The Ancestor

by Danielle Trussoni

  I should have felt afraid, but instead an overwhelming sensation of relief flooded over me. Here was the monster Justine had followed in the mountains. The archaic hominid of Dr. Feist. The beast of Nonna Sophia. The missing link of James Pringle. I remembered Joseph’s drawings, the word “Simi” written in childish blue script. Here, before me, stood the Icemen.

  Vita was with them in the hollow of the trees. She gave one of the men the leather pack. He opened it, checking the contents, then closed it again.

  “Come closer, Alberta,” Vita said, turning to me. “It is time for you to meet them.”

  A wave of dizziness sent me off-balance. I stepped back, away from Vita, and leaned against the trunk of a spruce tree.

  Vita walked to me and put her hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me. “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  “What are they?” I whispered.

  “They are our elders,” she said. “The native people of these mountains. They were here before any of us.”

  I glanced over at the men. They stared at me, their eyes glistening in the moonlight.

  Vita smiled. “You will understand them better soon. For now, trust me.”

  She took me by the arm and led me to them. She told me their names: Jabi, with his heavy brow and thick white beard, and Aki, taller than Jabi, thin, beardless, the skin of his cheeks smooth and white. The light was dim, and it was hard to see him fully, but his features were strangely beautiful, rough-hewn. He seemed younger than Jabi, perhaps twenty-five or so. The men’s clothes and leather boots were all store-bought.

  Jabi spoke first, expressing himself with a series of sounds that I would one day, after I came to know the speech of his tribe, understand to mean: “Who is this foreigner?”

  Vita spoke to him in his language, answering his question. Then she opened the leather sack and showed me the contents—boxes of bandages, bottles of pills, tubes of ointment, a pack of antibiotics. “They came for these,” she said, closing the sack and giving it to Jabi, and he turned to go.

  The man called Aki didn’t leave, however. He stared at me in wonder, unblinking, his pale blue eyes filled with curiosity. Then, without warning, he leaned over and touched my cheek.

  The gesture startled me. I pulled away, afraid. His cold hand against my cheek sent a rush of feeling through me—fear, yes, but also something else, something familiar yet painful, like the feeling of walking barefoot on ice with my grandfather.

  “Simi,” Aki said.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Vita said. “That is his way of greeting you.”

  Stepping to him, I took his large, cold, rough hand in mine and shook it.

  “Tell him it is my way of greeting him,” I said.

  He watched me with astonishment but didn’t pull away. He glanced at Vita, as if she could explain my odd behavior. She said something to him in his language, and he looked back at me and smiled.

  Jabi glowered at me from the shadows, his expression both curious and disdainful. Finally, he hoisted the leather sack over his shoulder and, with a nod in Vita’s direction, climbed back into the trees. As Aki turned to follow, I felt a strange urge to call him back, to bring his hand into mine again, if only to hold fast to the sensation of ice on my skin.

  Twenty-Five

  The encounter with the Icemen had set something going inside of me, a gravity relentless in its forward momentum. For days, I could think of nothing but Aki and Jabi standing in the shadows of the evergreens, their pale white skin, their enormous height, their large rough hands. I felt the strange sensation of Aki’s hand in mine. I had never experienced such intensely opposite emotions, curiosity and terror all mixed up together.

  I was so turned around by the experience, so unsure of just what it all meant, that the only reaction I could manage was to stay in my rooms and think. I spent the entire week after the encounter sitting by the fire, struggling to make sense of it all. These days of paralysis gave me time to sort out what was happening to me and formulate my response. There was no point in looking to the sky for a helicopter to appear, or to imagine that I would be rescued or that I could run away from the truth. A transformation was taking place inside of me, I knew; I could feel it on a cellular level. I was becoming a new person, one who would have the strength to face my inheritance.

  It took some weeks before I gathered the courage to go to the northeast tower again. I stood outside Vita’s door, expecting to hear her shuffling around her room, but there was nothing but silence. When I knocked, she did not answer. Finally, I pushed back the door to find the room as dark and stifling as the mausoleum. The air was unusually muggy, the window shut and a fire burning in the fireplace. Greta sat by Vita’s bedside, wiping her forehead with a wet cloth.

