Of Love and Evil (The Songs of the Seraphim 2)

“He was bloodied and bleeding, cut badly about the head and face. I don’t think he understood me. I lifted the false flags that conceal an underground storage space, and I forced him down into it, roughly and desperately, insisting he remain there until the danger was past. I don’t think he understood what was happening. He fought me madly. Finally I struck him a blow that made him go quiet. Like a child, he turned on his side and, pulling up his knees, put a hand over his face.

“It was then that I glimpsed his treasure and his books in this hiding place, and I thought, it is good these things are hidden, for the ruffians outside are about to breach the house.

“He was shaking and moaning as I put the stones back into place.

“The windows of the house were being broken, the door was being rammed again and again.

“Finally, surrounded by the servants, and armed as best I could be, I opened the door and told the mob that the Jew they sought was not here. I let the ringleaders in to see for themselves.

“I threatened them all with fierce retaliation if they dared harm one item of my property. And my guards and servants watched them as they roamed about the main rooms, down into the cellar and up through some of the bedchambers before finally leaving a good deal more quietly than they had come in. None of them had bothered with the top floor. They did not see the synagogue or the sacred books. What they wanted was blood. They wanted the Jew who had fought them and struck them, and that one they could not find.

“Once the house was secured again, I went to the cellar. I lifted the stones, eager to free my poor friend, and attend to him, and what do you think I found?”

“He was dead,” said Fr. Piero in a low voice.

Signore Antonio nodded. Then he looked off again as if he wished, for all the world, to be absolutely alone now rather than telling this tale.

“Did I kill him?” he asked. “Or did he die from the blows he’d received from the others? How could I know? I knew only he was dead. His suffering was ended. And for the moment, I merely moved the stones back into place.

“That night another mob came, and the house was once again the target for their abuse. But I had left it locked and secured, and when the toughs saw that no lights burned within, they finally went away.

“Soldiers came on Monday after Easter. Was it true, a Jew known to me had attacked Christians in Holy Week when it was forbidden that a Jew be seen in the streets?

“I gave the usual noncommittal responses. How was I to know such a thing? ‘There is no Jew here anymore. Search the house if you like.’ And search the house they did. ‘He’s gone, fled,’ I insisted. They left soon enough. But more than once they came back with the same questions.

“I was miserable with grief and guilt. The more I brooded on it, the more I cursed myself for my roughness with Giovanni, that I had dragged him to the cellar, that I had beaten him to make him lie quiet. I could not bear what I had done, and I could not bear the pain I felt in remembering all that had gone before. And somehow in my misery, I dared to blame him. I dared to blame him that I had not been able to protect him, and heal him. I dared to curse him for the sheer misery that I had felt.”

Again, he stopped and looked away. A long moment passed.

“You left him there, buried in the cellar,” said Fr. Piero.

Signore Antonio nodded, slowly turning to face the priest again.

“Of course I told myself that I would soon attend to his burial. I would wait until no one even remembered the riot of Holy Week and I would go to the elders of his community and tell them that he must be laid to rest.”

“But you never did it,” said Fr. Piero softly.

“No,” said Signore Antonio. “I never did it. I shut up the house and abandoned it. Now and then I stored things there, old furniture, books, wine, whatever had to be moved from this house. But I never entered the house myself. This is the first time, the very first time since, that I have entered the house.”

When it was clear that he had paused again, I said softly, “The ghost has gone quiet. The ghost went quiet when you began to speak.”

Signore Antonio bowed his head and put his hand to his eyes. I thought he would break into sobs, but he only took a ragged breath, and then went on,

“I always thought,” he said, “that I would tend to this, someday, I would have the proper prayers said for him by his own. But I never did.

“Before the end of the year I was married, I began to travel. My wife and I buried more than one child over the years, but my beloved son, Niccolò, whom you see here, has cheated death more than once. Aye, more than once. And there was always some reason not to approach the abandoned house, not to disturb the dust of the cellar floor, not to face the questions of the Jews as to their old friend and scholar Giovanni, not to explain why I had done what I did.”

“But you didn’t murder him,” Fr. Piero said. “It was not your doing.”

“No,” said Signore Antonio, “but he was murdered nevertheless.”

The priest sighed and nodded.

Signore Antonio looked pointedly at Vitale.

“When I met you, I loved you immediately,” he said. “You can’t imagine what a pleasure it was to bring you into the old house, to show you the synagogue and the library, and to put before you so many of Giovanni’s books.”

Vitale nodded gravely. There were tears in his eyes.

Signore Antonio went quiet. Then spoke again. “I wondered if my old friend would be pleased that you were living under the old roof, if he would be pleased that you were going through his many books. And I even wondered more than once if I might ask you to pray for the soul of that scholar who had lived in the house before.”

“I will pray for him,” Vitale whispered.

Signore Antonio looked directly at Fr. Piero.

“Do you still insist it is a demon raging here, a Jewish dybbuk? Or don’t you see now that it was the ghost of my old friend whose memory I consigned to oblivion because I could not bear his pain or my own?”

The priest did not answer.

Signore Antonio looked at me. I could see that he wanted to tell them of my description of the ghost I’d seen, but he did not. He did not want to indict me for seeing spirits or talking to them. I said nothing.

“Why did I not consider the truth of this in the beginning?” he asked, looking once again at Fr. Piero. “And who now is charged, justly, with seeing to it that my old friend’s remains are at last properly laid to rest?”