Tom Foran Clark

High above Naples, ensconced in their tent in woods, Pike and Emery took it easy the entire day. Pike admired his cast bronze statue of St. James of Compostela, Spain in medieval pilgrim garb and studied the map and antique diary he'd received from Arlen Townsend, the lunatic of Assissi, and also his own flourishing notes about these. Emery played a few Blues tunes on his harmonica and wrote letters to family and friends. Though it was overcast and cloudy out, the two were snug and warm in the tent.

It was quiet inside the tent. Not so outside the tent. Emery stepped out for a breather and was astonished at the assault on his senses. It was something so chilling, unkempt, cutting, and formidable, that it could not be muted, tamed, or gentled, even at this distance. He did not feel this in a general or allegorical or metaphorical way. Emery felt it in a physical way, in his stricken heart. He put his right hand over his heart. Arrythmia, he thought. Irregular heartbeat. Heartburn? Acid indigestion? Perhaps he’d eaten bad food -- this was botulism, food poisoning. Was he hallucinating? Emery felt himself drifting. He could hear voices rising from below -- people caught in the hubbub, trapped, pleading for help -- but he was not only hearing these in his head, he was also hearing them in his heart. Oh boy, he thought, I’m a goner. He was going to say something to Pike -- "Pike, you’d better get out here, fast" -- but he changed his mind.

Emery's heartbeat returned to its regular tempo -- that was good -- and then grew louder. It seemed to cease beating alone, however, now in harmony with a hundred other hearts; a billion hearts; a trillion hearts; all hearts through all times and places. Emery's comprehension was shifting. He was getting very woozy.

Had he accidentally ingested a life-threatening hallucinatory drug? He was dismayed and shaky, somewhat fearful -- but not very. Suddenly, he knew he was in no danger at all. He had no idea what was happening, but he felt deep down that, whatever was going on, it was going to turn out okay. It did occur to him that this feeling of sudden well-being could have been just a part of the hallucination sweeping over him, and that he was in fact in grave danger. For a moment, he thought he'd better get a grip on himself and snap out of it, then this thinking itself seemed ridiculously convoluted and wrong, so he just went along with what was happening, and nothing else mattered. Emery let his heart do its job.

It seemed important to him that he just let everything do its job -- not more and not less. His heart clearly knew what it was doing. Emery's heart was sending a message to his brain assuring his mind that he was doing all right. His mind accepted this message from his heart with love. Emery could feel the vibrations of the light around him, and the motion in the things around him. His heart wasn’t just pumping. It seemed totally in tune with everything around him. It was an orchestra. That was it. Emery's heart was orchestrating.

Emery was getting information from the hubbub rising from below -- and from everything else around him. No, he was getting energy from the hubbub; and from everything. It was no longer harsh or cutting at all. The Bay of Naples was very beautiful. The water seemed alike to the air and the ground in some way -- Emery could not say how. He floated a while, surrendering himself to the vibrations, letting the energies course through him, orienting him. Something was departing and something arriving. It wasn’t clear how, but the two were coming together. It was a circuitous and continuous relation.

Emery's heart was speaking to his brain in a language he did not know, but he knew the meaning: his heart was telling his brain, Just enjoy yourself; and his brain was responding, I love you, man. And the vibrations and the motions and the music and the waters all spoke, letting Emery know things were fine, and would always be fine. Things were coming and things were leaving. The two were enjoined. His heart pumped joy through him. Emery thanked his heart.

He might have been standing there like that for two hours or more. It may have been only five minutes. He didn’t know. Emery later asked Pike about it -- had he noticed Emery out standing by the tent at all that day, daydreaming or what have you. But Pike said he hadn’t noticed. Emery also asked Pike if he’d had anything resembling a mystical experience that day. But Pike could only confess to having had an insight after contemplating one of the hard sayings of Arlen Townsend that he’d collected in his notebook. Pike insisted he was beginning to see a pattern in the things Townsend had said, like an image rising to the surface of photographic paper in a darkroom. It was starting to add up, Pike said. He was connecting the dots.