  “What happened?” I asked, startled by the sight of Vita. An extraordinary change had come over her. She was very thin, her skin pink with fever.

  “Come in, madame,” Greta whispered. “See for yourself.”

  Greta stood, giving me the chair, and left the room. I sat down at Vita’s bedside, near the table covered with perfume bottles. There were fifty, perhaps more, each crystal bottle filled with colored liquid. I picked up a square bottle tied with a silk braid, weighing it in the palm of my hand as I read the label—Mitsouko. I worked off the glass stopper, and a dark, oriental, musky smell filled the air.

  When I looked back at Vita, her pale eyes were fixed upon me. “I hate that perfume,” she whispered, smiling slightly. “It was my mother’s favorite. I only keep the bottle to remember her. Let in some air. Greta is trying to suffocate me.”

  I went to the window and opened it. I stood there, glancing at the mountain, its ridges and crevices capped with fog.

  “Come,” Vita said, gesturing for me to return to the chair. “You came here to speak to me.”

  I left the window open and sat at her side. I had been trying to work out how to speak about the creatures to Vita, but in the end, I simply blurted out the most pressing question. “What are they?”

  “What are they?” Vita said slowly. “You might as well ask: What are we?”

  “Don’t avoid my question,” I said.

  “They are our legacy. They are your legacy. When you are ready, you will go to them and see for yourself how beautiful they are!” Vita’s eyes were sparkling, and for a moment, I believed the fever had made her mad. She leaned to me and took my hand. “They are rare and precious creatures,” she said, growing calm. “Somehow, through the millennia, they have survived. But the world is encroaching. This pocket of mountain has remained untouched, but for how long? Satellites, airplanes, helicopters—there is always danger for them. But now you are here. You are here, and you are strong enough to help them.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, and I saw that my hands trembled in hers. “Why has this fallen to me?”

  “We don’t choose our birthright,” she said. “It comes to us whether we like it or not.”

  The portrait of Eleanor on her horse looked down upon us. As I gazed up at her, the cadence of her voice came strong in my mind: I have protected Vita, and yet, in my weakest moments, I question the goodness of such protection.

  Vita followed my gaze up to Eleanor’s portrait. “They terrified her. She wouldn’t even meet them. But she knew they existed. She understood the choice I made.”

  “What choice was that?”

  “To protect them,” Vita said, her voice weak. “I vowed to help our ancestors survive.”

  With that, she reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a fat leather notebook from a drawer. Struggling, she handed it to me and gestured that I should take it. I opened the leather cover, and the binding cracked with age. Inside, I found a sheaf of papers that, when unfolded, revealed themselves to be pages ripped from Eleanor’s memoir.

  Interstitial

  December 1933

  With Ambrose gone, the truth belongs to me. It is mine and I can keep it hidden, as Ambrose did, or I can make it known. The greater part of me wishe
s to fold it up in a box and throw it into the oubliette in the northwest tower, where it will live in darkness, unknown. Another part, however, wonders if this is not something that must be seen by the world. As the naturalist who examined my daughter once said—Vita is an unknown treasure of our planet. Special. A creature from another time.

  Ambrose held his secret as strongly as the oubliette holds prisoners. In all the years we were together, he said nothing. He waited until the very end of his life to tell me the truth of how Vita came to be.

  Do I dare to write it down? I am superstitious. The British naturalist would laugh to hear me, but I fear bringing something terrible down upon us. I am uneducated in the ways of Mr. Pringle and fear the power of the pen to bring truths into being that might have remained unformed. And yet, if I do not write down what I have witnessed, the truth will disappear forever.

  I remember it as though it were only last night when Ambrose asked for his confessor. The priest arrived from the village and went to Ambrose’s bedside, while I stood, listening from behind the door. He had been sick for some months, and I believed he would recover if he could survive until spring. But the sickness took hold of his lungs, gripping with such ferocity that Ambrose spoke with a faltering voice, spending each word as if it were a golden coin. The weight and value of his words were not lost upon me.

