It was bracing, liberating, and he had a mind to swim all the way to Africa. He plunged past his pain and dove into the glassy turquoise and emerald depths, narrowly missing the stinging tendrils of a jelly-fish. He ploughed the water hard and fast, each arm stroke a plea for clarity.
The clerk at the municipal registry office in Livorno was so cautious that Sam had to pull a Walter and dish up some charisma. Her expression told him that she was far too old and far too smart for anybody’s charm, but she appreciated the effort, and in the end gave in and smiled, and went back to find the register he’d asked to see. The books were almost bigger than she was, and Sam could see the small stone cottage was costing her some effort. She brought the first one in and set it down on the table with a loud thunk, enjoying her own performance, made a display of grabbing at the glasses on the chain around her neck, putting them on and squinting to see the neat but tiny scrawls.
She looked up at him, making him wait, then said. “It’s owned by the Marbello Agency.”
“Where’s that?” Sam asked.
“Here. Livorno.”
Sam shrugged. “And?”
The woman gave in with a sigh. “Here, I’ll write the address down for you.”
“Thanks. So as a matter of interest, who owns the Marbello Agency.”
The woman sighed again, took her glasses off, and went to look for the right register. Another five minutes passed before she came back with the book, and another five again for her to find the right entry.
“Here it is. Walter Amerigo Gianmaria Prospero Montefalcone. Now there’s a handle and a half.”
Chapter Nine
Katia turned on her mobile and went to the first message. A photo with no text. When she realized what it was, her heart emptied out and she felt hungry. She remembered that green frock. And she remembered the loaded gleam of the grand piano, that Steinway in London that promised her the earth and the stars. She thought of her father, Professor of Piano at the State Conservatory, the illustrious piano teacher who had never given his daughter a single real piano lesson in his life.
At first, she had been too busy for lessons, too busy as a child rounding up the other kids and giving them her orders, intrepid to the point that other parents forbade their children to follow her around. She was chaos, they said. Wherever she went, doors and windows that were meant to stay closed flew open.
They were unhindered by parents’ threats, roaming and playing all through the city, clamoring around near the golden scrolls of Palace Gates, spraying the names of their favorite pop singers in graffiti on trains destined for the center, trying on all the clothes in the big department store, never buying a thing, shoplifting what they could get away with, and imagining the day when it would all be theirs.
There were boys in the group who declared their love for her but they all annoyed her, offering no challenge. By age eight, boredom drove her to pick up every fragment of music she heard, every jingle, every pop song from the radio, and reproduce it on the piano. The luscious images one could paint with the keys. It was possible to make them speak whole tangible and intangible worlds, freedom, outrage, happiness and misery… although misery had been low on her list when she was young.
Her father loved to say that music was for imbeciles and beggars, because it cost nothing. Any idiot could be a musician, was almost forced to be a musician, because everything else had such a price. You were a court jester when you made music, everybody’s fool. But Katia’s mother quietly found her another piano teacher when she realized that Katia’s music affliction wasn’t going to go away.
At home in private, her father casually played recordings of illustrious artists. Later, when she grew older, he had her read through everything, even the enormous pieces, the concertos. It was just for fun, he said, pretending that he didn’t care, but hovering so close behind her, she knew it was taking all his energy not to coach her. Behind his back Katia sought out his students, bribed them with items she’d shoplifted on her forays into town into teaching her what her father had taught them and declined to teach her. And although he refused to kill her love of the music through the rigours of the Conservatory, one day, he crumbled and took her to work with him.
He installed her in a practice room and let the forces take their course. The other teachers were magnetically drawn toward the sound and wondered which of their students was playing. They stood still and silent as she worked her way through some Arabesques of Debussy, sculpted the Goldberg variations, then moved on to the Rachmaninoff. They were irritated when they saw that it was Katia and not one of their own students who stepped out of the practice room.
Her father continued to say, “Whatever you do, do not embark on a life of music. It will be a crashing disappointment.” She could also hear the eagerness in his voice, the entreaty to disobey him at all costs. When the opportunity arose, the scholarship for London, it took every scrap of strength he had to refrain from helping prepare her. She was going to have to do it the proper way. On her own.
But that was all in the distant past. In the life before blood.
She read Sam’s other message.
.
I need you. You might start hearing things about me. I just want you to know that they're not true. We need to talk. I love you.
She went into his email account and read through all his other recent messages. She was always surprised by his lack of security, and wondered whether he was actually inviting her to read them. She closed the computer.
A story she had once heard came to mind. It was about an artist who lived in very cramped lodgings, so cramped that the artist kept kitchen chairs on pulleys and hoisted them down when people came to visit her. If the artist didn’t like somebody, she hoisted the chair out from under them and pulled it back up to the ceiling the very second they stood up. But if she liked somebody, she let the chair sit there long after they had gone.
Katia did the same with Sam’s emails to her, let them sit there for a day or two, reread them, and then deleted them.
