Power to Burn (7 page)

We soon left the city behind us and headed into the hills of Tuscany. The road became rocky and narrow and we bobbed about on our seats like loose buttons. Nonna let me sit next to the window so that I could take in the view. I pulled up the window every now and then to get a blast of fresh air.

The countryside looked so neat, with its pocket handkerchief fields rolling out over the hills. Pinned at the edges were small mustard cottages, the old terracotta roofs chipped like broken teeth. I saw soft patches of snow and gnarled old olive trees with backs bent against the cold. And lined along the top of the slopes were rows of cypresses, black-green and sombre, like monks guarding the secrets of the hills.

I suddenly realised that I hadn't thought about any of my usual problems for at least half an hour. It was strange how travelling plucks you out of yourself, like a nut popping out of its shell. All the loud thoughts about familiar things fade out of earshot and new things flood their way in. It was good to not have to listen for once to how worried I was about growing up to be as boring as my parents, or why Mum never told me about the power, or if Virginia Westhead, with all her calamitous facts, ever got as depressed as I did. When you only have familiar things to look at, like the same row of houses and old Mr Denton sitting on the porch in the afternoons when you walk home from school, you tend to ignore the view outside and look only at the scenery inside.

Only the cypresses led me back now and then to my old anxieties. There was something menacing and secretive about them, I don't know, they were so dark and closed-looking, almost religious in the way they pointed unswervingly at the sky. Like some sort of dark reminder they appeared regularly along those hills, exclamation points warning you to ‘beware, beware!'.

I don't want to go on about it, but those cypresses really chilled me. They made me think about the dark of the catacombs, the tramp I'd seen, the old woman selling chestnuts. It's as if they held secrets inside them, and like mushrooms they were nourished by mystery, and the dark.

Nonna's house sat in a small valley with a hill rising sharply behind it. Snow covered the fields that Nonna had described and settled like a fat white eiderdown over the peaks of the roof.

Someone had cleared the snow from the crooked path leading up to the house, leaving the wet stones gleaming in the twilight. As I looked at the path and the rough stone walls of the house and the silent white fields all around I felt as if I'd stepped into one of my fairy tales. Hans Andersen's
Snow Queen
, perhaps, when little Gerda travels through snow and witchcraft to find her friend Kay hidden deep in the ice palace of the Snow Queen. Now, more than ever, that tale seemed important to me – maybe it was just because of the snow, and the cold.

I thought of Gerda, and how scared she must have been, alone in the forest, and I wondered if I could ever be that brave, when it counted.

We trundled up the path and plopped all our boxes and bags onto the big wooden table in the centre of the room. Nonna switched on the lights and I saw that the fireplace and the kitchen and the lounge were all in the same huge room, making it cosy and crowded. There was a smell of coffee lingering in the air and I noticed, next to all our food on the table, two small espresso cups with a smear of browned sugar crystals at the bottom.

Nonna saw them too, and she sniffed the air like a hunting dog on a trail. Her eyes widened, as if in alarm, and then she looked at me and forced her mouth into a tight polite smile. I hadn't seen that smile on her since Rome, when she'd dismissed my story about Pig and the fire as ‘one of my fairy tales'. I suddenly realised that Mum often looked like that, too, in fact it was a habitual expression of hers. A faintly disbelieving look, it was, but courteous, as if she had to put on a mask. I felt suddenly uneasy and looked about for something to do.

‘I'll just pack these things away, and then I'll show you the rest of the house. Why don't you light the fire,
va bene
, Roberto?'

Nonna bustled about, putting jars in cupboards. We didn't take our coats off, it was freezing inside. A pile of wood sat next to the fireplace but when I went over I saw two black logs in the grate reluctantly smouldering. Old Maria hadn't done a very good job this morning. I kicked the logs hopefully but they gave off a damp, acrid smell and very little heat.

The stone walls seemed to soak up the small domestic sounds we made and there was a sense of waiting, as if something was going to happen. It didn't feel as if we were alone in this big room.

Just then, over my shoulder, I heard a footstep. I swung round and peered up into the darkness of a stone stairway. Someone was coming down, slowly.

