Cara Mia

by Denise Verrico

  Ethan lovingly swept his eyes over me. “We were admiring the view. It’s brightened considerably with your presence.”

  “Here…a present,” Philip said, presenting me with an antique mandolin. “The poor child needs amusement. You know—she might take to piano. I know an excellent tutor.”

  “Bit far to travel for lessons.”

  “Afraid of other lessons she might learn?”

  “From the master perhaps—not the apprentice—that would really surprise me.”

  Phillip took the mandolin and sat down on the stone bench, strumming it. “Nevertheless, you must go.

  “Oh mistress mine where are you roaming?

  Oh mistress mine, where are you roaming?

  Can’t you hear your true loves calling?

  Who can sing both high and low?”

  “Philip, please,” Ethan begged. “Cease, your noise.”

  “He has a fine voice!” I protested.

  “You see—this one has taste.”

  “Sing something else,” I pleaded.

  Philip cocked his head and changed keys, singing mournfully.

  “Fortune my foe, why dost thou frown on me?

  And will my favors never greater be?

  Wilt thou, I say, forever breed me pain?

  And wilt thou not restore my joys again?”

  Ethan snatched the mandolin away. “Enough, unless you’d like to sport this over that obscene tie. Put it away before he sings again.”

  I took the instrument inside, and then joined them on the terrace again. Philip now reclined picturesquely on the balustrade, admiring a rosebud he’d plucked. “Did you ever see such a garden?”

  “Not since Eden,” I replied.

  Philip smiled, dangling his fingers on the paving stones and pulling out moss that grew between the cracks. “Our Eve is certainly destined to bring about the fall. She’ll not rest until she’s eaten of the tree of knowledge.”

  “Indeed,” Ethan answered, leaning gracefully against a column with folded arms over his chest. “She’s sparred with Gaius.”

  “The old Wolf? She is bold. She knows about that lot?”

  “I enlightened her.”

  “What do you think of him, Mia?”

  I made a face. “Not much.”

  They laughed.

  “If her wits match her audacity, you may have something here.”

  “Had her wings singed the first time, now she plays him cool and slow.”

  “Ethan won’t take me to meet his women.”

  Philip sat up, running his hand through his curls. “Oh my dear, you can’t be serious? They aren’t women. They aren’t anything resembling women.” A slow hungry smile appeared on his face. “Well, some parts of ’em…”

  I challenged him. “And I suppose you aren’t men anymore?”

  “In Philip’s case the jury was decided before it convened,” Ethan said, dryly.

  “Your slights on my manhood aren’t to be borne.”

  “So if I am an Immortyl, I’m no longer a woman?”

  Philip looked at me closely, clearing his throat. “There are certain qualities one considers desirable in your sex.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you Philip,” Ethan said, shaking his head.

  “Such as?” I insisted.

  Philip cast about for an answer, a look of adorable bewilderment on his face.

  “Get out of this one, I dare you.”

  “You’ve tampered with her mind!”

  Ethan laughed, crossing to the bench where I sat and pulling me to my feet. “I assure you she came this way—a new breed, that sees the feminine frills for what they are, useful weapons. I’m her helpless victim.”

  “Bullshit!” I broke away and looked out on the bay. The moon was high and full, the waters calm and black along the ribbon of light. I climbed up and walked along the narrow marble balustrade in the manner of a tightrope walker, gracefully maintaining my balance with outstretched arms.

  Philip said slowly, “Di-a-bolical.”

  “Enlighten me,” I begged.

  “You’ve been enlightened far too much. I fear for us all.”

  Ethan snatched me up, lifting me high in the air like a ballet dancer. I made an arabesque to show off. “Behold my bird of prey. She’ll topple the idols and see them fall.”

  I burst out laughing. “Stop! Ethan has delusions of grandeur. He got this idea from seeing me in that Ibsen play, and gets a thrill from loosing me on mortal men.”

  Ethan set me down. “She’s being modest. You should see the gleam in her eye when she kills.”

