The Light in the Ruins (14 page)

“Perhaps. Remember what the old woman on Francesca’s floor said. Francesca had seen someone and wanted a more substantial lock.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re going to talk to Vittore. That will be helpful.”

“But you think it’s a waste of time to go to Monte Volta.”

He sat forward. “I don’t think it will be fruitful for this investigation. But I think you personally will find it very interesting. Will this be your first time back?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. Be careful.”

“You’re worried about my safety? No one’s going to hurt me in Monte Volta.”

“No, of course not. But your memories? Those could be daggers.”

“I have no memories,” she reminded him.

He flipped shut the shell on the turtle ashtray on his desk and stood. “Not yet,” he said. “But you will.”

ALL I NEEDED was twenty minutes. But I heard the marchesa’s daughter opening the building’s front door three stories below me, and so I did not kill Beatrice Rosati that morning when she was alone at Francesca’s apartment. I would have to wait to place her heart on the balustrade of a bridge along the Arno
.

But I am nothing if not patient. I had waited a long time for Francesca. I could wait another day for Beatrice
.

So later that day I went to the Uffizi. I sat contentedly before Caravaggio’s
The Sacrifice of Isaac
and gazed at the way Abraham uses his left hand to hold his son’s head down, pinning him. Abraham’s hand is grasping the boy’s neck from the rear, his thumb pressed into the child’s cheek. In Abraham’s right hand is the knife. And while there is a very great deal to be appreciated in the painting—how Isaac’s skin is so much paler than his father’s, the dark of the copse in which Abraham is about to slaughter the boy—what I love best is the utter terror on Isaac’s face. His mouth is wide open and his eyes are dark and scared
.

And if I could not find Beatrice alone later that week in Florence?

I could wait
.

Or I could go to Rome
.

Or I could see if she was going to return at some point to Monte Volta—perhaps to bury her daughter-in-law. There would certainly be a moral rightness—an ethical bookending, if you will—to slaughtering a Rosati in Monte Volta. After all, that little village will always be the innermost ring of my own private inferno
.

But I was invigorated by the idea of killing Beatrice now, while she was still here in Florence—of leaving her moldering heart on the bridge
.

So, I said a small prayer before the Caravaggio. I prayed that I would have the opportunity to butcher the marchesa in this beautiful city, perhaps within blocks of where I had killed her dead son’s loving wife
.

1943

CRISTINA WAS JUST emerging from the swimming pool, fixing the skirt on her swimsuit where it had bunched up beneath the ribbon in the back, when she heard the car coasting to a stop in front of the villa. She tilted her head over the tile, took her hair in her hands as if it were a column of rope, and wrung the water from it. It puddled at her feet in the shape of a flower.

“Who is torturing us now?” she heard Francesca murmuring as her sister-in-law sat forward on the chaise. She was wearing a straw hat, movie-star sunglasses, and a pair of red slacks that were far too tight to be matronly. Massimo and Alessia were playing in the dry grass near the chimera, using both his lead soldiers and her cloth dolls. They had apparently concocted a game in which scale and historical authenticity were irrelevant: the dolls were at least three times the size of the soldiers.

“Is Father expecting someone?” Cristina asked. She was feeling a pang of nervousness, and the apprehension grew worse when she heard the sound of heavy boots crunching along the white stone path from the front of the house.

But her breath caught in her throat and she found herself reaching for a towel on one of the wrought iron chairs when she saw who it was. And then—emboldened in the same strange way she had been at the museum, first inviting Friedrich to join them in Arezzo and then sitting beside him at the café—she resisted that urge and stood perfectly still in her wet bathing suit, leaving
the towel on the headpiece of the chair, as the German lieutenant limped with care along the uneven stones toward the pool. She had wondered in the bath just last night when she would see him again. She had heard his voice in her head when she had slipped beneath the water, and felt acutely the weightless tingling she had experienced when his left leg inadvertently had brushed against hers under the table. She was at once impressed with what she imagined was the bravery that had cost him his foot and the intellectual rigor that had led to a posting at the Uffizi. She had not dreamed of him—at least that she could recall—but she had thought of him in bed before falling asleep and immediately upon waking. She had thought of him as she had ridden Arabella that morning. And now here he was.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said, and he stopped walking only when he had reached her. Abruptly Francesca rose to her feet and strode over to them. She grabbed the towel Cristina had left on the chair and foisted it upon her young sister-in-law. Pushed it with unexpected urgency into her hands. A little defeated, Cristina wrapped it modestly around her waist; she knew if she didn’t Francesca was likely to embarrass her.

“I was retrieving some paperwork and a painting in Siena,” Friedrich continued, “and I realized how close I was to Vittore’s home. And so I had my driver make a short detour. I thought perhaps I could see the Etruscan tombs that so dazzled Colonel Decher and Major Lorenzetti.”

A sentence formed in Cristina’s mind:
No
, she thought,
you have come to see me
. But because Francesca was beside them, radiating anger and protectiveness like a hot oven, she kept the words to herself.

“You’re a resourceful soldier,” she said instead, a quiver of nervousness in her voice that she hadn’t expected.

