Episode Nine: Leaving Genoa
I am moving through nighttime Genoa at a walk paced just behind a jog.
I have to get out of here.
That's all I know.
When I awoke from what I will from now on refer to as The Vision, I fell forward as though my consciousness had returned to my body at force as with great velocity. Only just catching myself on my hands, my first thought was that I had to get the Hell out of here. That is, I didn't quite think it, precisely. I knew it. I needed to run like Hell. Get away. Get out.
The first thing I did was puke my guts out. When that was over – which, it lasted a damn long time; my body purging long after the heaves were dry and I was next to tears – my first cogent thought was that I had to write it down. So I did.
On the table where I stored my extra drugs, I also kept a pocket-sized journal – a book made with paper from the East – and a pen. But not any kind of ordinary pen. That is, not the quill which you should be imagining. I had quills. Of course I did. But I got tired at some point during my time in Genoa of spilling the ink or dripping it from the tip of the quill, and, like the Fatimid caliph Al-Mu'izz li'Din Allah in Egypt, decided that I was going to do something about it. Of course, that caliph did this in the latter quarter of the 10th century – some 70-plus years after I'd already come to the solution. Who's to say it wasn't I who introduced him to the notion of the fountain pen, that it wasn't I who sparked the caliph's demand? The design and make are unimportant and irrelevant to the story. Suffice to say that smiths, whether they be black, gold, white – craftsmen of all stripes, for that matter – are ingenius when given something new to craft. Consider for evidence of this the Antikythera Mechanism.
I didn't think much of the Vision at first. Definitely not while my body turned itself inside out.
I wrote my experience out of order, as I was able to remember it. Starting with my dialogue with God, seeing the Rod globehop, watching myself steal it; seeing myself use it; use it to what? Kill 2000 people? The eyes of the madman version of me. When I think beyond that, to the brief visit to my Mental Library, I almost don't write it out. Then, like the canonizers of Revelation, I figure what the Hell and include it. Then I read back over it.
I know I said I had no interest in defending druge use earlier. Now I have to defend drug use. The Visionary State, we could say, is unlike anything you can understand before you have experienced it for yourself. You might think it's like dreaming, that I was dreaming. It's not dreaming. Dreams are a lot of things. You can be confused and frightened just as I was in a dream. The things that happen in your dreams, though, you don't question their reality in the dream. Even when you realize this is just a dream, there is no question about the nature of reality – your reality testing, as a function of the sleeping brain, is turned off.
What I'd just been through, my reality testing may not even come into play. During and immediately after, replaying it as I was in my mind, The Vision seemed more real than Reality ever has. Like the places I was, the events I witnessed, were the realest kind of real and the waking state is just another dream state. And it felt deliberately and purposefully meaningful.
The thing with interpreting dreams is that there are few let's call them claims which are made in dreams that can be tested for veriticality. Dreams are, by and large – or so I believed then – metaphors, unimportant images that only have significance to the dreamer. And I hadn't dreamed in... months. Possibly years. Dreams tend to be the mind or the subconscious communicating with the dreamer in images and conversations which are meaningful only to the dreamer. What, then, had I just experienced? Because it felt meaningless.
I didn't give it much thought before I started writing it down, and I didn't give it much thought after. But I did agree with the knowing deeper than Instinct, older than anything approaching thought, that I needed to move.
So, eventually, I did.
I didn't know or care where I was going. I just had to get away from Genoa. Now.
It's difficult to say what it was about The Vision that told me to run. Maybe it was the Yaldabaoth using Francis and Giorgio's names. Maybe it was the alliance of the Ninth. Or maybe it was a decision I made with no reason at all. Maybe I would have made similar – or better – choices without the aid of The Plant. I don't know.
But I did know that by the time I put my hat on my head and adjusted my jacket to accommodate for the added weight of the items which I selected to make my journey to Elsewhere with me, the hour was late – long after dark. Indeed, after midnight.
I stepped into my office through the secreted door.
