The Sleeping Nymph, page 17
“What for?” he asked.
Blanca turned crimson with embarrassment. It was adorable.
“I . . . I snapped at you once or twice,” she began. “It’s not like me.”
He elbowed her softly.
“I should be the one apologizing,” he said. “I’ve been an asshole.”
Blanca bit her lip. Her eyes, so distinctive in their appearance, now roamed over the forest, seeing nothing. To her, it must look like the sea at night, blurry and dark.
“Do you think we’ll ever be able to find her?” she asked.
Massimo fixed his gaze onto the dense expanse of life before him, this organism that didn’t always return all that it swallowed.
“It depends on the forest,” he murmured, a shiver coursing through him in spite of the mild day.
“You speak of it as if it were a sentient being.”
As he stared at that vast world of shadows and cracks, he felt for a moment as if it were staring right back at him.
“Believe me, it is.”
34
“Just before the German soldier was due to pass through town, my sister, Ewa, Krisnja’s grandmother, came looking for me in the meadow, where I’d taken the cows to graze,” said Francesco.
Teresa noticed that a thin sheen of sweat had formed over his face, though he was trying to appear impassive. She let him continue.
“Ewa was only a year older than me, but she’d brought a rifle. It was meant to be for play. She’d gotten it from a partisan she’d made friends with. A forbidden friendship. He’d taken the bullets out and taught her how to shoot.”
“Was this a regular pastime?” she asked.
“I knew nothing about it, but I did find out later on that it had happened a few times before. He was a young lad of seventeen, that I remember. He had curly red hair and a smattering of freckles over his face. That day he took us to the field next to the road. Over on the other side, hidden in the trees, was a partisan outpost.
“We crouched down and Ewa gave me the rifle. She was giggling. I took aim and pulled the trigger, pretending to shoot—except that the rifle actually fired. The bullet smashed through the harness that secured the horse to the cart. It was bedlam. The horse bolted and dragged the soldier down the valley.
“The Germans showed up within the hour, in a spray of machine-gun fire and rifle shots ricocheting among the houses and the fields. Luckily, our terror alone was sufficient reward, else it could have been much worse. I never did find out whether that boy had really forgotten to take the bullets out, or if it had all been some kind of sadistic game.”
Teresa swallowed audibly.
“Is something wrong?” Francesco asked, seeing the look on her face.
Teresa assured him it was nothing, but that wasn’t entirely true: Francesco di Lenardo had just described one of the paintings that Teresa had seen in Andrian’s home. So the painter had been present at the scene, and watched as his comrade had made Francesco shoot the rifle; he had been right there, probably hiding in the partisan encampment hidden among the trees in the hill across the road, mere yards from the nephew of the woman he would eventually kill. He had watched the boy, studied his movements, like an invisible guest who had breached the tight circle of Aniza’s family.
“Do you remember what the red-haired partisan was called? He was probably a comrade of Andrian’s,” said Teresa.
“No.”
“Do you remember anyone else’s name?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. We didn’t really socialize with them; it was too dangerous. They didn’t even use their real names but called each other by their battle names instead.”
Teresa finally asked him the question they had both known was coming since the moment they’d begun their conversation.
“What happened on the night Aniza disappeared?”
Francesco’s expression shifted.
“What happened changed my life,” he said. “The evening was warm—it seemed summer was in a hurry to begin. Aniza had been in her room all day, doing her embroidery.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Not particularly. She’d spent a lot of time in there over the past several weeks. She said she had a job to finish and needed to get it done soon. Back then I spent most of my time playing outside with the other kids, so I never really noticed. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Teresa, but Francesco seemed not to hear her.
“Just before dinner, Aniza said she was going to visit her friend Katerina to show her the linens she’d been embroidering for her baby. Katerina’s baby was due in a few weeks. Aniza was very fond of her.”
“What did Katerina have to say about that visit?”
“Nothing. They never saw each other. Aniza never got there, though Katerina lived only a few minutes’ walk from here. We asked everyone in the village, but nobody saw my aunt anywhere near her friend’s house that day.
