This seemed impossible to Carolina. The kiss had unmoored her. It was easier for her to believe that the room had put out to sea than that the daily operations of the house continued around them as always.
But as if to prove his warning, a door rattled down the hall and footsteps approached.
Turri kissed her cheek and stood. “Write to me,” he said. “Tell me when you’ll be at the lake.”
“I can’t get out,” she told him. Looking up into darkness at a face she couldn’t see, it felt like saying a prayer.
The footsteps stopped in the door.
“Good morning,” Turri said.
Fabric whispered to itself as someone bowed or curtsied.
“May I bring you anything, Contessa?” a woman asked. Carolina recognized the voice as Dolce, one of the maids who served her dinners with Pietro.
“Oh, no,” Turri said. “I was just about to go.”
“Shall I show you out?” Dolce asked.
“Thank you,” Turri said. He bent over Carolina and kissed her hand. “Write me,” he said again. Then he crossed the room.
In the hall, a key clattered in the lock. Turri and Dolce exchanged thanks and good wishes. Then the door swung shut and the key rattled again. A moment later, Dolce returned to Carolina.
“Will there be anything else?” she asked.
“No, thank you, Dolce,” Carolina said.
She listened, but Dolce didn’t retreat. “What is it?” the old woman asked after a moment.
“It is a writing machine,” Carolina answered.
“A writing machine?” Dolce repeated.
Carolina nodded.
“What does it do?” Dolce asked.
“It writes,” Carolina said.
“That’s all?”
Carolina nodded again.
Dolce made a sound in her throat, unimpressed but tolerant, as if one of the boys had brought her a basket of windfall fruit instead of bothering to climb up in the high branches for the best specimens. “The Holy Father has a philosopher’s stone,” she offered. “It turns water into gold.”
“Can you sleep with your eyes open?” Pietro asked. He perched on the curved arm of the conservatory divan where Carolina nestled. She hadn’t moved from the spot since Turri left, hours earlier. She’d spent the afternoon adrift with the memory of his kiss, which returned to her each time with a new feeling: longing, desire, shame, and gratitude so deep she was afraid her heart might attract God’s attention by giving thanks when she ought to be making confession. Most of the time, the moment seemed like a dream. When it began to seem too real, hope paralyzed her or fear filled up her lungs.
“No,” she answered. For the first time since she had gone blind, she wished that she could see her husband’s eyes. Instead, she closed her own.
Pietro smoothed her hair. “But why would that be,” he said, “when the light can’t wake you now?”
“I don’t know,” Carolina murmured.
“It’s a question for science,” Pietro concluded.
He kissed the top of her head and went to the piano, where he played a few disconnected notes, and finished with a strong but clumsy major chord.
“They tried to teach me music,” he said, and laughed. “It was like teaching a dog to sing.” He played the first bars of a famous waltz, then let the left hand drop away but marched through to the close of the melody.
“Your violin player is all right?” he asked as the last notes died.
At the mention of this small kindness, Carolina’s heart lurched like a boat struck by a swell. “He’s wonderful,” she said, and sat up. “Thank you.”
“He’s very ugly,” Pietro told her. “But he plays as if no one can see him.”
As he spoke, he left the piano, passed the ledge of marble that hung over the fireplace, then stopped at the desk where Turri had set his machine.
“What is this?” he asked.
“What?” Carolina said.
A key rattled unsteadily against paper.
“Look at that!” Pietro exclaimed. “It makes a letter!”
“It’s a writing machine,” Carolina said.
Another key struck, this time more forcefully.
“How do you know which letter is which?” Pietro said.
“They are in order by the alphabet.”
“Aha!” Pietro said. A flurry of keystrokes followed. “I have spelled your name,” he announced after an interval. “With one extra letter: Casrolina. Where did you get this?”
“Turri,” Carolina said. “It is one of his experiments.”
“Turri,” Pietro repeated.
“This way I can write to my father,” Carolina said. “Or to our friends. I tried to write before, but the ink went everywhere.”
Another flurry of keystrokes. Then Pietro pushed the chair back, crossed the room to kiss her, and turned to go.
When he reached the door, she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“What did you write?” she asked.
“You have to guess!” he answered, and laughed.
When Carolina awoke that night, someone stepped lightly away from the side of her bed. Even with the deafness of sleep still fading from her ears, she knew how close they had been: so near it could have been their touch that woke her. She threw back the covers and sprang to her feet, but the footsteps were already outside, paused at the head of the stairs. When Carolina crossed her own threshold, they hurried down.
She rushed after them along the curve of the staircase, through the hall, to the dining room. By the time she reached it, they were already on the far side. A few steps more and they could easily have lost her, darting into the kitchen or the pantry. Instead, they seemed to wait until she had almost reached them. Then they opened the door to the cellar and plunged in.
Carolina hesitated at the top of the cellar stairs, held back by old fear of the dark, but her months spent in full night had robbed the fear of its power. She caught the worn railing and followed it down. On the hard-packed dirt of the cellar floor below, the footsteps no longer creaked and echoed. They were reduced to a faint padding and an occasional scrape, still unmistakable in the silence.
