Killing Pilgrim (4 page)

“My
son, Marko, who you’ve been asking so much about,” Piero said in his accented but clear English, nodding towards della Torre. “This is Rebecca Vees. She’s the American researcher I told you about, the one who’s interested in my work. She’s been staying with me.”

Della Torre stood up quickly, almost knocking his chair backwards as he did.

“How do you do,” she said.

“Yes. How do you do,” he echoed.

Della Torre was mesmerized by the softness of her naked flesh between breasts and hips. It took him an awkward moment before he noticed she was holding a hand out towards him. Her hand was cool and small, but her grip had substance and there was a roughness to the skin. He recovered a semblance of composure, enough to step back from the table and offer up his seat.

“I’m afraid it seems I took your chair,” he said. “And your plate and glass too.”

“Never mind, I’ll sit next to Piero. The stone’s nice and cool anyway,” she said.

Her eyes opened wide as she spoke to him. She turned to della Torre’s father and lay some bound papers she’d been holding in her hand on a clear corner of the table.

Piero? Hearing her use his father’s Christian name came as an aftershock to della Torre. Istria was old-fashioned. People still used formal language between the generations. Okay, so on closer inspection he could tell she wasn’t quite as young as she’d first seemed, when she’d been framed by the front door’s white stone architrave and lit by sunlight filtered green through the vine leaves. There were fine wrinkles in the corners of her eyes, and the backs of her hands looked like they were familiar with physical work. Even so, she couldn’t have been past her early thirties; she was at least four or five years younger than he was.

She sat on a flat, long cushion bleached with age, next to his father. So close they touched.

“I’ll get you another glass,” della Torre said, making a move for the house.

“Don’t bother. I’ve had lunch and I don’t drink much in the afternoon,” she said, smiling brightly at him.

She picked up the folder and turned to della Torre’s father. “This is as much as I came up with back in the States, but they’re only rough notes. I hadn’t really intended to work on them. Only if something came up.”

“I’m sure we can do a bit of work on it over the next few days,” his father said, tilting his head back so that he could read the notes through the bottom edge of his glasses.

“I’m researching the development of the Glagolitic alphabet,” she said, turning to the son.

“So you study Slavonic languages, like my father,” della Torre said, struggling to regain his composure.

“I’m no specialist. I’m beginning to research the subject.”

“Oh, are you an academic?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she said, not elaborating.

“Where?”

“At George Mason,” she said, that smile never leaving her lips.

He shook his head. “Where is it?”

“In Virginia,” she said. “Ever been there?”

“Never,” he said, trying to refresh his memory of American geography from primary school. Once upon a time he could name every state and its capital. Now he had only a rough idea of where Virginia was. Somewhere to the east and south.

“It’s very nice,” she said. “Rolling hills, beaches, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. You should come sometime. I’ll show you around.”

“That’s a kind offer,” he said. “So are you doing a doctorate or post-doctoral work?”

“Your notes here give you away,” the older man said to Rebecca, interrupting the conversation. “They show that you come at your analysis from the Russian. You’ve been deceived by some false friends, words from different languages that sound the same but have different meanings. Very naughty to start with the presumption of Russian when approaching middle European Slavic languages. It’s like the mistake people often make in thinking the word
histrionic
is related to the word
hysteria
.
Hysteria
comes from the Latin for
womb
. But
histrionic
is from
Histria
, which the Romans called Istria. The most famous actors were from Histria, and so
histrionic
refers to an ability to act, and not to womb or women.”

Della Torre couldn’t resist a little indulgent smile at his father. Piero loved explaining the etymology of
histrionic
because it often came as a surprise, even to linguists.

Rebecca smiled. “I said they were very rough,” she said by way of apology.

“Oh, never mind. You’re not a specialist. But I think a little more reading is in order before you start to build a thesis of any sort. And work on your Slovak. Very important for this. Not to mention Serbo-Croat.”

“You speak Serbo-Croat?” della Torre asked. His father had long argued that it was spurious to claim that Serbian and Croatian were separate languages; they were no more separate than American and British English, albeit with different alphabets. The differences were trivial, a matter of accent and a handful of words and a deep-seated enmity of two peoples. His father’s views may have been correct for a philologist, but they didn’t win him many friends among nationalists on either side.

“Not really. My background is in Russian, but I’ve taken an interest in western Slavic languages. That’s why I’m here. I invited myself a while ago, and your father’s just too kind to turn down a stranger.”

The memory precipitated from a fog in a distant corner of his mind. His father had mentioned an American research student some time ago, but della Torre had been too preoccupied to give it much thought. He had been on the run. From hired killers, from the Zagreb cops, from the
UDBA
. He’d driven through Istria on his way to London, via Venice, moving as quickly and secretly as he could. But he’d felt a pang on his way past his father’s house, not knowing when he’d ever see his father or the house again. So he’d taken an enormous risk in calling the old man. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Maybe some deep, longed-for . . . what? Whatever he’d been hoping for, he hadn’t gotten it. Instead, he’d spent worried moments listening to gossip, conversational filler — and, he now remembered, something about an American researcher.

“I’ll find some references for you,” Piero said. “You’ll be able to look them up when you get back to Washington. But that’s for later; it’s a side issue to the work you’re doing.”

“Time for a little break,” Rebecca said. “We got right down to it from the minute I showed up, and haven’t stopped since. Isn’t that right, Piero?” She lowered her head and looked up at the older man through her eyelashes.