“Someone swore they saw her walking down the road that led to the forest, to the east, on the other side of town. But why would she go into the forest by herself at that time of night? I’ve driven myself crazy all these years, trying to find an answer to that question.”
Teresa picked her words carefully and spoke them as gently as she could.
“I don’t think Aniza was alone in the forest,” she said softly. “I think someone was waiting for her among the trees.”
Francesco looked at her.
“You think someone lured her there?” he asked.
“Not exactly. They’d already arranged it. Aniza was going to meet someone that night, but not Katerina.”
Francesco stiffened.
“Are you saying Aniza lied to her family? To me?”
Teresa smiled to soften the truth.
“Young people do that sometimes, and they probably did it more often in the past, to find ways to meet up with their lovers,” she said.
“My aunt was old enough to get married. If she was in love with a boy, she had no reason to hide it from my grandfather.”
“She would have had every reason to hide it if her boyfriend happened to be one of the partisans hiding in these mountains.”
Francesco seemed speechless.
“Andrian?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
A series of conflicting emotions passed over Francesco’s face: shock, resignation, distress and finally anger.
“She loved him and he killed her,” he muttered, his eyes widening in horror, his hands resting on the image of the Sleeping Nymph as if to draw her back into his life.
“There’s still a lot we need to clarify,” Teresa pointed out.
“Why did he do this to her?”
“Francesco, all we have for now are theories. Please try to remain calm.”
He stared into empty space as if thoughts he’d never dared to think before were now taking shape before his very eyes.
“How did he kill her?” he asked.
“It’s hard to know, without a body. In fact, with no body and no confession, I’m afraid we’re in no position to even call this a murder.”
Francesco glared at her.
“So what is it, then?” he hissed.
“The judge might even rule it a tragic accident. Aniza may have gotten hurt some other way. What if she fell into a crevasse? Perhaps Andrian was there but couldn’t help her and the pain drove him insane.”
Francesco seemed to consider this possibility for a brief moment before immediately and decisively setting it aside.
“There was nowhere on earth Aniza would have been safer than in the woods of this valley. She was born here. She knew every crack in the rocks, every gully and every cliff edge. No, Superintendent, the valley would never kill one of its children.”
Teresa didn’t think so, either, but she felt duty-bound to consider every possible lead.
“If there had been an accident, Andrian would have come to us,” said Francesco, now in a state of heightened agitation. “He could have asked for help; he could have tried to rescue her! He could have come to us and told us where she was!”
He burst into tears, but his was a restrained sort of grief. He buried his face in his hands and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly added. “I don’t usually do this, but the strain is just . . .”
Teresa put her hand on his shoulder and gave his sturdy, suffering frame a gentle squeeze.
“There’s no need to apologize, Francesco. Tell me, do you think you can keep going?”
The man nodded.
“You said Aniza left the house just before dinner. Did you see her go?”
“I did. I was out playing in the yard. She gave me a kiss. I watched her walking down the road. She was singing.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. She never came back. It got dark, and my grandfather was furious. There was a war on and it was never a good idea to stay out so late at night. He went looking for her at Katerina’s place. He went alone. I was at home with my mother and father, who were laughing at the thought of the scolding Aniza would get from my grandfather.
“When he finally came back, he was like a different person. I will never forget the look on his face. It was as if he knew. He knew he’d never see her again.”
“What did he say to you?” Teresa asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Francesco’s head was in his hands, his eyes fixed on the Nymph.
“He kept saying the darkness took her from me. The darkness took her from me. But softly, as if he’d lost his voice. It took my father a minute to work out what he was saying and then he went out—combed the village door to door looking for her.
“Lots of people went searching in the woods with flashlights and lanterns. I remember the night lit up with lamps and the silence interrupted by all of those people calling out her name in the dark. Aniza, Aniza. Even the animals in their coops and their stables seemed restless, as if our unease had infected them, too.”
He fell silent, then gave a sigh before resuming his story.
“All that effort with nothing to show for it, not that night nor any other night thereafter. All we ever found was her embroidery bag. It was right at the edge of the forest.”
