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VI. MEETING PROFESSOR DARWIN
When you arrive at the house of Professor Luke Darwin, an attractive young woman welcomes you at the door. You have never met her before, but she looks familiar somehow. She treats you like an old friend. She tells you she is the daughter of Professor Darwin, and her name is Amalthea. She is slender and pale-skinned, speaking your language perfectly, but a very Italian-looking beauty, with straight, glossy black hair that flounces over her shoulders. "Come in!" she says animatedly, and almost pulls you across the marble threshold. "Andiamo!" she says brightly, "the Professor is waiting for you." She looks vaguely familiar; have you met her before? She walks briskly away down a sunny corridor, past open windows through which sunshine and fresh air penetrate. You smell good cooking somewhere nearby—probably pasta e’ faggioli (‘pasta and beans’) the wholesome soup that is an Italian staple. You wonder what happened to the ancient housekeeper who kept the place so dark and mausoleal. You follow Amalthea, noting the quick motions of her young figure in casually attractive, Bohemian attire—she wears black ballet tights, and over that simply a long yellowish cotton dress with flowers reaching to her ankles, and a russet scarf tossed lightly around her shoulders. On her feet are huge, hideous brown and black checked house slippers—the hairy, scratchy kind that one steps into—but nothing can detract from the beauty of her youthfulness. The flimsy cotton does not hide the simple but lovely outline of her figure, and her presence adds brightness to the sunlight itself. You follow her down the corridor, past open windows overlooking a small green garden where birds sing in fruit trees. You notice a cage in which sits a cricket or a cicada. No sign of the old lady who came to the door when you were first here.
"Ah!" Darwin says at his lunch table, half rising and throwing his napkin down. A big man, and tall, he stumbles slightly as he rises from his plush, high-backed chair, and Amalthea quickly supports him with her bare arms whose wiry strength is surprising. The room itself is pleasant. The walls are lined with books, and a stylish wooden crucifix with a steel Christ one hand high adorns a small niche in one corner. A yellowing shred of old Palm Sunday palm is looped behind the crucifix. The carpet is Oriental, the window open, the table set before it topped with nougat-like marble. On a thick linen cloth is Darwin’s lunch, consisting, as you suspected, of soup, sliced crisp panini (a bread), and a glass of red wine. "Come, sit!" Darwin urges. "Sorry, but I’m not too steady these days!"
You pull up a high-backed chair similar to his and sit by the window. Immediately you enjoy the cool breeze that blows in among shady gables while hot noontime sunlight creates sundogs over the clay roof tiles high above. "Thank you," you tell him. "I was anxious to see what you had in mind about his tour of Rome."
"You won’t be disappointed," he says, then booms: "Amalthea!"
"Patience, Old Man!" You hear a clatter of dishes, and the young woman comes from a nearby kitchen. Feet shuffling in those huge slippers, she jokingly threatens to hit Darwin over the back of the head with the plate she carries in both hands. It is a plain white soup plate, full and steaming. Under her arm she carries a long, thin flute of bread, and somehow from her other hand dangles a half-full wine bottle. Deftly, she sets your lunch before you. No sooner has the heavy silverware clattered on the linen, than you are devouring your first good home-cooked meal since arriving. You praise Amalthea, and she brushes her hair back, accepting the compliment gracefully as she strides out of the room with her chin held high. She is a slim, athletic young woman in her mid-20s, with glossy dark hair that hangs straight to her shoulders. She has large, sensitive black eyes that sparkle with humor and impudence. Her smile has a certain flash to it, and her skin is a beautiful color like beeswax that traps the light like honey on a perfect summer day.
"Forgive my daughter," Darwin says. "She can get on one’s nerves at times."
"I find her very charming," you say diplomatically.
"You should be around her more," he says simply. He looks a bit yellow, and you suspect jaundice. He picks up his napkin, making much of spreading it on his lap, but he doesn’t look enthused about his food. You notice he seems drenched in a cold sweat, and his eyes are rheumy.
"You aren’t eating," you tell him.
He shrugs. "You might as well know right away that I am very ill."
"I’m sorry to hear that." You are surprised, because he is a strapping chap around sixty, long ago an officer in the Italian infantry, an avid horseman like much of the old nobility of Hapsburg and Vittorio-Emanuele lines. He holds degrees from several universities, at Rome and Freiburg and Cambridge, and there is reputedly a solid family fortune tucked away in a Geneva bank. He is the author of a dozen scholarly books including a famous one about the Lipizzaner stallions of Vienna, but mostly his works treat the history of Rome. He is particularly well-known for his philosophical speculations.
