by Jane Langton
“Well, of course, it’s entirely up to you. But twice as high! You’re sure they’ll agree?”
“Of course. We couldn’t possibly allow the supreme Pontiff to stand at such a low level when he’s doing us such honor. It would never do, vero? Perfection above all.”
Across the river at the Villa L’Ombrellino, things were far from perfect. The trustees had notified Zee that the school was to be closed at the end of the semester. Lucretia, Zee and Homer took their usual turns at lecturing, but the student body was now reduced to three—Tom O’Toole, Dorothy Orme, and Joan Jakes.
For Joan it was heaven. She was overjoyed that most of the kids were gone. No longer did she have to compete with a zoo of healthy young animals.
Dorothy Orme felt privileged too. Of course she was sorry that the school was in such difficulties, but for her it had become the experience of a lifetime. It was like a seminar, or a religious retreat—students and teachers living intimately with one another, exchanging conversation that was sometimes ordinary, sometimes ridiculous, occasionally high-flown in a way that thrilled Dorothy’s modest intelligence, and tested it and shocked it.
She was not clever like Joan. She did not have Joan’s habit of piping up eagerly with the right answer, the wrong answer, any answer. Yet she could often sum up in simple language the thing everyone was seeking to express, or ask a naive question that left them all speechless.
“Isn’t it funny that Dante made such a fuss about the next world, when he was really talking about Florence?”
“Everything you do means something, right? Even little things can have”—Dorothy spread her arms—”huge consequences?”
Only Tom O’Toole seemed to get little from the smaller classes. He was carrying on as usual, helping with the daily necessities of running the school, but he was listless, as though the purpose had gone out of things. He misses the other young ones, guessed Dorothy, especially Julia Smith.
Housekeeping had become simpler. “You know, Lucretia,” said Dorothy, “you don’t really need that expensive cook. We can handle the food ourselves perfectly well. It’s just the six of us, after all.”
“You’re right,” said Lucretia, but she passed the buck to Zee. “You fire her,” she told him. “If I do it, there’ll be an awful fight.”
“Un idea terrible,” said Zee, but he took on the task. As it turned out, there was a fight anyway. When Signorina Giannerina finally tore off her white coat and stamped out of the villa, she had won two months’ extra wages and humiliated Zee.
That was the afternoon when Homer discovered Lucretia in tears. There she was at her desk in the office, sobbing with her head in her hands.
Embarrassed, Homer didn’t know whether to duck out and leave her alone, or put a comforting arm around her. “Can I help?” he said feebly.
Lucretia glanced at him with streaming eyes. “I’m sorry, Homer,” she said brokenly, “but please go away.”
“Of course, of course.” Homer shut the door softly, and went downstairs in a state of shock. Lucretia had been the sturdy engine that drove the school, keeping the rest of them on track in every emergency. If she were to fall apart, so would the entire American School of Florentine Studies.
But that evening she seemed her usual self, supervising the preparation of a scrappy cooperative meal. Next day she conducted her classes with her usual aplomb.
The school routine continued uninterrupted. In the mornings, whenever February granted them a warm dry day, Lucretia continued her field trips to churches and museums, and Zee carried on with a whole new set of clues for the Dante Game.
No longer did they dare to use the van, with the school insignia on its doors. It had become an object of curiosity and suspicion. Fingers pointed at it, faces frowned, one superstitious old woman held up two fingers in the ancient horn sign against the evil eye. Every fiorentino knew that the American School was playing a satanic game inspired by Dante’s Inferno. No doubt black masses were performed at L’Ombrellino, with the fires of hell sending up fiery sparks above the hill of Bellosguardo.
“All we need now is a couple of dead babies on the premises,” said Homer cheerfully, squeezing into the back of Zee’s little Saab, jamming himself in beside Tom and Joan.
