The Savage Garden

by Mark Mills

  This recognition of his foolhardiness wasn't without its consolations. He was liberated, relieved of duties, no longer required to speculate about who and how and why, endlessly playing out imaginary scenarios in his mind, searching for the worst wherever he turned. He was free to enjoy the company of a man who had shown himself to be nothing but charming and civil.

  Harry had always scrubbed up well, which was fortunate, because when Adam went to wake him before lunch he was sprawled facedown on top of the covers, still in his clothes. He was also dribbling. Remarkably, only twenty minutes later he sashayed onto the terrace fresh-faced, clean-shaven and sparkle-eyed. His hair even bore the traces of a halfhearted stab at a side-parting.

  He arrived as the rest of them were taking their places at the table on the terrace.

  "Hi, hello, I'm Harry." Maurizio and Chiara both seemed a little overwhelmed by the violence of the handshake, Signora Docci not entirely displeased with the kiss he planted on her cheek.

  Chiara remarked on their close physical resemblance—the same dark coloring, the same jaw lines, same wide mouths.

  "Adam hates it when people say that. He thinks he's better- looking—taller and better-looking."

  "He is taller," said Maurizio.

  "I slouch."

  Harry straightened in his chair to make the point. Maurizio looked skeptical.

  "Okay, I also have bandy little legs. But at least they're not skinny. You won't ever catch Adam in a pair of shorts like these."

  "I can't deny it," said Adam, "I wouldn't be seen dead in a pair of shorts like those."

  The laughter set the tone for the meal. It was a pleasant affair, the conversation tripping along quite merrily, until Signora Docci asked Harry what he had thought of Florence.

  "Disappointing."

  "Disappointing?"

  "If I'm honest."

  "Don't feel you have to be," said Adam.

  Harry ignored him. "I don't know what I was expecting, something more romantic, I suppose. It's so bloody"—he searched for the word—"masculine."

  "Masculine?" From Chiara, this time.

  "Big, bold, brash . . . hard. I mean, take that cathedral. . ."

  "The Duomo," said Adam tightly, meaning "Shut up right now."

  "That's the one. Let's face it, it doesn't exactly have you reaching for a pen to scribble poetry."

  Adam noticed that Maurizio was smiling. Signora Docci and Chiara bristled defensively.

  "Many poets have written about Il Duomo," said Chiara.

  "Short poems, right?"

  Maurizio laughed, drawing a sharp look from his mother. "I know what Harry means," he said. "Florence is not like Siena, or Venice, or Padua. It is much more robust. I can imagine being disappointed."

  It was unfortunate that Chiara retaliated with mention of Florence's unrivaled artistic heritage, because on that subject Harry showed even less diplomacy. He had found the art a bit of a letdown too.

  "Really?" Signora Docci asked incredulously.

  "A bit."

  This proved to be something of an understatement. In Harry's humble opinion, the Renaissance marked a low point in the history of Western art. As with most of Harry's theories, the originality of the hypothesis coupled with his passionate conviction almost made up for the glaring flaws in his argument.

  He didn't deny that the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance had made great leaps in terms of representational realism, but he questioned whether this was progress, whether it made for better art. You could argue—and he did—that medieval art, with its distortions and disproportions and stylizations, was more real because it wasn't trying to trick the eye. Renaissance art, on the other hand, was devotedly illusionistic. In fact, the illusion had almost become an end in itself. The technical prowess of faking a sense of depth on a flat picture plane or rendering a human figure with near-photographic precision sometimes seemed more important to the artists than the subjects themselves, than the higher, sacred purpose their works were intended to serve. With a few notable exceptions, much of what he'd seen in the galleries and museums of Florence had left him cold. One of the exceptions was Michelangelo's statue of David in the Accademia.

  That, he had hated.

