The Blind Contessa's New Machine

by Carey Wallace

  Relentless, Carolina circled the close space, her open palms brushing the walls, the chairs, the faces of the desks. But from mercy or fear, she didn’t pull the chairs away to reach under them.

  Instead, she waited.

  One by one, the dark minutes rolled after one another. Then the faintest of sounds: a scrape, a breath.

  “I can hear you,” Carolina said.

  Then she turned and left.

  Spring arrived by water. Rain tapped at her windows and capered on the roof. Ice melted into streams that trickled down the face of the house or dropped in long falls from the window ledges. The yard, which had been silent all winter, was suddenly alive with voices. The cook scolded the laundress, the boys, and the geese. The young men sang obscene songs that seemed to have hundreds of verses. The gardener chuckled at the children’s clumsy attempts at cruelty.

  Through the window, Carolina could feel the sun on her skin and mark its progress as the light climbed from the floor onto her bed, toyed with her fingers, brushed a cheek, then fell with its full weight over her body before it crept away each afternoon. All winter, the weak sun and the moon had been one and the same to her. Neither was strong enough to dispel her sense that she always moved through the same long night. But now the sunlight divided her life back into days, and the constant sound of other human voices proved to her again and again that she was not, as her blindness sometimes whispered, the first person in the world.

  And her heart, which she could have believed had been snuffed out along with her sight, began to stir. Still stiff with loss, it flinched from the threat of love, retreating immediately at the thought of her father’s voice, Turri’s questioning gaze, or the visits Pietro still made to her room each day. He arrived in the mornings, sometimes carrying her breakfast tray, and rattled on with idle gossip or small emergencies around the house until his limited collection of topics ran out. Finally, he would lapse into silence while Carolina searched for something to add, unnerved by the fact that he could be looking at her hands, or her face, or out the window, and she had no way to know it. Almost immediately, though, that unease would be overcome by her new and constant fear—that anything she could not hear might have disappeared. The fear was so strong that when Pietro fell silent for too long, she imagined him swallowed up by the same shadows that had taken her sight. At these moments, filled with remorse, she reached for him with an urgency that only confused and disturbed him. Love, in this uncharted darkness, was too much to ask. But under the touch of the spring sun, her heart did begin to yearn for old comforts.

  A few weeks after the arrival of spring, while the rest of the house was sleeping, she descended the staircase and slipped out the front door. Night poured over her, heavy with dew and turned dirt, the sweet bite of tulips and hyacinth, the weight of the whole dark sky bent low to kiss the curve of the earth.

  She pulled the door shut behind her and kicked off her slippers. Then she stepped onto the flagstone walkway, one foot on stone and one in wet grass. She walked this way for about twenty paces, until the path ended at the road that ran past Pietro’s home, separating it from the pine forest beyond. Carolina listened for a moment, then darted across, stopping when her skirts brushed the tall grass on the opposite side. She reached for the stake that should have risen to the height of her hip, right at hand: the first of the sticks and string she had planted that fall to lead her back to her lake.

  It wasn’t there.

  Carolina gave her head a little shake and set her jaw. Then she knelt in the dewy grass, her arms sweeping the soft new growth in wide arcs, like a child making an angel in the snow.

  Still nothing. She crept farther, her knees printed with the impressions of sticks and grass, her gown and robe soaked. Luckless, she stood.

  Then she strode, palms outstretched, into the darkness. After a few paces, her bare foot twisted on a piece of wood. When she bent to retrieve it, she felt the familiar gardener’s string, tied with her own knot. She dropped the stake and fed the string through her fingers. Another post, unmoored, rose into her hands without resistance.

  Tears welled in her eyes. She stepped forward unsteadily on the uneven ground, guided by the lengths of coarse string. A third loose stake rose from the earth, and a fourth. Both were muddy, and wet leaves clung to them. For all she knew, the line could have been dragged hundreds of feet from the path she had marked. But when she pulled on the next length of twine, it didn’t yield.

  “Please, please,” she said aloud as she went forward, following the thread. It ended at a fifth stake, still fixed in the wet earth. Carolina knelt, covered the damp wood with both her hands, and laid her forehead on her knuckles. Then she straightened and followed the string to the next stake, and the next, on through the forest.

  The path she had marked had been clear in the fall, but winter and spring had crossed it with broken branches, washed parts of it away to shallow gulches, and filled others with deep puddles. By the time Carolina made her way through the woods and around the lake, her hands were bleeding and her feet were numb. Her wet robe clung to her legs and belly.

  The string ran out at the last stake she had planted, on the water’s edge directly below her cottage. She let go of the twine and stepped gingerly down the bank, where she squatted to rinse her hands in the freezing water. Then she stood and walked the few paces to her house by memory.

  She awoke to a gentle touch on her cheek. It rested there for a moment, then began to trace the curve of her face to the corner of her eye. Smiling, she raised her hand to push it away. Her fingers fumbled against the heavy wings of a moth, which went frantic with terror. For a moment, the insect’s strange body beat against her eyelid before it came to its senses and rose out of reach. Too late, Carolina hid her face among the velvets, but fear drained quickly from her heart as the familiar room took shape around her in her mind: the fireplace still black with Christmas fire, the wooden chair at the small table, the square of light she could feel clearly, falling on her bare shoulder.

