The postal clerk immediately abandoned his window and hollered in Italian, initiating a few moments of panic in the Poste. Men and women spoke hastily in their own languages, creating a low-pitched murmur in the crowd. A Vatican police officer soon appeared at my side.
I was trembling, limbs twitching, my body shutting down. For one of the few moments in my life, I felt out of control. Hot tears came to my eyes. More than the loss of money, the feeling of being robbed caught off guard, hit me like an insult. Why would someone do this to me?
“It was a young boy with a yellow shirt and shorts down to here,” called an American voice above the noise. I turned to see a man back in the line cut below his knees with one hand.
When the officer understood the gesture, he pinched his walkie-talkie and spilled Italian words into it. Then he flew like a pigeon from the Poste. A few feet away, a finely suited gentleman peered out the window. “What’s happening?” I begged him.
He turned to face me. In an authoritatively deep voice—loud enough for the tiny room of onlookers to hear—he said, “They’ve closed off all Vatican exits.”
An eerie silence swept across the room. Then, whispering. Translations. I heard the murmuring over and over: They’ve shut down the Vatican, shut down the Vatican, shut down the Vatican.
I pictured the gates coming down, armed officers planted in front of doors, hands on their machine guns. I saw families blocked in clumps asking, “Why can’t we leave?” and a guard replying, “No one can. We have sealed all exits.” My imaginary visitors would scratch their heads, wondering what catastrophe could have caused such an event.
In the Poste, a little gray-haired woman writing a postcard stared up at me. In a plain American accent, she said, “Don’t worry. You’ll get it back.” She bent back over the table and continued writing. I wondered how she knew. Does this happen all the time? But I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I just nodded and thought, I hope you’re right, lady. I’m broke without it.
The door swung open and in rushed the police officer. He lifted his finger, curling it inward. I followed. Outside, Jake flipped through postcards while Jami and Meg stood in line at a food stand. Seeing me with the Vatican official, they froze and stared.
“I’ll be back!” I waved as I passed them, keeping up with the long legs of the officer. To my surprise, tourists paid us little attention as we charged down the sidewalk. However, when two blue-uniformed guards appeared on either side of me, I gained a few looks. Ducking under yellow ropes, and then weaving through a procession of nuns, we finally reached another corridor that led to the public Vatican restrooms.
A young boy slouched against a wall. My pace instantly slowed. But not my heart rate.
I realized I had no idea what to look for. My gut, however, said it had to be him. How many young boys tour the Vatican alone?
“Is this him?” someone asked me.
I shook my head. I didn’t know. I realized I had no idea what to look for. I remembered a boy. Small. Dark hair. Nothing else. My gut, however, said it had to be him. How many young boys tour the Vatican alone?
The guard by the bathrooms sounded like a skipping CD: “It’s important for someone to identify the thief. Very important!”
“The kid wore a yellow shirt. A man at the Poste told me that.” A guard took off to find the American.
Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, the boy looked through me. I approached him. I felt like grabbing his thin, bony arms and shaking him: Look at me! What did I ever do to you? He wouldn’t meet my eyes. A regular punk: bleached-blond hair, a deep tan, the early signs of a mustache, long shorts and scruffy sneakers.
But he wore a black shirt.
“Did you do this?” I said aloud. “Did you steal from me?” I hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in my voice, see the tears rising again in my eyes. Even cornered, without an ally, without a mother to say, “Leave my son alone,” he seemed incredibly calm. Even if he didn’t comprehend my words, there was no mistaking my meaning. But no reaction. Not even an uncomfortable budge.
“No. Don’t do that,” a guard waved me off. Then a young, thin, eager guard emerged from the men’s bathroom, holding a dripping-wet object at arm’s length between two fingers.
“Is this it?” he asked me in impeccable English.
My breath caught. “Yes,” I said. “This is mine.” I held out my hand to take it. The toilet water, which weighed it down, dripped between my fingers.
I pulled out my credit card, license, student ID, blurry receipts, the mini screwdriver for my glasses and a saturated bag of Tylenol, spread the menagerie on a bench nearby, and sat down to look at it. Only my two-hundred dollars was missing.
The sound of footsteps on the marble floor caught my attention. It was the American man and his escorts. He pointed at the boy as soon as he saw him and said, “That’s him. Only without the yellow shirt. He must’ve taken it off and stuffed it in a garbage can.”
Italian words swirled around me. The kid shrugged and shifted, shaking his head. I felt the tremors of anger return. I wanted him cuffed. A pair of officers grabbed him by the collar and lifted him into a tiny nearby room. They drew a drape so I couldn’t see, but I could hear the men’s loud voices and picture them poking the boy’s chest until he fell backward.
Then a guard appeared, waving me to him. Plucking my recovered wet items from the bench and loading them into my fanny pack, I stood up and walked into the little room.
The boy was scowling at the ground. Happy to see a change in his countenance, I felt a sweep of satisfaction pass over me. The chief officer, in his immaculate white uniform, held all my lire and dollars in his hands. He returned the wad of bills to me and I counted. Over $200. I had made a profit! Apparently, we had a seasoned criminal on our hands. I wondered who the other victims were and whether they even knew their money was gone.
I gave the extra bills to the officer. But something else was missing. The Italian phone card I had bought at a cigarette shop in Florence. I explained this to the officials and before I knew it, the boy produced two phone cards and gave them both to me. Again a profit. Tempted, I thought it’d be some compensation for my troubles. But, with two feet in the Vatican, I returned the second card to the policeman.
The police then whisked me, the American eye-witness and the kid to a private building in Vatican City. While the boy got an earful behind closed doors, Patrick and I signed statements, waited until papers were filed, and were released. Patrick, a man not much older than me, said he was on his honeymoon. We wished each other well. He ran off to find his wife, and I wandered back to the Poste to find my friends.
They were right where I left them—except now they all held runny ice-cream cones in sticky hands. I recounted my adventure as they licked melting streams of gelato. When I finished and the cones were all gone, Jake insisted on taking my picture in front of the Poste, to remember this day. “You know,” he mused, focusing the lens, “it’s probably not good PR if someone gets robbed in the Vatican. Those guards knew what was on the line.”
Then Meg grinned. “How many people can send a postcard and say, ‘Robbed at the Vatican. Wish you were here’?”
“You shut down the Vatican, Mary Jo,” Jami said. “Put that on your postcard.”
“Say
