pity.” The Pope cautiously agreed, nodding his head carefully. “Instead, please see to it that the Shroud of Turin, instead, be dispensed with.” “Where?” the Pope said, “Naples? Paris?...the Getty!” There was a long pause as the Pope waited. A few moments passed, and the Pope heard a faint, ever so slight ding of a bell, in his brain. “Fine. The Getty….The Getty!” The Pope listened, triumphantly, but he heard nothing. He hesitated as to what to do, confusedly. He stood upright slowly, and walked to a rare red and blue and faded yellow tapestry over his back wall. Then he heard the majestic sounds of angels, trumpets, and an uplifting of the firmament for a moment, and he sensed that God, now, was gone. The Pope mumbled, “I look forward to speaking to you again, some time, Heavenly Father,” but he heard nothing.

    Italian television broadcasts two days later, chronicled the quiet, eloquent removal of the Shroud of Turin from Rome, to be loaned from the Vatican, indefinitely, to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. California rejoiced, and many described the event as a miracle. A genuine miracle. Some said it was a miracle they had been waiting for, or something like it, for some time. Not long after the Shroud was installed—behind bulletproof glass, against a large white wall with magnificent plexiglass skylights—a slim, athletically built woman with short, tight skirt and a pink, fluorescent bob, took her little girl’s hand and the two bought tickets and made their way, slowly, with reverence, utter solemnity, to the holy relic—on loan from the Vatican. Passing through the crowd, the two stopped, amid the clicks and solemn, quiet murmurs and the assembled, taking photographs, and talking, commenting in whispers. The woman and child stood and looked up. “He’s like tall,” the little girl said. “And, like, he’s bloody.” Her mother said, and she quickly cocked her head to the side, as her eyes settled on the approximate centre, or thereabouts, of the holy relic, and she stood with total admiration.

Chapter  VII   The President

    The creature lay asleep, reclining on his back, at the same spot where he had been for the past few weeks. His account now was down to one hundred and sixty-five euros. He alternated between three other parks in the city with one park, the hardest to get to, about twenty kilometres away.

    A teddy bear rested on his chest. Someone over the course of the night had placed it there and he now slept, drifting in an out of wakefulness for the better part of three hours. Likewise, food was, or had been for a time, easier to acquire throughout the city and he still had the rest of his very tasty gnocchi al pesto with a closed plastic lid under the park bench, with a plastic fork.

    A starling ignited its song, very near his ear, and he woke with a start. Seeing the teddy bear, he raised it to his face while he was still reclining. To his eyes, he thought it looked mouldy, before throwing it off of himself and getting up. Morning as it was, he reached into his pocket and removed a small metal box of sardines in sea water, wrapped in a napkin, opened it and helped himself to them, after fishing some bread from another napkin in his other pocket. The fountain was alive and he thought about the odd but infinitely welcome encounter with the young Roman woman weeks beforehand. Perhaps it was the paper napkin that jogged his memory. At any rate, and having extinguished his hunger, he stood up and picked up the teddy bear again. Looking at it carefully once more, he brushed it with his hand and stuffed it in his right pocket. He started walking. Around the fountain, the starlings became enervated suddenly, for some reason, and took to the air by the tens and twenties and flew in concerned swarms—resembling schools of fish—before settling again on the lamps, buildings, and into the depths of the trees once more.

*

    At nearly the same time Lieutenant Maiano, legs up on his desk, was listening by speaker phone to the latest arrests and citations, etcetera, throughout the city. There had been fifteen arrests, two citations, and a strange questioning of a Burmese monk. When the lieutenant enquired further, his detective over the phone said a Burmese monk in a suit and tie had been caught in a rather obscure part of the city, doing what, they as yet did not know. “Undercover Buddha,” the lieutenant asked. The police officer on the phone laughed and said, “Precisely.” The lieutenant asked him to go on, and he finished listening to the report.

    At ten past nine, his personal phone rang. Or, that is to say, his other personal phone rang. Picking up the phone and clicking the button, he heard nothing on the other end and hung up. It was July in Rome.