"I am still strong now," he says, mopping an alarmingly darkened forehead. "It’s cancer, and my time is short." He lies back and breathes quietly to calm himself. Amalthea appears by his side as if on cue, laying a warm damp hand-towel across his forehead and patting his wrist to comfort him. "Lungs, liver, what not, I am glad you came because I don’t know how long I have left."
"He should not exert himself," Amalthea says sternly. She stands with one arm protectively around his shoulder. You do not notice any significant family resemblance. Darwin assures her about his condition, and Amalthea leaves the room. He tells you: "We must eat now and get on with our trip."
"Take your time," you suggest as you resume eating with gusto. You savor the salty broth, the tiny pasta shells rolling on the seafloor of the plate amid shreds of freshly cooked tomatoes and herbs. Alternately, you take bites of fresh bread doctored with a light, tangy prosciutto. You wash it down with sips of a richly evocative, almost moody red wine that is thick as blood, dry as a dusty Carrera ravine on a hot afternoon. He shakes his head. "You will eat for both of us. I have no appetite, except for the journey ahead." He sees the questions written on your face, and toys with his wine glass, careful not to stain the marble. Instead, he leaves purple rings on the white linen. "I have chosen you from a list of many because you are trustworthy and brave. You have the intellectual gifts to understand what you will see, and the courage to respond correctly in moments of danger. Amalthea will accompany us, a source of great strength and very practical at times."
You ask about the strange brochure that came in the mail at your home.
Looking conspiratorial, he pushes the old-fashioned European-style swinging window from wide open to nearly closed. "We are going to ancient Rome. It will be a short but very intense trip and you will have a lifetime to tell and write about it—if anyone believes you, or if you remember anything."
"I thought you were joking."
He leans close, pokes a thick, powerful finger under your nose, and says significantly: "Tonight, you will sleep in a villa in Ostia that at this moment lies in ruins."
"No."
"Yes. A place that has not been home to a soul since the time of the emperors." He sees your incredulity and nods. "It is a dangerous journey, to be sure. I feel you will not lose your nerve, and I know you will bring back that which you prize the most—knowledge. Not gold or jewels, not riches of any kind."
"Why do you want to do this, Professor? You say it’s dangerous, and you are ill."
He leans forward with a devilishly secretive grin and a glimmer in his eyes. This is the moment where he confides what is in his heart. "By going into the past, I will answer a question that has puzzled me more than anything else in my studies."
"And that is?" You stop chewing. Suddenly, a thought occurs to you. "You aren’t going back to meet Jesus Christ—are you?"
"Oh no, no," he says with a hearty laugh. "That would be impossible. You see, there are paradoxes involved."
You’ve read about those. "Oh yes, like for example, we can’t go back and shoot our grandfather, because then we’d never be born to shoot him, and so he can’t be shot." You feel a chill run up and down your spine.
"It’s a little more complicated than that. Think of it this way. Time is like a river. You can throw a rock in, but the current will roll around it. If you go back and change anything significant, the universe compensates. That's like throwing in a big enough boulder, which changes the river's course and therefore creates a different river. It’s not enough to say you can’t go back and shoot your grandfather, because indeed you can, assuming you can travel back in time as you are about to. What might happen, though, is that you cease to exist. Not only do you cease to exist, but you will have never existed, and everyone who knew you will soon forget. You will fade away, and Time will have resolved the paradox by its efficient, streamlined methods, but within the allowances of its endlessly rich fractal and baroque complexities. Alternatively, it might create an entirely different universe branching off from the first like two gigantic branches from a single tree trunk. In the first, you might cease to exist. In the second, you might never be born and your grandfather lives out his life quite happily. Those are just two of the possibilities."
You prod him, because he gets lost in his own thoughts. "So why, again?"
"Oh yes. Well, there is a mystery I am interested in solving. You see, the fate of Rome was predicted by a set of scrolls given to the early Roman kings by the Sibyl of Cumae."
"The one on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?"
