Good Blood (9 page)

“What do they want?” Phil asked.

“I don’t know yet. I didn’t speak with him personally. He’ll be here with it at eleven o’clock.” As custom required, Vincenzo had called a consiglio, and the de Grazias and their kin were now gathered and awaiting the colonel’s arrival.

“The usual crew?” Phil asked.

With a sigh and a barely discernible lift of his eyes, Vincenzo nodded. “Every last one. Your ‘sainted’ grandfather, of course, who, in his usual way-”

“Yes, I met him outside,” Phil said, cutting him off. He didn’t want to hear Vincenzo’s mocking assessment of the aged Cosimo. “Let’s go in.”

“I want to wait out front for the colonel, but you go ahead and join the others,” Vincenzo said. “I know you can’t wait to see them all again.”

“Mm,” said Phil noncommittally.

The fact was, he always did look forward to seeing them. His Italian relatives were, after all, the only family he had. Between visits he would invariably forget how much they got on his nerves. That is, he knew they did, but he couldn’t quite remember why. It usually took about ten minutes for it to come back to him, and today was no exception. Once the excitement and surprise at his showing up had died down, it started.

And as usual, it was Dante Galasso who was the first to get to him.

Technically speaking, Dante wasn’t a relative-that is, a blood relative-either of Phil’s or of the de Grazias’. But he was married to Vincenzo’s older sister Francesca, which gave him the privilege of residing with her at the villa, along with the right to participate in the consigli if he so chose, which he unfailingly did.

A sinewy man with a deeply lined face, a bony head atop a snakelike neck, and a thin, contemptuous twist to his lips, as if he knew all sorts of things you didn’t, he had been a Marxist professor of Italian language and culture at the University of Bologna in 1984, when Francesca had been a student there. She had fallen under his spell and the following year, over the vigorous objections of her father Domenico, she had married him. This had caused Domenico enormous grief, inasmuch as Francesca, even more than his brother Cosimo or his son Vincenzo, had been his dearest confidante and had served as mistress of Isola de Grazia since the death of her mother.

A week after the wedding the married couple came to the villa to pay their respects. In a rare emotional scene, the outraged Domenico had Dante forcibly ejected, and for many months father and daughter were estranged. But when Francesca began visiting without Dante in tow, Domenico’s reserve broke down, and they soon became as close as ever. As Phil understood it, the one condition the old man insisted upon was that Dante’s name, or the fact of Francesca’s marriage to him, never be referred to, even indirectly. Francesca, apparently, had no objections and took to spending one or two husbandless weekends a month at her old home.

In the meantime, Dante had continued to teach in Bologna, living in nearby Modena with Francesca, until Domenico had died in 1993. Then, with the old man’s hostility no longer an issue and the widowed Vincenzo more than happy to have his sister on hand to reassume her old role as mistress of Isola de Grazia, he had returned with Francesca to take up residence at the villa “for a year of reflection and renewal.”

That had been ten years ago, but here he was, still reflecting and renewing away, with no sign of letting up.

“So then, here we are,” he said when they had retaken their uncomfortable seats after greeting Phil. He sipped from a gold-rimmed teacup and gestured at the dark, sober portraits that surrounded them, “Once again we find ourselves in the de Grazia Family Hall of Undistinguished Provincial Magistrates, Obscure Papal Sycophants, and Second-Rate, Do-Nothing Admirals.”

This was said just as Cosimo came in from his walk with Bacco. Phil knew perfectly well that it was meant to bait the old man, and predictably, it did.

“The de Grazias have centuries of public service to their credit,” he said sternly, taking one of the remaining chairs, pointedly turning it so that he wasn’t required to rest his eyes directly on Dante, and settling the old dog beside his legs, “which is more than can be said for the Galassos. And I remind you that my sainted brother Alfredo was no ‘donothing admiral.’ He fought and died as a decorated naval officer in the Second World War.”

Dante tipped back his head and laughed. “Sure, with the Fascists. Now there’s something to be proud of, all right.”

“He despised the Fascists, as you well know. He loathed Mussolini.”

“But he fought on their side anyway. Pardon me, but I’ve never understood how that makes sense.”

