Devlin hasn’t moved. I walk on. The next terrace is speckled with small branches and seashells. The storm must have been worse up here.
The man with the umbrella comes forward to meet me. Behind him is a high narrow silver door set between the two widest glass spines. As I cross the main terrace, I see the jagged cracks which radiate like massive spider-webs across the huge panels of glass.
Devlin is coming up slowly behind me. The car is already wreathed in mist, the guardhouses blurring in the grey air.
Later, when I stare at the white pages of my diary, the vast plains to be crossed before I can extract some truth from it all, that is one of my clearest images of Devlin. I suppose I like it because, at the time, it symbolised what was happening between us. Of course I was completely wrong, the way that I read that image of Devlin coming up to me, walking away from the mist. But then I was wrong from the start, about Devlin.
As the stocky man holds the front door open for me, I say, ‘Hello, how are you?’
He glances around to see who I am talking to, then grins.
‘He doesn’t understand you,’ Devlin says in intense irritation.
‘Give me a shove along,’ I say. ‘You’re dying to.’
A tide of red goes up his throat. The man in black smirks.
‘Yes, you,’ I say to him. ‘Buon giorno. Come sta?’
He is tanned with thinning grey-white hair, no side teeth, laugh lines by his mouth. He is weather-fit, not weather-beaten, with the powerful shoulders and barrel chest of an ageing wrestler. He says in careful English, ‘Very well, thank you. And how would yourself be?’
‘Very well myself,’ I say. ‘And you’re called – ?’
‘Tarfuri, miss.’
‘More of a madam,’ mutters Devlin.
‘Poor Mr Devlin has a hangover. Your first name?’
The man hesitates and says, ‘Stefano, miss.’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Stefano.’ I step into the marbled hall. ‘Do we wait here?’
‘Please. I will fetch sir.’
The door closes behind us. We are in a marbled hall, the walls covered in heavy white wallpaper, embossed with silver. There are three doors on each side and a polished wooden staircase which rises in a gentle curve to join the first floor landing.
Stefano walks around the base of the staircase and disappears.
Devlin says, ‘Try not to be so obvious.’
‘I bet you would have taken a photo with your super-secret tie-pin camera and scanned the world database to check his name.’
‘So?’
‘Sometimes it’s easier to just ask.’
He makes a noise in his throat.
‘Oh, come on, Devlin. As though you don’t already have files on everyone in the house.’
‘They’re incomplete,’ he says. ‘That’s what you’re here for.’
He plants his feet on the white floor. His eyelashes flicker. He is counting the doors off the hall.
‘Oh, Christ,’ I say and go to the nearest door and open it. We look into a vast living room with thick rugs laid on the marble. Beyond are glimpses of a valley lying in a trough of clouds.
I close the door, open the next which gives on to the same room. I move towards the third.
‘For God’s sake,’ says Devlin.
I say, ‘Devlin, whatever gave you the idea that you could control me?’
He puts his briefcase down with a snap on the marble floor. When he straightens I see an edge in his face. Something he has thought of gives him confidence.
He says, ‘You came, didn’t you?’
I turn my back on him and see the glass table against the wall. On it sits a vase, old and delicate, coloured the deep ocean blue of lapis lazuli with fine gold around its rim. Chinese, fifth century. In the vase are huge dark purple roses, so dark as to be almost black. Above the roses is the painting.
It glows in the late afternoon light, sailing through the cloudy air like a mosaic. It is huge, covering the left hand wall between the last two doors. It is a map of the world dominated by a bulbous purple-coloured Europe. This world has Heaven and Hell inscribed in gold leaf at the top and bottom. Black ink drawings of dragons rear out of aquamarine waters and, on the right, in the sea between Sicily and Africa, is a fine-etched compass topped by a lion’s head.
I catch my breath. ‘Mappaemundi,’ I say.
Devlin comes over. ‘That’s bloody inaccurate. What’s the point of that?’
‘You mean, apart from it being five centuries old, a record of religious and philosophical attitudes, and an example of exquisite workmanship? Maybe you’d be impressed to know that its value is probably beyond price.’
