The Demon Catchers of Milan (15 page)

“Good,” I said out loud. I wanted to feel both free and safe again. I looked across the room to the statue of the Virgin on my desk. I went over and picked her up, turning her slowly in my hands, running my fingers over the folds of her cloak and the wild beasts on her pedestal. I touched her calm face. For a minute, I thought of throwing her at the wall, but I didn’t; the thought suddenly horrified me. I set her back down on the desk and began to breathe more slowly, starting to meditate before I realized I was doing it. Finally I went back to bed, feeling a bit better and thinking there might be something to the meditation exercises after all.

THIRTEEN

The Return of Lucifero

S
ometimes I think it was Laura’s coffee that saved me during that time. No matter what was happening, what I’d seen or heard or felt the day before, the smell of coffee would reel me out of my room and into a seat at the kitchen table every morning like a fish on a line.

It occurs to me now that Nonna might have planned it that way.

She gave me the same cup each day, a bright yellow one about the size of a cereal bowl. My Italian having progressed to the point where we could have real conversations, she would catch me up on the news: the case had gone well; Francesca might be getting a cold; Alba and Emilio had had an argument, but everything was all right now. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think
Nonna wasn’t all that happy about their reconciliation, either.

Cured by coffee, more or less, I could sit downstairs in the shop, studying and doing my meditations on the Virgin (now making more sense), slowly learning my few and pitiful methods for confronting the unknown.

Giuliano might not want to take me to cases, but at least he would talk to me about what they fought against.

“There are at least as many kinds of demons as there are human faults,” said Giuliano. “And like human faults, some of them can be corrected or changed, while others prove very hard to defeat. I think that the unquiet spirit who took over the unfortunate Signora Galeazzo was at least as upset as the signora herself to find herself where she was. I think her first thought was, ‘Wait! This is not my body! What has happened?’ She was lost for a long time, you see. Terrible things had happened to her in life, and she was still angry about them. Some spirits, it seems, find it very difficult to let go, while others move on or vanish without a trace.”

“But why?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Well, you and I, for example, we have different spirits, yes? We behave differently in the world, don’t we? My character, for example, might be a more clinging kind when the end comes for me. I might choose not to leave this world gently. Especially if I have suffered a great injustice, like the woman of Majdanek.”

“Do we have to call her that?” I asked suddenly, remembering for a moment what it had been like to look out across that plain of bodies. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the place she wants to be
associated with. Can we call her by another name?” I continued shyly. “I mean, I know it doesn’t matter to her anymore.…”

“It matters to you, however,” he said. “I think it is a very good idea. What name shall we call her by?”

I thought. “What about the ‘woman of Signora Galeazzo’s house’? That’s where she used to live, wasn’t it?”

He seemed pleased by the idea, so we left it at that. Sitting in the shop with him each day, I met people, too, such as Marie Franco, American wife of an Italian lawyer in Francesca’s firm, who told of the strange mishaps that followed her daughter wherever she went: chunks of stone peeling off buildings to fall just behind her; a street vendor spattered with his own hot oil. I sat as an old woman, a neighbor whom I will not name, whispered descriptions of terrible torments. When she walked out the door, Giuliano turned to me and raised his eyebrows, asking, “So? What did you think?”

“I don’t know, Nonno.… None of the candles moved. Plus the room didn’t change, I mean, you know, go dark, like it did when the other people were here, or like it was at Signora Galeazzo’s.”

“Exactly.” He nodded. “What do you think?”

“Well … if I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know why people came to us, I would say she wasn’t telling the truth …?”

“Still so reluctant to believe the evidence of your own eyes, of all your senses.”

“Well, why shouldn’t I be?”

He looked irritated, which meant I had raised a good point, considering that an unquiet spirit had recently convinced me
that I was being gassed. “Yes, yes, but you must learn to differentiate. Today, you were listening to someone who made up lies for us. Even the story itself was inconsistent—not in the way that someone suffering from possession can be inconsistent, forgetting things, mixing things up—but inconsistent because she didn’t keep her story straight.”