*

    Molly M. McIntyre, the attaché from Gentleman’s Quarterly Magazine nervously clicked her pen in and out. The president thought it was an embarrassing, neurotic few times too many. He was not certain, but suspicious at this very moment, due to the well-kempt bearings of his American guests, their almost uncomfortably comfortable manner around his office, if it was not indeed true that he was in the company of agents or two, possibly three American spies, and the president began to sweat. He made a veiled gesture to his secretary and she abruptly left. He, upon questioning, discovered that two of the three GQ representatives were Californians, and he heartened at the thought. The two, the president and Miss McIntyre, accompanied by a two-man camera crew, had, half an hour before, finished photographing the president in a variety of poses: in front of his desk, standing; from an alcove with the president sitting down—Molly having to remove a plate of bread at the president’s insistences laid there to accompany the glass of red wine; on his back, with an overhead camera and fill light; and—the pose the president preferred—in front of double doors opening onto a stone balcony, the blue of the sky above his head.

    Molly clicked the pen she held a few more times and said, “OK, so, let’s begin.” She lifted her pad of paper closer to her knee and her assistant checked the tape recorder to make sure the record button was pressed. “So, I’d just like to say that you look very good, healthy even, after having been burned in effigy countless times throughout South America, Ethiopia, Parts of America, Spain, France, Portugal, Haiti, Botswana you know and like the Dominican Republic as well. The president responded, “Well, you know, as Constantine is purported to have said, paraphrasing, ‘I feel fine’.”

Molly laughed, “So how does it feel knowing that enormous forces of people are wanting to burn you alive? Are you coming to America?” The president responded, “At this time the president of Italy has no plans to emigrate to Fortress America, but who knows, maybe for a vacation.” Molly said, “With your wife?” The president responded with a laugh and said, “My wife goes with me, generally everywhere I go.” “To the toilet as well?” then Molly laughed and said, don’t answer that, I’ll fix it later. The president looking a bit shocked but relieved, put his hand on the desk, “It’s a bit hot in here. Shall we open the door?” Molly agreed, and he stood up and opened the two doors. “That’s better,” Molly said, “So, Let’s go on.” “Yes, let’s,” the president said, and laughed. “So, would you like to add anything to the many things that supposedly have been going on in Rome over the past few weeks?” The president, following her train of thought said, “I assume you’re implying the ‘miracle’?” and he laughed. Molly said yes. The president said he’d rather not and the two laughed, Molly in a sort of ironic staccato and the president in a relaxed way—putting two fingers casually to his temple. “So, like, could you tell the readers of GQ what inspired your request to have fake religious relics destroyed throughout Christendom?” “Sure,” he said, and Molly laughed.

*

    Two hours later, his phone rang again. And once more, Lieutenant Maiano pushed the button to receive the call, raised the phone to his ears, and he heard nothing. “Pronto,” he said, “Is someone there sitting quietly in the dark?” Maiano said. The other line went dead.

