The Sleeping Nymph, page 7
Teresa was craning her head out of the car window, the wind playing with the red curls around her face as the car slipped through the center of town. Marini’s driving was unhurried, and he only kept one hand on the steering wheel. He was quiet, too, and looked sullen.
They had eventually reached a wordless agreement to stop trying to make each other confess whatever it was that was weighing so heavily on their minds—though Teresa did wonder how long this truce could last, how long she could keep deceiving the person she spent most of her time with.
They drove through the center of town and across the Devil’s Bridge, a stone arch stretched over a vertiginous drop that had been carved out by a river of the purest turquoise. The bridge was rumored to have been built by Satan himself, who had claimed a soul in return for his efforts.
The car scrambled up a forested hillside as the GPS droned on in the background. The sun was still high in the sky, but even though there were some hours left until evening, the approaching twilight had already permeated the light with sunset hues. Thick shadows lurked at the edges of their field of vision, ready to unfurl farther by the minute.
Marini lowered the window on his side, too. It was warm out, but every now and then there was a gust of wind with traces of a chill that stung the skin. At the edge of the forest, the air already smelled like night.
After a few more turns, the Andrian home, perched on top of a hill, finally came into view. It was an old building of standard rural appearance, built out of light, square stonework and perfectly conserved. It looked a little like a farmhouse.
A row of ancient, gnarly vine trees ran along the front of the building all the way to an arbor overhung with wisteria, sheltering a table and a few wrought-iron chairs. The wisteria’s violet flowers hadn’t yet bloomed, but already they had begun to spread through the air their characteristic peppery scent. A graveled courtyard fanned out from the building, and a dog lay drowsing in front of the door. It lifted one ear up when it heard their car arriving, then lowered it back down.
Once Marini had parked, they both sat there for a few moments to observe the building. Raffaello Andrian had inherited a striking property with an affectedly rustic air. The same features that had once hinted at poverty and toil had since become the stuff of real estate fantasy.
They got out of the car and started looking around. The stillness of the countryside was punctured only by bees, golden specks buzzing tirelessly among the wildflowers swaying in the breeze.
“You can smell the nectar they’re carrying,” said Marini, taking a deep breath.
“Nectar doesn’t smell, Mr. Poet,” said Teresa.
He shot her a skeptical look.
“What do you mean it doesn’t smell?”
“Oh yes, quite an inconvenience for flowering plants, who had to find some other way to become attractive. Their solution was quite brilliant: caffeine.”
“Caffeine?”
“Insects go crazy for it. It’s actually caffeine they’re after. And when the plant decides it’s had enough, all it has to do is start emitting it in such quantities as to become toxic. It’s fascinating, the perception plants have of the world.”
“Welcome.”
They turned around to find Raffaello Andrian smiling shyly at them. He stepped over the dog and came toward them, wiping his hand on his jeans before extending it in greeting.
“Sorry about this; I was working up in the attic,” he said.
“More cleaning?” Teresa asked.
“Yes, there’s a lot to sort out. No one’s set foot up there in decades.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve found other paintings,” Teresa joked, though not without a note of genuine interest.
Raffaello laughed.
“No, Superintendent. No more mysterious paintings. Follow me, let’s go inside.”
They walked into the shady entrance hall. Long lace curtains fluttered over the open windows, which let in the heat stored in the masonry and the scents of the natural world outside. The cherrywood floor had been polished to such a shine that it reflected the furniture—which itself looked like it must be at least a hundred years old, all made out of solid wood, edges smoothed over with use, occasionally with a minuscule hole left on the surface by woodworm. A pair of Siamese cats lay curled on a chenille sofa, eyeing the newcomers with suspicion. They, too, looked like they belonged in another era.
Their host seemed to guess what Teresa was thinking.
“My family has lived here for generations,” he explained. “They started off as farmers, then became merchants. My grandfather was the first to forgo farming and set up a business. He built his office where the chicken coop used to be.”
“What kind of business was it?” Teresa inquired.
“He imported timber, especially from Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
“And you work in the family business, too?”
“Yes.”
“How do you like it?”
It was an instinctive question. Teresa had never been able to comprehend how people were just able to follow in someone else’s footsteps when it came to a decision as personal as choosing a profession.
“It’s good,” the young man replied. “I’ve pictured myself doing this ever since I was little.”
“Then you’ve been lucky.”
Raffaello Andrian smiled.
“No, Superintendent. It’s not luck. Uncle Alessio made sure to provide for us.”
Teresa wasn’t entirely sure what he meant.
Raffaello Andrian motioned at them to follow him into a cozy sitting room. A pewter vase full of roses, two armchairs and a coffee table bearing a stack of books were arranged around the fireplace, but it was really what was hanging on the walls that caught their attention.
Andrian gestured at the paintings: six in all.
“These are the ones my father and I were able to retrieve and bring back home. We’re missing four: either the prices were too high or the owners too intransigent.”