  Philip put his arm around me, whispering in a conspiratorial tone, “Come now Mia, we’re family here. You’re a daughter of the blood. It’s proper for you to be proud of your accomplishments.”

  I broke away from him. “You two act as if it’s my drawing we’re talking about.”

  “Your drawing is abysmal.” Ethan laughed. I looked at him indignantly. It was a joke; still, I didn’t feel any better about it. Ethan’s jibes always disguised an element of truth and they stung. “She’s getting riled up, look at her eyes, pure fury.”

  “I hate when you do this,” I sputtered, heading for house.

  Philip laughed as Ethan caught my arm, pulling me to him. “Our world must change— we’ve outgrown the ways of the ancients and must take our place in the world at large. Science will release us from our bondage and we’ll become the supermen we’re destined to be.”

  I gasped. “You’re crazy!”

  “He’s a visionary and they’re often madmen,” Philip commented. “Well, I suppose we must tell her now.”

  Ethan held me by the shoulders, looking into my eyes. “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to men. So shall we.”

  He couldn’t be serious? Did he propose that we give immortality to all men? I looked into his frosty eyes and saw he was firm in his purpose. I’d always suspected the mission in his teaching. Didn’t he see the horror of this? “Ethan, we’re made up of degenerates and beasts. You’ve often told me so yourself. If we seize power we have no right to it will be disaster. Besides, you don’t think much of humanity either.”

  He calmly took a seat in a carved stone chair. “There are some who have potential to be a god among men.”

  “And who’ll decide this? Is one person better than another?”

  “The best will shine forth like the stars.”

  “The worst also have the habit of glittering in our eyes,” I muttered.

  “You’ll be part of this work, Mia.”

  Philip ushered me away, holding his arm protectively around my shoulders. “Don’t take his raving seriously. He’s been expounding his anarchy for a century. It’s one of his charming quirks of personality. He keeps me around to deflate his pomposity. You’re frightening the child, Marlovian monster.” Philip ruffled my hair reassuringly. “Listen to reason, she’s not interested in living fantastical dreams for you. A bird of prey is a wild thing that will fly on its own. Unless I’m mistaken, she’ll indeed smash a few idols along the way.”

  Ethan shook his head. “You never could understand, Philip.”

  “I’m your friend but I’m also the fool who chides you to retain humility arrogant monster. The old one’s plans are not for us to tamper with. Ours is to obey.”

  Ethan came back to earth suddenly, laughing. “Perhaps I’m premature. The state of science isn’t yet where it must be.”

  “Shall we wait until the millennium then?” Philip asked, with a grin. “Fifty years of bliss before Armageddon to enjoy ourselves?”

  They laughed again. I broke away from Philip, to face both of them. “This isn’t funny. Everything he’s taught me is a mass of contradictions. As soon as I think I have it figured out, he throws me a curve.”

  “A what?” Philip asked.

  “Baseball terminology. You wouldn’t understand. Speak the Queen’s English to our foreign friend, Mia.”

  “You’re the foreigners.”

&
nbsp; Again they laughed.

  “I’m serious!”

  Philip started for me. “She wants to go bathing again.”

  Ethan rose. “I’ll get her feet, you take her arms.”

  “Stop it! You’re like two little boys! Don’t I have any say?”

  Ethan folded his hands under his chin, leaning back in the chair. “I’d think my ideas would appeal to you.”

  “Women always do the opposite of what you’d think,” Philip commented.

  I glared at him and he mugged at me, putting a finger to his lips.

  “It’s an impossible dream, Ethan.”

  “Our very existence challenges the notion of impossibility.”

  “Even if we could be cured of this thing, and give the best of it to humanity—who gets the gift?”

  “Again I must chide you for your naiveté. Nature decides who wins and who loses, not us. They’re not all worthy.”

  “In your eyes I’m a princess, to Dirk what am I?”

  “Dirk is an aberration.”

  “Don’t you see? How far is it from you, or I, or Philip, and one like Dirk? Power in the wrong hands is more than regrettable—it’s indefensible. Power corrupts and each one of us has a monster lurking inside. I see nothing but evil if you tamper with this.”

