The Demonologist Read online

  But the fact is, as the morning sun rises to beat shadowlessly down on the old city, it feels less like excitement and more like fear.

  WE START AT THE DOGE’S PALACE. IT’S A SHORT WALK FROM THE hotel to San Marco, and once we step out onto the broad plaza, we take in the structure’s immensity from a distance. It’s true what one of the guidebooks said: the long arcade of columns on the building’s lower level lend the walled floors atop them the illusion of floating. I hadn’t expected the sheer size of it, the tons of stone, no matter how gracefully assembled, suggesting long-buried narratives of labor, injury, lost lives.

  Among these lost lives, I tell Tess, were the condemned men brought here to be given a final chance at salvation.

  “Why were they condemned?” she asks.

  “They’d done bad things. And then they had to be punished.”

  “But they were brought here first?”

  “So the story goes.”

  “How does the story go?”

  I tell her about the column. The book said it was on the exposed side facing St. Mark’s Basin, opposite the island of San Giorgio. Count three columns in and there it is: worn around its marble base from all the prisoners and, over the centuries since, curious tourists attempting the impossible. The challenge is to put your hands behind your back (as the prisoners’ hands would have been bound) and, facing outward, step around the entire column. For the condemned, it was a cruel offering of potential freedom, as the myth holds that the task has never been achieved.

  Tess thinks I should go first. I slip my fingers into my belt and get up onto the base’s edge. A single sliding step and I’m off.

  “Can’t do it,” I say.

  “My turn!”

  Tess reverse-hugs the marble, faces me, grinning. Then she starts. Little shuffles on her heels, inching around. And keeps going. I stand there with my iPhone video camera ready to capture her fall, but instead she disappears as she circles the column. A moment later she emerges again, still shuffling around. Except now the grin is gone. In its place is a blank look I take to be severe concentration. I return the iPhone to my pocket.

  When she’s made it all the way around to the starting point she stands there, looking out over the water, as though listening to whispered instructions from the lapping waves.

  “Tess!” A shout meant to awaken her from wherever she’s gone as much as to celebrate her accomplishment. “You did it!”

  She steps down. And with her recollection of who I am and where she is, her smile returns.

  “What do I win?” she asks.

  “Your place in history. Apparently nobody’s ever done that before.”

  “And salvation. Do I win that, too?”

  “That, too. C’mon,” I say, taking her hand. “Let’s get out of this sun.”

  WE WALK ACROSS THE ALREADY-CROWDED PLAZA TO THE BASILICA. The sun, aloof but scorching, makes even this short journey fatiguing. Or maybe the early rising after a long flight has me weaker than I figured. In any case, by the time we enter the cool of the cathedral, I’m feeling tilted, as though standing on the deck of a sailboat.

  It’s partly an excuse to regain my balance when I stop to point up at the mosaic decorating the dome above us. The images tell the story of Creation: God’s invention of light, Adam in the garden, the serpent and his temptation of Eve, the Fall. There is an astonishing simplicity to the images, especially in the context of the building’s overwhelming, Byzantine architecture. It’s as though the builders intended to distract one from the real materials of faith, rather than depict them. Yet here, in this overhead pocket, is the familiar narrative of Genesis, laid out in an almost children’s book illustration, and the impact of it takes my breath away.

  At first, I assume this is an aesthetic response: a man in awe of towering artistic achievement. But it isn’t the beautiful that transfixes me. It is the sublime. The unsettling presence of the serpent and its implications not only upon the iconic “Eve,” but the two real people pictured in the mosaic, a man and woman touched not by a symbol, but by a physically embodied evil. The green-scaled length. The forked tongue.

  And then, in the hushed tomb of the church, the sound of a whisper next to my ear. The serpent’s eyes focused not on a girl holding out her hand for an apple, but upon me.

  “Dad?”

  Tess has her hands against my lower back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Me?” she says. “What’s wrong with you? I’m holding you up.”

  “Sorry. Got a bit dizzy for a second there.”

  She squints. Knows I’m not giving her all the details and determining whether she needs to hear them now or not.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she suggests. “We can have a rest before your meeting.”

  She’s your child, the imagined O’Brien qualifies in my head as Tess leads me out into the piazza’s bustle. She knows more than you could ever hide.

  5

  I’M FEELING MUCH STRONGER AFTER LUNCH. THE BABYSITTER THE concierge has arranged for arrives at our room to look after Tess for the couple hours I will be away. Stout, matronly, “fully registered,” as the hotel assured me. I trust her at once. As does Tess. The two of them engaged in Italian lessons before I’m out the door.

  “Be back soon,” I call to Tess, who rushes to deliver a farewell kiss.

  “Arrivederci, Dad!”

  She closes the door behind me. And I’m alone. It’s only once I’m down among others in the ordered comings and goings of the lobby that I feel able to pull out the address the Thin Woman gave me.

  Santa Croce 3627.

  A typically Venetian designation. No street name, no apartment number, no postal code. Even the most extensive online map zooming could provide only a couple-hundred-square-meter area where it might be. To find the doorway I’m to knock on, I’ll have to be on the ground, looking for signs.

