Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“Thank you.”

Not Louiza’s voice.

Malory turned. He hadn’t seen anyone else in the room when he’d entered, but now he turned to the new voice, and saw on the other bed a figure intercepting the force of the sun from the far window. The figure, a woman, didn’t so much deflect the current of light from the window as draw it inwards. A long braid wrapped around one shoulder onto her breast, she was a vision in gray — gray hair, gray eyes as if she had captured all the color of the sun, determined to transform herself into the black-and-white heroine of a movie by Fellini. It was a gray that shone like the scales of an enchanted fish, a half-seen mermaid, a transparent stream, the hidden, veinless back of an autumn leaf. The hair was pulled away, back from the cheekbones, as impossibly sculpted and Slavic as any Pietà. At the heavenward end of her left cheekbone, a soft mole led Malory to the woman’s eyes, which waited in serenity for Malory’s full attention. Gray-haired as she was, the woman could not have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old.

“Thank you.” The woman smiled at Malory with a softness that pushed the corners of her eyes into Siamese feathers, although it may — Malory thought later — have been only the smoke from a Gitane between her fingers that she handed up to Tibor. Could you really smoke in Italian hospitals, and just before you were due to give birth? But what stopped Malory short was the sound of the woman’s voice. It shared not only the same Eastern European tones as Tibor’s, but also its uncomfortable dissonance. The sound that came to Malory’s right ear was gentle with undertones, he thought, of lavender and ambrosia, though he was only vaguely aware of what ambrosia might be. But at the same time, the “thank you” that came into his left ear was nasal and unsettling, like a sorceress from a Brothers Grimm tale scratched out in Cyrillic.

“You’re welcome,” Malory said. “But thank you for what?”

“For rescuing my husband.”

“Ah,” Malory said, “you are La Principessa .”

“And I am the Count of Monte Cristo!” Another voice entered the room, another accent — American, a male voice. The man belonging to the voice was tall. Red-haired, in a full-bodied lupine way that made him seem twice as tall as Malory, with red hairs protruding from his cuffs and running down onto his knuckles. He was wearing tan khakis, a pink-striped shirt, a blue blazer, and a pair of soft, expensive moccasins that seemed out of place with the white coat draped cavalierly over his shoulders. Malory hoped that this was the standard uniform for obstetricians in Rome.

“Are you Louiza’s—” Malory began to ask, but the nurse jumped in.

“Doctor, I thought the fathers might go down to the cortile for a coffee, while we prepared the ladies.”

“Excellent!” the red-haired American boomed. And the vibrations of the boom had an effect on Malory’s knees and drew him to his feet. “You gents grab a coffee while I check up on your wives.”

“Malory!” Louiza called. He could see that something about the red-haired doctor clearly terrified her. But it was time for Malory to be a man, to be a father, to do the manly thing and let the professionals take charge and he would be back for the birth and the life and Louiza in the five minutes it would take for the nurse to run a washcloth across her pale skin and change her into something more appropriate for new beginnings.

“It will be all right,” Malory whispered to Louiza. He bent down and scooped a strand of hair, black with sweat, behind Louiza’s ear. Her lips were chapped with exhaustion. But the warmth of her kiss removed all doubt. Louiza was here, the child was here. The equation was balanced. But as he followed Tibor into the hall and the red-haired giant of a doctor winked and closed the door behind him, a jerk from his Kit Bag made Malory turn. The red-haired American, the plate of scones at the Orchard. Was it the same red-haired American who had bought him tea at the Orchard when he’d first lost Louiza, Malory wondered? Had a demon followed him? Had he once again played a false note?

IGNOR MALORY?”

A new man took his elbow in the corridor. Tall, tight-fitting dark suit, sunglasses, good shoes, hair combed back in ranks of well-oiled centurions. Italian, Malory thought. The director of the hospital, or maybe a chauffeur.

“Please,” the man said, “you must come with us.”

“Us?” Malory said, turning back to Louiza’s room.

A second man appeared from the same nowhere as the first. He wasn’t barring Malory’s way back to Louiza’s room, but he was present in a way that rearranged Malory’s center of gravity. Even shorter than Malory, he was dressed in a long, night-blue woolen coat. The hint of cufflinks and a double Windsor at the collar suggested a formality that Malory hadn’t seen in either the Master and fellows or the porters that served at High Table at Trinity. The afternoon light from the far end of the corridor sprinkled the man’s face with a Roman dust that softened his silver hair. The maze of lines and shadows that ran from eyes to smile, made Malory think the man was as ageless as his grandmother, Old Mrs. Emery.

Of course! Malory shook off the anesthetic charm of the maternity ward. This was the man his grandmother had written about, the man who would tell him about his inheritance. Malory looked again. The clarity of his eyes, pale, past blue, a color nearly newborn in its transparency and openness, led Malory to understand that the man, the men came from a world where numbers and ages were counted according to a different system, a system that might prove invaluable to Malory, with an uncertain future and a new family on the other side of the door.

“Signor Settimio?” Malory said, thinking — how fortunate! He and Tibor could have a coffee in the cortile with Signor Settimio and his Driver. Signor Settimio could hand over whatever bank account and safe-deposit trinkets that Mrs. Emery had left to her neglected grandson. And then Malory would be free to welcome his child into the world and spend the rest of his life with Louiza.

“Settimio. Simply Settimio,” the man said, the words almost sung in a tenor accent, somewhere between Puccini and Britten. “Eternally at your service.” He bowed his head and, it seemed to Malory, also his right knee as his left hand went to his heart. Malory looked to the younger man with the sunglasses to see whether the appropriate response was a laugh or a giggle. But the other man’s head was also bowed. Towards Malory.

“Please,” Malory said. “ Prego , thank you, grazie ,” running through his full vocabulary of Italian. “You are, you were a friend of my grandmother’s, of Mrs. Emery. May I offer you a coffee down in the cortile ?”

“There is not time for a coffee. I have much to tell you, mio Principe ,” Settimio said — the Principe flummoxing Malory as much as the rejection of the coffee. Was everybody in Rome a principe or a principessa , like Tibor’s gray-eyed wife? Settimio raised his head and turned to the man with the gloves. “We must go.”

“I’m sorry,” Malory said, “I need to stay close by …” He paused, searching for the word to most accurately describe Louiza and his necessity. “If this is about my inheritance, certainly it can wait until tomorrow. I’m staying at Santa Maria …”

“There is a certain urgency,” Settimio said. “For you and for many others. Prego .” And with that prego , both Settimio and the man in the sunglasses touched Malory on the elbows — lightly, but with an electricity that began to move Malory’s feet down the corridor.