Out of the gloom a man appeared. He had thick white hair and a silver moustache, perfectly combed. His face was smooth and olive, like the sepia of an old photograph. Nonno Natino.

‘Natino, what are you doing here?' Nonna said sharply. ‘I thought you were in Padua! Are you alone?'

Who else would there be? I had a sudden picture of Lucrezia, with her long black hair and white lashes at the corner of her eye. But her hair would be grey now, like Mum's, and anyway, I guess long-lost relatives with dark pasts only reappear in plays, or fairy tales.

‘Roberto, well, well, at last!' Nonno Natino strode across the room and gripped my shoulders. ‘Let me look at you!'

He stood back and gazed at me, as if I were the view at Portofino. So I stared, too. I noticed his big shoulders, still broad for a man of his age, but his pants hung loosely. I sighed. He had the family's skinny legs.

Nonna stopped fiddling with her jars and said to Nonno, ‘What happened with your business in Padua? When did you arrive?' Her voice was cold and tense.

‘I finished early,
cara
. And I couldn't wait to see my
nipote
here.' He put an arm around my shoulder, and tweaked my ponytail. ‘You're a fine-looking
ragazzo
, but I'm not sure about the hairstyle, eh?' And he gave a hearty laugh. ‘Come on, let's build up this fire or we'll freeze to death before we've even been introduced!'

We scrunched up newspapers and added some kindling. Nonno lit a match and we sat back to watch the flames leap up, dazzling the room.

In the crackling silence I watched Nonno and Nonna. There was a tension between them, like dogs circling each other, and Nonna's open smiling face was pinched, and wary.

‘Roberto,' Nonno said my name like an announcement, ‘there's someone I'd like you to meet.'

I heard Nonna's sharp intake of breath. ‘Now? What are you doing?' she hissed. Nonno just raised his hand, like God in one of Michelangelo's paintings. I was beginning to think he must be hard to live with.

Nonno got up and disappeared into the stairway. In a minute he came back, followed by a tall, slim girl.

As she walked into the circle of firelight I felt all the breath rush out of my body. My mouth fell open and for a moment I felt dizzy, as if I might faint. I was looking into a mirror. There, on this girl, was
my
long nose and pointy chin, with a dimple in the middle, just like mine. Her chest was narrow, too, but softened by two small breasts that rose like tiny hills under her blue jumper. Her legs were what you'd call slim (skinny, I realised, was okay on this girl) and her ankles were as fine as a race-horse's. It was like looking at a female version of myself. And this version, I thought, looked better than the original.

‘Roberto,' Nonno said now, looking from me to the girl, ‘I hope this will be a pleasant surprise for you. We have been waiting for this moment for many years. I would like to introduce you to Angelica – your twin sister.'

‘What?'

The girl's face was quite calm. Her mouth smiled.

‘What are you talking about? How could I have a sister?' I felt cold and in shock, as if I'd been in some kind of accident.

Suddenly the room grew boiling and hectic, and everything pressed in on me till I couldn't breathe.

I rushed outside and took a lungful of icy air. It cut across my chest like a knife and I looked up to see the sky measled with stars. There were too many, and the sky looked too huge, as if it would come tumbling down hard as concrete any minute, and smash everyone below.

‘Roberto, come back inside, you'll catch your death out there.' Nonna pulled at my jumper and I stumbled back into the house. She stroked my cheek, and she looked so sad, that even with all this confusion I wanted to comfort her, without knowing why.

‘We're going to have dinner now,' Nonno said briskly. ‘And over our meal I will tell you how it was.'

Angelica sat next to Nonno at the table, and I sat facing her. I couldn't stop looking at her, it was such a weird sensation. She still hadn't said anything, and that small smile was still on her mouth as if she'd tacked it up there for politeness' sake, like a ribbon to go with her dress. Her eyes were lowered demurely onto the table, as she passed the bread and the napkins.

No one spoke until Nonno had finished his pasta. A drop of sauce clung to the end of his moustache, and when he'd neatly wiped his mouth, he began.

