The Whirling Girl

by Barbara Lambert

  Nothing. Except to discover that the great beautiful room upstairs was badly lit. How would she do her work? She spied the top of an angle-poise lamp poking up behind a big fireplace chair, but this turned out to have a tiny lemon-sized bulb, and worse, the lamp was wired to an almost unmoveable bronze statue of Romulus and Remus suckling the she-wolf, the whole contraption so extraordinarily tacky that she could only shake her head. The low table this sat on was covered with a beautiful shawl of heavy silk, fringed with coloured crystal beads. The beads made a tiny tinkling music when she reached down and fingered them, before she worked up the courage to push open the bedroom door again and fumble for a light switch.

  BESIDE THE BED THERE were three books.

  Absurd to imagine he had made sure exactly those three books would be in that position, certain to catch her eye.

  The two Everyman volumes were on top, worn gilt print on the spine, above a pattern of flowers. Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. So many times she’d seen him pull one or the other from his pocket. She knew exactly where the art nouveau design on the frontispiece of Volume One would be stained because a child had spilled cocoa on it. She knew the page she should turn to, in order to find, in the upper left corner, a small black-and-white illustration: Etruscan Dancing-Girl. She knew how either of those compact little books would feel if she were to pick it up and open it at random: Sutri, Nepi, Norchia, Pitigliano, Tarquinii. The names of places that had held queerness and splendour. She had learned to read by spelling out those names, often pronouncing them wrong.

  And under the top volumes? Without coming a step closer she recognized the book he had kept on a shelf in his study in that other farmhouse in western Washington, never knowing (she had thought then) how she had crept in there almost from the time she could read, to sound her way through the true grownup versions of the stories he had told her ever since she was very little. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Oxford edition, on the cover the helpless form of the young god of war, asleep, pinkly draped across the lap of a Venus who smiled a creamy smile.

  A whistle broke the silence.

  Just a bird?

  She remembered a stout burled stick in a copper stand by the kitchen door. When she went to get it, foolish or not, she noticed a hunting coat hanging on a hook by the door, an old green coat with cargo pockets and cartridge loops.

  She took the coat down. She buried her face in the quilted lining, caught the smell of once-familiar tobacco. Finally, a whiff of him. She sank down at the kitchen table, and stared through the glasspaned door to where the kitchen light shone on a flowering quince. A pinkish-white petal floated down, and then another. Watching this, waiting for another petal to fall, breathing the smell that the old coat released, she understood how absurd all this other caution was, how it hardly mattered about the thieving gypsies and the strangling Calabrians.

  After a while, she turned the pages of a loose-leaf binder on the table. It held information about the house, the pages yellowed, typed with an old machine where the c and the g struck above the line of type. “If you hear noises in the night, they will be these: a wild boar (cinghiale) rooting in the woods beside the house or among the olive trees; a porcupine grubbing out the arum lilies along the drive; a screech owl. There is nothing to fear.”

  But there’s always something to fear, Clare thought.

  It comes creeping up from inside if nowhere else.

  IN RAINFORESTS OF THE upper Rio Negro, Clare, the imaginary traveller, had not been afraid. She had watched the ruby eyes of caimans gliding by, as her guide poled the dugout through dark waters. She had eased past giant anacondas on the trail. She had calmly gathered up her painting materials and slipped back to camp, when she heard the crashing of a jaguar in the brush.

  Where The Bull Was Kept

  HUDDLED INSIDE HER UNCLE’S hunting coat, on his dark bed, Clare listened to a little wind slipping through some unfamiliar Italian trees. She heard the rushing of a stream. In the rafters, night thoughts roosted. She tried to concentrate on just the whispers of air as they played through twigs and leaves, pretending this could be a new discipline, identifying growing things not just by leaf and bract and stem but by the sounds they made as the wind played through.

  Then the moon reached in and said, Hush now little Clare. Your mother’s name was Selene, another name for the moon. You will never be an orphan, Chiara, because your mother will always be shining down on you.