“What a waste of our time! Why would anybody do that? Can’t they see that they could be taking away from someone who’s facing life and death? I can’t believe she would do that,” I finished angrily.

“That is because you are young and have no idea what it would be like to live alone in a dark apartment, growing old with sore bones, not able always to get out and do what you like, and with only one dutiful son visiting whenever he can get away from his work in Torino,” said Giuliano. “You had better learn some compassion. This will not be the last time you have to listen to someone like her. From each person you listen to, you will learn something. Patience, for example.”

This was too much. I snapped.

“What do you mean, I don’t understand? I know exactly what it’s like to be stuck in a dark apartment, to not be able to get out and do what I like! I know
exactly
.”

I could hear my voice rising. It felt good, so good, like being able to put out my hand and break the hinges on a door. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and I wanted my words to slap him. “Patience?! Oh, I’m learning patience.”

I’d gone too far.

“PATIENCE?” he roared suddenly. “You think
this
is difficult?
You have no idea, no idea at all.
Patience?
You haven’t even
begun
to learn it.”

He stalked away into the back room. I stood where I was, fists balled together, shaking.

When he didn’t come back, I went to the door and looked out into the street, the forbidden street, my head full of comebacks and arguments clamoring to get out.

The candles around me flickered. The early winter dark was setting in. I watched a student flutter past, portfolio under her arm. I stroked the door frame, feeling the old nicks and cuts in the wood, smoothed over by layers of varnish and by the touch of other hands. I breathed in the scent of melting beeswax and warm flame.

I felt like my feet were stuck to the floor, but I turned them anyway and made them go to the office, where Giuliano sat at the cluttered table, gazing at pages of thick, yellowing paper covered in brown handwriting. He looked up, and we stared at each other. His face wasn’t hard anymore.

The words didn’t taste right in my mouth, but I said them anyway: “Nonno. I’m sorry.”

“
Cara
, I’m sorry, too. I should not have shouted,” he replied, standing up to come and take my hands. Unlike me, he didn’t have to fight himself to say the words. “I know how much we are asking of you. But believe me, it would be much harder … There are risks we cannot take, not yet.”

“But couldn’t you teach me? Just some small stuff? Just get me started, so at least I could go out in the street?”

He smiled very sadly at me.

“I promise you, we are working on that. I will try to think of something we can do in the meantime. But—it’s very difficult.”

I knew what he meant: they couldn’t give any knowledge to the demon. I didn’t say that, though, because I wasn’t ready to admit I had overheard him and Emilio.

Molto difficile
: very difficult. Yes, it was. He looked at me carefully, so I pretended everything was okay now, because I knew talking more about it wouldn’t help. I am not sure he believed me, but at least he played along, coming back to the table, letting me change the subject, and answering my questions about the history of Milan. After a while, he asked me to watch the shop by myself for a bit because he had to help Laura with the Plan for dinner.

“Call me on my cell if anyone needs a serious consultation, yes?” He patted me on the shoulder. “And keep on with the book about the Visconti. They gave our family a bit of trouble back then, they did.” He smiled as if he could remember the thirteenth century himself and headed upstairs for final instructions.

To keep myself from thinking about what had just happened, I considered what he had said about the Visconti. None of my relations had bothered to mention that we had actually run Milan, way back when. They had let me find out for myself. According to the books I was reading, we weren’t dukes, because that came later, but we ruled the city.

I checked the candles and turned on the lamp, wondering whether anyone in Milan outside our family actually remembered.

The bell jingled, and a customer came in. It was Lucifero, he of the dark, windswept hair.
Great
.

He looked around the shop with the same hungry expression he’d had the last time, then his face softened when he saw me. I don’t know what I had expected, but it certainly wasn’t for him to come forward and say gently, “Bad time?”

Did it still show on my face?

“Sort of,” I answered, before I could stop myself.

“I’ll go,” he said softly, and half turned away.