  I board a vaporetto at the hotel’s dock and head back along the Grand Canal to the Rialto stop. The bridge is as busy today as when we passed under it yesterday, and as I work my way across it to enter the Santa Croce sestiere on the other side, my hesitations about whatever awaits me at 3627 lift away, and I am merely a visitor among visitors, passing the vendors’ stalls and asking “How much?” in the languages of the world.

  Then I’m following the relatively easy route highlighted in the printout I unfold from my pocket. There are people here, too, other map readers like me, though as I proceed their numbers diminish. Before long there are only locals returning to their homes with grocery bags. Kids kicking soccer balls against ancient walls.

  I should be close. But how can I know? Only some of the doors have numbers next to them. And they aren’t in anything approaching order. 3688 is followed by 3720. So I turn back, thinking the numbers will get smaller, only to find 3732 comes after 3720. Much of the time, I’m just trying to remember landmarks to which I can stick a mental pin: these drooping window-box flowers on the second floor, those stern-faced old men drinking espresso outside a café. Yet when I cut back and follow what I’m sure is the same path, the café is gone, the flower box replaced by an undershirt left out to dry.

  It is only at the moment I start to head back in the direction (or what I believe to be the direction) of the Rialto that I find it.

  Stenciled in chipped, gold paint on a wooden door smaller than any other is 3627. It must be an original, maintained since the time when it was built for shorter, seventeenth-century Venetians. Its size, along with the tiny script of the numbers, gives the impression of an address that has long done its best to avoid notice altogether.

  A doorbell button flickers like a nightlight even now at midday. I press it twice. It’s impossible to know whether it makes a sound within or not.

  In a moment, the door is pulled open. From out of the interior shadows, a middle-aged man emerges wearing a gray flannel suit far too hot for the temperature of the day. His eyes blink at me through the smudged lenses of his wire-frame glasses, the
only evidence of dishevelment in his otherwise excessively formal appearance.

  “Professor Ullman,” he says. It is not a question.

  “If you know my name, I must be at the right place,” I answer, a smile meant to invite him to participate in some humor at the strangeness of our meeting, but there is nothing in his expression that registers anything other than my presence at his door.

  “You are late,” he says in accented but perfectly articulated English. He opens the door wider and makes an impatient, sweeping motion with his hand, ushering me inside.

  “There was no designated time for my arrival that I was aware of.”

  “It is late,” he repeats, a hint of weariness in his voice, suggesting he is referring to something other than the time.

  I step into what appears to be a waiting room of some kind. Wooden chairs with their backs against the walls. A coffee table with Italian news magazines that, judging by the acts of terror and blockbuster movies featured on their covers, are more than a few years old. If it is a waiting room, no one else waits here. And there is nothing—no signage, reception desk, explanatory posters—to indicate what service might be provided.

  “I am a physician,” the man in the suit says.

  “Is this your office?”

  “No, no.” He shakes his head. “I have been commissioned. From elsewhere.”

  “Where?”

  He waves his hand. A refusal, or perhaps an incapacity, to answer.

  “Are we the only ones here?” I ask.

  “At the moment.”

  “There are others? At other times?”

  “Yes.”

  “So shall we wait for them to arrive?”

  “It is not necessary.”

  He starts toward one of three closed doors. Turns the knob.

  “Wait,” I say.

  He opens the door, pretending not to hear. It reveals a narrow set of stairs leading up to the floor above.

  “Wait!”

  The physician turns. His anxiety undisguised on his face. It’s clear he has a job to do—lead me up these stairs—and has a distinctly personal investment in getting it done in the quickest manner possible.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s up there?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You are about to show me something, right? Tell me what it is.”

  The various answers he might give can almost be read in his eyes. It is a process that seems to bring him pain.

  “It is for you,” he says finally.

  Before I can ask him anything else he starts up the stairs. His polished leather Oxfords pounding on the wooden steps with uncalled-for force, either to prevent hearing any further comments from me, or to signal someone else of my arrival.

  I follow him up.

  The stairwell is warm and dark, the rising heat thicker with each step higher, the plaster walls slippery with condensation. It’s like entering a throat. And with the arrival of this impression, a sound: the subdued breathing of something other than myself or the physician. Or, more accurately, two breaths, overlapping and in time. One high and weak, a deathbed struggle. The other a bass tremor that is felt rather than heard.

  It’s pitch dark when I reach the second floor. Even looking back the way I’ve come reveals nothing but the palest reach of light from the waiting room.

  “Doctor?”

  My voice seems to reanimate the physician, who switches on a powerful flashlight, blinding me.

  “Le mie scuse,” he says, lowering the beam to the floor.

  “Are the lights not working?”

  “The power. It has been turned off for the building.”

  “Why?”

  “I have not asked. I believe it is to be”—he works to find the phrase—“off the grid.”

  I study the man’s face for the first time. His features are underlit by the downcast light, so that his near-panic is caricatured.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask. The question alone provokes a clench of discomfort.

  “I cannot say.”

  “Is someone forcing you to do this?”

