The Heart Is a Burial Ground

by Tamara Colchester

‘Those meaningless rituals of hers.’ Leonie shook her head. ‘Belief without God. A somewhat empty gift.’

  ‘Do you remember her room in Ibiza?’ Elena sat beside her sister on the bed and ran her hand over the huge embroidered mantilla that covered it, stopping at a large stain that had leached across it turning a pale pink rose a murky brown.

  ‘The lion’s den,’ Leonie said.

  Elena had the sense that her sister was about to speak further, but stopped herself. She waited, hoping it was clear that she encouraged the words. But none came.

  ‘She would have been so much happier if she’d stayed there,’ Elena spoke the familiar thought, and it trailed uselessly in the dust-filled air.

  ‘I don’t know about that. As within so without. Only Diana could have chosen an old concentration camp as her place of retirement.’

  ‘There is more to this island than that,’ Elena said reproachfully. ‘It can be very beautiful here.’

  ‘It’s okay for something to be awful, Elena.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Leo, but . . .’ Elena stopped herself.

  ‘Well, you did always like to stay close.’

  ‘Is that a dig?’ Elena said, looking hurt.

  ‘No.’ Her sister looked at her, with a clear, open face. ‘It’s just how I see it.’

  Elena was silent.

  ‘And I probably go too far the other way. Diana might have seen my vows as an act of violence but they were only an attempted retreat. I thought I’d found the perfect escape in my cell. Little did I know what was in store,’ she laughed.

  Elena nodded.

  ‘You know it was Caresse who first suggested I go and stay in a convent? I still don’t know how she knew of the nuns up there in Big Sur. I often wonder at her understanding that I needed the emptiness of that place. The seclusion of those great fogs covering everything like so many ghosts and the rage of the fires that burned them away. A clearing out of all that had served its purpose. Soft and brutal. Blackened corpses of trees. No understanding of why. And then, the little shoots of green and the endless rains.’ She paused, thoughtful. ‘And the abbess there was extraordinary,’ Leonie went on. ‘Calm, scrawny . . . A bit like Inés.’

  Elena smiled.

  ‘Surprisingly sexual, actually.’

  Elena’s smile turned to a frown. She turned away from her sister and began to tightly fold her mother’s soft woollen jumpers.

  ‘Yes, Elena, sexual. She wasn’t afraid of acknowledging that side of life.’

  ‘But she didn’t . . .’ Elena glanced at her sister, her fingers getting lost in the baby-softness of the wool in her hands.

  ‘Have intercourse?’ Her older sister gave her an old smile. ‘No, of course not. But it was a great help to know that I would not be shamed for what had been. She was very frank.’

  Elena knelt and placed the neatly folded jumpers in a box. She sat back on her heels. ‘Do you miss it, Leonie?’

  Her sister shook her head. ‘It’s like entering a quiet room after the din of one of those awful parties.’

  Elena couldn’t prevent herself from looking down at her own heavy stomach.

  ‘When I married Victor, that hunger paced inside me. I felt contaminated by its restless urge. Utterly contaminated.’

  Elena glanced at her sister’s wrist where the faint scar emerged from the sleeve of her habit.

  ‘It came from within me, lived inside me, wanting more,’ Leonie continued. ‘Always wanting more.’ She shook her head and began to gather up books into small piles. ‘I remember once being with a man and before it was even over, already planning to see another.’

  ‘Yes.’ Elena nodded, eyes wide. ‘I mean, I can imagine how hard that must have been for you.’

  Leonie stopped and for a moment it seemed as though Elena was rowing away from an island leaving her stranded on the empty stretch of sand. Her face hardened. ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes not leaving Elena’s face. ‘I’m sure you can.’

  Elena turned her head away and gazed towards the window.

  ‘Victor was just as damaged,’ Leonie rolled a leather belt into a neat loop, ‘and far too old to want to change anything. Though it got me away from her, which was the point I suppose.’

  Elena’s stare was fixed, and Leonie looked at her in profile for a long time.

  ‘Elena, what is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, and the sisters lapsed into silence.

