Icejacked

The Hospital and the Priest

The night before, I managed to write an article for Archiv and e-mail a sketchy report to the university with copies of everything forwarded to Mr. Calabro as agreed. I then made a list of what I needed to do today, including revisiting Leddicus and checking the research lab where the morgue had sent his clothes. My haircut somehow did not make it onto the list. At this rate, I would soon need to put it in a ponytail.

I also decided I must keep a journal, not just for my university research but also for personal reasons as who knew where this might lead. I had purchased a black Moleskine notebook, which fitted neatly into my inside top jacket pocket. I took it out now, wrote down yesterday’s date, and made notes about all that had happed at the hospital and with Mr. Calabro. When I had finished, I slotted the elastic page holder around the cover, popped it back in my pocket, and patted it. I vowed I would do this every day.

I called up the lab and explained who I was and what I was investigating. They were most cooperative, and we had a long chat. So far, they had discovered that the clothing certainly had the style and appearance of the Roman era and could be two thousand years old, but radiocarbon dating was required to confirm this. They would be sending these artifacts to a local university who had the necessary equipment, but that could take some weeks. The strange smell, was, as I suspected, urine. Slaves who did the washing for the wealthy immersed the material in the repugnant liquid, and it came out sparkling white. The ammonia in the urine did the trick. But the downside of this washing technique was the lingering smell. The most notable Romans, although they looked bright and clean, must have smelled truly pissy. The stench would have been unbearable to the contemporary nose. The researchers at the lab and morgue staff had both complained about this overpowering smell.

The next item on my list was to find a way to rectify the communication problem with Leddicus. It was pretty obvious that I couldn’t rely on the busy and very unfriendly doctor. I sat chewing on my pen, and then I had a brainwave. Perhaps I could engage the help of a Roman Catholic priest who must surely speak Latin. As far as I was aware, it was still the lingua franca of .

I contacted the local Roman Catholic presbytery and located myself a fluent Latin-speaking priest who agreed to act as my interpreter, gratis! After breakfast, I jumped in the car and headed off to pick him up and take him to the hospital to meet Leddicus.

Father Patrick turned out to be a very friendly, multilingual Irishman who spoke Latin, Italian, and English so it appeared we had every base covered. He was short and round, and he had an unruly mop of ginger hair. When we arrived at Leddicus’s ward, the room was empty, and we couldn’t find him in the main ward. One of the nurses told me a nursing assistant had come to give Leddicus a break from the ward. She was going to take Leddicus for a walk, but his legs were too weak so she had to take him in a wheelchair.

Father Patrick and I went from ward to ward, but there was no sign of Leddicus. We then checked out the basement coffee shop and walked briskly around the garden area. He was nowhere to be seen. We began to make our way back to the ward by a different route. As we walked past the children’s ward, we glanced in, and there he was, sitting in rapt attention as the children participated in an English lesson. He was leaning forward. Deep creases were between his brows. He was obviously paying very careful attention. As we hovered in the doorway, we caught his attention, and for a moment, I thought he recognised me. Perhaps he was pleased to see me, indicated only by the lessening of the frown.

I walked quietly into the ward, and as I did so, the lesson ended. I introduced Father Patrick in English, and then Father Patrick took over and spoke to Leddicus in Latin.

The nursing assistant, who until then had been sitting beside Leddicus, stood up and turned to me. “I was about to take him back to his ward.”

“If it’s all right with you, we’ll make sure he gets back there safely.”

“That’s fine. Could you just sign here?” She pushed a clipboard toward me with a care plan form clipped to it. “We have to keep track of patients. You do understand, don’t you?”

“Of course, no problem.” I scrawled my signature and dutifully printed my name underneath. “Any other instructions we need?”

“You can leave him in the wheelchair when you bring him back onto the ward. The nursing staff will get him back into bed.”

I began pushing the wheelchair. Father Patrick walked along beside Leddicus and stooped down to chat to him. Every now and then, he would turn his head toward me and say, “Left here, laddie” or “Right will be grand.” He was obviously a regular visitor to this place as he had no trouble at all navigating his way around the confusing corridors. We eventually arrived back at the right ward.

Leddicus seemed a little more relaxed, and I hoped he was pleased that I had found him another person with whom he could communicate more easily. This small meeting of just three people was but a microcosm of what was happening in the wider world, that is, the mass migration of traumatised war refugees into Western countries. They then had their trauma increased due to being unable to communicate with the local population.

