Road to Rome

The car that came to pick up Antonio was replaced by a new one. It was old, inconspicuous, and had no unpleasant smell, but the passenger seat was uneven, as if sitting on a pebble beach that kept sliding.Antonio shifted uncomfortably along the way, avoiding the hollows, but the car jolted and pushed him back again and again.

He rubbed his elbow nervously, as if Costa's fingers were still there.Antonio never liked touching, not enough to run away screaming, but enough to make him anxious for a while.When he was about to graduate, the dean once privately commented that he was "not suitable for preaching, and there is nothing else to say." Antonio heard about it by accident from another priest. The latter felt embarrassed and came to apologize the next day, but Antonio did not. Without being offended, he actually agreed with the provost.

Antonio Pelligrini went to seminary for exactly the same reason he came to New York: a slow, constant journey into hiding.In his father's words, "retreat," burrowing like a mole, over tree roots, over irregular rocks, over subterranean lakes, until he curls up in the darkness where no human voice can be heard.Antonio sees this as a natural consequence of family life: His parents were new immigrants, and his father was under 17 when he came to San Francisco from Turin. Two years later, he married an Irish girl who worked part-time in a restaurant. Antonio's brother was born within five months of their marriage.With a little savings, the young couple caught up on a two-year-delayed honeymoon and had their second son soon after.After their third pregnancy, both agreed that their daughter would be their last child, but God clearly had a different view. Antonio was born on the kitchen floor in 1908.

The six members of the Pelligrini family lived in a cramped apartment above the restaurant. The eldest brother fled first, completed his degree with the support of the local parish, and then left for Rome.The second brother found a job at a car assembly plant and moved away after getting his first month's salary.The only sister married a veterinarian and moved to Pasadena.Antonio spent his whole boyhood waiting for his chance of escape.New York was originally just a springboard, he only stayed for a year, and then he set off for the Vatican, where there was a job as an assistant librarian waiting for him. His brother found him a job, which was not a long-term job, but Antonio hoped that after settling down in Rome, There will be other opportunities, and perhaps by God's providence, other archives will one day suddenly need a silent American who speaks English, Italian, and Hebrew.In the darkened archives, Antonio is finally able to find his mole hole, where he will spend the rest of his life.

The reality was that, in the second month to New York, war tore through Europe and everything was put on hold.

The car parked in front of the door.Antonio thanked him in a low voice, no matter whether the driver heard it or not, he got out of the car and stepped up the steps in two steps.Father Clement must have deliberately ordered someone to wait in the hall, for the door opened before Antonio could hear the bell, and a young man in spectacles took his coat and beckoned him to go straight upstairs to Father Clement's. office.

There was coffee and a tape recorder in the office, but no Father Clements.Sitting on the sofa was Bishop Brennan, reading a document spread out on his fat thighs with the help of reading glasses.The bright red sash stretched tightly around his belly, making the cardinal look like a sherry cask tied with rope on the dock. "Obesity", Marco's evaluation from a few days ago suddenly jumped into his mind, Antonio pushed the word back to the back of his mind and cleared his throat.

The bishop raised his head, pushed the documents aside, and took off his glasses: "Ah, Father Pelligrini."

Antonio lowered his head and looked at the carpet: "Your Excellency."

"Meet our friend?"

"Yes, sir. He gave the amount."

"How many?"

"Twenty-five thousand, sir. And he asked for a small amount—"

"Yes, yes." Bishop Brennan waved his hand, and the ring flickered briefly under the light, "Don't tell me the details. You are solely responsible for this matter. Father Clement will arrange money and anything else you need Good. Oral instructions, no lists. No written traces shall be left."

"I understand, sir."

"Thank you, Father Pelligrini."

"My pleasure."

"Sit down, Antonio, how much sugar for coffee?"

He hesitated for a while, not expecting the sudden change of address, let alone coffee.The Bishop moved with difficulty from side to side of the sofa, poured coffee from the jug, lifted the sugar bowl, and watched him.Antonio pulled the armchair over from the desk and sat down: "Two sugar cubes, thank you, sir."

