The Mysterious Treasure Of Rome

Later at the hotel, the guide would explain to us that this was called the Mouth of Truth. If after putting the right hand into the opening the person did not tell the truth, he or she would lose their hand.

After that, we continued roaming around the city, amazed by the number of artistic and cultural treasures that had survived over the years.

I had heard about the medieval castles, those sumptuous and grandiose buildings, fortifications built to save the possessions of kings and feudal lords, together with the dwellers of the surrounding villages. Being there, however, was like actually living in a medieval city, where the same architecture remained in its streets, fountains and plazas.

No matter where we looked at, whether to a balcony or to a door lintel, we were impressed by the majesty of the details that had been carved, sculpted or painted, memories of an earlier glorious artistic era. Furthermore, as we found out later, the promotion of these arts was kept alive at local schools, which were considered one of the most prestigious in the world, a good place to live in, if you loved history.

But I was more pragmatic. I preferred the technology with all its advantages. The wide and straight avenues, where you could move with your vehicle from one place to another in a short time, without having to walk up and down the cobbled streets.

A different way to see and consider life. I preferred big cities, where it was easier to access all the services in minutes. I had never thought that anyone could live in such a particular place.

Getting up in the morning and seeing all that, seemed quite unheard of and disconcerting to me. I could not imagine living there as a young man, for me it would be like permanently living in a museum, knowing that everything that I touched was hundreds of years old.

Although as far as the people, the differences with us were not that many. Some of them, however, looked at us with faces that showed surprise and mistrust, which made us feel foreign there, almost as an occupying force

Maybe it was just a perception; maybe it was because our clothes were different from what you would usually see around there.

No matter what it was, with the chagrin we experienced with the theft we had in the morning, we were careful not to get into any other disagreement or similar issue, now that we were a smaller group.

Perhaps our journey had been a bit too rushed, taking into account the socio-political circumstances of that time, but it was a sign of goodwill from our academy, a sign of cooperation and exchange.

I do not know if any group of Italian students were scheduled to visit our country. I guess that would the proper thing to do, but I did not have that information.

Maybe it was part of a policy of openness with the rest of the world, I do not know. What was clear to me was that I had never visited this country, and that this was a great opportunity to do it, so I did not want anything or anyone to spoil the trip for me.

If the classmate whose wallet had been stolen had told me how much money he had missing, I myself would have given him that amount, to be able to continue our excursion with peace of mind.

I cannot imagine what other valuables he could be carrying in his wallet, because as far as documents, we left them all at the embassy. To move around the city they gave us a card with our data, the address of the hotel where we were staying and the embassy’s phone number. Despite being in the middle of an early spring, it was quite hot, we were not used to such high temperatures for this time of year, and we found it difficult to find water fountains to drink.

And those we found we were not sure they had water that was safe to drink, even though people drank from them without any concern. We, out of prudence, preferred only to refresh our hands and head, for a fountain that had been operating for so many hundreds of years could not be as clean as we wanted.

Perhaps it was the contrast, but those people seemed quite unassuming to us, away from the big cities filled with the smoke of nearby factories, to which we were used by now. On the other hand, probably they thought the same about us, when they realized we were amazed at things they saw on a daily basis.

We liked so much what we saw, that some of my classmates started to draw what they saw in their notebooks, so as not to forget anything, sketching silhouettes, more or less well rendered, of the most significant and important buildings. On the other hand, others seemed to be more at ease writing, and they stopped on every street attempting to describe in a few paragraphs the wonders we were seeing. Only of a few of our colleagues were taking pictures with their cameras.

Incidentally, I do not know how they could pass the cameras through customs. Before leaving, we received very detailed instructions to take no technology out the country. Probably when they dropped the name of their parents, that weighed more than any written rule.

So, occasionally they asked us to stop to take pictures of the whole group with one of those buildings in the back.

Maybe as far as travelling I was not as expert as others, because I had only brought my notebook, where I intended to collect every day what was most remarkable, without trying to capture in those few lines the admiration that the city produced on me at every turn.

One of the aspects I found most curious, in contrast with what I knew, was the way women dressed. Older ones used a black scarf or handkerchief on their heads and they dressed in black. Younger ones dressed with discreet colors but sported scarves of striking colors.

I was used to see women in my country with make-up, large flight skirts, and short sleeves showing their arms, and only some of them wearing a scarf as a decorative detail.

