Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1)

by Strozzi, Amadeus

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sam came to with his face flattened against the bristly wool of the carpet in the library. He forced himself to take long, even breaths. His legs felt watery and weak, so he dragged himself on hands and knees to the couch and pulled himself up. He sat there for a while taking more deep breaths, and commanding his rebellious body to support him.

  When he was finally able to stand, Sam had to use the wall to prop himself up. It was humid at his touch. He pulled his hand away, unable to shake the sensation that the villa was a living thing, a creature.

  What was he not seeing? Something so obvious he would hate himself when he finally figured it out. Someone was coming in and out whenever they liked. Someone was doing an evil dance around him. The only person who had total access right now was Donatella, and Donatella knew who she was, had no need to murder anyone to make her world right.

  He had to try to think like Walter. He had to retrace Walter's footsteps, which meant going up into the tower. The very idea of the tower swept him with a new kind of nausea. He stumbled out into the hallway and into the small bathroom and vomited. Twice. That end of the world feeling, that swirling revulsion crushed him, consumed him, wouldn't let him go. He felt as though his brain, his whole being were being squeezed by a huge pair of pliers. He was on his knees, grasping the rim of the toilet bowl and sobbing.

  “Get a grip, Montefalcone,” he whispered to the walls.

  Sam pulled himself to his feet and turned on the tap. He splashed his face with cold water, then drank a few gulps from his cupped hands. He tried to calm himself, thinking back to his Legion training. How had he managed to find his nerve back then? He couldn't remember.

  Entering the tower was necessary and inevitable if he was going to understand anything. Where would Walter have put the key? Sam crept along the upper hallways, wary of being ambushed, then nearly slid down the main staircase. In Walter’s bedroom, he opened the chests of drawers and the desk and pillaged all the cubbyholes. Nothing. Everything was in order, everything in its proper place. Walter was near him, smirking at him, challenging him.

  My dear boy, it's simply so obvious. Hide in plain sight if you can. Fewer jealous husbands that way.

  Plain sight. Yes.

  He went along the corridor to the kitchen, into the small pantry, and opened the ancient carved wooden door to the key cupboard. There was a vast selection of keys, some dating all the way back to the beginning of the villa and made for keyholes that no longer existed, hadn't existed for centuries. He didn’t need to take the bundles off their hooks. The key he wanted was on the first hook, with a label. La Torre, written in Walter’s hand.

  From the kitchen, Sam went back along the dark passageways to the other end of the villa. Even as he was approaching the entrance hall to the tower, the old nausea was with him again, gutting him, paired with the indefinable sinking feeling. Mogadishu and Sarajevo had been church picnics compared to this.

  When he stepped into the hall, his legs turned to water again. His hand shook as he shoved the key in the lock and turned it. The door opened easily, releasing a rush of air that carried with it the varnish and woody must of all those years ago. It was that scent, more than any other thing in the world, that drove a tiny wedge into his memory, opening it just a crack. Sam breathed in deeply, reached into his pocket for Sara’s gift, put the tiny Buddha on his tongue, and waited.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the colours around him began to gleam, trail and glow. They were fluorescent, brilliant, astoundingly beautiful. He knew he was on his way when time itself seemed to be under his control. He could slow it down or speed it up at will, scroll it faster or slower with his hand. Or just simply remain there, stopped in time altogether. A euphoric lightness took hold of him. It was so easy to stand, to walk, to float. His knee had stopped hurting.

  Everything was there within his grasp; the world in Technicolour, and he could reach into it and pluck out any memory he wanted. The tower’s odour was permeating him, taking on a spirit of its own. He moved forward. Looking up the stairwell, at the white plastered walls, the iron handrail, the narrow slots for windows, Sam was transported by memory and the drug, there at the centre of the doorjamb. He glided up the tower staircase and along the years, back into his eight-year-old self.

  1980

  Walter has come into Samu’s room. He’s wearing his grey silk suit, and a blue paisley cravat, which means he wants to make an especially good impression.

