To my husband, Ted,
and our daughters, Amber and Tara.
I love you.
—MAW
For Rob, Grace, and Charlie
—MF
Chapter One
I SHOULD NOT have answered the phone.
But that’s one more thing they fail to mention in those books you buy to try to prepare for parenthood. What the books should say is this: unless your child is in sight or within shouting distance, you will never again be comfortable letting a phone ring.
My five-year-old, Henry, was spending the weekend with his father, Declan; his stepmother, Kelly; and his two half sisters, Delia and Nell. Kelly’s brother has a cottage on Lake Sunapee, and since it was Columbus Day weekend, which happened to fall very early this year, they’d all set off on Friday for three days of boating and campfires.
“Anza? It’s Nat.”
“Oh, hi!”
My friend Natalie was everything I wasn’t: cool, willowy, able to get through life with a few faultlessly chosen pieces of clothing—one cashmere sweater, one black pencil skirt, one perfect pair of jeans. The jewelry she made was just like her wardrobe, spare and tasteful. She was also a secret smoker with somewhat unfortunate taste in men.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I had just settled down with a glass of Sancerre and a DVD.
“Nothing?”
“Well, I was just about to fire up the third season of 24.”
“Oh!” She sounded a little too enthusiastic. With anyone else, I’d wonder if they were angling for an invitation. But Nat didn’t need one, any more than I needed to call before showing up at her place or her grandmother’s. Pasquina, Nat’s grandmother, had grown up with my nona in Palermo. I’d appeased Nona’s early fears about my living alone in Boston by spending every Sunday with her childhood friend and the dozens of relatives and hangers-on who floated in and out of three family apartments in the same building in Boston’s Italian North End.
I could hear many of these relatives in the background right now. Maybe Nat needed out.
“You want to come over?”
“No, no, I can’t, but … listen. You remember Sylvia Cremaldi?” At the mention of the name, I recalled Sylvia’s pale and worried face, the face of someone who grew up hearing nothing but “No!”
“I think so.”
“She was ahead of us.”
We’d attended the North Bennet Street School, where Nat got her training in jewelry making and I learned the deeply rewarding yet highly impractical and not very lucrative trade of bookbinding. Well, I had to do something. Books seemed … logical. I’d just spent four years as an English major, and reading was what I did. Reading is what I would still be doing, if I could pay my rent by lying on the couch with a good novel.
“She did that folio of Danish woodcuts,” Nat went on.
“Yeah, I remember.”
She paused, possibly distracted by what sounded like a platter hitting the floor, followed by lots of yelling.
“She got a job at the Athenaeum.”
The Boston Athenaeum was one of the oldest private lending libraries in America. It was located in a jewel of a building on Beacon Hill.
What I said was, “Really? That’s fantastic.”
What I thought was, I’d kill to get a job there! How come she got it?
To which I answered myself, She stopped waiting for the people conducting the door-to-door search for bookbinders specializing in bookcalf and marbled boards. She went looking for a job, and when she found that one, she applied.
“Well,” Nat said, “they seem to be having a little problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Your kind.”
I knew it. Nat had dropped her voice to a whisper, maintaining the illusion that this was just between us—that is, if you didn’t count all the relatives who were probably standing around the phone: Pasquina and Nat’s aunt, Marcella, and of course Camille, and probably Nat’s brother, Franco.
“Would you just … talk to her? She’s kind of freaked out.”
I let out a beleaguered sigh. I really didn’t want to get involved in this. I took a sip of my wine and stared at the paused image on my TV screen: a fuzzy Jack Bauer with a cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Are you there?” Nat asked.
“I’m here.” Here, and feeling guilty. According to Nona, who may not have read the Bible but who sure had listened to her share of Sunday sermons, the problem-solving ability Nat was hoping to enlist fell into the category of talents one was not supposed to bury, and lights one was not supposed to “hide under a barrel.”
This parable had baffled me as a child. Not that I didn’t understand the message, but hearing the story always brought to mind the image of a circle of Old Testament guys in robes and beards placing a wooden basket—the kind we used for apples and garden clippings—over a lighted candle, which even a kid knows is a bad idea.
I sighed again.
“Okay,” said Nat. “I get it.” And she did, which was one reason why I loved her. But I’d moved halfway across the country to get away from all this: from the police and the FBI and strangers calling me up in the middle of the night to drag me into messes I had no part in creating and would just as soon not even have known about, thank you very much.
I didn’t have a choice when I was a kid. But I wasn’t a kid anymore.
And Nat wasn’t a stranger. She was the closest thing I had to a sister.
“Okaaaaay.”
“You don’t have to. Really.”
“I know. You think she can keep quiet?”
“She’s desperate. She’ll do anything you ask.”
Nat paused, and when I didn’t respond, went on. “The Athenaeum is closed tomorrow, but she has a key. She said she could meet you anytime.”
“Tell her I’ll come by around eleven.”
“Thanks. And just so you know, this wasn’t my idea.”
“Pasquina?”
“Marcella. Sylvia’s mom was in her wedding.”
