Though the Ragnaia was his childhood terrain, and there was no secret shortcut he hadn’t used a thousand times, tonight he felt the Borgo people might have a point; the trees that had once seemed friendly in childhood, that he'd given names like the Pirate Tree, the Hanging Tree, or the Imperial Fortress, appeared hostile. His adult self reminded him that they were simply dogwood, stone pine, and field oak, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that the known objects and quantities of his life had switched sides, were capable of treachery.
He moved fast. Even under the unreliable moon, the trails were luminous, encrusted over the centuries with shards; first seashells and marble used in building, and later discarded ceramic floor tiles, old kitchen sinks, shattered, and then entire bathroom suites, reduced to smithereens, a shout to the encroaching nature that man walked there and wasn't going to give up easily.
Halfway up the hill, a deer shot across his path and a few seconds later a huge black shape that was probably a wild boar. He tried to ignore it and stepped up his pace to a jog. When he reached the bluffs near the belvedere, he huddled into the curve of a tree that had a good sight line. There was an exhalation from the earth, a tinderbox scent mixed with bay laurel, dried pine needles, and leaf mould.
He stayed in an alert trance state. The nausea, images of Emmie, Carla, Katia, gripped his mind and body. Around him, nightingales and cicadas trilled a steady accompaniment, and in the distance, loud speakers and fairground music was blaring, building into a crescendo. Under the rumpus, he listened for cars approaching, footfalls crunching through the woods, but the Polka blotted out the other sounds. Along with the music were the megaphone voices of hawkers calling the crowd to come play the Wheel of Fortune, win a prosciutto or a mountain bike. The Festa Dell’Unità, the Communist fair. Sam had forgotten what it was like.
How Walter had hated this fair and how hard he had tried to transmit that particular hatred to Sam. My dear boy, don't get embroiled with the masses and these entertainments of theirs. So intrusive, so noisy, so lacking in taste.
Sam whispered to the air, “What a snob you are, Walter.”
He dug through his knapsack, found the binoculars and pointed them toward the Villa. He had expected more confusion, reporters, police, paparazzi, but the villa was deserted.
Donatella would be at the Festa. She was a ballroom dancer. Every Saturday night she got dolled up and went out to some little community centre with her husband Gino to cut up the dance floor. On summer nights, wherever there was an outdoor fair, there were Donatella, and Gino, and the rest of the Borgo, all dressed up and in party mode, everybody pretending that these weren’t the same faces that slogged through daily life in Borgo every day. Up the hill, an abandoned outdoor oven and a smooth concrete square shot back to life once a year in the first week of summer. Now there were pavilions, a stage, a restaurant and pizzeria under a tent. The same thing that was happening in Borgo tonight was happening throughout the rest of Tuscany, even though Communism’s bite had become wobbly. The rest of Italy was in trouble, but he didn’t want to think about it.
As for Walter's finances, they were bound to be complex. As soon as Sam could clear himself, he was going to put his head together with Walter's other lawyers, and find out where the Montefalcone fortune was. Occasionally Walter had made rumblings about sneaking money out to some tax haven, but as far as Sam knew, he had never actually done it. Walter’s trip to Pristina to visit an old friend had been his last, and after that the idea of travel seemed to have lost all its allure for him.
Walter had become obsessed with Le Falde at the end, focusing on it as if it were something fabulous, an extension of Versaille, and Sam had struggled to understand. Walter had kept going on about its ‘former splendour’, and again Sam had struggled. Which former splendour? The turquoise Hollywood swimming pool splendour of the 1950s? Or something baroque, astronomically expensive, and completely impractical. Le Falde had seen so many different periods of splendour in its history.
He got up off his haunches and shook out his legs, stretched his whole body. Settling again into motionlessness, like a sentry, he waited another half hour. When he saw a light go on in the villa, on the second floor, in the library, he froze and watched. A shadow moved past the slats of the shutters, out of the library, into the study, then into Sam’s bedroom. He tried to calm himself but he needed to move.
He grabbed his knapsack and began to run toward the villa, crossing through the olive grove and overgrown brush, taking the obstacles the way he had taken them in war zones, leaping over the hurdles, adrenaline making him oblivious to pain or damage. When he got to the kitchen door he found it locked. He used his own keys and entered silently. Leaving the lights off, he shot through the corridors to the main staircase then raced upstairs, taking two steps at a time. On the second floor, he moved towards the library. When he reached the door, the light was on but the room was empty.
Everything appeared to be as he had left it. He walked around, listening, looking for signs of someone else. On the round walnut table where Walter had always showcased his latest pieces was a little Chinese carved ivory ball, and next to it, a brass letter opener with a dragon on the handle.
Sam felt time rip apart. He was staring directly through a hole in a temporal curtain, surfing, shrieking, skidding back to a lost fragment of early memory, to when he'd last seen that brass knife in a white-knuckled grip, in a boy's hand, a hand smeared with rust-coloured blood. A suffocating blanket of terror sucked away all his breath and blackened his vision. As he slumped to the floor, it flashed through his mind that he was lucky to be standing on the carpet.