  “Today we have visitors, figliolo, so we’re going to be good hosts now, aren’t we? One of them is a boy, not too far from your age. He’s thirteen. Just five years older than you. And his mother, Mirella. It should be good fun for you. Having somebody to play with? What do you say?”

  “Yes, Babbo.” You can never say no to Walter in moments like these because his wrath is as crippling as his love is energizing.

  Samu is already jealous of this new boy who he’s never even seen. He envies him for having a mother who is there, who is with him. He doesn’t want any new people in this house. The only thing he wants is his own mother, back in her place at the dresser in her Pucci dress with the tangerine lipstick and the high black boots and her perfume that smells like flowers and cinnamon.

  “When they come, you can show the new boy around. His name is Luca. But not the tower, mind, there are too many valuable things there.”

  Samu is furious now and his fury has a name. Luca. When his father leaves, he runs outside, into the heat of the morning, takes his stick from its hiding place and runs, runs, runs, through the tall grasses already baked to straw by the glaucous sun. He has been told a million times not to run with a stick in his hand, that he could fall and hurt himself, blind himself. He hopes that he will hurt himself. He hopes there will be lots of blood. Enough blood to bring his mother hurrying back to him.

  The hot earth is in his throat and nostrils, mixing with his tears. He hates feeling sorry for himself, and he hates himself for becoming sloppy with his own misery. He scrambles up an unruly fig tree that sits high on the edge of the Ragnaia woods and takes up his familiar perch, eyes on the driveway. Biting the insides of his cheeks to quell his tears, he waits for the guests.

  Up here, he has sometimes had glimpses of how it is to be the Prince of Everything. How it feels when nothing can touch him. And then the vision, the feeling, slips away and he is just himself again. But he imagines that Walter must feel like that Prince all the time.

  The guests arrive in a cloud of yellow dust aboard a red Vespa scooter. There is a woman, slim, dark, and petite, and a big, dark, ungainly boy. Sam climbs down from his tree and runs as fast as he can. He’ll catch hell from Walter if he isn’t there to meet them. He rounds the back of the villa just in time, races inside, through the kitchen door and along the dank, stony corridors to the front hall. Walter isn’t there yet. Sam won’t even give them a chance to ring the bell. He throws open the big door and there they are on the threshold.

  “Oh,” says the woman. “You’re Samuele, aren’t you?”

  She smiles and is too beautiful. Because of his own mum, Nora, he wants to hate this new woman, but can’t. He nods and says, “Hello.”

  “This is Luca, my son.” The other boy, despite his poorly proportioned body, has a face that could be handsome, and is somehow familiar. Where does Sam know him from? The other boy nods and smiles slightly, and although Sam feels scrutinized, he can see that Luca is making an effort.

  “Ah, Mirella,” comes Walter’s voice from the darkness behind. “What a pleasure. Come in, both of you. Samuele, ask them to come in.”

  “Please come in,” he says flatly, then steps aside.

  Sam feels lost. Donatella is usually there to do this. But not today. She has gone to be with her sister who lives in Massa Carrara near the sea. Normally, there would be a table set with coffee and biscuits. No tea, though. Not any more. Sam’s mum used to have tea all the time, and tea would make Walter say, “Tea? Good God, is someone
ill?”

  Sam doesn’t know where to take them now and waits on Walter for a cue. Walter is staring at Mirella, and Sam knows the look. Walter will be useless. So he says to Luca, “Want to see the limonaia?”

  Luca shrugs and Sam lets it pass for a yes, then starts to lead the way, the long way, through the drawing room with its snowy divans, the portraits of queasy ancestors staring down at them from other centuries, the false opulence of Venetian chandeliers whose bulbs, like hundreds of blinded eyes, are never switched on.

  Sam swings around to glance at Luca and catches his expression of envy mingled with awe and appreciation. Luca’s gaze flickers over to him and it’s dark, ugly. This is not what Sam wants, not what he’s ever wanted really. His bad mood has passed. What he really wants, at the bottom of everything, is for people to be happy, and when they are not, he knows from experience that he is at the maelstrom of their gloom.