Given the way Nat’s family had folded me in when I first moved to Boston, this practically made Marcella my aunt.
We chatted for a few more minutes before hanging up. I don’t remember finishing my wine, but I must have. I thought about pouring another glass but decided against it. I was always kind of lonesome on Sunday afternoons, especially as darkness started to fall, especially in the autumn, especially if I let myself start thinking about Nona and Dad back in Cleveland, and how they were probably missing me, too, and wondering why Henry and I had to live so far away.
What was Daddy doing right now? Was he down at his workbench in the basement, putting a coat of varnish on something he would give to one of us? Sitting at the kitchen table as the afternoon light faded, wearing a flannel shirt and his old reading glasses, the radio on low, leafing through Yankee magazine or the ads in the Sunday paper?
What do you do, when you’re seventy-one and the kids you struggled so hard to raise are grown and gone? Do you think about the drunk driver who picked off your bride in the middle of a May afternoon while she was walking to collect your boys at her mother’s with your only daughter in a stroller? Do you go back to Ireland and attempt to resume a life you left off four decades ago, when there was not a lick of work to be had, for carpenters or anyone else? Do you throw in your lot with snowbirds like the Costellos and Colm and Ann McInerny, flying south for a condo on a golf course?
I have no idea what you do if you’re Owen James O’Malley. I only know what you don’t do. Complain.
So, about that other … uh, aspect of things. It’s kind of hard to explain, but here goes.
I am not musical.
Even though I love to listen to jazz and old time and anything Joni Mitchell ever sang, I myself couldn’t hum a recognizable “Jingle Bells,” much less write it.
But I once saw a musical prodigy being interviewed on 60 Minutes. He couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven, and all his life, people had been comparing him to Mozart, who was entertaining kings and princes by the time he was six and writing symphonies soon after that.
Morley Safer or Dan Rather, or whoever it was, asked him if he could describe what went on for him as he wrote music. And this little boy said that it didn’t really feel as if he were composing it; he was just copying it down. He didn’t sit there trying to come up with a melody. He just listened for it in the air, and there it was. It was the same with harmonies and all the different parts. He just listened for the moments when the instruments floated in and out, all the time writing as fast as he possibly could.
It’s kind of like that for me, too.
Whereas most people hear everyday sounds in the air—a siren in the distance, a power drill a few yards over, birds, cars—he hears music. A quartet. A symphony.
And where he hears music, I hear, and see, and can speak with …
Ghosts.
Chapter Two
I TOOK THE train to Park Street. The sky was a deep, fall blue and the Charles River glittered brightly as the train surfaced after Kendall. Sailboats dipped and bobbed in the basin, toylike and cheery.
For a holiday, the train had been crowded, and when I climbed the stairs to Boston Common, I realized why: the Tufts 10K, held every year on the second Monday in October, Columbus Day. Tents of every shape and size lined the sidewalks, and loud plastic banners heralded competing brands of yogurt, power bars, energy drinks, and cell phones.
Behind me, four aerobics instructors wearing headsets were leading an entire field of women in a prerace warm-up, to the boom and thrust of “It’s Raining Men.” A boy about Henry’s age was groovin’ on the sidelines, and I couldn’t help thinking, Too much MTV.
As I paused at the top of the hill, though, and looked back down at the swirl of humanity in shades of khaki and Day-Glo—the sleep-deprived dads clutching their Starbucks ventis and manning the strollers, the toddlers careening wildly toward meltdown, the little clumps of hopeful, average women, about to subject themselves to 6.2 miles of asphalt and concrete—I remembered an Updike story I’d read in college.
In it, a man had gotten sick on a trip and had found himself completely at the mercy of strangers. As his homebound plane cleared the clouds, the sparkling lights of his city came into view: lining the streets and lighting the hospitals and the pools, the ball fields and bridges. Seeing them, he was overcome by tenderness at all the things people come together to do with, and for, one another.
The Athenaeum was only a few blocks away and I was early, so I took my time walking up Park Street. As usual, a van from one of the local TV affiliates was parked within sight of the golden dome, and a reporter I recognized was interviewing a cluster of protesters on the State House steps. It was a scruffy bunch and none too well organized, judging from the size and illegibility of their signs. I hazarded a guess: the legalize pot lobby.
Sylvia must have been watching for me, because the front door of the Athenaeum opened before I even had a chance to scan the granite for a doorbell.
“Thanks for coming, Anza,” said Sylvia quietly.
“That’s okay.”
I stepped inside and she locked the door behind us, then proceeded to an alarm panel in the adjoining coatroom and punched in a code. Six years’ time and gainful employment had done little to dispel her timid and furtive air. She was dressed in fawn wool slacks, a pale pink turtleneck, and a beige cardigan. I couldn’t be sure, but I would have bet she had a couple of crumpled Kleenexes tucked up her sleeve.
We stood awkwardly for a moment before she said, as though asking my permission, “We could go to my office?”
“Sure.”
