Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  After the other two had left, she studied a map of the city that she had found among the other brochures in the room. She had no intention of hiding away in their suite, but a shopping trip with Zoe and Lilia was the last thing she needed right now. Instead she was going to explore the streets around the hotel on her own, letting herself wander around the district for a while.

  She was just about to set off when there was a knock at her door. “Rosa Alcantara?”

  “Who is it?”

  A short pause, and then a second voice. “Police,” said a woman. “Open the door, please.”

  Ironically, the first thing she thought of was the stolen fountain pen, and only then did her family’s businesses cross her mind. But instead of making a rope of sheets and shinnying down from the balcony, she put out her hand, like a sleepwalker, and opened the door slightly.

  She had it open just a crack when she thought of the peephole in the door itself, and the fact that anyone could say they were the police.

  She slammed the door shut again.

  “Please, signorina, what was that for?”

  Standing on tiptoe, she looked out and saw a man and a woman, both in leather jackets, hers short and waisted, his long, with bulging pockets. Not uniformed officers, then. Both were quite young, thirty at the most.

  “Do you have ID with you?”

  The two of them exchanged a glance, then took out small folders, opened them, and held them up to the peephole. Through its circular eye, Rosa could see only their photos. They might just as well have been student IDs.

  “I could call reception,” she suggested, playing for time.

  “We’d rather you didn’t. It would only cause unnecessary agitation.”

  “But I am agitated.”

  “No one wants to do you any harm. At least, we don’t.”

  Keeping the police waiting worked on TV shows, but here and now it struck her as childish.” Okay,” she finally said, and opened the door.

  “Thank you,” said the man, and he held out his ID to her again. “Antonio Festa. This is my colleague Stefania Moranelli. Please come with us.”

  “Where to?”

  The young woman, dark-haired and wiry, with slightly Arabian features, pointed down the corridor. “Only a few rooms down, don’t worry.”

  Sure enough, there was a door open down the corridor, with light spilling out of it.

  “Do I need a lawyer or anything like that?”

  The man who had introduced himself as Antonio Festa smiled. His nose was so large that for a moment it was as if she were still seeing it through the magnification of the peephole. In an angular way, he was almost attractive. His hair was very short, and a narrow scar ran through one eyebrow. He might indeed be a police officer. Or a contract killer.

  “You’re not going to be accused of anything,” he said with a crooked grin. “Apart, perhaps, from the theft of several chocolate bars, a bracelet, and a gold fountain pen that turned up in a flowerpot in the lobby here.”

  Her heart missed a beat. “How long have you been following me?”

  “Since you landed in Italy. But don’t worry, only while you were out in public. Your private sphere has been respected throughout your stay.”

  “I’m an American citizen.”

  “We know that you hold two passports. And our laws also apply to tourists.”

  Here the young woman, Stefania Moranelli, intervened. “Listen, no one’s trying to set a trap. At the moment our superior officer would like a word with you, that’s all. I promise it won’t take long. After that you can go and meet your sister and Lilia Dionisi in the city if you like.”

  “I was twelve when I was interrogated for the first time,” Rosa said. “If it’s about my family, then I know exactly what my rights—”

  “Just follow us,” said the policewoman, nudging her colleague. “We don’t want to discuss this kind of thing out in the hall.”

  Rosa gave herself a little shake, took the key card out of its slot in the lock, and let the door lock behind her. The carpet in the hallway felt deeper and softer the closer she came to the open room.

  The man went ahead. The woman stopped outside the room, waved Rosa in, and followed her. Then she closed the door.

  A second woman was standing at the window, with her back to the doorway, and turned around as Rosa entered the room. She was smaller than the two officers who had escorted Rosa here, not much more than five feet tall. She had short brown hair, touseled bangs, and looked as if she’d bought her clothes in a department store years ago and had never given a thought to refreshing her wardrobe; she wore beige trousers, a dark sweater, and over it a thin silver chain with a pendant the size of a thumbnail hanging from it. Rosa suspected it opened to show a photograph of her child. She probably saw him or her only at weekends on visits to her ex-husband.

  “My name is Quattrini,” she said, offering Rosa a slim hand. “Judge Quattrini. I am leading the investigation into your aunt, Florinda Alcantara.”

  “Are you arresting me for three stolen chocolate bars, or can I go now?”

  “I know quite a lot about you.”

  “What do you want?”

  The judge had a dark birthmark on her left cheek. Her eyes were surrounded by tiny folds, and she looked as if she didn’t get enough sleep. “I’d like to ask you to work with me.”

  Rosa almost choked. “You want me to spy on my aunt for you? You must be out of your mind!”

  “No.” Quattrini gave her a mirthless smile. “Not your aunt. I know more than enough about her. In fact that’s part of the deal I would like to offer you. I’ll hold back the evidence against Florinda Alcantara if, in return, you will cooperate with me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

  “The person we would like to know more about is not your aunt.” The judge took a step toward her. Rosa wasn’t tall, but she stood half a head above this woman. “There’s someone else I’m interested in. I believe you know him well. His name is Alessandro Carnevare.”