  The room seemed to fill with Elena’s unspoken thought, the air between them getting thicker and thicker with it, until Leonie’s voice broke through. ‘Elena. Speak.’

  ‘It . . . it’s what you said.’

  ‘Which bit?’ Her sister spread her hands.

  ‘Contaminated,’ she said quietly. ‘You said that you felt contaminated.’

  ‘Well . . . I suppose I did, to an extent. What’s the matter with that?’

  Elena waved her hand over her stomach, the other arm holding it protectively.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes, I wonder if . . .’

  ‘If? You can speak, Elena.’ Her sister laid a hand on her shoulder and Elena turned her head towards her.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Shouldn’t what, Ele?’ Leonie looked at her in bewilderment and then, sitting back as though taking in an enormous picture so that its disconnected images began to make sense in their entirety, shook her head, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘Oh no, Elena, no.’ She went down on her knees and, reaching forward, placed her hands gently at her sister’s middle.

  Elena did not move. ‘But what if it builds, Leonie?’ she said, her voice constricted. ‘What if it gets stronger?’

  ‘But I was talking about me, Elena. It’s different, we’re different.’

  ‘Is it? Are we?’ Her sister looked at her searchingly.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Leonie nodded with feeling. ‘We had different fathers, for a start.’

  Elena stared at her sister and then down at her lap. ‘They were as bad as each other,’ she said quietly. She glanced at Leonie to see her reaction and saw she’d gone still, one hand placed on the floor as though steadying herself. Her sister was silent for a few moments and then reached over and took hold of a heavy stack of papers.

  ‘You are eating properly, aren’t you, Ele?’ Leonie’s sure voice moved them back towards safer ground.

  Elena shrugged irritably. ‘Of course I’m eating. I’m pregnant.’

  ‘What does your doctor say?’

  ‘As soon as the baby comes, I should start taking the pills again.’

  ‘And you say?’

  Elena was silent.

  ‘And you say . . .’

  ‘I say all right.’

  They were silent for a while, moving around the subject as though manoeuvring in a small cabin.

  ‘Why did Anita come here?’ Leonie asked in a new, lighter tone, as she half-turned and began sifting through a drawer stuffed full of photos.

  ‘She wanted to let me know that she’d thrown away the things Anthony left me.’

  ‘What things were they?’ Leonie said.

  ‘Nothing much. The good furniture all went to a cousin up in Northumberland. Man to man, clean and cold. But I would have liked to give his tools to the boys . . .’

  Leonie grew very still. ‘I didn’t keep anything from my father,’ she said after a pause. ‘And I wouldn’t want anything from yours either.’

  Elena watched her. ‘Anyway, life’s much cleaner without all those things. Best not to let luxury sink its teeth in.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call a few tools “luxury”, Leonie.’

  ‘It’s not an attack, Elena.’

  Elena observed her sister’s familiar face, revealing some of Diana’s curves, but cut with the sharp brow of that very old Frenchman whose enormous house she’d never wanted to visit.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you when you were in hospital.’ Elena spoke in a rush of feeling. ‘And I’m sorry I’ve
never said that till now.’

  Leonie looked her in the eyes. ‘I know she told you not to come, Elena.’ She shook her head. ‘Inés wrote and told me that.’

  ‘Inés told you that?’ Elena said, eyes shining.

  ‘Yes. And I know that Diana was incapable of answering a cry for help.’

  ‘She wasn’t taught how to,’ Elena said, twisting her hands.

  ‘Your soft heart.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘The way you’d cry for the birds as she cut short their flight with that unanswerable gun.’

  Elena was silent. ‘I was scared of birds. Would probably have killed one myself if it had got into my room. It was those horrible men beating their sticks in the woods, forcing them out of their hiding places, shouting so that they had to fly into danger.’

  ‘But you stayed by her side, even while she did the things you loathed.’

  ‘You think it’s weak,’ Elena said in a low voice. ‘You both do.’

  ‘It’s not weak, Elena,’ her sister laughed softly. ‘Holding it together – all that violence and all this beauty’ – she gestured at her sister’s pregnant stomach – ‘it’s far from weak.’