  A towering monument to man's mawkish fascination with himself, a triumph of form over content, style over substance, was how Harry described it. Where was the terror of a young shepherd boy about to take on the enemy's champion in single combat? The only sign of it Harry had been able to detect lay between David's legs. Fear, like cold, could do that to your penis, Harry explained considerately, for the benefit of the ladies. No, the "snake-hipped Narcissus" looked more like "some dim-witted teenager primping himself in front of a mirror before a big night out."

  Harry's views sparked a lively debate, just as he'd intended. There weren't many things he enjoyed as much as an intellectual scuffle. Unfortunately, red wine was one of them, and it was flowing freely throughout the main course—a potentially explosive combination.

  Adam judged his moment carefully. At the first signs of beady- eyed belligerence, he dragged Harry away on the pretext of showing him the memorial garden.

  No one seemed to mind when Harry asked if he could take his glass with him.

  Adam experienced none of the usual anticipatory thrill as they made their way down the path into the valley. He had felt defeated by the garden even before the matter of Emilio's death had laid siege to his thoughts. He gave Harry only the barest background, mentioning little more than the fact that Federico Docci had cast his wife as Flora, goddess of flowers.

  Harry stopped as they pushed through the gap in the yew hedge, the gloomy tunnel of trees stretching out before them. "Jolly spot," he said.

  He didn't speak again until they reached the open ground at the foot of the amphitheater. He looked up at the statue of Flora, the triumphal arch looming on the crest above her, then he turned, taking in the rest of the valley, the trees pressing in on the pasture.

  "What are you thinking?" asked Adam.

  "It's beautiful. But eerie."

  "What else?"

  "Is this a test?"

  "No."

  It wasn't a test, but he did want to see the place through Harry's eyes—afresh, for the first time. Maybe it would throw up something.

  "I need help," said Adam.

  "From me?"

  "I'm that desperate."

  Harry read off the inscription on the triumphal arch, pronouncing it incorrectly.

  "Fiore," said Adam. "It's Italian for 'flower.' "

  "As in Flora."

  "Exactly."

  "And that's her—the statue?"

  "That's the goddess."

  "Is it a likeness?"

  "There's no way of knowing, there are no portraits of Flora. I think it might be, though." It was a feeling that had crept up on him in the past few days. Her face didn't fit the template of the time. The features didn't quite accord with the bland, polished refinement of the late sixteenth century. The mouth was too strong, the nose too pronounced, the chin too square. She was too real.

  They climbed the slope beside the amphitheater, stepping onto the second level. Harry handed Adam his wineglass and lit a cigarette for both of them. He then proceeded to examine the statue from every angle.

  "Well, it's not my kind of thing," he said eventually.

  "I guessed as much."

  "But it does have a certain quality."

  "You think?"

  "Uh-huh." "What?"

  "Well, she's hot."

  "Hot?"

  "Horny. Look at her."

  Harry slid his hand up the statue's leg, just as Antonella had done at their first meeting. This time was different, though; Harry's hand kept going, working its way right up into Flora's groin.

  "Yep, she's wet."

  "Oh for God's sake, Harry."

  "Well, look at her, see how she's twisted that way then back—all coy but not really."

  "It's a classic pose."

  "
Oh, a classic pose," mocked Harry. "All I'm saying is I wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of that look."

  Adam glanced up at Flora's face, the slightly pursed lips, her wide-set almond eyes gazing off into the distance. . . .

  But where exactly?

  Adam's head snapped round, then back to Flora. She was looking down the slope and across the vale toward the wood, with its towering trees and its dense undergrowth of laurel. They presented an impenetrable screen, but he had a pretty good idea of what lay beyond.

  "Stay here," he said.

  He lost his footing as he hurried down the slope, stumbling badly, painfully. Gathering himself on the level ground, he called up to Harry. "Tell me where she's looking."

  "What?"

  "Where she's looking. Tell me exactly where she's looking."

  He hurried off, hobbling. He had done something to his ankle. It wasn't hurting yet, but he could tell it would be, and soon.

  When he reached the tree line, he turned and shouted, "Here?"