He didn't say so, but Emery thought that theory was nuts. He felt confident Pike had only experienced a milder, diluted version of whatever had just got into him. Emery remembered the loving ways, geniality, and generosity of the Nigerians in Perugia. Maybe they had given Pike and Emery something with their tea, or through their skin, that took many days or even weeks to take effect. Perhaps this was what they fed their prostitutes, to keep them coming in to work each day. Or perhaps Townsend had poisoned them. That made sense to Emery. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Townswend doing or saying anything that would make anyone feel good. Maybe Emery had ingested some of the detergent dissolved in vinegar that he’d used as a de-greaser while working on the bikes. Maybe it was something heady squeezed out of the putrid Naples air, affecting people in a pleasant way only in the higher altitudes, the upper regions. He only knew it may as well have happened that aliens had landed in those hills, conveyed Emery away, changed him, and then delivered him back again -- just in time for Christmas.

Emery had been thinking maybe they should just stay completely out of Naples, which was fine with Pike, he knew -- him now filled with the delusion that Spain was basically just around the corner. But now Emery had had these strong revelations -- these beautifully alienable thoughts. He was now eager to encounter Naples. Whatever it was that had happened, it had felt fine, and there was no hangover. Pike and Emery took the tent down the next morning, on the day of Christmas Eve, and walked with their bikes to the city.

Now here was a spree. The streets were wildly confounded with cars. The stores were beehives. The Neopolitans were almost wildly cheerful. We couldn’t proceed three feet but some cheerful shopper, sales clerk, midget, giant, leper, hunchback, scrooge, or kindly stranger would wish us "Buon Natale! Buon Natale!"

Pike and Emery were given ginger cookies, glazed buns, bread rolls, peaches, pears, tangerines, and red pimentos. They purchased boiled eggs and cherry brandy.

"Hey-a, you need-a help-a?" cried out a bald and swarthy taxi driver. He stretched his arm from his window. "To go to the Ostello, you go-a there," he said, pointing to the mouth of a tunnel. "You go-a through-a the tunnel, you come-a to a piazza. You circle round-a to the left-a and come to another bridge-a. Don’ go under. The Ostello is there-a. Merry Christmas!" he called out, and sped away

They went into the tunnel. It, and the roar of the traffic, closed on them like a clamp. They emerged to find themselves at the cacophonous axis or intersection of a squalid gnarl. Their eyes caught sight of harbor waters. They took the road that led there.

The gray and blue sky looked like a huge sheet hung out to dry. An old woman walked by in a thick brown coat, carrying heavy carpets slung over her shoulder and arm. She coughed and sneezed. She looked desolate, until Pike stepped up and asked her for directions to the Ostello. Then she looked insanely mad. She raised her free arm and waved it angrily at Pike and gave him the Italian sailor’s salute and rained down curses on him.

"And a Buon Natale to you, also" Pike told her and waved to me, signaling, Let’s move on. The two went right back in again -- into the chaos and the squalor -- as lighthearted as Morris Dancers on a May Day, weaving their way from the waterfront toward the Ostello. All in all, people were gracious and helpful, also piling on the cookies, apples, and oranges as they passed. By the time they found the hostel, they looked like a couple of cycling fruit vendors. As for the Ostello, it was closed for the holidays.

Again they turned back to the press of things. "Buon Natale! Buon Natale!" They went with the flow. They were funneled to a single narrow way leading to the slanting doorway of a grimey, cheap hotel. Emery gestured, no way. "It’s our destiny," Pike concluded, and went in to register. But, as fate would have it, the pensione was full. There was no room at this inn for them.

Across the street was a palace of some kind, with a neon sign flashing out front. This too was a hotel -- and what a hotel! -- the D’Innocenzo, with its expansive courtyard of flourishing palms, gushing fountains, and waterfalls. The desk clerk informed them that, yes, he had a single room left, due to a no-show. He could let the two have it for a song, he said -- and he meant just that. If Pike and Emery would sing a familiar Italian song for him, in English, he would let them have the room -- no charge. For him, from the depths of their hearts, they sang Silent Night.

The room at the D’Innocenzo was palatial -- with a large, luxurious bed, two lamp stands, each with a Tiffany-style lamp, a big dining table in a corner covered with a green checkered table cloth. Above the table, hanging from the high white ceiling overhead, was a glass chandelier. On the dining table were six red candles in a glistening golden candelabra.

After showering and dressing in clean clothes, Pike and Emery lighted the candles and brought out their cherry brandy. Emery waited patiently while Pike tenderly smoothed down before him on the table his precious tobacco-stained, torn treasure map and antique diary revealing the way to the treasure of Saint James of Compostela, Spain. Pike now proposed an excellent toast: "To Arlen Townsend of Assissi and to our hearts' desires!" he said.

"To our hearts‘ desires!" Emery drank to that.