They drove down to Porta Romana and took the bus to Via Cerretani. Today’s clue was an impossible one, The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Only the studious Joan Jakes was ready. She had pounced on the answer in the notes for the thirty-second chapter of the Purgatorio, and she snuggled it to herself, then snatched it out, triumphant, in the reliquary room in the Museo del Duomo.
“The tree of the knowledge of good and evil! The cross of Christ was made from it, right? Look at that!” She stalked across the room and pointed at a glass case containing an elaborate gold reliquary covered with cherubs and jewels.
“I don’t understand,” said Dorothy.
“I get it,” said Tom O’Toole.
“Those little wooden fragments inside the crystal,” said Homer, leaning down to peer at them, “they’re supposed to be pieces of the true cross.”
“Oh, I see,” said Dorothy.
And then Zee congratulated Joan mildly, and she gloated. Surely before long he would forget about the enchanting Julia Smith and turn his attention to the most gifted student of them all, a woman who had not gallivanted carelessly off with a silly young boyfriend. With glittering eyes Joan climbed back on the bus with the rest of them, vowing to throw herself even more earnestly at her Dante paper. She would make it longer, still longer, fifty pages, sixty, a hundred!
But Zee did not forget the enchanting Julia. Now that she was gone, now that her physical presence was no longer distracting him he was aware of something more solid about her, something larger and more lasting. And he couldn’t rid his imagination of a repeating vision—Julia locked in some terrible hiding place, being raped, and raped, and raped.
That afternoon, after bringing everyone back to the villa, he lingered in the driveway, staring at the ground, walking slowly around the circle, pouncing suddenly on another piece of litter, then pulling a second out of the rampant vine that tumbled over the wall. Eagerly he took them to Homer and put them down on the kitchen table as if they too were fragments of the true cross.
One was a small electrician’s clamp, the other a torn and dirty piece of paper. Homer bent over the paper, which had been ripped in half. It was obviously the remains of some sort of timetable—
ATAF–HRENZE
**LINEA
ORARIO (F3) No 2121
VALIDITA: DAL 16–4 AL 24-4
LA QUERCIOLA CALDINE
CALDINE N
PARTENZE DA VIA PACINOTTI
6.12
6.27 6.52 7.10 7
11.10
11.52 12.40 13.12D 13
17.29D
18.25D 19.23D 20.20 21
“It’s a bus schedule,” explained Zee. “Those places, Querciola, Caldine, they’re on the north side of the city along Via Faentina. Which bus is it? We can find out.”
“But, good lord, Zee,” objected Homer, “how do you know it has anything to do with Julia? It could have blown halfway across Italy. Well, at least it could have blown uphill from the bus stop at Porta Romana.”
“No, no, it’s part of the stuff from somebody’s car. It all belongs together. The totocalcio ticket, the cigarette package, the bus schedule—they all blew out of the car when she was taken away. The bus schedule flew up against the brick wall and stuck in the leaves.” Zee looked at Homer insanely. “Which way was the wind blowing?”
“I don’t know which way the hell it was blowing. It’s not blowing now. It’s dead calm out there.”
“But there’s usually some kind of a little breeze. The prevailing winds are from west to east, aren’t they? I mean, isn’t there a wind that blows around the world from west to east in the northern hemisphere and east to west south of the equator?” Zee looked doubtful. “Or have I got it all wrong?”
Homer wanted to laugh at this cosmic geophysical clue to the disappearance of Julia Smith. Had the winds of heaven, circling the earth, blown the answer into Zee’s hand? “Well, I don’t know. But let’s just suppose you’re right, and this bus schedule did come from some vehicle in which the woman was kidnapped. So what? I’ve got an Italian train schedule in my pocket, but I’m not going to any of those places. What good is a miscellaneous bus schedule?”
Zee folded the schedule tenderly and put it in his wallet. “I don’t know, Homer, but Inspector Rossi isn’t getting anywhere. At least this is something. And it’s all we’ve got.”
CHAPTER 39
How salt the bread of strangers is, how hard
The up and down of someone else’s stair…
Paradiso XVII, 59, 60.