“No,” I found myself saying, “you don’t have to go, it’s not that bad. Please. How can I help you?”

He smiled as if this were a very complicated question. “Well, I really came to talk to Signore Della Torre, but …”

“I’m afraid he’s out—upstairs, I mean. He’ll be back in a while, I think, before he goes shopping.”

I didn’t want to go get Nonno. I looked up into Lucifero’s handsome face, still not quite able to believe the kindness I read there.

“Would it be all right if I waited?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He stood, shifting his weight, uncertain, until at last I worked out what he wasn’t saying and offered him a seat. It was strange, sitting across from him, no longer looking up at his cold face but eye to eye across the table. Suddenly I noticed every detail about him: the pulse in his neck as he pulled his scarf away from his shirt collar, the way his dark hair curled against his cheek, the faint, rough shadow where he had
shaved, the soft light in his eyes, dark blue like Emilio’s.

“Settling in, are you?” he said. “You seemed frightened of me the last time I was here.”

I looked down at my homework.

“You were reading about the Visconti then, too. I remember.”

I looked up at him and, prompted no doubt by the hidden spirit of Gina, I said with a smile, “You said it was the history of a few great men and many fools.”

“You remember!” His eyes flashed.

“Yes, because I didn’t agree,” I said.

“I say foolish things sometimes.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what possessed me. In this country, you may have noticed, men say foolish things around women quite a lot.”

I looked down at my homework again, my face hot. He seemed to think he had gone too far, because, after a pause, he said, “Your—grandfather?—may not be down for some time. Perhaps you would permit me to run up to the café up the street and get us a coffee?”

Permit him? No good-looking guy had ever offered to run up the street for a Kleenex for me before, let alone coffee. Emilio didn’t count.

“They do have good coffee there, don’t they?” he persisted when I said nothing.

“Oh, yes, yes—it’s very good. Yes, please.”

He stood up, winding his scarf around his neck again, and slipped out into the street. I sat there, waiting for him, feeling startled and happy. I hoped Giuliano wouldn’t come back down. For a moment, I thought about his warning. He said
Lucifero wanted to harvest demons. Well. Maybe he did, but wasn’t it worth finding out? And maybe he was not as he had appeared before. Before I decided what he was, he was back, setting a tray laden with coffee, milk, sugar, and pastries on the table and once again unwinding his scarf. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Somehow he had grown handsomer in the moments he had been gone.

I looked at the tray. “I still haven’t gotten over that people will just let you carry dishes out of that café. It’s so funny. I’ve never seen it before.”

He glanced up, stirring his coffee. “Really? They don’t do that in New York?”

He said New York like “Nuyyorke.” I wanted to hear him speak English, just for the accent. I noticed that I was tingling all over and hoped it didn’t show.

“No, they don’t.”

“I’ve never been there. I’ve always wanted to go. No, that’s not true; that’s what people say to be polite, isn’t it?”

He smiled at me. “Actually I’ve always wanted to go to the East, the Orient,” he continued. “The world may be growing small but we are still strangers to one another, and I would like to know more about the yellow people.”

This wasn’t the first time I had encountered the casual racism that would have shocked most Americans, with our own open wounds from history. Even Nonna the all-forgiving had warned me against Albanian pickpockets the first time we had gone out.

Lucifero was still speaking. “…  their ancient traditions, their philosophies, their magic.”

At the word
magic
, he looked at me, his eyes holding mine.

“Does any of that intrigue you?” he asked. “With your family’s work—studying the Eastern traditions might be useful.”

I hesitated. Nobody had specifically said anything, yet I had noticed that we avoided talking about the work outside the family. We might have a low conversation in the street or talk about technique in front of a client, but otherwise, we took great care to hide what we did.

On the other hand, he already seemed to know about my family. And more than anything, I wanted to find out what he was thinking.

“Yes,” I agreed, thinking about it for the first time. “There’s so much missing, it seems. Like we’re just feeling our way forward.” I rolled my eyes. “So much to study.”