Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1)

by Strozzi, Amadeus

  A whimpering sound surrounds him. It takes him a minute to realize that it’s coming from him. He can’t stop himself. Luca, who has been standing still, his body now slack with spent fury, turns toward Sam’s hiding place and this new sound. In one step he is there in front of the panel. He yanks it open and looks down at Sam. His expression is drawn, bloodless, zombie-like, and its blankness is terrifying.

  “Come out.”

  Sam doesn’t dare disobey.

  Luca grabs a handful of Sam’s clothing then pulls him to a standing position. Then he puts his hand at the back of Sam’s neck and pushes him forward. Their feet cannot avoid Mirella’s blood and they track it across the room. It engorges Sam’s senses with its raw metallic smell. He is afraid he will throw up or faint but Luca keeps pushing him forward with a firm grip.

  They go down the stairs. Though Sam is holding onto the handrail, he almost trips and stumbles a couple of times, but Luca yanks him up and prods him on down each step and along the corridors of the hot dark villa. Luca begins to mutter, half talking to himself and half to Sam. Only some of the words are clear.

  “It’s got to be this way. That’s what it said. We have to find it. We can’t go. I have to find it.”

  Sam would like to turn and ask him what they’re looking for but his vocal chords are paralyzed.

  Luca stops him and in a rushed hushed voice, asks, “Where’s the way into the cellar.”

  “We’re not allowed down there,” Sam manages to croak.

  It’s more than not allowed. Nonno Riccardo has made it quite clear that the cellar is full of unquiet ghosts. His exact words were, “Those are the crypts where lie our ancestors and our enemies. You wouldn’t want them rising up and devouring your flesh in the middle of the night now, would you, young Samuele?”

  Riccardo claimed he had gone down there and bargained with the ghosts. If he didn’t bother them, they wouldn’t bother him. And so it was to be that Sam could never approach that cellar door without the feeling that he was about to step on the souls of a thousand angry presences, even though Mum had said it was all a lot of tosh.

  Thinking of Mum fills him with despair. It has been made clear to him that she has gone and is not coming back. So where is Walter? When is he going to come and rescue him from this Luca? The villa is so noiseless that its silence seems to scream.

  “Where is the cellar?” Luca prods him, insistent. Sam fears all the choices. Going into the cellar, which means that place full of spider webs, rats and ghosts. Or refusing to go into the cellar, which most likely means being slaughtered like a pig by Luca. Or running, bolting, trying to get away from this boy monster. Sam, unable to move, is trembling now. He can't stop himself. He is aware of the warm trickle down his leg.

  “What is wrong with you? You’ve pissed yourself… I know you have a cellar. It's in the plans. Show me where it is.” Luca has taken a piece of paper from his pocket and is studying it. He doesn’t yell. He's speaking quite reasonably. It confuses Sam.

  He glances back at Luca. “Don’t hurt me.”

  Luca looks offended. “Don't be stupid. We're brothers. Blood brothers.”

  “Your mother...we have to…” says Sam, staring at the bloodied letter opener, which Luca is still clutching in the other hand, still waving around in his clenched fist.

  “We have to hurry.” Luca is losing his temper again. He shoves Sam, who stumbles forward and falls to the floor, grinding his knees against the cold marble. Luca pulls him up again. “There’s no time. We need to go now. The cellar.” Sam feels dwarfed by the older boy, who is again puffing up like some gigantic bird about to take on a rival. All of Sam’s will is draining from his body.

  Luca’s hand is driving him forward again. For such an unathletic, pudgy boy, he has remarkable strength. His cracking voice, the adolescent yodel, ought to diminish his force, but it makes him more menacing. He says. “We’re in this together.”

  Sam does not understand what Luca is talking about. He wants to sit down on the spot, whimper and give up, but Walter has often told him that men do not do that. Walter has said that if possible he should attempt humour in a bad situation. Nothing funny comes to him. He says, “The cellar stairs are off the kitchen.”

  “Show me.” Another prod from behind.

  “It’s this way.” Sam points and Luca drives, the grip on Sam’s shoulder painful to the point of numbness.