Teresa could feel a throbbing inside her chest, like something heavy tugging at her heart.
“I wish I could do something to relieve your suffering,” she managed to say.
“And that music. That damned melody,” said Francesco, his voice sounding as if he’d fallen too far into his memories now ever to come back.
“What music?”
“We could hear a violin playing in the dark, somewhere in the woods, right there on the mountain. It played almost right through the night. There was the odd pause, but then it would pick up again.”
“Who was it?”
“We never found out. We used to have a very good teacher here in the valley who was an expert on classical music. He told us he was sure he recognized the melody. It was Tartini’s Violin Sonata in G Minor—better known as the ‘Devil’s Trill.’ Whoever it was playing it that night, their execution was magnificent.”
Teresa was surprised.
“It’s not my area of expertise, but I do know it’s meant to be one of the most technically challenging compositions ever created for a solo violin,” she mused. “Was there anyone in the valley who’d have been capable of playing it? Surely that level of skill wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.”
“Nobody. And in case you’re wondering whether or not the music was coming from one of our local musical instruments, I can tell you straight away that it wasn’t. It wasn’t a Resian sound. Even now it makes me shiver just to think about it.” He paused as if he were unsure of whether or not to continue. “Do you know what Tartini used to say about it?”
Teresa shook her head.
“He said that the sonata had been inspired by a dream in which he’d made a pact with the devil. He’d dreamed that Lucifer himself had performed the piece for him with the kind of genius and precision that could only find quarter in hell. When he woke up, Tartini tried to transcribe the music he’d heard, but he swore for the rest of his life that he hadn’t even come close to reproducing its brilliance. The sonata came to light exactly seventeen years after the night he had that fateful dream.”
“It’s certainly an intriguing interpretation,” Teresa remarked.
“The older generation of Resians took the story very literally. They claimed the devil himself had kidnapped Aniza, snatched her away from life, taken her into the forest and into the darkness—the kind that never gives way to dawn. His trill was heard for several nights thereafter. Carried in the wind, close at first, then farther away. It was like it was playing games with us. It made a mockery of our hope of finding Aniza alive.
“My grandfather used to say that all things considered, the devil had been magnanimous, for he’d never let us find her body. He left us with a sliver of hope to cling on to, if we really wished to do so.”
He fell quiet.
Teresa asked him one last question.
“I suppose you never reported her missing?”
“To whom? This was a borderland and the horrors of the war were at their peak. There was no State and the authorities had hundreds of thousands of dead to worry about. Italy was in disarray. We were alone. Aniza was alone. Lost.”
Teresa closed her notebook.
“I think that’ll be sufficient for the time being,” she said. “Thank you. This has been most useful.”
Francesco emerged from his reverie and did something Teresa hadn’t expected him to do.
He asked about Andrian.
“I did read about this in the newspaper, but there was nothing in there to connect the story with Aniza. Is it true that he hasn’t spoken a word since 1945?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“You think he’s the one who killed her, don’t you?”
“It’s a possibility, but there’s a lot that we still need to consider.”
There was a brief silence, in which Francesco gathered the strength he needed to say what came next.
“Do you think I could meet him?”
35
The police had come into the valley, taking care not to draw undue attention to their presence. They were following the trail of a heart that had beaten there nearly a hundred years ago and unwittingly peering into a past that should never have come back to light. Even after all this time, that old blood was still warm, kept that way by the everlasting memories of those who had loved the young woman in whose veins where it had once flowed. That old blood had spoken and it had led the police here much sooner than expected.
But however discreet the officer with the red hair and the sharp eyes had been in her approach so far, someone had noticed her and her colleagues’ presence in the valley. Someone was following them. Someone had watched them intrude upon an ancient mystery with every step they took and every word they uttered.
The Tikô Wariö carried a basket on its back. The liquid oozing through its patterned weave had the color and consistency of crushed ripe cherries, but its scent was the metallic vital essence that filled the veins of the living.
A heart for a heart. That was the punishment for betrayal.
The police weren’t the only danger lurking. Other presences were patrolling the valley like nocturnal predators.