"Precisely. I am curious to know, and eager to present to the scientific world, the content of those scrolls. The Romans never made a move, whether it was going to war, holding a festival, or blessing a ruler, without first consulting those papers. Now history has it that they were burned in a fire in 83 B.C. while stored in the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. The Sibylline Books were said to be kept under lock and key on the Capitoline Hill, but I have reason to believe that was not the case. You see, the temple was of the old Etruscan type, which means it did not have walls around it. It was actually the largest temple ever built in the Etruscan mode—essentially a raised stone platform with steps all around, and pillars holding up a roof. It would have been open to the elements, except for the three cubicles, or cellae, of the principal deities at the far end under the roof. Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva."
"And why was it open like that?"
His eyes flashed as he described lightning. "Because the Etruscans were great observers of nature. Nature was part of their worship. They read the future in every bolt of lightning, every stray wind, every flight of birds, every object in the night sky. That is probably why the Pantheon has an opening or oculus (literally, 'eyelet') in the top of the dome, so that the ancient priests could observe the sky by day or night." He added: "It also relieves a great deal of architectural stress, I am told."
"And the scrolls?"
"I suspect they were kept in a safe place, either on the hill or even down in the Forum. Of course it is sacrilege to say this, and every scholar will chase me with a torch or a stick, but I think they would have kept their most sacred writings in a dry place. The Capitoline was often hit by lightning, and had plenty of fires. If I am correct, then the scrolls might be found in the city, and in my research I have found certain clues about where to look. It means we must go back in time."
"So how are we doing this?" you ask.
"You will find out soon enough," he says, pulling his plate close. He starts to spoon some soup, wincing at its heat, and you understand the subject is closed for now. He has given you plenty to think about. He adds, in a much lighter vein: "Think of it as a friendly, happy-go-lucky tour. Keep it light, and don’t get too caught up in things like gladiatorial combat or the appalling aspect of slavery, and you may keep your lunch down, and get out in one piece."
"I’ll do my best."
"It will be a very overwhelming experience." He tears apart a chunk of fresh bread. "We have one shot, and one shot only, so it has to be good. We will return to the early reign of Diocletian, about 285 A.D."
You finish eating, and Amalthea cleans the table while Darwin takes you down into the dark cellar of his townhouse. For a moment you wonder if he has a wine collection to show you, or maybe a nice row of smoke salammes aging nicely on hooks above the reach of rats. Grunting with effort, he descends the stairs. He flicks a heavy white ceramic wall switch, and weak yellowish light floods the cellars. You see shadowy hollows amid pale, glowering white fragments of marble set amid crumbling brickwork from some other era. "The bricks are ancient Roman," he tells you. He points to the paler marble, some of it unpolished gray travertine, other chunks the dull remnants of long-ago polished stone. "The broken pieces were part of a wonderful floor once. There was a great library here, owned by a very wealthy man named Ulpian. We will meet him. Ulpian's palace burned down during the Gothic wars, and later the Lombards rebuilt this place from its pieces. I think they used it as a stable. Then it fell back into ruins and the ground swallowed it all up as grass and vegetation slowly covered it." He leads you down a narrow, dank passage to a row of dark doorways without doors in them. "Old shops," he says. He flicks light switches in passing, and two or three other naked bulbs cast their wan light on the age-dark stones. "Many Roman houses have archeological treasures like this in their basements. Same in Naples or Jerusalem or many other ancient cities." You come to a small round area. It has a floor of hard, packed earth, and walls all around of dessicated brick held together by shapeless bits of mortar. He points to a hole in the wall near the floor. Fresh dirt is piled around it. A pick and shovel lie on the ground nearby. On the ground lies a concrete slab that must have covered the hole under a layer of clay and soil. The opening is about two feet high, two feet wide, and three feet deep. Sitting on a simple brick floor from long ago is a rectangular stone box. Its lid stands on edge beside it. The box is empty. "Take a good look," he says. "I'll explain later. What I hope is that, when you return from this journey, you will find something in that box."
"What?" you blurt.
"Patience," he says.
Darwin leads you back upstairs. He throws a few things in an old green canvas bag that looks like something from his long-ago army days. Amalthea returns, having changed into jeans, a mannish blue shirt, and a Red Sox baseball cap. Perched on the bill of the cap are aviator sunglasses. On her feet now are lightly scuffed Doc Marten boots. "Are you ready?" she asks, chewing gum. She stands with her arms akimbo and blows a wisp of hair from her nose.
Darwin manages a weak grin and a nod. "You drive, my dear," he tells her. "We two will continue our conversation."
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