  But a window must be broken, if the moth had flown in.

  Carolina rose on her knees, located the windowsill—and found her investigation stopped short by one of her scarves, which had been pinned neatly into place. Not only that, but the window beyond the scrap of silk was open: she could hear the woods chatter and breathe beyond, and feel some small wind, more like a sigh than a breeze. It was impossible that her father hadn’t shut the house for the winter. Who had opened it?

  Toying with this mystery, she twisted back amid the velvets. At the foot of the couch, something crashed to the floor: a bowl, maybe, filled with marbles or shells, which skittered over the wooden floor all the way to the far corners.

  Outside, from the lakeshore, a sharp voice called, “Who’s there?”

  Carolina laughed out loud. Then she pulled her blanket up over her bare chest. “Turri?” she said.

  Moments later, steps rang on the cottage stairs. The door rattled.

  “Have you been staying here all winter?” Carolina asked.

  “I wish,” Turri said.

  He was the first person she had spoken to outside her home since she lost her sight. For a moment, shyness paralyzed her. Then she raised her eyes to what she guessed must be his face.

  “I’m much taller than you think,” Turri said. “That’s the third button of my shirt.”

  Carolina lifted her eyes higher.

  “My Roman nose,” he said.

  She smiled, and tried again.

  “There,” he said. He fell silent.

  A chair scraped along the floor. “Is this what the string and sticks were for, then?” he asked.

  She nodded. Again, silence. Nothing could tell her if he was staring into her blind eyes, or gazing out at the lake. She frowned.

  “Your sight has gone?” he asked gently.

  “It’s like light,” she said. “Moving beyond a heavy curtain. When it’s dark, nothing.”

  “I thought so when you didn’t come to the lake,�
�� Turri said. The chair creaked as he leaned forward, or back. “I wanted to send you something, but I couldn’t think what to send.”

  “Liza has been telling me lies about the pictures in your books,” Carolina told him.

  “That’s wonderful,” Turri said. “You should have her tell you as many lies as she can. I, for instance, have been building a flying machine. So as not to alarm our neighbors, I only use it after dark. Since the snow melted, I have spent the night in half a dozen trees.”

  “I wish you would take me,” Carolina said.

  “It only seats one,” Turri said. Then he relented: “But I could teach you how to fly it yourself.”

  Carolina shook her head and flattened her palms on the soft velvet.

  Outside, perhaps from the other side of the lake, someone called her name.

  Pietro. She realized again that she was naked.

  Turri had already risen. “I’ll be gone before he sees,” he said, speaking low.

  Then, silence. No step on the stairs, no click of the door, betrayed him, as if he really had risen through the roof in the grip of a flying machine.

  “Carolina!” Pietro shouted again, closer now.

  Hurried, solid footsteps crossed the damp grass and mounted the stairs. Pietro threw the door open. In a moment, his arms enveloped her, his hands cold, his breath hot, his chest and forehead wet. As he gathered her up, something smooth and round pressed into her ribs. Carolina reached for it and touched satin.

  “You left your shoes,” he said in explanation. “I brought them for you.”

  Without releasing her, he dropped the slippers on the floor beside the bed, then spread his hands wide over her bare flesh. He kissed both her cheeks and pressed her face to his neck. “A maid found them, but I came for you myself,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Carolina murmured.

  His breathing slowed and became deep. His hand tightened in her hair. He kissed the side of her face, her bare shoulders, the dust and salt in the hollow of her neck, and pushed her back into the pillows of her couch.

  Before she and Pietro even emerged from the pines, Carolina could hear that all the servants had spilled out into the front yard. Children laughed and shrieked in the throes of some game. Women murmured to one another. Men barked orders and others refused them with equal force.

  When the two of them stepped out of the forest, a great cry rose up and the crowd rushed close. Little hands pulled at her torn robe. Grown ones reached for her arms and waist and elbow. Like a stubborn horse, Carolina drew to a halt and turned her face against Pietro’s chest.

  Pietro laughed. “All right,” he said. “Stand back. Nothing is wrong. We’ve just come from a walk.”

  The babble of voices around them rose with questions and protests, but the hands fell away, leaving only Pietro’s. He had half carried her all the way from the lake, since her punished feet couldn’t support her weight without pain. Now he led her across the lawn, up the stone walk, and into the house. The door shut out the sounds of the servants and the birds, leaving them in sudden silence.

  Pietro took her hand and set it on the banister.

  “You know where you are?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Pietro lifted her hand again, this time to kiss it. “If you can walk through the woods,” he said reasonably, “you will come down to dinner from now on.”

  “It is another butterfly,” Liza said. “With wings like a tiger.”

  Over the course of the last hour, Liza had been relentlessly precise in her descriptions. Carolina, waiting for her to break into a fabrication, had been equally relentless in her demands.

  “And the page after that?” she asked, again.

  An almost indiscernible hesitation.

  Carolina held her breath, as she had as a child, stalking the valley’s half-tame rabbits across her lawn.