‘No need to sneer.’
I laugh. ‘Admit it, Dev. We’re just two foreigners in a strange, strange land.’
We look at each other. His eyes travel down my face, my throat. I am sure I sense a swaying towards me.
His gaze flicks up. He avoids my eyes.
He says, ‘At least I don’t look like a freak.’
There is an eddying in the air across my cheek. ‘Sir asks you wait here,’ says Stefano from behind us, holding open the door to the living room.
Devlin looks furious. Neither of us had heard Stefano return.
I see Devlin eyeing the shadows spilling out from behind the staircase. There must be a door in the alcove there.
Stefano ushers us through and I gasp. This side of the house is built out from the mountain like the stilt homes in Los Angeles. The wind hits the side and I swear I feel the floor tremble. Devlin stamps his feet.
‘Marble on concrete slab,’ he says. ‘I hope.’
I go past the long silk sofas, the huge mirror in the carved frame, past the heavy polished wooden side tables – more delicate vases, more black roses – to the wall of windows.
Beyond the marble terrace, the tip of the next mountain pokes through a layer of clouds as white and thick as stones in fire. I do not understand where the storm clouds have gone. This mountain is veiled in solid matter, a pale blanket with skeins of clouds lifting off it, like Anna’s wool rug, the one she had in hospital. Tendrils of white and grey filaments stroke the terrace. More clouds stream past: animal shapes. Monster shapes. They make me remember lying on the grassy ledge overlooking the bay, counting off faces in the clouds – with my brother and Anna, my best friend, my alter ego.
But there, the clouds were far away.
Devlin comes to stand next to me. ‘Wild nature,’ he says, without enthusiasm.
‘It’s . . . ’ I can’t find the words. ‘Where did the storm go?’
Devlin points up.
The dark clouds are drawn aside like curtains, allowing columns of light to fall through. But even as we watch, the clouds smash together, the light is eaten away. Diamond chips fall against the glass and, a moment later, the sound of hard blows. Rain.
‘November,’ says Devlin, grimacing.
He touches a long crack running from ceiling to floor.
‘Pietr must own the glass shop,’ he says, peering at the ceiling. ‘All that money,’ he continues. ‘To do nothing but – ’
‘Defy the elements?’ I stare at the roiling clouds. ‘Après moi, le déluge.’
Devlin runs his hand along the steel joints. His fingers come away wet.
‘Reportedly spoken with a fatalistic shrug by King Louis XV,’ I say. ‘After me, the deluge.’ I draw a circle on the wet glass, a curved line. A smiley face. ‘I can understand that.’
‘French,’ says Devlin. He takes out his notebook, writes, and points at the huge mirror with its elaborately carved wood frame of roses and vines. ‘Antique?’
I look at the signature fleur-de-lis hidden within the roses. ‘Eighteenth century,’ I say. ‘Finest quality; a master craftsman. Smuggled out from France.’
‘To a little house in Sicily,’ says Devlin.
‘Some people like to admire their treasures in private.’
‘Gloat over them, you mean.’
As he writes, I say, ‘And you call me obvious.’
Devlin says, ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re suspicious of me.’
I look down at the vase beneath the mirror, a twin to the vase out in the lobby. These purple roses are nearly as black.
‘No family happy snaps,’ says Devlin.
‘We never had photos in our house either, after my father got rich. What about you?’
‘No.’ He frowns. ‘You’ll know him, won’t you? Even after all this time?’
‘You don’t forget Pietr.’ I touch a purple petal. ‘The last time I saw him was at Anna’s funeral. He was under indictment too but they hadn’t served him. He came to Sydney for a few hours.’
Devlin stares at the painting.
‘My father was under house arrest,’ I say. ‘As you well know. And my mother was still locked down at Kalangi.’
He keeps staring at the painting. ‘It was a blazingly beautiful day for Anna’s funeral,’ I say. ‘Just a plane’s exhaust leaving chalk smears across the perfect sheet of blue. I hated that. I wanted it to be rainy, overcast. Thunderous.’
I open the French doors. A cold breeze gusts past me, rocking the vases on the glass tables, slamming the door into the lobby.
