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La prossima stazione è : Venezia Santa Lucia. The next stop is: Venice Santa Lucia.
The canned voice piping through the train car’s speakers jolted Aldo out of his stupor; not quite asleep, but not really awake either, stuck staring out at the windows as mountains turned to hills below the gray December sky. When he’d first informed Thomas of his plans to attend a conference in Split barely a week before Christmas, his friend had fussed about how nightmarish the airports would be, full of screaming children and overtired parents. Then his eyes had brightened.
“I suppose you could take the train,” he mused, turning to peck at his keyboard until the Trenitalia website appeared on his screen.
Aldo had lowered his glasses, tracing the route from Croatia around the Adriatic and back down towards Rome. “It would practically be a full day’s travel,” he’d bemoaned. “And with transfers, it’ll be a whole process.”
“True,” Thomas had hummed, turning to look at him with that ridiculous, besotted look that had begun to crop up now that he and His Holiness were engaged with their...relationship? affair? marriage? “It would be good for you,” he’d then declared, nodding at himself as if to settle the matter. “You should be around people at Christmas. People who don’t live here.”
All of which found Aldo hurtling across northern Italy on a high-speed train with the suburbs of Venice looming before him. Only a few more hours until he’d be back in Rome, but those hours seemed endless all of a sudden. Just one more transfer.
The train ground to a halt, his fellow passengers collecting their luggage around him as they filed out from the car. Aldo followed them, fingering the cross that hung heavy around his neck as he wove through the crush of holiday travelers. Tourists and homesick Italians and children in heavy down coats formed a mass of humanity, moving through the station like a great school of fish. Ahead of him they split into two groups: the first, heading to the right, towards the other train platforms that would carry them out to their net destinations; the second, heading straight out into the watery winter sunshine. He needed to turn right, towards his next connection and on to the Vatican. There was a thirty minute delay, enough to grab a coffee and people watch for a while, but then he really should be getting back to Rome and his work and Thomas.
Instead, he let the crowd carry him straight out the doors.
Looking back, he’d tell himself he wasn’t sure where he planned on going or where his travel-weary feet were taking him. He’d be lying to himself, but it’s the lie he would stick with when, later that evening, Innocent would ask him by way of Dean Lawrence if he would be arriving later than expected with that knowing tone of voice that meant he’d known what Aldo would do before he did.
He didn’t let himself dwell on his destination even as he boarded the vaporetto towards the city center. He focused instead on the sensations within him – the cold sting of the briny sea air on his face, the awed expressions of his fellow travelers from far off lands taking in the wonder of Italy for perhaps the very first time, the way the Christmas spirit seemed to glow in the air like a living, breathing thing. He blessed an old woman who leaned on her walking stick while she crossed herself and let the twinkling lights of the city catch on his cross, pricks of light dancing around to the amusement of a small boy sat two rows in front of him. He felt calm, for the first time in weeks, and as they drew nearer to the city proper he felt the weight of the world slough off his shoulders like shrugging off a heavy coat at the end of the day.
Another walk, the length of which he couldn’t possibly say, because suddenly he was threading past a pair of security guards and through the main doors of a great stone palazzo. The outer walls were salt-stung and pocked with decades of wear, but within it was as though the entire world were some far-off other place. His shoes clicked loudly against the floor as he walked: past the public rooms, past another guard, and finally to the front door of the building’s private living quarters.
Aldo lifted a fist, then hesitated. He could turn back now. He could probably catch another train this evening if he hurried. There’s so much to do back in Rome, and he really should be debriefing the latest scholarship from his conference with Vincent, and he’s got Christmas sermons to write, and –
He knocks, shave-and-a-haircut rapping at the door before he realizes he’s done it. It’s silent while he waits, like the world is waiting to move again. Twenty seconds, then thirty, and he’s about to give up when he hears the turning of locks and finally, finally, the door swings open.
There’s a beat while the two stare at each other, lost for words now that they’re actually face to face. Then, Goffredo’s awed face blooms into a crooked smile.
“Aldino!” he crows, stepping aside. “Che maravigliosa sorpresa! Come in, come in.” He waves a hand towards him, ushering Aldo inside.
Aldo follows, shrugging his coat off his shoulders as the door clicks shut behind him. “There are slippers there, for your feet,” Tedesco directs, taking the coat and notching up onto a rack laden with a dozen others. He furrows his brow, confused, and realizes he can hear voices from further into the apartment. It’s not just other clergy either, but women too, and children bickering about some tablet or phone game.
“I’m sorry,” Aldo says, one shoe off and feeling wrong footed in every sense. “Am I interrupting something?”
Tedesco laughs – not his usual cackle, but a quieter, fonder thing. “A bit,” he admits, grinning as his face flushes, “but you’re just in time for dinner. A good time to interrupt, no?”
He shuffles his now slippered feet, following him as he turns away from the door. “Dinner with who, exactly?”
“My family, Aldino, who else? Here for Christmas, they came all the way from Basilicata – eight hours on the train, what a mess, with all their bags – “
Aldo grabs Tedesco’s arm, cutting off his rambling. His voice is low when he asks, eyes bright in the dim hallway, “Are you sure I should be here? It’s your family, I don’t want to intrude.”
He stops then, turning fully to watch his face for a moment before settling one broad hand on his shoulder. “You, too, traveled quite a ways to get here,” Tedesco muses. “And at Christmas, when a man like yourself has much too much to do, you chose to come here and find me instead.” He squeezes gently, emphasizing his point. “I think you’re just where you need to be right now.”
With that, he tugs Aldo forwards, towards the voices that crash together like waves and the warmth of the kitchen. “Enjoy yourself, my friend,” he insists, face crinkling with the size of his grin. “And don’t let them scare you off!”