by Mark Mills
The lock gnashed at the key, then conceded defeat. The interior was aglow, a ruddy sunlight slanting through the windows. Aside from a handful of old wooden pews, the interior was almost completely devoid of furnishings. The thieves wouldn't have been disappointed, though. The simple stone altar bore a painted triptych of the Adoration of the Magi. As they approached—silently, reverently—Adam tried to place it.
The colliding perspectives, the elongated figures and the warmth of the tones suggested a painter from the Sienese school. The date was another matter. To his semitrained eye, it could have been anything from the mid—fourteenth century to the mid—fifteenth, later even. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was distinctive, an unsettling blend of innocence and intensity—like the gaze of a child staring at you from the rear window of the car in front.
"I must go there," said Adam.
"Where?"
"Siena."
"I'm impressed."
"Don't be. I couldn't tell you anything else about it."
"No one can."
"I'm sure someone could."
"I hope they don't. Then there would be no more mystery."
They made a quick tour of the chapel, stopping at a small plaque set in the wall beneath one of the windows. There were a name and a date etched into the stone:
EMILIO DOCI
27. 7. 1944
"My uncle," said Antonella.
"Your grandmother told me what happened. It's a terrible story."
"He's buried there." She pointed at the unmarked flagstones at her feet. "I never really knew him. We were living in Milan, and I was only ten or eleven when it happened."
Which would make her what ... ?
"Twenty-four," she said, reading his mind. "And you?"
"Twenty-two next month."
The words had a ring of desperation about them, as if he was trying to narrow the gap on her, and he quickly moved the conversation on.
"Why did he keep his mother's surname?"
"To keep the Docci name alive. So did Maurizio. Not my mother—she's a Ballerini."
"And you?"
"I'm a Voli. Antonella Voli."
He returned her little bow. "Adam Strickland."
"Strickland," she repeated. It wasn't designed to roll off an Italian tongue.
Adam glanced back at the plaque. "Is Emilio the reason the top floor of the villa isn't used?"
"Yes."
It had been her grandfather's idea, apparently. The day after Emilio's murder, the Allies had liberated San Casciano. Soldiers arrived. They searched the villa for intelligence left by the Germans before moving on. Her grandfather then had all the broken furniture from the terrace carried back upstairs. When this was done, he closed and locked the doors at the head of the staircase, sealing off the top floor. The rooms had remained that way ever since— undisturbed—on her grandfather's insistence. When he died some years later, people assumed that Signora Docci would have them opened up, aired, repaired, reused. But she had left them just as they were, just as they had always been.
Adam lingered a moment when they left the chapel, casting a last look around the interior. Unless the information in the file was incorrect, then somewhere beneath the stone floor also lay the bones of Flora Bonfadio, dead some four hundred years.
They found Maria spreading the table on the terrace with a coarse white linen cloth. When Antonella stooped to kiss her on both cheeks, there was no mistaking the unguarded look of warmth in the older woman's eyes. It dimmed visibly when she took in Adam hovering at a distance.
"You must stay and meet my uncle and aunt. They'll be here soon. Also my cousins."
"I should be going."
Maria's expression suggested that this wasn't such a bad idea. It also suggested that her grasp of the English language was far better than she liked to let on.
"I insist," said Antonella.
He stayed for only half an hour, but it was time enough to be won over by Maurizio's easygoing charm and his wife's mischievous wit. They made an attractive couple. He was dark and trim and distinguished-looking, with a dusting of gray at the temples; Chiara Docci was a blond and sharp-featured beauty whose husky laugh betrayed her passion for cigarettes, which she smoked relentlessly, to the evident disapproval of her two children, Rodolfo and Laura.
"Mama, please," said Laura at one point.
"I'm nervous, cara. How often does one meet a handsome young man who also has a brain?"
Adam fielded her look and felt his cheeks flush.
"Is it true?" Maurizio asked. "Does he also have a brain?"
"I've only just met him," Antonella replied, playfully noncommittal.
Chiara blew a plume of smoke into the air. "That's all it takes, my dear. The moment I met your uncle, I knew I would have to search for mental stimulation elsewhere."
It was an odd sight for Adam, watching children openly laughing at a parent's joke. And so wholeheartedly that he wondered for a moment if there wasn't just a small grain of truth in Chiara's quip. Somehow he doubted it, though. Maurizio was laughing along like a man who knows quite the reverse is true. His teeth were improbably white, Adam noted.
"Your brain, my looks, wasn't that the deal?" retorted Maurizio, well aware that his wife left him standing in the looks department.
"So what went wrong?" said Antonella, nodding at her cousins, the offspring.
More laughter. And more wine. Then a discussion about a forthcoming party at the villa, which Adam would be a fool to miss. Adam, though, wasn't really listening. He was observing them, with their lively banter and their air of easy affluence, their coal-black hair and their honeyed complexions. A breed apart.
He felt a sudden urge to be gone. Maria spared him having to make an excuse, materializing from the villa with the news that Signora Docci was ready to receive her family.