  “There is no action without choice,” he says, the words spoken in a slightly modulated accent, as though quoting someone else’s answer to the same question.

  “Are we safe here?”

  The plaintive urgency of my question surprises me, though not the physician, who briefly shuts his eyes against some recollection of irreparable regret.

  Then, with a sudden motion, he reaches for something on a table behind him, and the flashlight swings about in his other hand, showing we are on a landing with access to at least three closed doors. The space free of any art or decoration. Only the slight glitter of humidity on the white walls.

  The physician shines the light on me again, focuses the beam on my chest. And what I see is him offering what looks to be a brand-new digital video camera.

  “For you,” he says.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “For you.”

  He drops the camera into my hand.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “I was not told what you are to do. Only to give it to you.”

  “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “There is no deal,” he says, flinching as though in prevention of rude laughter. “What you do with it is for you to determine, Professor.”

  The physician starts to move. At first, I assume he is going to accompany me inside one of the doors he will open, or perhaps guide me to a higher floor altogether. But then he steps by me—a whiff of sour body odor as he passes—and I see he is about to start back down the stairs.

  “Where are you going?”

  He pauses. Casts the light on the farthest door.

  “Per favore,” he says.

  “You will wait for me? Downstairs? You’ll be here if I need you, yes?”

  “Per favore,” he repeats. He has the yellowish look of someone doing his best to hold on before he can make it to the closest toilet so he can be sick.

  One minute.

  This is all I’m thinking as I take a step toward the door.

  One minute to make my observations, report them to this man or whoever awaits me downstairs, then leave. Take the free holiday and the money and run. Honor my promise.

  The truth? I open the door and step inside not for the Thin Woman’s payment or to fulfill my end of the agreement I made with her. It’s simpler than that.

  I want to see.

  A MAN SITTING IN A CHAIR.

  He appears to be asleep. His head slumped forward, chin touching his chest. While I can’t see his face, his position allows a good view of his thinning salt-and-pepper curls and the small pink patch of crown that is the badge of male middle age. He wears dress pants, a pinstripe business shirt, and leather loafers. A wedding band. His otherwise trim frame betrayed by the slightly rounded stomach of someone used to fine food, but still vain enough to fight its effects through obligatory exercise. Everything about him, in a first appraisal, suggests a man of good if unadventurous taste, a professional, a father. A man like myself.

  But then, with a single step closer, other details reveal themselves, invisible a second earlier.

  He is soaked through with sweat. His shirt clinging to his back, dark moons under his arms.

  His breathing. A hoarse rattle so deep it seems to be drawing air to somewhere other than his lungs.

  And then the chair: each leg screwed to the wooden floor with industrial bolts. Rough leather straps of the kind used to bridle horses wrapped around the man’s chest, holding him in place.

  A kidnapping. They have taken this man and are keeping him for ransom.

  Then why have they brought me here? No demand has been made of me other than my presence.

  You are about to be imprisoned here, too. Or worse. They have given you the camera to record something terrible. Torture. Murder. Something they will do to the man.

  But why bring a witness, if that’s
what I am, all the way from New York?

  They’re going to take you, too.

  For what purpose? Not money. I don’t have enough of that to make it worthwhile. And if they want to imprison me, why wait as long as they have?

  Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. They’ve got the wrong guy.

  But the Thin Woman knew exactly who I was. As did the ticket agent at the airport and the clerk at the Bauer, all of whom studied my passport. She wanted David Ullman here. And now I am.

  This internal debate, I realize, has been conducted with an imaginary O’Brien. There is a pain in my chest as I wish she were with me now. She would have answers that the O’Brien of my making doesn’t.

  I turn on the camera.

  I don’t try to run, don’t try to call the polizia. For some reason I am certain that I’m not in any immediate physical danger, that I haven’t been brought here to be strapped to a chair.

  The man before me is why I am here. He is the “case.” The phenomenon.

  I press REC and look through the camera’s viewfinder, square it on the man in the chair. In the corner of the frame, the digital clock starts to tick away as the footage rolls in. The autofocus briefly blurs him before it adjusts to render him clearly on the screen. Still asleep.

  I test the zoom button. Push in closer to exclude the floor, the walls.

  1:24

  Then closer still, so that only his upper body and head fill the frame.

  1:32

  Suddenly, his head jumps up straight, throwing wet tendrils of hair off his forehead. Eyes wide open, at once alert and glossed with exhaustion. For however long he rested his chin on his chest, they never closed. He was never asleep at all.

  He stares directly into the camera’s lens. And I hold it on him. Recording his expression as it shifts from a blank apprehension to recognition. Not of the room, but of me. A smile spreads over his face as though at the arrival of an old friend.

  But the smile grows too wide, his mouth stretching open until the corners tear open old scabs there from when he last performed this trick. It bares all of his teeth.

  He snarls.

  Fights against the restraints that hold him in place. Thrashing his torso to one side, then the other, testing the chair’s fix on the floor. The screws remain secure, but the force of his struggle sends creaks through the room’s entire structure, the light fixture swinging over my head. In case it falls, I take a step forward. A step closer to him.