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Authors: Valerio Massimo Manfredi
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able to see to your education for some time to come. You’ll be going to boarding school.’
Shortly after that Desmond left for the war, and he began to write to his son from the front, from a number of battle positions. He would always enquire as to how his studies were progressing. He would even send mathematical problems for Philip to solve, conundrums to puzzle out. He would write in Latin at times, or in Greek, and it was only when he used those languages that he would let himself go with an affectionate form of expression, as if only those dead, sterile words allowed him to let out emotion or feeling. Philip had hated his father for that.
And yet he realized that it was his father’s way of staying close, of taking an interest in his personal development and the growth of his mind.
Philip suddenly remembered that his birthday was only three days away, and the dedication that his father had written in the book flashed into his mind. The date: ‘Naples, 19 September 1915’. It was clear now! That was the clue, how could he not have realized it? In 1915, Philip had only been fourteen: how could he have read and understood that book? His father’s gift that year had been the music box.
Could his father’s message be in those notes, that music? Philip tried hard to remember it, but he just couldn’t pin it down. Although it seemed impossible, that brief tune that he had listened to hundreds of times had been snatched from his mind and he couldn’t call it back.
He returned to his pensione and sketched out a stave on a sheet of white paper so he could try to jot down the notes of the music-box tune, but it was no use. In the sitting room there was an old piano pushed up against the wall. He sat down and put his hands on the keys, hoping that a stray note might bring the lost melody back into his head. The notes rose incoherently up the stairwell and rained back down inert and meaningless onto the keys. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the little soldier with the black beret, blue jacket and gold frogging, with his jerky movements, mounting guard on his lost memories.
Philip picked up the book again and read the phrase that preceded the second chapter: ‘The brown friars can hear the sound by the volcano.’
He moved on to the third, imagining that the chapter numbers provided the sequence with which the notes were to be read: ‘The sound is beyond the gate of the dead.’
The last phrase was written in before the fourth chapter: ‘Find the entrance under the eye.’
Perhaps the ‘sound’ mentioned in the second phrase referred to the music box whose tune he had tried so hard to remember, but still there was no sense to be made out of the sequence.
Philip felt frustrated and irritated at being dragged into a stupid, infantile game, a ridiculous treasure hunt. A seasoned researcher like himself, trapped by such a childish puzzle! But then he thought of Colonel Jobert’s words when he gave him the volume . . . there must be a reason why his father had chosen such an apparently nonsensical approach to guiding him through this enigma, an approach that would take him back to his childhood . . . and he must surely have taken into account the possibility that Philip would be unable to decipher his messages, or meet with Father Antonelli.
That same afternoon Philip went to the Angelicum Library to look for a directory of the religious orders in Italy. It didn’t take him long to find a Franciscan monastery near the Church of the Madonna of Pompeii. ‘The brown friars can hear the sound by the volcano.’ All right, so he had Mount Vesuvius and the friars: what sound could they hear? Philip decided that he would leave for Naples the next day.
F ATHER B ONI OPENED THE SAFE and took out Father Antonelli’s diary. At the end, between the last page and the back cover, was an envelope with a single line, written in ink: ‘To be delivered into the hands of the Holy Father’. Boni had never dared either
Shortly after that Desmond left for the war, and he began to write to his son from the front, from a number of battle positions. He would always enquire as to how his studies were progressing. He would even send mathematical problems for Philip to solve, conundrums to puzzle out. He would write in Latin at times, or in Greek, and it was only when he used those languages that he would let himself go with an affectionate form of expression, as if only those dead, sterile words allowed him to let out emotion or feeling. Philip had hated his father for that.
And yet he realized that it was his father’s way of staying close, of taking an interest in his personal development and the growth of his mind.
Philip suddenly remembered that his birthday was only three days away, and the dedication that his father had written in the book flashed into his mind. The date: ‘Naples, 19 September 1915’. It was clear now! That was the clue, how could he not have realized it? In 1915, Philip had only been fourteen: how could he have read and understood that book? His father’s gift that year had been the music box.
Could his father’s message be in those notes, that music? Philip tried hard to remember it, but he just couldn’t pin it down. Although it seemed impossible, that brief tune that he had listened to hundreds of times had been snatched from his mind and he couldn’t call it back.
He returned to his pensione and sketched out a stave on a sheet of white paper so he could try to jot down the notes of the music-box tune, but it was no use. In the sitting room there was an old piano pushed up against the wall. He sat down and put his hands on the keys, hoping that a stray note might bring the lost melody back into his head. The notes rose incoherently up the stairwell and rained back down inert and meaningless onto the keys. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the little soldier with the black beret, blue jacket and gold frogging, with his jerky movements, mounting guard on his lost memories.
Philip picked up the book again and read the phrase that preceded the second chapter: ‘The brown friars can hear the sound by the volcano.’
He moved on to the third, imagining that the chapter numbers provided the sequence with which the notes were to be read: ‘The sound is beyond the gate of the dead.’
The last phrase was written in before the fourth chapter: ‘Find the entrance under the eye.’
Perhaps the ‘sound’ mentioned in the second phrase referred to the music box whose tune he had tried so hard to remember, but still there was no sense to be made out of the sequence.
Philip felt frustrated and irritated at being dragged into a stupid, infantile game, a ridiculous treasure hunt. A seasoned researcher like himself, trapped by such a childish puzzle! But then he thought of Colonel Jobert’s words when he gave him the volume . . . there must be a reason why his father had chosen such an apparently nonsensical approach to guiding him through this enigma, an approach that would take him back to his childhood . . . and he must surely have taken into account the possibility that Philip would be unable to decipher his messages, or meet with Father Antonelli.
That same afternoon Philip went to the Angelicum Library to look for a directory of the religious orders in Italy. It didn’t take him long to find a Franciscan monastery near the Church of the Madonna of Pompeii. ‘The brown friars can hear the sound by the volcano.’ All right, so he had Mount Vesuvius and the friars: what sound could they hear? Philip decided that he would leave for Naples the next day.
F ATHER B ONI OPENED THE SAFE and took out Father Antonelli’s diary. At the end, between the last page and the back cover, was an envelope with a single line, written in ink: ‘To be delivered into the hands of the Holy Father’. Boni had never dared either
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