The Light in the Ruins (31 page)

Cristina threw herself at Bayer and was pounding feverishly at his chest, the smell of the gunshots a fog around both of them, when there was a colossal explosion and the ground around them began shaking. Everyone turned toward the village of Monte Volta, the direction of the blast, just in time to see one of the two medieval granary towers pancaking into the earth.

1955

SERAFINA STOOD BESIDE a fountain outside the museum in Arezzo, smoking and daydreaming and watching her shadow on the light stone of the piazza. Silhouetted, her arms looked like matchsticks. Her skirt was shaped like moth wings. She inhaled the aroma of the water from the fountain, its scent at once musky and cool. Finally she snuffed out her cigarette with the sharp toe of her shoe, a little bored with waiting. She reached into her purse for her matches and lit one, bringing the flame as close to her eyes as she could. She stared at it until the fire burned down to her fingers, held it for a full second longer, and then finally dropped it onto the stone. She looked at the two black marks on her fingertips. Neither would blister, but the one on her thumb would grow a little red and it would smart.

Once, over dinner perhaps a year and a half ago, Milton had asked her if she ever had flashbacks.
No
, she had answered,
I wish that I did
. She wondered now if that was going to change. Paolo and Milton had been correct: returning to Monte Volta was triggering something, beginning with those mushrooms and then continuing with the ceiling inside the Villa Chimera tombs. Perhaps viewing the artifacts the Rosatis had donated to the museum would amplify her memories further. She tended to doubt it, because the vases and the pottery and the sarcophagi had been removed by the time her brutalized body was laid inside the burial chamber. But then, this wasn’t precisely why she had come to Arezzo today.

At the café at the edge of the piazza, she watched a young
man in a blazer with a crest on the breast pocket dip a biscotto the length of a quill into his coffee and then feed it to a blond woman across the small table. Serafina guessed they were Brits or Americans, and she envied how much they were in love. She saw them adjourning into a small hotel during siesta, louvering shut the blinds, and then …

But maybe they were Germans. The war had ended a decade ago now, and even some Germans these days were finding the money to travel. The pair was roughly her age. She speculated what they might have been doing eleven or twelve years ago if indeed they were German, and she didn’t like the images that passed through her mind. She told herself once and for all that they were from the United States.

A thought came to her: Had Enrico and Teresa seen the irony that they were sheltering her from the Nazis in a tomb? They must have hoped she would live but believed she would die. Had the British arrived even a day later—perhaps hours, according to that British doctor—they most certainly would have found but a corpse.

She looked at her watch. It was finally time to go in. She started across the piazza toward the museum.

Giulia Rosati looked at the calendar, the telephone pressed against her ear, and found herself wrapping the cord anxiously around her fingers. “So,” she said to her husband, “the funerals will be in two days.”

“Yes. But I’ll be home tomorrow,” Vittore said. “Cristina and I are both hoping to leave for Rome in the morning. Our mother’s body—and Francesca’s—will be sent straight to Monte Volta.”

“What do you think we should do about the children?” Tatiana was two and had only a toddler’s connection with her grandmother. But Elisabetta was four and adored Beatrice. Neither child had even the vaguest notion that a woman named Francesca Rosati had ever existed and had been, technically, their aunt. Still, Giulia would soon have to tell Elisabetta about her grandmother, and she
dreaded that. Beatrice had always been far more of a warm and enveloping
nonna
than a dignified marchesa around her granddaughter. Giulia resolved that when the children awoke from their naps, she would try to explain to her daughter that Nonna was in heaven with Mary and Jesus and the angels.

“I’m not sure. Obviously they understand nothing of death,” Vittore answered. Then he added, “Who would have thought I would ever have said something like that about a Rosati? For a while there, from Marco’s death to my father’s, it seemed we had more than our share.”

In the hallway she heard the officer flipping through the newspaper. Matteo was one of three police officers who were rotating in and out of her and Vittore’s apartment.

“I want to bring them,” she said after a moment. “Even if they don’t understand the significance of what’s occurring, I don’t want them out of my sight.”

“That’s fine,” he agreed.

“And it will be interesting for Elisabetta to see the crowd at the church in Monte Volta and the number of people who come to the Villa Chimera for your mother.”

“It will be a lot smaller than you expect.”

She recalled her father-in-law’s funeral. He had died blocks from where she was standing right now, while strolling one Sunday afternoon through the Villa Borghese. The war was still fresh in everyone’s memory and so the family had decided to have a graveside service only. The priest from the village had come to the estate, but otherwise no one but the family had been in attendance. Afterward, Beatrice had felt that they had made an egregious mistake and shamed her husband’s memory: he had done nothing, in her opinion, to be buried in a manner more befitting a criminal than a marchese. Vittore and Cristina never forgot their mother’s despair and vowed that her funeral would begin at the church in Monte Volta. At the time, however, they hadn’t imagined that the funeral would occur when their mother was a mere sixty-four. They had supposed it was still years and years in the distance.