At first Julia had nothing to do but stare out the window. She sat on her chair, her arms folded on the sill, and studied the chickens, learning which ones were at the top of the social scale and which had to scuttle away from the others to get their dinner. Some had no feathers on their necks. The six ducks showed wild deviations in plumage. There was a lame dog on a chain. Four orange cats slept in the sun. The animal in the pen was a large pig.
The days were endless and dull, but at least she had not been assaulted. She had plugged the peephole in the door with a sock. Slowly the hours dragged by, punctuated only by breakfast, lunch and supper. The woman who brought the tray was called Tina. She was silent and severe. She brought the meals and took the tray away again. She took away the chamber pot and returned it. To Julia’s “Grazie,” she said nothing more than a solemn “Prego.”
With the poultry in the farmyard Tina showed more feeling. She called the cats in an affectionate singsong and scolded the pig, screeching its name, Graziella.
Every morning a grizzled old man drove a tractor below the high wall of the farmyard, along the road where the younger men played ball. Julia would hear the machine start up noisily and catch a glimpse of it on the road. Later on she might see it in the olive grove, churning up the ground with a disc harrow, loosening the soil. Once she saw the farmer and Tina on the other side of the valley, moving slowly along rows of grapevines. They were cutting and tying, doing winter work, preparing the vineyard for the new growth of the coming spring. Was the farmer Tina’s husband? Was this their farm? Or did they work for the distinguished-looking man with the grey hair, Signor Roberto?
On the fourth day of her captivity a new regimen began. Julia was released for a few hours in the care of a couple of the bravos. There were three of them, not counting Matteo—Raffaello, Pancrazio and Carlo.
When they saw her for the first time with her mop of pigtails, they roared with laughter.
Signor Roberto was invisible. He went away every morning before she was released and did not return until she was shut up again in her room. Julia was relieved, but she braided her pigtails every morning just the same.
As for Matteo Luzzi, he was gone too, most of the time. When he appeared one day at noon, surging up the driveway in his rented Honda, Julia confronted him as he got out of the car and slammed the door. “Why am I here?” she cried, shaking him by the arm. “What do you want with me?”
But Matteo only laughed and pulled her to him, and Julia tore fiercely away.
Pancrazio and Carlo laughed too. “Andiamo,” Carlo said, grinning at her. “Vediamo tutto.” And he took her on a tour of the farm.
Together they visited the barn of latticed brick where the tractor was kept. There were rabbits in cages. In another outbuilding plastic baskets were heaped in nested piles, ready for the next grape harvest. Then Carlo unlocked the door of a room filled with terra-cotta jars.
“Olio,” he said, beaming at her, removing one of the wooden lids. In an adjoining chamber there were baskets of corks and shelves of dusty bottles. A metal tank stood at one side. “Vino,” explained Raffaello, rapping it with his knuckles.
In the farmyard Julia made the acquaintance of the pig. Graziella was a big sow, long and slender like a sausage. She had huge floppy ears, small crafty eyes and a clean pink skin under white bristles. When Julia approached the pigpen for the first time, Graziella made a rumpus, nosing up her heavy dish and slamming it down, demanding to be fed.
“I’m sorry, Graziella,” murmured Julia. She found a stick and reached it through the bars, to scratch the pig’s back. At once Graziella quieted down and stood still, looking at her shrewdly, as if she were thinking, Never mind, the world is like that. The bastards will get you in the end. Within a few days she was an old friend.
In the company of Carlo or Raffaello or Pancrazio, Julia explored the hillside, the vegetable garden with the dry stalks of last summer’s sprawling squash and tomato vines, the olive grove with its lopped and twisted trees. When Julia spoke, it was in the simplest Italian. She was careful to say no more than buon giorno, buona sera, ciao, arrivederti, grazie, si and no, and perfavore. None of them spoke English except Raffaello, who could say only Pretty girl and I love you. Always she kept a sharp eye on them, hoping for a relaxation of attention.
