Jonathan Levi - Septimania

We would no longer head south to the Septimania of the past, the kingdom that the shochet of Narbonne had long since abandoned. I needed more than light. I needed life. Septimania needed life. I would take Isaac to the city where my family, for over eight hundred years, has ruled its quiet empire from a villa hidden from the world beneath the crest of the Aventino. The Aventino Hill of Rome, with its view of the River Tiber and St. Peter’s Basilica — I would take Isaac to the Villa Septimania. All roads, all colors lead to Rome. And Isaac had seen the light.

ITH SETTIMIO ACTING AS GUIDE AND TRANSLATOR, MALORY searched all the rooms in the prow of the hospital, where he had last seen Louiza and Tibor’s wife. From ward to ward and office to office, he asked about a young English woman named Louiza, a young Rumanian woman, her tall, long-haired husband, a red-bearded American obstetrician. By 10 p.m. it was clear that the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli had no more record of Louiza than the Maths Faculty at Cambridge University.

“The police,” Malory said. “Let’s go ask them.”

“Which ones, mio Principe ?” Settimio answered. “The polizia, the carabinieri, the vigili? ”

“Whoever can find Louiza, of course!”

“The carabinieri are in charge of missing persons and they have a few dogs. But you are not even convinced that Signorina Louiza is missing.”

“Then the British Embassy.”

“Which is closed for the night and undoubtedly will be very busy congratulating the new pope in the morning.”

Malory sat very slowly down on a bench in the courtyard of the hospital. The lights had gone out, the televisions were cold. “ Mio Principe .” Settimio stood in front of Malory. “There are many things you will learn about Rome in the coming years. And many things about your new kingdom.”

“I’ve lost her again.” Malory’s porphyry solidity evaporated. “My new kingdom is nothing.”

“Your new kingdom is Septimania,” Settimio said with the firmness that had first led Malory out of the hospital. “You have not begun to know her.”

“Her?”

“Your new home. If you will allow us, we will take you to the villa, to your new home.”

“We can’t,” Malory began. “I won’t,” he stood, “leave without Louiza and the baby.” Even standing, Malory felt as small a child as at any time in his life.

“There is one more person who might interest you here,” Settimio said. “She will be awake, even at this hour. And if there is a baby, if your child was delivered, she is the only woman who could have delivered it.” Settimio turned and crossed the courtyard back towards the entrance.

Malory sat for a moment.

If there is a baby.

She is the only woman.

Malory followed Settimio. He had little choice.

The little man in the Windsor knot and the midnight blue coat receded along the long pier of Fatebenefratelli in waves of sulfur shadow from lamppost to lamppost. Malory followed across the piazza, past a gothic shrine that rose like a miniature Albert Memorial in the middle of the island. An ancient Roman slept rough on the cobblestones, a significant hound beside him, jowls on paws, neither aware of the celebration at the Vatican, neither interested in Malory’s search. Settimio didn’t look back, but headed for a squat little church at the back end of the island. No more priests, Malory pleaded, no more friars, no more popes. But Settimio was too far off to hear.

Instead of walking straight into the church, Settimio turned to the left along the façade, to a corner where a long, low building lay like a breakwater against one rush of the divided Tevere. Malory entered. The stairwell was ill-lit, but he followed the cue of Settimio’s steps, neat and methodical despite the late hour and Settimio’s advanced age. Along the walls of the stairwell, yellowed frames held photographs from early in the century: colorless, long-bearded men, women tented in black — travelers in an antique land, posed in front of the repositioned columns and lintels of the Forum. In the shadows of the stairwell, Malory couldn’t make out the exact descriptions, typed on index cards. But at the top of each of the frames a few words stood out. Above, the words were in Hebrew. Below, the presumed translation — OSPEDALE ISRAELITE. Not a hospital for Israelites, or Israelis for that matter, Malory thought as he climbed, but a Jewish hospital. Although why Settimio should lead him there at midnight in his search for Louiza was beyond his limited linguistic powers.

At the top of the stairwell, a pair of windowed doors was still swinging. Malory followed into a long hall, a refectory perhaps, with a high ceiling and a cool floor speckled with marble meteorites, empty except for a row of polished benches that lined the walls — one set of windows facing into the center of the island, the piazza with the miniature Albert Memorial, the other lit by the sulfur lamps across the river by the synagogue. A Jewish hospital without any patients. Without any inhabitants, Malory thought.

“Settimio!” Malory heard a low alto, the rustle of movement behind him. “You’ve come to visit. And you’ve brought company.” He turned and saw a woman sitting at the end of the wooden bench, a nun perhaps. Yet there was nothing in her appearance, speckled by the shadows from the lamppost through the window, to assure him that the voice had come from her. No motion from the mouth. And in the vastness of the hall, sound came from everywhere.

“Permit me to present—” Settimio began. He walked over to the nun and bent to kiss her cheeks.

“ Tesoro, ” the old nun murmured, “you forget. I know the boy.”

“ Il Principe, ” Settimio bent by her ear in gentle correction.

“Ah, she has finally died,” the woman said. All was black and yellow and shadow, but Malory saw the delicate creases of her eyelids flutter like the leaves of the poplars behind the Wren Library. “I never liked your grandmother.” The old woman raised her chin towards Malory. “If it had not been for Settimio here, she would have denied me the privilege of delivering you, and you would have been born in some distant swamp in France.”

“Suor Miriam believes all of France is a swamp,” Settimio said, with no effort at discretion.

“It was one thing for your grandmother to fight against the laws of heredity,” Suor Miriam continued. “She was born a fighter.”

“Laws of heredity?”

“I have not yet informed the Principe of the special nature of his inheritance,” Settimio said to Suor Miriam with an apologetic turn at the corner of his mouth. “You see, mio Principe, while a woman like your grandmother may take up the title, only a man may inherit the kingdom.”

But Malory was more struck by his calculations.

“Did you deliver my grandmother too?”

“ Figurati! ” Suor Miriam laughed, and her eyelids fluttered again, but in a way that Malory could only think had a bit of the coquette in them. “I was a girl then, a novice, barely fourteen, twelve even. But I assisted. I was there. I saw the sorrow of the Principessa , I heard the disappointment of the Principe through closed doors — he was nearly seventy years old, after all, and it was his final opportunity to produce a maschio, an heir. I heard the first screams of your grandmother, her refusal to be decorous in the face of the disaster that was her birth.

“I was too young to have an opinion. Perhaps I am still too young.” Her eyelids fluttered again but didn’t wait for a gallant response from Malory. “Later, I was sympathetic. My friend Settimio agrees with me, I know. The church, and perhaps your kingdom, would benefit from the participation of women in more than childbirth.” Of the two of them, the nun seemed clearly older — ten, perhaps twenty years. In another life, or perhaps in this one for all Malory knew, their familiarity might have been connubial. Perhaps the nun was all the family Settimio had. Perhaps her enforced celibacy provided suitable companionship for Settimio. Malory had known him, after all, for less than three hours and had no idea whether there was a Signora Settimio, half a dozen Settimio sons, and a brace of junior Settimini.