What We May Become, page 8
Diana toweled off, got dressed, and had just combed out her hair when she heard a knock coming from far off down the long hall. She ran.
‘It is I, Signora Bugari,’ came the voice on the other side of the door. ‘You may open this door now.’
Diana quickly unlocked the door, stepping out on to the landing and locking the door behind her. Her hair was dripping wet, soaking the back of her lavender dress, the one with the uneven hem.
‘Signora, I have so many questions for you this morning—’
Bugari cut her off.
‘Allow me to make one point clear. While Herr Adler is our … our guest, he will be my primary concern. I amend that statement. He will be my only concern. It will take all of my ability, as well as that of Giuliana and Giorgio, to do what needs to be done before he can leave us. That being said, any questions you might have are irrelevant, for the time being. Your duties will be light – Giuliana will have charge of the boy, for the present – no, no arguments. That is decided. You will have to take care of yourself the best you can and stay out of Adler’s way, as I told you. We cannot be everywhere at once, and the estate is extensive. Do not go anywhere where you might be alone with him or have him come upon you suddenly. I will not answer for that.’
‘Signora, I am not a child. I can take care of myself. In the war—’
‘I can assure you I understand what war is more than you. I have lived through … more than one of them.’ Bugari held a far-off look for a moment before continuing. ‘But, by and large, you were dealing with men, I believe. This is different.’
Bugari had reached the end of the landing and was working her way down the stair. Diana noticed she had her cane again. In fact, everything about Bugari’s appearance – the stiff black dress, the perfectly starched lace that covered any bruises left on her throat the night before, the gold locket, the polished onyx buttons – seemed as normal, as if last night had left no mark on her. But Diana knew it had. She reached out and stopped the old woman, placing her hand on the delicate, bony arm.
‘Signora, I will take care of myself, I promise. But you cannot mean Adler is something other than human, any different from any other man. You are not talking about ghosts or monsters or demons, are you? Because, if you are, I must tell you I don’t believe in those things. They are not real.’ We create enough of those for ourselves, without their help, she added mentally.
Bugari looked down at Diana’s hand, then up at her face.
‘I don’t know how you expect me to answer that. I cannot, not without going into the type of detail I just said I have neither the time nor the energy to expend now. If you do not believe in monsters, then your war ended too soon for you. If nothing haunts you, you have learned nothing.’
Diana stood still at the base of the stair as Signora walked into the study and closed the door behind her. Signora’s words rang in her ears. If nothing haunts you. But what was the baby and the tree and the hill, the nightmare that came unbidden, if not a haunting? She was haunted, she wanted to scream at the closed door, she was haunted but what had she learned? What had it all been for? If for nothing, then nothing held any meaning. But if there was some awful, terrible meaning to life, could she possibly discover it? Would she be strong enough to endure it if she found out the secret? Or would the answer destroy her as completely as the Allied bombs had destroyed that baby, had destroyed the villagers in that town that fateful night?
The dining-room door was closed and Diana, unwilling to come upon Adler having a late, solitary breakfast, passed by it quickly on her way to the kitchen. There she found the usual frenzy of activity, everyone, except bambola, hard at work. Sarina was dicing onions with a dull knife, and Dorothea was carrying heavy plates and bowls from one woman to the next, stopping by the open-topped crate they had turned into a makeshift crib to toss the baby some shiny object – a spoon or a tea-strainer – to teethe on. Dorothea smiled at Diana in welcome and seemed about to speak but was immediately called upon to peel an enormous pile of potatoes. Diana took a small roll, poured some coffee out of the enamel pot on the stove, and stepped outside. There was no sign of Adler, or of whatever conveyance he had used to reach the remote spot the night before. Diana walked over to the garage, standing on tiptoe to look inside the paned-glass windows, but the only vehicles were the red and the green and the blue automobiles she had seen the day before. Diana turned to survey the house. She knew, from the preparations that had been made, that they had given Adler a ground-floor apartment at the back of the house, one that overlooked the extensive gardens and the hedge maze. From this side of the house, Diana could make out the windows of the study where Signora had ensconced herself, but the windows were shut tight, despite the growing heat of the day, and the curtains were closed. She could learn nothing there.
