The Ancestor

by Danielle Trussoni

  What would they do, if they were to peel from the walls and stand around me, these ghosts of the past? Would they be benevolent spirits, wrapping around me in a circle of protection? Or would they, like Ambrose, feel it their duty to stop the continuation of the Montebianco line? To kill me, the last living descendant of Leopold Montebianco, and be done with the family’s cursed legacy forever.

  I searched the plates affixed to the gilded frames until I found Leopold. In the portrait, he looked every bit as strange and eccentric as Ambrose had described. Tall, lanky, and pale, he had a white cravat at his neck and a book in his hands. He had been painted in the library, and the vaulted ceilings rose behind him, showing the family tree with all the Montebiancos who had come before. Leopold was the opposite of every other man in the room, dreamy as a romantic poet, a Byron or Shelley, his large dark eyes liquid with emotion. The portrait was darker than the others, the paints thicker, as if straining to express the extent of Leopold’s saturnalia.

  Vittorio, whose portrait was next in line, could not have been more different in appearance from his father, Leopold. While his father had been thin and introspective, Vittorio was hale, wide-shouldered, exuding power. With Vittorio came the beginning of the extreme whiteness of the Montebianco skin, the bright blue eyes, the hair rinsed of color. The traits—I now understood—that we had inherited from the Icemen. Then there was Ambrose, who was not quite as magnificent as his father, Vittorio, but not too shabby either, rugged from mountaineering, brow wide and tempered as a ram. Finally, I stopped before my grandfather’s portrait. He looked down upon me from his horse. His appearance sent a shiver through me—it no longer reminded me of my own, as it had the first time I saw that painting. He reminded me of the Icemen.

  I hurried to the very far end of the gallery where the portrait of Vita hung. Pushing aside the curtain, I stepped into the room. Someone had lit the candles, and the nook glowed with light. It was then, as I sat before the portrait of Vita, that I finally examined the book in my hands, the leather-bound journal that had contained the pages of Eleanor’s memoir. It was a thick book, fat with a thousand onionskin pages, and filled—I saw as I pressed open the cover—with handwritten text, sketches of caves, a makeshift map. The cover was battered and the spine warped, as if it had been exposed to the elements. Some of the pages had been damaged by water, leaving washes of streaked and unreadable words. A braid of long, white hair—a shorter version of the braid in the trophy room—had been attached to the back cover with a string. I sifted through the pages, trying to read the barbed cursive, but it was written entirely in French. I could understand three large, bold words on the first page of the book:

  NOTES DE TERRAIN

  Under these words I found the florid signature of Leopold Montebianco. These were Leopold’s field notes from his years living with the Icemen, the notes that Basil had been searching for.

  In all the months I had known Basil, I had never seen his living quarters and didn’t know exactly where they were. I walked through the hallways of the west wing, tapping on doors, hoping to find him. I had almost given up when I heard a record playing—the low call of a trumpet.

  I knocked on the door. There was a shuffling, some coughing, and then the door flung open. Basil wore a silk robe and house slippers and a pair of striped pajamas.

  “Oh, hello, Countess,” he said, blinking with surprise. “Come in, please, don’t mind the mess. Right this way.”

  He led me into his rooms—which were as big as mine—and I found myself pushing through a tidal wave of objects: flowerpots and empty wine bottles, paintings, old curtains. Books, hundreds and hundreds of books. A narrow passage had been made through the debris, winding through records and stacks of cookie boxes and crates of empty glass bottles and tins of prunes and newspapers, everywhere, stacks and stacks of newspapers. From floor to ceiling, everywhere I looked, was junk.

  I squeezed my way into the room, pushing aside a steamer trunk to the small cleared space by the fire. Something in my memory clicked: the trunk was the twin of my grandfather Giovanni’s trunk, the one from the newspaper photograph Nonna had shown me. The fact that he had lived here as a young man struck me with renewed force. Everywhere I went, Giovanni had been before me.

  Basil whisked a stack of records off a chair and waved for me to sit. The records were all jazz. The album on the record player: Miles Davis’s Blue Haze.

  “I know what you are going to say,” Basil said, pushing a pile of papers off another chair so he could sit. “I need to make a wider path from the doorway.” He bit his lip, looking embarrassed and defiant at once. “And I plan to do that, as soon as I organize that . . .”

  He pointed to a stack of leather boots in a corner. They were worn, with holes in the soles and mud on the laces. “Are those Sal’s boots?” I asked.

  “And Bernadette’s and Greta’s as well,” he said. “They go through them faster than you’d imagine.”

  I glanced back to Basil, who was fiddling with his mustache. I understood, suddenly, why Basil had not left the castle. He had hoarded piles and piles of objects and now he couldn’t bear to abandon them. He was a prisoner of his compulsions. No one was keeping him there but himself.

  I gave him the pages from Eleanor’s journal. “I wanted to show you this.”

  Basil took the pages, a look of astonishment growing as he read them. “This would certainly explain a few things.” He gave me back the pages. “If, that is, this account is true.”

  “You think Eleanor could have made all of this up?”

