by Joe Andriano
150.
22.
Epilogue: Where the Fire Burned
They
were deluded who thought, in early 2000, the millennium was new. It really was
old, still late twentieth century. An ancient simpler time, with 9/11 a
year-and-a-half away and Katrina still a pretty name. Once people realized
there would be no Y2K apocalypse, it even became a time of optimism. So it had
briefly been for Marc DiCaso, until he ignored all the warnings of personal catastrophe—from friends and lovers,
from spirits and phantoms, even from tarot cards. Thanks to both Charlene’s and Lauren’s testimony,
the court ordered the tests Marc needed, and finally getting a definite
diagnosis of RBD, he was able to plea bargain from second-degree murder to negligent
homicide. The sympathetic judge, convinced that Marc had been completely
unaware of what he had done, was ready to give him a stiff fine and a suspended
sentence. But he had his lawyer actually plea for the maximum five-year prison
term. To truly atone he knew he needed to do the time. “I am responsible,” he
told the judge, “for what I didn’t know I was doing. I didn’t murder, but I did
kill.” She readily agreed. Marc
was in prison in September 2001, when the new millennium really did finally
begin. He got out in August 2005, in the
last few days of Old New Orleans. Katrina's deluge spared Ristorante DiCaso, which
sustained only a little damage. With so much devastation all around him, Marc
took no pleasure in his good fortune, but he could not help but think of it as
a way to continue the atonement begun in prison. His house on Josephine did take a hit from
Katrina, though—in the form of a tree limb crashing through a side window. The
rain streamed sideways into the window, creating enough of a flood to ruin
rugs, furniture, computer, AV equipment, and books—including Paolo Culotta's version of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Marc had hoped one day to actually read it in
Italian, which he'd finally learned in prison, partly for that
purpose. The book was now an unreadable block of soggy wavy agglutinated pages,
totally ruined. Marc knew from the increasing rarity of Lauren's visits to him in prison, that it was over
between them even before he got out. Then, after Katrina, she left New Orleans,
though she did say she might some day return. The monster storm actually drove
her back to graduate school to work on a Ph.D. in meteorology. She moved to
Tallahassee to attend Florida State, planning to write her dissertation on the
hurricane. On the way there, she stopped in every devastated town she could in
Louisiana and Mississippi, and began her research before she was even formally
accepted into the program.
And
what of Circe, soul tracker? No sign of her.
While Marc was in prison, Charlene checked his house periodically.
Lauren, of course, gave up on the Randi challenge. The uncanny
cat was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she was waiting for a sign of
Marc's impending
demise. She waited until she could smell his death, like a circling
buzzard.
The comparison was completely unfair; he knew she was more like a
guardian
spirit, keeping track of his soul until his spirit could rejoin it.
That could
only happen, he decided, if he did whatever he could to help revive
the drowned city,
whether it was free meals for workers or donations of both time and
money. |
151.
Poe came to him one more time to tell him Vivica
would not back off. Fortunately, Marc was asleep and medicated. Poe sat by his
feet, dressed in the usual black, barely visible except for his gleaming
forehead and yellowing white shirt. "Where else can she go?" he said. "Your violent act split her spirit from her soul,
and she has no Circe to track it. But do not despair, for her spirit cannot haunt you
forever. Her energy wanes, and she will eventually dissipate. Without souls,
spirits eventually die. When her soul reincarnates it will acquire a new
spirit. It probably already has done so." "So why haven't you dissipated?" "Nolano's half-baked spell made Circe a powerhouse. At
least he did that part right. As long as I can find her, hold her, I will not
fade away. I draw energy from her. I intend to fuse with our soul so we don't, like Vivica, have to start anew in the dismal
swamp of lowly souls." "But isn't that what I deserve, after what I've done?" "No! Because you are striving to atone." "Where is Circe now?" "Not
far from me, but she is keeping her distance from you, until the time
is right. Let's just say for now she is lurking at the threshold of
your world." Poe vanished then, and Marc sensed that the next time
the ghost came to him, Circe would come too.
Poe was right—Vivica did finally stop
appearing, her hapless spirit fading away. For now he put all thoughts of the
metaphysical out of his mind. He concentrated on helping his neighbors and
cooking good food. He took one vacation, in 2010, a visit to Italy—not
the romantic one he’d envisioned with Lauren, but one he felt compelled to
take, all alone. Shortly after checking into his hotel in Rome he wended his
way to the Campo dei Fiori and stood amidst the throng of shoppers in the
bustling square to stare at the colossal statue there. He vaguely remembered
the glimpse he’d gotten of it on TV ten years ago. The hooded figure, arms
crossed in front of him, one hand holding a book, stood atop a giant pedestal,
his head some twenty-five feet in the air.
Marc could actually read the Italian inscription on the pedestal: 9 June 1889: To Bruno, from
the century he predicted, here where the
fire burned. Perhaps because he expected a feeling of déjà-vu,
he didn’t get one. But he did feel a gut-tug when he saw a black cat rubbing up
against the pedestal. Please no, he
thought. I’m not ready. Approaching
the cat, he was glad to see white tufts on its paws. He bent down to make sure.
No scar across the nose. He breathed a sigh of relief and started to walk away.