The delicate weight inside the basket on its back was a silent, furious warning never to forget that what had happened that night in the forest seventy years ago must remain buried and hidden forever.
It must rest in its grave. Forever inside the valley.
36
A fierce wind was blowing, heavy with moisture. The sun was covered by a frothy cloud whose shape kept changing and casting its tentacular shadow across the valley. The shadow crept along the mountain slopes and the riverbed like the hand of a giant, raking its fingers through the soil, emitting shivers of cold, stealing warmth from the rocks and sending the animals of the valley scampering back to their dens.
The air was electric, charged with the promise of a thunderstorm. Toward the east, a shard of sky ensconced among the spires of alpine peaks was a whorl of rain-dense clouds, a maelstrom of steely gray traversed with flashes of lightning, each crack followed by a clap of thunder that sounded like the voice of the mountain itself—a roar that carved through the air and exploded in a cacophony of sound.
Teresa crouched at the foot of the ancient linden tree Francesco had pointed out to her. Its branches were being tossed to and fro by gust upon gust of restless wind. It looked like they were shaking with suppressed rage.
She hadn’t spoken to Marini and Blanca yet. There was still plenty of time to untangle the story she had just heard. All she wanted to do for the time being was simply to “feel.”
The village had changed, but not as much as she had previously assumed. Teresa saw before her the same landscape she had already seen in Andrian’s painting. He had captured it from exactly the spot in which Teresa stood now, observing the view and picturing the two children and the red-haired partisan watching the German soldier drive his cart over the steep, sloping road.
Andrian had stood in that spot seventy years before Teresa had. He had looked at what she was looking now. He had breathed in the fragrance of the valley and studied its people. He had approached Aniza unbeknownst to her family. He had stood within touching distance of Francesco, but Francesco had never even known he’d existed, never known about those secret urges that had, perhaps, led Andrian to kill the object of his deepest desires.
Teresa ran her hands over the roots of the linden tree. They looked like sinewy arms plunging into the earth. She thought of Andrian sitting there with his rifle and his pencils, picking up a sheet of paper and starting to draw.
Blanca turned crimson with embarrassment. It was adorable.
“I . . . I snapped at you once or twice,” she began. “It’s not like me.”
He elbowed her softly.
“I should be the one apologizing,” he said. “I’ve been an asshole.”
Blanca bit her lip. Her eyes, so distinctive in their appearance, now roamed over the forest, seeing nothing. To her, it must look like the sea at night, blurry and dark.
“Do you think we’ll ever be able to find her?” she asked.
Massimo fixed his gaze onto the dense expanse of life before him, this organism that didn’t always return all that it swallowed.
“It depends on the forest,” he murmured, a shiver coursing through him in spite of the mild day.
“You speak of it as if it were a sentient being.”
As he stared at that vast world of shadows and cracks, he felt for a moment as if it were staring right back at him.
“Believe me, it is.”
34
“Just before the German soldier was due to pass through town, my sister, Ewa, Krisnja’s grandmother, came looking for me in the meadow, where I’d taken the cows to graze,” said Francesco.
Teresa noticed that a thin sheen of sweat had formed over his face, though he was trying to appear impassive. She let him continue.
“Ewa was only a year older than me, but she’d brought a rifle. It was meant to be for play. She’d gotten it from a partisan she’d made friends with. A forbidden friendship. He’d taken the bullets out and taught her how to shoot.”
“Was this a regular pastime?” she asked.
“I knew nothing about it, but I did find out later on that it had happened a few times before. He was a young lad of seventeen, that I remember. He had curly red hair and a smattering of freckles over his face. That day he took us to the field next to the road. Over on the other side, hidden in the trees, was a partisan outpost.
“We crouched down and Ewa gave me the rifle. She was giggling. I took aim and pulled the trigger, pretending to shoot—except that the rifle actually fired. The bullet smashed through the harness that secured the horse to the cart. It was bedlam. The horse bolted and dragged the soldier down the valley.