  ‘Beautiful words, Leonie.’

  ‘No, Elena,’ her sister said fiercely. ‘Not beautiful words. Feel it.’ She sat forward again and pressed her hand against her sister’s heart this time. ‘This is where it is happening, Elena, right here, where you love. The heart is our burial ground, it transforms what we give it. Death back into life. But you have to feel it. You have to feel it with as much pain as when those children left your body. The heart will devour the loss, the pain of the feast will wash you clean.’

  Elena did not move. Her sister’s hands were strong and warm and she had never been able to be held by them for long.

  ‘That’s Bay calling.’

  They listened and there was another plaintive cry from the room next door.

  Her sister looked at her for a long time. ‘You are free to leave, Elena. You always have been.’

  ‘It’s not because I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘Go, Elena.’

  ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Go to her,’ Leonie said. And, getting to her feet with difficulty, Elena walked from the room.

  Roccasinibalda, 1970

  Diana opened the door and entered her mother’s silent rooms, a glass in her hand. The shutters were held open and the faint trace of tuberose was fading with every hour of her absence, pushed out by the cold empty air blowing in from the hills. The castle was quiet now, most of the people gone. She looked at her watch. Just after ten. She listened. And there it was. The ringing of the death bell, pulled by Bruno who’d asked to do it, tears streaming down his lined face, every hour throughout the coming month. She sat and listened to the low clang breaking the strange silence. The life was fading out of the place as quickly as the mark of water on sun-warmed stone; what had only just occurred was being forgotten. Because all things come to an end, Diana thought. What else could this have ever been?

  She looked into the bathroom, a simple table and a bar of soap, the movement of the door causing her mother’s dressing gown to slip from its hanger onto the floor in a heap of collapsed colour. Diana picked it up and felt the silk, cold and fine in her fingers, and returned it to its hook. She had not seen her mother’s naked body for some time. The long legs always striding, the hands always moving and those beautiful, feted breasts that had lived on in many men’s minds as an example of God’s kindness, as high and heavy as love itself. Diana had always envied those. Hers were nothing like so remarkable; she cupped one with her hand, testing its firmness. Still pretty good though. Her hand ran downwards over the encased curve of her stomach, patting it thoughtfully as she walked back into the bedroom, where she stopped. Hanging between the two windows was her portrait. She glanced at the bed, and realised now that it must have been the first thing her mother saw when she woke up.

  Diana moved her hands into a similar pose and walked in a small circle. She did not know what to do.

  She sat heavily on the bed, picturing the church and the people whose names she barely knew, outdoing one another in loud and theatrical grief. Diana had sat throughout, neither kneeling for the prayers nor standing for the liturgy, incanting her own words as strange as the markings on the stolen obelisk that stood at the centre of the gurgling fountain in the piazza outside the church. At the end of the long, wearing day, only her mother’s ashes remained in a yellow urn shaped by David’s hands. He had not questioned her decision to stand alone on the battlements and tip it forward so that the grey dust had flown with a sudden gust of wind and disappeared into the clouded sky.

  The girls had stripped the bed and remade it so that a smooth expanse of white linen stretched over its surface. She lay down gratefully, still wearing her shoes, and pulled the satisfying weight of the covers over herself, glad of their substance, drawing her shoulders towards each other in some kind of conclusion.

  Rue de Lille, 1930

  ‘Life goes on, Diana. I have to live.’ Caresse continued to button up the long black silk gloves that matched her new hat. Mourning suited her.

  The housemaid came in. ‘Monsieur Dalí is here. And Monsieur Pound is waiting also.’

  From the hallway came the sound of the telephone. It had been ringing incessantly for days now.

  ‘Tell them I’ll be just a moment.’ Caresse stood and checked her reflection, watched by Diana where she sat on a chair, knees brought up to her chest.

  ‘I’ve found a new artist.’ Her eyes met Diana’s in the mirror. ‘A true Surrealist. Mind like a hot wire on a raw nerve. When you go back to school I’m going to take him to America. I’ve already lined up a press conference for him when we arrive. Talent like that needs as much exposure as possible.’