It was only just ten when Donatella crossed the threshold of her own blessed house. Her husband, Gino, had already gone up to bed and would soon be snoring louder than a saw mill. The only thing to do was go to the kitchen, turn on the hot water tap and fill the bucket. Her feet hurt from the dancing but she was the last person in the world who was going to admit it. And the music. The music they were playing nowadays rattled her nerves.
It was no hour to be washing a floor but she needed to think, she needed to worry and pray for Samuele. When she thought of him, the first picture that popped into her mind- well a double-exposure really - was that summer, the summer of 1980. The image was like one of those weight-loss ads, only a bad reverse of the before and after. The before and after image of Samuele Montefalcone as a boy.
The soap bubbles frothed and floated up and she took the rag, plunged it into the water then pulled it out and squeezed it as hard as she could. Tossing the perfect open square onto the terracotta floor, she stuck the long brush into it and began to push. Shoving a soapy rag around the floor helped. It had always helped. In keeping trouble, squalor, poverty, and evil at bay.
She had seen every kind of trouble down there in the Garfagnana just after the war, only in those days there was no hot running water. She didn't talk about those days because she’d be damned if she was going to let anybody know her real age. Nobody knew, not even her husband, Gino, who for a while there had done nothing but gabble on about retirement. The Monti reforms had put an end to that talk quick enough. He seemed to lose all his strength overnight. And when she looked at him now, what did she see? Ha. An old woman is what she saw.
Donatella was never going to retire. She was going to die on her feet, pushing a soapy rag. And the floors under her corpse were going to be spotless. Cleanliness was equal to dignity. It’s what kept you all right when you could barely afford a pair of shoes. Nowadays, people had too much and didn’t even know how much they had. Donatella had barely had that pair of shoes growing up. Shoes were for Sundays in winter. The rest of the time it was clogs.
Back then, people hadn't even realized how poor they were, some hadn't realized they were living like animals, because they had nothing to compare it to. Though of course, you had to be careful how you went about accusing people of living like animals because Our lord the Saviour was born in a stall full of animals, and that was well a
nd fine, although probably, if he'd had a choice, if God wasn't so bent on testing people, Our Saviour would have been born in a proper bed.
Sam's mother hadn't known the first thing about keeping a place clean. She’d married the Signore Conte, so she didn't have to. But another kind of wife, an Italian wife would have been in there beside Donatella, bossing her around, telling her how it was supposed to be done, finding the spots where she hadn't cleaned. Also, no Italian woman would have caved in so quickly, would have abandoned her marriage or her son.
Nora was not a bad woman. She was just weak. She should have found the balls to stay. She couldn't come to grips with the fact that Italian men had wives and then they had girlfriends. Of course, not Donatella's Gino. But then he was not her first husband and she'd gone into that second marriage with a long list of conditions, one of them being that he was not to die on her without some kind of warning.
Donatella’s first husband had died in the night, age thirty-two, right there next to her in the bed. She'd woken up, thought he was looking at the crack in the ceiling, and found him stone dead, eyes wide open. His heart just stopped, they said. But she wasn't so sure about that. It was much more likely that that whore down the road had put the evil eye on him because he'd married Donatella instead of her.
And for a while back then, after her first husband's death, her prayers had been filled with fear. Her talks with God had been more like her begging the schoolyard bully not to push her to the ground and beat her to a pulp. But then, by the same token, in the end God had come out and shown his fairness. That same spurned woman who'd put the evil eye on her first husband was taking a shortcut through the fields one day, no doubt getting up to some wicked nonsense of hers, and she didn't see it. It was left over from the war and when it exploded it took off half her leg and not a single man in the village wanted her after that.
It was those things that made you realize that almost nothing was in your power. Nothing but your clean house. You could always have power over how clean or dirty your house or your villa was. How white and well-pressed your shirts were. Those were things that counted. And while you were scrubbing and ironing you could pray, just pray hard that no harm came to those people you were looking after, and that included the Signore and his family.
Which is exactly where she'd fallen short. She'd been too distracted that summer. There'd been a lapse in her praying for the Montefalcones when she had to rush off to the Garfagnana to help her sister after the operation.
Some time around June and Sam's mother had already abandoned them. Donatella had heard much of the fighting and arguing but had no idea what they were saying because they fought in English. She could imagine though. You could understand everything from the tone. There was no easy life for women, not any women, not anywhere in the world. No matter how privileged they were.
So little Samuele, well, he had always been down at her house, hadn't he, to avoid the war up in the villa? Down with her two boys, who were both doing very well for themselves, thank you very much, so her prayers in that direction hadn't been wasted, thank God. One was a plumber and the other an electrician and they both had more work than they could manage, if you don’t mind. They called the shots.
But Samu, he wasn't happy. And she wondered if he'd ever been happy in his entire life. Except for now, when that redhead with the roller skates arrived and messed up her floors. He looked, well... he looked… ecstatic. It was a look she’d never seen on him and it made her nervous. Maybe he really was going to be allowed to grow up after all.