  “Heavenly Father, hear me . . . I must confess . . . something I have kept from everyone . . . the truth . . . Vita is my fault.”

  I heard him say it: Vita is my fault. His fault. A rush of relief swelled through me. I began to weep. This confession relieved me of a terrible burden. Always, they had blamed me. Surely I, the mother, was at fault for bringing such a creature into the world. But Ambrose’s confession confirmed what I had long suspected: I had not caused Vita’s troubles. He was responsible for Vita. The Montebianco family was responsible.

  The priest was our confidant, having relieved Vita of spiritual burdens, and he knew enough to remain silent as Ambrose spoke. Ambrose asked the Lord’s forgiveness. He said he should never have married me, that he had known even before we met that he was from a cursed lineage. His parents—who had arranged our marriage—had been foolish. He had been selfish. He had loved me and hoped that we would be spared. Now that Vita existed, he prayed she would bring no further suffering to others.

  I listened to this strange talk, trying to understand it. But as soon as the priest left, I went to my husband’s side and demanded he tell me everything. What did Ambrose know about Vita’s origins? What had he hidden from me? What is our child? How did she come into being?

  My dear Ambrose, who was once so beautiful and strong, looked at me weakly. How time makes us wretched! How it deforms and destroys us! I put a wet towel against his neck and gave him spoonfuls of water from a cup. I had always thought death was like falling asleep, but his was a form of wrestling, as if the material and ethereal worlds were pulling him this way and that, both wanting him, both unwilling to let go.

  “Why would you have me tell you?” he asked. “When it will only terrify you, my love?”

  “I am an old woman now. You will soon be gone. What is left but honesty?”

  It was then that Ambrose told me the horrible truth.

  “I saw the creature with my father,” he began, gripping my hand. “We were hunting wild boar in the caves above Nevenero. Do you remember, Eleanor, when I took you there?”

  I nodded. One summer afternoon, when we walked together in the mountains, he stopped at an arcade of caverns, bent his knee, and gave me the bouquet of wildflowers he had collected. We were married already, our union having been arranged years before by our families, but it was only then I knew he loved me.

  “I was fifteen years old when my father took me hunting,” Ambrose continued. “I was inexperienced and worried that a boar would maul me. I carried my flintlock ready, clutching at its wooden handle so hard it was slippery with sweat. Wild boar shelter in those caves all winter. My father knew this and came to that same spot each year. I stayed close to my father, following in the deep tracks he made in the snow.

  “We climbed and climbed until we came to the caves. My father bent and picked up part of a chestnut left with the boar’s droppings in the snow. ‘There’s one close by,’ he said, and made his way to the mouth of a cave. I held back, watching him, listening. I wanted to see how he aimed, how he shot. I wanted to see if he flinched when the boar charged.

  “It was then that I saw a movement in the trees. I flipped my rifle onto my shoulder and steadied it, taking aim. And there it was, staring at me. Its eyes enormous, blue, so big I couldn’t look away. The brow was low, heavy, and the nose large and flat. White fur covered it from head to toe, so that it seemed to emerge from the snow.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “It was an ape,” he said. “But a man, too. An Iceman, whose eyes were blue as crystal. It was very big, so large that I had to raise the muzzle of the rifle to take aim at its heart. I only heard my father cry for me to stop after I pulled the trigger.”

  I stared at him, trying to understand what he was saying. There are many wild animals in our region, but no apes. The creature he described could not exist. It was impossible, his story. Impossible.

  “The beast has been known in these mountains for generations, my father told me. They were here before us, even before mankind. They are from an earlier time, perhaps before the Flood. These are their mountains.” A wave of pain washed over him. He clenched his teeth together until it passed. “There is a village of them somewhere above Nevenero. I have not seen it myself, but there were men in my family who have been there.” He paused. “And once, very long ago, there was an instance of . . . crossing.”

  Ambrose glanced at me, to be sure I understood.

