The Sleeping Nymph, page 36
Teresa eyed her wordlessly.
“Don’t leave the village. We may need to interview you again soon,” she said.
“Now you’re the one making threats.”
“Not at all. You’d benefit, too, from having this matter cleared up once and for all—isn’t that right?”
“I need to talk to Krisnja,” the woman replied, taking a step back to increase the physical distance between them. “I won’t let ghosts come between us again.”
Teresa took a step forward and went farther still, her stance now an open challenge.
“Do not approach the girl,” she said, her voice calm. “And I would really suggest you follow my advice, given the circumstances.”
“It was Francesco who told you, wasn’t it? It was him, trying to throw suspicion on me again.” Matriona was fuming. “He was always jealous of the family who surrounded Ewa; they were all women, and he was excluded.”
But she was interrupted then by the sound of a woman’s scream coming from the house, a roar of anguish and fury combined. Almost like a signal, it released a chorus of female chanting, their voices accompanied by an obsessive and increasingly fierce drumbeat.
“What’s going on in there?” asked an alarmed Marini.
Matriona, back now to her calm and imperious self, looked at each of them in turn.
“You’ll need a warrant to find out,” she replied, then turned around and walked away.
Teresa heard distinctly the sound of the key turning twice in the lock.
There was another scream, more muffled this time, but no less painful to hear.
Marini felt for his holster under his jacket, but Teresa stopped him.
“Superintendent?”
She motioned at him to remain calm.
“There’s an ancient name for women like her,” she murmured, surprised at herself for remembering. “Doula. They deal with life, but also death. They’ve been assisting births and performing abortions in villages since time immemorial. Listen: there’s nothing on earth more magical than what’s happening in there right now.”
In that house, in that very moment, surrounded by an infinite circle of female arms seething with unfathomable energy, a child was being born.
89
“We should really get that warrant.”
Driving back to the city, Massimo had felt the need to break the silence somehow. Superintendent Battaglia had barely spoken over the past few hours. It was as if the encounter with Matriona and the sounds of the ancient ritual they’d stumbled upon had cast her into a different dimension. Not even Blanca had managed to get her attention. They had gone to pick her and Smoky up from the search area, which had meanwhile expanded like oil on water. There was another body to look for now—Ewa’s—but no one had any idea where to begin. Blanca and Smoky had been contributing valiantly to the massive search operation, which promised to be long and arduous.
“Superintendent?” said Massimo when Teresa didn’t reply.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Let her be,” said Blanca through a yawn, curled up in the back seat with her dog.
“We don’t have time just to let people be,” he groused.
Superintendent Battaglia finally tore her eyes away from the view outside the window.
“If we want Judge Crespi to issue a warrant, we’re going to have to give him something more than a hunch,” she drawled. “You can’t just go into people’s homes because you have a feeling they might be hiding something.”
“But that woman is hiding something.”
“And who isn’t?”
“So you’ve already changed your mind about her?”
“No, but there was an investigation conducted at the time on Hanna’s death and the fire, and Matriona wasn’t even considered a suspect. Crespi won’t want to revisit a closed case and cast doubt on his colleagues’ judgement without valid reason—unless there’s ‘compelling and unequivocal new evidence,’ as they say.”
“How could they not have noticed that she was murdered?” Blanca asked.
“Because there was no autopsy. The evidence seemed clear: the fire was started by the candles the family used to illuminate the inside of the barn. There was no electricity. There was nothing to suggest there had been a homicide.”
“But now there is,” said Massimo. “Judge Crespi will have to take that into consideration.”
They reached Blanca’s house.
“Are you coming up?” she asked them.
“I am,” Superintendent Battaglia replied. She turned to Massimo. “You?”
Massimo looked up at the window, where the lights were on.
“Maybe,” he said, gripping the steering wheel harder.
“Come on; she’s not going to eat you.”
“Are you sure?”
Elena didn’t look like she wanted to bite his head off. When she opened the door and saw him standing there, he thought she looked almost relieved, as if until that moment she hadn’t quite let herself believe what he’d written in his text messages.
Superintendent Battaglia and Blanca promptly came up with some embarrassingly terrible excuse to leave the two of them alone.
Massimo had rarely felt so nervous. It was like starting from scratch, like a first date, a first kiss.
“Hey,” he said, mentally kicking himself.
“Hey.”
She was so beautiful in her leggings and the plain T-shirt stretched tight over her stomach. He pointed at it.
“It’s already growing,” he said in wonderment.
She followed his gaze and quickly crossed her arms over her belly.
“I feel so bloated. Food seems to be the only thing that works on the nausea. It’s torture . . .”
“I’m sorry. Anyway, I didn’t mean to say that you’ve put on weight.”
“Put on weight?”
“And so what if you had? You look amazing anyway.”
“Anyway meaning . . . ?”
