Beatrice stared unblinking.
“Only Italian. No Eengleesh!” her new teacher admonished.
Oh. No. She could barely say a word! How had she gotten herself into this mess?
Ginevra followed a perturbed Beatrice into the dining room. She smiled and sat down at the table, pulling out a notebook and pencil. Beatrice slid into the chair beside her, her ears turning pink in anticipation of her inevitable humiliation.
“Allora,” Ginevra chirped, “cominciamo.”8
Despite not understanding, Beatrice liked hearing Ginevra speak. The Italian words danced off her tongue like a melody on a flute.
“Io mi chiamo Ginevra.”9 The tutor indicated herself, placing her left hand on her chest, and wrote the words out in a notebook.
Beatrice was surprised how it was spelled; the ch of chiamo made a k sound. If they wanted a k sound, why didn’t they just put a k in there?
“Tu ti chiami Beatrice,”10 Ginevra continued. Except she pronounced the name in an entirely different way; it sounded like Bay-ah-tree-chay. Beatrice didn’t recognize her own name until she saw it written on the page.
“Beatrice,” she said slowly so her teacher would know how to pronounce it.
“No,” corrected Ginevra, “Bay-ah-tree-chay.” As Ginevra stressed the tree sound, she rolled the r a little, like the flutter of a bird’s wings. It sounded exotic, like a line from an opera, but it wasn’t her name. “In italiano, il tuo nome è Be-a-tri-ce,”11 Ginevra insisted.
Beatrice had a feeling she wasn’t going to win this argument, so she did her best, and stammered out a hopeful “Io mi chiamo Bay-ah-tree-chay.” She spoke each syllable slowly, struggling to pronounce them just as Ginevra had.
“Brava,” her teacher said with a curt nod of approval.
Beatrice raised an incredulous eyebrow. Was she teasing her? Brava was something you shouted to prima donnas at the opera house, not beginner language students. But Ginevra had a straight face.
“Be-a-tri-ce,” she repeated again. She was beginning to like the way her name sounded in Italian.
They managed to get through the two-and-a-half-hour lesson without speaking a word of English. Beatrice was often tempted to do so, but Ginevra was strict about the no-English rule. By the end of the lesson, Beatrice’s head was spinning with all the new information she’d just crammed inside. She noted down her homework assignment and escorted her teacher to the door.
As she gathered her things, Ginevra glanced around the apartment appraisingly. Her eyes lingered on the view through the living room windows and she wandered over to gaze into the piazza.
“What a lov-eh-lee view you have,” she remarked, in thickly accented English.
“You speak English!”
“Of course I speak Eengleesh! But I am your Italian tutor, and during lessons we must nat-ural-lee speak only in Italian.” She paused, a gleam in her black eye. “But the lesson ees over now.”
Beatrice felt duped. She imagined how silly she must have looked, pantomiming words to avoid saying them in English.
Ginevra continued to stare out the window. An impish smile played at the corners of her lips, as if she had a secret but wasn’t going to share it. “Thees ees a very special fountain. You are fortunate to be able to see eet every day.”
“I know. I fell in love with it the first moment I saw it.”
“It has that effect on people. According to legend, eet was built een just one night.”
“One night? That’s impossible!”
“That ees what they say,” she said in a dreamy voice. Then she snapped back to reality. “Who knows? In Roma, anything ees possible.”
Tongue-tied, Beatrice stared down at the fountain. By the time she’d gathered her wits and turned to ask her more about it, Ginevra was already gliding out the door.
Six
SEEKING, SEARCHING, SKETCHING
Beatrice stared out the window, as if in a trance.
A legend. There was a legend behind the fountain. Her stomach fluttered with glee. She had to find out everything about it.
She skipped into her father’s meticulously organized study and scanned the items on his desk: sharpened pencils lined up in a tray, a stack of monogrammed stationery, a notepad, an Olivetti typewriter that was older than she was, and a newspaper, read and refolded. On one corner of the desk sat a few framed photographs of a smiling flame-haired child at various ages, as well as one of a striking brunette. Her mother.
Beatrice stopped in front of the picture. She’d seen it hundreds of times before. It had occupied her father’s desk in Boston for as long as she could remember, but even so, it made her pause.
She knew next to nothing about her mother. Only that her name was Isabella and that she’d died of a sudden illness two weeks after Beatrice’s second birthday. Common sense told her she couldn’t miss someone she couldn’t remember, but she missed her all the same. Despite the love she got from her dad, there were places in her heart—deep, inscrutable crevices—that only a mother’s love could reach, and sometimes she felt hers were covered in cobwebs.
She ached to know more about her, but she’d learned long ago not to bother asking her dad. Whenever she’d made that mistake in the past, a haunted expression would cross his face, and he’d pull her into a silent embrace, then disappear into his study for hours on end. Seeing her usually cheerful father retreat into a world of pain was worse than not knowing. For now at least, the details of her mother’s life would have to remain a mystery.
And so she’d thrown herself headfirst into the world of books. Life was full of mysteries, she quickly discovered—her mother’s identity was just one in an infinite list. The difference was, if she wanted to find out why the Egyptians worshiped cats or what sparked the Russian revolution or who was the most powerful female politician of all time, she could always find the answer in a book, if she looked hard enough.
Beatrice gazed into her mom’s hazel eyes, flecked with gold like the surface of a honeycomb. Apart from this sole feature, their coloring couldn’t have been more different—Beatrice took after her father. For all Beatrice’s ginger frizz and freckled pallor, her mother had possessed sleek, dark tresses and skin like alabaster when the sun shone on it. But beneath these obvious traits, as she grew older, Beatrice began to recognize her own image reflected back in the bones of her mother’s face and the shape of her features.
She tore her eyes from the photo. She’d come in search of information about a legend, not to ogle her mother’s picture for the millionth time. She cast her eyes over the towering bookcase. If there were information to be had, she’d have to find it here, because one thing was conspicuously absent from this study: a computer.
Augustus Archer was staunchly old-school. Although Beatrice had a laptop, her father preferred to use a typewriter for his own work, and in any case, an internet connection was out of the question.
Having grown up—and penned a number of books—long before the digital age, Mr. Archer insisted his daughter do her research the good old-fashioned way: by looking things up in books. He didn’t trust the anonymity of the internet. A published book is subject to rigorous fact-checking, and much less likely to have inaccuracies, he maintained. So when all of her schoolmates were writing their essays with the help of Wikipedia and Google, Beatrice was scrounging around the public library or trying her luck with her father’s book collection. She grumbled about this, but didn’t actually mind. She found comfort in the solidity of an old hard-covered book, in the mathematical reliability of a thorough index. As she cracked open a library tome, she often wondered how many other inquisitive eyes had scanned its pages for answers to their own burning mysteries.
She glanced over the titles on the shelves, which were, not surprisingly, in order of subject. For once she was grateful for her dad’s persnickety habits. It wasn’t long before she had to drag in a dining room chair to reach the top shelves. At last she spotted a line of books about Rome. There were dozens of them: books
on the emperors, the popes, mythology, Renaissance sculpture, Baroque architecture, medieval churches, archaeology . . .
She dove into a book on architecture, turning immediately to the index. In no time, she found a list of fountains. There were at least fifty, but they were all in Italian. She couldn’t make sense of a single word. She growled, fighting the urge to throw the book across the room.
Instead, she hopped back up on the chair and pulled down a hefty Italian/English dictionary. “Turtle, turtle, turtle . . . ,” she mumbled, thumbing through the back of the English section. “Aha! Turtle: tartaruga.” She turned back to the index of the architecture book. “Let’s see . . . Fontana delle Tartarughe, page 318. That has to be it!”
She located the page and found a photo of the fountain but only one measly paragraph of information.
The Fontana delle Tartarughe, located in the Jewish Ghetto, was designed by Giacomo della Porta and completed in 1588. It was restored in 1658, when four bronze turtles were added by the great Baroque sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Beatrice jotted down the basic facts in her notebook, but skimmed over the last few lines when she saw no mention of the legend. She marked the page with a slip of paper and went on to the next book. When it turned up nothing, she went on to the next, and the next after that.
After a few tedious hours of searching, she was no closer to uncovering the elusive legend. Had Ginevra made it up? But why would she do that?
She closed the last volume with a heavy sigh. After replacing each book, she shuffled back to her room. She leaned on the windowsill and watched the fountain spurting happily, the bronze boys teasing her with their smiles. The slanting rays of afternoon sun turned the neighboring buildings the color of rich, buttery toffee and the fountain threw unexpected shadows over the cobblestones. Beatrice felt the urge to pick up a pencil and re-create it herself.
Her father had encouraged her to try her hand at drawing, especially with all the works of art in Rome for inspiration. She didn’t think she’d be any good, but he kept bugging her to give it a chance. She eyed her pristine sketchbook and new set of pencils, sitting unused on a shelf. Why not? She had nothing better to do. She slipped her guidebook and dictionary into her backpack along with the sketching supplies. She wasn’t going to be ill prepared this time—she’d learned that lesson the hard way.
Instinctively reaching for her phone, she remembered her little mishap with a rumble in her gut. She fingered the remnants of her phone that lay scattered on her nightstand. It was beyond repair. She wasn’t supposed to leave home without it, but surely sitting in the piazza right outside couldn’t hurt. She shoved the pieces of broken plastic into the back of a drawer. She’d tell her dad what had happened . . . when and if he asked.
As she stepped into the sunbathed piazza, her mood lifted. The square was buzzing with life. A family speaking what sounded like German consulted a guidebook and an enormous map. A blond girl wearing a wide-brimmed red hat posed in front of the fountain while her boyfriend snapped her picture. A man in a white apron chalked up the day’s menu on a blackboard that hung outside a trattoria.
Beatrice settled herself on a shaded bench, dug out her supplies, and got to work. It wasn’t easy making her untrained hand follow the curving lines of the fountain, and she used her eraser more than her pencils. Half an hour later, her timid squiggles finally began to resemble something other than a shapeless blob.
She started on the turtles next. Studying their position, she was surprised to notice that they barely touched the rim of the basin. They had to be attached somehow, but they seemed to hover in midair, their hind claws dangling precariously over the edge.
“Non è niente male,”1 came an amused voice over her shoulder.
Beatrice whipped around.
A boy with a mop of brown curls stood behind her, grinning widely as he appraised her work. She flipped the sketchbook shut as bloodred stains streaked across her cheeks.
“Ti conosco, vero?”2 he asked with a smile. He had a warm, open face punctuated with dimples, and eyes the color of hot cocoa.
Beatrice’s blush deepened as she recognized him. “Um, I . . .”
“Ah,” he said, switching into English, “you’re the American girl who just moved here, right? You’re friends with Alex?” He spoke without a trace of accent.
“Well, n-not exactly,” she stammered. “I mean, yes, I’m American, but I’m not friends with Alex. I mean, I just met him the other day . . . the same day I met you. . . .” She was blabbering like an idiot. Apparently she couldn’t even speak English anymore. She tried again. “I’m Beatrice.” She stood up and held out her free hand.
“Marco. Piacere,” he said as they shook.
“You speak perfect English—are you Italian or American?”
“I’m half-and-half, actually. Mom’s American and Dad’s Italian. But I’ve lived in Rome all my life.”
“It must be nice to speak two languages fluently.”
“Yeah, it’s cool, I guess.” Marco glanced at her sketchbook with a wry smile. “So you’re an artist, eh?”
She couldn’t tell if he was serious or looking for a way to poke fun at her.
“Hardly!” she scoffed, hugging the sketchbook to her chest. “I’m just obsessed with this fountain, that’s all.”
“Me too.” He looked up at it. “It’s my favorite in the city.”
An idea flashed into her head. “Wait. You said you’ve lived in Rome all your life?”
“Just around the corner.”
“Have you ever heard about a legend behind this fountain?”
Marco frowned and lifted his eyebrows. A strange monosyllable issued from his lips. “Boh!” It sounded like the croak of a giant toad.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I forgot you’re not from Rome.” He grinned sheepishly. “That’s what we say for I don’t know.”
“Ooo-kay,” said Beatrice, furrowing her brow. “Well, I heard there’s a legend that this fountain was built in a single night.”
“A single night?”
“I know,” admitted Beatrice, “it sounds impossible, but still, I’d like to find out more. You know,” she added casually, “just out of curiosity.”
“Well, I’ve never heard about that”—he shrugged—“but if anyone has, it’d be my dad. He owns an antique shop just down the street and he’s always droning on about neighborhood history. Give him an audience and he’ll talk himself hoarse.”
“Really?” Beatrice’s heart leaped. “Could I talk to him?”
“Sure.” Marco chuckled. “But if he chews your ear off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Seven
ILLUMINATION IN A DARK SHOP
“La leggenda della Fontana delle Tartarughe?1 Of course I know it.”
Samuele Morello’s voice was a rich, deep baritone. Every word he spoke resounded in his chest like a vibrating cello string. He sat behind a worktable spread with instruments: a magnifying glass with a mother-of-pearl handle, a set of minuscule pliers, a bit of ancient-looking metal he was polishing with a rag.
The only light came from a lamp hanging a few feet above the worktable, illuminating Signor Morello’s face like a spotlight. The rest of the shop was steeped in shadows, though here and there Beatrice spied various artifacts: a fragment of a painted plate depicting a couple embracing, a rusted sword with a dog carved into its hilt, a gold necklace set with amber beads.
Her imagination took wing, inventing histories for each of the inanimate objects—every one a key that opened the door to the past. She saw a wedding banquet with a shy bride and groom eating from the same plate, a young knight taking the image of his beloved dog with him into his first battle, an adolescent girl inheriting a precious necklace on the death of her mother. The scenes flashed before her eyes in the space of a moment, but in that moment she was in a world of her own, a world where time travel was as effortless as daydreaming.
She stepped into a bar of dusty sunlight a
nd was momentarily blinded. The streak of light illuminated a map on the wall and Beatrice couldn’t stop her eyes from taking a greedy peek. Hand-drawn lines in cobalt ink outlined what looked like a medieval village surrounded by a wall with a maze of streets twisting higgledy-piggledy.
“A fellow map lover, I see,” Signor Morello said with an appraising nod, his voice shaded by a whisper of an accent. “That map shows the Ghetto as it was in the sixteenth century, surrounded by walls and little more than a shantytown. But you came here to learn about a legend, no?”
“Yes!” Beatrice exclaimed, recalling her mission. “I’ve looked through dozens of books, but I can’t find any mention of it.”
“Certainly not. Local legends like these are never found in books. They’re passed down orally, from generation to generation.”
“Really. You never told me, Papà,” said Marco with a mildly accusatory tone.
“I’m telling you now.” He turned his dark, heavy eyes back to Beatrice and nodded to a wooden chair that looked as old as some of the artifacts in the shop. Beatrice sat gingerly as Marco leaned on the corner of his father’s worktable. “Tell me, signorina, what is the name of the piazza in which the Turtle Fountain is found?”
“Piazza Mattei.”
“Esattamente!2 The square was named after the Mattei family, the richest and most powerful family in this neighborhood, since medieval times. Their palace still sits in that very piazza.
“Now,” he said, leaning back in his chair, and resting his hands on his ample belly, “according to the legend, sometime at the end of the sixteenth century, a young duke of that family, Muzio Mattei by name, had a weakness for gambling. Muzio was engaged to a beautiful young noblewoman. One evening, shortly before the wedding was to take place, the father of his bride-to-be took Muzio out for a night of cards. The young duke began a dreadful losing streak. By the end of the night, he had lost everything he owned to his future father-in-law, everything, that is, except his ancestral palace, Palazzo Giacomo Mattei.”
Midnight in the Piazza Page 3