  I stared at him, aghast. Could he possibly be telling me that some part of his noble family—the fine and ancient line of Montebianco—was infected with the blood of this strange creature? That our child, our poor deformed Vita, was the product of such beastly stock? I could not believe it.

  “That is not possible,” I said at last.

  “It has long been talked about in the village,” he said quietly.

  “But it is a legend,” I said. I wanted to dismiss what he was telling me. I wanted him to die rather than continue. “A village legend.”

  “My grandfather, Leopold Montebianco, the youngest son of Alberta and Amadeo, and described by my father as a strange and eccentric man, discovered the village of Icemen in the mountains in 1812. He lived with the creatures for two years, studying them, making notes of his experiences, and when he returned to Nevenero, he brought with him a child, a son named Vittorio. This Vittorio was my father.”

  “Your father was like our Vittoria?” I asked, anger rising in me like mercury in a tube, hot and quick. Why had he not told me before? Why let me torture myself all these years?

  “No,” he said, grasping my hand. “There was nothing unusual about my father, Vittorio. And nothing, as you well know, in my nature resembles these creatures. But I knew the taint existed in our blood. I never wanted to continue the curse. And yet, I loved you. I could not keep myself from marrying you. Our child, however, has unmasked the truth: with Leopold, the Montebianco lineage became intertwined with these Icemen. Vita’s forebears were creatures of the mountains. She carries the traits of this ancient race of beasts.”

  “Vita is one of them?” I asked, my cheeks stinging with shame, although some deep part of my being was joyous to have this explanation of Vita at last.

  “Yes,” he said, raising his eyes to meet mine. They were filled with terror. “She is one of them. But she is also human.”

  As I finished reading Eleanor’s memoir, I took a deep breath, folded the pages, and put them back into the book. There was a tension pulsing through my chest, a pressure so constricting, so tight, that I stood and walked back to the window to get some air.

  I gazed out the window, at the immense vista of mountains, the pea
ks pale against the pinks and purples of the setting sun, struggling to take in the meaning of Eleanor’s memoir. If what Eleanor wrote was true, Vita was not the only one afflicted with this legacy. A creeping sensation of horror fell over me as I understood: this was who we were. Not just Vita, but the Montebianco family, all born after Leopold. At last I understood all the terror and secrecy around Vita. My grandfather Giovanni’s shame. The desperate measures Ambrose had taken to hide his child. The estate’s requirement that I stay in Nevenero. It all made sense. Vita was the expression of our darkest secret, her existence proof of the taint in our blood. She was part of me, her genetic code twisted into mine, a legacy that I would carry with me and—if a child were to ever arrive—pass down. I was descended from these creatures. The Icemen were my ancestors.

  Twenty-Six

  I rushed through the hallways of the second floor, Eleanor’s revelations thrumming in my mind. I pushed open the heavy doors, and walked into the long, narrow portrait gallery. It was afternoon, and a gray light fell over the room, giving the portraits a diaphanous, otherworldly appearance, as if they were not reproductions in oil, but the souls of my ancestors shimmering through the fabric of time.

  The last time I had looked at the portraits had been the day I had pushed Dolores over the polished parquet floors in her wheelchair. I was startled by how much had changed. Then, I had been overwhelmed by the faces looking down at me, the luminous eyes, the traits that were so much like my own. I had gazed at each of these portraits, read the small brass tags, taking in their commanding presence, but I had never really known these people. Not their faces. Not their stories. Now I knew the murderess Isabelle of the House of Savoy and her goat herder husband, Frederick. I knew the strong, persistent voice of Vita’s mother, Eleanor. I knew that Ambrose had loved Eleanor so much that he had married her despite his fear of having children. I felt Eleanor’s feelings of repugnance at the sight of her daughter, Vittoria. I felt the tragedy of Vita’s education, the horror of her rape, the victory Eleanor had felt at seeing that her grandchildren—Giovanni and Guillaume—had been born with normal human features. I felt the loneliness of Giovanni and Guillaume growing up under the tutelage of Vita’s doctor. I understood what my ancestors had suffered, what they had lost. The Montebianco family stories were my stories now. For the first time, these people were really my family.