“Bambino …ah, Dio … bambino mia … ma che fai? What are you doing here?”
“How did she die?” It was all Serena could think of as she clung to the old woman.
“In her sleep.” Marcella sniffed deeply and stood back to get a good look at Serena. “She was getting so old.” She gazed into Serena's eyes and shook her head. It was remarkable how much the girl looked like her mother. For a moment, as she had stood there in the street, watching her, Marcella had thought she was seeing a ghost.
“Why didn't anyone tell me?”
Marcella shrugged in embarrassment and then looked away. “I thought he … that your uncle … but he didn't have time before …” She realized something then. Serena knew nothing at all of what had happened since her grandmother's death. “No one wrote to you, cara?”
“Nessuno.” No one. And then, gently, “Why didn't you?”
This time the old woman looked at her squarely. The girl had a right to know why she hadn't written to her. “I couldn't.”
“Why?” Serena looked puzzled as they stood there in the lamplight.
Marcella smiled shyly. “I can't write, Serena … your grandmother always told me that I should learn, ma …” She shrugged in a helpless gesture as Serena smiled in answer.
“Va bene.” It's all right. But how easily said after two terror-filled years. How much anxiety she would have been spared if the old woman had at least been able to write and tell her of her grandmother's death. “And …” She hated to say his name, even now. “Sergio?”
There was a moment's pause and Marcella took a careful breath. “He's gone, Serena.”
“Where?” Her eyes searched the old woman's. She had come four thousand miles and two and a half years for this news. “Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“Sergio?” This time Serena looked, shocked. “Why?” For an instant there was a flash of satisfaction. Perhaps in the end they had killed him too.
“I don't know all of it. He made terrible debts. He had to sell the house in Venice.” And then, almost apologetically, she waved at the white marble palazzo behind them. “He sold this … only two months after your grandmother died and he brought me back to Rome.” Her eyes sought Serena's then, looking for condemnation. She had come with Sergio, he who had betrayed her parents, whom even the principessa had come to hate. But she had come home to Rome with him. She had had nowhere else to go, Serena understood. Except for the elderly principessa, Marcella had been alone in the world. “I don't understand what happened. But they got angry with him. He drank. He was drunk all the time.” She looked knowingly at Serena. He had had good reason to be drunk all the time. He had had a lot to live with, the murder of his own brother, his brother's wife.… “He borrowed money from bad people, I think. They came here, to the palazzo, late at night. They shouted at him. He shouted back. And then … II Duce's men came here too. They were angry at him too … perhaps because of the other men. I don't know. One night I heard them threatening to kill him.…”
“And they did?” Serena's eyes lit up with an ugly fire. Perhaps he had come by his just deserts after all.
“No.” Marcella shook her head. Her voice was without pity in the summer night. “He killed himself, Serena. He shot himself in the garden, two months after the principessa died. He had no money left, he had nothing. Only debts. The lawyers told me that it took everything, the money from both houses and everything else, to pay his debts.” Then there was nothing left. It didn't matter. She hadn't come home for that.
“And the house?” Serena looked at her strangely. “Who does it belong to now?”
“I don't know. People I have never seen. They rent it to the Americans now since the end of the war. Before that, it was empty. I was here by myself. Every month the lawyer brings me my money. They wanted me to stay, to see that everything is all right. Once, the Germans almost took it over, but they never did.” She shrugged, looking embarrassed again. Serena had lost everything, and yet Marcella was still living here. How odd life was.
“And the Americans live here now?”
“Not yet. Until now they only worked here. Now … next week … they will move in. Before, they only used it for offices, but they came yesterday to tell me they will move in on Tuesday.” She shrugged, looking like the Marcella that Serena had known as a child. “For me, it makes no difference, they have all of their own people. And they told me yesterday that they will hire two girls to help me. So for me it changes nothing. Serena?” The old woman watched her closely. “E tu? Vai bene? What happened in all those years? You stayed with the nuns?”
“I did.” She nodded slowly. “And I waited to come back.”
“And now? Where are you staying?” Her eyes glanced down at the suitcase Serena had dropped at her feet. But Serena shrugged.
“It doesn't matter.” She suddenly felt oddly, strangely, free, fettered to no place, no person, and no time. In the last twelve hours every tie that she had ever clung to had been severed. She was on her own now, and she knew that she would survive. “I was going to find a hotel, but I wanted to come here first. Just to see it.”
Marcella searched her face, and then hung her head as tears filled her eyes again. “Principessa …” It was a word spoken so softly that Serena barely heard it, and when she did, it sent a gentle tremor up her spine. The very word conjured up the lost image of her grandmother … Principessa.… She felt a wave of loneliness wash over her again, as Marcella lifted her face and dried her eyes on the apron that she eternally wore, even now. She clung to Serena's hand then, and Serena gently touched it with her own. “All these years I am here … with your grandmother, and then here, in this house.” She waved vaguely toward the imposing building behind Serena. “I am here. In the palazzo. And you” —she waved disparagingly at the dismal little suitcase—”like a beggar child, in rags, looking for a hotel. No!” She said it emphatically, almost with anger as the corpulent body shook. “No! You do not go to a hotel!”
“What do you suggest, Marcella?” Serena smiled gently. It was a voice and an expression on the old woman that she recognized from a dozen years before. “Are you suggesting that I move in with the Americans?”
“Pazza, va!” She grinned. Crazy! “Not with the Americans. With me. Ècco.” As she spoke the last word she snatched the suitcase from the ground, took Serena's hand more firmly in her own, and began to walk toward the palazzo, but Serena stood where she was and shook her head.
“I can't.” They stood there for a moment, neither moving, and Marcella searched the young girl's eyes. She knew all that she was thinking. She had had her own nightmares to overcome when she had first returned to Rome after the old lady's death. At first all she could remember here were the others … Umberto and Graziella … Serena as she had been, as a child … the other servants she had worked with, the butler she had once so desperately loved … Sergio when he had been younger and not yet rotten from within … the principessa in her prime.…
“You can stay with me, Serena. You must. You cannot be alone in Rome.” And then, more gently, “You belong here. In your father's house.”