Cats had gotten into Caravaggio’s one-room cabin. Hundreds of cats, all colors and sizes, the bright blue ones being the most numerous. Some were meowing loudly, others quiet, a few of them jumping from one piece of rickety furniture to the next, several of them sleeping on the windowsill, basking in the early morning sun. Caravaggio laid on his mattress filled with so much straw it was ready to pop like a bloated tick and wondered how the cats had gotten in with the windows shut and the door closed. Small flames flickered on the few remaining sticks in the large, stone fireplace. Wisps of smoke rose from the hot ash, so the cats didn’t come down the chimney. He sat up, wishing that he felt better, that the consumption that rendered his lungs almost useless would miraculously clear up and allow him to breathe normally and he’d stop coughing up blood. The fever that gripped him made his head ache. Sweat drained from his pores. The knock on the door sounded like a battering ram pounding the wood that set off loud ringing in his ears. He slowly stood and kicked aside a dozen or more cats as he made his way across the room.
“My dear friend, you look awful,” Panjayo said to Caravaggio when the door opened. He was holding a basket with bread, cheese, and a bottle of wine.
Caravaggio wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and coughed, his chest wracked with pain. “It’s the cats. They keep me awake most of the night.”
“There are no cats at my house,”Panjayo said. “You are welcome to come live with me.”
Caravaggio smiled wanly. “You do too much for me already, my friend. Tell me, have you seen Renaldo of late?”
Panjayo put his hand to Caravaggio’s forehead. “You’re burning up,” he said. He walked in, took Caravaggio by the arm and led him back to his mattress. “I’ve brought you something to eat, but first we must do something about your fever.”
Caravaggio laid back on the mattress and looked at Panjayo with pleading in his dark green eyes. “Please get the cats out of my house.” He shut his eyes and tried to ignore the meowing of the large vermilion cat that had climbed onto the mattress.
“Of course,” Panjayo replied. “Close your eyes and rest while I prepare a poultice.” He placed the basket on the table, stoked the embers, reigniting the flames, and placed a pan of water on the fire.
Caravaggio awoke around noon to the sound of Panjayo singing an operatic aria in a falsetto voice. The notes that he sang were as melodious as any notes he had ever heard. He removed the damp cloth from his forehead and shifted uncomfortably in his sweat-soaked nightshirt. His fever had broken. He looked over at Panjayo who was seated in front of the fire and using needle and thread to mend a hole Caravaggio’s tunic. His heart swelled with love for his friend.
* * *
Twelve months before, on his twenty-first birthday, Caravaggio climbed onto the concrete railing of the bridge that spanned the small river that flowed through the center of the city and sat down. He dangled his feet a few yards above the gently flowing water as hummingbirds that sipped nectar from the blossoms of the honeysuckle vines that clung to the bridge around his legs. He leaned forward and gazed at his reflection in the water and admired his new hat adorned with an ostrich plume that he had just bought from the money his parents had sent him from his hometown of Genoa. The remainder of the gold coins in the pocket of his new tunic tinkled musically as they were jingled about by his movement.
He sat back and with his eyes closed he lifted his face toward the afternoon sun, warming his cheeks. Thoughts of the birthday party that his friend Panjayo was throwing him later that evening filled his heart with joy and his head with thoughts of Renaldo, the new addition and a baritone, to the operatic society. He hoped he would be at the party. They had only flirted surreptitiously with one another from across the theater stage, but he was certain that the romance he had seen in Renaldo’s eyes was more than just his imagination at work.
“Excuse me, young sir,” came a raspy voice from behind him.
Caravaggio turned his head and saw standing there a very old woman whose wrinkles almost erased her facial features. She wore a blue and white turban that was tightly wound around her head. She gazed at him pensively with watery, cathartic eyes hidden between the drooping folds of skin that surrounded her eyes.
“What is it you want to say, old woman?” he asked, crinkling his finely shaped nose at the smell of stale garlic that wafted from her ragged clothes.
“Happy Birthday to you,” she said. “I can tell your fortune for a few gold coins if you’d be so inclined.”
He swiveled around, facing her. “How did you know it was my birthday?”
“I know a good deal many things,” she replied. “But it’s that new hat with that glorious plumage that told me today must be a very special one for you, young sir.”
“Indeed it is,” he replied cheerily, forgetting the old woman’s scent. “Tonight I’m attending a party being thrown in my honor at the finest restaurant in the city and the entirety of my operatic society will be there.”
“I could tell you were a singer by the way music leaves your lips with every word you speak, young sir,” she said.