*

    The president began, “The history of collecting religious relics is, as you know, a long one. As far as our religion goes—which is to the birth of Christ and much farther beyond—is one of the most present examples. Stories in many books describe and attribute magical powers, things, to the acquisition of such objects. Your movies and filmmakers have brought many images of such things to the silver screen for years—on such objects: the Ark, the Holy Grail, mummies, products of tombs, such things, and when you think of it, they’re just cups, containers, parts of a person’s body, sculptures you know, things like that, inanimate objects. But the faith of the owners of such objects—some of them being just trinkets really—attribute in a spiritual way, powers to such things.” Molly said, “Yes, it’s fascinating.” “Yes,” the president continued, “Sometimes, over time, the legitimacy of such religious relics, the truth of their origins, becomes lost in the sands of time, of eternity.” Molly replied, “Please go on, this is really fascinating to our readers.” “Quite…,” the president said before continuing, “Over time, thousands of years, relics, and fake or counterfeit, fraudulent relics, if you prefer, can accumulate, and when this happens, when these, these…graven images…become too populous, confusion results. So, as we go through time, I suppose, I know, you know…” and he laughed, “Those who consider themselves followers of the faith or even merely a decent historian or person must know, you know, to separate the tares from the wheat. From time to time, fake holy relics have to be found and destroyed or dispensed with. Simple. I really shouldn’t be saying this but I have no doubt some relics, fake relics, have been inspiring all kinds of acts, a variety of behaviours and laughter for years. “Oh, really? Please explain that to our readers.” “Wow! An imperative statement,” the president said continuing, “Certainly, and I won’t go on into too much detail,” he paused, “When superstition reaches an apogee, a high point, people can and generally do get manipulated. Coupled with a disastrous education, among the citizens of any given nature, this effect is exacerbated much more. American pragmatism is a wonderful example of a philosophical movement, in your past, that, along with the logical equivalents in other countries, served as a counterweight to, well, the dangers of fanaticism. Added to this, among the uneducated masses, the possibilities of how you say, duping people, are plenteous. Criminals, common rogues and evil men exploit these situations and you end up with, I don’t know, ten left arms of St. Mark, as an example. Molly and her crew erupted with laughter. “And at very reasonable prices!” the president exclaimed loudly. He added, “You see, and I don’t want to go on with this as, you know, at least in your country, you can believe what you want you know.  But among many, even especially Italians, a dead body has power you know. It has a mysterious strength. Molly said, “Wow” That’s just great. You know, I’ve always admired the Italian people for that.” The president laughed and took a sip of the glass of wine on his desk. The secretary walked in but the president shooed her away. He continued, “So men, sometimes ingenious men, with, how shall we say, persuasive talents in making money can empty three of five graves somewhere in the world and make tens of thousands of dollars or euros on dead men and women. And, I would add, in a society, such as ours, where such ideas as the sacredness of the dead body exist, I don’t know, let’s say because of the Resurrection, as an example, the cutting up or desecration of a person’s relative or dead loved one, under much sambuca, you know…” and he laughed, “…can become money in your hand, and also a joke. A joke that if done right, can add laughter to an Underworld dinner table somewhere in the world, as an example.” Molly laughed again and said that is so funny. Continuing, the president went on, “Anyway. Perhaps I go too far. Is this being recorded? Yes! Oh dear,” and they laughed, “Anyway, to bring things back to reality, such things make religious worship difficult to endure sometimes, hence the call to arms a week ago.” “And it was well-heeded. How many fake relics were found?’ Molly said and crossed her legs. The president paused and said. “We, in the Christian world rely on faith, and trust. We collected the relics that were given to officials—no questions asked. In the end, by last count, six thousand eight hundred and forty-eight had been catalogued,” and he added, “It’s a trade you know, like many others.” “Amazing.” Molly said. The president added with a note of sobriety, “Yes, yes. That’s a lot of dead people.” Molly dropped her pen, “Wow” she said quietly, this time almost out of coquettishness, almost sarcastically, “Quite,” the president added with a smile, “The police will be in business for decades.” “Well, yes. That’s funny. Well I think we have all we need right now,” she added, “We’d also like to record you, in the company of your wife, maybe sometime tonight? “Sadly, no,” he said with a bright grin. Molly turned off the recorder to complete the interview, and said the interview would do, and she passed the recorder to her colleague, who took the recording and placed it into his care right next to his camera bag. Molly asked the president if they could add a brief biographical part at the top of the article for good measure. The president stood up. He said, “By all means,” and after stating that his secretary will be in touch and shaking warmly their hands, and kissing Molly on either cheek, amidst her slightly blushing face, he escorted them to the double doors at the opposite end of the room. The interview was accomplished.

*

    Lieutenant Maiano spoke to the Burmese monk at length. He arrived back at his division headquarters at thirteen past three in the afternoon and his other personal phone rang again. Once more, no one there. Just as the phone hung up, he thought he heard a giggle.

