by Inconnu(e)
“Taci! Taci!” said Lucia, shutting her up. “Voglio sentire!”
Titi subsided into a sullen mass, eyes on the floor. It threw Cassidy off stride, the whole outburst. He strode to the window and stared out, collecting himself. It had all been disturbingly illuminating. First, that Titi had the will to disagree even if she didn’t know what she was disagreeing with. (She barely understood English.) Even more that “Voglio sentire.” In his month there Cassidy had never known whether or not Lucia wanted to listen or whether she was submitting because she had no choice.
Voglio sentire! I want to listen! Well! Well!
“Let us proceed,” said Cassidy. He turned from the window to face a new situation. Lucia still sat cross-legged in the center of the floor her black eyes fixed on him. Titi had deserted stage center and was crouching in the corner of the nursery over the medieval castle, glowering, raising the drawbridge and lowering it, raising it and lowering it.
“Reason,” crooned Cassidy, eyes on Titi, “has intruded on man’s progress only occasionally and then at long intervals—Greece, the Renaissance, the eighteenth century, all fleeting moments of sanity in the general lunacy of history.”
Here Cassidy squatted on his haunches next to Lucia. “The paradox we must live with is this: Mankind has reached his highest pinnacle at moments of most extreme irrationality—the times that try men’s souls bring out the best, the worst, the greatest, the most profound illumination.”
“What about women’s souls?” asked Lucia scowling right back at him.
“Jupiter,” exclaimed Cassidy. “A feminist!”
“I’m a woman.”
“You’re a twelve-year-old girl.” Still, he was absurdly pleased with the interruption. She was listening, evaluating. He wasn’t just dropping the stuff down a well. “Women’s souls as well,” he said. “In the high Middle Ages, women’s souls and their bodies and their minds were tried to a degree never known before. Women were left in charge of the castles when their knights went off to the Crusades. They ran the castles, led troops in battle, were tortured, imprisoned, enslaved, and slaughtered with great equality.”
“Just like now,” said Lucia, eyes shining.
“Yes, just like now,” said Cassidy. He was delighted. It was better that the pupil make the deduction than it be made for him.
“This place is a prison!” hissed Lucia.
“Yes,” said Cassidy. “It is.” He sat next to her. “In the Middle Ages, the highborn spent much of their lives in captivity, just like now. Richard the Lionhearted spent most of his reign as King of England in various prisons waiting to be ransomed.”
Dangerous territory—talk of ransom. It was meant to be.
“My father was kidnapped,” said Lucia passionately. “We paid the ransom and they killed him anyway.”
It was the first mention of the Prince di Castiglione since he’d moved into the apartment. Lucia’s mouth hung open, her eyes furious, body tense, a volcano about to erupt.
“They killed him because he was too smart to be left alive,” she cried. “If they’d left him alive, he’d have caught them and got the money back and killed them.”
Cassidy was impressed by her ferocity.
Then he noticed the Principessa, standing very straight beside the door. Dressed in a gray wool suit with a little toque on the blonde hair. How long had she been standing there?
“Mama!” cried Lucia. She sprang to her feet and rushed into her mother’s arms where she burst into tears. The Principessa enfolded her in her gray skirt, her eyes on Cassidy coldly.
“Rather emotional, the lesson today, Professor?” said the Principessa.
Accusingly.
My fault! What have I done?
The Principessa and the Contessa had gone, leaving Cassidy alone with Titi who sat crouched in the corner playing with the medieval castle.
Cassidy rolled over on his stomach and contemplated Titi thoughtfully. Titi kept playing with the medieval castle and its knights and horsemen as if he weren’t there.
“How do you suppose a woman with such beautiful violet eyes managed to have a child with eyes as black as ink, Titi?” asked Cassidy softly.
She said nothing, as if the question had never been asked.
