The Fallen Angel

I took one look and knew I couldn’t stay out of the world forever. It’s like every other Caravaggio I’ve ever seen: a call to life. A challenge, to face our fears.’

‘And the Church?’ he asked.

‘I’m still a good Catholic. I simply came to understand there are more definitions of the word “good” than I’d learned inside a convent. Also I missed Rome. .’ She closed her eyes. ‘. . so very much.’ She smiled and looked back at the city, now growing somnolent beneath the clear night sky. ‘I grew up here. This place is my life. I couldn’t leave it forever. Could you?’

‘Never. This job of yours. .’ He still struggled with the idea of her earning a living like everyone else. ‘How did you get it?’

‘Hard work! How else? I didn’t sit in my cell all day, you know. I have the degree, the postgraduate qualifications, to teach the history of art anywhere in the world. Why do you think those eminent men from the Palazzo Barberini used to come to me for an opinion?’

‘Because they valued it,’ he said quickly.

‘Quite. On Monday I become assistant professor at the Raffaello College in the Corso. It’s a school for foreign students. Not a public university exactly. Perhaps that will come later. But it’s a job, the first I’ve ever had. Teaching spoilt brats the history of art. Caravaggio in particular. You, however, may attend my lectures for free.’

‘I will.’

‘No. I was joking. You know as much as I do about him. More in some ways. You can see into his head. I never will. Frankly I don’t want to.’

Her hand went to his hair. She stroked his head, as if amazed by their closeness.

‘Those ghosts really are gone, aren’t they?’ Agata Graziano whispered.

‘Exorcized,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me what buried them. I don’t want to know. It’s enough that they’re dead.’

TWO

Costa felt awkward holding her. He still had a gelato in one hand, as did she, and it seemed inevitable that this experimental moment would culminate in a kiss. He was happy with this idea, provided the evening ended there. He needed to think about Agata’s sudden reappearance in Rome a little more. In the morning, when his head was clearer, and hers too.

She noticed his predicament with the ice cream, raised a single dark eyebrow, and nodded at the ground.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve enough litter in Rome as it is.’

He got to his feet, took the half-finished cone from her fingers, went to the bin at the end of the bench and deposited both ice creams there.

When he got back she was standing up, a diminutive and beautiful young woman with her arms folded across her chest. She wore a tight dark jacket, a scarlet silk shirt and grey slacks. Around her neck was a silver chain with some abstract ornament — not a cross — that he’d noticed earlier. Her dusky, compact face was stiff with a familiar bemused anger. The noise of the revellers finding their way home from the Campo and Trastevere was getting louder all the time. Bellowed shouts and obscenities in foreign languages. This was the price of being an international city.

‘Perhaps not all the ghosts have gone,’ Agata said. ‘I wonder. .’

‘Enough talking,’ Costa said, then took her in his arms and kissed her, chastely almost, on the lips, holding her very gently so that she could withdraw easily from his grip.

He imagined this was the first time any man had embraced Agata Graziano, not that he had much idea of what she’d done in Malta for the last two years.

They broke for breath. Since they’d last met scarcely a day had passed when he hadn’t thought about the curious little sister from the convent in the centro storico who had fought so bravely to find some justice for him after the efforts of the police and the judiciary had failed.

To his astonishment her eyes stayed wide open throughout.

‘I’m sorry,’ Costa said quickly.

‘No, no, no. . don’t apologize.’

‘I didn’t mean. . I thought. .’

She waited, then said, ‘Thought what?’

‘I thought that perhaps you wanted me to. .’

Before he’d finished she dashed forward, kissed him quickly and rather roughly on the lips, then pulled back grinning, looking a little wild.

‘I did. And I like this!’ Agata announced brightly before lunging at him once more.

The kiss was brief, the embrace longer. She stayed in his arms, smiling, her head against his chest.

‘I like this a lot,’ she murmured. ‘Nic. .’

She glanced up at him. At that moment, from somewhere in the network of streets on the city side of the bridge, there was a cry, that of a man in terrible pain. Then, not long after, came a young female voice calling, shouting, words that were so high-pitched and full of distress they were incomprehensible.

‘You can’t take your car home,’ Agata declared, trying to ignore the din. ‘You’ve had too much to drink. A taxi driver will charge the earth to take you out to that beautiful house in the country. My job comes with a little apartment.’ She hiccupped, out of embarrassment perhaps. ‘In the Via Governo Vecchio, believe it or not. Please. .’

He shuffled from side to side and stared at his feet. He hadn’t been driving a car lately. At the beginning of the month, when the city began to wind down, he’d decided to resurrect his father’s ancient Vespa scooter from the garage. With the spare time from his holiday he’d got it back on the road. The thing was parsimonious with fuel and it was wonderful to feel the fresh air against your face in weather like this, dodging the traffic, parking anywhere. The Vespa was a little rusty in places but the engine still had noisy fire in its little belly. Now the decrepit little turquoise beast was just round the corner, waiting in a side street.

The racket from across the road kept getting louder and louder.

‘In my apartment I have a. .’ She struggled for the words as her skin took on the warmth of a rising blush. ‘A. .’

‘A couch?’

‘I have a bed.’ Agata blinked at him, wobbling a little. ‘There. I’ve said it.’ She smiled, a little bashful, perhaps even a little ashamed. ‘You’re happy, just like Teresa said you’d be. Finally. The Nic I always knew was there even when I could see your heart was breaking. My Nic. .’

‘You’re babbling,’ he said, reaching forward and taking her shoulders. ‘Do you have a couch?’

‘I am not babbling. Of course I’ve got a stupid couch. I live in the Via Governo Vecchio.’

‘Good. Then. .’

The unseen girl was screaming again, at the top of her voice. There was real agony and fear in her cries, not the drunkenness and violence he’d come to recognize over the years. He could see his concern reflected in Agata’s shocked features.

‘There’s something wrong,’ she said, her eyes wide and glassy with trepidation.

‘Stay here, please,’ Costa ordered.

Then he ran across the riverside road and down towards the tortuous web of lanes and alleys that meandered in every direction out from the ghetto like a tangle of veins and arteries wound around the human heart.

THREE