*

    Arriving at the Milan airport two hours later, his phone rang again. The gentleman picked up. Once more no response, but a long, expectant pause on the other line. He laughed quietly, with arrogance, to himself. He walked in the fading sun beneath the Italian sportscar billboard signs which cast his face in shadow for the longest time, and then he left. By the time he managed to squeeze his small rental car through the vineyards, the phone had rung only two more times. And by the time he arrived at the prostitute’s door—the one with the auburn and grey eyes and the abnormally large pupils—it was just getting dark. He knocked. Moments later she opened and said enthusiastically, “Brava!” She locked her arms around his familiar neck, and closed the door behind him.

*

    Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played well with the teddy bear as accompaniment. The creature sat on a bench, along with a few others watching modern players play in period costumes. It was a fine outdoor concert and Carl was happy to have overheard quiet undulations of the melodies playing as he entered the park—half of an hour before. Simply delightful. A silent, seated man sat at the other side of the arranged white chaired assembly, occasionally smoking and oddly looking at the area where the players had been, saying nothing; looking nowhere, after the outdoor performance. He waited, along with Carl, until well after the concert was over. Three hours and eleven minutes after the musicians and spectators had left, as workers arrived to put away the chairs, the creature picked up his teddy bear and left. The man still sat and looked on at his customary focal point for the past three and a half odd hours. Carl yawned a great yawn. He thought the child’s toy next to him would make a nice pillow.

Chapter VIII   The Festival of Falling Fish

    It started as a grassroots campaign, a few days after what some say happened in Rome. The aquatic bombings of fish. The thirty-first of July was the goal. The International Foundation of Holy Relics, newly founded and minted in the wake of the president of Italy’s words, assembled itself here and there, growing and spreading throughout the various areas of Christendom. The intention was clear: voice a community and devoutly orthodox support for the continuation of holy relics throughout the world, under pain of corporal punishment and death. Dressed in black, chiefly, the petitioners, old women, religiously devout, and believers of all faiths made hasty, inspired and vigorous arrangements, and it was done.

    On the other side, peasants, more devout believers, bricoleurs, picketers and fishermen. Due to the pervasiveness of an age of mass communication and instant access to information, the march of the International Foundation of Holy Relics somewhere in Rome was compromised.

    On a slightly overcast day in August (they had missed their July 31st deadline), with the tepid breezes of the season competing with the early morning air, the International Foundation of Holy Relics, regaled in dark flowing robes, black veils, black shirts, and the accoutrements of a similar tone and demeanour collectivised in tens and twenties (over three hours) with their signs, religious statements, a few relics, and the odd slogan here and there. Amongst all of this, enormous, freshly cut and timbered crucifixes were carried intermixed with the dark collectivity, upright to mark the occasion—and to add fury to their cause. As the worshippers and believers reached a size of approximately two thousand and sixty-three, using loudspeakers and a loud drum, some whistling discordantly, they all began to walk in unison, taking their positions and marching with tremendous solemnity and grace down one of the central streets leading to the centre of Rome.

    They passed the signs of the tobacconists, the pharmacies, the diverse fish sellers, and the countless merchants, the cafes, and the restaurants, the liquor merchants, the petrol stations, the boutiques, the flower sellers, the imbibers, the homeless, the prostitutes, the con-artists, the half-crazed, the obsessed, the heartbroken, the manic, and the downright silly.

