Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

They had stopped in Ustipraca-a town halfway between Rogatica and Visegrad-Petra friendly enough with the shopkeepers to rummage for something a little more provincial: long skirt and kerchief for her, coat, brimless cap, and a new pair of boots for him, along with a bundle of cloth put together to look like an infant in her arms. Three became four with a small blanket and a few pages of newspaper crumpled up inside. Most bizarre was her insistence that Ivo don a girl’s long skirt and kerchief of his own. He’d giggled his way through it all, Pearse thinking it a bit much, until he’d looked at all of them in a mirror. By then, she’d applied some stipple from a child’s makeup kit to his face, five days’ growth of beard to add to the image of the nondescript Bosnian family. Pearse had had trouble recognizing them himself.

Now, gazing at a map of the town, and acutely aware of the few other customers in the shop, he was grateful for the camouflage.

“There,” whispered Petra, pointing to a spot on the map. “The old inn would have been there.”

Pearse pulled a sheet from his jacket and placed it above the map. Tracing the inn, bridge, and hills, he marked an X for Mani’s location in the original triangle. He then peeled the page back.

“That can’t be right,” he said as he stared down at the area.

“That’s where the inn-”

“It puts him in the middle of the river,” he said, trying it again so as to make sure he hadn’t miscalculated.

“Let me see,” she said, taking the map.

Pulling the tracing away, Pearse pinpointed the three landmarks. “There, there, and there,” he said. “Which puts Mani there,” he added, his finger in the middle of the Drina.

“That can’t be right.”

“I just said that.”

Her eyes still on the page, she asked, “Which are your three landmarks?”

Trying not to show his frustration, he said, “The bridge, the hills, and your inn, which obviously wasn’t where you thought it was.”

When she looked up, the expression on her face only served to annoy him further.

“What?” he said.

“I’ll give you the inn and the hills, but you’ve got the wrong bridge.”

“What?”

“1521, Ian. The great bridge wasn’t built until fifty years later. Remember the song?”

Pearse didn’t answer.

“It’s the bridge over the Rzav River, not the Drina,” she said. “That’s the one your Manichaean was referring to.” She placed her finger on the map. “The Rzav is the other river in town, which happens to be there.”

Pearse brought the tracing up to the map. Angling it so as to accommodate the new landmark, he saw where Mani’s X had come to rest. Nowhere near the Drina. Luckily, there was only one site of interest in the vicinity, the name all too obvious as Pearse thought about it.

“‘ Izvor za Spanski, ’” he read. “Ribadeneyra was obviously more homesick than he let on.” He turned to Petra. “What’s a Spanish fountain doing in Visegrad?”

She looked more closely at the map. “It’s in the Cetvrt za Jevrejin , the old Jewish Quarter.”

Pearse began to nod. “Makes sense. A lot of Jews came east after the Spanish Expulsion. It’s the right time frame. They must have built it as some sort of memorial.”

Before he could ask, she said, “About fifteen minutes from here.”

He carried Ivo, she the “baby,” the streets relatively quiet for the late afternoon. The farther on they walked into town, however, the more the place began to fill, stores reopening after the protracted midday nap, more bodies on the streets to make Pearse feel a bit more comfortable.

It was when they reached the old marketplace that he recognized the first of the outsiders, men flaunting their conspicuousness-receivers with wires attached to their ears, handheld radios, not to mention the telltale dark suits of Vatican security. None of them seemed to notice the stares from the locals.

Pearse started to turn down a side street so as to avoid them, when he felt Petra slip her arm through his. She began to lead him directly toward one of the Vatican men.

Instinctively, he began to tug her back the other way. Almost at once, he stopped, aware that the movement would only draw more attention.

A numbing sensation began to course through his legs and torso as they drew closer to the man. In that instant, he knew only the betrayal: I’m no good with Latin … You’re frightening me . He had shown her where the “Hodoporia” was. There was no need to keep up the pretense any longer, no need to lead him around by the nose. Of course she had known what Salko was teaching her son. Of course she had been a part of it all along. How could I have been so stupid?

They were within a few feet of the man, Pearse ready for the final Judas kiss, when Petra simply glanced at the man, then continued moving on. With his heart pounding, Pearse moved on, as well.

“It’s only if you look like you’re trying to avoid them that they’ll notice you,” she said when they were out of earshot. “They’re not looking for a family of four with a seven-year-old girl, remember? If we’d gone down that side street, we’d be running for our lives right now.”

The best Pearse could do was nod.

He was still breathing heavily when she led them up into an area of town where the houses were packed in tighter together, narrow streets making it difficult for the sun to break through.

“I though for a minute back there-”

“I know,” she answered without looking at him. “Remember, you have to trust me.”

The moment in the village repaid in full.

They walked along the cobbled shadows for several minutes until she turned down a short alley-no sign of the Vatican faithful this far off the beaten path. Following the curve of the passageway, they came into a small courtyard of dirt and grass.

“‘ Izvor za Spanski, ’” she said.

Pearse stood there, staring at the small fountain at its center. All was forgiven.

The square itself was perhaps thirty yards in either direction, the buildings along the perimeter sagging under the weight of ancient stone and wood. No more than four stories high, they looked to be resting against one another, squeezing out what little support they could as they peered out into the courtyard. Two trees stood at the opposite corners, wide branches filled with leaves to blanket the square in even deeper shadow. A group of children was playing soccer in front of one of the more ancient houses, its decay helped along by the constant thumping of the ball. None of them seemed to notice as the small family neared the fountain.

Drawing to within ten feet of it, Pearse stopped again. He was hoping that, with the “Hodoporia” so close at hand, he might reclaim that same sense of wonder he had known at Photinus; instead, all he felt was a strange kind of ambivalence. Not that he was any less drawn to the promise of clarity, but somehow it seemed tied to a part of himself that sought release in isolation. And that no longer made any sense to him.

He placed Ivo on the ground, took his hand, and together they began to circle the fountain. A second memory of Photinus fixed in his mind-Gennadios scooping handful after handful of water to his soaked neck-a thought that perhaps Ribadeneyra had chosen the fountain not for its reminiscence of home but for its uncanny resemblance to the one on Athos. The only significant difference was that this one hadn’t seen water in quite some time: cracks lined the inner pool; once-green algae deposits had turned an inky black; and, at the top, where the Photinus spout had sported a monk in prayer, here the figure was a man looking back over his shoulder. Pearse noticed that, at one point, the water had streamed from the top of his head, a fitting stain now on his cheek, perhaps the last tears for a country he had been forced to leave behind.