The Forbidden Book: A Novel

by Joscelyn Godwin

  “But how can you be so sure they did it?” asked Leo, still in disbelief.

  “Let’s say that I have a hunch, and that B inevitably follows from A. Anyway, I expect that it’s just a matter of time before everybody knows from official sources what I suspect.”

  “Uncle,” said a voice entering the hall then, “don’t tell me you’re haranguing our guest!”

  The same delicious breeze that Leo had enjoyed earlier in the garden had wafted her perfume in before her voice. Still troubled by the Baron’s assumptions, he got up to greet her.

  “Professor, meet my niece, Donna Angela.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Leo as he leaned forward to kiss, or rather graze her hand with his lips. It was Orsina herself who had taught him, years before, this old-fashioned greeting, and the great hall itself seemed to invite it.

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Angela said, looking as if she meant it. “Sister never mentioned you were so cute!”

  The word was more appropriate to Angela herself, with her shock of blond hair and risqué minidress. “You are Orsina’s sister? Why, she never mentioned you, and that’s a far graver omission.” Angela seemed flattered by his remark, and the Baron surprised. The American could be gallant?

  “Shall we go to dinner?” Angela asked. “I had a table set outdoors, under the cherry tree.”

  “Is Orsina not coming?”

  “Not tonight, Professor. But I hope I don’t disappoint?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “I’ll tell you all about her at dinner, I promise,” Angela cut him short.

  Candles flickered in the evening breeze. Dumitru had been trained well in the dying art of waiting at table, and his wife Afina, Angela explained, had become an excellent cook.

  “I didn’t doubt it,” said Leo. Suddenly he was thriving on polite remarks. But no, there was something else. The way Angela looked at him.

  Leo had inherited his father’s blue eyes and tall stature; his mother’s black hair and fine facial features. The amalgam had been a success, and young women had taken notice. Now in his early forties, he had kept slim, and was reasonably groomed, if not as fastidiously as the Baron.

  “So, Orsina really never told you she had a sister?” Angela asked, turning so that her dress revealed just enough of a perfectly sculptured breast.

  “No, she didn’t. Perhaps you were very young?” Leo was enjoying his present company, but Angela had promised that she would tell him about Orsina, and he was impatient to know. Eventually, he asked.

  The Baron himself replied: “They phoned an hour before you arrived. Her husband thought that, given the circumstances, they should delay their coming to Italy for a few days. I thought you knew. Anyway, I could bet that there won’t be any more bombings for a while, so they will reach us soon.”

  “Her husband?” wondered Leo in his mind.

  “Why, Leo,” said Angela, leaning into him, her flaxen hair fluffy in the breeze, caressing his face, “do you miss her?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen her in years, but I do have fond memories of her when she was at Georgetown.”

  “So, you do miss her,” she insisted.

  “Yes, of course.” After the unspeakable tragedy he had lived through, Angela had managed to make him blush. How did she do it?

  Dinner continued without too many more awkward moments.

  When he got back to his bedroom, he found a “sweet dreams” message on his pillow, a chocolate and some rose petals. It was signed by Angela. He smiled at her flirtatiousness and began his evening prayers.

  THREE

  The next morning, Orsina called early to speak to Leo. She would be arriving that evening. “The Bologna attack is on everyone’s lips, even here in London, but Alitalia seems to be flying on schedule, if that’s not an oxymoron.”

  “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me too.” She paused and then added, “my … husband doesn’t think we have anything to fear in the countryside, so we’re still coming. See you soon.”

  At breakfast, Leo made the conscious decision of not looking at the newspapers. There was a selection of them on the table, from the national Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica to the local L’Arena; still, he knew he couldn’t stomach the gruesome photos. As he was saying a silent prayer for the victims, Angela swept into the breakfast room, dressed to kill in tennis shorts and high-platform espadrilles. She ate a hearty breakfast as she leafed through the papers and said, “This is too bad.” Setting them aside, she went on cheerfully: “I’m going villa-hopping. You can come along if you like.” Seeing his puzzled expression, she explained: “There’s a whole bunch of us that have known each other for years. As soon as school’s over they all come back to their villas for the summer.”