“The Germans showed up within the hour, in a spray of machine-gun fire and rifle shots ricocheting among the houses and the fields. Luckily, our terror alone was sufficient reward, else it could have been much worse. I never did find out whether that boy had really forgotten to take the bullets out, or if it had all been some kind of sadistic game.”
Teresa swallowed audibly.
“Is something wrong?” Francesco asked, seeing the look on her face.
Teresa assured him it was nothing, but that wasn’t entirely true: Francesco di Lenardo had just described one of the paintings that Teresa had seen in Andrian’s home. So the painter had been present at the scene, and watched as his comrade had made Francesco shoot the rifle; he had been right there, probably hiding in the partisan encampment hidden among the trees in the hill across the road, mere yards from the nephew of the woman he would eventually kill. He had watched the boy, studied his movements, like an invisible guest who had breached the tight circle of Aniza’s family.
“Do you remember what the red-haired partisan was called? He was probably a comrade of Andrian’s,” said Teresa.
“No.”
“Do you remember anyone else’s name?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. We didn’t really socialize with them; it was too dangerous. They didn’t even use their real names but called each other by their battle names instead.”
Teresa finally asked him the question they had both known was coming since the moment they’d begun their conversation.
“What happened on the night Aniza disappeared?”
Francesco’s expression shifted.
“What happened changed my life,” he said. “The evening was warm—it seemed summer was in a hurry to begin. Aniza had been in her room all day, doing her embroidery.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Not particularly. She’d spent a lot of time in there over the past several weeks. She said she had a job to finish and needed to get it done soon. Back then I spent most of my time playing outside with the other kids, so I never really noticed. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Teresa, but Francesco seemed not to hear her.
“Just before dinner, Aniza said she was going to visit her friend Katerina to show her the linens she’d been embroidering for her baby. Katerina’s baby was due in a few weeks. Aniza was very fond of her.”
“What did Katerina have to say about that visit?”
“Nothing. They never saw each other. Aniza never got there, though Katerina lived only a few minutes’ walk from here. We asked everyone in the village, but nobody saw my aunt anywhere near her friend’s house that day.
“Someone swore they saw her walking down the road that led to the forest, to the east, on the other side of town. But why would she go into the forest by herself at that time of night? I’ve driven myself crazy all these years, trying to find an answer to that question.”
Teresa picked her words carefully and spoke them as gently as she could.
“I don’t think Aniza was alone in the forest,” she said softly. “I think someone was waiting for her among the trees.”
Francesco looked at her.
“You think someone lured her there?” he asked.
“Not exactly. They’d already arranged it. Aniza was going to meet someone that night, but not Katerina.”
Francesco stiffened.
“Are you saying Aniza lied to her family? To me?”
Teresa smiled to soften the truth.
“Young people do that sometimes, and they probably did it more often in the past, to find ways to meet up with their lovers,” she said.
“My aunt was old enough to get married. If she was in love with a boy, she had no reason to hide it from my grandfather.”
“She would have had every reason to hide it if her boyfriend happened to be one of the partisans hiding in these mountains.”
Francesco seemed speechless.
“Andrian?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
A series of conflicting emotions passed over Francesco’s face: shock, resignation, distress and finally anger.
“She loved him and he killed her,” he muttered, his eyes widening in horror, his hands resting on the image of the Sleeping Nymph as if to draw her back into his life.
“There’s still a lot we need to clarify,” Teresa pointed out.
“Why did he do this to her?”
“Francesco, all we have for now are theories. Please try to remain calm.”
He stared into empty space as if thoughts he’d never dared to think before were now taking shape before his very eyes.
“How did he kill her?” he asked.
“It’s hard to know, without a body. In fact, with no body and no confession, I’m afraid we’re in no position to even call this a murder.”
Francesco glared at her.
“So what is it, then?” he hissed.
“The judge might even rule it a tragic accident. Aniza may have gotten hurt some other way. What if she fell into a crevasse? Perhaps Andrian was there but couldn’t help her and the pain drove him insane.”
Francesco seemed to consider this possibility for a brief moment before immediately and decisively setting it aside.