It also seemed to me there was a clear difference between the sexes as to what they could or could not do. That way the men strutted down the streets with clothes that looked were their best galas, except those at work that wore a simple shirt because of the prevailing heat. Now, in an attitude somewhat funny for us, men seemed to be the ones in charge, whereas women, in a modest and shy way, seemed to try to be totally unnoticed, as if they had nothing to prove or to contribute.

That seemed quite surprising to me, it was as if everyone had become stuck in time. The way they dressed, I mean, because I do not think there was a religious reason, as it happens with the Quakers, a community that had isolated themselves from the rest of the world, keeping their culture and not wanting to progress, showing this in the way they dressed, not very different from what we were seeing now.

Well, those were my impressions at the time. Later on I would be able to understand that culture. It was all the result of my inexperience, since as my classmates that had traveled in Europe told me, on each country there were totally different traditions and dressing codes.

Even the way men and women treated each other was quite different depending on the country where one went. They told me about the liveliness of French women, who exhibited their charm without much modesty, so they did not wait the man to go after them, but they chose the one they found most gracious.

Even in places with a common culture and language as ours, they still seemed to keep rather peculiar traditions. That way, unlike what it happened in our country for some time, women there had not managed to have enough level of economic and political independence. This even happened in England, where the first movements to obtain voting rights for women started. That is, that women could vote to choose their representatives and thereby had a recognized series of rights equal to men. Apart from the political considerations, however, many women still did not work, except in minor areas or at home.

Those comparisons kept astonishing me, perhaps this part of the world was evolving more slowly than I thought.

At least in my country there was an important effort to share its culture with the rest, and we had integrated in our society those migrants who had recently come from all countries of Europe, political refugees, immigrants, or just relatives, which that way were reunited.

Quite a few had come fleeing political systems they did not accept, others looking for better living conditions and job opportunities. All of them had been welcomed, regardless of sex, race or religion.

Before long, they embraced the culture of the country without losing their own, so it was difficult to differentiate them at schools or at their jobs.

Perhaps what was most noticeable was the color of their skin or some of their features, but since there were already so many who had been in the country for generations, this was no sign of any special condition.

What they did keep as a sign of their identity were their practices and ceremonies, like when they were getting married or when they said goodbye to loved ones who had passed away. I had gone to their funerals more than once, first out of curiosity, and later out of friendship.

CHAPTER 2. THE FIRST SURPRISE

We walked through those ancient streets, many of them cobbled, for what it was supposed to be a short visit, but there were endless and countless tourist sights, at least that is how they looked to the rest of the group, who got excited every time we turned a corner and discovered an outstanding old building.

To me, so many visits to historic buildings seemed endless, so I was a little exhausted and tired, perhaps because I had been walking all morning from one place to another. Maybe it was due to the heat and the change of hour, because it was still night in my country and here it was close to noon, or maybe because I had not had enough sleep because of our failed exploration of the city’s nightlife. Maybe it was a combination of both.

Besides, everything we saw had been here for hundreds of years, and for sure it would remain like that for many more.

That is why I did not understand the need of the rest of the group to go to every single place that seemed remarkable to them, documenting it with photographs or in their notebooks, as if they were the first discoverers of some ancient ruins.

I sat by a stone fountain, in the middle of a square, waiting for my classmates to leave a church they were in. I was absent-minded, looking at the bottom of a pond formed by the water falling from the fountain, when a little girl approached me.

By how tall she was, I do not think she was more than six or seven. She had a white dress and a yellow scarf on her head, and with a broad smile she offered me a flower of great white petals.

After receiving that precious and delicate object in my hands, and not knowing the reason for that gift, I wanted to pay her, taking some coins out of my wallet and showing them to her so she would receive them. However, she shook her head, told me something that I did not understand, and raising her right hand as a goodbye gesture, turned and ran away.

I did not know what to do with that little wonder, and I put it on my lapel. In other occasions I would not have done it, since I knew flowers as a decoration were only used at weddings or other social events, and that they were more an ornament for women.

When I looked up after placing the flower, I saw the girl walking away through one of the many alleys that led to this square. Sincerely I was somewhat disoriented with this rather chaotic urban distribution. I was used to big cities, where from the main streets, of larger size, parted the rest of the smaller secondary streets. However, here the size of the road was not an indication of anything, since from any of them could emerge another and later another one of different size, and of these other new avenues and roads.

