Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“What does Louiza have to do with my safety?”

“Please, Malory …”

“Antonella, who were these Americans?”

“Americans, Malory. Like the Americans my mother told me about after the War. All smiling and asking innocent questions about imaginary numbers and dividing by zero.”

“Dividing by zero?” Malory found himself squeezing Antonella’s hand in his excitement. Hadn’t Louiza told him about her childhood ambition to divide by zero? And here were the Americans snooping around the Maths Faculty talking about dividing by zero.

“Malory,” Antonella said, “these are not ordinary mathematicians. One of them — he looked like a soldier — he came and sat on the edge of my desk. He said he liked my hair, you know, that kind of soldier. He asked me about dividing by zero, and I told him I don’t even divide chocolate biscuits. And then, as he was reaching inside my biscuit tin, I thought of my Malory, and I said, ‘If you want to know about dividing by zero, why don’t you ask Louiza?’”

“And?” Malory knew he was squeezing too tightly but didn’t want to break the spell of the name.

“The soldier jumped up from my desk as if my biscuit was poison!”

Malory wasn’t certain why he was excited by this news — it certainly supported Antonella’s contention that this was dangerous business. But it was the first time since October that the world had deigned to recognize the reality of Louiza.

“I don’t know if they are CIA,” Antonella whispered, “or FBI or military or top secret some other letters. But if you want to know what your Antonella thinks, I think Louiza is working in another Maths Faculty that doesn’t have anything to do with my Sidgwick Site. Some place that is very interesting to the Americans. Some place secret. And dangerous. I know.”

Dangerous. If Louiza were, in fact, involved with American intelligence, then there must be a way — Settimio would certainly have the appropriate phone numbers tucked somewhere in the Villa — for Malory to contact them, find her. He had selected the latest pope, been asked to serve dinner to Princess Grace. That must be good for something, for information. “Was there one American?” Malory asked. “Tall? Red beard?”

“Information is dangerous, Malory.”

Malory couldn’t imagine what Antonella meant. Cholera was dangerous. The Red Brigades were dangerous. Miscalculating the arrival of a Dublin-bound ferry was dangerous. But information had neither bacteria nor trigger.

“But your Antonella has other information that will make her Malory very excited!” Antonella unleashed her hands and plunged them into the unshapen cloth bag on the pew beside her. Malory expected biscuits. Instead, Antonella drew out a Heffers bag holding a heavy binder, the size of a doctoral dissertation. “ Ecco! ” she said. “You see, Malory. All you have to do is ask your Antonella, and …” Malory couldn’t for the life of him remember what he had asked his — had asked Antonella, except, of course, to help him in any and all ways to find Louiza. Then he opened the binder and remembered.

Before leaving Cambridge, he had shown the Chapbook to Antonella and had asked her to translate the first lines. One garden. One tree. That much he remembered. She had offered to make a photo copy and more, a full translation — since all but the final lines were in Italian and Malory’s grasp of the language didn’t extend beyond buon giorno and forse oggi.

“My goodness,” he said, trying to focus a new enthusiasm on Antonella’s dedication.

“Oh, Malory,” Antonella said, seeing straight into the heart of Malory’s embarrassment. “You have no idea what is inside here. All the travels, all the meetings of your Isaac Newton. I used a marker to highlight all the names of people and places.” Antonella turned to Malory until he was almost in her lap, under the gaze of Lippi’s Madonna, the divine impregnation coming at her on the wings of a dove, full of a certain kind of portent. She turned the pages. Names jumped up at Malory in yellow — Rotterdam, Münster, the Abbey of Westphalia, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Descartes, Nuremberg, Leibniz.

“Leibniz!” Malory shrieked, perhaps less loudly than when the Pip flew off the organ loft of Santa Maria but no less forcefully. “Leibniz in a journal about Newton? Newton hated Leibniz. Leibniz boasted that he had invented the calculus first, before Newton.” And yet, Malory read in the journal of Newton’s Italian chum about how the two of them had stopped off in Nuremberg in August of 1666 to visit some Rosicrucian friends of the chum and had met the young Leibniz, who was working as an apothecary and engaged Newton in a discussion of alchemy.

Malory, of course, knew all about Newton’s interest in alchemy, his years of research and countless experiments looking for the Philosopher’s Stone that would turn ordinary metals into gold and the Elixir of Life, the liquid gateway to immortality. He knew about his calculation of the End of Time based on cranky interpretations of Biblical texts. But Malory, like all other Newton scholars, considered these interests to be the side hobbies at best of a Newton gone ga-ga long after his brain had been pickled by the extraordinary discoveries of 1666.

And yet here, so it seemed, was information — information more precise than the vague notion that Americans were snooping around the Cambridge Maths Faculty trying to divide by zero — that Newton was interested in alchemy from an early age. Perhaps the Newton community had it backwards. Perhaps alchemy, magic, and crackpot religion had been Newton’s reasons for waking up in the morning, and the hard science — the work on gravitation, optics, the calculus (and meeting Leibniz in the winter of 1666!) — were at best sidelines, things that Newton whipped off while he was sitting on the loo. Accidental discoveries, as Settimio would say.

Malory looked up at Antonella. The light around her had changed. Beyond the copper curls and blue halo, Antonella was indeed the Angel of the Annunciation. She had brought him great good news, information that, perhaps like the announcement of the Virgin’s impending birth, was both miraculous and potentially dangerous.

“Antonella,” he said, lifting her up from the pew, “it’s Christmas Eve. Would you like to see something spectacular?”

THE PREMIERE OF TIBOR’S DIVINE COMEDY WAS SET FOR THAT EVENING. After much back and forth with the Minister of Monuments, half a dozen archaeologists, and the carabinieri of eight districts, a 5 p.m. curtain was scheduled for the Inferno in the Colosseum. The Purgatorio would begin its procession at midnight, winding out past the Forum, Trajan’s Column, Mussolini’s balcony in the Piazza Venezia, and up the Corso to the Piazza del Popolo. And then, in the first light of Christmas morning, the finale to Dante’s grand trio, the Paradiso , would unveil itself in St. Peter’s Square.

Malory led Antonella out of Santa Maria as the bell in the spiral of the tower of San Ivo rang four. The elephant with the obelisk balanced on its back looked revived, washed clean of color. Malory also felt the anticipation of renewal, and it drew Antonella’s sculpted fingers into the crook of his arm at the top of the steps. Malory knew that the Driver was watching from a discreet distance. He didn’t mind. He didn’t mind the Driver following them as they walked out to the Corso and past the single pine tree in the center of the Piazza Venezia. He didn’t mind him following them down the Fori Imperiali, already overflowing its banks with Romans heading towards Christmas dinners and tourists searching for pre-Christian meaning in a beer or a Negroni.