  Harry gesticulated and yelled back, "Up a bit. Bit more. That's right. No. Back a touch. I don't know. There. Yes. There."

  Adam stripped off his shirt and slung it over the nearest branch. Looking deep into the woods, he set his sights on a distant tree in direct line with the statue and his shirt. He kept his eyes tightly fixed on the tree as he pushed his way through the overgrown laurel. It was a struggle, like walking against the current in a lively river.

  When he reached the tree, he turned. He could just make out his shirt hanging from the branch.

  He had to be exact, which meant removing his trousers and hanging them from a branch. When he slipped his shoes back on he noticed that his ankle had already started to swell.

  Singling out another tree that lay along the same axis, he set off through the laurel. The tight-packed bushes clawed at him, grazing his bare skin. Once or twice he received a sharp jab in the thigh or midriff, enough to stop him momentarily in his tracks, but he didn't take his eyes off the tree until he reached it.

  Fortunately, he wasn't required to remove his underpants as another marker; the next tree was close enough to the border of the wood for him to judge the rest of the journey by eye.

  He turned and gave one final check that he was still on target with Flora's line of sight, and then he stepped into the open.

  He was at the northern fringes of the glade of Hyacinth, and there—directly in his path—stood Apollo atop his high, conical mountain, his arm outstretched toward Hyacinth, prostrate on his plinth on the other side of the clearing.

  It came to him suddenly, setting his pulse racing.

  Apollo was the key that unlocked the mystery.

  He closed his eyes and hurried around the garden in his head,

  each element of Federico Docci's design unraveling, taking on new meaning, telling another story, one buried just beneath the surface.

  A couple of sharp expletives brought him to his senses. It was Harry emerging from the wood, barging through the laurel, holding his wineglass aloft. Impressively, he seemed to have spilled barely a drop.

  Harry's gaze roamed the glade before coming to rest on Adam. "Jesus, Adam, look at you, standing there in your underpants and your shoes, all scratched to fuck. Is this where a Cambridge education gets you?"

  "You sound like Dad."

  "I'm beginning to understand how he feels."

  Adam seized Harry and hugged him close. "You're a genius, Harry."

  Harry patted his back and said, "There, there, the nice men in the white coats will be here soon."

  Adam laughed and released him. "It's not a memorial garden."

  "No?"

  "Or rather, it is." "Right."

  "Only, it isn't."

  "Okay, now I'm really quite worried."

  "It's both. It's a memorial garden and a confession."

  "A confession?"

  "To murder. He killed her. Federico killed her."

  "Who?"

  "Flora."

  "Not her—him. Who the fuck is Federico?"

  "Her husband. He killed her because she was having an affair."

  Harry took a sip of wine and nodded sagely. "Seems a little . . . excessive."

  Harry wasn't too happy about being dispatched into the wood to recover Adam's trousers, but he perked up a bit when they arrived back at the amphitheater and Adam pointed out the anagram on the triumphal arch and the nine circles of Dante's Inferno.

  Harry was on board, a happy passenger, by the time they reached the grotto. In fact it was here, standing before the story of Daphne and Apollo, that Harry figured out Federico Docci's chosen method of murder: poison.

  It took them more than an hour to complete the circuit, hampered by Adam's injured ankle as well as their protracted discussions.

  They only left the garden when they were both satisfied that the new hypothesis held.

  Nearing the villa, Harry stopped suddenly and turned to Adam. "That's got to be the weirdest thing we've ever done together."

  "Weirder than when we nipped over the back wall to spy on Mrs. Rogan?"

  "Okay, second weirdest."

  Harry managed to make it through to the evening before reneging on his promise not to break the news about the garden.

  Maurizio and Chiara were long gone by then, but Antonella had shown up for dinner, arriving directly from work with a leg of cured ham—a gift from her grateful boss, because of the lucrative order they'd just received from one of the American buyers.

