The Savage Garden (23 page)

    He was nearing the villa, still working out how best to broach the sensitive subject with Signora Docci, when he saw her on the lower terrace, standing at the balustrade, looking out over the plunging olive grove. He wondered if Maria had told her about his solitary rant in the grotto.

    Her face as he approached suggested she knew nothing of the incident. "Good morning," she said.

    "Good morning."

    "Another beautiful day. Not as humid as yesterday."

    His exact words to Maria in the grotto.

    Adam gave a weak smile.

    "Are you feeling better?" she inquired.

    "I was feeling fine then, and I am now."

    "I have a cousin—Alessandra—they took her away for the same thing."

    She was clearly going to have her moment of amusement at his expense, whether he liked it or not.

    "Talking to sculptures?"

    "Paintings."

    "Waste of time," said Adam. "They've very little to say for themselves."

    She laughed. "Where's Harry?"

    "He went into Florence."

    "He's a strange young man."

    "He had a difficult birth."

    "Really?"

    "No. But he's always been like that, as long as I can remember. He doesn't care what people think of him. He just, well... is Harry."

    "Is he a good sculptor?"

    "I don't know. I suppose. They asked him to stay on and teach when he graduated last year."

    "He must have something, then."

    "Yes, a strange desire to spend the rest of his life welding rusty pieces of metal together."

    It was a cheap swipe, revenge for Harry's assault on him the night before, but Signora Docci was amused.

    "You remind me of Crispin when he was younger. He also made me laugh."

    It was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

    "I wanted to ask you about him."

    "About Crispin?"

    "It's a personal question."

    "Oh."

    "Very personal."

    She took up her new cane, crossed to one of the benches and lowered herself onto it. "On one condition—I'm allowed to ask you a personal question first." "Okay."

    "Are you falling in love with Antonella?"

    "No," he replied after a moment. "I think I already have."

    "Why?"

    "That's two questions."

    "I'll allow
you
two."

    "I don't know why. I hardly know her."

    "No, you don't."

    "It's inexplicable."

    "Physical attraction—that's inexplicable."

    "It's more than that." Trying to pin it down in words was impossible. "I can see myself being happy with her."

    "And if I told you she had made a number of young men quite unhappy?"

    "I'd ask myself what your reasons were for saying it." "You don't believe me?"

    "I didn't say that. But maybe I'm young enough to make mistakes and still survive."

    "Mistakes at any age can color a life forever. Just one mistake." "Emilio, for example?"

    There, it was done now, there was no turning back.

    "Emilio?" she said warily.

    "Was he your son?"

    "Of course he was my son."

    "I mean . . . with Professor Leonard."

    Signora Docci turned and stared off into the distance. When she looked back at him he saw that her eyes were moist with tears. Her voice, however, remained surprisingly level, devoid of emotion.

    "I would like you to leave."

    "Leave?"

    "Today."

    "You mean—?"

    "Yes. I want you to leave the villa."

    Adam could hear the blood beating in his ears. It was about all he could hear.

    "I'm sorry if I've offended you."

    She looked away. "Just go."

    He shaped the snowdrift of papers on the desk in the study into ordered piles. It took three trips to carry everything upstairs to his bedroom. He did so in a daze.

    He pulled his suitcases out from under the bed and began to pack. At a certain moment he had to stop. He went to the open window and smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, working through the consequences of his behavior.

    The Pensione Amorini was out of the question; too close to home. He'd take a room in Florence, pick up his photos, maybe stay a day or two. Shit. Harry. He'd completely forgotten about Harry. He'd have to wait at the bottom of the driveway for Harry to return from town. What would he tell him? The truth? He couldn't tell him the truth: that they were without a bed that night because he'd felt compelled by a statue of a classical goddess to ask probing and impertinent questions about their hostess's dead son.

    His only comfort was that, as explanations went, it wasn't so far removed from some he'd heard from Harry over the years. Harry would probably just shrug and ask him where the nearest bar was.

    Maybe he'd go to Venice with Harry. Why not? They'd never been traveling together.

    He was still groping for empty consolations when he heard a light knock at the door.

    "Yes?"

    It was Signora Docci.

    She crossed to the armchair near the fireplace and subsided weakly into it.

