Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

Carta forced a smile. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you plow that wretched field.”

“And who else was to do it? … Ow-w! Carta—”

“Yes?”

“You have done this before, haven’t you?”

“What, delivered a baby? Have you plowed a field before?”

With the next contraction the pain became unbelievably intense, as if she were slowly being torn apart.

Carta leaned closer. Even through her own pain Regina saw how pale she was, her white face glistening with oily sweat. “Regina, listen to me. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, child,” Carta said sadly. “No, I don’t think it can. Your father … You remember how he died.”

It was an awful image to come wafting through her clouds of pain. “I could hardly forget—”

“It was me.”

“What?”

“I was the one he was unfaithful with. I was the reason he punished himself.”

Regina gasped. “Carta, how could you? You betrayed my mother—”

Carta’s bloodless mouth worked. “He gave me no choice.”

Marina screamed, “I can see its head!”

Carta pulled back to see. “Marina, help me …” She reached down to support Regina’s perineum, and cupped her hand around the baby’s head. “The cord is around its neck … Uncle, give me that knife. Now, you old fool.” Even through her own pain Regina could feel Carta’s hands trembling as she worked.

When the cord was cut, the baby’s body slid smoothly out, tumbling into Marina’s waiting arms with a last gush of fluid. Marina picked mucus from the baby’s button mouth. Carta stayed with Regina until the afterbirth had emerged, and then she packed her vagina with moss to stem the bleeding.

Regina, despite her weakness and exhaustion, had eyes only for her baby, which had begun to wail thinly. “Let me see …”

“It’s a girl,” Marina said, her eyes bright. She had wrapped the baby in a clean bit of blanket, and now she leaned down toward Regina so she could see the round pink face.

Carta said, “I think — I think …” And she fell back, slumping to the floor. Regina tried to see, but could not raise her head.

Carausias cried, “Cartumandua! Come, oh come, my little niece, we can’t have this.” He fumbled for a small flask; Regina knew it contained an extract of deadly nightshade, a heart stimulant bought at great expense from Exsuperius. He tried to pour droplets between Carta’s lips, but her face was like a wax mask.

Her goddess heavy on her chest, fear and rage flooded Regina. “No! No, you sow, you bitch, you cow,

you whore, Cartumandua! You won’t leave me, not you, too, you slave, not now!”

But Carta did not respond, not even to apologize. The baby’s crying continued, thin and eerie.

That evening Severus returned from his hunting. He saw the baby, the mess in the hut, Carta’s body.

Severus stayed that night and the next. He helped Carausias and Marina prepare the body, and he used the plow to dig a shallow grave in the rocky ground at the top of the hill. But when Carta’s body was buried, he walked away, taking nothing but the clothes on his back. Regina knew they would never see him again.

“I followed General Clark as we climbed the steps of the cordonata toward the Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill. And all around Rome the bells of the campanili rang out …”

Lou Casella, my mother’s uncle, my great-uncle, was over eighty. He was a short, stocky man, bald save for a fringe of snow-white hair, with liver-spotted skin stretched over impressive muscles. His voice was soft, husky, and to my ears, mostly educated by movies and TV, he sounded like a classic New York Italian American, something like an old Danny DeVito, maybe. He sat facing Lake Worth, sunset light glimmering in his rheumy familiar eyes — the family eyes, gray as smoke — as he told me how, in June 1944 at age twenty-two, he had entered Rome as an aide to General Mark Clark, commander of the victorious Fifth Army.

“In the place where I stood with Clark, Brutus, fresh from the murder of Caesar, once came to speak to the people. Augustus made sacrificial offerings to Jupiter. Greek monks prayed their way through the Dark Ages. Gibbon was inspired to write his great history. And now here we were, a bunch of ragged- ass GIs. But we’d made our own piece of history already. All I could see was faces, thousands upon thousands of Roman faces turned up toward us.

“And even then I knew that among those hopeful crowds I would find family …”

I had found Lou in a retirement home just off Seaspray Avenue in Palm Beach.

“What the hell kind of a coat is that?” he asked of my duffel. It was the first thing he said to me. “Where do you think you are, Alaska? Haven’t seen a thing like that since the army.”

It had taken me a while to trace him. The address Gina gave me was out of date. She wasn’t apologetic. “I haven’t seen him for ten years,” she said. “And anyhow you don’t think of people that age changing address , do you?”

Evidently Lou was an exception. His old address had been a rented apartment in Palm Beach. There was no forwarding contact, but Dan advised me to try the American Association of Retired Persons, which turned out to be a muscular lobby group. They were reluctant to give me his address, but acted as a third party to put us in touch. In all it took a couple of days before Lou finally called me at my hotel, and invited me over.

Lou showed me around his rest home. It was like a spacious hotel, every room sunlit, with dozens of white-coated staff and its own immense grounds. You could get permits for golf courses and private beaches. There was a daily program of exercise. As well as old-folk nostalgic social events like wartime picture shows and big-band dances, I saw notices for guest speakers from universities and other learned organizations on such topics as Florida history, coastal flora and fauna, art deco, even the history of Disney.

When I enthused about all this, Lou slapped me down. He called the place “the departure lounge.” He walked me to a dayroom, where rows of citizens sat in elaborate armchairs, propped up before a gigantic, supremely loud wide-screen TV. “They like reality shows,” he said. “Like having real live people here in the room with them. We do have a little community here. But every so often one of us just gets plucked out of here, and we all fight over his empty chair. So don’t get all nostalgic about being old. You’re fine so long as you keep fit, and you don’t lose your marbles.” He tapped his bare, sun- leathered cranium. “Which is why I walk three miles a day, and swim, and play golf, and do the New York Times crossword every day.”

I was impressed. “You complete the crossword?”

“Did I say complete? … So you want to talk about your sister.”

I’d told him the story on the phone. I’d brought a copy of the photograph, scanned and cleaned up by Peter McLachlan; Lou had glanced at it but didn’t seem much interested. “I want to close the whole business off,” I said.

“Or you’re picking a scab,” he said warningly. “I never met her, your sister. So if you want to know what she’s like —”

“Just tell me the story,” I said. I spread my hands, and tried to imitate his Godfather accent. “Picture the scene. Rome, nineteen forty-four. The liberating army is welcomed by a smiling populace—”

He laughed, and clapped me on the back. “Shithead. Christ, you are your father’s boy; he made the same kind of dumb jokes. All right, I’ll tell you the story. And I’ll tell you what was told to me by Maria Ludovica.”