He jumped down from the railing and puffed out his chest. “I’m said to be the finest tenor in the entire city.” He opened his mouth and emitted several notes that lifted into the air as if headed straight toward heaven.
She clapped her arthritic hands. “What a gift you have, young sir!” she proclaimed. “Now, about your fortune.” She reached out her hand.
“Oh, yes, I guess it might be worth a few gold coins knowing if I’ll find true love tonight,” he said. He reached into his pocket and took out the gold coins and placed them into her palm.
She put the coins in a small burlap bag that hung from a sash tied around her thin waist. “Hold out your hand,” she instructed him.
He did as he was told. She lightly ran her bony fingers over the lines that criss-crossed his palm and mumbled a few unintelligible words.
“What do you see?” he asked, excitedly.
“See for yourself, young sir,” she said, raising his hand to within inches of his eyes.
The palm of his hand began to glow as if the light of a lantern had been cast on it. His apartment in the wealthy Di Lusso district of the city came into view, as if the palm of his hand had become a pool of water he was looking into. His best clothes were laid out on the satin sheets that covered the down-filled mattress on his four poster bed. His manservant, Lugio, sat on a stool polishing Caravaggio’s leather boots with a chamois cloth.
Caravaggio stared, astonished and dumbfounded, as he watched himself enter his bedroom, dress, put on his boots, and place his new hat on his head. He put a cape around his shoulders and left the apartment. He walked out of his building just as a coach pulled by two white horses arrived at the curb. He stepped into the coach and rode through the city as night fell, arriving in front of the Belissima Cena restaurant where a crowd of his friends from the operatic society applauded as he stepped out of the coach. Panjayo took him by the arm and led him into the restaurant. At the table, everyone was there except Renaldo. He watched his hand as the four course meal was served, a great deal of expensive wine was poured, and with great merriment everyone ate and drank.
And then his hand went dark. He looked from his hand to where the old woman had been standing. She was gone. He began to cough, a cough that shook his entire body, and spat up a small spot of blood into his handkerchief. He stared at it, mystified.
* * *
Caravaggio sat up on the edge of the straw-filled mattress and took in several deep breaths, as deep as he was able to inhale them. Thinking about Renaldo, he whispered his name.
Panjayo looked up from his sewing. “So, you’re awake,” he said, put Caravaggio’s tunic aside and walked over to the bed. He placed his hand on Caravaggio’s forehead. “You’re much cooler, my friend, and look a little better. Would you like something to eat?”
“Just a little bread and a glass of wine, please,” Caravaggio answered.
Panjayo put his arm around Caravaggio’s torso and helped him walk to the table and sit down in a chair, that like all three chairs in the shack, had uneven legs. Smiling at the silliness of it, Caravaggio rocked back and forth. “I don’t really miss my old furniture so much,” he said.
“Don’t you?” Panjayo asked as he poured wine into an earthen cup and then handed it to Caravaggio.
“I do wonder who owns my old bed, though,” he said and then took a large gulp of the wine. The coolness of the liquid going down his irritated throat and the slight bitterness of the purple grapes used to make it that lingered on his tongue made him cough. He put the cup on the table and watched a cockroach crawl across the hole-ridden table cloth. “I thought I’d die a very wealthy man because of what was to be my inheritance but because I have refused to marry a signorina I can’t get my parents to send me even one gold coin.”
“Even more reason that you should come live with me instead of in this rundown cabin on the outskirts of the city,” Panjayo said.
“I impose on your kindness too much already, my generous friend,” Caravaggio replied. “Besides, I couldn’t leave my straw mattress behind, nor could I take it with me and further spread the fleas.” He chuckled and then began to cough.
* * *
Four months almost to the day after meeting the fortune teller while on the bridge, Caravaggio was strolling on a path between patches of blooming tulips in the Giardini Forti park when he spotted the old woman sitting on a bench. The gold coins in his trousers pocket jingled as he ran across the park and stopped in front of her, breathless, his lungs aching.
“Old woman, you didn’t earn the money I gave you the last time we met,” he said.
She squinted at him as if allowing her eyes to adjust to the sight of him. “Oh yes, young sir, I remember you. Your fortune didn’t turn out as you wished when last time I told your fortune?”
Caravaggio coughed. “What I hoped for didn’t occur.”
“Hope is a thing of the heart. Fortune is what we hold in our hands,” she said.
He stared at the palm of his hands. “I’ve seen nothing in them since then.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so young sir, but the pallor of your skin is quite pale,” she said.
