The Church of Lost Souls 12

I thought about Mum as I went to sleep. If I’d told her about what was really going on she’d have been beside herself and demanded my return.

It was good to hear her voice, though, to know that all was well back home. It also made me realize that things weren’t so bad here. I’d made some good friends and was having a mad time, even if it did revolve around mystery and intrigue.

I had one job for sure with the grapes and perhaps Maria had a viable proposition too. Another aspect brought forward from the call was the feeling that, whatever Sofia said, The Church of Lost Souls was well and truly behind me. My thoughts towards the old man had somewhat softened too, although I still wanted to know why he’d accused me of murder to Paolo.

The police officer may have done a good job of allaying Paolo’s fears but Sofia was still very curious about the American woman and her circumstances. As far as she was concerned the officer had been far too forgiving. Assuming that the American woman had mental difficulties and that she’d done disappearing acts before, as was detected by the officer’s phizog, surely there would have been consequences of one kind or another.

When I thought about the American woman I’d met at the joke shop the idea of her being mentally ill seemed laughable. She was as plain as could be and there was a good vibe about her.

But then there was the name, Fontanelle. Sofia loved that little touch, but as I drifted off to sleep I couldn’t quite reconcile how strange it was that she knew so much about this Cult of Purgative Souls.

In the morning I woke up well. I’d be staying for two more nights so when I passed reception I paid in advance and the woman gave me a note.

‘Please call me. I have good news. Maria x.’

Holy shit, I thought, an x!

That one little letter sent me into orbit and as I walked into the sunshine I felt on top of the world.

From the look of it Paolo and Sofia hadn’t risen so I veered off towards the taverna to see how the builders were getting on.

They’d finished the breeze block work and the pizza oven was in place. An electrician was chasing wires into the ceiling and walls, another guy was fitting a stone work surface and another one was painting.

He’d painted the ceiling and walls in white and was busy doing a fresco, of sorts, on one of the walls. I could see he was having trouble, getting flustered and swearing in Italian.

‘You like I do for you,’ I said to his profile as he mixed some colours in a tin between his feet on the ground. ‘Art, I good at art.’

He looked across at me and stopped stirring. ‘You good?’ he said. ‘Show me drawing.’ Passing me a pencil and a bit of paper he swiped at a poster on the ground and presented it to me. ‘Like this, si?’

It was a pastiche of The Last Supper, with cut and pasted cartoon characters taken from a magazine replacing the icons’ faces.

I said ‘OK’ and went to sit on a few breeze blocks to draw.

One thing Dad taught me was drawing. His Daffy Duck he could do in seconds. I’d always admired him for that and since an early age I’d sketched pretty much all the big cartoon characters. I think it was an attempt to win his love, and a father’s love is the strangest thing, the smallest encounter remains forever.

I did a quick sketch of Daffy and Jerry, then one of Foghorn Leghorn, my favourite.

I passed it back to the guy in no time and he stared at it. ‘Bene, bene,’ he said, placing his stick into the tin. ‘You want do?’

‘Si,’ I said.

We agreed that he’d get on with the background, the table, the food and wine, the columns and the sky, leaving a white space for me to fill in later with characters. The pizza oven was a rounded cement mass set into one wall and so there would be Jesus, as himself and not a cartoon character.

While all that was drying I could go into Rome with Paolo and Sofia and be back by three. What I hadn’t finished by the end of the day I could do the next morning and be done by midday. It was opening in the evening so the paint would easily be dry.

We talked money and it was agreed that I’d get 100,000 lira, but, he said, it had to be really good. ‘Like there but with colore,’ he said, pointing to my sketches and spreading his hands flamboyantly.

I asked if he had some tins of spray paint. ‘Color primari,’ I said.

‘Si, afternoon.’

‘Perfetto.’

We shook hands and when I got back to Sofia’s tent they were up and sat on the rug. Paolo was making coffee and Sofia was cutting up a melon and flicking the seeds out. Even with ruffled hair she looked gorgeous.

She asked if I’d called Maria so I told her I hadn’t. ‘I did call Mum, though,’ I said.

‘You probably should call Maria too,’ said Paolo. If he thought I was set on staying in Rome he was being very noble about it.

We needed to get going soon, Sofia said. Big business generally closed at midday till four and it was already ten-thirty so we got our skates on and headed off to the bus stop.

At the depot we took a coffee at the café and proceeded to the insurance company that Sofia had sourced from the phone directory at the campsite.

They were pretty good there. Paolo explained what happened and they agreed to pay a nominal amount for each of the items lost. It wasn’t a lot but it was better than nothing, which Paolo had half expected. The owner of the campsite had reported the theft to the police and that all checked out but I was surprised to see how easy it was to procure money from suits who’d willingly taken on trust a misdemeanour’s credibility.

They’d need to process the travelers’ cheques, which would be ready for him to collect tomorrow morning.

With that settled we headed over to The Spanish Steps and sat there for a while. Recent events had taken their toll on us and there was little conversation.

I told them about the painting job at the taverna and they were happy for me, then there was a silence.

‘Sofia wants to go to Maria’s flat and find out what her name is,’ said Paolo disconsolately, lighting up a cigarette.  

‘What?’ I said. ‘No, we can’t be doing that.’

‘We don’t have to go to her flat,’ said Sofia. ‘All we need to do is get into the block and look at letterbox number, what number is it?’

‘Six,’ I said.

‘There, number six,’ she said. ‘It’s easy.’

‘What if she’s out walking with Giovanni?’

‘There are three of us, we can work with that,’ she said.

‘Jesus,’ I said, looking despondently at Sofia. ‘You’re hellbent on the cult thing, aren’t you? Can’t you just leave it alone? We’re supposed to be on bloody holiday.’