And now with his father dead and all. It wasn't quite right, but in a way she could understand it. Samuele had always been a fine looking boy, plenty of brains, plenty of talent, but his father the Signore Conte had simply sucked up all the light and attention whenever he walked into a room. It was the age he grew up in. People with true breeding had a different light in their eyes. It went well beyond manners.
They didn’t make them like that anymore. Privilege just wasn't what it used to be. The high-born no longer understood that they had a responsibility. Drugs hadn't helped, and they had not bypassed Samu either, but he seemed to have survived despite his detours.
Samu had been a confused and angry little boy at the end of that June. Donatella had watched him closely, hacking away at the trees with sticks, well… with anything he could lay his hands on really. Kicking the ground, smashing things around, slamming doors, picking fights with her boys.
He'd always been nice, gentle, and well-mannered. Up until then. But then it might have had something to with Signora Nora leaving in the night, her sobbing all over Donatella and saying she didn't want to go, didn't want to leave her Sam there but that they wouldn't let her take him, that the Signore knew people in the police. That he would track her down and get Sam back and she couldn't do a thing about it, and maybe he would even have her charged and sent to jail if he felt like it. And Nora begging Donatella to look after the boy as if he were her own. It wasn't normal. But then few things were normal when it came down to this villa and its people.
Donatella felt bad about that. How could she have known that her sister was going to need her all of a sudden after the operation and that she would have to get herself on a train to Garfagnana faster than the devil? And of course she took her two boys with her. There were plenty of cousins for them to roughhouse around with down there. Gino had stayed behind on the estate, and you would have thought the man could have put his ear to the ground from time to time, sniff out what was happening up at the villa. But not a chance.
Maybe she had married him for just how unobservant he was because when she grilled him on what had gone on while she was away, he only blasted her with, How should I know what the hell goes on in the big house? The gardens don't tend themselves, animals don't feed themselves, in case you didn't know. Fields don't work themselves. And I had to make my own meals, didn't I. You think that's easy on a man?
She had only gone away for ten days but it could have been ten decades for how Samuele had changed. She returned to find a shadow of a child. When she went toward him to give him a kiss, he shied away from her. No, not shied. He cowered. And then when she insisted on that kiss, he grabbed on to her, pressed his face into her stomach and wouldn't let go of her, stuck to her like one of those pond leeches. That was how he was the very afternoon she came back. As soon as the Signore Conte came into the room though, Samuele was sent out.
And then his mother Nora arrived, looking completely flabbergasted, stunned. For now it appeared that everything had changed, that Nora was allowed to take him away with her after all, and the Signore wouldn't have her arrested. He seemed in a terrible hurry to get Samuele out of the house and away, and that just didn't add up. They had gone to war over that very thing for more than a year and then there she was.
Nora disappeared into Samu's room with him, packed a suitcase full of his things, and Donatella could hear Nora's voice, trying to sooth, trying to understand, trying to break through his new shell, and then finally something snapped, something small because Samu started whimpering, like a wounded puppy, whimpering, whimpering, but still no explaining what had happened. The sound was enough to break your heart. An hour later, when the bags were finally packed, the Signore himself got into the car to drive them to the airport in Pisa, and that was the last she saw of the boy for the next five years.
She realized, after Samuele had gone, that he still hadn't spoken, hadn't even said goodbye.
Then the next morning, there was Donatella in the empty villa, serving the Signore his breakfast as usual and him, calm, just so calm, like the water at the beach in the morning, except for that slight glisten in his eye. As if he'd been crying. Even so, he was elegant, and waiting for her gossip, just a little impatiently. And then, as cool as a cat, and because who could ever resist his charm, he said, “I'm afraid there's a little disarray up in the tower. I hope you don't mind, Donatella, and I do apologize. I think the floor needs special attention. That very old mar
ble, you know. Do what it takes. Whatever it takes. As always, I can rely on your discretion?”
She had been waiting for an order, and she had heard a question. His eyebrows were raised and he was expecting a reply. And she nodded, certainly, yes, her discretion, whatever that was, though she was fairly sure that meant something about secrets and keeping them. Well, what else could it be when you were dealing with a man who had money and power, who was used to getting whatever and whoever he wanted, whether she was married to someone else or not? There was lots of discretion going on around here. Heaps and heaps of it.
So up she'd gone into the tower, which she usually cleaned regularly every two weeks. It was a little museum really, and she had to be very careful. The Signore was strict about her not trying to take the patina off the antique objects. There were those she was allowed to buff right up and others that were to have only the most careful dusting.
It was in the studiolo that the attention and all that discretion was needed. When Donatella got up to that room she had a shock. She had to stand back and get her breath. Whatever had taken place there, it had not happened yesterday. The stain had darkened with days of sitting, cooked in by the hot weather, what with the marble being so old and porous and all, and there was the stench.
She did and didn't want to know what had happened, because the terrible pictures that came into her head had young Samuele at the centre of them, and the stain was too large and messy for this to be any little nosebleed or accident. She used bleach first and when that didn't work, she sent Gino to get her some hydrochloric acid from the Ferramento. The floor was ruined after that but at least it no longer looked like the floor of a butcher shop.
Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1) Page 14