In addition to that, the few indications that had the names of the places where we went were written in that strange language, which despite sharing a similar alphabet was quite enigmatic to me.

Perhaps if I had paid a little more attention to the classes of ancient languages, during which my teacher wasted so much effort trying to instill in me the love of classical culture. However, since that subject did not count too much for the final grades, I did not consider it with much interest. That now prevented me from being able to make the most of this trip, not only because the city was full of inscriptions on doors, lintels and on other archaeological remains, in the ancient and already forgotten Latin language, but because the language spoken by the citizens here, the Italians, was a derivation or evolution of it.

In addition to that, the guide the embassy had assigned us served as our translator, talking to the merchants and sellers who approached the group to try to sell us something, or when we wanted to enter some private building to look at the architectural or historical remains in those villas.

By the way, it was not clear to me how art was related to the city. It seemed that ancient benefactors, the patrons of arts of the time, paid generously to the artists to produce their work. That way they made the city a cultural center of reference.

Although in my country we certainly had some patrons that donated part of their wealth to young talents, their generosity was not enough to obtain benefits decade after decade, as an incentive to new generations.

In addition, the government itself provided through various mechanisms, direct aids or scholarships to those that stood out from the rest, but these aids did not focus exclusively on artists. They rather tried to reward those who best performed on a given specialty, so that they would continue to train and progress.

Besides, the government rewarded with financial help young promises in science, research, the arts, and even sports, so they could dedicate their time to them, without having to worry about a job to pay for their studies.

Fortunately for me, I was among those lucky young people, who had scholarships from their government, and on whom depended the progress and future of our country. This government’s scholarship allowed me to study in the same center as others, without having to have a father with a high political office or a great fortune, like some of my fellow travelers had, or without having a remarkable and outstanding sports career that others had as well.

My specialty, on which I had stood out, was mathematics. Since I was a child, I loved to discover the relationship elements had in nature, or guess events before they happened, or predict the behavior of animals and people.

Of all of this I had no idea, but when I started to study mathematics I understood this was the language of the future, since I could use it to put forward theories about present and upcoming events, I could understand the associations of sets and their behavior, and apply this to ordinary life.

Perhaps it was somehow presumptuous, as some professor had discussed with me, to try to find some logic in the world around us, not taking into account instinctive behaviors. Likewise, some of my fellow classmates criticized me as arrogant, since as far as them they preferred to trust on something as intangible as good or bad luck. In my case, however, I was sure that behind every fact and every behavior there was a formula that could explain it.

I then specialized myself in economic theories, with which I was able to predict the behavior of governments with respect to their domestic and foreign trade.

The main theory I had supported was that the population would expand or contract based on the availability of food. So, it was not so much about having a good or bad harvest in the fields, but about the ease or difficulty of the interchange through commerce.

I then reread history from that hypothesis, and I could explain why some peoples were doomed to their disappearance because they did not have a raw material to offer to the neighbor country. Therefore, they were not be able to trade with anything other people needed.

Some of my professors, when I had to defend my thesis, accused me of forcing reality to fit my mathematical model, but I was sure they said that only due to skepticism on their part.

If I could know all the economic variables of a certain population, or at least the most important ones, I could predict without too many errors how many years of subsistence they would have, and whether these people would become dominant or dominated.

Therefore, if a given population, who cultivated and generated raw materials, did not have around them others who converted and manufactured them, they had no chance of growth. It was for me a perfect symbiosis, beneficial to both, where the producer survived thanks to the manufacture of raw materials.

It is true that this led to a rather significant economic difference. Once a product was manufactured, the original producers had to pay more than ten times more for the raw material they had extracted from the land. However, if we talk exclusively about survival, both populations managed to survive.

Perhaps my theories had impressed a few, but it was most noteworthy when applied in other fields. Some had suggested me to present a variation, to try to guess how countries would behave from a weapons point of view.

Although my initial economic idea was more predictable, because people are no longer governed only by the quantity of weapons they have, but by their quality and logistical capacity, elements that in my equations were difficult to assess and to evaluate.

Being distracted while engaged in these thoughts, I suddenly heard somebody scream. It came from the place where the little girl, who had given me the flower, had gone.

I looked everywhere and no one seemed to pay attention to that scream. It went for a few seconds and then it was silenced by the noisy coming and going of people on the street.

I stood still for a moment and a strange thought came to my mind. Maybe the little girl was in danger. A chill went up from my spine to my neck, and suddenly I started running toward the street where I had last seen her, since nobody seemed to care about the scream for help that I had heard.