  Basil shrugged. “Well, clearly Eleanor believed it. But this account is not exactly firsthand knowledge. Her husband, Ambrose, told her the story of Leopold and the Icemen. Ambrose was dying. He could have been delusional, deranged. One cannot be certain. He could have been repeating his take on the local legends. These mountains bring out the imagination like nowhere else on earth. Just last month, not long after you asked me about the Beast of Nevenero, as a matter of fact, this came with our monthly book drop . . .”

  He stood and walked to the far side of the room, where he dug through a wardrobe stuffed with newspapers and magazines. I hadn’t believed that he had created a system in all that chaos, and yet he went directly to a particular pile of newspapers, lifted a magazine from the stack, and sat down again.

  “This is one of the more interesting pieces I have read about the crazy legends up here,” he said, opening the glossy pages of a magazine called New Animal on his lap. There was a reproduction of the James Pringle photograph, a map of the Aosta Valley, a large color photograph of Montebianco Castle, and reproductions of the Shipton Bigfoot pictures. The headline of the article read: “The Search for the Yeti in the Alps.” The byline was Justine Jeanneau.

  “This was the woman I met in the village,” I said, astonished, my heart skipping a beat as I read over the article. I didn’t know what startled me more—Justine’s name on the article or the word “Yeti” in bold type. I scanned the pages, finding information about the Montebianco family, the history of the Yeti and Bigfoot legends in the Alps, and her experience watching a Yeti-like creature steal a child. “She showed me these pictures before she called Dr. Feist. Before Sal shot me,” I said. “Before he shot her.”

  “Hmm,” he said, shaking his head. “It is unfortunate for her that she was still poking around here. She came to the castle to interview Dolores for the article. Dolores nearly had a nervous breakdown. Sal told the journalist in no uncertain terms that she better not come back.”

  “Dr. Feist had the same theory of archaic hominids,” I said, going back to the magazine and scanning it, comparing what I saw with what I had witnessed myself. Aki and Jabi were nothing like the creatures in the article, but I had encountered them only once, in the shadowy evergreens, and couldn’t be sure. “He believed they were a missing link between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.”

  “Well,” Basil said, pointing to the photo by James Pringle, “so did Pringle, although he didn’t u
se that language. He came up here over a hundred years ago and recorded them, but no one believed him.” He closed the magazine and sat back in his chair. “But even this very convincing article doesn’t prove that the Montebianco family has anything to do with the Beast of Nevenero, archaic hominids, or Yeti, or whatever it is one chooses to call them. That story is purely speculative. There is nothing in the family records to corroborate Eleanor’s memoir. Believe me, I have looked. Not a shred of evidence about Leopold’s time in the mountains, or his supposed affair with a creature.”

  “This article got some of it right,” I said. “But there are mistakes, too.”

  The certainty in my voice caught Basil off guard. “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw the creatures myself,” I said. “They were here. Vita brought them.”

  “Them?” he said. “There was more than one?”

  “There were two,” I said. “Both men. But”—I removed Leopold’s book of field notes and gave it to Basil—“I suspect this will give us more information.”

  Basil took the book in his hands and examined it. He bit his lip and furrowed his brow—the large mole above his eyebrow flexing—and opened the cover. “Oh!” he said. “Leopold’s field notes. Where was this? How on earth did you get it?”

  “It was in Vita’s room,” I replied. “She gave it to me.”

  “Devilish Vita,” he said, as he paged through the book, taking in the sketches, reading the French. “I looked everywhere, even in her rooms, and couldn’t find it.” He turned the book so that he could examine the binding. “I believe I can rebind it,” he said, stroking the book as if it were a pet. “Perhaps I can also save some of these water-damaged pages.” Finally, he put the book down, a flicker of elation illuminating his eyes. “Do you know what this is? And what this means?”

  Basil paged through the notebook. “There is so much information, one can hardly summarize. But I see that it mostly describes—in intricate detail—Leopold’s years of living with them.”

  I pushed my chair close, taking in the pages of sketches, the charts, the endless stream of sentences.

  “There appears to be two distinct sections,” he said at last, after he had paged through the book. “One that is more personal—about his relationship with the female creature—and another that is more professional. Clearly, he meant to do something more with the field notes. Perhaps write a book or a scientific treatise, as that section is very well organized. The other parts are a bit haphazard. It may take some time for me to translate the personal bits, but the professional notes are quite easy to understand. I could read a few paragraphs to you now, if you like.”

  Sitting back in my chair, I was filled with anticipation for what Leopold’s notes would reveal about the Icemen. As Basil began to read, I closed my eyes and listened as the village of the Icemen and its inhabitants came alive.

  Interstitial

  June 1814

  THE FIELD NOTES of LEOPOLD MONTEBIANCO

  “HIGH MOUNTAINS SUFFOCATE ME.”—Chateaubriand

  POPULATION:

  The population of the iceman village is comprised of sixty-four individuals, fifteen males, thirty-two females, and seventeen children.