Bacco, sensing that his master was in need of support, uttered an uncertain growl in Dante’s direction. Cosimo sat very straight, stroking the furry, nervous head. “It is to Alfredo’s unending credit that he gave his life in a war he hated, obeying a leader he abhorred, in a cause he distrusted. I assure you, if he didn’t bear the name he did, he would not have done it, something I don’t expect you to understand.”

He sat up even straighter. “Do you know what he said to Domenico and to me the morning he left?” He was addressing the entire group now. “‘This war is going to be lost, brothers, I have no doubt of that. But we must lose it as well as we can.’” He looked from face to face. “He was a de Grazia.”

Dante shook his head, as if in incredulity, although he, like all of them, had heard the story before. “All I can say is, let us all be grateful that such traditions are now obsolete, along with the decadent, moribund aristocracy that spawned them.”

“Decadent… I… you…” Cosimo, having run out of steam, shook his head with an old man’s trembling frustration. The dog, looking up at him with concerned eyes, nuzzled his hand.

It was an old debate, and although on an intellectual level Phil had to agree with Dante, it was his grandfather’s side that he instinctively took. The only thing that had kept him from publicly standing with Cosimo so far was his reluctance to begin his visit by getting into an unwinnable argument. Besides, this had been going on for years and would keep going on after he left, so what difference would it make? But he was now resolved to jump in if Dante pushed his luck in the face of Cosimo’s capitulation, as he probably would.

Francesca saved him the trouble. Before Dante had gotten out another full sentence (“Once it’s understood that all the tired old ideas of reactionism and imperialism have been obsolete for fifty years, and Italy comes to terms with its tawdry history of marginalization-”) her dismissive, painfully incisive voice cut him off.

“Tired old ideas is exactly right. Keep it up, Dante, and when the revolution comes, you won’t have to kill all the capitalists, you’ll have bored them to death long before.”

Dante glowered at her. “How very amusing.”

“I thought it was time for someone to be amusing.”

Francesca de Grazia Galasso had been-still was-one of those classic Italian beauties, long-nosed, black-haired, flashing-eyed, and from Phil’s point of view, overwhelmingly, almost frighteningly, hard-edged. Although they had never taken to each other-as a child, Francesca had preferred to keep well clear of her Ungaretti kin-he was always grateful for her presence at family affairs, which were dull things in her absence. With Francesca around, the clang of steel blades, the exciting glint of armor, was never very far away.

Well into her forties now, and more formidable than ever, she had been a textbook example of the adoring student who fulfilled her dreams by marrying the professor she idolized, only to find that his brilliant and profound observations tended to be less dazzling after she’d heard them a few dozen times. It also hadn’t taken her long to figure out-correctly, in Phil’s opinion-that she was smarter than he was. For many years now she had been paying little attention to anything he said, and on the few occasions she did, she was equally likely to be bored or irritated.

Over those years she had turned from the rebel against her own class that Dante had briefly made her, into as much a defender of the ancienne noblesse as Cosimo was, but of a very different sort. Caustic and exacting, she was the terror of the household staff, more than once reducing a new maid or young assistant gardener to tears. Not long before, Clemente and Genoveffa Candeloro, the married couple who had served as major domo and housekeeper since Domenico’s day, had thrown an unprecedented joint tantrum and walked out. It seemed that Francesca, during one of her white-glove tours of inspection, had shut one too many French windows and said, one too many times: “If dirt does not get in, dirt does not have to be got out.” It had taken the intervention of Vincenzo to get them to return, and relations were still on the dicey side.

Long ago, when Francesca had first started talking back to Dante, he had reacted with astonishment and indignation, neither of which had had any lasting effect on her. Now she no longer argued, but she no longer listened either, and when she casually cut him off or publicly ignored him, he still flared up once in a while, but generally did nothing worse than mutter back at her and eventually shut up. What their life might be like in private nobody knew and nobody wanted to guess.