“Rob, we need to talk.”
I looked up, half-panicked by the voice, and found Giorgio standing on my side of my desk, the candle lit. He'd left the door to my office open.
“This really isn't a good time, Giorgio,” I said, approaching him.
“No. It's not. Why don't you sit down?” He gestured beside him to my chair. “We need to talk.”
“How about we do this tomorrow?” I don't slow for the door.
As I passed him, he made no move to stop me. Just said, “Rob... Regina is dead.”
This stopped me just as firmly as had he tackled me to the ground. My eyes stared at the open doorway, at the stars in the night and the desolation of the street, abandoned even by the riff raff the city abandoned long before. I wanted to run, to flee – to wail and gnash my teeth – to throw down my hat and rend my hair and clothes.
No. I've failed her, too.
They're dead. Dead, and it's your fault.
No....
“Francis, too. But I know you know that.” Giorgio's voice is... empathetic. Almost soothing. Unaccusing.
I turned back to him. There are things, moments, we must all face.
“And you think I had something to do with it.”
“I don't want to. But, Robert—“
“Don't you but Robert me. You know I didn't kill them.”
“Someone did.”
“So it has to be the foreign wizard. What about Pei— the woman who came to town the other day, with the merchant?”
“What woman? What merchant?” Giorgio seemed genuinely confused by what I'm saying.
“What woman,” I spat. “The woman! With the captain – the Persian merchant?”
Why didn't I remember a Persian? Why did I remember a Hindi? The thugs saw a Persian. Francis saw a Persian.
Was he making them up?
She came to my office!
“Robert, I don't know who you're talking about. No one has said anything to me about any woman or any Persian. That's the kind of thing the whole city would be talking about.”
“Ask the tavernmaster!” I shouted. My mind felt like a box that's too small to contain me. I was having trouble thinking – breathing.
“Stefano is the first person I spoke to. Robert, this is my city. I am responsible for these people. There was no woman. No Persian.”
“Your city? I understand, now. I turned you down and now you would destroy me for it. Not willing to have a rival? Huh? You're just like Adalbert. Just like your father. I thought we were friends!”
“God dammit, Robert. Stop this.”
“What about the priest, huh?”
“The priest? Robert, you're scaring me. I didn't want to believe that you are mad, but— Woman? Persian? Priest? This sounds like the ravings of a madman. I know what you did in Tuscany, but—“
“You would do this to prevent me from a Consulship I don't want?”
“Robert – I know that you and Francis were plotting to make you king.”
How was Giorgio so calm?
“I'm not standing here and listening to this.” I turned on my heel, but before I could make step one for the door, he caught me by the left sleeve.
“Robert, don't—!”
I wheeled around. The right hook was launched before I even knew I was throwing it. By the time I realized it, it was already too late. The punch's momentum carried my fist to and through Giorgio's chin. The dull smack was deafening. The impact, the mild pain in my knuckles, as devastating to my life as a comet impact.
He fell like – another – corpse.
And I fled into the night.
A fugitive, now.
And now I'm trying not to run, because I don't want to be any more conspicuous than a man dressed how I am running through the night must inevitably be; and I have a very long way to go. I don't even know where I'm going, but I know that it's a long way between towns. Even longer between cities. Maybe I go east. All the way east – to China and whatever is beyond that. Maybe it's nothing and I'll disappear from reality.
I feel a westward wind as I reach the crossroads of my escape. I can go north and west to Turin, into the mountains and—
No. That's where Charles sent his army. Don't want to get involved in wars.
I stop, shaking my head.
What the Hell am I thinking? Wars?
Isn't that what the General said?
In The Vision. Right.
I look west, out of Genoa. There was one surefire way to know whether what I'd seen was real. I could go to Turin. I could ask around. Hell, I could even march my happy ass into the mountains and see if I come across an Italian army waiting to intercept a Frankish army – see for myself whether that Frankish army has a madman with bloodshot, blistered eyes at its head. Or at its rear.