  SISTERS

  THE PLANE FROM ROME landed at Catania around nine in the evening. A little later Rosa, Zoe, and Lilia were racing west down Expressway 417 through the twilight in a black Mercedes. Florinda was still on her way back in the helicopter, so the three girls had called an Alcantara limousine to pick them up. They dropped Lilia off in Caltagirone, a little mountain town where she lived with her father and a younger brother.

  Half an hour later, around eleven, the limousine turned into the long drive of the Palazzo Alcantara, and finally stopped at the foot of the double flight of stone steps in the inner courtyard. The driver took out the baggage, a good deal more of it than when they’d set off. Zoe had shopped for both of them, and gave instructions for which designer logo shopping bags belonged in which room. Rosa stood there in silence, watching her sister.

  When the man had disappeared into the house with the first load, Rosa touched Zoe’s arm. “Can we go for a little walk around the house? I need to talk to you.”

  “If it’s about all that in the club—”

  “It’s about the family.”

  Zoe looked at her, surprised, as if until now she had successfully suppressed all thought of where the money she had been spending so freely in Rome’s Via Condotti came from. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “Florinda will be back tomorrow. She’ll spend hours tearing me a new one because I went out with Alessandro.”

  “In my car.”

  “It doesn’t have a scratch on it.”

  Zoe suddenly looked grave. “I don’t care about the scratches on my car. But what about my little sister?”

  Rosa smiled. “Call her that once again and never mind the car, she’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  They strolled out of the gateway of the inner courtyard. Ahead of them, in the car headlights, stood the dried-up fountain. The stone basin was still full of empty birds’ nests. Something rustled among the dry leaves and twigs.

  “M
ice,” said Zoe.

  “Or snakes,” suggested Rosa.

  Zoe said nothing. They walked past the western side of the palazzo, below the huge terrace. A cool wind blew down the slope, carrying with it the scent of lemon trees and lavender. Whenever they came within the sphere of the next motion detector, another light came on; there were several in the tall palm trees on this side of the property.

  “I talked to the old man,” said Rosa. “You could have just told me he wanted to see me instead of staging that game of hide-and-seek in the forest.”

  “He wanted it that way,” replied Zoe. “In these parts you obey when Salvatore Pantaleone gives an order. Did he tell you who he is?”

  “The capo dei capi.”

  “One of the most wanted men in Italy—maybe in all Europe. Our people guard the mountain for a long way all around. He himself is … he’s the last of his clan. All the other Pantaleones have died, one way or another. It’s a privilege that he picked the Alcantaras to convey his orders to the other families. He treats us as if we were his family now.”

  “That sounds as if you learned it by heart.”

  Zoe sighed. “Florinda drummed it into me for months after I arrived here. Pantaleone insisted that I was to take over running the errands—and I assume it’s going to be you in future.”

  “Did he tell you so?”

  “No, but he’s curious. And the fact that you’re here in Sicily—”

  “That was his idea?”

  “He never said a word about it to me. Florinda suggested it after she heard what had happened to you, and I thought it was a good plan. But now I’m inclined to think it was his orders in the first place.” Zoe stopped. “I’d have told you, Rosa, except …” She shook her head. “It’s not so simple here. And there are rules you have to obey, even where your own sister’s concerned. I’m sure you’re thinking terrible things about me now, but—”

  “You saved my life up there in the forest.”

  Zoe walked a little faster, as if she didn’t want to look Rosa in the eye. “Tano… I don’t know whether he really wanted to kill you. Normally no one dares go that far into another clan’s territory. Others would hardly have got past the guards.”

  “Oh, a tiger would.”

  Zoe slowed down again, and this time she did meet Rosa’s eyes. “How did you find out? From Alessandro?”

  “I’d rather you had told me.”

  “I wanted to. Especially after that stupid book of animal stories turned up. When I saw it, I realized why Alessandro had given it to you. And I knew there was a danger that he’d be the first to tell you. I told Florinda we had to do so before him, and I said you ought to know the truth. But she wouldn’t listen. She thought you wouldn’t believe a word of it anyway until you yourself had—”

  “Turned into a snake for the first time.”

  “How do you think I found out? I woke up one night in the greenhouse among all the snakes, and I was in such a panic that it happened right then.” She grimaced. “And I always thought I hated snakes.”

  “Is that why Florinda had me taken there that night?”

  “She wanted to find out if you’d reached that stage yet.”

  “But I hadn’t.”

  “You weren’t afraid of the snakes, they weren’t enough to trigger the change … we were watching you.”

  Zoe sounded ashamed. Rosa wanted to get angry with her, but she couldn’t. Instead she simply listened, while the tangled threads of everything that had happened gradually came together.

  “When I was there with the snakes, I was in such a state that the transformation began,” Zoe went on. “That was about three months after I arrived here. But the whole thing didn’t affect you at all.”

  “Of course it did.”

  “All the same, it wasn’t enough to trigger that first change. You need furious rage for that, or fear.”