He put his hand to his face. “I’ve had a cold that I’ve been unable to shake and tonight I’m to give my first solo performance.” He took the coins from his pocket and handed them to her. “I want to know how things turn out this evening.”
She put the coins in her burlap bag and then took hold of his hand. “Look and you’ll see your fortune,” she said.
He raised his hand and looked into his palm. There, he saw himself standing on the stage, looking out a large audience as the opera chorus assembled about him, with Renaldo standing among them. He opened his mouth about to begin his song when he began to cough, and unable to stop, he ran from the stage. His vision in the palm of his hand vanished. He looked up and saw that the old woman had disappeared.
* * *
Caravaggio sat in front of the fireplace with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and hummed quietly as he stared at the flames licking at the tree branches Panjayo had just added to the fire. He held in his hand the ostrich plume from his hat, rubbing the tip of it against the palm of his other hand. The plume had lost some of its vanes and appeared sickly, as if taken from a diseased ostrich. He held back the cough that tried to escape from his lungs.
“Is it really true that the operatic society has disbanded?” he asked Panjayo who was stuffing fresh straw into the mattress. “Being a part of it was one of the true joys of my life.”
Panjayo gave him a worried look. “Your life isn’t over yet,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” Caravaggio replied.
“Tomorrow is your twenty-second birthday and I have a surprise in store for you.”
“You’ve found Renaldo!” he exclaimed excitedly.
Panjayo shot him a pained look. “That would be a surprise since no one has seen or heard from him since he left for Venice.” He flattened out the mattress the best he could and then covered with a piece of cloth the untouched bread and cheese that sat on the table. “Before I leave you for the night, are you sure you will be okay until morning?”
“We will have to leave that to fate, my friend.”
* * *
Eight months after originally meeting the fortune teller, Caravaggio walked out of the shop where he had just sold his hat and boots to the shop owner in order to pay the doctor’s bill and ran into her on the sidewalk. He had removed the plume from the hat and thrust it into his pocket where the end stuck out, giving the appearance of a bird being trapped in his tunic. He held the coins in his hand that he had received from the shop owner. “See what good your fortune telling has done me, old woman?” he hissed at her. “I’ve just sold the last of my things to pay the bill to a quack who wants to send me to live in convent until I die.”
The old woman looked him up and down, at the deteriorating state of his clothing. “A fortune told is not the same as a fortune promised,” she said. “I am but an old woman who shows the future to the willing at the meager price of a few coins to buy crusts of bread with.”
He rolled the coins around in his hand. “You’ve robbed me blind, but I must know, am I to die with no one but my friend Panjayo at my funeral?”
She held out her hand and counted the coins as he laid them in her palm. She put the coins in her bag and then ran her fingers over the lines in his palm. She raised his hand in front of his face. “Just know I can show you only once what will happen after you have left this world for your eternal rest.”
“I hope to not cross your path again after this, old woman.”
In the palm of his hand he saw the pauper’s cemetery and open graves stacked with bodies.
He screamed at the sight, giving flight to the flocks of pigeons that crowded the nearby square. He looked up to see that the old woman had vanished just as his hand returned to normal.
* * *
Caravaggio awoke in the middle of the night thinking he had been set on fire. Fever coursed through his body causing him to hallucinate seeing smoke arising from his skin. The cats had returned, taking up every square inch of spare space inside the cabin, filling the air with their cacophonous meowing. Rending his nightshirt, he climbed off of the mattress and ran to the door, flung it open, and ran out into the darkness. Stumbling, throwing himself blindly forward, he rushed from the perimeter of the city, shouting out Renaldo’s name as he made his way to the city’s center. At sunrise he arrived at the bridge that crossed the narrow river, climbed up on the railing, and prepared to jump.
“Ending your life now would be a mistake,” the old woman said, suddenly appearing a few feet away.
He whirled about. “You, better than anyone knows that my fortune this past year should not be endured by anyone.”
“That was a fortune you might have lived.”
“What?’
“Fortune has many paths. You chose to see just the one.”
“What if I want to go back and have another fortune laid out in front of me?” he asked.
“That can be done just by asking it,” she said, and then vanished.
In that instant he was returned to the year before when he climbed onto the concrete railing of the bridge and gazed at his reflection in the water.
“Caravaggio, my love,” a voice called out.
He turned and saw Panjayo walking toward him, holding a bouquet of flowers.
Steve Carr (he/him), who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 320 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals and anthologies since June 2016. Four collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, and The Tales of Talker Knock, have been published. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice.
His Twitter is @carrsteven960
His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/
He is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.carr.35977