Antonella accompanied Adam to the courtyard, where the bicycle stood propped against the wellhead.
"My grandfather's," she said, her long fingers sliding over the leather saddle. "He used to put us in the basket when we were young and make us shout 'Ay caramba!'"
She kissed him on both cheeks, her hand lightly touching his arm as she did so.
Negotiating the turn at the bottom of the driveway, he could still feel the delicate pressure of her fingers at his elbow.
Have they gone yet?
Didn't you hear the car leave? Are you angry, Maria?
Angry?
You always answer a question with a question when you're angry.
Do I, Signora?
Or sad.
They were talking about the party like it is theirs already... all the friends they're inviting.
We need their friends. So many of mine are gone.
But it's your party, Signora, it always has been.
I thought you hated the party.
I do. But that's not the point.
And what about Antonella? How did she seem to you? Antonella?
Do you think she likes him? Who?
Who do you think? Adam, of course.
I've hardly seen them together. How can I say?
Because you know her better than any of us does.
Yes, I think she likes him.
A lot?
Maybe.
Oh dear.
Signora?
Sit down, Maria. The chair there. Pull it up to the bed. Closer. Good, now give me your hand. That's right.
Signora ...?
There's something I need to talk to you about, Maria, something we should have talked about long ago.
ADAM LOWERED THE CAMERA. "DAMN," HE MUTTERED, not for the first time.
The light was perfect, clear and limpid after three days of flat summer haze, but now he found he was unable to photograph the glade in its entirety. The three statues distributed around the clearing resolutely refused to fall within the frame at the same time.
Waist-deep in the laurel at the southern edge, he was able to capture both Zephyrus—the west wind, his cheeks pu
ffed out, blowing with all his might—and Hyacinth, supine on his pedestal, dead, the discus lying beside him. But Apollo was out of shot.
In fact, wherever Adam placed himself, the 50mm lens on his father's old Leica ("Don't bother coming home if you lose it") was unable to accommodate more than two of the three figures at any one time.
The story they enacted was simple enough, which only increased his frustration at not being able to trap it in a single shot: Zephyrus, jealous of Apollo's love for Hyacinth, a beautiful Spartan prince, decided to take action. While Apollo was teaching the youth to throw a discus, Zephyrus whipped up a wind that sent the discus crashing into Hyacinth's skull, killing him instantly. The hyacinth flower then sprouted from the ground where his blood fell.
At the northern fringe of the grove stood Apollo, with his grief- stricken face and his arms outstretched toward the fallen boy. He was perched on a conical, rough-carved mountain peak. Maybe it was intended to signify Mount Parnassus, the home he shared with the Muses, but its inclusion seemed gratuitous. Mount Parnassus didn't figure in the story as handed down by Ovid and, besides, Apollo was already identifiable from his bow and his lyre.
The statue of Hyacinth only raised further questions. Why place him facedown in the dirt, his long hair sprawled across his features so that only a small section of his delicate mouth was showing? And why clad a young man renowned for his athletic prowess in a loose, long-sleeved robe, rather than baring his physique?
The file offered no insights. Nor, for that matter, did the copious notes amassed by Signora Docci's father while preparing the document, although these had yielded some lines from Keats' Endymion about Zephyr's role in the death of Hyacinth. It was a nice fat chunk of poetry that would help flesh out his thesis, but like the other little discoveries he'd accumulated over the past few days, it left him feeling strangely indifferent.
He was safe now—he knew he already had enough to shape a convincing paper—and he should have been celebrating. He couldn't, though, not with so many questions tugging at his thoughts. They had proliferated ever since his tour of the garden with Antonella, when for a brief moment it had all seemed so clear, so straightforward.
The steep rise housing the amphitheater was evidently an artificial construct, but why had Federico Docci gone to the effort and expense of shifting so many tons of earth for the sake of one feature? Such a vast undertaking was hardly in keeping with the discretion he'd shown elsewhere in the garden. And as for the amphitheater itself, why nine levels instead of the seven on display in the amphitheater at Bomarzo?
Like false notes in an otherwise flawless piece of music, these questions jarred; they refused to be ignored. He had tried to dismiss them, but each time he breached the yew hedge at the entrance to the garden, he knew they'd still be there. Even now, while engaged in the purely practical exercise of photographing the garden, two more had just presented themselves to him in the form of the Apollo and Hyacinth statues.
He fired off one last shot of Hyacinth, then made his way back through the woods toward the grotto. It occurred to him that he was developing an unhealthy fixation on the garden. This was hardly surprising. Since his arrival he had barely thought about anything else. When he wasn't walking around it, he was invariably reading about it, shipping books and papers back to the pen- sione every evening in the bike basket so that he could continue studying through dinner and on into the early hours.
There had been no one in the trattoria to chide him for reading and eating at the same time. Disappointingly, Fausto hadn't shown his face since that first evening, and was unlikely to do so anytime soon according to Signora Fanelli. Apparently it was the first time in a long while that he'd stopped by her place. Adam might have been imagining it, but he'd detected a whiff of disappointment on her part too.
No Fausto. And no Antonella, not for three days.