The marble in the terrace floor is veined with blue. In parts the creamy white is touched by darker shadows. The bruises that tired breaths make in old ice. I see a form in the marble, the way that Michelangelo must have dreamed of men in ice, imagined himself in a vast and snowy landscape, tracing his path through the cracks. Cutting and shaving and sculpting to reveal the man within. I imagine a vastness only broken by hanging curtains of white, an exhausted tree struggling in the cold wind. The anticipation – or terror? – of raising my chisel. Not knowing whether I will open fissures or treasures.
‘Can you see the man within?’ I say to Devlin.
That gaunt look re-appears. I wonder whether I’ve misread his worry. Under-estimated his fear.
‘For God’s sake,’ he says desperately.
I step outside. The curtain of rain cools my cropped skull. I remember my bare feet digging into the frigid marble of the vast bathroom, and the horrified look on the hairdresser’s face in the mirror. She hadn’t brought her razors and when I told her I wanted my long dark hair shaved off like the women who had slept with Nazis during the war, she had dropped the new blonde wig. A faint broken light came into her eyes, like the reflection of sunlight on far-off water. She had looked at the door, as though she knew Devlin was waiting outside. She refused to shave me, instead had used her finest scissors to cut my hair to the roots. After she left, and with Devlin banging on the door, I tried my own razor. But my hand was shaking with rage, and I nicked myself almost immediately. Now, when I put my hand on my head, I feel water drops trapped in the uneven prickly field.
‘It’s all right, Devlin,’ I say now. ‘I have a mind for winter.’
I walk carefully across the marble terrace to the iron railing.
Lightning forks behind the clouds. A crow – no, a raven they call them here – falls sideways, head down, plummeting past me. There is a smell of sea and dirt and dank crumbling bodies in the wind. The rain beats on my bare head.
To my left, the marble runs around the corner of the house to meet the front terrace. To my right, the wet terrace slides into a dark mirror. As my hands seize the railing, the wind buffets my skirt; clouds twine around my ankles. The ground cracks, I see slivers of ice. The wind encircles me and I almost slip despite holding the rail.
Devlin’s words spiral into the grey air. He shouts from the doorway, ‘My responsibility.’
‘Your custody, Devlin.’
He flinches but stands his ground. ‘They’re just words – ’
‘I’ve seen how you use words, Devlin.’
He turns his back on me.
Hail falls and warmth flares. I touch the back of my head; my fingers come away flecked with blood. On the railing, I draw another face with the smile turned upside down. Almost before I finish adding the rosy cheeks, the lines smear into pink and slip over the side.
I shout, ‘They’re not just words to me.’
I pull myself along the railing, closer to the dark mirror. Water slaps against the concrete wall and the wind whines up the side of the house, whistling as it crosses the terrace. The Polish flag flaps wildly, the silver buckles hitting the rattling pole. Now I am closer to the end of the terrace I see ripples spilling over the edge.
I go on.
Drops of water rise from the surface; the lightning freezes them in mid-air. When the flashes stop, there is nothing but blackness curdling overhead. My hand is a blur; my skirt so wet that even the wind can’t lift it anymore.
I am near the dark mirror. It is moving back and forth – I wonder whether the building is shaking but the railing feels firm enough. Chips of ice jab into my face. I smell sulfur.
‘I know you,’ I shout.
I wonder what I will find when I look down. Who will I see? Myself? Anna? My brother? Someone else?
Rain runs down my spine. I am the coldest I have been since I was told my brother was missing. There are odd spots of warmth in the chill encasing me. I imagine it is the blood from my cut scalp. I welcome it. I want more.
I go on.
Now I see what the dark mirror is. It is an infinity pool, built to extend past the building, so it seems to topple into nothingness. The blackness is the water, reflecting the dark clouds overhead. Without a barrier to stop it, the wind rakes the surface, plucking up small waves into white peaks, hurling fine white spray, creating water structures which hang for long moments twisting in the grey air. The hard waves rock back and forth, higher and higher, spilling over the edge. The sulfurous smell is chlorine.