  “I’ve caught a glimpse of a library crammed with ancient books, and I think that’ll be more up my street,” Leo said, adding, “do you think your uncle will mind if I browse through the collection?”

  “Not at all,” said Angela, with an ambiguous expression that made it impossible to understand whether she was disappointed or relieved, “you’re free to roam. By the way, Uncle will be working all day in his studio. We’ll all meet for dinner.”

  Leo made straight for the library. The room was flooded with light that came from the four east windows, striking across the inlaid patterns of the floor and reflecting off the tall, glass-fronted book presses. In the center of the room was a marble table holding a vase of white lilies, and four antique, backbreaking chairs. Leo’s first impression was of a typical villa library of its period. There were the Latin and Greek classics, the Italian poets, histories ancient and modern, a large topographical section concerning the Veneto region, and a mishmash of theological, medical, and legal tomes bound in vellum or old calf.

  He explored it until Dumitru announced that a light lunch had been prepared for him. Leo thanked him, adding how thoughtful it was of his wife. As he exited the library, in came, almost on cue, a chambermaid wielding a feather-duster. “Excuse me, Professor,” she said, “if you’re leaving, I’ll dust the books; I dust them every day, Baron’s orders.”

  It was a matter-of-fact piece of information, yet her delivery had been coquettish. He put it down to her being young and conscious of her good looks. “I didn’t realize I was holding you back,” said Leo. Samanta, the maid, beamed at him and went about her business.

  ****

  The Baron, too, was going about his business. He was painting a picture. His studio was a converted hunting lodge some two kilometers south of the villa, on the other side of a knoll. It contained a large, square room with a tall ceiling, lit by a clerestory and, opening off it, several cubicles. One was a bathroom, another held a double bed, and the others served as miniature kitchen and laundry. The walls were painted in Renaissance style with fantastic plants, animals, satyrs, cherubs, weapons and musical instruments. But Emanuele did not paint grotesques like these. He painted from life, in oils, on large canvases. At this moment, his model was Angela.

  She reclined on a small sofa with one high end. Her right arm was raised, the hand beneath her head. One leg, too, was crooked, with its foot on the sofa, while the other dangled. Her mop of golden hair hung loose, and her face was turned to the ceiling in an uncomfortable pose of ecstatic abandon. Apart from the espadrilles, she was naked.

  Emanuele had no pretensions as a painter. He never showed or gave away his canvases, and certainly never thought of selling them. In fact, he scissored and burned them as soon as they were finished.

  He had been working on this painting for half a year now, putting in an hour most days. He worked very slowly, and when he lacked the model, he worked more slowly still, for it took extra effort to visualize the image. He used painting to attain a certain state of mind that required concentrated attention; and he found it easier to achieve when contemplating such a sight as he now had before him. Like the turning of a prayer wheel, he moved in a regular cycle: eyes to the mode
l, eyes to the palette, brush to the paint, brush to the canvas, and so on.

  Neither of them said a word, though Angela took regular breaks to stretch her limbs and take a sip of water. The process seemed to put her, too, into a strange state of mind, for at the end of the hour she rose like a sleepwalker and padded to one of the cubicles, the one with the bed. Emanuele half undressed himself in the bathroom, then joined her.

  Nobody knew that he made love to her, nor could she have explained to anyone why she allowed him to. Assuming that it was love. There was something clinical about it, and perhaps ritualistic. It certainly was all very deliberate. This uncle was violating all the taboos. Angela was no rebel against society’s norms. She had boyfriends, and sometimes let them make love to her. But there was a quality to Emanuele’s lovemaking, always preceded by a session of painting, that was completely different from theirs.

  Afterwards she felt as though she had only just entered the studio, as though it had all been a dream that took two seconds of waking time. She was not even certain that it had happened.

