The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [36]
“I suppose many people have at least one place like that.”
“Look at that gorgeous sweater,” Jean exclaimed, stopping in front of a window. “I’ll bet it costs thirty thousand lire…. Yes, it’s funny, but we all have our own places here in Rome. Even Dana has admitted that when she’s depressed she goes and sits on a rock in the Forum. That’s not very original, but then neither is Dana.”
“What about Michael?”
Jean laughed sharply.
“Michael. Would you like to see his place? We’re practically on top of it. And five will get you ten Michael is there right now.”
Jacqueline murmured agreement, and Jean led the way down the street. Her scraped knees were killing her by this rime. They had almost reached the scene of her recent near-demise when she stopped under the grateful shade of a tall tree, and gestured.
“There it is.”
Jacqueline studied the stairs that led up to an undistinguished church facade.
“Michael in a church?”
“Just wait,” Jean said. “Just wait.”
Jacqueline had read her guidebook; before they reached their final destination Jean saw comprehension begin to dawn on her face. But no amount of reading could prepare a viewer for the actuality.
It was an unpretentious place, only half a dozen small chapels opening off of a long, drab-painted corridor. The decorations were the source of the attraction. They were composed of human bones.
The long bones of arms and legs were piled in neat stacks, and human skulls formed the altars. Walls and ceilings were festooned with swags and scallops of vertebrae; a series of hip bones made a particularly ornamental pattern. Only the humbler members of the group had served as decorative sources; the more distinguished had been allowed to remain intact. They were present—some hanging from hooks, some lying flat in niches, all garbed in the drab-brown Capuchin habit. Their bony faces wore the same expression of fleshless laughter.
“Argh,” Jacqueline said, and then smiled weakly at the single living member of the order, who was standing guard in the corridor. “I’ve read about this place. I had decided that under no circumstances would I visit it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jean said. “It was a dirty trick, sneaking you in here. I loathe the place myself. I’ll never forget the first time Michael brought me here. I had not read about it.”
“You should read Mark Twain’s description,” Jacqueline said. She glanced into the next chapel, which contained more of the same, and glanced quickly away. “The Innocents Abroad is still one of the greatest travel books ever written…. I’d love to meet the man who thought this up.”
“You can meet someone with the same type of mind,” Jean said grimly. She gestured. “Look. What did I tell you?”
Michael was propped against the wall by the farthest chapel. He looked completely plastic and incapable of standing alone; the curve of his shoulders, back, and legs made a perfect arc. He was barefoot, and the shirt and flapping trousers he wore were of the same muddy hue as his tanned skin. He seemed to be unaware of them, and of the tourists who passed him, giggling or squealing according to their moods. His brooding profile, framed by the locks of his long dark hair, was bleached out by the artificial light.
“He looks frighteningly appropriate, standing there,” Jacqueline said after a moment.
“Christ contemplating the damned in hell,” Jean said. “Don’t think Michael doesn’t cultivate the resemblance. With a beard, he’d look like one of the paintings of Jesus.”
“In the earliest representations of Christ, he is shown as young and beardless,” Jacqueline said.
“Where do you learn these things?”
“My mind is a hopeless jumble of useless information,” Jacqueline admitted. “Shall we steal quietly away?”
“He’s seen us.”
Michael’s head turned. No other part of his body moved, but a smile spread slowly over his face.
“Ciao,” he said amiably. “What are you two doing here?