For a moment della Torre could have sworn he’d seen his father’s cheeks colour. The old man kept his eyes on the notes in front of him. His prominent widow’s peak was more apparent than ever; the hair was almost completely white, in marked contrast to his deeply tanned skin. No, della Torre decided, he’d been mistaken; it was probably just the afternoon heat.

“You’ve been staying here?”

“For a little more than a week now. It’s terrific. I love how you can really feel history in the place. You can almost taste it,” she said, running her bottom lip under her teeth in a way that sent an electric current up della Torre’s spine.

History. She was right. Maybe there was too much of it. A history of armies and of destruction. The ruins of a Roman hamlet lay under his father’s wheat field. Bits of stone wall and the detritus of an ancient civilization pushed up through the soil now and again. And his family history was tied to it.

His father had bought the house as a ruin, a project for the two of them, when they’d come back from the U.S. after della Torre’s mother died. They’d rebuilt it, at a time when these old stone houses were being abandoned in favour of new, concrete structures, the local architecture replaced with anodyne modern Mediterranean villas that wouldn’t have been out of place in Spanish or Greek resorts.

But when they’d finished, people came from all over Istria to marvel at their work. No doubt some laughed up their sleeves that these Yugo-Americans had spent so much time and money on an old house when a new one would have been so much cheaper and easier to build. But even they had admired the quality of the restoration and the household conveniences they’d only ever seen on television: a machine to wash dishes, a big shower that never ran out of hot water, air conditioning in almost every room.

The house had been state of the art a quarter of a century before. But, like his father, it had grown tired in the intervening years.

Rebecca pulled her head closer to the old man’s so that they were reading the papers together. It gave della Torre another chance to look at her closely. The pale skin, marked by small freckles; the curve of her breasts. He felt a pang. Could it be he was jealous?

She looked up suddenly, catching the younger della Torre scrutinizing her. Again that smile.

“So how long are you here?” she asked.

“Just the weekend. I’m due back in Zagreb on Monday.”

“What a coincidence. I need to get to Zagreb next week too. I’d like to do a bit of research in the library there. Maybe we can make the trip together,” she said.

Della Torre senior looked up sharply, his head drawing back as if in reproach. “I didn’t realize you’d be leaving so soon.”

“You’ve been so kind, Piero, but I really can’t encroach any further on your hospitality. I’ve been here too long already. I’d only intended to spend a few days. Besides, there are a couple of people I promised to look up in Zagreb,” she said.

Della Torre thought he could read hurt in his father’s expression.

“I need to be in Poreč tomorrow, might make a day of it. So I’ll stay out of your hair while I’m here,” della Torre said. “Right now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a shower. It was a hot drive.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll join you,” she said. Della Torre’s look of panic made her laugh. “I mean on the drive down to Poreč. I need to pick up one or two things and it’ll make a nice change from the brain work.”

“I can drive you,” della Torre’s father said, hurriedly. “We can all go to Poreč tomorrow.”

Della Torre shrugged. “Like I said, I’ll probably be making a day of it, so I’ll take my own car. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,” he said to Rebecca.

“The pleasure is all mine.”

• • •

The house was considerably tidier than when della Torre had seen it last. Papers still covered the dining-room table, but now they were in ordered stacks. Surfaces looked like they’d been dusted. The kitchen had been scrubbed and the perennially dripping faucet had been mended. Books were back on their shelves and shutters had been opened for the first time since he and his father had hung them, despite the heat of the day.

He went to put his overnight bag in his room but stopped short. Rebecca’s clothes were folded on a chair, and her suitcase was at the end of the double bed, the one he and Irena had bought.

He carried on through to a small interconnected room. It had been his study and model-making room when he’d been a teenager, and it had a single bed that he’d used as a sofa. The room wasn’t air-conditioned, but enough cool air flowed through the louvred door from his bedroom. He’d be comfortable for the three nights he was there.

Della Torre dropped his bag on the bed and went through another door to the hall that led to the bathroom. Rebecca’s toiletries were on the shelf. Nothing elaborate, but feminine enough for della Torre to feel Irena’s absence. He’d call her when he got back to Zagreb.

He took a long, cool shower and then headed back to his room with a towel wrapped around his waist. Rebecca was in the hall.

“Sorry. Have you been waiting for me to get out?” he asked.

“Nope. Besides, I’m the one who should be apologizing for taking your room. You can have it back if you like,” she said, running her gaze up and down his damp torso.

“That’s fine. It’ll seem like old times sleeping in my little bed,” he said. “If you don’t mind me parking myself next door. Sound travels between the rooms and I’m told I sometimes snore.”

“Just as long as you don’t smoke. Then again, maybe I won’t mind if you do.” She paused. “Well, if you have all your things, I was going to take a little siesta. I’ve grown used to them. A cool shower and a lie-down these hot afternoons.”

The sarong she’d tied around her waist slipped lower still. His eyes traced an invisible line that arrowed down her belly from her navel.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

His hand rested on the doorknob for a long time before he pulled on some shorts. He lay on his bed, thinking, while she showered. But the heat of the day, the journey, and the wine at lunch lulled him to sleep before she finished.

It was late in the afternoon when he woke. He pulled on an old T-shirt that fit better than it had in years. He must have lost weight since getting shot.

He made his way downstairs barefoot and found a pair of his father’s plastic sandals by the front door — they wore the same size shoes. There was no sign of life in the house. Della Torre guessed his father would be in his study, reading and drinking watered-down wine or cold beer, as he did most afternoons. In the evenings he moved on to grappa or slivovitz, the fierce local plum brandy, while watching Italian television or listening to the World Service or sometimes American or German shortwave broadcasts.