  “This one is a giant moth,” Liza said, and waited.

  It was a lie. The next page, Carolina knew with certainty, contained illustrations of a pair of butterflies with mottled green wings and pale blue bellies, so that they were equally invisible resting on a leaf or rising into the sky.

  “I remember that,” Carolina said quickly.

  “It is sitting on a man’s shoulder.” Then, with a certain pride of authorship: “It is as big as his head.”

  “What color is it?” Carolina asked.

  “It has black-and-white eyes on each wing. They are slanted like a cat’s. The wing tips are orange,” Liza added with relish.

  “That one was very beautiful,” Carolina said, feigning wistfulness. “What is it called?”

  “A giant cloudless emperor,” Liza said with authority.

  “And on the next page?” Carolina asked.

  “It is another giant,” Liza said, her bent toward deceit momentarily outstripping her imagination. “This one is carrying off an apple,” she continued, recovering. “It seems to have picked it from a tree.”

  “I think there was a whole section of giants there,” Carolina said, to prompt her.

  “There are three of them,” Liza agreed. “They are picking all kinds of fruits from an orchard. Lemons, apples, and plums. They are all blue, but one of them is bluer than the others.”

  “And on the next page?” Carolina asked.

  “They are butterflies the size of birds. They are landing on the statues in a square. You cannot see the ground for their wings. Each wing has an eye and they are all looking back at me.”

  “I wonder what we would do if they landed around the house?” Carolina asked.

  “We would pour oil on the grass and set it on fire,” Liza replied matter-of-factly.

  Carolina let that picture flicker in her mind for a moment, a wave of giant butterflies rising out of low flames.

  “And on the next page?” she said.

  “It is a tree in a forest,” Liza said, looking down at a page Carolina knew contained a portrait of a butterfly’s bulb-eyed, monster’s face, drawn ten times its actual size, with the enormous patterns of its gold-and-red wings spread like expensive wallpaper behind it. “But I don’t see any creature. No, here. They are very small, covering the trunk like mildew. Some of them might be missing wings.”

  “And on the next page?” Carolina asked, again.

  “Are there ghosts in this house?” Carolina asked.

  Pietro laughed. A fire roared in the salon grate, but one window was open to the spring afternoon. Scents of hyacinth, rain, and manure drifted through. Attracted by the fire’s crackle, Pietro had come to investigate, discovered his wife, and sat down with her on the couch that faced the wide mouth of the fireplace. He had caught both of her hands in one of his and was toying with her fingers on his leg.

  “Maybe of the little dog I had to kill, after the horse kicked it in the head,” he said. “I only hit his foot the first time, and had to shoot him again.”

  “I hear footsteps at night,” she said.

  “The servants are always working,” he said.

  “Not like this,” Carolina insisted. “They won’t answer when I speak to them.”

  “Maybe you have caught our thief,” he said. “Someone has been stealing the lemon liqueur.”

  “I don’t think so,” Carolina said.

  Pietro loosed her hands so that he could gather her up in his arms. He pulled her into his lap and kissed her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “Who cares if you can see?”

  “He has sent you a dress,” Liza announced from the doorway of Carolina’s room.

  “Pietro?” Carolina asked. She twisted on the seat at her dressing table, where she had been turning over pieces of her jewelry in her hands: the smooth enamel, the cool metal, the jagged peaks of the diamonds and the rough clusters of gems in their settings.

  Without answering, Liza flung the gown down on the bed in a great swoon of lace and fabric.

  Carolina rose and bent over to collect the dress. It was made of thin, stiff taffeta, the bodi
ce reinforced with boning. Lace circled the low-cut neck and decorated the cap sleeves. The skirt fell away into numberless layers.

  “It seems fine,” Carolina said. “What color is it?”

  “Gold,” Liza answered. Then a short pause, long enough to repent of the truth—or a lie. “No, I am wrong. It is blue, with red lace.”

  “That is enough, thank you,” Carolina said.

  “You will see,” Pietro said. “With the music and the dancing, I think you will be happy.”

  “It is a blue dress?” Carolina asked.

  “It is a red dress,” he said. “Red like wine in a glass. But the lace is blue.”

  Carolina frowned.

  “Did you want a blue dress?” he asked. “That is easy enough to do. You can have ten of them if you want. But I don’t know why the color should matter to you.”

  When she didn’t answer, he laughed at his own joke. In a crowd, others might have joined in out of pity for him, but they were the only two in her room.

  As the sound of his laughter faded, he took his wife in his arms and stroked her head. “Ah, Carolina,” he said. “I never know what to do.”

  The dance was hosted by the Rossi family, which owned one of the oldest villas in the valley. Every Rossi was quick to boast that this stone floor had been laid, or that thick wall had been raised, during the time of the Romans, but they never seemed to be in agreement about exactly which wall or floor. No one doubted the great age of their home, however, because it was such an unholy mess of architectural experiments. Great marble pillars in the classical style jutted into the sky, supporting nothing; beautiful stonework was slathered with cheap stucco; a small army of coy nymphs beckoned all the way up the drive, where a pair of forbidding tigers, twice as tall as any man, frowned down on the arriving guests.