Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [275]
Alitalia took us to Rome. Mechanical problems on the connecting flight had the agent projecting a fourteen-hour layover. It gave me an idea. In no time Hema and I were once again in a taxi on a freeway, but this time we were heading to downtown Rome. We were like children playing hooky from school.
Hema had needed little convincing. We went to a first-class hotel, the Hassler, Rome's best, I was once told. It was a grand building that overlooked the Spanish Steps. From the rooftop at dusk the sky's red hue outlined the dome of St. Peter's in the distance.
Each morning we set out for the briefest sightseeing. We returned to our hotel for lunch and a long afternoon nap. The evenings we wandered down the streets and alleyways beneath the Spanish Steps. Eventually we'd pick an outdoor café for dinner. “It's so familiar, isn't it?” Hema said. “These menus, typed out and mimeographed, minestrone and pasta fagl-oli, the waiters with white shirts, black pants, white aprons …” I knew what she meant. The Italians had brought it all to Ethiopia, right down to the umbrellas that hung over the little Formica-topped round tables. Hema's face at dinner was as tranquil as Id seen it since I became conscious of her at my bedside at Our Lady. “I wish Ghosh could have been with us. How he would have enjoyed this,” she said, smiling.
ON THE FOURTH MORNING, we let the concierge talk us into a private tour with a guide from our hotel. What did we want to see? Surprise us, we said. Take us off the cow path. Places where there isn't too much walking or waiting in line.
He began with the Santa Maria della Vittoria, a ten-minute ride from our hotel. It was a homely church, sitting right on the street, cars passing by, the elaborate façade looking as if it had been slapped on to the front of an unadorned stone box. Our guide said it was built about 1624, first dedicated to St. Paul, and later to the Virgin Mary. The interior was small—tiny when compared with St. Peter's—with a short nave under a low vault. Off to the side, Corinthian pillars flattened into the wall demarcated three “chapels” which were nothing more than recesses, each with a rail for private prayer and a place to light candles. As we came to the end of the nave, our guide turned to the left and pointed. “This is the Cornaro Chapel. It is what I wanted you to see,” he said.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to relay the sight to my brain, and longer still for my brain to believe. The blue marble sculpture floating before me was Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa. I wanted to silence our guide and say, Stop, I know this sculpture. But in truth what I knew was only a print that found its way onto a calendar which my mother had then thumbtacked to the wall of the autoclave room. It had been up for perhaps thirty years before Ghosh had taken that aging piece of paper and framed it for me, to protect it from further deterioration. The print meant the world to me, yet it had never seemed at ease on my walls in America, where it looked like the cheapest kind of tourist gewgaw. I'd packed it with me on this journey, planning to restore it to the one place where I knew it was at home, the autoclave room.
I looked over to Hema. Her face was aglow. She understood. What providence had brought us to this spot? Surely this was Ghosh announcing his presence, because Ghosh was the sort of man who could be counted on to know that Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa was minutes from our hotel, even if he'd never been to Rome before. Ghosh had brought us here, led us to this spot, not to see St. Teresa in marble, but to see Sister Mary Joseph Praise in the flesh, for that is what the figure was to me. I have come, Mother.
WE LIT CANDLES. Hema fell to her knees, the flame throwing a flickering light on her face. Her lips moved. She believed in every