"She is working very hard," Signora Docci had revealed to him during one of his regular audiences in her bedroom. "Apparently, there are important clients in town, buyers from big American department stores."
She had made little effort to conceal the note of mild mockery in her voice.
"You don't approve of what she does?"
"It's the job of old people to disapprove of everything young people do."
"Oh, is that right?"
"If we don't disapprove, then the young have nothing to fight against and the world will never change. It cannot move on."
"I'd never thought of it that way."
"I should hope not; you have better things to think about."
"Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know"—she waved her hand vaguely about in the air—"Elvis Presley."
"I'm impressed."
"Antonella keeps me informed of these things."
"And you dutifully disapprove."
"Elvis Presley is clearly a young man of questionable morals."
"Based on your knowledge of his music."
"And his films."
"Which you've seen?"
"Of course not. You don't understand. The old people are allowed to argue their case from a position of complete ignorance. In fact, it's essential."
Adam laughed, as he often found himself doing when in her company. "Maybe she likes what she does," he said. "Maybe she's good at it."
"My friends who know about such things tell me she has a great talent. But I always saw her as more than just a seamstress." "I'm sure there's a lot more to it than just sewing."
Signora Docci gave a low sigh. "You're right, of course. Ignore me. I think I am still a little angry."
"Angry?"
"You should have seen her before, before this." Her fingertips moved to her forehead. "She was so beautiful. Now she hides herself away in a back room and works with her hands. La poverina."
Her words riled him, especially the last two, replete with pity: the poor thing.
"I disagree," said Adam. "I can't see her hiding herself."
"No?" Her tone was flat, skeptical.
"I know I've only met her once, but it's what struck me most— that she's not ashamed, not embarrassed. The way she wears her hair, the way she carries herself. She's not hiding."
"You think she doesn't look in the mirror every morning and wish it was different?"
"Maybe. I don't know. But she's more beautiful because of it, because of the way she is with it."
"You really believe that?"
"I do. Yes."
At first he took her look for one of weary sufferance, and he suddenly felt very young, he suddenly felt like a person in the presence of someone who has spent considerably more time on the planet. But there was something else in her eyes, something he couldn't quite place. He only realized what it was when a slow and slightly wicked smile spread across her face.
"You're playing with me."
"It's nice to see you defending her. And you're right—she is more beautiful because of it."
"How did it happen?"
"It was near Portofino, at night. Her mother was driving. She was also lucky. She only broke two ribs."
Signora Docci had not elaborated. In fact, she had terminated the conversation then and there on some doubtful pretext, banishing him back downstairs to his books.
Maybe that's what the problem was, mused Adam, strolling back past the grotto: the routine, the rigmarole, long periods of study broken by conversations with a bed-bound septuagenarian. Toss the pitiless heat into the pot, and it was little wonder he was losing his grip.
He climbed the steps sunk into the slope behind the grotto, resolving as he did so to break the pattern, to introduce some variety into his life, maybe eat out one night, cycle off somewhere for half a day, or even hitch a lift into Florence—anything to add some variety, jolt him out of his folly.
He stopped at the base of the amphitheater and stared up at Flora on her pedestal near the top. He would never be able to see her as he had that first time. Antonella's words had irrevocably colored his judgment. When he looked on th
e goddess twisting one way, then the other, he no longer saw the classic pose borrowed from Giambologna, he saw a woman contorted with some other emotion, he saw the provocative thrust of her right hip.
Why put her there, near the top but not at the top? In fact, why put her there at all, in a nine-tiered amphitheater? And why nine instead of seven tiers? Or five for that matter? What was so special about nine? The nine lives of a cat? A stitch in time . . . ? The nine planets of the solar system? No, they hadn't known about Pluto back then. Shakespeare, maybe—Macbeth—the witches repeating their spells nine times. Not possible. Shakespeare couldn't have been more than a boy when the garden was laid out. Close, though.
And the occult connection was interesting. How had the witches put it?
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
The trinity to the power of three—a powerful number—thrice sacred, like the Holiest of Holies, composed of the three trinities. And something else, some other dark association with the number nine. But what?
He pulled himself up short, the resolution fresh in his mind yet already ignored. He lit a cigarette, dropped the match in the trough at the foot of the amphitheater and made off up the pathway.
He was a few yards shy of the yew hedge barring his exit from the garden when the answer came to him.
The nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno.
It was several moments before he turned and hurried back down the path to the amphitheater.
It wasn't that the statue of Flora was placed on the second tier from the top—he couldn't remember just which category of human sin or depravity had been enshrined by Dante in the second circle of his Inferno—it was the inscription on the triumphal arch standing proud on the crest above that settled it:
It took him ten minutes to locate a copy of the book in the library, just time enough to recover his breath. He dropped into a leather chair and examined the tome: La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri, an Italian edition dating from the late nineteenth century.
His dictionary was back at the pensione, but with any luck he wouldn't need it, not immediately. Even his rudimentary Italian should be up to establishing which class of sinner inhabited the second circle of Dante's Hell, his Inferno.