“Were they lost during the war?” Marini queried.
“No. Uncle Alessio decided to sell them to help out his brother, who was destitute and had a wife and young child—my father—to support. He was quite well known already, despite never actively having done anything to court fame. And by then he’d already withdrawn from the world.”
“How was it possible that he was so well known?”
“One day an American soldier came across some drawings that Uncle Alessio’s comrades had brought back with them from their mountain camps. As a civilian, this American had been a museum curator and an art expert. He wrote a piece for an industry magazine about the ‘partisan painter’ and the legacy of madness the war had left him with. Of course, collectors and art dealers went crazy.”
Teresa was puzzled.
“You said your uncle wanted to sell his paintings to help out his family, but I had understood that Alessio Andrian had already lost his mind when he was found in the forest,” she said.
“That’s correct. He didn’t talk; he seemed to have gone deaf, too. He refused to eat. But my grandfather said that one day he found one of the paintings in the kitchen, wrapped in newspaper. It looked like someone had packed it up to have it sent somewhere, but there was no address on the parcel. My grandmother said she didn’t know anything about it and it couldn’t have been my father, either; he was too little even to pick up the painting. It had to have been Alessio himself, but as you can imagine, it was pointless to ask him about it.”
“What did your grandfather do?”
“He unwrapped the painting and put it back.”
“Then what?”
“The next morning it was on the kitchen table again, wrapped in newspaper and string. And four more paintings with it.”
Teresa could hardly believe it.
“Alessio Andrian had packed them up overnight?” she asked.
Raffaello reached up to touch one of the paintings.
“He did much more than that, Superintendent. That night, my uncle left his room for the first time in five years to tell his family to sell the paintings and leave their poverty behind. So, you see, our fortune had nothing to do with luck. It came from an act of love: my uncle’s.”
Teresa didn’t know what to say. She could hear the emotion in Andrian’s great-nephew’s voice.
“Did they see him?” she asked, wondering whether or not she was being indelicate in addressing such an intimate family matter.
The young man nodded.
“His brother, my grandfather, saw him. He waited for him when everyone else was asleep. My grandma found him in the kitchen the next morning. He was crying, his head bowed over the wrapped-up paintings. Alessio had gone back to his room and he never left it again. My grandfather couldn’t contain his tears.”
“Had he spoken to his brother?”
“No, and after that night he stayed mostly out of sight. He said he couldn’t stand to show his face anymore. What he saw and heard that night was so . . . unbearable that he felt it would be humiliating for his brother if he even so much as laid eyes on him again. So he said.”
Teresa couldn’t help herself. “And what had he seen? What had he heard?”
Raffaello Andrian quickly wiped his eyes dry.
“Imagine a man who hasn’t walked for years, who hasn’t spoken a word in years, all of his own volition,” he murmured. “Imagine how he must have struggled, with his atrophied muscles, to stand upright, to make even the smallest of movements. How he must have groaned with frustration at having to grapple for hours with tasks that would take a normal man no more than a few minutes to complete. Imagine doing all of that for one reason only: to provide for your family.”
Teresa fell silent, touched by the young man’s memories and even more so by the depth of feeling etched in his expression.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Andrian announced. “Feel free to take a look at the paintings, if you wish. Then I’ll take you to my uncle.”
“Thank you.”
Teresa watched him slip out into the other room, clearly needing a moment to process his emotions.
“He looked like he was about to cry,” Marini observed.
“And we’ll give him the space he needs to compose himself,” she whispered back.
She walked up to the paintings. They were all fairly typical scenes, mostly landscapes, but there was also something remarkably modern in their composition, in the unorthodox use of perspective and style. The shading was so exceptionally skilled that the figures looked three-dimensional, just like the Sleeping Nymph. But none of these paintings had been made using hematite chalk; they had all been drawn in charcoal and depicted scenes from life in the mountains—all except the one painting that more than the others, drew Teresa’s attention.
It was a scene from war: a young man with barely the trace of a beard and two children aged about seven or eight, a boy and a girl, hiding in the undergrowth. The boy was holding a rifle, which looked like it had just been fired and was about to leap out of his hands. On the slope below them—the sharp incline of the valley conveyed by the use of perspective—a German soldier, identifiable from his helmet, sat teetering on a wagon cart, pulling on the horse’s reins in an attempt to subdue the animal, which had been startled by the conflagration of the bullet.
The expressions on each of the five subjects’ faces were astonishing, so florid and tangible as to rise up from the paper: the young man’s shock, the little boy’s fear, the soldier’s surprise and the horse’s panic as it reared itself on its hind legs. And the girl: standing slightly apart, eyes wide open and lips pressed together.
Teresa scanned the painting for clues, references to a location or a date, any detail that might serve to place the scene in a definite time and place, but all she found was the signature: two wispy, intersecting As.
