Tourmaline (15 page)

But it was jealousy, plain and simple jealousy, that turned Francis’s worry into deep resentment. Murray had come to steal Elba’s most precious treasure — the treasure named Adriana Nardi. By then it was too late to help her. She liked the American, she told Francis. She liked best of all his airy hopes. Coming to an island to buy land that no one else wanted and hoping against hope to make money. She, too, would have liked to hope for something impossible, or at least to know that she had the luxury to be foolish. In a middle-aged American investor, Adriana had found a model fool.

Francis told Adriana that Murray had been seen digging in the yard behind his house with a teaspoon. He told her that the American was convinced he’d find gold. Gold! He told her that people with nothing better to do like to dig holes and then fill them up. But Adriana didn’t have much to say in reply. She’d laugh and shrug and toss her hair back away from her eyes. And once she reminded Francis that chunks of Elban rubellite as big as melons were said to have been found by the Etruscans.

The secret treasure of love. A girl as lustrous as tourmaline. A man who wants the treasure for himself. The story made such sense that Francis came to believe he couldn’t alter the plot. He thought of himself as no better than a spectator — or no worse.

On the occasions over the years when Francis had spoken at any length with Adriana’s mother, they’d moved back and forth between English and Italian, with some French thrown in whenever the subject turned to island history. At first Francis had found the conversations awkward and could only follow the Signora’s lead. But once he realized that he could be the one to choose the language, he grew to enjoy the shifts.

So he was discomforted by the Signora’s decision to speak only in English with him. English had been the language Adriana had preferred to use with him once she’d become fluent. But with the Signora, the exclusive use of English made him feel more awkward than ever in her presence.

He tried to offer consolation. No, the Signora didn’t want consolation. Her daughter would be found, she said. You don’t console the mother of a daughter who will be found.

“Forgive me, Signora. I only want to help.”

“Everyone wants to help and no one is helping.”

It was a clear day in late March after weeks of rain, the air over the island was spiced with the smell of bonfires in the fields, the sea was glittering, the vault of sky a magnetic blue. But in the dining room of the Nardi villa the only light was the sunlight shining through the slats of the shutters, turning the darkness a pale gray and the walls the greenish color of a gecko.

Francis had taken to visiting Signora Nardi regularly in the months since Adriana had been gone. He was served English tea at the dining-room table, with powdery scones baked by Luisa, the Nardis’ cook. Francis would talk with the Signora about her daughter, praising the girl for her facility with English, her quick mind, her perfect pronunciation. The woman would listen with an expression that suggested boredom, but she wouldn’t tell Francis to stop.

It was Francis who had persuaded the Signora to seek help from the local police. And it was from the police rather than Signora Nardi that Francis learned about the possible involvement of a foreigner. An American man who went by the name of Murray Murdoch? It was such an obvious identification that Francis didn’t bother to point it out. Everyone on the island knew or knew about the investor from New York and his interest in Adriana Nardi. So why wasn’t Murray asked some probing questions?

Apparently, Adriana had been seen by a taxi driver talking with an older man somewhere on the road — the driver couldn’t say exactly where — between San Giovanni and Lacona. Is that so? Francis Cape was startled, but only for a moment. He wanted to point out that Le Foci was between San Giovanni and Lacona. But the Signora was explaining that the man had been old. A rich old white-haired straniero, most likely one of the millionaire yachters who docked in Porto Azzurro — this was the type of man Signora Nardi wanted to find.

Why didn’t she allow herself to harbor suspicions about Murray Murdoch? Francis wanted to ask Signora Nardi this but couldn’t. It was impossible to ask Signora Nardi anything. He couldn’t ask her about the search for her daughter; he couldn’t even ask her if she was well. Tutt’OK? This was one of his favorite greetings, and he called it out to his Elban friends when he passed them on the street. Tutt’OK? Everything was not OK with Signora Nardi, he already knew this, and anyway, he was expected to speak only in English.

He wanted to help. You can’t help, Mr. Cape. He wanted to — “To what?”

“To…”

“To what, Mr. Cape?”

He heard the chatter of sparrows out in the terrace garden, a garden as harsh as the Signora, with bramble roses and juniper thistles and gravel paths winding between meager olive trees. But on the Nardi property was also the beautiful garden in the ravine that Adriana had tended when she was home. Francis had been there many times since Adriana’s disappearance. Already the lilies were blooming, and the ground was carpeted with purslane and chickweed. He didn’t bother to pull the weeds; he wanted to see them grow, spread, choke the garden, destroy it. He hoped that Signora Nardi wouldn’t send someone to weed the rock garden. He wanted to suggest this. He wanted to suggest —

“To what, Mr. Cape?”

“To suggest…”

“Yes?”

“The American investor. Shouldn’t you find out more about him?”

“I know what I need to know.”

“He is American.” He’d been wanting to say this to her — Murray Murdoch is American! He wanted to startle her with his insinuation. But she just smiled coldly and danced her fingernails with a clatter across the table’s mosaic tiles.

