Road to Rome

"clam down."

Marco said aloud, half to appease Antonio, half to command himself.He sat on the corner of the bed, pressed hard on the wound, and forced himself to take a deep breath.Just a minor wound, the bullet didn't stay in it, but fuck it, it hurts. "It's just a minor injury, the bullet is not inside." He told Antonio what he had just thought, "Father, please give me a towel and alcohol."

Antonio went into the bathroom, scavenged all the textiles, piled them on Marco's lap, and stood there, staring palely at the wound.

"Antonio, alcohol."

"Yes, of course, I will... I'll be right back."

The priest hastily opened the door and went out.Marco took off his shirt, rolled the towel into a ball, pressed hard on the gunshot wound, clenched his teeth, and controlled his breathing with all his willpower, slow, deep and long.Pain is always scary, it is inevitable, it has nothing to do with courage, but panic is useless.The blanket was stained with blood, and so were the sheets, which meant paying the hotel staff to shut up tomorrow, making up an excuse of an accidental fall or something, so that both parties had steps to descend - more on that later.The ghostly aftertaste of the gunfire still buzzed in Marco's ears, and Bruch's men must have recognized his car, absolutely.It is very likely that he noticed Marco's whereabouts from the hospital parking lot, and then rushed directly to guard Costa's house. It is a very reasonable strategy. Marco himself would have given the same order: two cars, four people, The four guns fired intensively when they saw the target and got out of the car, and then accelerated to escape.The investment is small, extremely flexible, and the movement is much smaller than the bombing case, and the effect is good.

If he hadn't accidentally dropped the key when he opened the door, Marco would have been lying on the examination table of the municipal morgue by now.The bullet shattered the rearview mirror and the car window, and the glass splashed. He subconsciously fell to the ground, climbed to the other side of the car, panting, and then opened the door of the passenger seat while the ambusher was changing the magazine, climbed to Get back in the car and restart the engine.The gunfire rang out again, and the rear windshield shattered.Marco slid down against the seat, using the back of the seat as a cover to avoid being pierced through the head.The gearbox made a dry and harsh creaking sound, the gears bite reluctantly, and the car bumped and jumped out like a hare with a wounded hind leg.In the only remaining rearview mirror, he could see flames suddenly bursting from the back of the house.The surrounding houses turned on their lights one after another. I don't know who is yelling, and the figure is running around in the orange fire. The siren is heard, and it is far away. I don't know if it is coming here.Marco almost turns back and rushes into the burning house to make sure his parents are safe, but the move only puts everyone in greater danger.He shifted into an upshift and raced around the empty street corner until he was sure that no one was following him, before he eased off the gas pedal a little and sat up straighter.The faint pain on the side of the waist finally became unnegligible. He tentatively touched it, and it felt like a scratch, but it was so deep that his index finger could almost sink in completely, and the blood soaked the fabric of the shirt slippery.

Antonio is back, carrying a first aid kit that looks like it was made 150 years ago. The wood is so brittle and thin that it can be broken with just a little thumb pressure.There were three rolls of bandages inside, one of which had been disassembled, moldy and yellow, and covered with suspicious particles like insect eggs.The other two volumes looked okay.The alcohol was in a large glass bottle, and the stopper got stuck, and when it was pulled out it split in two, and it couldn't be put back.Marco washed the wound, bandaged it up with Antonio's assistance, lay down directly on the blood-stained sheets, took a long breath, and closed his eyes.

He could hear the priest moving restlessly by the bed, coming here, coming back, moving the chair, fiddle with the bottles in the old medicine chest, knocking something off, picking it up, moving the chair again, and sitting down.There was a quick silence, so complete that Marco couldn't help but wonder if the priest was breathing.

"Don't let me hinder your rest, please." Marco opened his eyes and patted the relatively clean side of the sheets.

"No, thank you. It will be daylight soon."

"Is there some unknown rule against lying with me?"

"Not as far as I know. I just don't like being too close to other people."

Marco laughed out loud, startling even himself, a sharp pain flashed through the wound, and he had to desperately control his breathing to suppress the inexplicable laughter.He imagined that Antonio was a water snake coiled under the rocks at the bottom of the river, cold, wet, covered with scales, afraid of light, maybe poisonous, or not, you need to catch it and observe carefully to be sure.

"Understandable." He finally squeezed out the words, carefully covered the gauze with his hands, and closed his eyes again.

A rustle, and then, softly, "Marco?"

"I am awake, Father."

"what happened?"

So Marco briefly recounted everything in the first two hours: ambush, bullets, fire, escape, blood, panic.When he was talking, he either looked at the ceiling, or closed his eyes, and gently drew circles on the gauze with his index finger. The bleeding should have stopped, and the gauze was always dry.