  Maria sliced ham from the bone and they washed it down with vintage champagne. Cases of the stuff had been delivered that afternoon and it was in need of "testing" before the party, said Signora Docci. Even Maria permitted herself a glass.

  Adam raised a toast to Antonella and the fact that her creations would soon be on sale in New York.

  "But what if they don't sell?" she asked with a pained expression.

  "That's easy," said Harry, "they won't order any more." He then called for another toast. "To Adam. He's also got some good news." "Do I?"

  "You know you do."

  "Harry—"

  "Stop bleating and tell them."

  "The garden . . ." guessed Antonella.

  "There's more to it than meets the eye," said Harry. "Much more."

  Antonella was smiling at Adam. "You solved the rest of it?"

  Signora Docci leaned forward in her chair. "The rest of it?"

  Antonella turned to her grandmother. "He told me a bit already."

  "Traitor."

  "I don't share everything with you, Nonna."

  "That's clear to me now."

  They turned their eyes on Adam, waiting.

  "I couldn't have done it without Harry."

  "It's true," confirmed Harry, "he couldn't."

  Signora Docci raised her hand abruptly. "Don't say. I want to be there when you say. In the garden."

  "Nonna, we're about to eat and it's getting dark."

  "Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow morning before you go to work."

  "How will you get down there?"

  Signora Docci slapped the top of her thighs. "On these of course. And I have two strong young men to help me."

  "But I want to know now."

  "Then you can ask—once I've gone to bed."

  But when Signora Docci made her way upstairs after the meal, Antonella didn't ask. She chose to live with the anticipation for a while longer. Harry assured her she wouldn't be disappointed.

  The three of them took their glasses and made for the lower terrace. They lay on the grass under the stars and talked about films they had seen, books they had read, life in England, life in Italy, and even—until Adam told Harry to shut up—Crystal Palace Football Club's recent promotion to the newly formed national Division Four.

  Adam felt good, stretched out there on the grass, basking in the soft night air and the conversation, the quiet satisfaction of the breakthrough on the memorial garden washing over him. Only now that it was lifted could he appreciat
e the true load he'd been shouldering since that first visit to the dark valley down the hill. The place had unsettled him immediately, infected him. It had consumed most of his waking hours, and many of his sleeping ones too. Life had gone on, but it had unfolded around him in a half-haze. He had lived it at one remove.

  Now that the spell was broken, things were falling back into focus. Even Antonella appeared different: sharper, crisper, more distinct. And more desirable than ever. He wished, a little guiltily, that Harry wasn't there, that he was on his own with her. He even flattered himself that she was thinking the same thing.

  It was annoying that she'd arrived by car; it denied him the opportunity of walking her home. He hadn't forgotten that it was while strolling through the garden with her on just such a night that she had kissed him. He could still recall the soft cushion of her full lips against his own, and the way her hand had snaked around his waist and drawn him against her.

  He reached for his cigarettes and caught sight once again of the chapel down the end of the terrace, lurking at the periphery of his vision, as it had been all evening. He had managed to put it from his mind before. This time he was less successful. While Harry prattled on to Antonella about the neglected heroines of early blues music, Adam found his thoughts turning to Emilio's bones sunk beneath the flagstone floor. A life cut short by two bullets—one to the chest, one to the head—Chiara had been very specific.

  He couldn't help thinking that there was something unnatural about this level of detail. Chiara could only have heard it from Maurizio, but what kind of man would describe his own brother's murder with such clinical precision? And the other details too: the shot fired into the gramophone player, the Germans glancing at their abandoned weapons. It smacked of a piece of theater hatched in the mind of a playwright. Like a bad lie, it was weighed down with unnecessary information.

  He had made the same mistake himself the summer before, when, driving too fast, trying to impress his friends, he'd lost control of his mother's car, crumpling the Morris's fender against a tree. He had told his mother that he'd swerved to avoid a springer spaniel in the road. "Welsh or English?" she had inquired with that knowing look of hers.