  ****

  After lunch, Leo returned to the library. The sun had moved away, and no longer blinded him to the three narrow bookshelves in between the windows. On moving across to these, he was surprised to find them devoted entirely to works of alchemy and the so-called “occult sciences.” These books, too, had been in the family for two centuries and more. Nearly every volume carried the same Della Riviera bookplate, and was annotated in the same spidery eighteenth-century hand.

  Eventually Leo felt that he had been cooped up too long, and decided to take a stroll through the garden. The mature trees all around made him regret his botanical ignorance: each seemed to be of a different species, and most of them unfamiliar to him. All were massive, undoubtedly centuries-old, yet he marveled at their crowns being as green, thick and luxuriant as those of younger trees that still have much to grow. Perhaps a combination of fertile soil and favorable climate? He could only guess.

  There was no one beneath the trees, but a disconcerting presence in the form of many statues. Half hidden by the foliage and overgrown by lichens, they seemed to leer at him—or worse, as in the case of a Priapus who thrust his oversize phallus at him as he rounded a corner.

  Many of the statues were of semi-human satyrs, fauns, and Pans. In a clearing, however, some more classical figures were grouped around an altar holding a large stone vase. They were deeply eroded, but evidently represented the seven planets: Mars, easily recognizable with his helmet and the stub of a broken sword; Saturn, with what might once have been a scythe; Jupiter with a wingless eagle; a still shapely Venus, and so on. Leo could just make out the inscriptions on their plinths. Pater eius est sol, mater luna, he read: “Its father is the sun, its mother the moon.” They seemed to date from the early 18th century, the rococo period, and Leo wondered whether the ancestor who had annotated the alchemical books was responsible for them?

  The path twisted and turned, occasionally breaking out of cover to offer a glimpse of distant hills, until Leo feared he had gone too far. Then to his surprise it led him back to a terrace on the opposite side of the villa. Before getting ready for dinner, Leo lingered here, looking forward to enjoying the twilight. What had happened just days before in Bologna was appalling; he had no words to describe it. But for all its uncanniness, this place, he realized, worked as a balm: how easy it was to leave behind all worries and, above all, the real world.

  At dinner, he was annoyed to find that Angela had not returned. He would have to make conversation with Emanuele again. The library would be a good topic, though, and as soon as the first course arrived, Leo said: “I gather from Orsina that you know a lot about this mysterious book she’s been given,” he ventured. Was this too much, too soon, he wondered as Emanuele knitted his eyebrows?

  “Did she mention it to you? I’m surprised,” he replied coldly. “It is something particular to our family.”

  “Really? That reminds me of the Borgias, and the secret poisons they passed on from generation to generation, or something of the sort.”

  The Baron stiffened. This was evidently the wrong thing to have said. Leo tried to patch things up: “Orsina said that she couldn’t make head or tail of it, but I assure you that I haven’t set eyes on the thing myself.”

  “She could very well have asked me,” came the response. Another uncomfortable silence amplified the very faint noise of their forks. Emanuele sipped some wine, and something seemed to thaw in him. He looked Leo straight in the eye, and said with a smile, “Well, since you brought it up, I can tell you that the book is in the public domain. A good friend of our family brought it back into print in the Thirties, and you can look for a modern edition at any good bookshop—of which there are as many as three in our country, no, four.”

  The Baron kept a straight face, so Leo replied, as seriously as he could: “I’ll make a note of that.”

  Emanuele ignored his reply and continued. “It is a centuries-old tradition that the eldest son of the family receives a copy of this ancestral work on the occasion of his marriage. After about 1900, it was given to the daughters, too—a mistake, in my opinion, but now a tradition. It is presented on the wedding eve in a peculiar ceremony. But as a scholar, you would be more interested in the unexpurgated version, which did not need to obtain the Imprimatur of the Church.” He stopped abruptly. Changing tone, he resumed: “Unfortunately there is no chance of reading this edition. Simply because one is not a member, that’s all. You must forgive these aristocratic restrictions. They must seem incomprehensible to an American.”