• 10 •
There was a cocoon within a larger cocoon, spotless, air-conditioned, smelling always a little of furniture polish. In his black, threadbare suit, Cassidy moved down waxed floors catching glimpses through half open doors of the Irish maids polishing the mahogany and rosewood and satinwood surfaces of chairs that were never sat in and breakfront cabinets that were never touched by any hands but their own. Outside, shimmering in the sunshine, lay New York, dirty, noisy, and dangerous. Inside the cocoon they breathed air redolent of flowers and furniture polish. The raucous sounds of New York came through a kind of anesthetic hum. Once in a while Cassidy could catch sight of his scarecrow frame in one of the innumerable mirrors which everywhere cast reflections—one room mirroring another, making the whole place look endless—and he’d make a face at himself—baring his teeth, grimacing, scowling, crossing his eyes. “The only thing that looks out of place in this place is himself, namely me,” he’d say to himself in a sort of parody of his Irishness.
The Principessa caught him doing this one day: “Your face will grow like that, if you’re not careful,” she said as if reproving a child.
They lived in a kind of hush; shuttered, twilighted, compartmented, and enclosed. In the long corridors Cassidy would catch sight of a figure ahead of him—Titi, Lucia, the Principessa, Lorenzo—and when he got there the person had vanished into some room or other and closed the door. Doors were always kept closed. The Principessa’s bedroom door, the nursery door, the doors into Lorenzo’s room, the kitchen. Lorenzo lived back of his own kitchen in a little servant’s wing which contained two bedrooms. Cassidy never so much as caught a peek into it. Lorenzo was a private person.
Once in a while he flattered himself that he caught a glimpse into Lorenzo’s soul—but he couldn’t be sure. It was like the mirrored surfaces of the apartment, beckoning one into distant recesses that did not really exist.
Once after a battle with the Principessa over the foyer, he remarked to Lorenzo: “She’ll stick a knife into me one day.”
“She doesn’t use knives, signor,” said Lorenzo. “She has other weapons, more powerful, more subtle and . . . more interesting.” It was the way he said “Interesting” that caught Cassidy’s attention. A gleam of a smile, sardonic, almost satanic, as if being “interesting” was at the heart of the matter.
Lorenzo lay deep within layers and layers and more layers of reserve, each layer containing a century of experience beyond mortal comprehension. Cassidy loved to watch the very way he polished—he was forever polishing—the amber look in his eye as he ran his fingers over three-hundred-year-old silver candelabra, as if feeling each century in his fingertips, drawing sustenance and, yes, wisdom from it.
Relations between Lorenzo and Titi were fragile and mysterious, something only caught out of the corner of his eye, or at the end of a corridor. Lorenzo, his tall, beautifully proportioned frame bent respectfully down over the little peasant listening as she chattered, himself saying little, but according her that immense courtesy which flowed out of him in waves. She wasn’t all that courteous in return, the little wild forest beast that she was, and sometimes her chatter crackled angrily, dark eyes flashing, Lorenzo unruffled.
Cassidy tried and tried to draw Lorenzo out about himself to be met with a gleaming smile, and little else. He had little luck drawing him out about anything. About the dead Prince, Lorenzo was reserved, respectful, almost worshipful—but underneath it all, disapproving. One day, Cassidy repeated a few things he’d heard about the Prince (or read)—a wit, connoisseur, good shot, great horseman, et cetera, et cetera.
“Superbly talented,” agreed Lorenzo in his engraved English whose accent was like perfume, “all of it wasted.”
He thereupon shut
up, and Cassidy couldn’t for the life of him find out if he meant the Prince had wasted his talents on frivolity or that the murder had wasted the man—as the current phrase went.
That night he got tired of waiting any longer, and he called Alison in Washington. Alison wasn’t glad to hear from him. “I told you not to use this number except in emergency, Horatio.”
“I was worried about your welfare, Hugh. Rumor in the underground they’d trashed you and dumped the body in the Gowanus Canal.” Hugh would hate being found in the Gowanus Canal, a very unfashionable spot to be caught dead.
“What do you want, Horatio?”
“I sent you the prints a week ago.”
He’d got Alfred the Great to look at some photographs of prospective cooks. Good prints they were.
There was a pause on the other end—and Cassidy could read Alison’s pauses like a book. He didn’t like this pause at all. “Nothing at all, Horatio,” said Alison smoothly.
