Dante beams.
The bookstore is not library-sized, which is disappointing, but it boasts a good selection. Crowded shelves are packed into rambling rows, excess inventory stacked at random intervals along the floor. Behind the counter, a headmastery-looking man with majestic jowls glowers. He looks like a bit of a traditionalist, the sort that wouldn’t take queries from a lady or a Negro boy, nor think either of them has any place in a bookshop, so I sally forth alone.
I opt for a daft-but-earnest approach—lead with a smile and a stumble and my shoulders pushed up to make me look smaller and less threatening. Though I’m not particularly large or threatening to begin with.
“Good morning,” I say in French.
The bookseller tips his bridge specs from his nose and tucks them into his pocket. “May I help you?”
“Yes, actually I was wondering—it’s a bit of a slim chance—but if you happened to know what a Lazarus Key is? Or if you have any books on it?”
The bookseller blinks. “Are you making a Biblical reference?”
“Am I?” I laugh. He does not. “I don’t know.”
“Lazarus is the man Christ raises from the dead, detailed in the eleventh chapter of John in the New Testament.”
“Oh.” That hadn’t occurred to me. I’ve never been an attentive scholar of the Bible, my father being a deist and my mother being of an anxious disposition that manifests most prominently before disagreeable church services. “Yes, perhaps I am.”
“Then I suggest you study the Bible.”
He looks ready to tuck back into the demanding occupation of scowling, but I press on. “What about Baseggio puzzle boxes?” I show him the dimples. “Do you know about those?”
He is—tragically—immune. “No.”
“Do you know what they are?”
“Young man, do I bear resemblance to an encyclopedia?”
“No. Sorry.” I duck my head in surrender. “Thank you for your help.”
I start to walk away, but then he calls, “We do have a small section on Venetian history.”
I turn back. “Venetian history?”
“It’s a Venetian name—Baseggio. A patronymic from a Venetian diminutive of the surname Basile. Perhaps you might begin your search there.”
“A patronymic diminutive of . . . that, yes.” I understand less than half the words in that sentence, but God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends. “Yes, thank you. I’ll try that.”
“Young man,” he calls, and I turn back again. He gives me a nod, head bobbing though his jowls all hold their formation. “Good luck.”
So perhaps not entirely immune to the dimples after all.
“Anything?” Percy asks as I return to where he and Felicity are waiting.
“Baseggio is a Venetian name,” I reply. “And Lazarus might be from the Bible.”
Felicity claps a hand to her forehead. “I should have thought of that.”
“So I suppose we can each take one of those,” I say. “Bible and Venice and then the alchemy book, and see what we can find.”
“I’ve the alchemy,” Felicity says.
“Venice,” Percy says quickly.
I moan. “Please don’t make me read the Bible.”
Percy gives me a wide smile and touches one finger to the tip of my nose. “Should have spoken faster.”
We spend the afternoon in our respective corners of the bookshop. I read John 11 twice, then do a skim of the surrounding pages to see if any further mention is given to that Lazarus character, though it devolves quickly into less of me reading and more me trying to stay awake—the bookstore is warm and the chair comfortable and exhaustion is a houseguest that has rather overstayed its welcome.
When a bell tower down the way chimes the hour, I stand, stretch my arms over my head, then go to find Percy, first casting a quick glance around for the jowly book minder, who might be less than keen on the fact that I left my readings scattered across the floor instead of shelving them again, but he’s still holding court behind the counter.
Percy’s at a table by the window, bent over a book with his palms clamped over his ears, the green glass panes casting a jeweled sheen upon his face. He doesn’t look up when I sit down across the table, until I nudge his shin with my foot and he starts rather spectacularly. “You scared me.”
“Very engrossed in your reading. Did you find anything useful?”
“Abso-bloody-lutely nothing.” He tips the cover shut with a dusty slap. “Not even a mention of the name or a family. Perhaps Baseggio isn’t Venetian after all. You?”
“Nothing about a key, though there’s quite a lot about that Lazarus chap. One of Christ’s showier miracles, apparently.”
Percy laughs. “Oh, please do tell me your version of this story.”
I lean forward on my elbows, and Percy mirrors me, hands knotted before him. “So Jesus and Lazarus are chums, right? And while Jesus is off preaching, He gets a shout from Lazarus’s two sisters, Mary and Martha, letting Him know that Lazarus is not long for this world—”
“Mary and Martha?” Percy repeats. “I don’t remember that.”
“Should have paid more attention in your Sunday services. So Jesus doesn’t come, and Lazarus dies, and he’s been decaying for days when the man himself finally shows up at the tomb—”
“There’s an island,” Percy interrupts.
“No it’s not, it’s a tomb.”
“Not in the Bible—in Venice. I read about it in one of the books—an island off the coast with a chapel on it called Sante Maria e Marta.”
The room seems to hush around us, the soft flutter of pages suddenly shivering and ghostly. “Mary and Martha,” I say.
“Lazarus’s sisters.”
“Probably a coincidence.”
“Probably,” he says, though neither of us sounds as though we really believe that.
We both let that seep into us for a moment like ink into blotting paper. Outside the window, the sun shifts behind a cloud, casting the room into shadow. Then, under the table, Percy nudges my shin with his foot. “So. Tell me the end.”
“The end of what?”
“After Christ shows up at Lazarus’s tomb.”
“Oh! So the man Himself shows up at Lazarus’s tomb, and the sisters and their friends are all wondering what He’s doing there, for Lazarus is very dead by then. And Jesus asks the sisters if they believe in Him and God and life after death and all that and they say, ‘Yes, fine, but it would have been brilliant if You’d come when we first called because then our brother might still be alive.’ And then Jesus says, ‘Well, watch this’—”
“Really? Well, watch this?”
“That’s biblical language.”