“Just a little . . . rounder, I guess?”
In the silence that followed, he felt a tingle on the back of his neck, an itch he didn’t dare scratch: she was staring at him as if she were about to tear into his jugular vein.
“Elena?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
Massimo grabbed her hand before she could walk away.
“Look, I was clearly out of my mind before, but I want you in my life—both of you,” he blurted out.
“I’m not so sure I want you anymore.”
“Then allow me to spend the rest of my life trying to change your mind.”
“How?”
Massimo fell to his knees and put his hands around her hips.
Elena blushed.
“Your boss might see you,” she whispered.
“Oh yes, I’m sure she’s watching.”
“Massimo . . .”
He rested his head on her belly, then took her hand and ran his thumb over her ring finger.
He closed his eyes. For the first time he could feel, finally, that primordial, transcendental bond with the baby growing in Elena’s womb and the protective urge that came with it.
Elena was becoming a conduit for a new life to enter the world. She was handing her body over to the most brutal and momentous of experiences; to Massimo, who was merely a man, it seemed nothing short of superhuman.
He thought of the valley where the force of the sacred feminine was an ancient wisdom preserved and passed on through generations. The Female had always survived there, and so had the notion of the Goddess within her. The women of the valley still carried the force of the sacred feminine inside them, just like Aniza and the portrait of the Sleeping Nymph—and even that icon of the Virgin Mother that had come through death into the hands of the children of the valley. And those children, who lived every day with the presence of that esoteric female force—what must they have thought when they saw the shining face of the Queen of Heaven?
Massimo opened his eyes. He clasped Elena’s hand in his own and held back on the proposal he had been about to make. He got back to his feet.
“I’d take you both with me if I could,” he said, kissing her lips. “But it’s not safe.”
Reluctantly, he took a step back.
“Where are you going?” Elena asked, bewildered.
He smiled.
“To look for the beginning of a story, so that we can figure out how it ends.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t ask her!”
Massimo shook his head.
“I knew you were eavesdropping,” he replied.
“Why on earth would you get on your knees and not propose? That’s ridiculous!”
“I wanted it to be a perfect moment.”
Battaglia swore.
“There are no perfect moments—only unforgettable ones. This could have been one of those.”
“It could have been, if it had just been the two of us without you spying through the keyhole.”
“You should thank your lucky stars I didn’t come in there and kick your ass. I would have, you know. And then you came out with that line like something out of Murder, She Wrote. Jesus Christ! You were still thinking about the case! Unbelievable.”
“I was thinking about us, about our child. There’s a killer out there who came all the way to my front door. I’m sure you’ll understand if I feel I should probably sort that out before I bring Elena back into my life. Anyway, we’re here.”
Battaglia swore again.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she said as they pulled up in front of the headquarters of the regional gendarmerie.
“I wish. Can you imagine the look on Lona’s face if he caught us fraternizing with the enemy?”
“Shit. Is that what we’re doing?”
“No, no. We’re just using them.”
“That sounds a lot better.”
Christian Neri greeted them at the door and made straight for Superintendent Battaglia.
“Detective Battaglia, it’s an honor to finally meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’m Lieutenant Neri.”
She looked him up and down.
“I think I’ve seen you before,” she told him. “Standing half-naked in a boxing ring, in fact.”
Christian smiled.
“Yes, well. I do hope you won’t hold it against me,” he replied.
“No, Lieutenant. I have every respect for the occasional act of rule-breaking.”
“Oh, really?” Massimo interjected. “That’s news to me.”
“This way, please,” said Neri. “And allow me to extend a warm welcome on behalf of the entire cultural artifacts unit here. We focus mostly on retrieving stolen artworks, among other things.”
Massimo watched them walking together down the hallway, thick as thieves.
“Cultural artifacts unit . . . What’s with the fancy name?” he sniped, but neither of them bothered to reply.
Christian showed them to his office.
“In all honesty, the case of the Sleeping Nymph should have been assigned to our unit,” he was saying. “But I can understand Deputy Prosecutor Gardini’s decision. There’s no one better at cracking a difficult case than you, Superintendent.”
Superintendent Battaglia returned his smile.
“Well, I’m lucky to be working with an excellent team,” she said.
“And now we’re lucky to be collaborating with you.”
Massimo couldn’t bear it any longer.
“I’m not sure ‘collaborating’ is the right word,” he interjected. “As I told you on the phone, this meeting isn’t happening.”
Christian spared him a glance.
“And as I told you, I will be happy to assist Superintendent Battaglia.”
“Boys, I can’t say I’m not flattered by all this testosterone you’re expending on my account, but please remember, I’m sixty years old and it’s not quite as exciting as it used to be. I’d be grateful if we could please get to the point. Thank you.”
Christian burst out laughing.
“Now, tell me, please: Why am I here?” the superintendent resumed.
