by Mark Mills
He was honest enough to know that a more pragmatic consideration was also pushing him toward a study of the garden over the villa: the file prepared by Signora Docci's father. It offered a model from which to work, a template for his own thesis, a document easily massaged, expanded, made his own with the minimum of effort. It was short, and a tad dry, but thorough in its scholarship. There were numerous references in both the text and the footnotes, most of them relating to books or original documents to be found in the library. It would take a few days, but all of these would have to be checked out first, their suitability as potential padding material carefully assessed.
Retreating to the cool of the villa, he found Maria prowling around, marshaling a couple of browbeaten cleaning ladies and handing out chores to Foscolo, the saturnine handyman.
Adam set up shop in the study. Light and lofty, it occupied the northwest corner of the building just beyond the library, with French windows giving onto the back terrace. Unlike the other rooms of the villa, which were plainly and sparsely furnished, the study was crowded with furniture, paintings, objects and books— as if all the incidental clutter conspicuously absent from the rest of the villa had somehow gathered here.
On the wall beside the fireplace was the small portrait panel of Federico Docci that Signora Docci had mentioned to him the previous day. It showed a handsome man of middle years whose sharp features were only just beginning to blunt with age. He was represented in half length, seated in a high-backed chair, his hands resting lightly on a book, and through a window in the wall behind him, hills could be seen rolling off to a distant ocean. Painted in three-quarter face, there was something fiercely imperious in the tilt of his head and the set glare of his dark, slanting eyes. And yet the suspicion of a smile played about his wide and generous mouth—a contradiction that seemed almost self-mocking, attractively so.
A vast glazed mahogany cabinet filled the wall behind the desk. Its lower shelves were given over to books, the majority of them relating to the Etruscans. A large section was devoted to anthropological texts. These were in a variety of languages—Italian, French, English and Dutch—and were decades old. The upper shelves of the cabinet were home to all manner of strange objects, mostly of an archaeological nature: clay figurines, bronze implements, bits of pottery, fragments of stone sculpture and the like. On the very top shelf were two skulls, their hollow eye sockets deep pools of shadow behind the glass.
Adam opened the cabinet door and, with the aid of some steps from the library, found himself face to face with the macabre display. They weren't human skulls, but they weren't far off—primates of some kind. Although similar in size, there were distinct differences. The skull on the left was narrower and less angular. Its partner had longer canines, jutting cheekbones and a bony crest rising across the skull from ear to ear, met at its apex by two ridges running from the sides of the eye sockets.
Adam reached out and ran his hand over the skull, his fingers tracing the cranial ridges.
That's when he heard the footsteps.
He turned to see Maria enter the study from the terrace. The reproachful cast of her eye would have driven him from the library steps if he hadn't already been descending.
"Very interesting," he said pathetically, nodding behind him.
"Would you like some coffee?"
"Yes, thank you."
Maria stopped and turned at the door to the library. "Orango-tanghi," she said, her eyes flicking to the skulls.
"Oh," he replied in English. "Right."
The moment she was gone, he reached for the dictionary.
He hadn't misunderstood her.
Despite her offer of coffee, Maria barely concealed her relief at not having to feed him at lunchtime. Toward three o'clock, she appeared in the study with a summons from the lady of the house.
He found Signora Docci sitting in her bed, patting at her face and neck with a wet flannel. A typewriter sat beside her on the bed, an unfinished letter in its jaws.
"I've asked Foscolo to prepare a bicycle for you," she said. "To spare you the walk every day."
"Thank you, that's very kind."
"I don't want your death on my conscience, what with this heat."
She asked him how his work was going, and he came clean about his dilemma, now resolved.
"You like the house?"
"I do. A lot."
She looked on approvingly as he spelled out why exactly. He asked her who the architect had been.
"No one really knows. There is a reference somewhere to a young man, a Fulvio Montalto. My father looked into it, but he could find no records. It is as if he just disappeared. If it was him, he never built another villa. A sadness, no? A great talent."
"Yes."
"I'm glad you think so. The house does not speak to everybody. Crispin never felt much for it."
Adam hesitated, still not accustomed to hearing Professor Leonard referred to as Crispin.
"No," he said, "he hardly mentioned it."
"What did he mention?"
"Well, the memorial garden, of course."
He could see from her expression that this wasn't what she'd intended by her question.
"He said you were old friends."
"Yes, old friends."
"He also said your husband died some years back. And your eldest son was killed during the war."
"Emilio, yes. Did he say how exactly?"
"Only that the Germans who took over the villa were responsible."
"They shot him. In cold blood. Up there. Above us." Her voice trailed off.
He wanted to ask her why and how and if that was the reason the top floor was off-limits. The pain in her drawn eyes prevented him from doing so.
"You don't have to say."
"No, you might as well hear it from me."
She spoke in a flat, detached monotone, which clashed with the sheer bloody drama of her story. She told him how the Germans had occupied the villa, installing their command post on the top floor because of the views it afforded them over the surrounding countryside. She and her husband, Benedetto, were obliged to move in with Emilio and his young wife, lsabella, who lived in the big house on the slope beyond the farm buildings.