  They go out from the kitchen into the blazing sunlight and Sam starts to run across the brown lawn. He turns back again to make sure that Luca is behind him, but he isn’t. He’s still at the other end of the lawn, irritated, clumping forward slowly. So Sam stops, waits until he catches up and walks beside him. “It’s down here,” he says, pointing at the square pale yellow and grey two-story building with huge dusty windows. “I’ll show you my secret place.”

  Luca perks up and walks a little faster, enthusiastic again. Sam takes him into the empty lemon house and up the cramped stone steps to the top floor. The long sun-flooded narrow room holds a sagging couch with one protruding spring, an old eiderdown shedding feathers, and a stack of Tin Tins and Dylan Dogs. Luca grabs the Tin Tin on the top of the pile and flops onto the couch with an air of having arrived, having come home. “What else can you show me?”

  “What do you mean?” asks Sam.

  “This is all your stuff?”

  “I have a race car set, in the villa, in the playroom. And a train set.”

  “Yeah,” says Luca, no longer interested. There is a long silence, and he says, “I have these.”

  Sam watches him dig into an inner pocket in his jacket and bring out two objects, a long thin knife and a ball. He brings them closer.

  “That’s just a letter opener,” says Sam, relieved.

  “It looks like a dagger, though.” Luca’s tone is conspiratorial. “And it’s sharp. I sharpened it myself.” He prods the tips with his finger, forcing a single gleaming crimson drop to appear. “Let’s make a pact,” says Luca, holding up the bleeding finger.

  Sam has done a blood pact before, with Marta and the other kids. “Okay,” he says, and lets Luca prick his finger.

  They press their fingertips together and move them back and forth. Luca grins and says, “Now we’re blood brothers.”

  “That ball is nice,” says Sam.

  “It’s three balls. Ivory. A ball inside a ball inside another ball.”

  “Cool,” says Sam.

  Luca has perked up. “Let’s play something.”

  “Like what?” asks Sam.

  “Hide and seek.”

  “Okay.” Sam really likes this idea. The villa is his. He knows every bolthole and forgotten cupboard.

  “You hide. I’ll look for you,” says Luca. “I’ll count to a hundred.”

  Now Sam is glad he’s such a fast runner. While Luca is counting, he dashes out of the limonaia, back across the lawn and into the villa. As he steps into the blackness, the idea hits him. He knows he should knock it away, that it will lead to trouble, but he can’t stop himself. There is something in Luca’s face that demands to be challenged, to be pleased, something that goads him into dangerous territory. He senses that Luca won’t be impressed unless he does this.

  Inside the villa, he has to wait, let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He looks around half expecting Donatella to appear and catch him before he makes that move that will send him hurtling into Walter’s bad books. But there is no one today, so he is safe. The villa’s maze of rooms yawns and whispers, but there is only one room that matters, that entices him, whose hiding places have the flavour of a Chinese puzzle and the odour of ancient magnificence.

  Samuele tip-toes over to the key cupboard and opens the carved door. Inside is the Montefalcone patrimony.

  Their keys.

  Keys to the house on Elba overlooking a shard of turquoise sea. Keys to the lodge in Vallombrosa where Walter has taken him hunting but has been unable to hide his own disgust at killing creatures. Keys to the apartment in Milan, strictly for Walter’s business trips. Keys to the shop in Via Maggio. And the palazzo in San Frediano. And the farmhouses and rental properties.

  Samuele reaches out and takes down the huge key with the iron Florentine lily at its end. As he moves toward the tower, he listens for Walter and Luca’s mother, but the villa offers up no voices, no laughter or murmurs.

  When he reaches the tower door, his heartbeat is strangling him, gripping his throat and racing out of control. He will have to leave the door ajar, otherwise it won’t be a fair game. He pushes the key into the lock and turns it, opens the door and starts up the stairs, which follow the square shape of the tower up to the lower anteroom, then the last set of stairs to the room which is like an observatory.

  There are huge windows on three sides, and beneath the windows, ornate carved wooden cabinets with glass doors, displaying the telescopes, astrolabes, clocks and other ancient devices that Samuele understands, but has not yet been allowed to use. He has dreamed of every kind of navigation but Walter will not let him touch these objects.

