He was safe now—he knew he already had enough to shape a convincing paper—and he should have been celebrating. He couldn't, though, not with so many questions tugging at his thoughts. They had proliferated ever since his tour of the garden with Antonella, when for a brief moment it had all seemed so clear, so straightforward.
The steep rise housing the amphitheater was evidently an artificial construct, but why had Federico Docci gone to the effort and expense of shifting so many tons of earth for the sake of one feature? Such a vast undertaking was hardly in keeping with the discretion he'd shown elsewhere in the garden. And as for the amphitheater itself, why nine levels instead of the seven on display in the amphitheater at Bomarzo?
Like false notes in an otherwise flawless piece of music, these questions jarred; they refused to be ignored. He had tried to dismiss them, but each time he breached the yew hedge at the entrance to the garden, he knew they'd still be there. Even now, while engaged in the purely practical exercise of photographing the garden, two more had just presented themselves to him in the form of the Apollo and Hyacinth statues.
He fired off one last shot of Hyacinth, then made his way back through the woods toward the grotto. It occurred to him that he was developing an unhealthy fixation on the garden. This was hardly surprising. Since his arrival he had barely thought about anything else. When he wasn't walking around it, he was invariably reading about it, shipping books and papers back to the pen- sione every evening in the bike basket so that he could continue studying through dinner and on into the early hours.
There had been no one in the trattoria to chide him for reading and eating at the same time. Disappointingly, Fausto hadn't shown his face since that first evening, and was unlikely to do so anytime soon according to Signora Fanelli. Apparently it was the first time in a long while that he'd stopped by her place. Adam might have been imagining it, but he'd detected a whiff of disappointment on her part too.
No Fausto. And no Antonella, not for three days.
"She is working very hard," Signora Docci had revealed to him during one of his regular audiences in her bedroom. "Apparently, there are important clients in town, buyers from big American department stores."
She had made little effort to conceal the note of mild mockery in her voice.
"You don't approve of what she does?"
"It's the job of old people to disapprove of everything young people do."
"Oh, is that right?"
"If we don't disapprove, then the young have nothing to fight against and the world will never change. It cannot move on."
"I'd never thought of it that way."
"I should hope not; you have better things to think about."
"Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know"—she waved her hand vaguely about in the air—"Elvis Presley."
"I'm impressed."
"Antonella keeps me informed of these things."
"And you dutifully disapprove."
"Elvis Presley is clearly a young man of questionable morals."
"Based on your knowledge of his music."
"And his films."
"Which you've seen?"
"Of course not. You don't understand. The old people are allowed to argue their case from a position of complete ignorance. In fact, it's essential."
Adam laughed, as he often found himself doing when in her company. "Maybe she likes what she does," he said. "Maybe she's good at it."
"My friends who know about such things tell me she has a great talent. But I always saw her as more than just a seamstress." "I'm sure there's a lot more to it than just sewing."
Signora Docci gave a low sigh. "You're right, of course. Ignore me. I think I am still a little angry."
"Angry?"
"You should have seen her before, before this." Her fingertips moved to her forehead. "She was so beautiful. Now she hides herself away in a back room and works with her hands. La poverina."
Her words riled him, especially the last two, replete with pity: the poor thing.
"I disagree," said Adam. "I can't see her hiding herself."
"No?" Her tone was flat, skeptical.
"I know I've only met her once, but it's what struck me most— that she's not ashamed, not embarrassed. The way she wears her hair, the way she carries herself. She's not hiding."
"You think she doesn't look in the mirror every morning and wish it was different?"
"Maybe. I don't know. But she's more beautiful because of it, because of the way she is with it."
"You really believe that?"
"I do. Yes."
At first he took her look for one of weary sufferance, and he suddenly felt very young, he suddenly felt like a person in the presence of someone who has spent considerably more time on the planet. But there was something else in her eyes, something he couldn't quite place. He only realized what it was when a slow and slightly wicked smile spread across her face.
"You're playing with me."
"It's nice to see you defending her. And you're right—she is more beautiful because of it."
"How did it happen?"
"It was near Portofino, at night. Her mother was driving. She was also lucky. She only broke two ribs."
Signora Docci had not elaborated. In fact, she had terminated the conversation then and there on some doubtful pretext, banishing him back downstairs to his books.
Maybe that's what the problem was, mused Adam, strolling back past the grotto: the routine, the rigmarole, long periods of study broken by conversations with a bed-bound septuagenarian. Toss the pitiless heat into the pot, and it was little wonder he was losing his grip.
He climbed the steps sunk into the slope behind the grotto, resolving as he did so to break the pattern, to introduce some variety into his life, maybe eat out one night, cycle off somewhere for half a day, or even hitch a lift into Florence—anything to add some variety, jolt him out of his folly.
He stopped at the base of the amphitheater and stared up at Flora on her pedestal near the top. He would never be able to see her as he had that first time. Antonella's words had irrevocably colored his judgment. When he looked on the goddess twisting one way, then the other, he no longer saw the classic pose borrowed from Giambologna, he saw a woman contorted with some other emotion, he saw the provocative thrust of her right hip.
Why put her there, near the top but not at the top? In fact, why put her there at all, in a nine-tiered amphitheater? And why nine instead of seven tiers? Or five for that matter? What was so special about nine? The nine lives of a cat? A stitch in time . . . ? The nine planets of the solar system? No, they hadn't known about Pluto back then. Shakespeare, maybe—Macbeth—the witches repeating their spells nine times. Not possible. Shakespeare couldn't have been more than a boy when the garden was laid out. Close, though.
And the occult connection was interesting. How had the witches put it?
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
The trinity to the power of three—a powerful number—thrice sacred, like the Holiest of Holies, composed of the three trinities. And something else, some other dark association with the number nine. But what?
He pulled himself up short, the resolution fresh in his mind yet already ignored. He lit a cigarette, dropped the match in the trough at the foot of the amphitheater and made off up the pathway.
He was a few yards shy of the yew hedge barring his exit from the garden when the answer came to him.
The nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno.
It was several moments before he turned and hurried back down the path to the amphitheater.