Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

His only comfort was that, as explanations went, it wasn't so far removed from some he'd heard from Harry over the years. Harry would probably just shrug and ask him where the nearest bar was.

Maybe he'd go to Venice with Harry. Why not? They'd never been traveling together.

He was still groping for empty consolations when he heard a light knock at the door.

"Yes?"

It was Signora Docci.

She crossed to the armchair near the fireplace and subsided weakly into it.

"Emilio wasn't a mistake," she said. "I knew exactly what I was doing. Even if Crispin didn't." She paused. "We were in love. I can still feel the force of it. It was almost violent. What I did . . . what I allowed to happen . . . it made sense at the time, complete sense, in the way that things do to the young. And I was very young—your age. I don't expect you to understand, but Emilio was a gift to myself because I couldn't be with Crispin."

"Why not?"

"Money of course. He didn't have any, and Benedetto's family did. A lot. The estate was in trouble at the time. My father felt bad, I know—he was very fond of Crispin—but he would not allow us to be together." She lowered her eyes. "Benedetto was a good man. I have not had a bad life."

"Did he know?"

"No one did, not even Crispin. I never told him."

"You never told him?"

She hesitated. "I think it would have destroyed him. I had just got married when . . . well, when it happened. He was very upset. Ashamed. He liked Benedetto a lot. When Emilio was killed, I wrote him a letter. I tore it up. What good would it have done?"

She drew a long breath. "There, now you know, you have your answer."

Adam could think of nothing to say.

"How did you guess?" she asked.

He told her about the family photo in the album and about Gregor Mendel and his gene theory of earlobes.

She nodded, impressed. "I didn't know that," she said, "but I'm surprised Benedetto didn't."

"Maybe he did."

"If he did, he never told me."

But maybe he told someone else, Maurizio for example. Maybe Maurizio knew that Emilio was not his true brother.

Signora Docci held out her hand. Adam walked over and took it.

"Don't go," she said. "I would like you to stay."

He should have been relieved—and he was—but there was also a nagging voice in his head telling him to finish packing the suitcases on the bed, to leave Villa Docci far behind him while he still could.

"Are you punishing me now?" she asked, misinterpreting his silence.

"No."

"I'm sorry; I should not have asked you to go away. I was shocked by your question."

"And I shouldn't have asked it."

She took his words as an apology when really they were a reprimand to himself.

Do you have everything you need, Signora?

Yes, thank you, Maria. You don't have to tuck me in, I'm not a child.

You've been crying.

It's nothing. Memories. Sentimentality. And you know how I hate sentimentality. Is Harry back from Florence yet?

Not yet.

I hope he's all right.

I don't think you have to worry about that.

No. He's very eccentric, isn't he?

He's too familiar.

You mean he's not afraid of you.

If you say so, Signora.

Oh I do, Maria, I do. And I think you quite like that.

I've had an idea.

Don't change the subject just when I'm beginning to enjoy myself.

They will both need evening wear for the party.

Harry's staying for the party?

That's what he told me at breakfast.

Oh, you had breakfast together, did you?

I was thinking that I could unpack Emilio's suits.

If the moths haven't had them.

I've checked. They haven't.

The legs will need to be taken up.

Not for Adam. A few centimeters for Harry. I'll see to it.

Yes, do that. Good night, Maria.

Good night, Signora.

Maria ...

Yes, Signora?

It's a good idea.

ADAM WAS AWOKEN BY THE LIGHT, THE ONE THAT LIVED on his bedside table, the one that was now hovering directly over his head.

He twisted away. "Jesus . . ." he mumbled into the pillow. "Yes, it is I, my son." "Fuck off, Harry."

Harry flopped onto the bed. "I'm in love," he announced. "What's his name?"

"Don't mock. She's Finnish." He lit a cigarette.

"Finnish?"

"Swedish-Finnish."

"Swedish-Finnish?"

"Apparently there are lots of them in Finland: Swedish Finns."

"Oh, for God's sake, Harry."

"What?"

"Was she related to the Swiss girl in Milan by any chance?" "She wasn't after my money."

"My money."

"Although I did buy her dinner."

"Oh, that's what's on my jacket."

"She was very grateful," said Harry, blowing a perfect smoke ring into the air.

Adam checked his watch—almost two in the morning—and resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon.

"And what does she do, this Swedish Finn?"

"Pretty much anything you ask her to."

For much of the following day the back of the villa was crawling with men. Electricians laid a giant spider's web of cables as discreetly as possible; an impressive canopy was erected on the lower terrace near the stand of umbrella pines; smaller tents sprang up elsewhere. Maurizio and his wife, Chiara, had driven up from Florence. They spent much of their time in the company of Signora Docci, deep in discussion with caterers, florists and other official-looking types.

The sound of raised voices would carry into the study from time to time, whenever Signora Docci and Maurizio crossed swords over some detail, which was often, with Chiara doing her best to mediate. At a certain point, Chiara had had enough. Adam knew this because she said as much when she appeared in the study and monopolized an hour of his time. Whatever suspicions he might have harbored about her husband, he liked Chiara. She was warm, frank and irreverent.

"Every year they argue," she said, lighting her first of many cigarettes. "Why, I don't know. Everyone will come, everyone will get drunk, and then everyone will go home. Men will meet the lovers of their wives and not know it; women will meet the lovers of their husbands and know it immediately. And lots of people will find new lovers."

"Sounds like a romantic affair."

"You are young, not a man still."

"Not yet a man," said Adam, correcting her English. "Or not a man yet."

"Exactly. Not a man yet. You believe yet."

"You still believe."

She gave a dismissive sweep of her arm. "Ma, questa lingua di barbari mi fa cagare." Which translated as "This barbarian tongue makes me shit."

"What do I believe?" asked Adam, carrying a smile.

"In life. Love."

"How do you know?"

"I see you," she replied, pointing her cigarette at him.

"What do you see?"

"I see a boy like my son, but more intelligent. I see the way you look at Antonella." Adam rolled his eyes in what he hoped was a convincing display of amused forbearance. "Yes, I do. And I see that you are"—she couldn't find the English word— "un osservatore."

"An observer."

"Yes. You watch. And you think. You are always watching. But you are .. . passivo."