As it was, and probably very much for the better, they spent little time together. The highly intelligent Francesca, who had gotten her accounting degree at Bologna despite the distractions provided by Dante, was Aurora’s chief financial officer and Vincenzo’s trusted second-in-command. In effect, it was Francesca who ran the company day-to-day, while Vincenzo was jetting around making deals or getting his clothes filthy at the building sites-an arrangement they both preferred. These duties kept her away from the villa a good forty, and sometimes fifty, hours a week (to the great relief of the household staff). Dante, on the other hand, stuck close to home, cranking out fiery manifestos for various left-wing or postmodernist antiestablishment periodicals, unbothered by the paradox of living high off the hog, in the bosom of a patrician family, while doing it.

Around the corner of the room from them, seated side-by-side, shoulders touching, like a pair of oversized nuthatches, on a heavy wooden dowry chest from the fifteenth century, were two people who were, in appearance, almost the exact opposites of the Galassos: a plump, pink-cheeked couple who were invariably protective of each other. These were the Barberos, Bella and Basilio. Bella was the daughter, by a previous marriage, of Domenico’s wife, which made her Vincenzo’s half-sister, which, Phil supposed, made her his own… what, stepaunt? Second cousin, once removed? He’d have to ask Gideon.

Or maybe not. He’d gotten along until now without knowing, after all.

As Domenico’s stepdaughter, Bella had grown up on the island, among the de Grazias, and had married Basilio when they were both twenty-four. That had been thirty-five years ago, and if they’d ever said a cross word to each other since, nobody could remember having heard it. Not that Bella had any shortage of cross words when it came to other people. Hypersensitive and short-fused, she had chafed most of her life under the humiliation of depending on the largesse of her stepfamily. Marriage to Basilio had come as a tremendous release, and she’d wasted no time in escaping to Milan with him. However, her husband, an ineffectual, jovial man with a diploma in human resources, had proven unequal to the task of supporting her in the style to which she’d become accustomed. After a few years of relative deprivation in Milan, she had turned for help to her stepfather.

Not unexpectedly, Domenico had come through. Following his father’s instructions, Vincenzo had created a make-work job with a nice title for him at Aurora: employee salary and benefits administrator. With the appointment to this position, the Barberos had come back to the villa to live. It had been intended as a temporary measure until they found someplace nearby, but somehow it had settled into permanence.

Later, when Vincenzo had taken over the company as CEO and chairman of the board of directors, he had given the somewhat underemployed Basilio another essentially meaningless responsibility as chairman of the newly created policy advisory committee. In the decade since then, Basilio, being Basilio, had voted with Vincenzo 434 out of 435 times, the one exception being in 1996 when Basilio stood up for his principles and voted, against Vincenzo’s openly expressed wishes, for installing a candy machine in the plant. There had been no similar revolt since.

While Domenico had been alive, it hadn’t been so bad for Bella at the villa. Although not a de Grazia, she was, after all, the daughter of the padrone’ s own wife and he had treated her with consideration, if not with great affection. But after the old man died, once Vincenzo had become padrone, the atmosphere had changed. It was nothing he’d ever said in so many words, but he made it clear, every day, in a hundred ways, that she was now nothing more than one more unwelcome ward, an unasked-for, barely noticed obligation he was honor-bound to meet. His despicable sister Francesca and even the snot-nosed young Achille had taken their cues from Vincenzo and had begun treating her accordingly. But despite the many provocations, after twenty-two years it no longer seemed conceivable to live elsewhere. Besides, the damned de Grazias owed it to her.

Basilio Barbero was very different from his wife, a nervous, always-jolly, accommodating man with thinning reddish hair and a drinker’s veiny nose and cheeks. Left to his own devices, he would take whatever hand Fate dealt him without complaint. Unlike Bella, he was constitutionally averse to conflict, so that while Bella had been taking malicious pleasure at the exchange between Dante and Francesca, her husband had been getting increasingly uncomfortable.

“I can’t help wondering,” he piped up as Dante arranged his all-but-lipless mouth into the most satisfactory position for a cutting retort to his wife, “what those people”-he meant the kidnappers-“have to say. And I certainly hope young Achille is all right. I know we’re all terribly worried about him.”

“Oh, are we really?” Dante said mockingly. “Tell me, would it be violating some primeval law of the de Grazia canon to be honest for once? Is there anyone here who really cares, one way or the other, what happens to that know-it-all brat?”