Relations with the new tenants were strained at times, but generally civil. The Germans were respectful right from the first, giving them fair warning to vacate the villa, suggesting that all works of art be stored out of harm's way, and even assisting in this exercise. At no point were the stores stripped, the cattle slaughtered, the wine cellar pillaged. The estate was allowed to function as normal, just so long as it provided the occupiers with what little they required for themselves.
On the day in question—an unbearably hot July day—the inexorable Allied advance rolling up from the south finally reached San Casciano, and the Germans began moving out of the villa. All day, trucks came and went to the sounds of the fierce battle raging just up the road. Her younger son, Maurizio, arrived from Florence to be with his family for yet another awkward handover to yet another occupying force. At nightfall, though, San Casciano was still firmly under German control. That's why the family was surprised when, just as they were finishing dinner, they heard the sound of gunfire coming from up at the villa.
It was Emilio who insisted on going to investigate, more out of curiosity than anything, because the gunfire was accompanied by the unmistakable sounds of music and laughter. Maurizio agreed to go with him, along with a third man, Gaetano the gardener, who had also heard the ruckus.
Approaching the villa from the rear, they saw furniture being tossed from the top floor windows, splintering on the terrace below. Incensed, Emilio stormed inside and upstairs, Maurizio and Gaetano hot on his heels. Most of the Germans were gone. Only two remained, left behind to burn documents and destroy equipment so that it wouldn't fall into Allied hands. Fueled by drink, they had overstepped their orders, using the frescoes for target practice and hurling furniture out of the windows—pathetic acts of destruction that en
raged Emilio.
A fierce argument ensued. If Emilio hadn't pulled out his pistol and fired a warning shot, it might have ended there, with heated words. But it didn't. The Germans opened fire, killing Emilio before fleeing.
"That's terrible."
"Yes, it was. Just a few more hours and we would have come through the war untouched."
There were questions Adam wanted to ask, but Signora Docci steered the conversation back to Professor Leonard, saying that he had shown himself to be a very good friend in the aftermath of the tragedy.
"How did you meet him?"
"Through my father. They worked together on an archaeological excavation. Well, not together exactly. It was an Etruscan site near Siena. My father was in charge; Crispin was one of the young people who did all the work—a student, like you, in Italy for the summer. It was the year your Queen Victoria died. In 1901. We were very aware of it here. She often came to Florence. Papa even had the honor of meeting her once." She paused. "Anyway, he brought Crispin home one day, out of pity, I think, as you would a stray dog. He was so poor and so thin and so very intelligent. He stayed with us for a month that first summer."
She smiled, remembering.
"My sisters were very excited about him being here. Not me, though. I was very distant with him, very . . . haughty. And he completely ignored me. As you can imagine, this was very annoying. I thought he was just like my father, lost in his books and his artifacts, blind to the living world. Later I discovered he knew exactly what he was doing."
"What was he doing?"
"Playing. The dance, he called it."
"The dance?"
"Courting, of course."
"Really? I always thought—" He broke off.
"What?"
He hesitated. "I don't know, that he was, you know . .."
"Yes . . . ?"
"Well, a homosexual."
An incredulous expulsion of air gave way to helpless laughter. The application of the flannel to her mouth muffled the sound.
When she eventually collected herself, Adam said, "I'll take that as a 'no.'"
"No," she said emphatically. "No."
"He was never married, though, was he?"
"There were lots of opportunities. He was very handsome."
Adam couldn't picture it, but that didn't mean anything.
"He has high praise for you," said Signora Docci.
"Me?"
"You sound surprised."
"I am."
"You're here, aren't you? Doesn't that tell you something?"
"Should it?"
"It's many years since I first suggested the garden to Crispin—as a subject for one of his students, I mean. He said he would wait for the right person."
This didn't fit with what the professor had told him: that the offer of the garden had only recently come from her. He wondered which of them was lying. And why?
"Apparently, you have a good mind, an enquiring mind." She must have seen him squirm. "You're not comfortable with flattery?" "No."
"He also said you were extremely lazy." "That's more like it."
This brought a laugh from Signora Docci.
He was able to put in a couple more productive hours in the library, despite the distraction.
Why had Professor Leonard not even hinted at the true nature of his relationship with Signora Docci? Unless he had completely misunderstood her, everything pointed to some kind of love affair between the couple. Maybe love affair was overstating it. In 1901 that probably meant little more than an unchaperoned stroll through the gardens, or a charged look across a crowded room, although somehow he doubted it. Signora Docci's few words on the subject had shown the strain of many more left unspoken. And she had almost choked herself laughing when he'd cast aspersions on Professor Leonard's sexuality.
He found himself speculating on what had happened to keep them apart. It was probably doomed from the start—a penniless student and a young heiress. Much would have been expected of any potential spouse of Signora Docci. He would have been well vetted, the future of the estate a prime consideration. And a young foreigner with an interest in Etruscan archaeology would hardly have offered much comfort in that department.
