A Glancing Light

still be in Rotterdam then?'

'I can be.'

'All right, save Monday for me, will you? Maybe I can fly out through Amsterdam and stay for most of the day. It's just a quick train ride to Rotterdam.'

'Don't bother about that. I'll meet you in Amsterdam. Oh, Chris, could you really do that? It'd be wonderful!'

'Don't worry,' I said, my spirits higher than they'd been in months, 'I'll work it out. Give me a number where I can reach you tomorrow. That'll give me a chance to figure out the logistics, okay?'

The telephone rang the next morning at about eight, just as I finished shaving. I toweled off the shaving cream and picked up the receiver. 'Pronto.'

'Dr. Norgren,' the prissy voice said in English, 'I am sorry to disturb you. I am Mr. Marchetti, the assistant manager You are leaving your room today, this is correct?'

 'Yes, that's right.' With the towel I dabbed at some cream behind my ear.

'We are having a small problem at the desk. Through a misunderstanding, a shortage of rooms has developed. May I ask if you will be staying until check-out time?'

'I can check out early if that would help.'

I heard a relieved sigh. 'Thank you so much.'

'What time did you have in mind?'

'Would ten o'clock be too early? We don't want to inconvenience you.'

'No, in fact I can be out of my room in half an hour if you like.'

'Ah, that would be wonderful. You're sure it's no trouble? If you wish, you can leave your luggage with the bell captain until you need it. I will send up a boy.'

'That's all right, I'll take it down myself.'

'As you wish. You will be going to the airport? You would like a taxi?'

'Yes, it takes about half an hour, doesn't it?'

'On Saturday morning, about twenty minutes.'

'All right, could you have one here at eleven-thirty, please? Or better make that eleven-twenty to be on the safe side.'

'With pleasure. Molte grazie, signore.'

'Non c'e di che.'

By eight-thirty I had settled my bill, made arrangements for a room when I got back on Sunday night before flying on to Amsterdam the following morning, and left my bags with the bell captain, who wrote out a receipt and placed them with the rest of the luggage that lined one wall of the reception lobby. Then I went into the dining area and had breakfast, a good one: juice, a bucket-sized cup of strong caffe latte, and a basket of crusty, warm rolls, toast, jam, and cheese.

All the same I didn't linger over it. This was, in fact, the first meal I 'd had there. The Hotel Europa, as Calvin had implied, was not big on ambience. The building was an early nineteenth-century palazzo that had been reasonably well- maintained, with large public rooms, head-high paneling, and decent nineteenth-century fakes of good eighteenth- century paintings hung high on the walls. But there was a depressing, anonymous feel to the place, perhaps from the 1950s imitation-leather sofas, or from the total absence of amenities like flowers, or vases, or rugs, or ornaments on the tables. If you've ever stayed in a Moscow hotel, you know the feeling. Everyone else in the place seemed to be a businessman in for the trade fair, which apparently had to do with mattress and cushion manufacture, or so it seemed from the snatches of conversation I heard around me.

I finished the last of the coffee and walked to the Municipal Archaeological Museum a couple of blocks away on Via Archiginnasio. It was the only museum in Bologna I'd never been to, and I was anxious to see the well- known head of the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV it had on display. Well, moderately anxious. And once I'd seen it my interest in the remaining Egyptian exhibits quickly waned. There is, you have to admit, a certain numbing sameness about pharaonic heads. After you've looked at them for a few minutes, you're no longer sure if you're looking at Thutmose II or Thutmose III, or maybe even Amenhotep I. You don't much care, either.

There I am, being provincial again. I apologize. Pharaonic heads can be terrific, but I guess I just wasn't in a museum mood for once. After a few more minutes, with over two hours to kill, I walked several hundred feet farther down Via Archiginnasio, sat down at an outdoor table at the crowded Caffe Zanarini, ordered an espresso that I didn't really want, and thought about how to pass the time.

The cafe looked out over the Piazza Galvani, already buzzing with streams of well-dressed people, mostly women, mostly elegant, who had the steely look of serious Saturday shoppers in their eyes. At the center was a modest statue of the locally born Galvani, and beyond that, at the corner of Via Farina was an ancient but ordinary- looking apartment building with a marble plaque that was too small to read from where I sat. I knew what it said, however: Guido Reni had died there on August 18, 1642. At the other end of the piazza loomed the facadeless back of the basilica with its crazy jumble of 600 years' worth of changed plans, there for all the world to see in the stops and starts and metamorphoses of its naked brickwork.

It was the kind of scene that ordinarily would have occupied me for a reflective hour, but this morning I was restless, impatient to get on to Sicily. I jumped up after a few minutes, went to a telephone, and called the airport. Yes, I was told, there was an earlier Aer Mediterranea flight to Catania, departing at 10:15 A.M., and yes, they would be happy to reassign me to it.

That left an hour. I walked quickly back to the hotel, picked up my bags, and got the desk clerk to get me a taxi. I was at the Borgo Panigale Airport at 9:45, which left barely enough time, because security precautions in Europe, and in Italy in particular, are painstaking. If I'd been on an international flight, or had had anything but carry-on luggage, I wouldn't have had a chance to make it. As it was, I had to stand in a men-only line (the women had their own) to enter a booth where I was patted down and gone over with a metal-sensitive wand. Then I was directed to another line, this one heterosexual, first to have my bags go through the X-ray scanner, and then to put them on a counter where they would be opened like everyone else's and meticulously gone through.

Almost. I got as far as the X-ray machine. My suit bag had just come through the scanner without incident, and I was waiting for my old red duffel bag, when the conveyor belt stopped moving. A few seconds passed.

'C'e una problema?' I asked the woman behind the machine.

She stopped her whispered conference with a guard. 'No, davvero, ' I was told with a cheerful smile. 'Va bene.'

All the same, the conveyor wasn't moving. I checked my watch, wondering if I'd make the flight after all. Well, no real problem if I didn't. I'd just catch the one I'd originally planned to take. I realized I'd forgotten to call Ugo about the change, so it might not make a difference anyway. Still, I would have preferred to be up and away rather than waiting around the airport.

My thoughts were going along in this lazy manner when the area erupted into noise and activity.

'Everybody out!' one of the nearby guards shouted suddenly in Italian. 'Hurry, back to the lobby!'

Travelers in this part of the world do not need to be told such things twice. The orderly line flew apart as people scrambled helter-skelter for the main terminal. The woman behind the X-ray scanner turned and fled with the rest of them. I started to do the same thing but found myself tangled up with my neighbors, as did many others. There was quite a bit of yelling going on now as people tried desperately to unsnarl their arms and legs from other people's luggage straps.

'Scusi, ' I shouted above the noise, and tugged hard to free my arm. It didn't budge. The grip on it tightened. So did the grasp on my other arm. Startled, I glanced around and found a uniformed guard, a big one, on either side of me, holding tight.

'Che c'e? ' I stammered. What's the matter?

For answer I was pulled roughly out of the line and pushed down the passageway in the opposite direction from everyone else.

'Faccia presto! ' I was told. Hurry up.

It wasn't as if I had any choice. They had never let go of my elbows, and now they hustled me down the aisle between them. I can't say my heels were actually dragging on the floor, but if I'd tried to hold my ground they certainly would have been. These were big men, and they meant business. I could see two other uniformed guards trotting close behind us with semiautomatic weapons unslung and at the ready. Not teenagers this time, but grown