“And a good student. I want to learn,” he told her. His hands were clasped behind his back and his heels were together. His posture was so erect that she almost wanted to laugh, especially since
his eyes were so incongruously playful. She decided that his officer’s belt, wide and black and sinister on some men, looked more like part of a pretend uniform or costume on Friedrich.

“So you were ransacking a painting from Siena. You must be so proud,” Francesca said to him, her voice acid. “Which picture?”

“One of Martini’s. A minor work.”

“There is no such thing as a minor work by Simone Martini. Did you pillage it from the Duomo?”

“It came from the gallery,” he answered, offering her a small smile. “And it will be returned. It needs some restoration work, that’s all.”

“You must be parched after your drive,” Cristina said to him. “What can we get you?”

“Water will be fine, thanks.”

She recalled that he had preferred sparkling water when they were in Arezzo. “We don’t have sparkling water here. Do you mind?”

“No, not at all,” he said, laughing. “Really, I don’t want to be an imposition.”

“You’re not,” Cristina said. “I’d be happy to show you the tombs.”

“Thank you. That’s very gracious of you.”

“But we will need candles,” she went on, the giddiness in her voice surprising her. Given the reality that he had but one foot, she considered suggesting that he wait here by the pool while she retrieved the candles up at the house, but that would also mean leaving him at Francesca’s mercy. And so she continued, “Come with me to the villa. I think you’ll appreciate the view of Monte Volta. The granary towers, especially against the sort of sky we have today, look like something by Perugino.”

“I don’t know Perugino,” Friedrich said, and he offered Cristina his arm. Despite Francesca’s glare, she accepted it.

“You work at the Uffizi and you don’t know Perugino?” her sister-in-law grumbled, shaking her head in disgust. “So this is
what it has come to—we have Germans who don’t know Perugino or Martini deciding what’s art. What a brilliant use of resources. No wonder we’re losing the war.”

At first they walked in absolute silence, and once they could no longer hear Massimo and Alessia splashing in the pool, the only sound Cristina was aware of was their feet—especially his odd tramp—as they walked along the olive grove. On the opposite hill she saw the teenage boy Ilario moving the sheep onto the western slope, and she waved. Ilario was one of the younger farmhands. He saw her, she knew that, but he pretended to ignore her and didn’t wave back.

Initially she moved a little more slowly than usual to accommodate Friedrich’s disability, but he seemed to walk at a spirited gait, as he had in Arezzo when they had gone to the café. He really had no trouble keeping up. The sun warmed her skin and she could not imagine the soldier was comfortable in that gray-green uniform with the cap and boots. She had donned a white linen blouse when they had gone to the villa for candles, and even that felt to her a bit like a quilt in this heat. Occasionally the cypress trees were bent ever so slightly by a breeze, and in those moments the jasmine became more pronounced and she inhaled the scent deeply.

Only as they were nearing the stone crevice that led to the vault did he break the silence. He told her that he did not believe how fortunate he was to have been transferred to Italy. As handsome as he found the landscape in his corner of Germany, nothing could compare to the countryside here. He said—and for a second she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly—that he hoped peace came to Italy before the invading armies did. Before there was real damage. It was a comment that hinted at defeatism, something she never expected from a German officer.

And so she said, “But there already is real damage. I’ve seen Arezzo firsthand.” She recalled the perfectly rectangular field of cadavers.

“I don’t want to see your country endure what Russia has. Or Poland. I don’t want it to become another battlefield.”

“And you think it might?”

“If people don’t come to their senses? I do. My mother used to get so frustrated with my father. He was a veteran from the earlier war. She used to tell him that if there was a peaceful way to an end or a violent one, people, especially Germans, would always choose the violent route. And that was years before this war began. Years!”

“You loved your mother very much, didn’t you?”

“I did. But what makes you say that?”

“You’ve mentioned her twice in the two times we’ve been together.”

“It’s probably because you have the same name.”

“And I look like her?”

He chuckled. “Not in the slightest,” he said, and she was relieved. Francesca had once joked that weak men always tried to marry their mothers. Vittore had been present and had murmured in response, “Well, that means my brother must be very strong.” It had been a small dig, but Francesca had let it go.

“What did she look like?” Cristina asked now.

“A bit like a wild boar,” he said, his voice completely earnest. “A very pinched face, a long nose. A snout, really. And I hate to admit this, but I think she could have grown very thick whiskers if she had wanted.”

“You’re horrible!”

“Perhaps.”

“And I know you’re exaggerating.”

“I am—ever so slightly. But yes, I loved her. Even if she was as homely as a fairy-tale creature. She might have resembled a boar, but she certainly didn’t have a boar’s temperament. She was sweet and loving and very, very smart. And I remember that she had a voice like an angel when she would read to me as a little boy.”

“Is your father …”

“Homely?”

She nodded, laughed once.

“Odd-looking. A little feminine. But some women find him attractive. The older women and the younger widows who live near the museum all think he’d be quite a catch.”

She focused on the word
widows
. “Are there that many?”

“Widows? Absolutely. I’m sure this village has seen its share of death.”

She thought about this. Monte Volta had been fortunate. It was a town of perhaps eight hundred people, and she knew of only three families who had lost a husband or a son. Her mother had spent time with the grieving families because she felt a distinct noblesse oblige as the marchesa. But Cristina herself had been spared even this responsibility so far.