“No one has gotten pregnant in three years?”
“Only those who have been able to conceive away from the town.”
“And you really believe that the disappearance of the statue is responsible?”
“Vittorio and I were educated at the university. Do we believe it rationally? No. But the fact remains… The only way any couples have been able to get pregnant is to do so beyond the borders of Casalleone, and this is not always so easy.”
Finally Isabel understood. “That’s why you’re always traveling to meet Vittorio. You’re trying to have a child.”
Giulia’s hands twisted in her lap. “And why our friends Cristina and Enrico, who want a second child, must leave their daughter with her nonna night after night so they can get away. And why Sauro and Tea Grifasi drive far out into the country to make love in their car, then drive back home afterward. Sauro was fired from his job last month because he kept sleeping through his alarm clock. And this is why Anna is sad all the time. Bernardo and Fabiola can not get pregnant to make her a grandmother.”
“The pharmacist in town is pregnant. I’ve seen her.”
“For six months she lived in Livorno with a sister who always criticizes. Her husband drove back and forth every night. Now they are getting divorced.”
“But what does all this have to do with the farmhouse and old Paolo?”
Giulia rubbed her eyes. “Paolo is the one who stole the statue.”
“Apparently Paolo had a reputation for disliking children,” Isabel told Ren that evening as they stood in the kitchen together, gently wiping the dirt from the porcini with damp cloths. “He didn’t like the noise they made, and he complained that having so many children meant they had to spend too much money on schools.”
“My kind of guy. So he decides to cut the town’s birthrate by stealing the statue. And what part of your mind did you lose when you started to believe this story?”
“Giulia was telling the truth.”
“I don’t doubt that. What I’m having trouble comprehending is the fact that you’re taking the supposed powers of this statue seriously.”
“God works in mysterious ways.” Ren was making a mess of the kitchen as usual, and she began clearing space on the counter.
“Spare me.”
“No one has conceived a child in Casalleone since the statue was stolen,” she said.
“And yet I’m not feeling any compulsion to throw away your condoms. Doesn’t this offend your academic sensibilities just a little?”
“Not at all.” She carried a stack of dirty bowls to the sink. “It supports what I know. The mind is very powerful.”
“You’re saying there’s some kind of mass hysteria going on? That women aren’t conceiving because they believe they can’t conceive?”
“It’s been known to happen.”
“I liked the Mafia story better.”
“Only because it had guns.”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the nose, which led to her mouth, which led to her breast, and several minutes passed before they came back up for air. “Cook,” she said weakly. “I’ve been waiting all day for those mushrooms.”
He groaned and grabbed his knife. “You got a lot more out of Giulia than I got out of Vittorio, I’ll give you that. But the statue disappeared three years ago. Why did everyone have to wait until now to dig up this place?”
“The town’s priests kept the statue in the church office…”
“And isn’t it charming the way paganism and Christianity can still coexist?”
“Everyone knew it was there,” she said, rinsing out a bowl, “but the local officials didn’t want a rebellion on their hands by reporting it, so they looked the other way. Paolo had done odd jobs at the church for years, but no one made the connection between him and the statue’s disappearance until he died a few months later. Then people started remembering that he didn’t like children.”
Ren rolled his eyes. “Definitely suspicious.”
“Marta always defended him. She said he didn’t hate children. That he was just imbronciato because of his arthritis. What does ‘imbronciato’ mean?”
“Grouchy.”
“She pointed out that he’d been a good father to his daughter. He’d even flown to the States years ago to see his granddaughter when she was born. So people backed off, and other rumors started to fly. I guess it got fairly ugly.”
“Any guns?”
“Sorry, no.” She wiped up a small section of the counter. “The day before I arrived, Anna sent Giancarlo down here to clean up a rubbish pile that had gotten out of hand. And guess what he found tucked in a hole in the wall when he accidentally knocked out one of the stones?”
“I’m holding my breath.”
“The marble base the statue had always stood on. The same base that disappeared the day the statue was stolen.”
“Well, that does explain the sudden interest in the wall.”
She dried her hands. “Everyone in town went crazy. They made plans to take the wall apart, only to have the fly in the ointment show up.”
“You.”
“Exactly.”
“Things would have been a lot easier if they’d just told us the truth from the beginning,” he said.
“We’re outsiders, and they had no reason to trust either one of us. Especially you.”
“Thanks.”
“What good would it do for them to find the statue if we spread the word that it was here?” she said. “It’s one thing for local politicians to turn a blind eye to a priceless Etruscan artifact sitting around in a church office, but officials in the rest of the country weren’t going to be quite that cavalier. Everyone was afraid the statue would end up locked away in a glass case in Volterra right next to Ombra della Sera.”
“Which is where it should be.” He whacked a clove of garlic with the flat of his knife.
“I did some snooping while you were working out, and look what I found.” She retrieved the yellowed envelope she’d discovered in the living room bookcase and spread the contents on the kitchen table. There were several dozen photographs of Paolo’s granddaughter, all carefully identified on the back.
Ren wiped his hands and came over to look. She pointed toward a color photograph showing an older man holding a baby on the front porch of a small white house. “This is the oldest photo. That’s Paolo. It must have been taken when he went to Boston not long after his granddaughter was born. Her name is Josie, short for Josephina.”
Some of the photographs showed Josie at camp, others on vacation with her parents at the Grand Canyon. In some she was alone. Isabel picked up the final two. “This is Josie on her wedding day six years ago.” She had curly dark hair and a wide smile. “And this one with her husband was taken not long before Paolo died.” She flipped it over to show him the date on the back.
“It doesn’t seem like the collection of a child hater,” Ren admitted. “So maybe Paolo didn’t take the statue.”
“He was the one who built the wall, and he was also the one responsible for the rubbish pile.”
“Not exactly hard evidence. But if the statue’s not in the wall, I wonder where it is?”
“Not in the house,” she said. “Anna and Marta have searched it from top to bottom. There’s talk of plowing up the garden, but Marta says she’d have noticed if Paolo hid it there, and she won’t allow it. There are lots of places near the wall or the olive grove, maybe even the vineyard, where he could have dug a hole and hidden it. I suggested to Giulia they bring in some metal detectors.”