  Along the fourth wall are the door and a set of display cabinets and bookshelves. Beneath these is a carved panel with numerous holes in the shapes of stars and moons, creating a type of grating, like a priest’s confessional, or the screen in a sultan’s harem.

  He digs his fingers into the holes and yanks the panel away, crawls into the long low space and pulls the panel back into place. He has a perfect view without being seen. He has hid on Marta here several times and each time she looked straight at him and never found him.

  Sam is excited about defeating Luca, impatient, can’t wait to see the frustration in Luca’s face, but at the same time, he wants to put off that sweet moment for as long as possible. The villa is big so he may be waiting for quite a while. Although Walter says that people and animals who feel threatened always move upward. He can see that Luca might be threatened by what the Montefalcone family is and has.

  Sam settles in, stretching out his body in the long low space, listening to distant sounds beyond the tower windows, a tractor somewhere, and a dog barking. He starts to feel sleepy in the airless dusty nest and lets his eyes close.

  When he wakes, there is someone in the room. He eases himself onto his side, making as little noise as possible, and peeks through a crescent moon-shaped hole. Luca is opening cabinets, taking out the sundials, astrolabes, nocturnals, and trying them out, moving their parts, spinning the globes, taking the telescopes to the window and spying on the world.

  Sam wants to burst out of his hiding place, and tell Luca to take the precious objects, take them all, play with them, blast Walter’s hoarding and hiding all to hell. But an old lecture of Walter’s is coming back to him, that certain primitive tribes had bankrupted themselves in the name of generosity and graciousness, giving too many gifts to their guests, trying to outdo them, and that this is something that should be avoided at all costs.

  Sam doesn’t care. He wants to break apart the hollow shell of his life, he wants to so badly, but he mustn’t move otherwise he’ll spoil the game. He stays there in his hiding place, watching, breathing silently as Luca pokes around the room, leaving his sweaty fingerprints on everything.

  The sound of footsteps at the bottom of the stairs makes the hair at the back of Sam’s neck stand straight. If this is Walter, it will be Armageddon for anyone found in the tower. The footfalls come closer. They’re slow, dragging a little, as if tired. It’s taking them forever to arrive. Luca puts the telescope he
has in his hand back in its case, then goes in the direction of the footsteps until he is out of Sam’s line of vision.

  Sam can hear whispering. It grows louder and comes closer. It is in the room now and he can see everything.

  Sam holds his breath, not wanting to be discovered. Luca steps back into the line of vision. He is going toward the footsteps, his expression sour, his face crimson and plump with rage. Now Sam can see the black dress and slender legs of Luca’s mother. He can’t see her face yet but he hears her voice. She says, “Don’t make me have to tell you again. I said come, Luca. Leave those things alone. We’re going.”

  Luca is still. Too still. His arms gradually begin to flail until he looks like a huge crazed bird.

  “What about me? What about the room?” Luca is looking at his mother with disgust. “What did you do? You did something. You ruined it all.”

  “I said we’re going. Now.”

  Something unearthly is happening to Luca. A tiny guttural sound comes from his throat, a crooning “no” that is small at first and then crescendos into a roar.

  Mirella tries to grab him, to quiet him. Sam, from his vantage point, can see that Luca has become so much bigger than his mother, heavier. He is blowing like a volcano. Out of nowhere, there is a flash of gold shininess. It is in Luca’s hand, the brass letter opener with the dragon handle. In an impossible burst of frenzied movement, he thrashes out at his mother, slashing and driving the pointed blade into her body, over and over again. She has barely realized what is happening and when she does, she is too stunned and damaged to make a sound.

  His lightning movements stop. Mirella’s knees are quivering and losing their strength. She bends slightly, then slumps to the floor, almost elegantly. Purplish blood is forming a small pool on the marble pattern. The only time Sam has seen that much blood is when they slaughtered the pig for sausage. He is struggling with the idea that this is a human being and not a pig.