She could feel a charge in the air around her. Things were moving fast but not in the direction she had hoped. Walter's death had conditioned everything. And now that Sam had seen the portrait, things would have to move even faster.
From her desk she could see across the courtyard and into the kitchen where her husband sat. He seemed calm enough this morning, and had already eaten a piece of the cornetto in front of him. Mira sat beside him, white teeth in a dark young face that was still smooth with possibility.
It was early, a good time for a run. Katia went to her chest of drawers, took out a lightweight track suit, pulled it on, then bundled her conspicuous hair into a headscarf. She put her keys and phone in her pack, hitched it around her waist and slipped out the front door without telling the others. When she got to the park, she did a few stretches then took the river towpath at a slow jog. It was good at this hour among the alders and cottonwoods. No one to interrupt her thoughts.
Several nights ago she'd had a lesson in everyday living, in how other people went about their lives as if nothing were more important than a comfortable night's sleep. In a moment of suspended belief, she let the upstairs tenant, Maria, talk her into going with her to the local community centre, the Circolo Che Guevara. They were doing a demonstration for Imperial Mattresses and if they could get twenty-four couples to attend, the Circolo would be given a badly-needed cheque for five hundred Euros simply for getting twenty-four couples to fill the seats.
They got to the Che Guevara early. It was nice to be out of the house, nice to be somewhere she'd never been before with people she didn’t know, people whose lives were ordinary, and less likely to be volatile. Though she realized that was presumptuous, and that, at times, even the most ordinary souls opened up and revealed their worlds to be a great big sack of live eels.
It had been mostly married couples, many elderly, and Maria explained that the venue with its shiny black floor and little stage hosted ballroom dancing on weeke
nds, and why didn't Katia come down some time with her husband. And then Maria turned bright red, but had the good grace to change the topic without apologizing.
When they were seated, the salesman went around to every couple and introduced himself as Guiglielmo from Turin. He paused a little too long to shake Katia's hand, to give her the name tag and take her signature for the list that would give the Circolo their cheque. She knew he would single her out.
He stood up in front of them and told them all about his young family, how important good sleeping habits were when you were a travelling salesman and had a young family and although he was actually older than Katia, his optimism made him seem like a fresh boy.
When it came time to test the mattress for themselves (Guiglielmo had gone on at length about the bed frame and the quality of the latex, how different it was from other mattresses, free of dust and dust-mite excrement, getting quite a rise out of the room with the word ‘excrement’), an intrepid few volunteered. And then Guiglielmo insisted that Katia go up and try, so she gave herself over to the moment, went up there and lay down.
Guiglielmo's voice was soothing, and it really was such a comfortable mattress that she entertained the idea of buying the double bed for her and her husband. As she lay there, testing each of the zones that Guiglielmo was indicating and backing up with information on flow charts, she saw this tiny wedge of time as something that she should prolong and allow to overflow into the other parts of her life. She should make time like this the reality, expand it, savour it, as if it were ninety-nine and not just one percent of her life. Like her moments with Sam Montefalcone.
Wasn’t this the point? What was the purpose of all that other work, that dangerous work, if not to preserve this? If not to guarantee a comfortable night’s sleep?
She rounded a corner and had to step fast to one side for a man and his German shepherd. She berated herself for losing concentration. Walter and the gyrfalcon were back in her mind again. And now that it was essential that Sam fit into all of this, every minute of the trip played itself over in her head, obsessing her. She kept wondering what she had missed, whether something was staring her in the face and she just wasn’t seeing it.
She went back over every detail again.
Walter had arrived very early that morning, almost a year ago. He had come in the BMW, with Gino, his ancient farm manager, driving. Walter was seated in the back and the gyrfalcon was in its cage on the front seat. Walter, dressed in hunting gear and very dashing, had climbed out of the car, kissed Katia on both cheeks, and said, “Well, my dear. Here we are. Come and look at this.”
He went round to the trunk of the car and opened it. Inside were a large box and a drum container. “It doesn’t look like much, does it,” said Walter. In the picture on the packaging, it looked like an air-conditioner. “We should be fine. It seems innocuous. The material is in the drums.”
“Thank you, Walter.”
On the way to the airport, they talked only about the weather that awaited them. Sunny spells with patches of cloud but no rain. They were anxious and hopeful. They needed as much sun as possible.
At the Florence airport, there was some difficulty with the bird, but Walter dealt with it by calling an acquaintance and having them speak to the airport authority, who looked cowed under the weight of what he’d been told. After that, they let Walter bring the bird into the cabin.
On the flight, they were served watery coffee and some rolls with ham and cheese. Walter turned down his food with a comment about his age and delicate digestion, and then offered the rolls to Katia. She had never told anyone about her eternal fear of going hungry but the gesture doubled her fondness for Walter. He just smiled and said, “It’s wonderful to see a woman with an appetite.”
“Thank you for doing this,” said Katia.
“I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.” Walter was serious, business-like.
“I love you,” she said.