‘You and Angelica were born, Roberto, on a cold and wintry day in the apartment you've just left at Firenze. Your mother, Cornelia, had been living across town with your father, but she came back to us to have her babies, to be with her mother at this important time. We all rejoiced when she produced two black-haired healthy babies. Your father smoked his first cigar, and he coughed like a coal miner, poor man! Then we toasted your health with an excellent '49 port. Ah yes, you babies were as alike as two peas in a pod.'

‘But Roberto's hair was a little lighter,' Nonna interrupted.

Nonno glared at her, and she was silent. He was beginning to get on my nerves.

‘To continue the story,' he said loudly, looking around the table. ‘Life went smoothly for your mother and father, Roberto, in those first years. You twins seemed connected in an extraordinary way. When one of you awoke, so did the other. If one of you stirred in a dream, the other moaned in his sleep. You began to speak at the same time and when you could walk your mother would find one of you in the morning, curled up in the other's bed. And then, when you were both three, something terrible happened. Something we were all dreading, and hoping would never come true.' Nonno paused and a log exploded in the fireplace, making me jump.

‘What? What happened?' He was like the ancient mariner, making sure his audience were all suitably attentive. ‘Look,' I said, ‘just tell me, will you, and leave the drama. This is my life you're talking about.
Our
lives!' I looked across at Angelica, silently pleading with her to agree or make some sign. But she just stared back at me, that half-secret smile on her lips. She was beginning to annoy me as much as Nonno. She might
look
like a sister but she sure didn't act like one.

Nonno and Nonna exchanged a glance. ‘When you were three, Roberto,' Nonno went on, ‘Angelica did something that showed us she was different. She was contaminated.'

‘Oh, Natino, do you have to tell it like that?' Nonna cried.

Nonno ignored her. ‘Contaminated,' he repeated. ‘Angelica was born with the power, as her aunt and her grandmother were before her.'

‘You too!' I burst out. I stared at Angelica, and then at Nonna. They both lowered their eyes, as if something shameful had been said.

‘You, Roberto, had shown no signs of being in any way unusual, and the power is uncommon in male children. So it was decided that the two of you must be separated. Before the power could infect you, too.'

‘It was decided,' I said slowly. ‘
Who
decided? You, I suppose. And did Mum and Dad just follow meekly, give up their only daughter just because you
decided
?'

‘No, it wasn't like that, Roberto,' Nonna cut in softly.

‘Don't,
cara
, I'm telling the story,' Nonno was sharp.

‘But you're telling it
wrongly
.' Nonna's face was twisted with anger, but somehow she looked more like herself now, the way I'd known her before we came here, before I met Nonno.

I wonder now how she would have told the story, and I think how strange it is that history, just because it's written down in textbooks, is believed to be fact. Maybe it just depends who's telling the story, what flavour it turns out to be.

Nonna gripped Nonno's hand, ‘You must tell it the way it was. Tell Roberto about the pain and the grief, how his mother fought you and cried every day for a year. How Cornelia and Giorgio stopped speaking, how the light went out of their eyes.'

‘Well, of course,' Nonno cleared his throat, and disentangled his hand, ‘your parents were very upset. They loved each of you equally, and intensely, and it was an extremely hard decision. But we had to avoid another tragedy. The evil can spread, Roberto, like ripples in a lake, until each person in the family is touched, and changed. The power had to be contained, and we had to protect you.'

‘Why did you say
another
tragedy? What tragedy? Why do you all think the power is so terrible?' Questions were bursting to the surface inside me, fighting for air, and I couldn't sort out which to ask first.

There was silence for a moment and again my grandparents exchanged a glance.

‘Your mother's sister, Lucrezia, suffered from the power. She ruined her life, and very nearly destroyed ours.'

‘How? Where is she now?'

Nonno poured another glass of wine and he stared into it for a minute as if it were a crystal ball, and floating within it was the future, and the past.

‘You don't need to know that now, Roberto. Just trust me. You've reached a stage where you need to be guided, by someone older, and wiser.'

Holy Moly, did he get these cliches out of a book? He was like my father, talking, talking, but not wanting to listen.