Read Online The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi - Free Book Online
Authors: Matilde Asensi
Tags: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Ravenna, fascinatingl, Buzzonetti, Ramondino, Restoration, tortoiseshell, Laboratory, Paleography
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the terrific job he did (didn’t Pierantonio tell me to buy information?), something inside me had suddenly clicked. All those hours of my poring over research, of searching for meaning in the scars on that poor dead Ethiopian’s corpse, had finally paid off with the clarity I had suddenly been blessed with.
And just like that, as though a light had been turned on within me, I knew who my Ethiopian man was, how he had died, and why the various Christian churches were so interested in him. It was so serious a matter that my legs were beyond trembling as I descended the stairs for lunch.
____________
* Eusebio (260–341), bishop of Cesarea, Hist. Eccl.; De Mart. Palaestinae.
* The giudiziarie prison, located near the port of Palermo, is the most sophisticated and bestguarded prison in Italy. Members of the Mafia serve their time there.
CHAPTER 2
I got back to Rome Monday night, plunged into a sea of confusion and fear, for I would have never imagined I was capable of disobeying. Against the wishes of the church, I’d retrieved important data by unorthodox means. It made me feel uncertain and intimidated, as if at any moment a divine bolt of lightning would strike me. Following the rules is always simpler: by doing so, you avoid the remorse and blame and uncertainty that comes with disobeying them. Above all, you feel proud of your work. In my case, I felt no satisfaction with myself or with my wretched snooping around. How was I going to face Glauser-Röist? Blame was written all over my face; and he, of all people, was sure to notice.
That night I prayed for consolation and forgiveness. I’d have given anything to forget what I knew and get back to the moment when I’d said to Pierantonio, “I’m ready.” I wanted to simply reverse that phrase and recover my inner peace. But that was impossible. The next morning when I closed the door to my office and saw the sad silhouette taped up, so deliberately covered with notes and scribbled labels, I recalled the Ethiopian man’s name: Abi-Ruj Iyasus. Poor Abi-Ruj, I thought to myself as I slowly approached the table where the terrible photographs of his battered body lay. He’d died a horrible death you wouldn’t wish on anybody, though surely in keeping with the magnitude of his sin.
My nephew Stefano, his index fingers poised at the keyboard and his brown hair falling into his eyes, had asked me what I’d been looking for when I forcefully asked him for help, and I responded, “Accidents… Any accident in which a young Ethiopian man died.”
“When did it happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did it happen?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Sounds like you don’t know anything.”
“That’s right.” I had shrugged.
With only that to go on, he began scouring thousands of documents. He had several windows going at the same time, each one displaying a different browser: Virgil, Yahoo Italia, Google, Lycos, Dogpile, and others. We ran searches using words like accident and Ethiopian, taking advantage of the vast number of Web pages. We did so in English, too. Thousands of documents turned up on Stefano’s computer. He rejected them as soon as he verified that the accident in question had nothing to do with the Ethiopian man mentioned several paragraphs into the article, when he found out that the Ethiopian was eighty years old, or when he read that the accident and the Ethiopian that popped up were actually from the days of Alexander the Great. None had anything to do with what I was looking for. In a virtual folder called “Aunt Ottavia,” he saved only those pages that held some remote tie to what we felt may be useful in our search.
“I have some good news, Dr. Salina.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me…,” I murmured, not the least bit interested.
Stefano logged off the Internet near lunchtime, and we started to review the material we had filed. After the first time through, we eliminated all Italian documents. After the second
And just like that, as though a light had been turned on within me, I knew who my Ethiopian man was, how he had died, and why the various Christian churches were so interested in him. It was so serious a matter that my legs were beyond trembling as I descended the stairs for lunch.
____________
* Eusebio (260–341), bishop of Cesarea, Hist. Eccl.; De Mart. Palaestinae.
* The giudiziarie prison, located near the port of Palermo, is the most sophisticated and bestguarded prison in Italy. Members of the Mafia serve their time there.
CHAPTER 2
I got back to Rome Monday night, plunged into a sea of confusion and fear, for I would have never imagined I was capable of disobeying. Against the wishes of the church, I’d retrieved important data by unorthodox means. It made me feel uncertain and intimidated, as if at any moment a divine bolt of lightning would strike me. Following the rules is always simpler: by doing so, you avoid the remorse and blame and uncertainty that comes with disobeying them. Above all, you feel proud of your work. In my case, I felt no satisfaction with myself or with my wretched snooping around. How was I going to face Glauser-Röist? Blame was written all over my face; and he, of all people, was sure to notice.
That night I prayed for consolation and forgiveness. I’d have given anything to forget what I knew and get back to the moment when I’d said to Pierantonio, “I’m ready.” I wanted to simply reverse that phrase and recover my inner peace. But that was impossible. The next morning when I closed the door to my office and saw the sad silhouette taped up, so deliberately covered with notes and scribbled labels, I recalled the Ethiopian man’s name: Abi-Ruj Iyasus. Poor Abi-Ruj, I thought to myself as I slowly approached the table where the terrible photographs of his battered body lay. He’d died a horrible death you wouldn’t wish on anybody, though surely in keeping with the magnitude of his sin.
My nephew Stefano, his index fingers poised at the keyboard and his brown hair falling into his eyes, had asked me what I’d been looking for when I forcefully asked him for help, and I responded, “Accidents… Any accident in which a young Ethiopian man died.”
“When did it happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did it happen?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Sounds like you don’t know anything.”
“That’s right.” I had shrugged.
With only that to go on, he began scouring thousands of documents. He had several windows going at the same time, each one displaying a different browser: Virgil, Yahoo Italia, Google, Lycos, Dogpile, and others. We ran searches using words like accident and Ethiopian, taking advantage of the vast number of Web pages. We did so in English, too. Thousands of documents turned up on Stefano’s computer. He rejected them as soon as he verified that the accident in question had nothing to do with the Ethiopian man mentioned several paragraphs into the article, when he found out that the Ethiopian was eighty years old, or when he read that the accident and the Ethiopian that popped up were actually from the days of Alexander the Great. None had anything to do with what I was looking for. In a virtual folder called “Aunt Ottavia,” he saved only those pages that held some remote tie to what we felt may be useful in our search.
“I have some good news, Dr. Salina.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me…,” I murmured, not the least bit interested.
Stefano logged off the Internet near lunchtime, and we started to review the material we had filed. After the first time through, we eliminated all Italian documents. After the second
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