But they were vigilant. There was never a moment when she could dart away and make for the distant invisible highway, where the tires of passing trucks made a high whining noise above the deeper throbbing of their heavy engines.
The time spent in her room was boring. She had nothing to read—until one day Tina brought her a bonanza. The bread on her supper tray was wrapped in newspaper.
As soon as Tina left the room Julia snatched the paper, dumped out the bread and glanced eagerly at the date on the front page. Good, it was yesterday’s La Nazione. Quickly she studied the bold print. There had been another strike in the city. This time it was OGGI SCIOPERO ALIA BIBLIO-TECA NAZIONALE, a strike at the library. She smiled, imagining the rage of all the scholars, stymied in their research.
So much for page one. Tearing off a piece of bread, she turned to page two, and caught her breath. Looking at her was Il professore, Giovanni Zibo, della scuola Americana a Villa L’Ombrellino. Jumping off the bed, Julia took the paper to the window and gazed at the picture hungrily.
She struggled with the language of the two columns of print. Something else had been stolen, she gathered, and the authorities had connected it with il Gioco di Dante, the Dante Game. There was a picture of the stolen object, a jewelled reliquary containing fragments of the true cross. It had been a treasure of the cathedral museum. Once again the thief had left behind a quotation from Dante, taped to the wall beside the empty glass case.
Below Julia’s window there was a sudden screeching of chickens and quacking of ducks. She was too absorbed to pay attention. Oh, God, what was the connection between Zee and the stolen reliquary?
Tina was coming back. Hastily Julia thrust the outer page of the paper under her blankets. Then she wadded the rest into a ball and put it beside her plate. She had just enough time to gobble a few bites of her green beans and pasta when Tina unlocked the door and reached for the tray.
“Grazie,” murmured Julia with her mouth full, handing over the rest of her lunch.
“Prego,” muttered Tina, and went away.
At once Julia took out the newspaper again. Sinking down on the small chair beside the window, she looked at Zee’s picture and suffered bitter remorse. Why had she not allowed herself to say certain things to him? Oh God, it hurt to know so clearly what he must be thinking—that she had gone away on purpose like Sukey and the rest. Yet how could he think she would leave without saying good-bye?
How could he think she would be like Kevin, who had just abandoned everything impulsively and walked away?
Then the truth struck Julia. Zee would think she had gone away with Kevin.
It was too cruel. She put her hands to her hot cheeks. For the second time since she had been dragged away from the villa she began to cry. She sat in the chair with her elbows on the windowsill and sobbed aloud.
At once there was a sound below her, a protesting voice, as if so
meone were speaking up in sympathy.
Julia jerked her hands away from her face and looked down to see Signor Roberto looking up at her.
Frantically she slammed the inner shutters over the window and bolted them. Then in a wild confusion of feeling she threw herself on the bed, clutching the newspaper, pressing it to her cheek.
CHAPTER 40
Like to a hawk, that sits with folded wing,
Eyeing its feet, and at the call turns, swift,
Eager for food …
Purgatorio XIX, 64–66.
Zee had lost faith in Rossi. The inspector seemed to be making no further attempt to find Julia.
It was true that the poor man was overworked. On the one hand he had to gather security forces for the Easter celebration at the cathedral, and on the other he was harried by the press. Those editors of the Florentine newspapers, La città and La Nazione, what did they care about Julia Smith? She was just another dropout. What excited them was the eruption of homicide at the school, the theft of sacred objects, the whimsical connection with Dante Alighieri, the laboratory that might have become the first center in their sacred city for the distribution of illegal drugs.
If anyone was going to find the girl, it would have to be Giovanni Zibo himself—with the help, of course, of that absurd madman, Homer Kelly.
Luckily, thanks to a visit to the supermarket on Via Senese, Zee stumbled on another faint trace of Julia’s captors.
He had set out early in the morning, hoping to get to the market before all the bread was gone, but he was met on the driveway by a van full of police officers from the Questura, and had to turn back.