“Don’t you think people have forgiven your parents by now?” Giulia asked. “The war was over and done ten years ago. And remember, until the middle of 1943, we were all on the same side as the Germans. Besides, your mother was a marchesa.”

“A silly title.”

“Maybe. But think of how many people once depended on your parents.”

“Or, arguably, how many people they exploited.”

“And don’t forget what a magical place the Villa Chimera once was. Really, Vittore—people forgive.”

He sighed. “Apparently, my love, not everyone does. Not everyone …”

Roberto Piredda, the director of the museum in Arezzo and for years the curator in charge of the collection’s Etruscan artifacts, was a giant of a man. Serafina wouldn’t have been surprised if he measured six and a half feet tall and tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His shoulders looked as if they wanted to split his sand-colored suit at the seams. She guessed he was in his late sixties now, his hair completely white, but he was still vibrant and vital and he struck her as a rather energetic patrician. His size made him seem a little intimidating, but she hoped he might in reality be a rather gentle giant.

“I was devastated when I read about the marchesa’s death,” he said to her as together they lumbered down the long corridor to his office. “I must have missed the detail in the first stories that Francesca was Antonio and Beatrice’s daughter-in-law.”

“It’s tragic. The whole family is tragic,” she said. Her heels echoed along the tile. She recalled what he had said to her when she had called him to set up this interview: he would never forget the sound of the jackboots in the hallways whenever the Germans from the Uffizi would come calling.

“I know just what you mean,” he agreed, nodding. “How is Vittore? Of all the Rosatis, of course I knew him best. After the
war, my wife and I were both saddened when he chose the Vatican Museum over us. But we understood his decision. Still, my wife thought the world of him. We both did.”

“I think Vittore is fine,” she answered. “But honestly? I think he’s angry. He’s always going to be disappointed in his family. He’s always going to be a little ashamed of the … the concessions they made in the war. Himself, too. The way they allowed the Nazis into their lives. He hasn’t forgiven them and he hasn’t forgiven himself. As a result, he’s a pretty hard-edged customer.”

“Well, he wasn’t always angry. And I’m sure he’s not precisely himself these days.”

“No.”

Piredda’s office had three large windows, but they were shuttered against either the heat or the sunlight or both. His desk was drowning in papers, and a large worktable was awash in pottery chips, many black and red, on a white cloth. There were shallow metal tubs on each side, as well as a variety of tweezers and small brushes. On the shelves along one inside wall were four rows of broken vases and cracked pots—she recognized amphoras and alabastrons and kraters—each with a handwritten label with the name of the site where it had been unearthed taped beside it. And on the lowest shelf, beside a knapsack, were the tools she supposed he took with him on digs: Trowels and root cutters. A sieve. A utility saw. A dustpan just starting to rust.

Piredda lifted one of the two wooden chairs beside the worktable and spun it around so it faced the desk. Then he sat in his own leather chair, turned on the fan behind him, and aimed the air at her.

“I’m fine,” she said, carefully settling herself in the seat so the ladderback didn’t press against her scars.

“So how can I help you?” he said. “What do you need to know about the tombs that were found at the Villa Chimera?”

She was actually interested in the Germans and Italians who had been a part of Vittore’s world during the war, but she had told Piredda on the phone that the Rosati dig was her reason for
coming. And so now she asked a cursory question about Etruscan burial practices and listened patiently as he discussed cremation versus inhumation, urns versus sarcophagi. He told her that he found the tombs at the Villa Chimera intriguing, even though it was a small site.

“We thought at first it was going to be a necropolis,” he told her, steepling his fingers together. “When the Rosatis showed us what they had discovered, I assumed this was but the tip of an iceberg. I expected another Cerveteri. The next Tarquinia.”

“But it’s not.”

“Far from it. Still, for its size it’s noteworthy. The artwork inside the chambers is brilliant. The artifacts we found there are extraordinary. And it has evidence of both cremation and inhumation—and at roughly the same time.”

She nodded and thought of the images she had studied by matchlight on the ceiling and along the walls of the tombs. As if he were reading her mind, he asked, “Have you been there? To the Villa Chimera?”

“I have, yes.”

He smiled. “This is a very thorough investigation.”

“I was actually there during the war, too.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“What a small world! Did you know the Rosatis then?”

She thought about how she should answer, because this really wasn’t about her. She glanced around the room once more, and her eyes rested on the utility saw. On the serrated edge and the beveled point. The blade was about eight inches long. “I met the marchesa briefly,” she said, turning back to him. Then: “You were exclusively in Arezzo during the war, correct?”