“There was nowhere on earth Aniza would have been safer than in the woods of this valley. She was born here. She knew every crack in the rocks, every gully and every cliff edge. No, Superintendent, the valley would never kill one of its children.”
Teresa didn’t think so, either, but she felt duty-bound to consider every possible lead.
“If there had been an accident, Andrian would have come to us,” said Francesco, now in a state of heightened agitation. “He could have asked for help; he could have tried to rescue her! He could have come to us and told us where she was!”
He burst into tears, but his was a restrained sort of grief. He buried his face in his hands and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly added. “I don’t usually do this, but the strain is just . . .”
Teresa put her hand on his shoulder and gave his sturdy, suffering frame a gentle squeeze.
“There’s no need to apologize, Francesco. Tell me, do you think you can keep going?”
The man nodded.
“You said Aniza left the house just before dinner. Did you see her go?”
“I did. I was out playing in the yard. She gave me a kiss. I watched her walking down the road. She was singing.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. She never came back. It got dark, and my grandfather was furious. There was a war on and it was never a good idea to stay out so late at night. He went looking for her at Katerina’s place. He went alone. I was at home with my mother and father, who were laughing at the thought of the scolding Aniza would get from my grandfather.
“When he finally came back, he was like a different person. I will never forget the look on his face. It was as if he knew. He knew he’d never see her again.”
“What did he say to you?” Teresa asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Francesco’s head was in his hands, his eyes fixed on the Nymph.
“He kept saying the darkness took her from me. The darkness took her from me. But softly, as if he’d lost his voice. It took my father a minute to work out what he was saying and then he went out—combed the village door to door looking for her.
“Lots of people went searching in the woods with flashlights and lanterns. I remember the night lit up with lamps and the silence interrupted by all of those people calling out her name in the dark. Aniza, Aniza. Even the animals in their coops and their stables seemed restless, as if our unease had infected them, too.”
He fell silent, then gave a sigh before resuming his story.
“All that effort with nothing to show for it, not that night nor any other night thereafter. All we ever found was her embroidery bag. It was right at the edge of the forest.”
Teresa could feel a throbbing inside her chest, like something heavy tugging at her heart.
“I wish I could do something to relieve your suffering,” she managed to say.
“And that music. That damned melody,” said Francesco, his voice sounding as if he’d fallen too far into his memories now ever to come back.
“What music?”
“We could hear a violin playing in the dark, somewhere in the woods, right there on the mountain. It played almost right through the night. There was the odd pause, but then it would pick up again.”
“Who was it?”
“We never found out. We used to have a very good teacher here in the valley who was an expert on classical music. He told us he was sure he recognized the melody. It was Tartini’s Violin Sonata in G Minor—better known as the ‘Devil’s Trill.’ Whoever it was playing it that night, their execution was magnificent.”
Teresa was surprised.
“It’s not my area of expertise, but I do know it’s meant to be one of the most technically challenging compositions ever created for a solo violin,” she mused. “Was there anyone in the valley who’d have been capable of playing it? Surely that level of skill wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.”
“Nobody. And in case you’re wondering whether or not the music was coming from one of our local musical instruments, I can tell you straight away that it wasn’t. It wasn’t a Resian sound. Even now it makes me shiver just to think about it.” He paused as if he were unsure of whether or not to continue. “Do you know what Tartini used to say about it?”
Teresa shook her head.
“He said that the sonata had been inspired by a dream in which he’d made a pact with the devil. He’d dreamed that Lucifer himself had performed the piece for him with the kind of genius and precision that could only find quarter in hell. When he woke up, Tartini tried to transcribe the music he’d heard, but he swore for the rest of his life that he hadn’t even come close to reproducing its brilliance. The sonata came to light exactly seventeen years after the night he had that fateful dream.”
“It’s certainly an intriguing interpretation,” Teresa remarked.
“The older generation of Resians took the story very literally. They claimed the devil himself had kidnapped Aniza, snatched her away from life, taken her into the forest and into the darkness—the kind that never gives way to dawn. His trill was heard for several nights thereafter. Carried in the wind, close at first, then farther away. It was like it was playing games with us. It made a mockery of our hope of finding Aniza alive.