I lean over the dark shadows in the waves. I take a deep breath. I must go on, I think. I lean further.
A shout behind me. Not Devlin’s voice. A tall man with silver platinum hair walks, fast and sure-footed, to me. He catches my wrist just as the wind knocks me into the pool. I see myself hovering over the dark water, reflected endlessly in the reflections in the eyes of the figure in the dark water.
The man pulls me back, against him.
He says, ‘Not today, my little Ophelia.’
I rest my cheek on his sleeve and look to the shock on Devlin’s face. I sympathise with him. Nothing in the photos prepared you for the colour of Pietr’s hair.
Pietr helps me inside and tells Stefano to bring tea and blankets. The room is warm; piped water under all the floors, says Pietr. He sits beside me, holds my hand in both of his in a peculiarly European gesture and looks down at me without blinking. He is immaculately dressed, in dark suit and silk tie.
‘I was so sorry,’ he says in precise English, ‘about your loss.’
It takes me a moment to realise that he is talking about my father.
‘Thank you,’ I say in a rush to make up for my pause.
‘You look very well,’ he says, still holding my hand. He has the measured neutral tone of the internationally educated, of someone who is thinking carefully about his words but only because he can choose from four languages.
‘Better rested than the reports indicated,’ he says. There is the slight, heavier emphasis on the last letter that would always mark him as Central European.
I wait for a comment about my hair but his gaze doesn’t waver.
‘The last time I saw you,’ I say, ‘was Anna’s funeral.’
For a moment there is a sheen like glass over his face.
‘I don’t think she wanted to go on,’ I say. ‘After my brother.’
‘No.’ He presses my hand and stands.
I say, ‘This is John Devlin.’
Devlin comes across the room.
There is a notable silence before Pietr puts out his hand. ‘From the Embassy?’
‘My fame precedes me,’ says Devlin, shaking hands briefly.
‘Italy is small, signor.’ Pietr looks down at me. ‘We
all saw the photographs of your arrest. Naturally, even though we were sure the authorities would not be stupid for very long . . . ’ He stares at Devlin. ‘We were a little concerned.’ That clipping of the final letter, almost a “t” in the final “d”, makes him sound angry; even “little” has an ominous ring, the “t”s turned to compressed explosions. ‘We saw you in those photographs, Mr Devlin.’
‘I had passport difficulties,’ I say. ‘Mr Devlin was kind enough to help me with them.’
‘Yeah,’ says Devlin. ‘Don’t shoot me. I’m only the babysitter.’
They stare at each other.
‘Who should I shoot, Mr Devlin?’ says Pietr. ‘To treat a woman this way. And so soon after the death of her father. If you wish to punish someone for the father’s sins, Mr Devlin, you should punish me. I was his partner.’
‘All I was told,’ says Devlin, raising a palm, ‘was that an Italian citizen offered to vouch for her while her passport problems were sorted out. My job is to sit tight and wait further instructions.’
Pietr presses his lips together.
I say, ‘Pietr, it’s okay, really. It’s some bureaucratic bungle. If you can put me up for a few days . . . ’
As I touch his arm, the bracelet shows beneath my cuff. His eyes narrow, he is about to speak when I whisper ‘No’. He raises an eyebrow, his glance flicking up and down Devlin.
The door to the terrace springs back. As Devlin closes it, a fine grey spray drops like a curtain over the terrace. Cold shivers in.
‘The snow is coming,’ says Pietr, going to the drinks table.
Devlin raps his knuckles on the glass. ‘You’ve got bad cracking here.’ He bends. ‘And mould.’
‘Stefano will replace the panes,’ says Pietr without turning his head. ‘My mother thinks this is a folly.’ He smiles at me. ‘Like those imitation Greek villas on top of Californian cliffs. Swiss chalets in Argentine jungle. Green squares cut into land the colour of vultures.’
I smile back at him. ‘I’m sure Mr Devlin would like a drink.’
‘You’re charitable,’ says Pietr under his breath. He raises the decanter to Devlin.
‘No,’ says Devlin.
A gust of wind hits the house and the windows rattle.
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