    After passing quietly, the sound of their shuffling and heavy footfalls in the Piazza della Via south of Central Rome, the throng passed into a narrow boulevard, beyond, two miles from the entrance to the Capitoline Hill. With its largely untouched architectural masterpieces of the Mussolini age watching, it happened: a blaring horn, distant, that reminded some of a symphony, and the slow adagio-like rumbling of cars, cymbals, clarinets, recorders, flutes, and an assortment of drums, perhaps the faint clack of castanets. And all of this over the growing discord of the darkly clad denizens from the south, the tremors and vicissitudes of what sounded like the movements of the sea (which might have been sound files—no one was sure). Trumpets sounded triumphantly, and the crowd exploded just to the left of the assembled. A loud crash and the boom of rockets accompanied the eruption, into the pale-yellow sky. Brightly dressed street entertainers, amateur musicians, Satanists, the largely devout, the atheistic, the troublemakers from the outside of Rome, and a collectivity of out of work harpsichordists, amidst a half-assembled and intermixed assembly of what looked to be amused professional musicians—all riding on the tops of cars, and the oddest persons on stilts with multicoloured hats marching. Amidst this, on either side of marching and laughing interceptors, women in long dresses, holding large baskets scattering silver herrings (newly caught) onto the streets. Following closely behind (and holding similar but smaller baskets) were the homeless, the opportunists, or merely the hungry of this area of Rome. Men distributed freshly baked loaves to the poor or the merely interested, and the curious. Last, a small herd of well-wishers, a clapping motley, from the fascinated streets that the assembly of worshippers at the Festival of Falling Fish (which happens to be what has just been described) appeared—and bisecting the long dense black clad masses on the unusually straight boulevard—moved on their way to Rome’s heart. As the children on tricycles and in small, wheeled plastic toys passed, the International Foundation of Holy Relics (and sadly resembling workers one might have said, from the beginnings of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis) looked past the silver, dead herrings, here and there, and the brightly coloured bits of confetti, to a slowly moving and malevolently growing group of young men assembling on the other side of the street. Similarly dressed, but in a more contemporary variety of modern dress, in black faded collared shirts, thick belts, and shiny black shoes—but not all—held large, dark rocks in their rope-like bare arms. “Go!” one of them said, and men positioned themselves here and there almost in a tactical way, just at the entrance of the boulevard—just beyond the littered cross-street and its spectacle. At the opposite side, the veils, the similarly dark-dressed throngs, the white and red tense signs, the crucifixes, the enormous and mal-fitting banner held up above the enormity, and the similarly written red and white signs all throbbed. The Foundation members began to scream and yell loudly. Suddenly a rock appeared, hurling at a velocity at once fast, but easy to follow, and plummeted into the crowd on the other side of the cross-street. Cries on both sides began to reach apogees of inanity that forced those watching high above, amidst the growing clamour of breaking faces and bones, down below, to quickly shutter their multicoloured windows, and brace themselves inside.

*

    Bartolomeo was plagued, the evening before the event, by a dream that put him in a bit of a snit. He dreamt that he saw faces, obscured and ill-defined, and he found himself standing on a promontory almost at sea level, across from a dock full of boats. It was overcast. The dock was half-submerged, and the medium-sized white boats covered with blue and white coverings, and he was overcome by a sadness that lasted for some time, until he awoke next to Emanuella.

    And then, four hours afterward, Bartolomeo thought of when he was fourteen and hostel hopping in Florence. Fifteen young students from somewhere in France, all female, had arrived at the hostel, trying to insert the entire building up their pussies. When Bartolomeo arrived, he made his way to the second floor, and being the shy Roman he was at the time, stood in stupefaction: several of the French girls were naked and glistening, talking playfully, completely nude and standing against blue tile within the deliberately open shower hall, and one of them, seeing Barto, walked naked, with her bright tanned vagina and equally tanned wet body into and down the hallway, carefully dabbing as she did her long, straight wet hair with a large multicoloured towel.

    Later that evening, Barto slammed himself here and there in bed, as a homosexual in the bunk above him took moments to stare at Barto, over the lip of the upper bunk and masturbated himself. And as can be expected of a handsome fourteen-year-old Roman, he cursed his lack of spontaneity, and bravery, at not dropping his green travel bag, earlier that day, and walking clothed, into the blue tiled shower hall with the French women. And he would have laughed with naked women, as his light jeans and shirt would have become drenched, allowing them to undress him. After all, they were there for him.

    At eleven-thirty in the morning, if a disembodied spirit were to have opened the kitchen door to Bartolomeo’s corner flat, they would have seen the narrow kitchen, decorated here and there with the foods one would expect for the time of day, lightly eaten, until he would have moved past the kitchen table and glancing to his right, would have admired the decorative but humble furnishings, the drawn curtains, and a black and white television set illumined, the American comic Soupy Sales with a strange hat on, fumbling about on stage. Moving upstairs, past the bright bathroom, and moving into and behind the white sheets of July, the spirit would have watched Barto, naked, tanned and strong, his back to him, and two women, alive, naked and standing in front of him. Emanuella leaning down and kissing her husband and Francesca doing the same, almost puncturing his neck with a bite.