  When they reach the kitchen, Luca puffs with exasperation. He takes a dish towel from the hook, pushes Sam onto a chair and starts to mop him up, wiping the urine off his leg, the blood off his shoes. Then he cleans his own shoes, tosses the cloth on the floor and says, “Go on. Show me.”

  At the door to the cellar, Sam feels the end of the world approaching. Nonno Riccardo, having shown him a book containing a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, the Garden of Earthly Delights, has told him that the infernal scene in the triptych, of a man’s body parts being devoured by Satan’s creatures, is an accurate representation of what he would find in the cellar. When Sam related this to Walter, he had laughed and said, “Your Nonno Riccardo is not particularly religious, though he did make a pact with the ghosts. Really, he just enjoys scaring children. He has no time for children. I speak from experience.” Sam has never been able to shake the picture from his mind.

  Sam switches on the cellar light, but he knows that it only lights the stairs, and the wine cellar. The rest is unlit “You’ll need a flashlight. It’s there, in that cabinet.” Luca opens it and finds the torch, then hands the letter opener to Sam.

  There is no railing next to the cellar steps, so Sam puts his hand against the stony wall to prop himself up and goes down one step at a time. The feeble light makes the cobwebs and dark corners dramatic. They are in a main area, a food storeroom, and beyond that is another room with an arched brick entrance to the wine cellar. Luca pushes Sam in that direction. They pass the sleeping-soldier rows of dusty bottles, the sweet mustiness of oak and fermented spillage, and continue on. At the end is another dark archway.

  Luca lets go of Sam’s shoulder and pushes ahead of him, shining the torch into the black gulf. Further on in the dark space is a heap of chairs. Sam can recall Nonno Riccardo talking about a missing chair, then making a strange speech full of hard words whose meaning he has not yet been able to decipher. And then Nonno winking, such a mysterious expression on his face. Sam always had the feeling that Nonno’s little speech was meant for him.

  My mother always used to notice these things, a chair missing from the downstairs sitting room, or some other part of the villa and she would interrogate everyone as to the whereabouts of this particular piece of furniture. It was something of a family joke. There have been and still are chairs, dozens and dozens of chairs at Villa Le Falde, though many of them are now retired; Biedermeier chairs, Empire and Umbertino chairs, Louis XIV and Napoleon I chairs, Chippendale and Sheridan chairs, Piedmont oak chairs, understuffed and overstuffed horsehair chairs; we have a hospice for all the crippled, injured and aged out-of-fashion chairs somewhere around here. In the cellar, I believe.

  And there they are, in a high heap, only partially covered with canvases now coated in pale orange gritty powder from the bricks in the cellar walls. Luca stands still and contemplates the pile. “We need to move those,” he says. Sam does not understand this boy. He wants to go home, then realizes he is already home. Luca steps forward and starts to pull off the canvasses, then yanks chairs down from the top of the heap.

  They remove one after the other, Luca instructing him on where to put them, telling him to get on with it, to hurry up. In front of them is a wooden door. The dust of centuries has made it the same colour as the cellar walls. It has a heavy drop latch and iron hinges in the shape of the giglio, the same Florentine lily that is everywhere in the villa. Luca rushes forward and wrestles with it until he is able to nudge it up and over. He pushes hard. Nothing moves. He finally throws his whole body against it and the door grates open. His torchlight reveals a passageway
of stone lined with iron sconces.

  Sam is stunned by the idea that this secret passageway has existed here all along, under his feet, and he hasn’t known about it. He feels cheated. He can hear and see Luca’s excitement, Luca, who is moving forward hesitantly in the dark. As far as Sam can make out, the passage is straight, no turns or surprises, but it is long, with no end in sight, and low, just slightly taller than a man like Walter.

  They go forward through the darkness, one cautious foot in front of the other. Sam is reminded of stories, biblical and more, of being swallowed by a whale, because that is how he feels, as if he were in the viscous belly of a huge creature. The start of the passage was not damp but as they move forward, the walls seem blacker, slimier. There is that odour of wet stone and rotting leafy earth.

