The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (24 page)

“The bath is this way, signorina.” Beppe moved about with the brisk formality of a hotel porter demonstrating the principal features of a guest room.

She followed him into an adjoining bathroom. It contained a shower with toilet and bidet, then a tub of marble and gilt, more along the lines of a small piscine than a bath.

Outside again in the bedroom, he opened windows to air out the place. She followed him there, then looked down. They were in a corner room on the uppermost floor of the building. Her eyes sought out balconies, ledges, any route of possible escape. There was nothing between the window and the cobblestoned courtyard below but a sheer drop of twenty-odd meters.

The boy, watching her with an odd, secretive smile, seemed to read her mind and sense her dismay. “I’ll bring towels, signorina,” he said with almost spiteful glee.

When he left, she could hear him on the other side of the door, clanking keys until at last she heard the rusty old lock gears engage and the bolt slide home. She found it unsettling that the boy had the keys. Hearing his footsteps recede down the hallway, finally fading into silence, heightened her sense of desolation. The quiet that followed was so pervasive and heavy, she could almost touch it. The terrifying stillness of the house was relieved only by the sharp squeal of hawks wheeling endlessly in great wide circles overhead.

At last, she allowed herself to look a bit more closely at her surroundings. The bedroom she was to occupy was larger than the entire first floor of the Villa Tranquillo in Fiesole. An enormous four-poster bed with a silk embroidered tester mounted above dominated the center of the room. Off in one corner was a small salon comprised of an old chestnut armoire, a glass-topped coffee table, and an antique settee covered in needlepoint primroses. Nearby was a small end table. Just beneath that, she found a telephone jack on the floor. The phone itself had been removed.

In the corner directly opposite stood a harp with a music stand before it. A small velvet-covered chair stood behind that. The harp gave the impression of having recently been played, as though its owner had left the room on some errand and was due back any moment. There was still sheet music on the stand. Stooping slightly above it, she saw that it was a little sonatine of Dutilleux.

Off in yet another corner of the room, in a shaft of mote-filled sunlight, were several easels, each with a painting; adjacent to that, a long marble refectory table stood littered with boxes of charcoals and pastels, tubes of paint, jars of brushes, and a heavily spattered palette, on which blobs of multicolored paints had, over time, turned rock-hard. In addition were cans of turpentine that had dried up, spatulas for applying paint, and X-Acto knives for removing it.

Whoever had worked there had done so daily and diligently. A painting still propped on the easel—a half-finished portrait of a Florentine lady of the fifteenth century—looked to Isobel like something that had been copied—something Italian. It had that light and textured opulence, richly colored in Florentine roses and siennas. But the area where the face itself should have been had been painted out and gone over several times, leaving in its place an empty, smudge-streaked oval. The paintings were decent journeyman work, but they were the work of a copyist, and not a particularly talented copyist at that.

Farther along the far wall of the room was a large ceiling-to-floor wardrobe. Comprised of eight or nine separate panels attached by hinges, it was designed to open in an accordion arrangement, sliding back on a track.

It took her some time before she mustered the courage to open it. When at last she did, a low rattle sounded and the breath of faded flowers exhaled outward from the shadowy interior. Fine, expensively tailored clothing hung there, in dazzling profusion. Couture dresses, gowns, skirts. Rows of lined, built-in drawers spilled over with blouses and sweaters. Bandboxes of hats had been stacked high on an upper shelf, along with trays of handkerchiefs, gloves, and silk scarves. The styles bespoke a fashion current nearly a half century before.

Rooted to the spot for some time, she peered into the musty shadows. A gradual but depressing awareness came over her that the room in which Borghini had chosen to imprison her was none other than his own mother’s, the Contessa Borghini. There was nothing especially remarkable in that. But why, then, she asked herself, did the mere thought of it so sicken her?

Two, three hours passed. She had no way of knowing. She wore no watch, and there was no clock in the room. The silence was so total and prolonged that after a while she started to make her own noises—shifting chairs, rattling perfume bottles on a vanity top, clashing steel hangers together in the wardrobe—just for the sheer relief of sound. At one point she plucked a string on the harp, nearly jumping back at the loud plangent note that came vibrating out at her in waves from the instrument.

