The Light in the Ruins (8 page)

When Cristina had finished reading, she placed the book beside her and watched Massimo. The boy had put a pillow on the floor and upon the mountain of down he had set a group of soldiers in a circle facing out. Around the pillow he had wrapped her shawl, the teal of the sea. Aware that his young aunt was surveying his work, he said, “This is Sicily. They’re protecting Sicily.”

And so he suspected, as they all did, that eventually the war was going to come to Italy. Tunis would fall and Sicily would be next. He understood that his father—her brother—would be one of those soldiers defending the island at the toe of the boot. Did he imagine him captured or killed? She doubted it. But she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t precisely sure what even she envisioned would occur in the coming year. She thought of the newsreels she had seen in the cinema, especially the footage of the Italians who had been in Russia until the fiasco at Stalingrad, and as horrific as that was to watch, she suspected the reality was far worse than the sanitized footage that was shared with the people. She recalled the explosions and columns of smoke in the film, the skeletal frames of buildings that collapsed in the blasts.

It occurred to her now—and she found this recognition troubling because it suggested just how spoiled she was—that the principal deprivation she had endured so far was this: she was lonely. She had no suitors. No lovers. When Francesca had been her age and the world had not been at war, there had been dances and balls. No more, at least not here in the country. The people who danced now were Nazis and Blackshirts and their women in Rome. In Florence. In Milan. And then there was her schooling—or, to be precise, her lack of schooling. The Rosatis had always been educated, even the women. Her mother had graduated from the university in Pisa. But Cristina’s education had ended abruptly last year because the teachers had been pressed into service. Even the professors in Pisa were fighting now. The dormitories were billeting soldiers.

“We should make her a blue dress,” Alessia was murmuring, and she held up the princess doll with hair the color of poppies.

She smiled down at the girl. “Why blue?”

“I like blue. It’s the color of the sky. And you like the sky. You’re always looking up at the airplanes.”

From his spot on the floor, her nephew glanced at them. “Our mother hates airplanes,” he muttered.

Abruptly Alessia jumped from the bed, and, holding the doll as if it were an airplane, the princess’s arms as its wings, she flew it over the soldiers guarding the Sicilian coast. She circled them once, twice. Then, with absolutely no warning, she had the plane swoop down upon the men, attacking them, trying to replicate the sound of a machine gun with her mouth. And Massimo, much to Cristina’s surprise, played along: he added to the noise the sound of explosions, and then, with the back of his hand, he wiped his soldiers into the sea.

The streetlamps still burned in Florence because no one believed the Allies would dare bomb the city. There were rumors, however, that any night now the lights would be dimmed and there would be a curfew. Just in case. But events had not yet become that dire. And so from the conference room window in the museum, Vittore could see the mongrel dog and the little boy who was trying to convince it to drink some water. The child had a small bowl made of tin, but the dog, so thin and wobbly that Vittore was shocked it could stand, didn’t seem interested. Still, it was easier for Vittore to watch the boy and the dog than to make eye contact with Lorenzetti. He was furious with the major and felt betrayed. It wasn’t merely that Lorenzetti and Decher had gone to the Villa Chimera that afternoon, as disturbing as that notion was; it was the fact that they had gone without telling him. He didn’t like the idea that a Blackshirt and a Nazi had been around his family, and he was frustrated that he hadn’t been able to warn his parents that they were coming. Nor did he approve of the pair wandering through
the Etruscan tombs on the property. Picking at the artwork. A man like Decher was oblivious to the fragility of the remains on the walls.

“What are the plans for those tombs after the war?” Decher was asking, and Vittore realized that the colonel was speaking to him. He turned away from the boy and the dog. It was after ten and the meeting had begun to wind down. There were seven of them at the table, three Germans—including that young pup with the prosthetic foot—and four Italians. He’d never noticed it before, but Decher looked a bit like his adjutant. He was twelve years older than Strekker, but still the two could pass for siblings.

“My family has already agreed to turn it over to the government,” Vittore answered. “It needs to be cared for. Preserved. And people will want to see it.”

Decher smiled glibly. “You’re going to allow strangers to traipse across your land? Become an attraction for travelers? I can’t imagine your sister-in-law would be especially accommodating. I don’t suppose you would have been pleased today if you’d known ahead of time that Major Lorenzetti and I were going to drop by your estate.”

“The access wouldn’t have to interfere with my family’s life or the business of the farm,” he said calmly, essentially ignoring the tenor of the colonel’s remarks.

“Besides, there won’t ever be droves of tourists,” said Lorenzetti. “It’s a small site, and people don’t flock to Monte Volta. Expect students and archeologists. And the Villa Chimera isn’t exactly the most accessible of venues. I thought I was going to vomit on the road up to the estate.”

“And the sarcophagi and vases are gone,” Vittore added. “The alabastron, the amphora, the cups. The plates. The pieces of the deity’s head. They’re all at the museum.”

“I know an amphora is a kind of pot,” said Decher. “But what is an alabastron?”

“A sort of flask,” Vittore answered. “They were used for oils
and unguents and perfumes. Often, as you might expect, they were made of alabaster.”

Decher seemed to think about this. “I want to see them—the artifacts.”

Lorenzetti shrugged. “Why not? We can drive to Arezzo tomorrow. It’s not like there’s a war going on.”

“Why aren’t they at the archeological museum here in Florence?”

Patiently, as if speaking to a child, the major said, “I told you in the car this afternoon. Most of the artifacts from the site at the Villa Chimera went to Arezzo. We could have stopped there after Monte Volta.”