  On nights when she couldn’t sleep, he used to comfort her with these words.

  To the sound of the stream, Clare began drifting back and back to the true place, the good place, and darkness gave way to the full rich green of a coastal morning rising, where a man and a little girl were heading to a stream full of cutthroat, the man carrying his own rod and the girl’s new one as he helped her through the fence into the field where the bull was staked, below the folly of a west coast farmhouse with an Italian tower. The bull was raising its head, shaking its chain. The man said, “Stand tall; show him that you are not afraid.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I would be. But he’s staked, Chiara.”

  They were playing hooky from a long list of chores. In his pocket were two hard buns with slabs of cheese, and in his other pocket was Volume One of Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. They had only just started on these travels, which he would take her on whenever they managed to escape for the next brief years, Volume One illustrating the map of a city with its ancient gates and streets and ruins and the cemetery that held tombs like small brilliant houses, and such paintings on the walls. All this was described in a way so grownup that Clare let a lot of it flow over her. Bit by bit the pictures formed. Her uncle said they would go there together.

  This was the prelude. Now, to inhabit the crucial moment that exploded some days later, to be truly there, she needed to summon up the smell of burning sun on clay, the glitter of Oregon grape against the cliff that dropped from the farmhouse to the field. And then little Chiara, digging, digging — in danger and hot young jealousy and fury — into that steep cracked wall of clay.

  If she is quick — but has left enough clues — he will come and find her.

  It turns out she is nothing in that house. He doesn’t care that she did the drawing of the foxgloves just for him. She signed the drawing with the tiny upright fork shape he’d explained made a k sound in the Etruscan alphabet, “as in your name, Chiara,” signed it with the symbol only he would understand, to show how she absorbed everything he said. But he had left her picture on the table where her aunt could come and crumple it and throw it on the fire. Now Clare has the butcher knife and she is carving a place to disappear.

  “Oh, what our Etruscans could have done with this cliff face, Chiara,” he’d said when they came back across the field the week before, his face lighting up in that way that made her feel peculiar power. “We’ll pretend the cliff is limestone, shall we? Its location would have been ideal for our Etruscan friends to carve tombs.” Excited now, pointing out how the horseshoe shape of the cliff brought it into perfect view of the house above. “That is the essential element for an Etruscan city of the dead — in view of the habitation of the living.”

  What a strange activity for a child.

  “Shall we carve the entrance of a rock-tomb, like the drawing I showed you?” Dark hair falling in his face as he set down the fishing gear. What child wouldn’t enjoy feeling singled out, special? What child wouldn’t delight in taking turns with his fish knife to carve an elaborate house-front into clay, then being hoisted onto his shoulders so she could cut stick figures on the triangle shape above the columns? But as she’d wriggled down and begun to hollow out a true entrance between the columns, he’d grabbed her back, scolded her. Yes the Etruscans had carved tombs deep into the living rock, but this was only clay. It would be dangerous to burrow in there.

  In deeper now, when it turns out she isn’t special after all. Burrow deeper still! The hot sun baking the outer clay, the blood roiling th
rough her brain as she carves her way to darkness, hacking out great reckless chunks with the stolen butcher knife.

  Eventually she hears him calling. So what? She will live here. In the night she will bring blankets, a camp stove, food.

  When she feels the down-rush of dusty earth, it is too late to call out or do anything but curl up like a snail and wonder, almost triumphant, if perhaps she will not be found till centuries later. Will she be fossilized by then, the clay turned to limestone at last, her curled body too?

  What she smells next is his fear. Sharp as a knife it cuts a channel ahead of him, the stink of it. She keeps her eyes closed after he gets her free. He collapses to his knees outside, crushing her tightly to him, saying, “Jesus Jesus Jesus.” Her hand creeps to his armpit. She breathes his fear from her fingers, and the smell of love and almost-death. There will never be anything, ever, to match that moment.

  Adonis Flower

  CLARE WOKE; THE BUTCHER of Florence had not battered down her doors in the night.