“I’ll try the FBI then,” said Cassidy instantly. “They owe me a couple from long ago . . .”
“Horatio!” A bleat of rage. “We want him left alone and we don’t want any interference from the Bureau.”
“What’s his name, Hugh?”
“He’s a handle, a good handle, into the building.”
“I thought I was the handle.”
“We can use all the handles we can get.”
“I’ll call the Bureau in the morning.”
A long pause. Pressure building up as in a steam kettle.
“Hugo Dorn.” said Alison sullenly. “SS.”
“Jupiter,” said Cassidy. “I can’t believe it. He’s too young.”
“Facelift. Dyed hair. You can never tell with these old Nazis. We flushed one out of Ecuador the other day looked thirty-five. What you must bear in mind, Horatio—and I mean this sincerely—is that even if he is old SS it doesn’t mean he isn’t on our side. Hugo was put in there by the people who rebuilt that building. All Fascist money. We know that.”
“We do?” said Cassidy. “Whose side did you say we were on again, Hugh?”
“They’re not the enemy any more,” said Alison sharply. “That was forty years ago. Hugo is a good Nazi.”
“A good Nazi, how nice,” murmured Cassidy, and hung up. He put the phone off his lap back on the night table and stood up. Then he saw her standing quietly in her nightie, black eyes enormous. “I heard all that,” said Lucia.
“Why aren’t you in bed, little monster. It’s long past midnight,” blazed Cassidy who hated being eavesdropped.
“Je n’aime qu’on m’appelle monstre,” said Lucia demurely. Always demure in European languages, Cassidy decided. In English she was a different personality altogether.
“I had a terrible dream.” Lucia sat on his bed and pulled her skinny legs up under her nightie. “About . . . frogs. Do you ever dream about frogs?”
Cassidy sat next to her carefully. “No, I don’t think so. Frogs ?”
“A roomful of frogs. It was very frightening.” Looking at him soberly out of the black eyes. “I went to Mama’s room. She’s not there.”
Mama didn’t come home that early.
“Do you have bad dreams often, Lucia?”
She shook her head. “No, but when I do . . .” She played with her nightdress. “Papa used to come into my room when I had bad dreams and comfort me with lullabies. He had a lovely voice, my father.”
A whole new aspect of the Prince.
“Do you know any lullabies, Professor?”
She’s having me on, the vixen, thought Cassidy. Childless academics are barren of lullabies.
“I know a song your mother wouldn’t approve of, Contessa.”
Lucia’s eyes gleamed. Anything the Principessa didn’t approve had the enchantment of the illicit.
“Sing it,” she said.
In a high harsh falsetto, he sang her a song from the Middle Ages:
Peace delights me not.
War—be thou my lot.
Law I do not know
Save a right good blow.
I crave no meat or drink beside
The cry On! On! from throats that crack,
A riderless and frantic pack,
And set the forest ringing.
The cries Help! Help!—the warriors laid
Beside the moat with brows that fade to grass and stubble clinging.
And then the bodies past all aid
Still pierced with broken spear and blade.
Come, Barons, haste ye, bringing
Your vassals for the daring raid.
Risk all—and let the game be played.
“What a bloodthirsty song!” exclaimed Lucia, eyes like black holes.
“It was written 700 years ago by a noble troubadour named Bertrand de Born. Great pal of Richard the Lionhearted. No more vicious than some of the pop songs today.”
He picked her up—she weighed nothing at all—and carried her out the door and down the corridor toward her room.
“Who was the nice Nazi?” asked Lucia, face in his chest.
She doesn’t miss a trick, this kid, thought Cassidy. “Nice Nazis,” said Cassidy, “are like unicorns. Mythological beasts.”
At the doorway to the nursery, they ran square into the Principessa. She was dressed in a long, gold lamé dress, carrying an ermine wrap, and she was cold with fury.
“I’ll take Lucia, Professor!” she snapped, each word a pistol shot.
“Mama!” cried Lucia eagerly. “You’re home!”