  Ethan wrapped his arms about my waist and drew me to him. “That’s why we won’t leave this to the others.”

  “The child has pangs of conscience.”

  I tore away. “He’s murdered my conscience. There’s nothing left but doubts, second guesses, and philosophies I don’t understand.”

  “Strong words Ethan, you should heed her.”

  “She’s not yet tapped her potential.”

  I shivered. “As I child, I watched newsreels of corpses bulldozed into pits of lime, and why? Because someone decided he was more worthy of life than his fellow men, and infected others with this disease.”

  Philip stood up, stretching his long body. “I grow weary of this philosophical and ethical carousel, and beg to be let off before my poor head aches. My advice Ethan is to enjoy her—or I’ll spirit this Psyche off to young Eros, leaving you to brood in silence.”

  “She’d never fall for that.”

  “You don’t understand women, Ethan.”

  Ethan smirked. “No one understands women like I do.”

  “Someone needs to teach you humility, and high time.” Philip put his arm about my waist. “Come Mia, let’s dance the night away to the strains of the phonograph and leave poor Byron here to figure out what we already know.”

  “And what pray tell would that be?”

  He danced me around the terrace madly. “How to live, my pet!”

  NINE

  “Ethan’s bizarre plans for me left me uneasy. I only hoped it was a passing whim and he’d get over it, but somehow I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t bring it up again for the remainder of Philip’s visit. I could only wonder what Brovik would do when he learned.

  Philip was just the sort of distraction I needed from Ethan’s constant lessons. He kept us out all night, dancing and haunting nightspots. But I never had a chance to speak with him alone until Ethan was forced to pay a courtesy call on Gaius one early October evening.

  “Come to Capri with me,” Ethan urged Philip, as he checked out his appearance in the drawing room mirror.

  “I must beg off. I’d much rather stay here with Mia. Gaius’s chamber of horrors holds no charms for me. And those two succubae he keeps—no thank you. I prefer to remain intact.”

  “Very well. Behave yourself.”

  “I’ll be a good uncle.”

  Philip and I went out onto the terrace as Ethan pulled away from the dock in our boat. The garden still dripped with roses, but the air was crisp and cool, with the scent of iron and sugar from the distant slopes of Vesuvius, and the ripened grapes growing there.

  “Philip…about Brovik.”

  Philip took me by the shoulders, dark eyes fixed on mine. “You’re caught in the middle of a battle that’s been raging for a century. It runs hot and cold with them. Right now is one very cold spell.”

  “Yet he still works for him?”

  “Brovik looks out for us and we pay tribute to him. It’s the way things are done. It started when Brovik took Kurt…”

  “Kurt?”

  “He was just eighteen when Brovik found him. His entire family was transported to Auschwitz to be gassed, but he’d been sent instead to Dauchau to work. One night Brovik was there, doing business with the commandant, when the boy was dragged out and beaten, nearly to death. Brovik paid a vast sum to take him away from there. Ethan is simply jealous. Brovik dotes on the boy, but Ethan is and will always be his favorite. Ethan can only play this game with Brovik for so long. Sooner or later he always goes back to him. When he does, be wary. Trust no one. Nature provided you with this enchanting form—use it. If it means swallowing your pride to survive, do it. It’s a bloody game Mia. Innocents are slaughtered in the playing.”

  What could I say? What can you say when you find out the man you love was the lover of another man?

  Suddenly a rock dislodged on the hillside. In a blur of movement, Philip leapt, taking hold of the dark figure hiding behind a column. Dirk struggled but Philip’s arm held him fast as an iron bar, his free hand pressing a knife against Dirk’s carotid. “You’ve violated a sacred law, you brute,” Philip said. “Does your elder know you’re trespassing?”

  Dirk’s eyes had the look of a trapped animal.

  I shuddered. “He must have snuck off as soon as Ethan got to Capri.”

  “Call the palazzo. Ethan and Gaius must come immediately. I’ll keep this one out of trouble.”

  Philip dragged Dirk into the house, throwing him into a chair with the knife still poised at his throat. I did as I was told, relating the story to a furious Ethan over the phone.