Perhaps it was the presence of the priest, but I had a pang of guilt at my deep intolerance of people who cannot speak the local language. Perhaps I needed a rethink on that one. Seeing it firsthand might hopefully give me more patience.

It would be unfair of me to bore you with reams of Latin, but the priest seemed to be doing a great job. A fascinating picture began to unfold as Father Patrick chatted with Leddicus and then interpreted key information to me, switching easily between Latin and English. My pen scribbled away, filling up the pages in my Moleskine notebook.

“Could you ask him what he meant yesterday? About the little people in the box?” I said to Father Patrick, who relayed my question to Leddicus.

This a good place to start to help piece together this mystery man.

Father Patrick looked at me quizzically. “He means the people in the TV. He wants to know how they get in there.”

This was indeed a curious question. I made a mental note to bring in my laptop tomorrow and educate him in the workings of a webcam. As soon as I had that thought, I realised that perhaps I was beginning to believe that he was who he said he was. I gave myself a mental shake to shrug off that preposterous and impossible idea.

“Ask him why he thinks he is dead and in heaven.”

Father Patrick grinned at me. “For sure the boy is certain he is dead. He says the people here have such great power. They can create night and day at will.”

I smiled at this strange notion, walked over to the light switch by the door, and switched the lights on and off. I then wheeled Leddicus over in his chair and beckoned him to repeat the exercise. He stretched up his hand and began flicking the switch up and down. His eyes widened as he gaped up at the ceiling as the lights went on and off. He seemed very excited and impressed.

The issues confusing Leddicus seemed to point quite strongly to him being from somewhere less developed, and perhaps he really was two thousand years old. My eyebrows shot up in surprise as I found myself thinking this again.

Father Patrick interpreted the response from Leddicus, “If I am not dead, then where am I?”

Father Patrick explained he was in , in a place for sick people. Leddicus was keen to know what sickness he had. This was the most difficult to explain. It took Father Patrick quite a while to retell the story to Leddicus, of where he had been found, being taken to the morgue, and what ensued after that.

Father Patrick looked at me and shrugged. “Leddicus has no idea of how he came to be on a mountain. He does not remember.”

”Ask Leddicus to tell us again where he’s from and where he was going.”

This gradually unfolded with Father Patrick interpreting the information to me, sentence by sentence. I was listening intently and scribbling into my notebook like a newbie journalist. Leddicus said he was married with two children. The family lived in Caesarea Philippi. He had been helping in the family business, which traded in a variety of cloth. He said he was a Roman by birth. His father had been a senior Roman officer, but had recently started a business in , as he was now no longer part of the army. He said his mother was Greek.

He was trying to develop trade for the family business, and as Rome was such a large, important city, there was a lot of traffic between Caesarea and Rome. was very much a Roman city. He explained many Jews were there, too, so he also spoke some Aramaic as well as his mother’s language, Greek.

He had sailed first from Caesarea to Malet, which I guessed was because that was a centre of the textile trade. From there, he planned to go to , but he had instead gone to and then on to Helvetii. From there, he started to cross the mountains on his way to , and that was as far as he could remember.

Father Patrick conveyed Leddicus’s words to me, “Then I found myself here in this strange country, surrounded by very strange things! Where am I?” The priest placed a comforting hand on the arm of Leddicus as he turned to me. “Poor lad, he’s so confused and distressed. He hasn’t a clue what happened or what’s going on. He’s very worried that staying in this place is costing him a lot of money. He says he has money. He wants to count it to find out if he has enough. It’s there on the bedside cabinet.” Father Patrick reached over and handed Leddicus the small leather pouch, Leddicus untied the leather thong that secured the top. He then poured the contents into his lap. I quickly realised that the coins were denarius, aureus, and perhaps sesteritus. He started counting them back into the bag. After a while, he informed Father Patrick that he had almost four hundred Denarius.

Father Patrick and I exchanged an incredulous glance. The priest then reassured Leddicus, saying he need not worry about payment at the moment. I asked Leddicus if I could take a photo of the money. Leddicus looked at Father Patrick quizzically. The priest explained that it was a picture.