    Thirty-five minutes beforehand, Barto was perched like a bird, at the end of the bed, having severely bumped his elbow. It was bleeding. Having just satisfied himself, he became distracted, as his two women began, after hearing Barto yell from pain, to distract themselves with pubescent-like play, and rolled together, inches away from him. The smell was intoxicating. He became, for a moment, angry, until he was overcome. He saw the dance of four brown, strong limbs, the two dark sexes (one shaved), the four arms, the two volumes of flowing and wet black hair, four disgustingly aroused eyes, the two small noses, the two open and wet mouths, and at times, the two palpitating navels, the two heaving, taut tummies rolling about. By this time, as can be imagined, he became aroused again. Barto imagined himself an angry Vishnu, sent by Brahma to tame a wrathful incarnation of Parvati. The women had begun to laugh almost derisively—for his tastes—which offended him. Bartolomeo angrily scooped some semi-coagulated blood from his elbow, and struck his forehead with his thumb. Like a little boy who had found the cowboy’s hideout, he let out a cry, and grabbed his wife’s hermaphroditic, strong young behind, entered her black hole, and then did the same to the little woman Francesca, and she squealed. Satisfying himself, they all showered together, and Bartolomeo took care to keep his odorous head away from the water; half an hour later, and dressed, the two laughed at Bartolomeo, at the red dot in his forehead, the smelly hair, and at the angry looks from the men at the restaurant, down the street. And after a lovely meal of fish, crustaceans, and molluscs, all three arm-in-arm, returned to the still alive bedroom, and to the sheets—still dancing with the play of angels. Bartolomeo thought, forty-five minutes later, that he owed it to himself to memorialise the event, by selling the two women’s blood to an underworld cloner. The two women spouted with laughter. Francesca—pretending to sleep as Barto lay on his back with his wife on his left—scrambled her hand up his chest and let out a small growl, and Barto thought that moment of Maupassant’s The Hand. He could make a mint with Francesca and turn her into a fucking industry. And the two women laughed, again, and Emanuella teared up a bit. And, as he thought such things, and taking stock of the time that had elapsed—and the time he still had—he realised that for a brief moment in time, four hours and fifty-two minutes, to be exact, Bartolomeo the Roman, was a god.

Chapter IX  The Creature in Capri

    On the small island of Capri, captivated by the bright copal blue and ochres of the seaside town, the creature Carl sat at the entrance of a dark café. It was hot, but this was tempered by a soft, cool breeze, coming off the Mediterranean Sea. On the round table in front of him, lay a half-finished cappuccino and a cigarette tray, full of the ashen remains of approximately seven cigarettes he’d smoked. The creature looked around him (as he largely had for hours now) and there were two women in bikinis much further down the beach holding drinks; two children played, not far away, ducking into the restaurant of a cheap store he supposed. Carl was on the very edge of this seaside town, down a hill, from another part of the island, and tired. He discovered the first watering hole irresistible, and walked in. On a television, high above, and offering only a pale blue pulsating light in the black shadowed insides of this small café, he heard the bright greens competing with the noise of lapis lazuli in the kitchen. Carl sat alone in the empty cafe watching (or listening to be specific) the Spielberg film, Jurassic Park.