  On chill air from outside flowed the scent of grass and herbs. The woods were loud with birdsong; in her sleep she had pictured a tap suddenly opened, a faucet pouring out melody and birds. A cuckoo started calling. She waited until it reached fifty, then swung her feet out of bed, felt the chill of the terracotta tile, slipped barefoot into her boots, pulled the hunting coat around her shoulders and walked onto the stone balcony beneath the wisteria arbour.

  Light rushed across the valley, springing the far hills into view. As she leaned on the railing, she imagined being on the prow of a ship, the house racing towards morning.

  She turned to close the glass doors. An envelope fell to the ground from the scrollwork above the handle.

  THE PAPER WAS CREAMY and stiff, the up-thrusting script so like her uncle’s British boarding-school writing. She retrieved the envelope gingerly.

  An invitation.

  Someone who described himself as the owner of an adjoining property was hosting a party in her honour, that very night. This had been arranged, he wrote, by the “wealthy chap who took you under his wing in London, Sir Harold Plank.” For as Clare was undoubtedly aware, the note went on, “old Harry Plank” had delegated an archaeologist in his employ, a chap who was staying just down the hill, to set up contacts for her.

  “Old Harry Plank.” Clare couldn’t help a flush.

  The spiky script went on to explain that “a goodly number of Etruscan glitterati” would also be attending. They were champing at the bit to hear about her fascinating travels, and of course to meet the niece of “the elusive Geoffrey Kane.” Sir Harold Plank had even couriered a carton of Clare’s recent book about the Amazon. Copies had been delivered to each of the expected guests, including the writer’s Italian brother-in-law, a young man who had established a refuge for endangered plants and various other species, “and with whom you will have so much in common, for the lad also knows all about the Amazon.”

  The writer signed off, “Eagerly awaiting the pleasure of meeting an illustrious fellow writer! Your good neighbour Ralph Farnham.” In a postscript, he warned her to be on her guard before she went out sketching. “I’m sure your uncle was a fine chap. But do be wary of those bloody ferocious dogs. I’m told that Sir Harry’s archaeology chap barely escaped with his life when he went exploring in your uncle’s woods.”

  Your good neighbour. She could see this man already: the old-school tie, the blue blazer with the crest, the supercilious familiarity with the likes of “old Harry.” The prospect of the party filled her with dread. She had not expected to meet a gaggle of glitterati not only familiar with her book, but including one who knew all about the Amazon. No way to get out of this. The man was coming to pick her up at seven, “Because, dear Signora Livingston, though my wife’s property adjoins yours, you will never find your way here on your own.”

  She shoved the invitation into the pocket of the hunting coat. Tonight was a long time away. Maybe her suitcase would fail to turn up. She could hardly be expected to meet all those glitterati in the boots and jeans she’d worn from London.

  SHE WALKED DOWN ONTO the grass, then skirted the front of the house, reaching out a hand to touch its stone flank. She came to a fence with a gate and a stile. The path beyond was rank and overgrown, leading into dark woods. What had Ralph Farnham meant about ferocious dogs? For that matter, who had been looking after the place? Who had left the bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, the milk and cheese in the bright yellow fridge? Or made sure these pots of geraniums flourished? There was so much she would have to ask the solicitor, once she’d made an appointment to see him.

  Behind the house, orderly olive trees graced terrace after terrace up the hillside as far as she could see. She scrambled around the end of the house and up to the first terrace, still worrying about dogs.

  Natural gardens had sprung up in the hollows around the olive trees, golden ox-eye daisies, wood forget-me-nots, chamomile with starry flowers; then, farther out, the soil was disked and rough. She settled on a stone and let her eye travel the patterned landscape, the rows of cypress, the patchwork fields far below, all brooded over by the ruined tower on the hilltop across the way. The tower had been built by the Medici, she’d read. Once, long before, that same hill would have held tile-roofed Etruscan buildings, a temple with brilliant painted god-figures flaring against the sky.