  ‘You’re going back?’ Diana asked, biting her lip.

  ‘No, not going back.’ There was a faint tremor in her mother’s voice. ‘Moving on.’

  Roccasinibalda, 1970

  ‘Do you know where Diana is?’ David asked one of the women, glad to finally find someone.

  ‘Nello studio dell’avvocato,’ she muttered and pointed towards the end of the corridor and then turned to go. As she went she called over her shoulder, ‘Stai attento, giovane artista. Ci troverai una leonessa, ed è a caccia di sangue!’ She disappeared into the long darkness of the hallway, her footsteps echoing.

  Entering the room, David found Diana sitting behind a carved wooden desk surrounded by shelves and dying plants, paper littering every surface. A cut-glass decanter of whisky stood unstoppered at her elbow, and her sleeves were rolled up, her hair tousled as though she had been disturbed in the middle of a wild dance.

  She glanced up. ‘You!’ she laughed, and her eyes glittered.

  He nodded, and put his bag down. ‘Yes, me. I decided to come back and see you before I fly tomorrow. The show finished early in Rome.’

  ‘You came back for me,’ she said. ‘I’m touched.’ She beckoned him towards her with one hand, while riffling through the papers with the other.

  ‘What is all this?’

  ‘A mess.’ She smiled up at him and then pressed her cheek against his stomach. ‘I had to meet with the lawyers this morning.’

  ‘You should know your daughter has arrived.’ David looked down at her. ‘I was told to tell you.’

  Diana pushed him away and turned back to the desk.

  ‘The firing squad. All I need.’ Diana glanced at him. ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘No, someone just passed the message on.’

  She nodded and continued looking at the papers.

  David placed a hand on the cool plaster of the wall and stared out of the window, frowning. Why had he lied? He’d seen the girl walking across the courtyard below him, her long bare legs pushed into a scuffed pair of sandals, a man’s shirt belted at her slim waist. She’d stopped when she’d got to a pillar and placed her hand on it, just as his hand was now pressed to the wall, crossing one
foot behind her to scratch her leg with the toe of her shoe . . .

  ‘Apparently, she’s here with a man,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Good,’ Diana murmured absentmindedly. ‘Well, if you see them, tell her we’ll eat at nine. You’ll have dinner with us?’

  ‘Yes. I want another night with you before we part.’

  Diana leaned back in her chair and looked at him frankly. ‘I’m beat, David. This has been a real bitch of a day.’

  ‘Wasn’t this Roberto’s study?’ David looked around. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s gone.’ She stood up and threw her arms wide. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘What do you mean “gone”?’

  ‘Gone to the dogs.’

  ‘Diana,’ David said, alarm in his voice. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I met with the lawyers this morning and it seems Caresse handed control of what’s left of her estate to Mr Roberto Mansardi under the proviso that he be responsible for ensuring the continuation of the Città della Pace.’ She spoke in an official voice, her hand tracing the words in the air. ‘He drew up all the paperwork, so you can imagine the size of the loopholes he left himself to jump through. He’ll no more stay here encouraging world peace with these mountain people than I will. Though at least I didn’t ever pretend I would. As for the political movement – well, it will join all the other little surges of spirit that have waved through the centuries.’

  ‘And what about you? What did she leave you?’

  ‘This!’ She spread her arms and laughed bitterly. ‘Three hundred and fifty-two empty rooms. A mausoleum full of homeless poets, hiding themselves in the walls. Thank you, Mother.’

  ‘Well, we should be grateful to these walls for giving shape to our meeting.’

  ‘Forgive me, David, but gratitude is not quite what I’m experiencing at present.’

  ‘And what about your daughters?’

  ‘Joint ownership of the contents.’ She held up a handful of papers. ‘But clever Roberto has been hard at work. There are some very happy art dealers in London raising a glass somewhere. He’s been selling off anything of value steadily since he got here.’ She waved a hand at the empty wall space behind her. ‘Oh, there’ll be something for them. I’ll make sure they get it.’ She drained her glass.