The little body was transferred from Cassidy’s arms to her mother’s as if she were contraband, the Principessa’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“She had a bad dream,” explained Cassidy.
The Principessa said nothing. She bore Lucia into the nursery, in her arms, her whole body stiff with anger. The light was on in the nursery, and Cassidy caught a glimpse of Titi standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped. She, too, looked furious, but then she always did when Cassidy was around.
• 11 •
Meals in the di Castiglione household were largely solitary.
The Principessa had breakfast in bed. For luncheon and dinner she was invariably out. (A large part of her day was devoted to dressing, exquisitely, for these repasts.) Titi prepared Lucia’s lunch and supper—salad, chops, spaghetti—of which Lucia ate little, Titi hovering over her like an evil genie. Titi’s own lunch and dinner, if they could be called that, she took standing up beside the big refrigerator in the kitchen, stuffing bread and hardboiled eggs into herself as if stoking her inner fires. Lorenzo prepared lunch and dinner for Cassidy and served them with his exquisite deference that made Cassidy very nervous. Try as he would he could not make Lorenzo sit down and have a meal with him. In part this might have been because the meals themselves were pretty bad. Lorenzo’s cooking was not nearly as good as his manners. Cassidy rarely saw Lorenzo take food and even more rarely sit down.
Meanwhile the search for a cook went on.
“Why do we need a cook?” expostulated Cassidy. “Nobody eats here.”
The Principessa gave him an ivoried glance full of disapproval, as if to indicate he was getting into areas that were none of his business. It was the morning after she’d taken Lucia from him, he was standing at the foot of her bed with Lorenzo while the Principessa ate her breakfast.
“I speak in the interest only of security, Madame,” said Cassidy magniloquently. “Another servant, another security risk.”
Forcing her to explain herself which she liked not at all. “We must have a cook to take the burden off Lorenzo,” said the Principessa, marmalading her toast. “Also I want someone to cook for Titi and Lucia in the nursery. Titi is terrible. She boils the vegetables into jelly.”
“The agency has sent the name of a German woman,” said Lorenzo.
“The best cooks are men,” said the Principessa.
Why do we need the best cook? Cassidy was wondering, for a household that doesn’t eat.
&nb
sp; Meanwhile the work on the front hall proceeded. The Tiepolo was removed (Cassidy had recommended covering it but was overruled by the Principessa) by Joseph Grant Ltd. from London, England, who were fearfully expensive but the world’s acknowledged experts on removing priceless frescoes from ceilings. Where the Tiepolo went, Cassidy had no idea.
He was too preoccupied with the steel doors which Newcastle Safe and Lock installed in front of the elevator. It took two days because the bolts holding the frame had to be sunk into solid concrete which meant removing plaster and wood in between door and wall—an operation that filled the apartment with fine dust and the Principessa with cold rage.
The moment the job was finished and the dust cleared by Lorenzo (who worked days polishing the whole apartment and everything in it), Cassidy was convinced the steel doors would never be needed and were a total waste of time. And just as equally convinced that if the work had not been done, the doors would have been needed and it would have been a fatal error not to have constructed them.
“Security,” he snarled at Lorenzo in the pantry, “is a mug’s game. There is no such thing.”
Lorenzo said: “The agency has sent in the name of a cook. Jefferson Lee. He’s black.”
“Jefferson Lee sounds like a high school,” said Cassidy. “No black man calls himself Jefferson Lee any more unless he’s making jokes.”
He met Fingertips at Ariadne’s, a little Greenwich Village bar, under street level at Flame Street. “You’re always beneath street level, Cassidy,” said Fingertips, giving his dreamy smile as if he were stoned out of his skull which he probably was. “Am I to conclude you’re hiding something?”
“I’m living on the forty-ninth floor now, Fingertips,” said Cassidy. “Half a mile straight up and it’s addling my wits.” He told Fingertips what he wanted.
“Relations,” said Fingertips with his bland smile. “You’ve been swept out to sea by Roots.”
“I just want to know what the Schoons were up to recently—that’s Elsa Schoon’s sister and brother—and the early marriages. I already know more than I want to know about the ancestry.”