Decher shook his head, annoyed either with himself or with Lorenzetti. “You told me when we were arriving at the villa. I wish you had reminded me later, when we were leaving.” He folded his arms and glared at Vittore. “Tell me, why Arezzo? Why not Florence?”

Vittore shrugged. “No mystery—it was closer to our home. When we found the site, we called the museum there first. The curator took me under his wing.”

“I assume you realize that Herbert Kappler has a profound interest in Etruscan art.”

“Who’s Kappler?” The question had come from a young Florentine named Emilio. Like Vittore, he was an archeologist first and a soldier second. The Germans at the table turned toward him, astonished that he didn’t know and had the naïveté to ask. Vittore wondered how dismissive Decher would be in his response.

And the colonel did pause before answering, trying to decide just how caustic he should be. In the end, he setttled upon professional disdain. “Herbert Kappler was a great friend of Reinhard Heydrich before the vermin killed Heydrich last year in Prague. Now he is our SS liaison to Il Duce and a security consultant to the Fascist police in Rome. His specialty? He is very good at suppressing resistance. He is very good at rounding up Jews and partisans
and other enemies of the state,” Decher said, and then added the dagger: “Would you like to meet him? I could arrange an introduction.”

And so, partly to rescue Emilio and partly because of his resentment at the idea that Decher had trespassed at the Villa Chimera, Vittore asked, “Colonel, may I inquire why you’re so interested in the tombs?”

“It’s neither complicated nor mysterious. Officers at the Ahnenerbe have seen the images on Kappler’s pottery—particularly on a krater and on a plate—and want to learn more about the Etruscans. And, thus, so do I.”

Vittore thought the Ahnenerbe was the part of the SS that obsessed about German ancestral heritage. But he wondered now if he was mistaken. Why would a group dedicated to the myth of Aryan supremacy give a damn about the Etruscans? He was about to press his luck and ask Decher what, specifically, the Ahnenerbe wanted to learn when Lorenzetti jumped in.

“There may be Nazis on vases, Vittore,” he explained. His smirk was perceptible, but only barely.

“I’ve seen dancers and musicians on Etruscan work,” said Emilio, “but, I must confess, never a Nazi.”

“They would be hard to miss,” Lorenzetti agreed.

“Well, I can assure you, there were none on the artifacts from my family’s land,” Vittore said. “But perhaps from the Tarquinia dig in ’39. You know how warlike the Etruscans were in Tarquinia.”

“You’re all very funny,” Decher told them. “But I have heard from reliable sources that this is a matter of interest to the Reichsführer himself.”

“Himmler?” Vittore asked reflexively, unable to mask the incredulity in his voice. “I would think he has more pressing concerns,” he continued, and he saw in his mind the troops trapped in a small corner of North Africa and the troops—including his brother, Marco—preparing to defend Sicily.

“Yes, the Reichsführer,” Decher said. “It seems there were
Germanic tribes here. And the Reichsführer is interested in the origins of the race—why we are who we are.”

“You are who you are because your country is too cold. Really, I couldn’t live there,” Lorenzetti said.

One of the other Germans, a lanky Bavarian with sad eyes that were all but lost to the dark bags beneath them, Jürgen Voss, sat forward in his chair and folded his hands before him on the table. “The Reichsführer has suggested that the first tribes may have come from either the highest mountains of Tibet or the Arctic, so it makes sense that we are comfortable in a climate that can be rather frosty.” He was completely sincere, and Vittore didn’t know what to make of this lunacy. The man had worked with Decher at the Louvre for two years before being transferred here.

“Of course, your Reichsführer also believes in Atlantis,” Lorenzetti observed dryly.

“Just so you all know, spring and summer are lovely in Dresden,” Strekker said, his voice typically exuberant and collegial. He didn’t seem bothered in the slightest that the Italians were having fun at the expense of his precious Reichsführer. “Moreover, it seems to me that it snows in Italy, too—in the Alps and in the mountains not far from here. Mount Amiata, for instance.”

“As a matter of fact, Vittore,” Lorenzetti went on, feigning sincerity, “I recall an Etruscan plate with a dancer shaping his body into a swastika. Sixth-century B.C. Found in the dig at—”

“Enough, all of you!” Decher snapped. “I don’t see the humor in wanting to understand our roots, and it’s too late in the evening to debate the weather.” Then he mapped out for them their day tomorrow and how he wanted to visit Arezzo. Vittore was relieved when, this time, Decher ordered him to accompany them. In the end, he might not be able to prevent the artifacts, including the ones from the tombs at the Villa Chimera, from being sent to Germany or to the Gestapo in Rome, but at least he would have the chance to speak in their defense.

Outside the window he heard the dog bark and he turned. Somewhere the boy had found a bone the size of a boot, a little
meat still clinging to it. Abruptly the dog, despite its unsteady gait, took the gift in its mouth and started to run down the street beside the Arno. The boy smiled, his hands on his knees, and then stood and waved at the animal as it disappeared into the night.

Alessia tucked her chin against her collarbone and rolled headfirst, her fine hair billowing out beside her as she tumbled. The sun was reflecting off the black chimera, turning it almost silver, and the lion’s eyes looked a little wild as it watched the child. Alessia somersaulted three times along the grass beside the pergola for her mother and her aunt, a display triggered, the women presumed, because her brother, Massimo, had just swum all the way to the bottom of the deepest section of the pool for the very first time.