    On the television, a fat man had just held up his finger and yelled, “We’ve got Dodgson here! We’ve got Dodgson,” and the fat man then commented that no one cares; the creature thought, how true that was. Carl Robinson had spent the better part of three hours sitting across from the only man on his side of the beach—across the street the old man sat, at a beach front table. A rotund, bald man with a reddening, bulbous nose, and gold-rimmed sunglasses, he sat nonchalantly at the white seaside table further down on the beach. A handful of ivory tables accompanied by yellow, processionary umbrellas—paralleled the centuries-old stone road that divided them. A waiter had just brought the fat man another drink. In time, the creature picked himself up, and walked across the road. The creature Carl stooped over, high on the sand beach, and started picking up stones that were amassed at the border between the seaside restaurant, the café and the sand. It wasn’t long before both of his suit pockets bulged with the small and medium sized black and white stones. The weight was such that he slumped slightly. And walking down the sandy beach, the creature reached the beginnings of the tide. The azure sky protected alcove was calm. Distant seagulls squawked. As Carl waded deeper and deeper into the warm ocean, he eventually started hitting large stones with his hooves on the sea floor. The fat man at the table watched. The sound of a fly then preoccupied his thoughts—landing first on his plate of bread, and then on the side of his beer. When the man glanced again at the alcove, Carl had already sunk beneath the waves. As the fat man looked more intently, he noticed a small stream of bubbles percolating and frothing at about twenty feet from the calm, protracted, and pleasant comings and goings of the small waves washing ashore. High above, just above the bubbles, a dove descended and began from very high to dance in loving, small pirouettes above Carl’s head. A strong voice descended, from above, and stated in Latin, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Again, the fly danced in front of the fat man’s sunglasses. Landing on his tanned and suntan lotioned cheek, he flinched ever so slightly. As old as the man was, his reflexes were still very good, and with a swift slap he killed the pest, and it fell onto the ground, dead, beside him. “Ah, buono,” he said, to himself, and exhaled, looking about him at the sandy beach, the surf, and the young women in bikinis down the road, parallel to the waves.

Epilogue

    Denis the Antichrist, sat on a burgundy oak-stained bench that he thought might have once been Quaker style. He wore a black two-piece suit. Two house flies seemed attracted to a small open window high above a beige file cabinet overflowing with disheveled papers. There were yellow papers, a lot of white legal-size papers, orange papers and post it notes, bleeding out from the sides of the main pile near the window that so captivated the flies. Denis thought by this that maybe the doctor behind the desk across from him, now, was possessive of junk. A small, cheap plastic desk fan was resting in between the frame of the small window—which was open—and the window sill, awkwardly, and a piece of duct tape was covering part of the electric cord. Either he had a cat he would sometimes bring into his messy office, or by some means Denis had yet to figure out, the cord had been mended; but either way, the doctor was cheap.

    The sign at the front of the building, on the third floor said, Center for Studies of the Criminally Insane LLC, and his mother, Denis’ mother, was in the lobby, biting her nails, on the yellow-flowered carpet just outside the doctor’s door, in the hall.

    “Now the next question Denis, is an easy one: I want you to recite your favorite movie line. Can you do this Denis?” the doctor, his thick grey moustache moving down over his lips, pursed slightly, “Can you do that?”

    “Luke, I am your father,” Denis said, with his hands, cupped over his mouth.

    “That’s fine, fine Denis. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?” the doctor held up his index finger.

    “One.”

    “Great. Great. Now, I’d like you to tell me if you like women.”

    “Yes,” Denis said, and he laughed.

    “Good. Good. Now, do your best to pretend to be a woman.”

    Without hesitating, Denis got up off the bench in his Sunday best, bent over sideways to the desk, and slapped his ass in succession again and again. “Yes!” he yelled, and he slapped his ass again, jumping forward as he did, and again, towards the door. “Yes! Yes! Oh!! Yes!! Yes! Oh!! Yes!! And with this he turned to the doctor with his back to the door, triumphantly. He glared at the doctor. The doctor paused. Spontaneously, Denis held up his thumb and index finger, making a small circle, and used the index finger of his other hand, to push it, in and out of the tight circle rapidly. At the same time, Denis let out an amusing, high-pitched American Indian war cry, out of his pursed lips (all of this imitating, of course, the act of sex). Denis paused, looking at the doctor, as the latter wrote something down. Denis clapped his hands together loudly, and putting his podgy hands on his black knees, he bent over in feigned obeisance to the doctor and laughed.