After a while, she became convinced there was no one in the house. But then the boy came back. She heard the soft clump of his boots moving down the corridor towards her, then the clank of keys outside the door. Once more, there was that same fumbling until he’d found the right key and the door swung open.

“The maestro would like to see you downstairs.”

“Now?”

“At once.”

He was seated at a long, narrow table in the kitchen pantry when the boy brought her in. He still wore the freshly starched army fatigues. Red shoulder epaulettes and collars studded with gold eagles proclaimed his rank.

He sat before a tall bottle of grappa, a snifter of the icy liquid at his right hand. At his left lay the folder containing the Chigi sketches. From the red flare streaking his cheeks, she could tell he’d been at the grappa for some time.

“Sit,” he said, his voice a muffled growl.

She slipped at once into the chair opposite him. The boy instantly took up his place behind her. Eyes bleared and grieving, Borghini began to take up his rant where he’d left off earlier.

“You say you want to go home?” He snatched up the folder and wagged it in her face. “Now that you’ve seen these, you can never go home.”

She stared at him, unblinking, her hands and feet gone sickly cold.

Lifting his snifter, he flicked his wrist, tossing off the last of the smoking liquid that remained in his glass. “Take the signorina back to her room,” he thundered at the boy, and waved them both out of his sight.

A short time later, Beppe brought a tray of supper up to her. He set it out on the small end table with fastidious care, then went into the bathroom to put out fresh towels, soap, and other toiletries. All the while he went about his work, she watched transfixed, like a doomed bird watching its ferret executioner. He never spoke. By the time he left, treading noiselessly from the room, bolting the door behind him with an emphatic click, she was shaking.

Darkness had begun to descend over the palazzo. She’d not eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. Despite her appalling situation, it occurred to her that she was famished. She walked over to the table to look at the tray Beppe had left behind there. It was one of those military things—metal and compartmentalized, with utensils that had the look of something from a camper’s mess kit.

On the tray lay a slice of meat of indeterminate origin. A few limp sprigs of greens passed for a salad. Another compartment contained a tepid mound of overboiled vegetables. For dessert, there was a square of spongy cake with a dollop of something red and syrupy. She poked unenthusiastically at the food, choosing finally to have none of it but a few mouthfuls of the cake and a glass of water. She was too sick with fear to eat much more. Borghini’s shrill shouts still rang in her ears—“you can never go home.”

With nothing else to do, she paced the room, trying to puzzle out how and why she’d gotten there, and how best and soon she could leave. That threat Borghini had let slip about the possibility she might never leave the palazzo, she knew was no jest. He was perfectly capable of that sort of thing. Also, she knew him to be the sort that reveled in intimidation, scaring the life out of someone until he or she was putty in his hands, held for him some sick appeal. She also knew him well enough to know that if he went so far as to make threats, they were seldom idle. He’d always had wildly romantic notions of his role in the world. No matter how grandiose or impractical they might be, it was a point of honor with him that he could never go back on his word.

Even as late as that evening, she was still conscious of the smells of the floor of the van she had lain on the night before. She could also smell the moldy carpet she’d been wrapped in—smell it in her hair and clothing. So she decided to bathe.

She went into the bathroom and spun both spigots full force. The tub, more like a small pool with a steeping section at one end, would take time to fill. The spigots coughed and spat a rusty brown fluid. She let them run a while, until shortly two thick columns of clear hot water came pulsing downward into the tub.

While disrobing, she heard a low, furtive
ping.
It occurred to her she’d heard that same sound before but had paid no attention to it. She glanced up in the direction of the sound just in time to see the louvers of an air duct just below the ceiling on the opposite wall slide open.

Something in her throat caught and stuck there like a fishbone. Her mind whirled with a multitude of possibilities of what lurked behind those cold metal blades.