  The passageway comes to another door. Luca falls forward onto it, puts his hand on the iron latch, then looks back at Sam and grins. He has to struggle with it at first but then is able to open it and he does it with a sense of ceremony, taking his time, his face filled with glee for the discovery.

  Beyond is a dark cavern. Sam squints and sees that it is not a cavern after all but another room. The torch light is too dim, too weak to take in the magnitude of it. Luca is breathing heavily, as if he might have an asthma attack, but it is something different, Sam realizes, something much more like joy.

  Sam’s eyes have not yet grown accustomed to the light but he can hear a stream trickling nearby. It is cool, the perfect temperature, and despite Luca hovering, he could lie right down there and soak up the coolness, let it soothe his body. But Luca is agitated again. He is shining the torch everywhere and pacing.

  “Look. Look at these.” He flashes the torch down to light some kind of bench. No, not a bench. Sam knows them from something Nonno Riccardo has shown him. There are three of them and they are like beds for a Roman triclinium, but that can’t be. A Medieval version maybe, because Nonno has said that nothing from Roman times like that could have survived, usually having become kindling during a siege. Nonno Riccardo has often lamented such facts because of the antiques shop.

  Sam is getting his bearings now. There are the three triclinium couches and a table between them. In the side wall opposite to the tunnel entrance is another dim slot. It is just a shadow in the wall, but the trickling sound is coming from there, and it is from there that the cool gust comes.

  There is one central wall - perhaps five metres long - and Luca is holding the torch immobile in different points for a few seconds at a time pointing toward it. As Luca continues this spotlight patchwork on different parts of the wall, it emerges, like pieces of a jigsaw.

  The fresco.

  At the very centre is a sun, which shoots out golden flames from a perfect circle. There is a night sky merging into a day sky, and above that, a field of celestial blues and indigos punctuated with planets in purple and coppery greens, surrounded by other flaming stars and comets.

  Clearly rotating around the brilliant central sun, are all of them. Mary, Child Jesus, the disciples and God himself, all circling around the sun. Little gold strokes indicate the movement. The longer Sam looks at it, the more amazed he is. Its brilliance is created with gold leaf. He knows the look of it from Nonno’s antique shop. It doesn’t tarnish. Off in a corner is Galileo, a portrait in the shape of a medallion surrounded by more gold leaf. Like an orchestral conductor about to come out of the wings and set it all in motion.

  Luca is grinning. “It’s completely heretic,” he says.

  Sam looks at him. He doesn’t understand the word.

  “Galileo. He was officially a heretic. This painting is heresy. People thought everything revolved around the earth. Galileo knew they were wrong but couldn’t do anything about it. He had to stay quiet about it for a really long time, the whole last part of his life. But he was a guest here. At this villa. He came to this villa. I know he did. I researched it. This was a summer room. For cooling off and relaxing. Galileo was poisoned in a room just like this outside of Padua. These rooms are cooled down by the waterfalls and air passages that create breezes.”

  “There’s the stream that runs into the grottos near the belvedere,” says Sam.

  Luca is staring hard at him, changing gears again. “We have to go.”

  Sam says, “I want to stay here. It’s too hot outside. I’m tired.”

  “No. We have to go. They’re going to start looking for us.”

  “No. I’m staying.”

  Sam remembers again what Luca has done. The image of Mirella that was momentarily replaced by Galileo and the painting, is back again. It must be showing in his face because Luca is looking at him, calculating.

  “I’m staying,” Sam repeats. “I’m staying. This is my villa, not yours.”

  Luca comes close to him, swelling up all over again. He lunges forward and clasps his big hands around Sam’s throat, pushing him to the floor. He is squeezing so hard that the world is turning white. Sam’s shocked mind is filling up with the panic kaleidoscope of his life and underlying it all is a stinging sensation of betrayal. He’s been betrayed by everyone, by this Luca who promised good things, by Nora who was supposed to be there for him, by Walter who is not here to save him.

