He’d complied with her instructions without a word, but stopped when he came to her buttocks, but she’d asked him to keep going, yes, and her thighs as well please, all the way up to the costume, because the skin was so sensitive there and even a minor burn could be agonizingly painful. He knelt close above her to do this work, straddling one of her legs with his, and from time to time their bodies had touched.
Once it was over, he lay down beside her again. They didn’t speak — the heat permitted that — but she knew that he was looking at her and lifted herself up on her elbows to reach for her cigarettes, her breasts just clearing the reclining bikini top so that her nipples showed a few centimetres from his fingers. But still he made no move.
When he finally announced, in his oh-so-well-brought-up voice, that he really should be getting back, thank you so much for inviting me, it’s been a great pleasure, she thought that she’d lost. And if she lost that day, she would have lost everything. Her pride would not have permitted her to make a similar demonstration again without an appropriate response from him.
Then she’d had her great insight, her stroke of genius.
‘Very well,’ she’d said, getting to her feet, ‘but before you go you must come and look at the little house down at the bottom of the garden. My parents had it built for me when I turned seven and I’ve kept everything just the way it was. It’s a quite extraordinary place, like something in a fairy tale. In fact I think it must be unique. You feel as though you’ve left the real world behind from the moment you cross the threshold.’
He had of course agreed, like the polite young man he was, and pronounced himself duly impressed with the exterior, which she told him had been faced by real craftsmen, the kind you couldn’t find any longer, using the best stone from the quarries at San Giorgio di Valpolicella. They went inside, giggling and joking about the diminutive size of the entrance, and Claudia closed the door.
Straightening up instinctively, Leonardo had knocked his head on the ceiling, sprinkling her with plaster which he apologetically brushed off. But the movements of his fingers continued long after the last traces of white dust had vanished, becoming slower and slower even as his breathing became ever more rapid. Their eyes met, exactly as they had that first time. Only now they could do something about it. Claudia placed one hand on his back, just where it had been during the waltz, and pulled him urgently towards her, her other hand at the nape of his neck, dragging his open mouth down on hers. And then…
That was how she remembered it, most of the time at least. But she also knew that memories change a little each time you revisit them, and she had revisited these memories just about every day and night of her life since Leonardo died. By now she had no clear idea how much was original and how much a replica, more strongly engineered in order to support the weight of the significance the whole event now had for her. Perhaps the literal truth had been erased by the version that had now supplanted it. Perhaps it had been too humdrum and confused, a documentary patched together from faded photographs and old newsreels where everyone walks too fast, rather than a Hollywood movie with glamorous stars, perfectly realized production values and a sense of knowing exactly where it is going.
She rose from the bed, brushing off her clothes. The playhouse was filthy, but she couldn’t bring herself to clean anything here. The only real evidence was the fading prints they had taken later with the new instant camera that Polaroid had brought out at about that time. She eyed the drawer in the chest beside the bed where she kept The Book, but left it closed. The last time she had looked at the photographs she had been sickened. She looked puffy and unhappy, Leonardo gawky and awkward, and everything was so matter of fact. No, there was nothing to be gained from that. The material had to be lovingly preserved but it didn’t need to be viewed, any more than one would wish to view the remains of some dear departed beneath his immaculately tended grave.
This was the house of memory, the house of remembrance, sealed off from the ravages of time. Gaetano had set foot in it just once, immediately after Claudia had inherited the villa on her mother’s death, only to declare that it should be demolished and replaced by a vegetable garden. But Claudia, as custodian, had prevailed, pointing out that the expense of demolishing such a substantial structure would be far more than the resulting plot was worth, and also discreetly suggesting that their children could play there just as she once had. She had wanted that, she had wanted them. She had not known that there would be no children with Gaetano, that his sperm was no good.
Gaetano had never raised the matter again, and Claudia had curated the little house with loving care for over a quarter of a century, even renouncing a sizeable sum of money to retain it when she had sold the rest of the property to the development company that had demolished the villa to build that block of condominiums. It had often occurred to her that she must have been mad so to do, so pointless could it seem on her bad days, but now she was vindicated. It all made sense!
She had of course never thought that Leonardo would ever die, let alone before her. And even if he had, his parents would have been given the body, had there been one. But according to Danilo that beloved body had miraculously resurfaced somewhere, somehow, in conditions of the greatest secrecy. Perhaps Leonardo’s parents did not know. As far as they were concerned, their son had died in that plane crash. For that matter, they might well be dead themselves by now. The outcome was clear: the body must be brought back here. This was where it belonged, not in some alien cemetery.
She poured herself one more glass of Cinzano Rosso before replacing the bottle. But what about the Ferrero family? The parents might be dead, but hadn’t he had siblings? Two sisters, she seemed to recall. And even if they made no legal claim to the remains, how could she possibly do so? It would mean disclosing everything, and that might well prove fatal. The law didn’t care about love, but it cared very much about murder. It would be sheer insanity for her to take any kind of initiative in the matter.
She finished her drink and went back outside, locking the door of the miniature house behind her. What a beautiful dream, though, to be able to scatter Leonardo’s ashes amongst these trees! That would close the circle, and ease the pain that had gnawed at her ever since his death. It would be a very private ceremony, just her and her lover, on a day like this at the end of summer, with all nature stooping for renewal beneath the burden of its own weariness.
And Naldino, of course. She’d have to invite him, although with any luck he wouldn’t bother coming all the way up from his foodie cooperative just to show some respect to a father he had never met. Even his mother got little enough these days. Still, if he refused, that was his business. At least she would have given him the opportunity.
It was only once she reached the garden door, having duly followed the long winding circular path through the grounds, that the solution to all her problems struck her. The insight was so overwhelmingly powerful that she gasped very much as she must have done that day thirty years ago when the man in Leonardo finally overcame the boy, and he took her.
Naldino! The authorities might refuse to let her have the body, but they couldn’t refuse him.
X
Zen walked slowly back along the street to the house, a satisfied smile on his lips. The day was cool and grey, with a scent of rain in the offing, but his spirits were not overcast. Among the various things that had become clear since he had moved in with Gemma, on a temporary basis which seemed to have become de facto permanent, was that he was the earlier riser of the two, and she had a sweet tooth and — without being in the least boring or demanding about it — quite liked to be pampered. The result was this expedition, which had become a tradition whenever he was at home.