This made him more curious. He looked at Father Patrick and rattled away in Latin. He wanted to know where I would get an artist to draw a bunch of coins. I laid out some of the coins on top of the bedside cabinet, produced my mobile phone, and started taking pictures. I had my phone set to a loud click, and as I took each shot, this seemed to disturb Leddicus. He became anxious and gradually wheeled his chair as far away as possible. He ended up wedged against the window. Then I turned the coins over and took a few more shots.

When I was done, I walked over to Leddicus and showed him the pictures. His gasp indicated what he saw genuinely surprised him.

Just for a bit of fun, Father Patrick pulled out his phone. “Send me one of the pictures.”

I punched his number into my mobile. A fascinated Leddicus watched as I sent Father Patrick one of the pictures. Poor Leddicus was completely overawed as Father Patrick’s phone beeped to let him know he had a new message. Father Patrick beamed and held up his phone for Leddicus to see the same picture there on the phone. Leddicus let out what I thought was a stream of Latin expletives, but Patrick told me what he actually said was, “And you say I am not dead and in another world.”

I was keen to ascertain Leddicus’s age and what year he was born. The age was no problem. He said he was thirty-one and his birth year was “Ab Urbe Condita seven hundred and eight five.” Father Patrick reckoned he must be around thirty-five or thirty-six, as “Ab Urbe Condita” means “from the founding of Rome.” Father Patrick tried to explain to Leddicus that, if this birth date were correct, then this made him two thousand years old, give or take a few years. His mouth open, Leddicus just looked at Father Patrick, then at me, and then back to Father Patrick. He then spread out his hands, covered his face, and began mumbling. Father Patrick gently pulled Leddicus’s hands away so he could hear him better. Leddicus became silent and looked at the floor. All the colour drained from beneath his olive skin.

Father Patrick rested his large hand on Leddicus’s shoulder. “He can’t take it in, poor laddie. He was saying over and over, ‘This can’t be possible.’”

“I agree! It can’t!” I said. “This gets stranger with every passing moment.”

We sat there in silence for a while to let Leddicus gather himself. Just then, the door crashed open, and in bounced a jolly lady pushing a trolley.

“Tea or coffee?” She looked at Leddicus expectantly.

Father Patrick interpreted for him, but the crease in his forehead just deepened even more.

“Hot sweet tea,” Father Patrick said firmly.

“Sorry. I can’t serve visitors.” She said, not unkindly.

Father Patrick smiled. “Yes, I know. This is for the patient. He needs an interpreter.”

She clattered around, popped the tea onto the side table, and crashed back out of the room.

“Hot sweet tea.” Father Patrick picked up the cup and offered it to Leddicus. “Tis grand at any time and never fails to comfort after a shock.”

Leddicus took the proffered cup, held it to his lips, and took a gulp. He let out a yelp because it was so hot. He then sipped it more slowly, still frowning, perhaps at the unfamiliar taste. But the color gradually returned to his cheeks.

When he had finished his tea, Leddicus seemed calmer and asked Father Patrick what language the young children were learning, which he correctly guessed was a school language class. He was told it was English, but this just left him looking blank and wanting to know what country that was from. He then suggested that surely it would be better for the children to learn the more widely used Greek. It was now our turn to look bemused.

“How can we give him two thousand years of history in a sentence?” asked Father Patrick. “And is it actually worth the effort if this is some gigantic hoax.”

“It’s a tough one, but perhaps we could just keep going. Give it a try. Even if it is a hoax, it’s a challenge for our brains, don’t you think?”

Father Patrick chuckled. “Aye, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.” He beamed at me as we took up the challenge of giving Leddicus a whistle-stop tour through the last two thousand years.

We began by telling him that this area was originally part of the Roman Empire and that, over the last two thousand years, it had, in fact, become an empire of its own, probably bigger than the Roman Empire. Its capital city, which would have been called Londinium in Leddicus’s year and had a population of around sixty thousand, was now called London and had a population of around 15 million. It was now the largest urban centre in the whole of the European Union. English was the spoken language, and it was also an international language, so teaching it to schoolchildren was essential.

Father Patrick relayed the information we had discussed. I watched Leddicus. From his body language and expression, I could tell that he did not believe what he was hearing. It reminded me of a story I heard from someone who visited a tiny village in . One of the senior villagers took the visitor to the edge of the town and showed him a newly laid tarmac road.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asked the young man, who happened to live just outside .