Turning when he was a good twenty feet from the statue, he looked at the
bearded face, now fully illuminated by the sun. It looked familiar. Suddenly he
remembered his dream of almost drowning in Lake Pontchartrain, the monk in the
pirogue extending an oar. That’s the face
I saw in my dream. He thought I should remember him. He took a few pictures with his phone, then
started walking away. He turned to take one last look. A balding man with a
beard, archaically dressed in a charcoal-gray frock coat, stood by the statue. He looks familiar too. I was here before,
with someone who looked like him! Now the déjà-vu hit full force. He
was shouting and I was embarrassed for him as people told him to shut up and
called him crazy. Zitto! Pazzo! Marc
turned back to walk toward the statue. Here
where the fire burned. The crazy man’s ranting voice faded in
and out: The
flames that rose round living limbs, and fell O
soul whose spirit on earth was . . . |
152.
“Here where the fire burned.” Marc spoke aloud to
the statue. “If only it would burn again, consume all my fear and dread, or better yet
burn away the memory in my brain of Vivica dead beside me.” “Il
americano è pazzo,” said a passing stranger, shaking his head. “No,
signor, not crazy, not psychotic.” He pointed to Bruno’s statue. “Metemspsychotic!
I’m off to Venice, signor. Arrivederci!” “Ah,
Venezia,” said the stranger, walking away. “You will fit in there.” He
wandered through the labyrinth of Venice, again expecting déjà-vu but never
getting it. Again he saw a black cat, this time crossing a little bridge. It
darted off as soon as Marc approached. He didn’t bother to pursue, for his
destination was the Doge’s Palace. The painting of the girl who looked like
Lauren was here. He took the Secret Itineraries tour, hoping he would be able
to understand the guide’s Italian. It wasn’t easy; he could read the language
now fairly well, but listening to it with any comprehension was another matter.
Still in all, he was duly awed by the huge masterpieces in the grand chambers,
the magnificence of the Hall of the Grand Council, the claustrophobia of the
prison cells, the horror of the torture chamber. But he went off on his own
when he found the little room with the painting of the crucified girl. In
the center of the triptych, the long-haired girl on the T-shaped cross seemed
now only vaguely to resemble Lauren, it no longer seemed uncanny to him. He was
alone in the room, he thought, but as he studied the picture he noticed a
middle-aged man in a navy-blue hoodie next to him. “That is merely biological,”
said the stranger. “Pardon?”
Marc turned to look him in the face. “You look familiar.” “It’s
easy for a spirit to materialize in places he has been, signor. I
avoided you
in Rome. Not because you were standing right where my body burned but
rather because you were, as they say in this era, having an episode and
I didn’t want to
complicate it.” He looked around. “I’ve never been in this room, but I
spent
some time in the dungeon, over that way.” He pointed at the far corner,
then at
the crucified girl. “The model was surely an ancestor of your Lauren.
As I
said, merely biological.” Marc
felt a chill. “How do you know about—“I
am awake, I know it. Maybe I need to adjust my meds. “Lauren is no longer
mine. Never was, really.” “Veronica
was never mine, either.” Marc didn’t actually see him
disappear. Couldn’t catch him in the act, between blinks. Now you see him, now you don’t. Was
he ever really here at all? The frisson that washed over his body
dissipated as the tour group he had abandoned entered the room. He followed
them to the Bridge of Sighs, which was actually a completely enclosed chamber
suspended high over the Rio. Again he tarried as they moved on. Looking out one
of the two windows, heavily barred with several intersecting circles of thick
white limestone, he could easily make out against a deep blue sky the distant
dome and campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore across the Grand Canal. Captivated
by the sight, he was not immediately aware of the person sidling up to
him. It was the man in the navy-blue hoodie again.
|
153.
“Are you following me?” Marc asked. “I’ve
never been in here either. Never ‘sighed’ here before being taken to the
dungeon.” “That’s
just a romantic myth, isn’t it, prisoners sighing while taking their last look
at beautiful Venice?” The stranger shrugged. “They built this bridge
the very year I was roasted in Rome. I’m here to tell you that only my body was
burned at that stake. What has been at stake ever since is my soul. We are
finally making progress now, signore. And for this I must say to you, Grazie.
Mille grazie.” He bowed ceremoniously like a Renaissance courtier, his right
leg drawn back, his right foot scraping the floor, his right hand across his
abdomen. “You have broken the spell. Not the Circe Spell, of course, for that
was broken from the beginning, botched, you see, because I didn’t heed
Veronica’s warning, and I didn’t have enough experience with those infernal
tarocchi cards, couldn’t fully control their power. She was right, you only
remember me in dreams both waking and sleeping, dreams you then forget. And
perhaps your disorder was my doing, too. But you, Signor Marco, your atonement
has freed our soul from fortune’s crushing wheel.” “I
have no idea what that means.” “It means it is only a matter of time when the soul in there”—touching Marc’s forehead—“fuses with this spirit.” “You sound like Poe.” “I take his form on occasion, just as I take the form of any body our soul has inhabited.” “I never believed in reincarnation, but now I have to; otherwise I'm insane.” “When you see Circe again, you’ll know the time
has come.” “I know, I know.” Marc gazed again out the window at the distant dome. “Tell her I'm not in any big hurry.” When he turned to look at him again, the stranger had wandered away.  |