Two sugar cubes fell into the half-cold coffee.Antonio took the glass and took a sip.

"Is your brother all right? You write to each other, don't you?"

"He—we last corresponded a year ago, and then the mail ships stopped going to Europe, let alone now. He said in the last letter that everything is fine. He lives in the Vatican City. I think it should be Safer than Rome."

"Indeed. The city will not be disturbed for the time being, just temporarily, and we certainly hope that this situation can continue." The bishop put his hand on his swollen stomach, "You must miss your brother very much, Antonio. At this point, the church can help Please, if you like, I can put your letter in the diplomatic pouch and ask the ambassador to forward it."

The coffee tasted like a mixture of earth and burnt bark, but Antonio took an extra sip anyway, prolonging his thinking.Bishop Brennan's proposal cannot be interpreted as good intentions. One cannot become a cardinal by virtue of good intentions alone.And he was pretty sure that if his elder brother wasn't in the Vatican, the Bishop wouldn't care if he missed anyone.The only explanation is that the American Catholic Church, or Roosevelt, the interim client, had something to say to the Vatican, but did not want to do so through formal diplomatic channels.Why?what you want to say?Don't want anyone to know?Don't want to offend anyone?or what country?

"I don't know how to express my gratitude," Antonio replied. "If you don't think I'm taking the liberty, sir, I know that Kilian has had the honor of working with you. Maybe I can help you with a brief greeting?"

Killian was his older brother's name, and the mother insisted on an Irish name for the eldest, perhaps as a way of courting the maternal grandparents.It was useless, the grandparents cut off contact completely when they learned that their daughter had married without permission, and Antonio never saw them, not even a picture.

The Bishop smiled at him, a knowing smile, satisfied that he didn't have to spell it all out: "Thank you, Antonio, I promise I'll only take up a small part of the letter, two lines, at most. In fact, He raised his chin at the desk, "Since you still have more than half of your coffee left, why don't you just write here?"

Ok, of course, I'd be more than happy, any other answers?Antonio got up and walked to the other side of the table. The letter paper and pens were also ready, and a stack of blank envelopes was placed in the upper right corner of the table, under the desk lamp.He picked one of the two fountain pens, drew a few circles on the white paper casually, made sure the ink flowed smoothly, changed a piece of paper, and wrote "Dear Kilian..." under the eyes of the bishop

It's not a greeting between brothers, it's just an official document with layers of disguise.He wrote down the content dictated by the bishop one by one, stopping only once in the middle to wipe away the ink.He remembered that in the first year when Killian went to Rome, he once asked about the Vatican in a letter and asked his brother to describe the heart and brain of the church in detail.Chilian Pelligrini sent back a blank postcard showing the cloister of St. Peter's Basilica and a note. "I find here only one eternal thing," wrote my brother in a note, "politics."

-

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Antonio straightened up, panting against the wall, and looked at the wooden box stuffed with old small denomination banknotes.He has counted this huge sum of money three times, confirmed that he has not missed a single dollar, and is quite sure that he will never have the opportunity to touch such a large amount of money again in the rest of his life.

He originally thought it would take at least a week to raise such a large amount of change, but Father Clement only took two days.Antonio considered wine chests and flour sacks, and finally decided to follow Father Clement's suggestion to disguise the money as furniture brought in from afar.Another day later, an empty wooden box of unknown origin arrived at the door, with the name and trademark of a certain Dutch shipping company printed on it.

Bribing, he took the hammer on the table and nailed the lids of the wooden boxes tight one by one, a necessary sin.He met with Costa again yesterday evening to finalize the details of handing over the money.Antonio couldn't drive, so chauffeurs hired by the church were responsible for transporting the "furniture" to a remote warehouse in Manhattan Harbor. "Just stop." Costa told him, putting his hands in his pockets and not touching him. Antonio was slightly relieved. "Sometime in the middle of the night, my men will take this car away. Take it smoothly." When the money arrives, I will leave a signal for you."

"What signal?"

"You'll find out then."

"Where do you stay?"

"You'll know when the time comes."