These were, of course, wild imaginings, but he let his mind roam the possibilities until it was time to leave.
Foscolo, the rock-ribbed handyman, insisted on being present when Adam took possession of the bicycle. He had a big square head planted on a small square body, and his iron-gray hair was clipped to a brush. There wasn't much to say on the subject—it was an old black bicycle with a wicker basket—so Adam shook Foscolo's knuckled hand and thanked him. This wasn't good enough for Foscolo, who wanted confirmation that all was in working order. Adam dutifully cycled around the courtyard a few times for his audience of one and declared the brakes to be "eccellente." Foscolo grunted skeptically and raised the saddle an inch or two.
Peddling back to San Casciano, Adam deviated from the main track, exploring. The dusty trail petered out in an olive grove. It wasn't a totally wasted detour. He found himself presented with an impressive view of Villa Docci. From afar, the shuttered, silent rooms of the top floor seemed even more striking, more ominous.
His thoughts turned to Signora Docci's account of her eldest son's death at the hands of the Germans. They also turned to Fausto's curious, half-mumbled comment on the same subject just the evening before: "Cost dicono."
So the story goes.
EITHER HE WAS SO DISTRACTED THAT HE DIDN'T HEAR her footfalls, or she deliberately set out to creep up on him. Probably a bit of both.
He was standing at the head of the valley, on the brow above the amphitheater, staring up at the triumphal arch. A warm light from the lowering sun was bleeding through the trees, flushing the garden amber. Even the dense wood of dark ilex beyond the arch seemed somehow less forbidding.
It was here, just inside the tree line, that the spring was located—a low artificial grotto housing a trough of rusticated stone. Under normal circumstances, water would have filled the trough before overflowing into a channel that ran beneath the arch to the top of the amphitheater, where it divided.
He was standing astride this channel, staring up at the arch, when he heard her voice.
"Hello."
She was off to his left, beneath the boughs of a tree. Her long black hair was tied back off her face in a ponytail and she was wearing a sleeveless cotton dress cinched at the waist with a belt.
"You haven't moved since I first saw you," she said in accented English, stepping toward him.
He thought at first it was the dappled shade playing tricks with the light, but as she drew closer he could see that her smooth, high forehead was indeed marked with scars. One was short and sat just beneath the hairline in the center. From here, another cleaved a diagonal path all the way to her left eyebrow.
"I thought maybe the garden had a new statue," she said.
Adam returned her smile. "I'm sorry, I was thinking."
He held her dark, almond eyes, conscious of not allowing his gaze to stray to her forehead. Not that she would have cared, he suspected. If she'd wanted to conceal the disfigurement she could quite easily have worn her hair differently, rather than drawing it straight back off her face.
"You must be Adam."
"Yes."
"I'm Antonella."
"The granddaughter, right?"
"She told you about me?"
"Only that you were harmless."
"Ah," she replied, a crooked gleam in her eye, "that's because she thinks she knows me."
She craned her long neck, looking up at the inscription on the lintel of the arch.
"What were you thinking?" she asked.
"It's not symmetrical."
"No?"
"The decorative panels at the side—look—the diagonals run the same way."
It was hard to make out—the stone was weathered and stained with lichen—but there was no mistaking the anomaly.
"I neve
r noticed before," she said quietly. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know. Probably nothing." He glanced over at her. "It's a bit overblown, don't you think?"
"Overblown?"
"The arch. For the setting, I mean."
"I don't know the word."
"Overblown. It means . . . pretentious."
"Pretenzioso? Maybe. A bit," she said. "You don't like it?"
"No, I do. It's just—"
He broke off, aware that he was in danger of sounding a bit, well, overblown himself.
"No, tell me," she insisted. "I think I know what you mean."
The triumphal arch was a classical architectural form that had been revived during the Renaissance, he explained, but so far he'd found no precedent for this one in any of the other gardens that he'd researched. Moreover, its inclusion seemed at odds with the discreet symbolism and subtle statements of the rest of the cycle.
Maybe Antonella was being polite, but she asked if he had any other insights he was willing to share with her. He should have confessed it was early days still, but the prospect of a leisurely stroll in her company overrode these thoughts.
The amphitheater that fell away down the slope behind them was not exclusive to Villa Docci, he explained, although it was narrower and more precipitous than the one in the Sacro Bosco, the Sacred Wood, at Bomarzo near Rome. Interestingly, Pier Francesco Orsini had also dedicated that garden to his deceased wife, Giulia Farnese, although the parallels stopped there. The memorial garden at Villa Docci was an exercise in restraint compared to the riotous imagination on display in the Sacro Bosco, with its mausolea, nymphaea, loggias and temples, and its stupefying array of bizarre creatures carved from solid rock: sirens, sphinxes, dragons, lions, a giant turtle, even an African war elephant holding a dead soldier in its trunk.