    "Emilio wasn't a mistake," she said. "I knew exactly what I was doing. Even if Crispin didn't." She paused. "We were in love. I can still feel the force of it. It was almost violent. What I did . . . what I allowed to happen . . . it made sense at the time, complete sense, in the way that things do to the young. And I was very young—your age. I don't expect you to understand, but Emilio was a gift to myself because I couldn't be with Crispin."

    "Why not?"

    "Money of course. He didn't have any, and Benedetto's family did. A lot. The estate was in trouble at the time. My father felt bad, I know—he was very fond of Crispin—but he would not allow us to be together." She lowered her eyes. "Benedetto was a good man. I have not had a bad life."

    "Did he know?"

    "No one did, not even Crispin. I never told him."

    "You never told him?"

    She hesitated. "I think it would have destroyed him. I had just got married when . . . well, when it happened. He was very upset. Ashamed. He liked Benedetto a lot. When Emilio was killed, I wrote him a letter. I tore it up. What good would it have done?"

    She drew a long breath. "There, now you know, you have your answer."

    Adam could think of nothing to say.

    "How did you guess?" she asked.

    He told her about the family photo in the album and about Gregor Mendel and his gene theory of earlobes.

    She nodded, impressed. "I didn't know that," she said, "but I'm surprised Benedetto didn't."

    "Maybe he did."

    "If he did, he never told me."

    But maybe he told someone else, Maurizio for example. Maybe Maurizio knew that Emilio was not his true brother.

    Signora Docci held out her hand. Adam walked over and took it.

    "Don't go," she said. "I would like you to stay."

    He should have been relieved—and he was—but there was also a nagging voice in his head telling him to finish packing the suitcases on the bed, to leave Villa Docci far behind him while he still could.

    "Are you punishing me now?" she asked, misinterpreting his silence.

    "No."

    "I'm sorry; I should not have asked you to go away. I was shocked by your question."

    "And I shouldn't have asked it."

    She took his words as an apology when really they were a reprimand to himself.

    
Do you have everything you need, Signora?

    
Yes, thank you, Maria. You don't have to tuck me in, I'm not a child.

    
You've been crying.

    
It's nothing. Memories. Sentimentality. And you know how I hate sentimentality. Is Harry back from Florence yet?

    
Not yet.

    
I hope he's all right.

    
I don't think you have to worry about that.

    
No. He's very eccentric, isn't he?

    
He's too familiar.

    
You mean he's not afraid of you.

    
If you say so, Signora.

    
Oh I do, Maria, I do. And I think you quite like that.

    
I've had an idea.

    
Don't change the subject just when I'm beginning to enjoy myself.

    
They will both need evening wear for the party.

    
Harry's staying for the party?

    
That's what he told me at breakfast.

    
Oh, you had breakfast together, did you?

    
I was thinking that I could unpack Emilio's suits.

    
If the moths haven't had them.

    
I've checked. They haven't.

    
The legs will need to be taken up.

    
Not for Adam. A few centimeters for Harry. I'll see to it.

    
Yes, do that. Good night, Maria.

    
Good night, Signora.

    
Maria ...

    
Yes, Signora?

    
It's a good idea.

    ADAM WAS AWOKEN BY THE LIGHT, THE ONE THAT LIVED on his bedside table, the one that was now hovering directly over his head.

    He twisted away. "Jesus . . ." he mumbled into the pillow. "Yes, it is I, my son." "Fuck off, Harry."

    Harry flopped onto the bed. "I'm in love," he announced. "What's his name?"

    "Don't mock. She's Finnish." He lit a cigarette.

    "Finnish?"

    "Swedish-Finnish."

    "Swedish-Finnish?"

    "Apparently there are lots of them in Finland: Swedish Finns."

    "Oh, for God's sake, Harry."

    "What?"

    "Was she related to the Swiss girl in Milan by any chance?" "She wasn't after my money."

    
"My
money."

    "Although I did buy her dinner."

    "Oh, that's what's on my jacket."

    "She was very grateful," said Harry, blowing a perfect smoke ring into the air.

    Adam checked his watch—almost two in the morning—and resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon.

    "And what does she do, this Swedish Finn?"

    "Pretty much anything you ask her to."