  “I felt as cold as if my blood had suddenly frozen.”

  “That’s how it begins,” said Zoe. “You had… It had begun. But then it just stopped and you were human again.”

  None of this really shook her. She thought it was fascinating, and felt a slight tingling inside her. “Did Mom know?”

  Zoe shrugged her shoulders. “If so, she never mentioned it to me.”

  “She must have had some reason for staying in the States after Dad’s death. When the two of them married, you—”

  “They did it in secret. Did you know that?”

  Rosa stared at Zoe. “In secret?”

  “They ran away together. The Alcantaras didn’t want him marrying an American. He was different from the others, and they—”

  “Different because they left him alive, instead of killing him at birth?”

  “You don’t want to believe everything you’re told. It’s not like that. No Alcantara woman has ever killed her son.”

  “Yes, they have,” said Rosa. “One of them, anyway.”

  Zoe took her hand. “Rosa, you don’t even know it would have been a son. It was at such an early stage….”

  “I felt it. I knew it was a boy.”

  Zoe was sensible enough not to contradict her. “You didn’t kill him.”

  “No, the doctor did that. But she was only doing her job, and I should have done mine—” Rosa was struggling to find the right words. “You know, it’s not as if I want a child. I mean, for God’s sake, a child … but I could have given him up for adoption after he was born or something like that. Instead of just … oh, how do I know what I should have done? Not listened to other people, anyway. I definitely shouldn’t have listened to Mom.”

  “You can’t blame it on her.”

  “You know what I’ve been wondering ever since I knew about this … this snake thing? Did Mom want the baby out of the way so there wouldn’t be another of us come into the world? Another Alcantara. Another—”

  “Arcadian?”

  Rosa nodded. “After Dad’s death she must have been terrified of them. Of Florinda.”

  “If Florinda had wanted something to happen to her, she could have fixed it much earlier.”

  “Perhaps she did want it. But then she dropped the idea because of us. Because then she wouldn’t have had any heirs. Did Florinda ever mention that she can’t have children? I thought about that half the night. Look at it that way and it all makes sense. She left Mom in peace because without us the Alcantara clan would die out … and it suited her for Mom to look after us until we were old enough to move back here.” She gave a derisive little snort. “To the bosom of the family.”

  “But Rosa, all this, here … it’s good for us! It’s where we belong. We’re a part of it. We’re Alcantaras.”

  “And is that why a Carnevare and I can’t—”

  “Have sex?”

  “Talk to each other.”

  “You saw what happens. Tano comes here and is on the point of breaking the concordat. They almost killed each other out on that island because of you. And as for the other day, whatever the two of you were up to—”

  “We weren’t up to anything,”

  “It only makes trouble.”

  They walked on in silence, passing the north facade and the greenhouse now. The dim green light came through the clouded panes.

  “Once you’re used to it,” said Zoe, “you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy crawling through the dirt?”

  Zoe stopped. Anger flared in her eyes, and for a fraction of a second Rosa thought she saw her sister’s pupils narrow to slits. “Can’t you see what this is, Rosa? We’re not the same as ordinary people … we’re human beings and Arcadians. We are the superior species. Our ancestors ruled Arcadia. They dominated the Mediterranean and the countries on its shores.”

  “Until two years ago you didn’t even know where the Mediterranean was.”

  Zoe let out her breath sharply and walked faster again. Rosa kept up with her from one circle of light to the next. The chestnuts on the outskirts of the forest were rustling. The cicadas had st
ruck up their nocturnal concert long ago.

  “What will happen if the Hungry Man comes back to Sicily?” asked Rosa after a while. “Pantaleone says there could be a power struggle between the dynasties.”

  “They’re all afraid of him.”

  “Does he really think he’s the reincarnation of an ancient king? That Lycaon?”

  “Some of the others are sure of it.”

  “He must be quite old.”

  “About the same age as Pantaleone. Midseventies, I think.”

  “How great can it be to belong to a … a species that would commit murder just because an old man tells them to?”

  “No one knows what he’s really planning. But he must have powerful allies.”

  “Doesn’t the Mafia already exert an influence on the government?”

  “Pressure must have been applied in the very highest places to get a man like that set free.” Zoe stopped as they entered the front courtyard again. They had walked all around the property. “It’s still no more than rumors. No one knows exactly when and why the Hungry Man will be let out. Or what’s going on behind the scenes. But the capi are uneasy, and Pantaleone … well, some say he isn’t strong enough now to keep the dynasties safe from prying eyes when he’s been living underground for decades.”

  “Maybe that’s why someone is spreading rumors—to weaken Pantaleone’s influence and prepare for the return of the Hungry Man.”

  Zoe uttered a mirthless laugh. “Do you think you’re the first to think of that? Florinda’s always going on about the possibility, and Pantaleone doesn’t seem to know what to think. It would be much simpler if half the families weren’t at odds with the other half. But as things stand?” She shook her head.

  Rosa leaned against the parapet of the fountain. She took a deep breath. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”