Adam lingered a moment when they left the chapel, casting a last look around the interior. Unless the information in the file was incorrect, then somewhere beneath the stone floor also lay the bones of Flora Bonfadio, dead some four hundred years.
They found Maria spreading the table on the terrace with a coarse white linen cloth. When Antonella stooped to kiss her on both cheeks, there was no mistaking the unguarded look of warmth in the older woman's eyes. It dimmed visibly when she took in Adam hovering at a distance.
"You must stay and meet my uncle and aunt. They'll be here soon. Also my cousins."
"I should be going."
Maria's expression suggested that this wasn't such a bad idea. It also suggested that her grasp of the English language was far better than she liked to let on.
"I insist," said Antonella.
He stayed for only half an hour, but it was time enough to be won over by Maurizio's easygoing charm and his wife's mischievous wit. They made an attractive couple. He was dark and trim and distinguished-looking, with a dusting of gray at the temples; Chiara Docci was a blond and sharp-featured beauty whose husky laugh betrayed her passion for cigarettes, which she smoked relentlessly, to the evident disapproval of her two children, Rodolfo and Laura.
"Mama, please," said Laura at one point.
"I'm nervous, cara. How often does one meet a handsome young man who also has a brain?"
Adam fielded her look and felt his cheeks flush.
"Is it true?" Maurizio asked. "Does he also have a brain?"
"I've only just met him," Antonella replied, playfully noncommittal.
Chiara blew a plume of smoke into the air. "That's all it takes, my dear. The moment I met your uncle, I knew I would have to search for mental stimulation elsewhere."
It was an odd sight for Adam, watching children openly laughing at a parent's joke. And so wholeheartedly that he wondered for a moment if there wasn't just a small grain of truth in Chiara's quip. Somehow he doubted it, though. Maurizio was laughing along like a man who knows quite the reverse is true. His teeth were improbably white, Adam noted.
"Your brain, my looks, wasn't that the deal?" retorted Maurizio, well aware that his wife left him standing in the looks department.
"So what went wrong?" said Antonella, nodding at her cousins, the offspring.
More laughter. And more wine. Then a discussion about a forthcoming party at the villa, which Adam would be a fool to miss. Adam, though, wasn't really listening. He was observing them, with their lively banter and their air of easy affluence, their coal-black hair and their honeyed complexions. A breed apart.
He felt a sudden urge to be gone. Maria spared him having to make an excuse, materializing from the villa with the news that Signora Docci was ready to receive her family.
Antonella accompanied Adam to the courtyard, where the bicycle stood propped against the wellhead.
"My grandfather's," she said, her long fingers sliding over the leather saddle. "He used to put us in the basket when we were young and make us shout 'Ay caramba!'"
She kissed him on both cheeks, her hand lightly touching his arm as she did so.
Negotiating the turn at the bottom of the driveway, he could still feel the delicate pressure of her fingers at his elbow.
Have they gone yet?
Didn't you hear the car leave? Are you angry, Maria?
Angry?
You always answer a question with a question when you're angry.
Do I, Signora?
Or sad.
They were talking about the party like it is theirs already... all the friends they're inviting.
We need their friends. So many of mine are gone.
But it's your party, Signora, it always has been.
I thought you hated the party.
I do. But that's not the point.
And what about Antonella? How did she seem to you? Antonella?
Do you think she likes him? Who?
Who do you think? Adam, of course.
I've hardly seen them together. How can I say?
Because you know her better than any of us does.
Yes, I think she likes him.
A lot?
Maybe.
Oh dear.
Signora?
Sit down, Maria. The chair there. Pull it up to the bed. Closer. Good, now give me your hand. That's right.
Signora ...?
There's something I need to talk to you about, Maria, something we should have talked about long ago.
ADAM LOWERED THE CAMERA. "DAMN," HE MUTTERED, not for the first time.
The light was perfect, clear and limpid after three days of flat summer haze, but now he found he was unable to photograph the glade in its entirety. The three statues distributed around the clearing resolutely refused to fall within the frame at the same time.
Waist-deep in the laurel at the southern edge, he was able to capture both Zephyrus—the west wind, his cheeks puffed out, blowing with all his might—and Hyacinth, supine on his pedestal, dead, the discus lying beside him. But Apollo was out of shot.
In fact, wherever Adam placed himself, the 50mm lens on his father's old Leica ("Don't bother coming home if you lose it") was unable to accommodate more than two of the three figures at any one time.
The story they enacted was simple enough, which only increased his frustration at not being able to trap it in a single shot: Zephyrus, jealous of Apollo's love for Hyacinth, a beautiful Spartan prince, decided to take action. While Apollo was teaching the youth to throw a discus, Zephyrus whipped up a wind that sent the discus crashing into Hyacinth's skull, killing him instantly. The hyacinth flower then sprouted from the ground where his blood fell.
At the northern fringe of the grove stood Apollo, with his grief- stricken face and his arms outstretched toward the fallen boy. He was perched on a conical, rough-carved mountain peak. Maybe it was intended to signify Mount Parnassus, the home he shared with the Muses, but its inclusion seemed gratuitous. Mount Parnassus didn't figure in the story as handed down by Ovid and, besides, Apollo was already identifiable from his bow and his lyre.
The statue of Hyacinth only raised further questions. Why place him facedown in the dirt, his long hair sprawled across his features so that only a small section of his delicate mouth was showing? And why clad a young man renowned for his athletic prowess in a loose, long-sleeved robe, rather than baring his physique?
The file offered no insights. Nor, for that matter, did the copious notes amassed by Signora Docci's father while preparing the document, although these had yielded some lines from Keats' Endymion about Zephyr's role in the death of Hyacinth. It was a nice fat chunk of poetry that would help flesh out his thesis, but like the other little discoveries he'd accumulated over the past few days, it left him feeling strangely indifferent.