She went from painting to painting scrutinizing every line, but to no avail. She had to concede defeat: Alessio Andrian had left no trail of clues that might make their job easier. She made a note to make sure someone checked the backs of the paintings.
The gentle sound of a piano being played somewhere on the ground floor broke through the late afternoon stillness. After the first few hesitant notes, the music gradually picked up in speed and fervor until the whole house rang with its impassioned melody.
Teresa followed the piano’s delicate chords as they reverberated over the wood and the upholstery of the home, letting them guide her through the corridor.
“This isn’t very polite,” she heard Marini say, but she ignored him.
Eventually she reached a small room, so narrow as to fit only a grand piano and the woman whose fingers were dancing over its keys. She was around fifty years old and must have been quite tall. The curious way in which she had styled her hair—a blonde braid looped around her head and into a large bun tied up with a ribbon—suggested to Teresa that she might be from Eastern Europe. Her outfit, though, was simple and practical: a white shirt and a pair of jeans. Her eyes were closed and her body was swaying to the rhythm of the music.
“That’s Tanja,” she heard Raffaello Andrian say from somewhere behind her. “She’s been looking after my uncle for almost twenty years. We’d be lost without her.”
Teresa turned around.
“Sorry,” said Marini, looking uncomfortable. “We didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No problem. You’re guests here,” Raffaello assured him.
Teresa turned to the woman again.
“I’m no expert, but she plays beautifully,” she said.
“Tanja graduated from the conservatory in Zagreb. She plays for my uncle whenever she can; she says he likes it and that it’s our duty to fill this silence somehow.”
Teresa sought the young man’s eyes and decided to speak plainly.
“You talk of your uncle with genuine feeling, Raffaello. And this lady here takes care to ensure there’s more than just silence around him. Forgive me for being blunt, but your uncle has never reciprocated your attentions. You told me you’ve never once heard the sound of his voice.”
“It’s true.”
“Then how can the bond between you be so strong? A relationship that’s never had anything to nurture or encourage it, and yet despite all the silence and all that’s missing, it survives, even thrives . . .”
Raffaello Andrian smiled.
“I can’t explain it. I’m not able to explain it. I can only hope you might understand it yourself one day. Come, it’s time for you to meet him.”
14
The room in which Alessio Andrian had spent the past seventy years of his life was nothing like Teresa had imagined it. No scent of decay, of death in waiting: instead, it was airy and bright, and so colorful that the first thing Teresa noticed wasn’t Andrian but the thousands of photographs hanging on the walls. It was as if every landmark in the world had gathered there for the eyes of an old man who wouldn’t even look.
Alessio Andrian was sitting on a wheelchair with his back to them, his face turned toward a wide window that looked out at the little forest of oak and plum trees.
“I’ve traveled a lot,” the painter’s nephew whispered. “I took these photos myself and put them up here so that he might see the world through my eyes. But as far as I know, he’s never even looked at them. Everything he wants to see is out there in those woods. Wherever he is, whether he’s sitting in the chair or lying in bed, day or night, his eyes always turn toward the window. Sometimes it’s as if they’re cutting right through it.”
Teresa hesitated, unsure of how to approach this silent, inert man.
“Uncle, there’s someone here to see you,” said Raffaello, motioning at Teresa and Marini to move closer.
Teresa took a few steps forward.
“Mr. Andrian, my name is Teresa Battaglia,” she said.
She had come to look at the suspect’s face and see what her instincts might tell her when she did so. As she walked around the wheelchair she was prepared to be faced with an empty and feeble gaze, eyes glazed over by time. What she saw instead was the exact opposite, and for a moment, she was knocked off-balance.
This was not the blank look of an old man who had lost his mind: Alessio Andrian’s eyes were magnetic, a pair of blazing embers embedded in the sharp bone structure of his lean face. His expression was one of deep concentration, as if he really were watching something at the edge of the forest that only he could see. It was neither a vacant stare, nor a benevolent one. It was feral.
“Mr. Andrian?” she called again, a little louder this time to encourage a reaction, even the tiniest of tremors.
But the man didn’t move a single muscle, not even in unconscious reflex.
Teresa studied him. Despite its gauntness, his body gave the impression of harboring great strength. It was as if his muscles had adhered to his bones and his skin followed suit. There was no loose flesh on him to be weighed down by gravity, but only a solid carapace.
His pajamas hung off broad, square shoulders. His hands, laying on the armrests, were large, with long, delicate fingers. He wore a ring on his left ring finger: a plain metal loop with two intersecting As carved onto it. These were the hands of an artist—and perhaps the hands of a killer.
Alessio Andrian must have once been tall and athletic. It would have been easy for him to overpower a being of ethereal grace like the Sleeping Nymph. His hair was still thick and white, and carefully combed in a side part. Teresa could picture Tanja doing that for him, then slipping the old man’s pale feet into his felt slippers and placing them onto the footrests of his wheelchair while Andrian’s eyes remained fixed on the woods.
