Chapter 62: Arrival
Rafael once again heard the slow, distant chanting of a woman’s voice in his dream. Waves pushed forward one after another, crashing against the foam suspended on the rocks. Raindrops pounded on the glass window, creating a high and low accompaniment. The ethereal and gentle singing echoed, causing him to sink deeper and deeper into the dream, as if descending to the most primitive beginning of life, into the warm amniotic fluid of a mother’s womb, wrapped in silence and an eternal sense of security.
All memories were cut into fragmented pieces floating up and down, forming an illogical ring circling around Rafael. He hugged his body with his arms, like a baby protecting itself in the womb. He didn’t open his eyes to look at those shattered memories, but just kept sinking in the intoxicating and soothing song.
Rafael had a rare good night’s sleep, meaning he wasn’t awakened by any nightmares in the middle of the night, nor was he disturbed by any sudden events outside. He slept soundly from ten o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning, a full eight hours, absolutely perfect.
Such sleep was a luxury for him, so much so that when he woke up, Rafael still felt the illusion of being held by the song and a swaying embrace. This made him too lazy to move, and he buried his face in the blanket, trying to hold onto the fleeting comfort. Unfortunately, the elusive song was like sand slipping through his fingers, quickly erased from his memory as soon as he became conscious.
Ten minutes after he fully woke up, he had completely forgotten everything he had heard in the dream.
“It seems you had a good dream.”
Lucrezia, who had just entered the room, was carrying a large tin jug filled with fresh, hot milk. The little girl was dressed in a cotton dress that reached her calves, with a lace apron tied around her waist. She had even wrapped her hair in a pristine white scarf, looking quite serious.
The little girl, dressed as a maid, placed the milk pot on the carpet and lifted a corner of her skirt towards the pope on the bed, giving a wobbly curtsy: “Good morning, Your Holiness. Today, your servant is Lucrezia.”
Speaking these words clearly took all the shy little girl’s strength. Her face flushed red, and her big eyes looked at the ground in a loss, until she heard a short, suppressed laugh from the young man on the bed.