  “Samuele, figliolo.” Sam opens his eyes to see Walter standing above him. Sam can feel twigs and leaves under one hand, the smell of pine resin all around him. He is lying on the forest floor.

  In his other hand is something hard and cold. He holds it up to look at it. The bloodied letter opener is snatched away by Walter, who then scoops Sam up in his arms and carries him out of the forest. Sam is aware that there are other people with Walter. Gino and Luca are there too. Sam closes his eyes to try to make this terrible Luca go away.

  Luca says, “We were playing hide and seek, and I couldn’t find him. I looked everywhere.” There is warning in his voice that says, don’t try to change my story.

  Sam would like to speak but realizes he is powerless. His words won’t be heard. He wants it all to melt away, the pictures that are now blasting in his head. He tries to think about his mother, her voice, but her image is blocked. He wants to vanish. On the endless trek back to the villa he sets his mind to the task of disappearing, of annihilating himself. His eyes are closed and his mind is drifting somewhere far out over the sea, where no one will ever be able to get to him.

  He is even able to forget that it is Walter carrying him, that it is his own limp body that is jostling up and down as they walk silently toward the villa. He is very far away. He does not even try to imagine what Walter must be thinking. Another distant Sam is desperate to ask, “Where’s Mirella? What happened to Mirella?” but he does not want to allow that other Sam in. He stays far away in the turquoise sea.

  Then Walter whispers to Sam, privately, so that the others can’t hear, “What did you do, figliolo? Did you hurt Mirella?” Sam refuses to return to his body. He is never coming back. He will be a mute ghost forever. All the other voices around him are growing distant, except for one. Luca, acting, insisting, “Where’s my mother? I want my mother.” Sam’s sadness is mingled with fury and revulsion.

  Gino says, “The ambulance driver tells me they’re ready to go. They need the address.”

  Walter says absentmindedly, “I must pay them. It will have to be a good sum, enough to keep them quiet. You mustn’t say anything to anyone, Gino. Do you understand? The less they know, the better. Not even your wife. Leave Donatella out of this.”

  Gino says, “Have I ever let you down, Signore?”

  “We have to remove everything. How did they come here?”

  “On a Vespa.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know. I looked for it but couldn’t find it.”

  Walter drags two kitchen chairs into the big living room and sets them meters apart from each other, then indicates that each boy should sit down. He tries to interrogate both boys but Sam can’t make out his words. They are muffled behind the sound of blood rushing and pounding
behind his ears. Walter is questioning Luca, who is telling a long story, a long lie. Then Walter says something about fair and equal punishment. But he is clearly worried. He says that it is risky for either of them to stay in Italy.

  Sam understands. The numbness is complete now. Now that there is the plan to tear him away from everything he knows, because that Luca kid has lied and ruined his life and killed his own mother. Sam decides that he is never going to be part of this world again.

  There’s a lot of bustling around that night, until Walter gives him an odd tasting water to drink. He says it is to make him sleep. And he does, deep into the next day. When he wakes up, the sun’s brightness feels as dark as a moonless night. And then Nora arrives. He is so happy to see her but also angry with her. She has come too late. She should have been there earlier when he needed her. Nora is flustered, unable to speak, but she hugs him tight.

  On the way out of Le Falde, in the car with his mother, Sam looks out the window and sees a sandaled foot dangling from the tree, the tree that all the kids use for spying on the adults. They think they can’t be seen, but he knows who is sitting up in that tree. He knows who has been watching everything.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sound made Don Paddy stop what he was doing. The suitcase, open on the bed, and still only half-filled with the essentials, was already going to be too heavy. There would be a long trip ahead. The usual prayers were not functioning, had lost their power to make him feel calm. It was a very unfortunate moment to be sober.

  If it was burglars he was hearing, well, it was not the first time he'd been burgled. The church was so isolated that it was only natural that drug-spurred youth roamed the hills looking for an easy mark, for the collection box or a silver chalice carelessly left out. Once he had caught gypsy children climbing out of his window with the odd bits and pieces of dead men’s gold that had been pressed into his hand by grateful widows, but he hadn’t been limber enough to stop them.