The only time Carolina had ever opened the cellar door, the cook had chased her away, defending her territory with all the sound and fury of the fowl that ruled the corners of the yard. Carolina had assumed that the space must be a single room, perhaps mirroring the shape of the kitchen, but as she followed the scuffle and slap of the footsteps, the chambers beneath the house seemed to run on and on. Her hands brushed rough walls, a row of bottles, a table strewn with tools. She stumbled on the raised stone thresholds of at least three rooms.
She guessed they must have crossed below the dining room, gone under Pietro’s office, and struck into the outer reaches of the house. As they pressed on, she began to wonder if perhaps they hadn’t already passed beyond the mansion’s foundations and entered some secret tunnel dug by one of Pietro’s ancestors a hundred years ago to smuggle lovers or other valuables.
Then the footsteps stopped. An inhuman groan split the darkness.
Carolina froze, her hands clenched at her sides, her mind black with fear, until a cool summer breeze touched her face, carrying a faint trace of lemon. Some part of the cellar had opened to the yard.
Carolina stepped forward and reached out. Her fingers caught a vine. Following its trail led her up a shallow set of stone stairs into the back garden. The footsteps vanished in the soft grass, leaving no hint as to whether they meant this latest adventure as a trick or an escape.
It was a little of both. For the first time since she discovered the front door locked, Carolina was free of the house—but she didn’t know if she could find her way back through the unfamiliar labyrinth of the cellar. The lure of freedom decided her. First she knelt to find the cellar door, which was set into the slope of the garden. She lifted it from the flowers it had fallen open on. With a brief shriek and a whimper, it dropped back into place. She yanked the old wo
od a few inches to make sure it would still swing free when she returned. It did.
The night was warm and in the heart of the garden the scent of lemon gave way to the heavy perfume of lilies, fainter rose, and mint. Carolina let her head drop back, remembering the stars.
Then she turned toward the house. She tramped a few steps through the invisible growth to the foundation. She laid one palm flat against the pebbled stucco, and then, using the house as a guide, she began to trace its outline, following the walls from the back garden, through the ancient lilacs that screened the side yard, to the front walk. She followed it out to the road, and darted across to the tall grass on the other side.
This was where she should have found the garden stakes that would lead her to her lake, but although she found the break in the grass where she had tramped out a path, she didn’t find the twine or sticks. She covered about twenty paces, bent low to touch the tall grass that marked the path on either side, but then the grasses dropped away, leaving her in a clearing with no hint of what direction to take. Beyond the clearing was the pine forest, small enough to cross if she knew the way, but large enough to disappear in if she was lost.
Behind her, grass rustled.
Then it rustled again. Another time, and the footsteps were unmistakable.
Carolina whirled where she stood.
“Contessa!” Giovanni cried, his boy’s voice high with the effort of controlling his fright. “Are you all right?”
Carolina laughed.
The footsteps stopped in the grass. “I didn’t know it was you,” Giovanni said, his pride wounded. “I thought it was a ghost, or a witch.”
“Giovanni,” Carolina said. “What are you doing out at this hour?”
The prospect of an intimate interview with the object of his young affection distracted Giovanni from asking her the same question. “I like to run at night,” he said. “If I run during the day, they throw things, because none of them can catch me.”
Carolina took a few experimental steps toward his voice. Giovanni hurried down, caught her elbow, and helped her back to the road at the crest of the hill.
“So you really are the fastest boy in the yard?” Carolina asked.
“That’s what I told you!” Giovanni exclaimed, stung by her doubt.
“Of course you did,” Carolina said, and added, to soothe him: “I never call for anyone else.”
“You could call them,” Giovanni said, feigning indifference, “if you didn’t care how soon a thing got there.”
Carolina crossed the dark road and stepped back onto the skirt of Pietro’s lawn.
“How far do you run?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Giovanni said. “Down the road and back. There are paths, in the forest.”
Carolina laid a hand on his wiry shoulder.
“How do you go back to the house?” she asked.
Giovanni didn’t even approach the front door. Instead, he led her diagonally across the lawn to the kitchen entry off the servants’ yard. The door was unlocked. He pulled it open with one sure motion and led her into the kitchen, through the dining room, to the foot of the stairs. There, for the first time, he hesitated.
Carolina squeezed his shoulder, then released it to reach for the railing.
“Thank you, Giovanni,” she said. “I can find my way from here.”
Giovanni gave a sharp, involuntary sigh. “It was such a beautiful evening,” he said wistfully.
The next morning, Carolina settled a single sheet of paper into the machine. Then she lifted a piece of Turri’s black paper and deftly checked which side was which. One face of the thin onionskin was smooth, but the other was dusty with soot. She placed the sooty side down on top of the other page in the machine, and set her hands on the delicate keys.
My dear father, she began.