  They live communally. I am reminded of the tribes of the South Seas, particularly those natives described by Captain James Cook on his voyage to New Holland. Namely, they are primitive creatures, but intelligent, with a system of communication, rituals, and family structures. Food, shelter, and clothing are shared among the tribe. Activities such as cooking and hunting are shared among the group. Tight couples are formed, although it is often the case that males have two or more female mates. Whether this is due to the lack of males in the current population—females outnumber males two to one—or mating preference is not certain. Children are raised communally, and no paternal identification appears to take place.

  There is evidence that the population was once much larger, perhaps as recently as two generations ago, as is evidenced by cave art depicting large groups of males hunting game together. Great quantities of artifacts such as jewelry, spears, stone knives, and animal skins confirm that the population was once more populous than the sixty-four individuals now living in the community.

  Fertility is robust, but child mortality is high. I witnessed the birth of six babies in the twenty-eight months I lived among the icemen. Five of these infants died within the first months of life. The length of gestation is longer than that of humankind, approximately fourteen months. Labor is shorter, and delivery less dangerous due to the anatomy of the female, namely a wide pelvis, which allows for fewer complications during delivery.

  CONCLUSION: While the birth rate is strong, the survival of infants is less certain. The iceman village is in decline. Isolation is crippling the icemen. If they mix their blood with the human population below, and bring hearty stock to their kind, strength and longevity would certainly ensue. I have instructed them to do so.

  LOCATION:

  The icemen’s caves are located approximately two kilometers northwest from Montebianco Castle, to the southeast of Mont Blanc. Although I have followed various routes, the least arduous, most direct trajectory from the valley of Nevenero can be found by following a path carved into the side of the mountain. It is my opinion that this path was created by the iceman himself, as the result of uncountable journeys to and from Nevenero over the course of centuries, perhaps to gain access to the rich hunting grounds of the valley. The path is marked by glacial ice formations and waterfalls of spectacular beauty.

  PHYSIOLOGY:

  The adult male iceman measures between 110 centimeters and 180 centimeters at full height. The female is larger, measuring between 115 centimeters and 190 centimeters. Weight varies between the sexes, with female creatures being heavier. Among the sixty-four icemen of the village, I have observed that females carry larger supplies of fat and muscle. Such reserves of nutrition aid in fertility and ensure milk production for infants. But it may also explain the survival rate for females: females outnumber males and are, in general, more resilient.

  The flesh of the iceman is exceptionally white, without the variation in pigmentation one sees in human beings. No freckles, moles, or any other variety of coloration marks the surface of the skin. The eyes are uniformly blue and the hair is uniformly white. Hair covers much of the body of the male iceman and 60 percent of the female. The feet of both male and female are wide and flat. The nails on fingers and toes are thick and yellow. The genitals are identical in size and shape as human beings.

  The physical features of the iceman in relation to humanity is striking. While the Creator has shaped them as He shaped our kind—in the mold of Himself and the first son Adam—there are marked differences that render the iceman wholly separate from humanity. The facial features are blunted. The chin shorn away. The brow wide and broad. These features beg to be compared to primates, but I resist such comparisons: the iceman is no animal. Indeed, in my observations, I have wondered if he is not more adept, more beautiful, indeed, more human, than my kind.

  CONCLUSION: The Lord has created the iceman with greater fortitude and resistance to the Alpine landscape than humankind.

  HABITAT & TECHNOLOGIES:

  The iceman has survived in a narrow crevice between two high mountains. This land is protected by rock on all sides, with the center fertile, a seed pressed into a deep furrow.

  The primary habitat of the iceman is composed of a series of low, wide caverns. Carved into the western side of the mountain, they number twenty-two in all, eleven on each side of a narrow arcade.

  The iceman’s caves are communal in nature. Cooking, eating, sleeping, production of clothing, food, and tools are the primary activities that occur in these spaces, although instances of storytelling, singing, familial interactions, and mating have been found to occur as well.

  The caverns are barren, without even the most basic of furnishings, although I discovered a number of man-made objects in the large central cave, name
ly a ceramic jug and a handsaw, both of which were clearly fabricated by human beings. The icemen regard these objects as extremely valuable. Their existence among the icemen points to contact with human civilization. Indeed, it is my observation that they were acquainted with humankind when I arrived among them. They did not fear me, but rather examined the objects in my pack—a fountain pen, ink, this notebook, a snuffbox of tobacco, a pipe, a pocket watch, as well as other possessions. They considered these objects marvels of technology.

  There is a great deal of importance placed upon a large central grotto located above the village. Decorative paint covers the walls and ceilings of this space. Primitive depictions of hunting, cooking, bathing, and so on were in evidence, proof that the iceman takes pleasure in the beautification of his environment. Animal skins, furs, and hides cover the floor near the fire pit, and it is the custom in winter to eat and sleep here.

  No man-made structures exist in the village. Huts, tents, and teepees like those fabricated by the natives in America have not been detected. I have found no artificial barriers against the climate such as doors or shutters. The icemen live in the elements throughout the year and have the fortitude to withstand temperatures below freezing. I have endeavored to teach them to use their native elements—stone and wood—to construct huts, which would much improve their resistance to the cold.