She attempted a smile, then led me through a succession of rooms right out of Masterpiece Theatre, rooms lined with marble statues and gilded portraits, leather wing chairs and highly buffed mahogany tables.
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I could give you a tour,” she offered. Anything to delay the conversation we were about to have.
“Maybe later,” I said.
“It’s beautiful.” Her tiny office was painted a pearly sage, and two tall windows offered a view of the old Granary Burying Ground and King’s Chapel.
“Thanks. This whole floor was a painting studio, lit by skylights. They added on the fourth and fifth floors in the 1900s.”
I walked to the windows and gazed out, feeling centuries away from the cheerful throngs on the common.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked. I crossed the room and sat down in a wooden armchair by her desk.
“A few months. It’s not permanent; at least not yet.”
My ears pricked up. I could really see myself in this office. “What do you mean?”
Sylvia didn’t sit at her desk, choosing instead one of two upholstered chairs that formed what decorators call a “conversation area.” I wasn’t sure if I should move, but she patted the seat beside her, in a curiously personal gesture that made me feel like a cat or a two-year-old. I hopped up obediently and toddled over.
“I was working for John Winslow,” she said.
“Winslow, as in Winslow Paper?”
“And the Winslow Building at Mass. General, the Winslow gym at Harvard …”
“The Winslow Room at the MFA?” I asked.
She nodded. “He died in January. His collection came here and I came with it. I was restoring about forty volumes, and he left a fund in place for me to finish the job. Once his kids donated the books, it just made sense for me to work out of the bindery here.”
“What’s in the collection?” I asked.
Her smile became conspiratorial. “Daniell’s Oriental Scenery, for starters.”
“No!”
She smiled, with a hint of satisfaction in her eyes. “Gabriel Lory’s Swiss Illustrations, Gould and Elliot plates.”
I caught my breath. “Plants or birds?”
“Both!” A little color had come to her cheeks. For book geeks like Sylvia and me, these were emeralds and rubies. She paused, savoring the moment. She pulled her chair a little closer and leaned in.
“And something else,” she whispered, her gaze meeting mine full-on for the first time, as though she was trying to decide whether she could really trust me with what she was about to reveal.
I waited for her to go on, but instead, she sat back. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“No, I won’t.”
She didn’t seem convinced. “Look,” I said, “I’m the one who talks to ghosts!”
She laughed and I saw her relax a little. There was another long pause before she spoke.
“Finny bought it in the sixties. In Switzerland.”
“Who’s Finny?” I asked.
“Oh, sorry—Mr. Winslow. His middle name was Phineas; he went by Finny.”
I nodded.
“An illuminated manuscript,” she continued.
This got my attention. These manuscripts dated from the Middle Ages and had been calligraphed and painted by monks in scriptoriums on the skin of calves, sheep, or goats. Most were religious, many were painted with real gold, and all were priceless.
“We think it might be the Book of Kildare,” she whispered.
I stared at her. She was crazy. She had to be. The Book of Kildare, said to be the most splendid illustration of the Gospels ever produced, was created in the twelfth century by monks at Kildare Abbey, founded by Saint Brigid in County Kildare, Ireland. Reputed to be even more magnificent than the legendary Book of Kells, it disappeared during the Reformation and was never seen again.
“What makes you think …?”
“A few things,” she answered. “
We were in touch with some art historians at Yale and The Cloisters. They led us to the writings of a medieval ecclesiastic called Gerald of Wales. He saw the manuscript before it disappeared and wrote about it in detail. He described some pretty unusual images.”
“Such as?”
“A snake devouring a lion cub. An eagle wearing a bloody crown. Pages that look like oriental carpets, with intricate coils and knots.”
“How many of the things he described are in your book?”
“All of them.”
“Wow,” I whispered.
She nodded, scanning my face. “We were so close to proving it. We only had to verify a few more details. Hardly anyone knew about it, because if word got out too early, before we’d really built an airtight case, well, you know how it goes with the art establishment.”
She was giving me way too much credit. I had no idea how it went with the art establishment.
“You read about that Caravaggio,” she prompted, apparently assuming that I just needed to be reminded of how much I actually knew. “The one in that monastery?”
I dimly recalled an article in The New Yorker, years ago.
“The experts don’t like amateurs claiming to have discovered long-lost treasures,” she explained.
“Why not?”
“They spend their lives hoping to make those headlines. And God help you if you poke your nose in before you’ve got absolute proof. They’ll pick you apart. Besides, if the manuscript really is what we—”
She broke off. There was no more “we.”
“What it appears to be, Finny wanted the right thing done with it.”
“What would that be?”
“I’m not sure.”
I nodded. We sat quietly for a few moments.
“Does anyone else know about it?” I finally asked.
“Only Sam, Sam Blake. He ran the bindery here for forty years. He retired in August.”
“You felt you could trust him?”
“Oh, completely.” She smiled. “Sam’s life is books. I was nervous about the manuscript being here in the bindery, so he kept it at his place with his own collection, in this little room he’s outfitted for climate and humidity control. He made me take it back here when he retired, though.”
The Book of Illumination Page 1