Costa told him not to go to the docks again, especially not to go near the warehouse where the "furniture" truck was parked.But after a week of no news, Antonio went to the pier and looked at the warehouse from a distance.There was no sign of the truck, the gates were closed, and there were no boats at the adjacent dock berths.He hesitated to go any closer, but soon came across a barbed wire fence, and several men who looked like stevedores hovered nearby, all staring at him.Antonio backed away tactfully and walked away quickly.

The day the "signal" finally arrived, Antonio woke up freezing as usual, and the room was colder than usual, beyond the scope of a heating failure, more like blowing with the windows open all night.He slowly got up, wrapped in a blanket, and opened the curtains.The window was closed tightly, and he fiddled with the peg, touched the glass, shrugged, and closed the curtain again.

A brown paper parcel lay on the desk.Antonio stood in front of the package and changed his clothes when he suddenly noticed something that did not belong to this room.Frowning at the package, he checked the bedroom door lock before turning back to pick up the paper package.The stuff inside is soft and can be bent and curled easily, like cloth.He spent a few minutes looking for scissors, or some other sharp object, but turned on the lamp and sat down to untangle the knots.

A scarf slipped out of the open paper bag, wool, dark blue.A piece of cardboard was folded inside, and three lines of writing were written in blue ink.

"Furniture arrived and installed."

Then, "attach the necessary gifts."

A little further down, the last line: "Lines your eyes."

The note has no letterhead and no signature.Antonio crumpled the paper, threw it away, quickly changed his mind, picked it up, dug out the match from the back of the drawer, pushed open the window, and burned it on the brick window sill.The cold wind quickly tore up the ashes and blew them towards the dawn city.

He hesitantly weighed the Necessary Gift, rolled it up, stuffed it deep in the closet, and held it down with two old sweaters.This is not a written trace, and it can probably be left, for now.

The furniture van was never seen again and may have sunk to the bottom of the river long ago.Life returned to the monotonous rhythm Antonio was accustomed to, except that the front pages of the newspapers were dominated by news of the war every day.Cardinal Brennan disappeared without a trace. Even if his brother replied, Antonio would not know.Occasionally, he bumped into Father Clement in the corridor or on the stairs, and the two greeted each other with a nod of greeting, politely avoiding it, and neither mentioned the van, the dock, or Marco Costa.

On a sunny afternoon in early April, Father Clement suddenly called Antonio into his office and sat him down by the radio.The volume is turned down for some reason, Antonio leans over the speaker, and the announcer is halfway through the story: The FBI has arrested sixteen people in Hoboken.As reported by the anonymous tip, the sixteen suspects had hidden explosives, detonators and guns in an abandoned shipyard. FBI agents also found a handwritten list of Allied ships anchored in various New York ports, detailing their damage, and ticked off three of them: two British destroyers, a Canadian cargo ship, It must be an easy target with loose security.

"According to the information obtained by this station," the announcer explained, "these suspects belong to the same gang, and most of the members are German. The local prosecutor is weighing the charges. The court time has not yet been determined, but it is expected to be in-"

Father Clement reached out to turn off the radio and turned to Antonio: "Thank you, Father Pelligrini."

"I'm just acting as a messenger."

"That's enough." Father Clement smiled briefly, with chisel-like wrinkles appearing on his forehead and the corners of his eyes, "By the way, your brother is fine, maybe a little better than 'very good', there is hope within this year Ordained Bishop. He is pleased to know that you serve the Church in... practical terms."

practice.Later, after retreating to the room, Antonio allowed himself a mocking hum.The wording is too euphemistic, but it becomes not euphemistic.Father Clement didn't even let him glance at Killian's reply, much to Antonio's disappointment.He was pretty sure that the letter would come back to him after being stripped of its "practical" value.But he's not going to complain, and the vignette ends there.Costa did what he promised, the plot was thwarted, and the ships in the harbor were spared.Antonio's short-lived messenger duties were relieved.He sat down by the desk, randomly picked out a book from a pile of unfinished books, read two pages, stared at the window in a daze, thinking about Rome.

Seventy-two hours later, in this room, at this table, Antonio Pelligrini will have a brush with death.