When she had finished, she pulled the pages from the machine, set the black paper aside, and pulled the bell that rang in the servants’ quarters. Then she folded the letter into thirds and pushed it across the desk until it butted up against the foot of the candle Liza had brought her earlier. The letter in place, Carolina picked up the stick of sealing wax and ran it up the stalk of the candle until the wicks met and the wax burst into flame with a small gasp. She lowered the wax close to the lifted edge of the letter, pressed the edge down, and listened for the sound of falling drops. Once several fell, she blew the wick out, picked up the seal, and counted to ten before pressing its face into the warm wax.
“Yes?” Liza said from the door of Carolina’s room.
“Cut some of the lilies by the cellar and the roses near the kitchen door,” Carolina said. “And take them to my father with this.” She held out the letter.
Liza retrieved it far more quickly than Carolina had thought she could, judging by the distance Carolina had guessed lay between them.
“Shall I send Giovanni?” Liza asked.
“No,” Carolina said. “Send Giovanni to me.”
She didn’t hear a sound from Liza until a stair creaked halfway down the first flight.
Then Carolina turned back in her chair, picked up another sheet, replaced the black paper, and began a second letter.
Carolina had only taken a few breaths of the night air when Turri pulled her into the shadow of the white roses that had almost overgrown the kitchen door.
“There’s a light on,” he whispered.
“A light?” she said. “Where?”
In reply, he kissed her. Answering heat flashed through her so quickly that it made her dizzy.
“In the front of the house?” she whispered when he released her. “It’s only Pietro in his room.”
“It’s not a lamp,” Turri said. “More like a candle. In the back, the corner window.”
Carolina thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I couldn’t stand to wait at home, so I sat by your lake until midnight,” Turri told her. “You have a perfect moon on the surface, and a pair of loons who smash it to pieces every time something frightens them.”
This time Carolina kissed him. When she let go, he made a small sound of recognition in the back of his throat, as if he had just grasped the results of some long running experiment.
“Take me there,” she told him.
Turri shepherded her quickly across Pietro’s lawn and into the pines, pulling her back when she took a false step, his clothes and skin breathing a spice she didn’t recognize. Under his touch, Carolina’s dreams seemed to overrun the boundaries of sleep. The night forest around them, which usually lived in her mind as black shadow and scraps of sky, had turned bright as day, the branches crowded with white blossoms one moment, ablaze the next with blue and orange flames. The stars beyond the branches struggled to find their balance, reeling crazily, some burning twice as bright as she’d ever seen, some flaring out.
“You know the way?” she asked, pausing to catch her breath.
Turri stopped beside her. He folded their hands together over her belly and pressed his cheek against hers.
“I’ve been this way a hundred times,” he said. “When I can’t sleep I stand in the woods and watch your lights.”
“But I don’t use any lights,” she said.
“I know,” Turri answered.
When they reached her cottage, he settled her hand on the weathered railing and let her climb the steps alone. Inside, the familiar smell of the lake, faint smoke from the fireplace, all the mingled perfumes she had worn among the velvets as a child, brought tears to her eyes. She turned back, suddenly lonely for Turri’s touch. But he had stopped somewhere and gone silent.
“Where are you?” she asked the darkness.
For a long moment, no one answered. Then a hand turned her face up to his. Shaking like a branch in the rain, he kissed her mouth, her ear, her eyes.
When she woke, Carolina knew immediately that she was at the lake house, but she had no memory of how she had gotten there. Slowly, the early hours of the night returned to her,
but tangled with her dreams and in fragments so blurred by heat that they didn’t seem real. Seeing her stir, Turri pulled velvet over her bare shoulder. She found his hand and folded it under her chin as if it were a favorite possession.
Then her eyes sprang open.
“Is it still dark?” she asked. “You have to take me back before dawn.”
“But we’ve been here for days,” Turri said. “There are already two armies camped on our doorstep.”
Carolina listened: no birds yet, no militant locusts. She sat up. “I have to go back.”
Turri twined her hair in his fingers. “What if you don’t?” he said. “Let me take you to a Greek island instead. We’ll get a house by the sea and live on figs.”
Carolina knew the book he had chosen this dream from: a collection of drawings of daily life in the ancient world that had been one of her favorites among those he sent, because of the pure turquoise in the watercolor oceans. For a moment, the image of the whitewashed house high on a cliff rose up, achingly sharp, but then it began to lose shape around the edges, like a paper model melting in the rain.
“I have to go,” she said, and pushed the velvet away.
“He says he brought you some balm,” Liza read. “But now he needs it for his experiments. He wants to know when you could send it back.”
“Nothing else?” Carolina asked, sitting up in bed. Turri must have written her as soon as he reached home. It wasn’t even noon yet.
“There are some lines of verse,” Liza said.
Carolina turned this over in her mind. The unspoken bargain the two of them had struck regarding Liza’s lapses in reporting the contents of Turri’s books was a new problem now that Liza held a letter from Turri in her hands. Liza was not a stupid girl. She knew better than to distort the central contents. But Carolina couldn’t be completely certain what she omitted or embellished.
“Read them to me,” Carolina said.
Liza read,
A little bird
stole my heart
The Blind Contessa's New Machine Page 12