  She shook her head, the amazement of actually being here sinking in, remembering how as a lonely little kid, inspired by her uncle’s stories, she had wandered on the ridge behind the farmhouse with the fake Italian tower — she and her inseparable friend, the little Etruscan girl — the two of them wily and adventurous, even bolder than Etruscan women were reputed to have been. They changed the fate of the entire Etruscan nation: for it had been foretold that the Etruscan civilization would last but ten generations and then a great trumpet would sound, signalling the collapse; but the two of them, two little rebellious daughters of a priest king, refused to allow their great civilization to turn up its toes. They broke into the temple where the trumpet was kept and threw it crashing and splintering onto the rocks. The course of history was changed.

  It was seductive to sink back into that heroic reverie. How much easier imagination was than life. No need to face up to the glitterati, for example. Hadn’t the same applied to her adventures in the Amazon? She’d been prepared to go; she’d been desperate to go. But, having been prevented, she had gone there anyway. Mightn’t she have achieved something just as strong, or stronger, if not for one egregious bit of imaginative self-indulgence which could invalidate all she’d tried to do? She had to smile, no matter what, thinking what a sneaky self-subverter her imagination really was. In her book about those travels, hadn’t she been trying to do exactly what she’d attempted with the little Etruscan girl long ago — to stop the inevitable? Change the face of history?

  She pulled herself back into the present. No soaring of imagination was going to get her through the problems that faced her in fighting off her aunt’s legal threats. Looking down on the old house, a presence that seemed almost alive, she knew that she would do everything she could to keep it. It was so beautiful. No, more than that. Almost a natural part of the landscape, the ancient stones and the roof that was like a complex puzzle, the many levels of tiles blooming with patches of lichen, the chimneys with their own tile roofs like small pagodas. A gleaming copper gutter ran along the roof edge, connected to bright copper downpipes. This was clearly new. Geoffrey had left everything in good shape. For her. With forgiveness.

  She would agonize no more.

  Nevermore.

  She said it aloud, for good measure, and in that instant she caught the movement of a tiny shape, in a stony hollow, a throb of silver splitting into red before her eyes.

  HAD SHE TRULY SEEN the bud splitting open? The petals were still trembling, the blossom catching light in its blood-red cup. The shock of seeing this blossom here, as if the web between reality and imagination had dissolved, made her dizzy
.

  Nevermore.

  And it appeared.

  How often, as a child, Clare had made her way up to her uncle’s room in the tower, secretly, to read the story of Myrrha, the child mother of Adonis. Myrrha exiled to wander the earth as punishment for her unspeakable sin. And this flower, here, was Anemone coronaria, the blossom that had sprung from the blood of Adonis when, later, Aphrodite held her young lover dying in her arms. Already in the sun it had split wide to show the stamens springing from the black mound of its female centre in the upturned skirt of petals. Clare knelt bare-kneed on the stony soil. Carefully, without touching it, she cupped the small bloom in the hollow of her hands.

  THE QUIET MORNING BLEW apart. A roar, a puff of black smoke. A stooped figure emerged from a shed on a higher terrace, pushing what looked like a giant rototiller. He caught sight of Clare, shut off the sputtering motor, and started down a track at the edge of the trees.

  “Ah signora, benvenuta!” A smile that showed a scattering of teeth. “Signora, scusi, scusi,” wiping his grimed hand on the seat of his pants, “Sono Niccolo!” his grasp like the clutch of a gnarled oak.

  He began explaining, in a volley of almost unrecognizable Italian, that he worked here, had always worked here, for her uncle, and before that for someone else. She scrabbled for words she’d been practicing in Vancouver, but was no match for this volley of local dialect.

  So — she finally managed to ask — these were her uncle’s olive trees?

  He nodded. Yes, her uncle’s trees, and (a rope of words that she half-managed to disentangle) it was his great pleasant happiness to look after them for her. She must not worry. Of everything he was continuing to take care.

  Was it safe to walk here then? she asked. Would it be dangerous to come back in a few minutes, to sketch this little bloom?