I could get there before him. Before Pepin. Convince them to call it off.
Or I could head him off in Pavia. I could end his killing before he has a chance to attempt it.
Does that mean I think he's actually in Venice?
My eyes are lingering westward. My legs even try to carry me that way.
Peitho will look west first. She'll expect me to try to join a pilgrimage and disappear.
That's not a bad idea either. Israel, the Holy Land, is in the east. It's just a skip and a hop from there to India – and from there to China.
You'll have to go through Constantinople if you do that.
You remember what happened in Constantinople.
I turn east without any more thought, any more hesitation, and take the road that will lead me south. Away from Peitho. Away from Metus. Away from Francis and Regina and—
I look as I walk toward where my home and my wife are. It is shameful to abandon her this way. I know this, feel it. But ours was never the happy homemaking marriage. I reassure myself that whether I'm making the right choice or not – I know in my bones that I'm not – she will be provided for. Without me, she'll be able to marry for love. She won't have to worry about whether the husband who buys her is like me or like Francis or like any other number of shitty husband-types. She'll be independently wealthy – as wealthy as a queen. Putting her from my mind and looking forward with new resolve, I see something so out of place at this time of night I almost think I'm still hallucinating from the Potion:
There's a cart in the road, just outside Venice proper. And it's headed south. Odd, but not an unwelcome sight.
I jog to catch up with it.
The driver must hear my footsteps, because before I can hail him, he turns and does so to me. “Hail and well met, stranger,” he says. “What brings you runnin up to me like that, eh? Did I forget somethin in town?” he grins, chuckling a little.
“No, no,” I say, slowing to keep pace beside him. “I was – actually, I was on my way to leaving town when I saw you. Figured I'd ask where you're headed – and if I can't convince you to take me with you.”
“Now ain't that a thing – two men both leavin a city after midnight, takin to the roads like a couple of madmen – or idiots. Well, friend, I'm headed to Venice. That's where I live. Where I do my business. Why don't you go ahead and climb on in the wagon, eh? Seein how that's my business and all – taking folks where they want to be – it would be mighty rude of me to turn ya down, don't ya think?”
I climb into his cart.
“I'm Jimmy,” the driver says over his shoulder. “People who know me call me Ol Jimmy – on account of how old I am.”
I regard him a moment, hearing this. He wasn't that old. Maybe 50. But he sure was as sun-dried as a tomato. Then I nod. “Ol Jimmy. I'm Rob.”
“Just Rob?”
“Just Rob. So what brings you headed south?” I ask. “If you're from Venice, why not take the Via Postumia north and east directly to Venice?”
“It's pilgrim season,” he says over his shoulder to me with a shrug. “Goin that route alone is how a man like me ends up dead. Pulled apart by bandits, you see? No, no. I know the ways, the safest routes through these mountains. Better'n anyone alive, I'd wager. Been trekkin em for decades. We're goin to head south a little ways, then I know of a pass northeast through the mountains. No roads, nothing like that. We're gonna avoid as many towns as we can til we get to the Po Valley. We'll get on ol Postumia around Verona-ways. But by then we'll be a day out from Venice – or thereabouts.”
Everything about this plan suited me perfectly. No towns meant no one to see us passing, meant I wouldn't have to worry about running across someone in one of them who recognized me for my connections to Adalbert – meant I wasn't likely to run across Adalbert himself.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Naw,” Jimmy gaffaws. “I was already headed this way. Ain't no sense or sensibility makin you pay for what I was happy to do for free. You keep Ol Jimmy company, give him somebody to talk to, and I'd say you paid me plenty well. Now, if you wanted to make sure we got good meals along the way....” he turns and winks at me, trailing off from this suggestion.
I settled in to the cart and its rocking motion and let myself enjoy the night. Not long now, and I'd be away from Peitho and Metus and all of it.
I'm not sure I ever mourned Regina properly. I didn't even learn how she died.
I would. Just not that night. And by then... well, some shames don't need to be discussed. They just are what they are.
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