Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“The Pip,” Tibor said, looking at the stairs up to the cabin door. “Do you have the Pip?”

And so I stayed — the only way we could get him onto the plane — with the promise that I would find Malory, with the promise that I would find you and bring you and the Pip to him.

I took the next flight to Rome. I had no idea where to look for you. But I went to see Sister Francesca Splendida — I hadn’t been back in ten years. And as I entered the Basilica of Santa Sabina, I looked up at the light, translucent through the foggy marble, and knew that you were close by. I know how to find people.

Monday, September 10, is Tibor’s birthday. He will turn fifty, and you must be there. He is stuck, like Dante, in the middle of the road of life, the right road lost. He has been tested by loss and has surrendered to gloom. He needs a Virgil to guide him out of the dark woods. You must come. I know you are the little Englishman with the pale English wife. I know you lost that wife and also lost a baby at Fatebenefratelli. And maybe all that loss makes it difficult for you to go to Tibor. But you must come. And you must — Tibor was very insistent — you must bring the Pip. Do you know what he means? The Pip?

MALORY HADN’T TOUCHED HIS SCONE. NOR HIS TEA. HE HAD ONE thought — it is not possible.

He had other thoughts — it will not happen.

Yet he also had a question, for himself.

How can I tell this girl, this Ottavia who somehow found her way past the doors, the gates, the walls, the alarms, the buzzers, not to mention Settimio and his invisible minions, how can I give this girl who found me the simple answer No, when I have forgotten how to speak?

In the beginning, Settimio brought me invitations for meetings with popes and rabbis, imams and lamas, politicians and supplicants. In the beginning, Settimio brought messages that came four, sometimes ten times a day, frantic messages from Antonella, from all the residents of the Dacia that through Fra Mario eventually found their way to Settimio. I ignored all news, especially news of Tibor. I had seen what I had seen — the position of Tibor’s body, the position of Antonella’s body beneath his, the velocity of Cristina’s walking away, the futility of my own observation. On the morning of December 26, 1978, I made the calculations that anyone with basic Newtonian common sense would have made. All added up to betrayal.

“Go,” Tibor told me at Fatebenefratelli and promised to look after Louiza.

“Go,” Tibor told me at the Dacia and promised to look after Antonella.

I went. I trusted those promises. Trust — the One True Rule of friendship.

Not for Tibor.

The betrayal is too great.

I will not go again.

Twenty-three years ago, I climbed into my oil lamp and pulled down the lid. In twenty-three years, I have set foot outside the grounds of the Villa Septimania precisely once, spoken to no one except Settimio, and most of what I have said to Settimio required no speech. For twenty-three years I have stared at the statue of Newton, the Princess of Septimania, and the marble apple. The force of gravity that Bernini harnessed in his sculpture, the force that attracted the two lovers and their apple into a perfect balance no longer calls to me. I’d had the gall to imagine the woman as Louiza and the man as myself and to dream that such a perfect balance guided our lives. But I had been late, been off-balance. I forsook the quest for Louiza and our lost child in a misbegotten lunge for happiness and Antonella. I rejected gravity, rejected attraction, rejected all of them, including Newton.

What did I have left? Septimania.

From the depths of my lamp, I sent away for books and papers, entire libraries on Newton and science. I corresponded with super-experts in super-gravity, super-symmetry, super-colliders, cosmology, string theory, and quantum hoo-hah to such an extent that Settimio had to redesign the Sanctum Sanctorum and wire it with serious self-updating computer machinery to handle the quantity and quality of information that I collected from Feynman in California, Hawking back in Cambridge, Greene, Klebanov, Polyakov, and even Freeman Dyson whose black holes and theory of perpetual free-fall felt most sympathetic to my own state.

I built tunnels and bookshelves, dug deep and deeper, seven times seven, beneath the orange trees and Roman pines, into the hill of the Aventino. I filled the tunnels with books, with manuscripts. As Settimio brought in computers, I devised a way with him to digitize what we have and acquire what we have not with a system that receives without giving any clue of its existence. The amount of knowledge I have beneath me, beneath the Villa Septimania, would not only bury Minerva the Goddess, but Maria the Mother, and two, if not all three, of the Catholic Gods without giving a clue to the outside world.

Discretion.

Settimio passed on the key to quiet acquisition of knowledge, as I searched for what Newton knew, as I tried to put the world in tune. Discreetly. Leaving no trace.

I buried myself in everything and anything that might lead me back to Newton’s One True Rule so I might begin again. I sat and thought, the way Newton sat and thought back in our frozen rooms next to the gate of Trinity College. But I couldn’t will myself back to the balance of knowledge and ignorance that Newton had.

I am not Newton. I am a descendant. And even if I am not the giant that Newton was, I am standing at least several shoulder heights above the giant, and see far too far to limit my vision. My knowledge is made up of toothpaste that cannot be unsqueezed.

My memory cannot be unsqueezed.

I have sat in this dining room every day staring at this statue, contemplating the one mystery I cannot explain. I have read of Arthur and Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone, and all the tales in the Arabian Nights.

I am Malory — King of the Christians, King of the Jews, and, if the Princess of Septimania’s Chapbook is to be believed, I am the Son of Newton, King of Science, King of the World, and yet I have nothing and have nothing to say. I argued that the answer was One. Tibor argued that the answer was Seven, at the very least. The answer was none of the above, neither negative nor imaginary.

The answer is Zero, terrifying and complete.

I have Zero to say to this girl. Less to say to Tibor.

On Christmas Day, I will turn fifty myself. And still I have Zero to say.

And yet, this girl found me.

Ottavia? Could that possibly be her name?

Could she possibly be Tibor’s daughter?

Could she possibly remind me more completely of a day, almost twenty-three years ago, that I have worked so forcefully to forget?

And yet — if the simple really were the sign of the truth — it is clear, despite Ottavia’s theatrical delivery, that if someone does not rescue him, Tibor will be dead very soon.

I will not be that someone, even though I have no wish to see Tibor dead.

And yet I do not want the girl to leave empty-handed.

The Pip. She asked for the Pip.

It is here, of course, in its canister. Behind Newton and his Queen.

POOR MALORY. I DON’T KNOW WHICH OF US WAS MORE THE GHOST. BUT while I explained myself, while I told my story, he shrank further and further into himself, as if he might disappear and leave only a pile of corduroy on the terrazza. But after I finished telling him about Tibor, after I finished telling him why I had come to find him, to bring him to the United States, to bring him up the Hudson to TiborTina, where Cristina was busy preparing a celebration of Tibor’s fiftieth birthday in the hope of a miraculous rejuvenation, I waited. I waited five minutes, fifteen. I polished off two scones and three espressos.

Finally, Malory spoke, in a voice that convinced me that he really hadn’t spoken to much of anyone in a long time.