  It sounded to Leo like a big fuss about some book that was probably just an Italian Kama Sutra. But there must be more to it, since Emanuele, still looking indignant, rose from the table and excused himself.

  As Leo himself left the dining room, he turned to go back to the library. Emanuele’s words had piqued him, and he felt sure that this family fetish was somewhere there. But he was interrupted by a scurry of servants, and before he had left the hall, Orsina entered.

  Was this Orsina? The beauty was all there, in its full impact. Her long, wavy hair of the red hue Titian favored in his paintings, and her sunny green eyes. Her deportment, her elegance too. But there was something more stately about her now. Would the Orsina of Washington have found this stateliness a bit pompous? wondered Leo, overcome with feelings as he looked at her. Or was it dignity? He thought he caught a strained expression in her face, but attributed it to their long day on the move. She smiled broadly, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Her husband came forward, his hand outstretched. “Nigel MacPherson,” he said in confident tones.

  “Leo Kavenaugh,” said Leo, disengaging from the other’s hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” said Nigel. He was tall, well-built, and heavily jowled; twenty years ago he must have been handsome. Orsina was talking to Dumitru. She turned to the men, speaking English: “Since it’s late, and I for one have no appetite, shall we just have a drink, perhaps in the library?” At that moment Emanuele materialized and greeted the MacPhersons with what looked like a genuine show of affection. For Nigel, too, thought Leo in surprise, as he followed the family cortège. Emanuele produced a decanter and four glasses from a hidden cupboard.

  “This is rum from Guatemala, thirty years old. I presume you’ve never tried it.”

  Leo shook his head. “Oh, I have, and I love that stuff,” said Nigel. “I must say, Orsina, I’m so glad to be here. The last couple of days have been sheer hell.”

  “Were you stuck at airports?” enquired Leo.

  “Stuck like glue, for hours and hours, then marched out of the bloody plane and marched back on again. Courtesy of the terrorists, and of Alitalia. I could have driven here in half the time if we’d known. From now on, we’re using private jets only, didn’t I say, Orsina?”

  “You did, dear,” she replied, “but it would have been even worse in Bologna.”

  “It would have,
” said Nigel, accepting a second glass from Emanuele, who then said goodnight and left.

  Nigel broke the uncomfortable silence. “Orsina tells me you’re a brilliant professor,” he said. “I don’t know about literature, but you certainly taught her English.”

  “She spoke excellent English before I met her,” said Leo, “and I didn’t actually teach her anything. I just hired her and let her loose.”

  “Let me loose?” said Orsina, opening her eyes in mock amazement. “I was totally uptight from beginning to end, afraid that I’d commit some literary solipsism!”

  “So-le-cism,” said Nigel.

  “Yes, dear, that was a joke.”

  “Sorry to be pedantic. It must be the effect of all these books!” Nigel rose from his uncomfortable chair and walked over to the shelves. “I suppose this is a goldmine for you scholars, but Italy for me is sun, cypresses, and glorious wine. Also motor cars. Do you know cars?”

  “I’ve driven in the past, but in Washington I get along without one. Do you have an Italian car?” said Leo, half-heartedly trying to bridge the gulf between their worlds. Nigel drew a long breath, but before he could reply, Orsina broke in.

  “Let’s save this till tomorrow. There’ll be plenty of time then, and we’re exhausted.”

  “Quite right, dear.” Nigel held out his hands, inviting Orsina to rise from her chair, put an arm around her shoulder, and staggered toward the door.

  Orsina turned to Leo as they left. “Goodnight. Sleep well.”

  Perhaps he was just imagining it, but he had the feeling that she wanted to linger in the library with him. Not wishing to leave the light on, he looked for the switch, which was a tricky search, as it was not by the entrance door. Finally, he found it and, not a foot away, lying in full view on a small table, the “forbidden book”: The Magical World of the Heroes. Leo was about to grab it when he started at Orsina’s voice: