Good Blood

by Aaron Elkins

  “‘But it is to the most ambitious and far-sighted of the Borromeos, Vitalio the Sixth, to whom we owe thanks for the Isola Bella we see today. It was Vitalio who began the prodigious earth-moving project that transformed the morphology of the land into ten superimposed garden terraces in the form of a gigantic truncated pyramid on the example of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The many pools and fountains were fed by pipes from an enormous cistern installed beneath . . . ’”

  He glanced up at Julie, who had been suspiciously silent for a long time. She sat with her eyes closed and her face tipped up to the sun. “Hello?” he said. “Are you still with us?”

  “Mm-hm,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “‘It was Vitalio who something-somethinged the project that transformed the something into ten superimposed something-somethings on the example of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.’ Do go on.”

  With a smile, he closed the book. “I think maybe I’ve had enough too. Why don’t we just sit here and soak up the sunshine and this nice, warm air? Doesn’t it feel great after the spring we’ve had, or rather, haven’t had?”

  “Mmm,” she said, more a purr than a murmur. Except to recross her ankles, she didn’t stir.

  Given the chance, he watched her face for a while: the slightly turned-up nose; the pert chin—softening now, but all the more attractive for it—the lively mouth always on the verge of a smile; the glossy, curly black hair, cut short now, that framed the whole pretty picture. He shook his head. What did I do to get so lucky? he wondered contentedly, as he had so many times before.

  “I love you,” he said.

  He saw her smile, though her eyes were still closed. “Likewise,” she murmured.

  “Good, I’m glad we’ve gotten that out of the way.” He looked at the menu again. “I’m having a problem figuring out what to order.”

  “Hm?”

  “It’s because of the difference in time zones.”

  “Mm.”

  He put down the menu and looked at her again. “I’m not boring you? Not keeping you awake?”

  “No, not at all. I’m glued to every word. ‘It’s because of the difference in time zones.’”

  “What is?”

  She thought for a moment. “What you were talking about.”

  He laughed. “The thing is, I think I’m hungry, but I don’t know what to get. It’s eight-thirty in the morning here, but our internal clocks still think it’s eleven-thirty at night. I don’t know whether to get breakfast or a midnight snack.”

  “What would you get if you ordered breakfast?”

  “Bacon and eggs, probably. It’s on the menu, probably for the English tourists. And coffee.”

  “And what would you get for a midnight snack?”

  He thought it over. “Coffee. And bacon and eggs.”

  “That’s a pretty tough problem you have there, mister. I don’t see how I can help you with that one.”

  They had finished their bacon and eggs and were on their third cups of coffee when Phil showed up, looking greatly refreshed and highly disreputable. It seemed to be a point of honor with him when he traveled, to look as if he’d been trekking through the Arabian desert for six months, so he had let his salt-and-pepper beard come in again. He’d also skipped his last few haircuts so that his thinning hair now hung in tendrils down the back of his neck. With his hitching gait—Phil habitually walked with one side a little higher than the other—he looked like a down-and-out sailor that had jumped ship a few years back and had never managed to get himself another berth.

  To complete the travel-worn image, he was attired in his professional tour leader’s regalia: rumpled, faded, multi-pocketed khaki shorts; a tired T-shirt with sagging neck-line; sockless sneakers; and an old, long-billed “On the Cheap” baseball cap. Phil’s first rule of travel for his excursion groups was “Never take more than can go in a backpack,” of which he made himself a living example. In his pack, as Gideon knew, were two duplicates of each item he was wearing (except for the sneakers, of which he had only a single extra pair), plus a waterproof windbreaker and a few toiletries, including a roll of toilet paper, without which he never traveled (rule two). That was it. As a result, Phil seemed to spend a lot of time searching out a convenient place and time to wash and dry his underwear, but he considered that a small price to pay.

  “Finish up,” he said, slipping into an empty chair at their table, “The boat’s waiting. We’re off to Isola de Grazia.”

  “Isola de Grazia?” Julie repeated. “You mean your family really has its own island?” Julie asked.

  “Sure, what’s the big surprise? I told you that.”

  “You said they ‘own this island, sort of,’” Gideon pointed out.

  “Forgive me for using a figure of speech. What, is there a difference?”

  “There’s a big difference,” Gideon said. ‘Sort of’ connotes ‘not exactly’ or ‘not really,’ doesn’t it? And what does it modify, ‘island’ or ‘owned’? ‘They sort of own an island.’ ‘They own sort of an island.’ Those are two entirely different referents, and either way—”

  “You have to live with this all the time?” Phil asked Julie.

  “It’s a trial,” she said. “But he has good points as well.”

  “I’m only trying to introduce a little clarity into your thinking, my dear Filiberto.”

  “And don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” Phil said, getting up with a yawn. “What do you say we go?”

  The boat was a canopied launch with three rows of seats for a dozen people, but they had it to themselves. As soon as they boarded, the captain, a bony, gray-haired woman in a Greek fisherman’s cap and bib overalls, cast off, eased backward from the landing, and turned the bow toward the north. In ten minutes they had left Stresa and the busy ferry run behind, and were sliding over smooth, bright, blue water, with green mountains rising from either shore, and far ahead, over the Swiss border, the grim, granite, glacier-topped mountains of the Simplon Alps. The warm, fresh breeze felt like satin on their skin and the three of them sat quietly for a while, with their eyes closed and their faces turned into the breeze.

  “Don’t tell me,” Gideon said when he opened his eyes.

  They looked at him. “Tell you what?” Julie asked.

  “Don’t tell me that that’s Isola de Grazia.”

  He was gesturing at a solitary island a half-mile ahead. Roughly oval and about a quarter-mile long, the point nearest them was occupied by a pink-stuccoed villa, relatively modest in size but gracefully proportioned in the refined, austerely symmetrical Palladian style of the seventeenth century. A set of stone steps at the front of the house led up to a broad, central entrance portico with four tall, slender columns supporting a Greek-style pediment at roof level. Two elegant stories high, with chimney pots shaped like Grecian urns rising from the red tile roof, the building fronted a wide stone courtyard that extended to a quay at which two gleaming wooden launches were tied up. Behind the handsome house and covering the rest of the island were formal gardens that were smaller but almost as elaborate as those they’d seen on Isola Bella. There were fountains, terraces, colonnades, statues, mazes, rows of orange trees, mimosas, and tamarinds, and pungent aromatic shrubs that they could smell from the boat.

  “Yup, that’s it,” Phil said. “Home, sweet home.”

  JULIE was flabbergasted. “But it . . . it really is a palace . . . and those grounds!”

  “I told you.”

  “You said it was practically a palace. You made it sound—”

  Phil rolled his eyes. “Oh, God, now she’s starting. What is it with you people, you have something against adverbial constructions? Is it some kind of a life mission?”

  “Of course not,” Julie said, laughing. “It’s just that it’s a little hard to imagine the Phil Boyajian we know—”

  “And love,” Gideon assured him.

  “—growing up in a place like that. Oh, look, isn’t that a peacock?”

  “Oh, yeah. They�
��ve got monkeys too, for Christ’s sake. There’s a whole goddamn menagerie wandering around the gardens. And yes, I grew up there, or at least I lived there for a few years. But I was born back in Stresa.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The house isn’t there anymore. It’s a parking lot for the railroad station now. My mother got my no-good father a job as some kind of a watchman or maybe a gamekeeper on the de Grazia property up north, and I lived in town till I was three. That’s when my father decided he wasn’t a family man after all and took off for good, never to be seen again, and my mother took me to live on the island, in the villa, till I was six or seven, which is when we came to the States and she got married again. Let me tell you, that place always spooked me,” he said, looking at the house. “I still come here every few years, kind of in memory of my mother, I guess. And it still gives me the creeps.”

  “It’s gorgeous, fantastic,” Julie said. “It must cost a fortune to take care of.”

  “Oh, I think Vincenzo can afford it,” Phil said with a laugh.

  “Vincenzo’s the owner?”

  “Well, there really isn’t any ‘owner.’ The de Grazia family owns the estate in perpetuity. They got it in the fourteenth century—along with the titles of ‘Count’ and ‘Countess,’ if you can believe it—when somebody’s great-uncle-twice-removed was Holy Roman Emperor for about five minutes. But Vincenzo de Grazia is the current padrone. He’s my cousin. Well, he’s my mother’s cousin, what does that make him? My uncle, I guess, but we’re the same age.”

  “He’s your first cousin, once removed,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “What kind of a cultural anthropologist are you, anyway? Didn’t they teach you about kinship systems?”

  Phil shrugged. “Sure. You want to know about the exopatrilocal kinship structure of the Arunta? That I understand perfectly. Ours I never got straight; too complicated. Anyway, Vincenzo’s father—my uncle Domenico—was the previous padrone, and Vincenzo’s son Achille will be the next one, and so on, yeah, into the far-distant future. So he gets this humongous inheritance and he gets to live there— he has to live there, actually; that’s in the covenant, if I understand it right. If he doesn’t, he forfeits the inheritance.”

  “Not too bad a deal.” Gideon said, more and more taken with the island’s beauty as they came nearer. “I think I could live with that.”

  The boat had slowed down now and was steering toward the stone quay, which led up to the courtyard by a wide flight of stone steps with two full-size palm trees in enormous pots at their head. The fabric of the building, the windows, the worn steps themselves, the many statues and plants they could see—all looked meticulously cared for, as if cleaning and pruning crews had been out that morning.

  “Yeah, but it’s not all gravy,” said Phil. “See, the deal is, anybody else in the family who wants to live there also has the right to do it, no charge, for as long as he wants, and Vincenzo has to put up with him and foot the bill unless he can come up with some kind of justification not to—moral turpitude, murder, something along those lines. So aside from the oddball, so-called relatives who come and go, Vincenzo’s had . . . let me see . . . four people—no, five—who’ve been there just about forever and are never going to leave; not in this lifetime. And there are all kinds of rules about them: They have to dine with the padrone if they want to, they have to be consulted in family matters, and so on. It’s all very medieval and complicated. Vincenzo tried to get it overturned once, but no luck. It’s foolproof, written in stone.”

  “On second thought, maybe not such a good deal,” Gideon said.

  As the boat entered the still pool between the two curving arms of the quay and worked its way around the tied-up launches, a dark, lean man in mirrored sunglasses, black suit, black T-shirt, and mirror-shined black shoes emerged from the shade of a lawn umbrella, where he had been sitting in a folding chair, apparently working a puzzle in a magazine. Never turning his head away from them, he used his heel to grind his cigarette out on the pavement, shrugged both shoulders to set his suit coat better, tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves, and sauntered toward them.

  “Who’s this?” Gideon whispered. “He looks like a leftover extra from The Godfather.”

  “You’re closer than you think,” Phil told him.

  The dark man reached the head of the steps as the captain leaned over the boat’s prow with a boat hook, making ready to tie up. “Proprietá privata,” he said without expression. “Non entrate.”

  “Cesare, how’re you doing?” Phil asked in Italian.

  The man pushed his sunglasses an inch down his nose and peered mistrustfully over them. Then, abruptly, he smiled, like a piano lid opening to show the keyboard. “Fili? Hey, nobody told me you were coming.”

  “Nobody knew. I thought I’d give everybody a nice surprise. So is it all right if we tie up?”

  The man jogged down the steps, inspecting Julie and Gideon. “Who are your friends?”

  “Old pals. Americans. Known them for years and years.”

  Cesare nodded. “All right, go ahead and tie up,” he said to the captain, who’d been waiting with the rope in her hands. And to Phil: “The guy, I’ll have to pat down. Better tell him.”

  “I understand Italian,” Gideon said.

  “That’s nice. Climb out and lean your hands against the wall here. No offense, I hope.”

  “Help yourself,” Gideon said, following instructions, while Julie looked on with wide eyes.

  “I should have mentioned it,” Phil said to her in English. “They have to do it with strangers.”

  “Not to me, I hope.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The pat-down was quick and professional. Cesare was lighting another cigarette and Gideon was zipping up his windbreaker when Cesare uttered a soft curse. “I knew it, damn it, here comes the old man. He sees everything.”