Still, she continued to disrobe. If someone was watching her, the last thing she intended to do was to let on that she knew. That in itself could be dangerous. But by then, there was little doubt in her mind that a pair of eyes were spying on her from behind the vent of that air duct.

Slipping off the last of her garments, she approached the bath as if nothing had happened. Then, stepping over the marble rim of the tub, she let herself slip beneath the oily surface of the water. All the while she lay there steeping, she was keenly aware of hidden eyes watching her. She had no idea whose. Earlier, Borghini had said he planned to be gone for several hours; if so, it had to be the boy. The sheer horror of that realization now came down hard upon her.

Later, stepping from the tub, she sneaked a quick glance upward, this time discovering that the louvers had again returned to their original closed position.

She was determined not to sleep. Instead, she sat up in a small rocking chair, rocking slowly, struggling to remain calm and plan what she must do. Who would know she was gone? She had virtually no contact with her neighbors in Fiesole. Erminia, vacationing at her grandparents’ farm in Arezzo, would not be back for several days. There was no one else. Tino was gone. She didn’t regret that. Her job for the Lumenetti ad had ended the day before. No one would be looking for her.

Sitting there in the rocker, weighing her prospects, her head began to throb. She was exhausted, and despite all efforts, she at last yielded to the temptation of closing her eyes. But before she did, she went back to the place where the easel stood. She recalled seeing on the long marble table littered with paint tubes and brushes and other artist’s supplies, a jar containing X-Acto knives—those long, razor-mounted holders artists use for scraping paints off of surfaces. If worse came to worse during the night, she would at least have those to protect herself. But no. Everything she saw then on that marble tabletop was precisely where it had been that afternoon except for the jar of X-Acto knives. Those had been removed.

“I
HEARD NOTHING. PAPA.
”

The high, frightened voice of a child murmured through the chill darkness.

“I heard nothing, Papa.”

Borghini sat bolt upright in bed, his dazed eyes chasing after the fleeting image.

“I heard nothing, Papa.”

“Forget this happened, Ludo. You saw nothing. When the police ask you, tell them you saw robbers …”

“Robbers?”

“The ones who came tonight. The ones who broke into the house …”

“I heard nothing, Papa. I heard nothing, Papa. I heard noth—”

“If you say anything, I’ll cut your head off.”

Late the next day when the colonel returned to the palazzo, he was tired but unusually happy. His eyes fairly glowed as Beppe drew his bath and helped him to disrobe. The night before, he had addressed the Milan chapter of the
Pugno.

“Several hundred came, Beppe. You should have seen. The place was packed. They cheered me at the end. They got up on their feet. They adopted all of my proposals. Almirante was there. The old man himself. He came up to shake my hand.”

Borghini lifted his foot and lay back on the bed as Beppe knelt to pull off his boot. “How is the signorina?”

“I brought her a tray in the morning. Then another a few hours ago. She eats nothing.”

“Scared.” The colonel hoisted each foot to permit the boy to haul his trousers down. “You don’t understand that, do you, Beppe? You’re never scared, are you?”

Smiling, he slapped the boy affectionately on the back. “Is the water hot? It must be scalding. I ache all over.”

“Boiling, maestro. Just as you like it.”

Slipping his aching bones beneath the steamy water, the colonel groaned softly. Gradually, his head drooped and he appeared to nod off to sleep. Then, as though by some act of will, he forced his eyes back open and fixed the boy with a woozy gaze. “I’ve seen the way you look at the signorina, Beppe. That’s not for you, my lad. Don’t touch. This is not some
puta
off the streets. Hands off. I have other plans for her.”

The boy shrugged pleasantly. That was his way. He was always pleasant, deeply respectful to the colonel, but with him, Borghini could never be quite sure.

Shortly past dusk, someone knocked at the door of her room.

“Yes.” She half-rose.

“Signorina,” the boy called back from the other side of the door. “The colonel asks if you might not join him for dinner.”

“Downstairs?”

“Yes, signorina.”

She took a quick glance at herself in the wardrobe mirror. “Just one moment.”

She went into the bathroom and, standing before the mirror, ran a comb several times through her hair, then went back out.