Diana loitered around the grounds. Giorgio was using the presence of the extra help to work on a wall that had tumbled down in one spot, where they were pulling off thick vines and replacing the missing stones. Diana walked around the back, waving at one of the women who was hanging kitchen towels out to dry on the line. The woman waved in reply, hanging the cheerful white and yellow rectangles that snapped in the rising wind like signal flags. From her vantage point, she could see Paolo’s open window, hear snippets of the song Giuliana was singing to him. This was to be their plan, then, to keep the boy under house arrest, to lock him in his room until the danger had lifted. Diana shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps they knew best.
The day was hot. Diana had not even gone halfway around the building and already she was thirsty. She walked for a few more minutes, coming upon the manual hand pump by the side kitchen garden. It was rarely used since electricity had been laid in the house, but she had seen Giorgio use it to fill a watering can, or drink from it himself when a trip inside was inconvenient. It was cooler on this side of the house. Large trees cast their shade on the pump, on an odd semi-circle of stones that had once been something – a dais or a stone porch – but was now more a dry spot of lawn than anything else, the flat stones showing through the parched grass that would not grow. Diana thought again about how ancient everything was in Italy. Back home, the historic buildings had been the town hall, and Mrs Claymore’s house, which had been built two hundred years before. But here, this small circle of stones could have been laid by the previous owners, or by Romans in the time of Christ, or by the ancient Etruscans who pre-dated the Roman Empire itself. The china cup Diana had drunk her coffee from still dangled, empty, from her pinky finger. She placed it down, carefully, as she primed the pump. Just like back home, at the pump she had used to water their livestock, she moved the iron bar up and down. Slowly at first, with the resistance of the weight of the water and the depth of well fighting her, then more easily as the cloudy water began to rise, coughing and spitting as it first came out, then running clear and cold, a white-gold glistening stream of ice. Diana bent as she pumped, drinking in deeply, the water splashing on to her face, and down her neck. She drank until she was satisfied, letting go while the momentum still moved the handle up and down for another moment, splashing the water over her arms and her legs, as she had done as a girl. When the pump stopped moving and the sound of water hitting stone had ceased, it was then that she heard the voices. One was Adler’s and not far off – perhaps just on the other side of the row of cypress trees lining the old farm path that ran from the house to the fields. Diana stepped towards the trees, growing so close together she had to press her way in between them. She had not forgotten Signora’s warnings, or her promise to her, or the mindless state the man had reduced her to with such seeming ease. Diana had not forgotten these things, but she was acting on instinct – not the instinct of a senseless creature seeking its own destruction but, rather, a deeper instinct, wedded to her innermost self and her identity as a woman. She pushed past the trees and found herself on the farm path, dusty but smooth. Adler was in front of her, but he was not alone. In front of him was the reason she had broken her promise and was putting herself directly in the path of danger. The other voice had come from a child.
It was one of the houseboys, a village child no older than Dorothea, Diana had seen throwing stones into the manicured lawn on his first day there. He was thin and frail and stood digging the toe of his shoe into the dust of the lane. Adler had his hand extended, handing the boy a sweet which the child popped greedily into his mouth. Adler raised his eyes to look at Diana, her wet arms and legs glistening in the sun. The man turned back towards the boy, keeping his eyes on Diana. He continued his conversation with the child. Diana felt that, in his mouth, even the lilting sweetness of Italian seemed suddenly sinister.
‘And do you like sweets?’
‘Yes, sir, of course.’
‘You did not receive many, during the war.’ It was a statement.
‘No, sir, not any. Not any half as good as these.’
Diana noticed the boy’s mouth was crammed with candy, it was hard for him to speak. She wondered how long they had been out here, and under what pretense Adler had gotten him to this remote spot where no one could see them.
‘I have many more of these, delicious ones,’ Adler went on, smiling. The child turned the hard candies over in his mouth, running his tongue over the sticky sweetness.
Diana stepped forward quickly, yanking the boy by the elbow.
‘You are wanted in the kitchen,’ she said sternly in English, forgetting to translate. Then, as the boy hesitated, looking wistful as the man dug deep into his pocket for another candy, she ordered, ‘Subito.’ At once.
The child could hear the rustle of candy wrappers.
‘And if I ever see you with this man again,’ she continued, pointing at Adler, her voice rising, ‘ti frusterò la tua pelle.’