  Gideon looked up to see a tall, elderly, goateed man in a too-small, old-fashioned suit, starched white shirt, and tie standing at the head of the stairs and peering down at the scene below him with obvious displeasure. Gaunt and frail-looking, he leaned on a silver-headed, metal-tipped cane but stood extraordinarily upright. Gideon thought he might be wearing a corset to keep him so straight. He was accompanied by an ancient dog, as old in dog years as the man was in human years; a fat, panting, waddling Corgi on a leather leash.

  “In my brother Domenico’s time,” the old man said in a thin but steady voice, “all who wished to come were welcome on Isola de Grazia. The stranger was trusted no less than the relative.” He spoke more in sadness than in accusation, in a flowery textbook Italian that Gideon had seen in books but had never before heard spoken. It sounded beautiful.

  Cesare hung his head respectfully. “I’m sorry, signore, I’m only following orders.”

  The old man sniffed. “Vincenzo’s orders.”

  “These are dangerous times, signore.”

  “Terrible times,” said the old man, shaking his head.

  “Hello, Grandfather,” Phil said, “it’s wonderful to see you looking well.”

  The old man started. “No. . . .” He peered hard at Phil. “Fili, is it you?”

  Laughing, Phil ran up the steps. The old man opened his arms, letting the cane and the leash drop. He was trembling as Phil gently embraced him and they exchanged happy greetings.

  Coming up the steps with Julie, Gideon picked up the cane, noticing that the silver knob atop it was a beautifully wrought feline paw “holding” what appeared to be a flower bud on a stem, some of the features worn blunt from years of use. When the old man let go of Phil, Gideon handed it to him.

  “I thank you, signore,” de Grazia said, then looked eloquently at Phil.

  Phil looked back at him for a couple of seconds before he got the message. “Oh. Right. Uh . . . Grandfather, may I present my good friends Dr. Professor Oliver and Mrs. Dr. Professor Oliver. Gideon and Julie, my respected grandfather, Signor Cosimo Giustiniano de Grazia.”

  De Grazia bent his hea
d to kiss Julie’s hand, then shook Gideon’s. “I’m very pleased to know you.”

  “They’re Americans, Grandfather,” Phil said.

  “Americans!” the old man cried. He gathered himself together, and in halting, heavily accented English, said: “You are here most welcome.”

  “Molte grazie, signor de Grazia,” Julie said in equally deliberate Italian, and the old man mimed good-natured applause, and everyone laughed pleasantly.

  “Ah,” said Cosimo. “Well. So.” Suddenly sobering, he grasped his grandson’s wrist. “Thank you for coming in this time of crisis.”

  “I felt it was my duty to come, Grandfather,” Phil said. The old man nodded his approval, then turned his attention to the dog, which now had its leash in its mouth and was uttering plaintive whimpers.

  “Yes, Bacco, we’ll go now,” he said, taking the leash and smiling once again. “My dog,” he told Gideon, “is a de Grazia through and through, a follower of tradition. At ten o’clock I am required to accompany him on his morning constitutional—twice around the villa, out to the swan fountain, and back. This I must do rain or shine, crisis or no crisis, visitors or no visitors. No variation is permitted.”

  Another round of shaking hands, another graceful hand kiss for Julie, and a few more words in delightfully accented English for Julie—“Forgive, signora, I regret I no’ speak so well English.”—and man and dog shuffled slowly off.

  “What an old charmer!” Julie said.

  Phil laughed. “He is that, and I love the guy dearly. He pretty well raised me after my mom brought me here. That’s the one thing I thank my lousy father for—if he hadn’t walked out on us, I’d never have gotten to really know that great old man. Come on, let’s go meet the rest of the clan.” He rolled his eyes. “Might as well get it over with.”

  They began walking toward the house. The entire courtyard, Gideon saw, was paved with smooth black, white, and rose-colored pebbles embedded in concrete in floral patterns. In the center was a circular mosaic of the same materials, sun-faded and very old, arranged into a larger version of the same feline paw and bud that was on Cosimo’s cane, plus a six-pointed star on either side.