Jonathan Levi - Septimania

But Malory had forgotten the 35-millimeter canister. At the moment he stood, either Malory knocked the Pip off the music stand of the organ or the Pip, of its own volition and magnetic charge, flew in search of the Kit Bag but miscalculated. Hitting the floor of the organ loft, the 35-millimeter canister rolled slowly along the tiles towards the opening of the balusters and off into the darkness below.

“The Pip!” Malory’s shriek, louder than the first note that had awakened Tibor, louder than Tibor’s own awakening roar, echoed in the church, bounced off the stone columns and the painted chapels, off Michelangelo’s statue of Christ the Savior at the altar and the more pedestrian bulk of Cardinal Torquemada in the right nave, and performed a ski dive of an arabesque off Bernini’s funerary marble in the near apse in the tones of a crumhorn. As the highs and the lows settled, Malory leaned over the railing, searching into the black for an answering sound from the canister hitting the paving stones. But the echo that returned was in a softer pitch. It was a voice he remembered from another church, a voice he had never forgotten.

“Malory?” Something moved below. “Malory?”

Next to the tomb of the headless and thumbless Santa Caterina, a figure shifted in the dawn shadows and called his name again. Malory ran.

The corkscrew of the spire of San Ivo unwound, the saucepan lid fell back onto the cauldron of the Pantheon. The colors of the rainbow drew themselves back off the wall of the tower into the white light of the sun to the clang of Malory’s footsteps — one, two, then four at a time — his ear and his heart harnessed to gravity in the singular desire to reach the ground floor of the church before that voice died away. Seven infinite months had passed since he had last heard it. But he had no doubt that, even through the confusion of his meeting with the giant Rumanian, the overturning of the 35-millimeter canister and the vacuum of the church, it was—

“Louiza!” Breathing hard but not shrieking, Malory ran out of the door of the staircase and into the nave. Although he slowed down the panic of his legs, it took a moment for his blood to catch up with him. Here she is, Louiza, here in Rome, where he’d least expected. Here she is, oggi , risen from the tomb of Santa Caterina below the altar and sitting on the second pew to the right of the aisle, the position Mrs. Emery took every week in a different church in a different time.

Malory walked as calmly as he could, tugging at Kit Bag and lapel, conscious suddenly that his own unwashed and rumpled appearance might be important. Because something else was different, different about Louiza. Even in the dawn shadows, with his heartbeat searching for escape through his eyeballs, Malory could see how tightly Louiza’s cheeks clasped her face, the red at the edge of her lobeless ears, softened only by a fine pale down. The shadows of pre-Mass dawn draped a shawl of care around Louiza’s neck, as if all nourishment, all strength had leached away in the past months, flown south to sustain a fullness, a roundness of the belly that pressed to bursting through her gray jumper. Louiza was pregnant. Louiza. Pregnant.

“I thought,” Louiza began.

“I knew,” Malory continued, and then corrected himself, “or at least I think I knew.” Because although he had come to Rome in the trance of the instructions that his grandmother had left with the vicar, Malory knew that something was pushing him off course, as surely as it had pushed him off his bicycle on the towpath by the river. He had felt the same pull, the same gravitational tug that he had felt since arriving in Rome, since that March afternoon with Louiza in the organ loft of St. George’s Church, Whistler Abbey. A pull he felt most strongly now, a pull he recognized that dropped him to his knees in adoration. He wanted to touch Louiza’s face, to pull her lips, swollen and chapped as they were, to his.

“So …”

Malory had forgotten the Rumanian.

“Is this what you dropped?” Tibor held up the canister. Malory broke his gaze from Louiza’s belly and stood.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“And this is your Principessa ?”

“Louiza,” Malory said, confused as always with introductions. “This is Tibor. I met him …”

“So,” Tibor said, “you did not come to Rome just to tune an organ. Not exactly.”

“What is that?” Louiza said, standing and reaching for the canister in Malory’s hand.

“The Pip,” Malory answered. “Do you remember?”

He knelt down beside Louiza in the narrow trough between the pew and the rail in front of it, and opened the lid and held the Pip between his thumb and his middle finger. And as he did, a magnetic force teased the fingers with the Pip closer to Louiza. A magnetic force that made resistance impossible, a magnetic attraction drew Malory’s hand towards Louiza’s belly and drew towards the Pip the unmistakable shape of another hand, a tiny hand from within Louiza’s belly, a hand that rose to press and touch the Pip.

“ Fututi pizda matii! ” Tibor’s voice joined Malory’s amazement, but in a timbre more attuned to the phenomenon at the second pew to the right of the aisle in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The Pip was caught in a perfect intersection between Malory and Louiza and that tiny hand. Malory’s gaze floated up beyond Louiza to the dimly lit Madonna of Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation, the fresco he had seen in postcard miniature propped up against Antonella’s biscuit tin. Louiza was — there was no doubt about it — Malory’s pregnant Madonna. And Malory — and Tibor too, for that matter — would have stayed motionless in worshipful wonder of this Madonna if an unholy cry hadn’t, at that moment, erupted from Louiza’s mouth, accompanied by a splash of water on the paving stones of the church.

“Malory!” she screamed, and fell into his arms, her teeth — fine and white and sharp — digging through the corduroy sleeve of his jacket as Louiza clamped down during the first contraction.

Malory knew enough to know that Louiza was going into labor. He knew enough to know that there were better delivery rooms in Rome than the nave of Santa Maria. And he knew that it might have been easier for all concerned if Malory had led the way and his new friend, the giant Tibor, had provided the muscle and heft to the gasping weight of Louiza. But Malory also knew that his arms alone should wrap themselves around the back and thighs, should press Louiza’s damp hair beneath his chin and lift her up from the paving stones of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

And yet the weight—

“The Pip,” Louiza whispered into his ear as the contraction eased and her jaw released his jacket. “By your foot …” Sure enough, there on an uneven square of marble, illumined by the morning, the Pip glowed with anticipation of the journey. Malory bent to retrieve the shining seed.

And mirabile dictu , with the Pip in its canister in his Kit Bag, Louiza’s body, sweating and panting in temporary relief, felt no heavier to Malory than a bottle of claret or Isaac Newton’s Principia as he followed Tibor towards the door out of the church and into the piazza.

“Fatebenefratelli!” shouted Tibor, striding ahead. “We take your Principessa to meet my Principessa .”

“ Principessa ?” Louiza mumbled into Malory’s left ear.

“And maybe,” Tibor roared, “we save a few lives!”

HERE WERE MANY THINGS THAT LOUIZA WANTED TO SAY TO MALORY.

It had been a long time since Louiza had spoken to anyone about anything. During her months by the river in Cambridge, she rarely saw the Cottagemates. The problems she picked up and the solutions she returned so occupied the many studies and corridors and niches of her mind that she was well-insulated against what her father called “the universal human need for conversation.” But the pull from the cottage to the church of St. George, the sight of Malory, first on the towpath by the Cam and then graveside with the vicar, the journey to Rome and the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva by train, plane — how and with what she could barely remember — the necessity of the trip as strong as the kick of life inside her, made Louiza realize that for months she had been holding mouthfuls of vowels and consonants for him, for Malory. As if she had been frightened that if she wasted these words in public conversation, she would lose the air in her lungs, the chords in her throat, the lift in her tongue, that special language only she and Malory shared that had first led her to talk about i and u in the dusty afternoon rays of the organ loft.