The boy’s eyes opened wide in fear, and he ran for the house. Ti frusterò la tua pelle. Donna Lucia had always been threatening it, it had been her favorite expression when she thought a girl lazy or found any recalcitrance in her. Ti frusterò la tua pelle. I will whip your hide, she had said, in the exact way Diana had said it to the boy. It was a horrible thing to say to anyone, let alone a child starved for sweetness after the bitterness of war, but it was the only thing she had been able to think of to protect the boy from Adler. And she would not trust the boy’s self-control when it came to candy. She would warn the mothers in the kitchen, let Giuliana and Signora know, too, that there was more than one child in their care that needed protection from Adler. The boy would be all right. Diana turned to go.
Adler gently placed his hand on Diana’s arm, as if to detain her, but she whipped it away.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she snarled.
Adler took several paces backward, raising his hands placatingly.
‘I was only going to say’ – his voice calm as ever, a hint of a smile behind it – ‘it is not wise to come between me and my … prey.’
Diana stared at him. In the dappled sunlight that came in through the double row of trees, she could see little lines of silver running through his hair, glistening in the light. His face was smooth and pink and so closely shaven she wondered, incongruently, if he had used a straight razor. She did not speak, or take her eyes off him, but she had begun to walk backwards, slowly, towards the gap in the trees.
‘Your prey?’ Diana asked accusingly. ‘Is that what you call a child?’
‘Perhaps I have chosen the wrong English word. Perhaps subject is what I meant. Or object.’
The man’s clear blue eyes seemed to bore into her.
‘But you are fascinating, my dear, absolutely fascinating, and you know that.’
The way he said the words made her face flush with a guilt she knew she did not have.
‘You are American, which is always novel to work with. I have had far too many Europeans.’
Diana had no idea what he was talking about – had too many Europeans for what?
‘Coupled with your spirit,’ he chuckled reminiscently, ‘your tackling me last night when you felt your employer was in danger – really, I couldn’t be more pleased. I mean, certainly, I have encountered resistance before in my work. There were those, surely, that put up a fight, at first …’
His voice trailed off as he took a step towards her. Diana noticed the fine silt of the cart path had settled on the polished black of his boots, in the cuffs of his carefully pressed suit pants. His smile disappeared as he searched her face, almost clinically, for something he could not find there. Diana reached a hand behind her, feeling for the trees. She was at the gap, she did not need to listen to this man any longer – a straight shot past the well and she would be back in sight of the woman hanging out the washing, of Giorgio and the men sweating to set the wall to rights. But what had he meant about his ‘work’? Who had put up a fight?
‘You are a challenge, my dear. An enigma.’
He took another step, into full shade this time, and the youthful flush the morning sun had given his skin was gone. He looked cadaverous now, an old man with sunken eyes. His closely shaven skin bulged above his tight, buttoned collar. His hands clenched and released spasmodically, before suddenly stopping.
‘But do not count too much on that. You have interrupted me, here, on a pleasurable errand. And I do not like to be interrupted. As I said, you came between me and my prey, which is not advisable. Do you know why?’
Diana was breathing quickly now, she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She was not mesmerized – his voice held none of the soothing power it had the night before, or only moments ago, with the boy and his candies. She had the feeling she was looking into something dark, an abyss that was black and unknowable, except for the danger it held. She stepped between the trees, dried twigs crunching under her feet. Then she was running, past the well, past the blue-patterned teacup abandoned in the grass. She was past the flapping towels, and the men rolling cigarettes as they rested, she was in the house and up the stairs and in her room, the door locked securely behind her. But she still heard his words, low and menacing, the answer to his own question, as the first twig snapped and she broke into her run.
‘Because now you become the prey.’
THREE
Adler had had enough. Bugari tried to dissuade him, tried to distract him with Caribbean cigars and fortified Portuguese wine. But he cast them aside untried, kicking over side tables and yelling at her in German, English, and Italian.
‘You know what I have come for. Now give it to me.’
As Diana passed by the closed library doors – Bugari’s voice a steady monotone, Adler’s loud, barking commands – she wondered why the old woman didn’t just acquiesce. She would have to give in to him, in time. She could not hold out forever with this German stalking around her home, emptying drawers, throwing their contents out on to the floor. Pushing over armoires, knocking on paneled walls for the sound of hollow spaces behind them. Yelling at the servants, storming through the kitchen and looking in the pantry, in the larder, thrusting his arm into the barrel of farina, up to his elbow, searching every nook and cranny for whatever it was he had come for. She should just give it to him, Diana mused, surveying the wreckage the man left behind him, the extra house servants righting tables and lamps and picking up broken crockery in his wake. Whatever it is, it can’t be worth this.