“Well of course you do,” he replied, taking her hand and kissing her palm. “And the feeling is quite mutual.”
When they landed, their mood was subdued. The airport in Pristina was dismal, its modernness giving the effect of a band-aid patching up the wound that spread throughout the country. Waiting at the Arrivals gate was Walter’s friend, Alin, a stout, creased, dark old woman, with a mass of salt and pepper hair, and a manner that was so spare and pensive, it was as if an excess of facial expression would send her into emotional bankruptcy.
They all went out to the parking lot where Alin had a jeep waiting. She and Walter exchanged a solemn formal hug, and some formal greetings in English, then Alin turned to the bird. She took it out of its cage and handled it expertly. Katia then heard the two exchange a few more unfamiliar guttural words that were not English. They put the bird and luggage in the back of the jeep and Alin drove until they were in dense, hot and humid countryside.
They continued to drive deeper into shady forest, and finally pulled up to an old wooden house. It must have once belonged to someone important. Its details, the gingerbread, were reminiscent of a Russian dacha, though it was more of an estate house. It was a fairy tale place, with a stream running past, honeysuckle and flowering wild plants, tall evergreens, and Katia reminded herself that fairy tales were never without evil witches and spiteful ogres.
At the house, a cold dinner awaited them. Again Walter declined it, saying, “I have found, with all the upsets of travelling, that a little warm broth is the best thing for the stomach.” Alin then made him a thin soup and as Walter sipped it, Katia saw how he had aged over the last few months.
Alin talked about the area around the house, what was bush, where the pathways led, how far away the other roads and neighbours were. When Katia made eye contact with Alin, she saw opinion in the old woman’s face, the approval for what they were doing. There was a gleam in her eye that spoke of a last glorious escapade, but she was too well-trained to say anything more.
Later Alin took them to the bedrooms, and Katia tried to settle down in hers but felt restless, displaced. During the night, she crept down to the screened porch and stretched out on the chaise longue, where the air was fresher and she could hear every sound. She did not expect to sleep and was surprised when she did.
Walter and Alin stayed up late, talking, locked in a conference of the years that had slipped past since they had last seen each other. The bond was so tangible between the two that Katia felt if she passed a hand in front of their faces, it would become entangled in solid material. They spoke English, but she sensed they were only doing it for her sake, being polite. When she was finally on the verge of dreaming she heard them lapse into that other language, and it overtook her dreams, transforming Walter into a completely different sort of man. That was the moment in which she began to seriously wonder about Walter.
The next morning, after a huge breakfast, the three of them donned work clothes, put on their sturdiest shoes and set out, blessed with good weather. Walter carried the gyrfalcon in its cage and they hiked through stubborn terrain along a faint trail that Alin had hacked out days before. It took two and half hours to reach the place. Walter, wearing the special gloves, lifted the bird from the cage and held it while Alin fastened on the tiny camera.
When they released the gyrfalcon for the first time, it headed in the right direction. Alin said it was sometimes a lottery because the bird only wanted to go after prey, but open areas were attractive for that reason.
Alin perched on a rock and set the laptop on her knees. They all hovered around the transmitted images, impressed. At seven minutes into the bird’s flight, a sharp crack sounded in the distance. On the computer screen, they watched as the images of woods, land and outbuildings spiralled and plummeted, and gave them a sideways view of ground, of tall green unkempt grasses and clods of ploughed earth. The face that then appeared in the screen left Katia with no doubts. A hand reached toward the lens, blocked the view, and killed the screen image. Katia felt ill. There was no doubt now.
Alin nodded at them all, indicating that they had no time, they had to get out of there immediately. They put away the equipment, shouldered their knapsacks and took the path half running, half stumbling. Katia went behind Walter to keep an eye on him. He was more fragile than he wanted anyone to believe. When she caught glimpses of his face, it was grim, struggling. The only sounds were the snapping and cracking of the underbrush.
The second they reached the house, the three of them packed up all traces of their presence, then they climbed into the jeep. Walter drove, and using the navigator, took them back toward the airport. Alin, in the back seat, worked at the computer, making stills of the videos and putting everything on a pen drive. At the airport, she gave it to Walter who handed it to Katia. The cage sat on the back seat, its emptiness almost roaring.
Alin said, “That’s how it goes. I will find another house and contact you. I made some observations. They’re noted here. I know you don’t believe, but God go with you.” She handed Walter something rectangular wrapped in black velvet.
Katia slowed down, bent over and stretched her hamstrings. The park was starting to fill up with more joggers and dog walkers. She took a deep breath then ran towards home.
After she had showered and dressed, she looked in on her husband. He was seated in the big armchair in the study. She went in quietly and stood above him. “Ciao, amore,” she said, “I’m taking off now.”
“Ah, it’s time, is it?” He lifted his head with enormous effort and gazed at her. “Where for?”
“I wish I could say Paris but I cannot.”
“Aha. Is that so?”
Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1) Page 11