“My grandfather used to say that all things considered, the devil had been magnanimous, for he’d never let us find her body. He left us with a sliver of hope to cling on to, if we really wished to do so.”
He fell quiet.
Teresa asked him one last question.
“I suppose you never reported her missing?”
“To whom? This was a borderland and the horrors of the war were at their peak. There was no State and the authorities had hundreds of thousands of dead to worry about. Italy was in disarray. We were alone. Aniza was alone. Lost.”
Teresa closed her notebook.
“I think that’ll be sufficient for the time being,” she said. “Thank you. This has been most useful.”
Francesco emerged from his reverie and did something Teresa hadn’t expected him to do.
He asked about Andrian.
“I did read about this in the newspaper, but there was nothing in there to connect the story with Aniza. Is it true that he hasn’t spoken a word since 1945?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“You think he’s the one who killed her, don’t you?”
“It’s a possibility, but there’s a lot that we still need to consider.”
There was a brief silence, in which Francesco gathered the strength he needed to say what came next.
“Do you think I could meet him?”
35
The police had come into the valley, taking care not to draw undue attention to their presence. They were following the trail of a heart that had beaten there nearly a hundred years ago and unwittingly peering into a past that should never have come back to light. Even after all this time, that old blood was still warm, kept that way by the everlasting memories of those who had loved the young woman in whose veins where it had once flowed. That old blood had spoken and it had led the police here much sooner than expected.
But however discreet the officer with the red hair and the sharp eyes had been in her approach so far, someone had noticed her and her colleagues’ presence in the valley. Someone was following them. Someone had watched them intrude upon an ancient mystery with every step they took and every word they uttered.
The Tikô Wariö carried a basket on its back. The liquid oozing through its patterned weave had the color and consistency of crushed ripe cherries, but its scent was the metallic vital essence that filled the veins of the living.
A heart for a heart. That was the punishment for betrayal.
The police weren’t the only danger lurking. Other presences were patrolling the valley like nocturnal predators.
The delicate weight inside the basket on its back was a silent, furious warning never to forget that what had happened that night in the forest seventy years ago must remain buried and hidden forever.
It must rest in its grave. Forever inside the valley.
36
A fierce wind was blowing, heavy with moisture. The sun was covered by a frothy cloud whose shape kept changing and casting its tentacular shadow across the valley. The shadow crept along the mountain slopes and the riverbed like the hand of a giant, raking its fingers through the soil, emitting shivers of cold, stealing warmth from the rocks and sending the animals of the valley scampering back to their dens.
The air was electric, charged with the promise of a thunderstorm. Toward the east, a shard of sky ensconced among the spires of alpine peaks was a whorl of rain-dense clouds, a maelstrom of steely gray traversed with flashes of lightning, each crack followed by a clap of thunder that sounded like the voice of the mountain itself—a roar that carved through the air and exploded in a cacophony of sound.
Teresa crouched at the foot of the ancient linden tree Francesco had pointed out to her. Its branches were being tossed to and fro by gust upon gust of restless wind. It looked like they were shaking with suppressed rage.
She hadn’t spoken to Marini and Blanca yet. There was still plenty of time to untangle the story she had just heard. All she wanted to do for the time being was simply to “feel.”
The village had changed, but not as much as she had previously assumed. Teresa saw before her the same landscape she had already seen in Andrian’s painting. He had captured it from exactly the spot in which Teresa stood now, observing the view and picturing the two children and the red-haired partisan watching the German soldier drive his cart over the steep, sloping road.
Andrian had stood in that spot seventy years before Teresa had. He had looked at what she was looking now. He had breathed in the fragrance of the valley and studied its people. He had approached Aniza unbeknownst to her family. He had stood within touching distance of Francesco, but Francesco had never even known he’d existed, never known about those secret urges that had, perhaps, led Andrian to kill the object of his deepest desires.
Teresa ran her hands over the roots of the linden tree. They looked like sinewy arms plunging into the earth. She thought of Andrian sitting there with his rifle and his pencils, picking up a sheet of paper and starting to draw.