“Oh, yes, I live near a road called the M25. It’s about one hundred and seventeen miles long, and in some places, it has six lanes, and each lane is as wide as your road.”

The old man glared at the young man and, with a derisory dismissal, said, “You’re a liar!”

Our presuppositions of what we know colours how we hear and assess things. Leddicus did not say that we were liars, but the look on his face clearly showed that what he was hearing was hard to take in and even harder to believe.

A nurse popped her head round the door and tapped her wrist, indicating it was time for us to leave. I felt bad to leave now, and so did Father Patrick. Perhaps in retrospect, this could have waited until another day when Leddicus was feeling stronger and we had more time, but in our enthusiasm and perhaps naïveté, we now had to leave him with all that information churning in his head.

“That’s a whole lot of confusion to land on this laddie’s head, if he really is two thousand years old,” he said.

“I know, but we don’t have much choice now. The deed is done,” I said.

The nurse hovered by the door, waiting to usher us out. I asked Father Patrick to let Leddicus know I would be back tomorrow.

As we walked across the hospital grounds, the late evening sun was dipping down toward the horizon. We had completely lost track of time.

“What do you think?” I asked Father Patrick.

“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard to be sure, and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Me either, and if he is lying and it’s a hoax, he is certainly doing a very good job of it. And if it is a big scam, what’s the point?” I opened the car and climbed in wearily.

“It’s a complete mystery to me. Would you mind if I came with you tomorrow? This has really got me intrigued.”

“That would be marvellous. I was hoping you would have more time. I’m stumped without you.” I edged out into the evening traffic and headed toward Father Patrick’s presbytery.

By five thirty, I was seated in the local restaurant, eager to get to work and catalog everything that had happened today. My thoughts were racing. I ordered the house special, gobbled it down, flung open my laptop, and started hammering away. After a couple hours, I sat back and ordered a large glass of red wine. I thought contentedly that I could relax and unwind for a couple hours before turning in. I would e-mail the uni and Archiv later from the hotel. There was a malfunction with the Wi-Fi at the restaurant.

My phone buzzed. It was a short, terse text from Mr. Calabro. “Remember our agreement. Daily updates by 8 p.m. via e-mail, or the deal is off.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. I had completely forgotten. My watch said seven thirty. Depression descended. I thought I was set for the evening, but instead, I threw some euros on the table, left my half-drunk wine, raced back to the hotel, and fired up my laptop, only to discover that the hotel Wi-Fi was also on the blink. Back in reception with fifteen minutes to spare, I got directions to the nearest internet café. I felt desperate to meet this deadline, remembering Mr. Calabro’s Mafia tone of voice as he had stressed the importance of this daily e-mail.

At eight fifty-seven, the e-mail sailed into the ether, and I breathed more comfortably. I slowly made my way back to the hotel, bought a beer, and watched CNN for an hour. I was hunched on my lumpy bed before collapsing into an exhausted sleep.

***

Eduardo Calabro sat down at his neat and tidy desk and cracked each knuckle individually. The blinds were closed against the darkness. He fired up his laptop and checked his e-mail. The last two months of e-mailed reports from Gerhardt were all filed neatly into their own folder. Eduardo opened a Word document entitled “The Leddicus Enigma.” It was one hundred and twenty pages long in ten-point font. He checked the e-mail he had received today, and his long slender fingers began to fly across the keyboard.

It was after two in the morning by the time he leaned back in his chair and again began to crack at his knuckles with his thumbs. His shoulders were broad, and his chin bore a pale shadow of grey stubble. He lit a cigarette and smoked for a while. He tapped the ash carefully into an ashtray on the corner of the desk. After a while, he stood up, pulled up the blind, and opened the window. The small, enclosed courtyard was damp from an earlier shower. The air was sharp and fresh. He leaned out of the window and looked up at the sky, letting a stream of silvery smoke slowly escape from between his slightly parted lips. After he had finished his cigarette, he shut the window, shut the blind, and sat back at his desk.

He stubbed out the cigarette, saved the document, and shut down his laptop. He opened a narrow cupboard alongside his desk, took out a small glass and a bottle of Grappa, half-filled the glass, and carefully screwed the cap back onto the bottle, which he then replaced in the cupboard. He took a sip and let out a long sigh. A slight smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.