I then left my fellow travelers without even telling them anything, as I did not yet know where I was going. I ran very fast a few hundred feet almost without breathing, until I stopped all of a sudden at the end of the street, that now branched in two.

I looked everywhere anxiously and surprised. Just a little while ago I had heard the little girl and now I could see her nowhere. No chance she could have run so much in such a short time, as I had done it. That meant that by now I should be seeing her. However, different from the crowded square I had just left, here I could see no one.

It would have been very useful to ask any bystander if they had seen a little girl pass by, but finding no one, I did not know what to do. I could go down one street or the other, but how far? for how long was I going to continue my search?

Although I did not know the little girl at all, to think she might be in danger was worrying me, to say the least, and I did not want to get back, but on the other hand, it seemed useless to keep running aimlessly through these streets.

The only way she could have disappeared was if somebody was carrying her in his arms. I saw no other possibility, since she could not have gone that far on foot.

I came back quite unhappy and worried, disappointed that I could not help her, short of breath due to the effort, when I saw that half way down the street to the right, there was a small door that I had not seen when I passed by running.

I nervously walked down the street again from the very beginning to see if there were any more doors, but I found no other one, “is it possible that they took her this way?” I wondered in front of the little door that was just only a bit higher than my chest.

I put my hands on that old wooden door, swollen by moisture, and I pushed to see if it gave way, because it had no knocker or latch. After a few attempts, the door gave in and it opened with a shocking squeak, like old bikes do when they are rusty after a long time with no use.

I stopped in front of that dark opening, not sure if I would get in or not, because for sure it was a private property where nobody had invited me to come in. Besides, it was very unlikely the little girl had gone in there, because in that case I would have heard that peculiar sound……. Unless the door was already open when they grabbed her.

I stuck my head in to see what was behind this swollen old wooden door. All I could see was a deep and vast darkness, with an intense smell of moisture, more typical of places near the sea, where the moisture in the air drenches the walls, corroding them and forming a sort of saltpeter that peels and cracks them.

I stood there enduring the stench, waiting until my eyes got used to the darkness, trying to locate some object inside, and at the same time trying to hear some noise, no matter how small, but it was of no use. There was no sound at all. I could only hear my breathing, and all I could see was an absolute darkness. I then assumed the door probably led to a closed, cold and damp room.

But what could that be? Maybe an old groceries warehouse or the abandoned cellar of some house.

With great care and announcing my presence in case there was somebody inside that sinister place, I decided to come in.

I left the door open to avoid bumping into any object, but it did not do much good because that black darkness turned into a thick gloom, where my shadow was cast as a sinuous and ghostly silhouette on the background wall.

After almost falling down three descending steps I had not noticed, I recovered, and trying not to bump into anything, I walked very slowly until I came across a wall.

There were probably less than six feet from the door to the end of that gloomy room, and there seemed to be no other access, a dead end.

There was no way the girl could have gone in there. And if she did it was not out of her own will. Where could she be? I ran out of ideas, so I continued doing what I had been doing so far, exploring that little room as if I were clutching at straws.

I continued feeling with my hands every inch of that room, until I found a slit in the wall. It was the frame of another door, which I touched next.

Its rough and moist touch was very similar to the one I had to push in to gain access to this gloomy room.

I slid my hand down its front trying to feel the knob to open it, but I could not find it. I just found a hole at the height of my belly button, which I guess would be the keyhole.

I pushed hard as I had done with the front door, but it did not move. Since it did not give in, I thought maybe it would open up towards me, so I tried to pull it, sticking my fingers as I could into that tiny thing of a lock, but all my effort was for nothing, because it did not open in that direction either.

I crouched down to the opening of the door, to see if I could at least see something through it, and the only thing I could see, quite partially, was a square courtyard, similar to a cloister, surrounded by columns set up like bars of a jail cell.

They seemed to guard and protect a number of large paintings that hung on the walls. Nothing helped to me identify the place, for stately homes like this I had already seen several that morning. However, I did not see the girl nor any other person I could ask for help to move that heavy door. I had to resign myself to my crushing failure. Knowing I could no longer do anything for that little girl and that my companions, once they finished their visit to the church where I left them would be looking for me, I went back to the square with the fountain in the center, from where I had left.