"You left your parents in the burning house?" the priest asked the first question.

Marco took a deep breath, and finally turned his head to look at Antonio: "It seems that we have a very different family education, Father. In my family, no one is allowed to be a hero, first survive and then try to reunite. Second , dad probably ran away with mom as soon as he heard the first gunshot, I didn't 'leave my parents in the burning house' because they weren't in the house."

"But how can you be sure?"

"No. Daddy's also not sure if I was shot fifteen times in the body, lying on the sidewalk waiting to die. We both have to trust each other to be able to escape on our own, and then we'll meet again. Someone has to survive, you understand? All 'The shipping business', someone has to take it over."

He waited for the priest to question the "shipping business" and refused to whitewash the word "smuggling", but the other party didn't speak, just looked at him sympathetically and nodded, as if he really understood.Why sympathy?What was he thinking about?

"Tell me about yourself, Father." Marco broke the growing silence, "since none of us can sleep tonight."

The other party frowned: "What do you want to hear?"

"What else? 'Who are you, where are you from, how do you like to die', philosophical questions. It's what people talk about when they first meet."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what people talk about when they first meet."

Pulling you into a conversation is like pulling a freighter into port alone, just in time for hurricane season.Marco decided to jump straight to the next topic: "'Antonio Pelligrini,' an Italian name?" "Yes."

"Mother too?"

"She's Irish, so my brother's name is Killian, and you can imagine the atmosphere in my family."

"Not quite."

“First and second generation immigrants under one roof, that atmosphere. Dad lived in California for over 30 years, but was actually Italian. My brothers and I grew up speaking a mix of English, Italian and Gaelic , I slowly changed after I went to elementary school."

"Sunshine boy from Golden State, unexpected."

"There are all kinds of people in California, Mr. Costa."

"My family is from Naples, exactly, my parents and my sister are from Neapolitan, I've never been to Italy. I can only be a 'dockman', if anyone asks."

"I've never seen Italy with my own eyes either."

"Would you like to go? After the war? If the Germans hadn't blown up New York."

"Of course." Antonio said without hesitation, "I will go to Rome."

"What are you doing there?"

Antonio looked at him as if Marco had just asked him why he needed water and air: "The Vatican is there."

The Vatican is of course there, but what does it mean to you? "Isn't it your childhood dream to become a priest, Sunshine Boy?" "Baker, that was my first childhood dream. There were two French immigrants who opened a bakery on the block. It was very expensive. You can only eat once every two or three months, and you have to walk a long way, four streets away."

"I remember wanting to be a postman because I thought postmen were the ones driving the trains and delivering the packages, and then I realized I was wrong."

Antonio laughed, finally looking more like a human being than an aquatic reptile pretending to be a man.Marco blinked and smiled, moving among the messy sheets, looking for a position that was more friendly to the wounds on his neck and side.

"So, what happened between the baker and the priest?" Marco asked.

Antonio cleared his throat, the smile disappeared, and looked down at his hands.After a long time, he turned his gaze back to Marco: "There are not many ways to get a person out of a poor neighborhood. Mr. Costa, the church is one of the ways. It happens to be my favorite way too. I am very lucky."

Lucky?Marco could think of at least three different ways to taunt, but didn't make a sound.There was the sound of car tires rolling over gravel outside the window, and the headlights briefly passed the curtains, and a blinding white light came through the gaps.The small clock on the bedside table reads just after 04:30 am.Marco signaled Antonio to turn off the light, endured the pain, got up from the bed, and went to the window to peek.It was a large coal truck that came in just now. The driver walked through the parking lot with a dirty canvas bag and yawned several times during the short distance.The cloth bag looked light and fluffy. The driver rolled it up casually as he walked and put it under his arm. It was unlikely that it contained a gun, and it was not a killer.

"Night shift truck driver," Marco said, moving back onto the bed with difficulty, trying not to strain his side. "It's okay, it looks like the two of us can at least live until dawn."

"Then what do we do?"

"Then there probably won't be 'us' anymore, Father, you have to find a way to get back into the hands of the dear church, they should be able to arrange for you to go back to the west coast to avoid the limelight, so as not to visit Jesus too early. I'm going to find my family."

Antonio did not answer.He didn't turn on the light again, and Marco couldn't see his face clearly in the dim light, but could only make out the motionless shadow on the chair.

"Good night?" Marco said.

"Do you mind if I take a few minutes to pray?"

"Not at all, it takes as many minutes as you want. Give yourself time to sleep, Antonio. Tomorrow may be longer than tonight."