“To consult our database of stolen cultural artifacts,” Christian replied. “It’s the only database of its kind, and we’ve made it accessible to law enforcement agencies all over the world. We’re really rather proud of it. Its catalogue includes more than six million artworks, each with its own unique code, which we call Object-ID.”
“I told Lieutenant Neri about the icon stolen by the Nazis and lost in the river,” Massimo explained.
Neri typed something into his keyboard.
“Sadly, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. During the Second World War, the Germans stole millions of works of art from Italian soil, and only a fraction have been recovered. Hermann Göring himself, Hitler’s right hand, came up with the idea of stripping occupied territories of their national cultural heritage. Take Poland, for example; in 1939, the Nazis smuggled the country’s entire artistic patrimony out. And the year after, it was Göring again, who appropriated a third of the works stolen from the Louvre for his own private collection.”
“That’s a huge amount of art,” the superintendent remarked.
“Yes, it’s quite extraordinary. But I think I’ve managed to find what you’re looking for somewhere in this sea of paintings and statues.”
Christian paused as if to give them time to register the import of his words.
“In February 1945, the Germans broke into the church of the Sanctuary of Castelmonte, which isn’t too far from your valley, and stole the altarpiece: a triptych in book form, screen-printed and with gold, silver and gemstone inlays. It’s thought to have predated the late Byzantine era—a priceless specimen of paleochristian art.
“It makes an appearance in the logs that were seized from the Nazi base at the entrance to Val Resia. The altarpiece was dismantled and its three panels separated. According to those logs, your icon was put on a train to Vienna. But it never got there.”
“The soldier who was shot that day must have stolen it,” said Teresa.
Christian nodded.
“In those days, with the war essentially lost, it wasn’t unusual for German soldiers to steal smaller works of art from right under their commanders’ noses. Which makes it that much harder to trace their whereabouts today.”
Massimo and Superintendent Battaglia exchanged a glance. Another piece had just been added to the puzzle.
“Thank you,” she said, getting to her feet. “Your help will not be forgotten.”
Christian Neri gave them a bewildered look.
“But don’t you want to see it?”
He turned his screen around, and the image they saw left them both speechless.
90
“It’s a Virgen Nigra—a black Madonna,” said Anastasiu Constantin, his eyes lighting up as he studied the image Christian Neri had printed off for Teresa.
Lieutenant Neri himself had referred them to Constantin, an expert antiquarian his unit frequently consulted when they needed to determine the authenticity of recovered artworks. When Teresa had arrived at his shop, stacked with baroque angels carved in ebony and candlesticks made of solid silver, she’d had to look down to meet his eyes; Constantin was a dwarf.
“The Virgen Nigra appears in many cultures across the world,” Constantin resumed, smoothing the cashmere scarf he’d placed around his neck like a ruff. “But only a select few carry—shall we say—a rather special secret.”
The icon had originally been photographed in black and white, but when it was entered into the Object-ID database, the image had been enhanced with color, using the recollections of those who had seen the object firsthand and the descriptions that appeared in the historical record.
“What secret?” Teresa asked.
Constantin didn’t respond. He used a step stool to climb onto a high chair and placed the photograph onto his work table, pointing his desk lamp at the Madonna’s face. It was hidden behind a black veil, just transparent enough to hint at exotic features and a pair of brown eyes that seemed to follow the viewers’ movements. But the skin on her neck and her hands was clearly dark, and so was the figure of the baby Jesus feeding at her breast.
“Very few Virgen Nigra are authentic examples of black Madonnas,” Constantin explained. “In most cases, the pigmentation is caused by the smoke of votive candles, which can, over the course of several centuries, attach itself semi-permanently to paintings and other decorative devotional objects.
“We’ve also seen instances in which a darker coat of paint appears to have been applied at a later date, perhaps to conceal particularly valuable ornamental elements. And sometimes the coloring is intended as an homage to the geographical provenance of the Virgin Mary. But the specimen whose photograph we have here doesn’t fall into any of the categories I’ve just described.”
“You mentioned a secret earlier. Is this what you meant?”
“Precisely. You see, it’s only in extremely rare cases—so rare, in fact, you could count them on the fingers of one hand—that the dark skin of a Virgen Nigra is indicative of her true nature. The image we have here is nothing less than the physical embodiment of blasphemy.
“Observe the positioning of the hand: her fingers are raised to indicate the number three, which stands for the Holy Trinity. This woman is telling us she belongs in that Trinity—she, a woman. She wears a crimson robe, as does the Christ; however, in this case the red isn’t representative of the blood of Christ on the Cross, but of the blood that women pledge every month to Mother Earth. And she wears a blue cloak, the color of the heavens from which she descends. It’s iconography reminiscent of the Christ Pantocrator of the Byzantine era.”