I still was uneasy for the little girl who just a moment ago, before she disappeared, had given me that delicate flower, but I was not even sure that something had happened to her.

I went back to where my teammates were already waiting for me, looking for me around. After reassuring them I was OK, and asking them how their visit was, we went to the next street, and soon a new building to visit appeared before our eyes.

Again I stayed outside, this time sheltered under the shade of a balcony so that I would not get too much sun.

Being there, somewhat calmer, having recovered from the earlier emotions, I remembered I had lived something similar before, a very awkward situation of my past, which I thought it was by then forgotten, diluted by the passage of years, but now remembered as if I were living it again at that very moment.

That time I should have done something, but out of fear or of cowardice I did nothing. Not sure if she would have been saved if it had been only me.

I mean my sister, when we were little, I still was not seven years old and she was only about five.

It happened on a hot day like today, at the swimming pool of the base, to which we belonged because our father was in the military. We had both left at noon, when we knew there would be no one there, because the adults at that time would be sleeping, and we seized the opportunity to take a bath.

Our parents had gone out to make one of those visits to which we were so used, due to the constant social activity of our mother, sometimes against the strict and regulated life of our father, but this is how she had overcome his constant absences, when he was assigned for months to different operations.

It had started as a form of entertainment, and it had gradually taken up longer and longer, until it had become an important part of her life.

At the beginning it was just a way to amuse herself. She started going once a week to an innocuous painting course, then twice a week, then … until she set up one the rooms of our house to be her studio. From there, becoming a professional was just a matter of time and lots of practice, because she had the essentials, a great skill with the brushes and a good eye for details.

Her teachers, proud of her work, encouraged her to start having exhibitions for the base staff personnel, but little by little that went further.

Some time after, she started a tour of several neighboring military bases, which invited her knowing her talent and her skill with the brushes. Then it came her public life, to call it so, since she was invited from different cities to take part in exhibitions, both collective and individual, to show her work.

In addition to that, the army supported her, since she improved their image among the general population, showing that life in a military base did not have to be necessarily boring and dull. That the women of the military did not have to give up their expectations and their lives, and they could develop them, just like the rest of the population.

Before long, that family changed its identity. From being the family of my father, a renowned captain, decorated in various conflicts and respected by all who had served under him, it became the family of my mother. It was a family known throughout the country. She was the pioneer, and in many cases a role model of progress for women, in and out of the military, so much that several prime-time shows invited her for interviews.

At the beginning that was quite a joy for all of us, because we saw our mother was happy, but after a while it turned out to be somewhat awkward as far as the economics.

My mother began to have her long-awaited financial independence, with her own income. This allowed her to buy a number of objects and vehicles not really fitting for military personnel or for their families.

My father insisted that she should restrain herself, that she could spend what she earned in any other matters, that she should not be notorious in the base for her financial expenses. My mother would not listen to him, tired, she said, of living like the rest of the base, when she knew she could have greater comforts.

In addition to that, she constantly traveled for several days to museums and exhibitions, or to show her work. She was even preparing to sponsor the creation of a foundation for young artists, for which she spent several months touring different institutions, to give scholarships to those accepted by the foundation.

All this meant that we often were at home alone, under the care of the mother of a friend, but it was not the same as having our own family.

No one seemed willing to leave part of their life to spend more time with us, so I had to become a little bit responsible for my sister, and I saw her back and forth from the base to the school.

Although of course, that activity was not too difficult, because transportation from the house to our school was on the base bus, but on that particular afternoon, my friend’s mother had not yet arrived. I do not know why she had not called or anything.

So we came back from school and ate the two of us alone. After that, and since it was a day of scorching heat we decided to go to the pool.

This one was located close to where we lived, so we only had to go through the yard of a couple of houses and there it was.

When we arrived to the pool, I did not know what to do since usually there was a lifeguard and a rescuer nearby, in case something happened, but there was none around.

Maybe there was not still the time and the pool was not yet open, but we wanted to open the season, taking our first swim.

Perhaps there were still a few days before the official opening. Anyway, then it would always be full, especially with those big boys who seemed to love to have the pool all for themselves.

I was still watching all over, trying to figure out which will be the shallower side where we had been last year, when I saw my sister suddenly plunging herself in, doing the bomb, as she had seen me do so many times, but after she went in, she did not come out.

I stared intently at the bottom of the pool how it went back to its static calm, until there was not a single wave caused by the plunging of my sister, but she still did not come out of the bottom.