  They arrived by boat shortly afterward. Gaius took his usual seat, leaning back, surveying us all as if we were part of his dominion. If he’d asked us to kiss his ring I wouldn’t have been surprised. He got right to the point. “I can’t blame this fool. She’s been made to fascinate and he’s weak. Dirk tells me she’s allowed liberties.”

  Dirk elaborated, “She let me touch her.”

  Ethan grabbed me by the arm. “Tell the truth, Madam!”

  “I did no such thing!”

  Gaius smirked. “Women are accomplished liars. The innocence of her face is deception itself. Nevertheless, I’ll send him to Diego to learn some manners. But If I were you my friend, I’d keep a closer eye on her.” He stared down Ethan coolly as he rose. “Brovik will be informed about this matter.”

  After they left, Ethan called me onto the carpet. “You let him touch you? Gaius would be more than happy for you to play their nasty games all the time. I’m sure he has a special place reserved in his dungeon. You’ve created a problem for me! My orders are to keep close tabs on the Wolf, and now we’ve offended him. You could have played them for some time, but you were stupid. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

  “Just to be a whore!”

  Ethan grabbed me by the back of the hair. “You have a part to play!”

  “To piss Brovik off, because you’re jealous of Kurt?”

  Ethan slapped me across the face. I reeled from the blow.

  Philip stepped in between us. “Touch her again, and I’ll take her to Brovik myself!”

  “This is none of your affair!”

  Philip shielded me in his arms. “Strike her and you’ll have me to contend with. I’m capable and you know it.”

  Ethan backed off. “Say hello to Brovik’s assassin, Mia. Does his clownish act fool you? This deadly weapon shed family blood before. There was a rebellion. Brovik ordered him to take out the disloyal alphas, but that was centuries before my time.”

  Philip sighed. “I told you, child. It’s a bloody game. Ethan is right about one thing. You can’t alienate the Wolf. We need to stay in his good graces, until we learn what w
e’re after. We’ve reason to think he’s building a laboratory. Kurt has contacts among the rats. They see everything. Brovik sent me here to alert Ethan. This still may work to our advantage.” Philip and Ethan exchanged a meaningful look that worried me. “Just do all Ethan says, and everything will be fine.”

  It was the beginning of the end. A Nordic chill had extinguished some of the heat between Ethan and me. Philip left us soon after the incident with Gaius. When he said goodbye, I clung to the only link I had to anything other than Ethan, begging him to stay.

  “I have a summons from the hall of the mountain king to attend him now that he’s in winter residence,” Philip said.

  “And you always speak so highly of him,” Ethan commented.

  “It’s the mise en scene I object to, snow, ice and forests primeval.”

  Philip brushed my tears away. “Ethan wants you back to himself, child. Look, she still sheds tears.” He caught them on the tips of his fingers, looking at them in wonder, “Like winter’s drops…”

  “And you who are but air, can you have one thought, one feeling for their afflictions?”

  “Always were you’re concerned little one. Any message, Ethan?”

  Ethan shook his head, and they embraced. I lingered for a moment, after Ethan went inside.

  Philip chuckled. “You have question marks in your eyes, little one.”

  “About Kurt…”

  A smile slid over Philip’s face. “Don’t be surprised if Brovik sends him from time to time bearing messages.” He slipped an envelope into my hand. “Read this sometime when you’re alone.” He kissed me on the cheek, sighing. “I must fly. Ciao.”

  Jumping into his Bugati, he revved up the engine, waved and sped away. Knowing Ethan would be closeted in his study for hours, I sat on the stone steps of the villa and opened Kurt’s letter. It was phrased in an oddly charming, old-fashioned, formal way. I tried to conjure what he looked like from Philip’s descriptions. All I could imagine was an angel…”

  Mia stared toward Kurt’s cell. Joe stretched and asked, “So Brovik had labs and stuff even back then?”

  She shook her head.

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  In this mood he wouldn’t get much out of her, and he was already exhausted and ready to call it quits. “We can end here—have anything for Kurt tonight?”