“He came here many times. Excuse me for reminding you of this. But I don’t understand why you —”

“He is not an old man. Now do you understand, Mr. Cape?” What could she possibly have said that would extend the meaning she conveyed with her eyes? Eyes with mud-colored irises, eyes telling him that there was nothing he could do or say in his own defense.

How slowly she moved when she reached for her tea. As though she were underwater, swimming away from Francis, out of his reach.

She was an agile woman — he hadn’t realized how agile until that moment. Nor had he realized that her hostility was isolated, directed at him alone. He’d mistaken her dislike of him for natural reserve. But she wasn’t a reserved woman, she wasn’t even unfriendly. She simply despised Francis Cape. She’d despised him from the day they first met, and now she despised him for having something to do with the disappearance of her daughter.

Francis was an old man. A very old man. Yet he wasn’t an American. Signora Nardi was looking for a wealthy American man, not an elderly librarian from London. He was confused. Francis Cape was an Englishman. So why should Signora Nardi despise him? He only wanted to help.

Not knowing what else to do, Francis added another lump of sugar to his tea. He stirred and stirred, but the sugar wouldn’t dissolve. Looking into his cup, he thought he might have dropped in a pebble by mistake. Then he discovered he could dig the edge of his spoon into the lump and crumble it.

Francis said he hoped the bad weather was over for the season. Signora Nardi hoped so too.

Soon it was time for Francis to leave. He stood. She offered to show him to the door. He declined.

“Arrivederla, Signora,” he said, knowing full well that she’d hear this as an insult. “Buona giornata.”

His knees were stiff, his jaw ached, and he needed to fart. How had he gotten so old? How old was he really? he asked himself as he stood outside the Nardi villa. He was surprised to realize that with his thoughts in such a swirl he could remember the year of his birth but not the day.

How old am I, Adriana? Tell me.

You are very very very very old, Mr. Francis Cape.

It would be easy to cast Signora Nardi as a type of woman familiar to readers of Victorian novels. She was stern, dusty, stuck in the past, repelled by the present, indifferent to the future. I find myself picturing her in a decrepit wedding dress with an ancient, cobwebbed feast laid out on the table. But my mother insists that Signora Nardi was a woman you would think you could know at a glance, and then you’d realize you didn’t know at all.

Signora Nardi was not what she seemed. Not dusty. Not stern. And not loveless. She was no worse than solitary. She chose to stay alone in the villa day after day in order to be available. It was good for a daughter to know that her mother would always be at home. Signora Nardi wanted her daughter to be free to fill her life with experience, to find out what she could about the world, to travel and make friends, meet men, find love, and all the while to enjoy the certainty that she had a home and her mother was there. She could leave home. She could come back. Her mother was waiting.

Our mother often thought of Adriana’s mother waiting in her lonely villa for her daughter to return. She imagined the Signora sitting inside her dark house, flinching at every unexpected sound. She imagined the Signora as a child, a little dark-haired beauty romping through the vineyards and olive groves, light-footed, light-hearted. Claire imagined being that child.

She’d only met Signora Nardi once, had thought afterward of Miss Havisham, and yet was surprised to feel at the same time the discomfort of recognition, the sense that in this strange, lonely Elban woman she was seeing a version of herself. The Signora had come to our home seeking help instead of revenge. She was prepared to trust Murray. The fact of this sank in slowly. Signora Nardi was not the kind of woman who would have been flagrant with trust. She was cautious. She had every right to be suspicious of Murray and instead believed he was innocent. Such confidence of judgment. Claire wanted the Signora to persuade her of her husband’s innocence. As the days passed she kept thinking about her, kept returning to the memory of their brief conversation, kept trying to imagine the thoughts of the Signora, kept trying and failing to understand why she felt such a profound connection to this woman after her single visit, and eventually decided that the only way she could understand the Signora was to see her again.

Delayed by the rain and her own reluctance, Claire didn’t visit the Nardi villa until the end of March. Coincidentally, she went the morning of the same day when Francis would pay his last visit.

Signora Nardi didn’t have a phone, and since Claire didn’t have the courage to write to her she arrived unannounced. The cook let her in and showed her to the library — a room lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, with shuttered French doors, closed and bolted, that would have opened to the garden. A grand piano filled one corner. The room was lit by a crystal chandelier that seemed to Claire too ornate for the setting. Arranged without any apparent order on some of the shelves at eye level were stone carvings, masks, iron arrowheads, and spear tips. Other objects in the collection, including the porcelain cup from which Murray had drunk his peppermint tea, were kept locked in a cabinet at the back of the room. On the walls were portraits, one of a man in a tasseled uniform, another of a woman in Victorian dress holding a lapdog, another of a gray-bearded man holding a pen.

Claire browsed through books while she waited. She pulled down a dusty copy of Marco Polo’s
Travels,
but the pages were fragile so she carefully returned the book to the shelf. She was trying to make sense of the Italian in the prologue of Boccaccio’s
Decameron
— “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti” — when she heard a door shut down the hall.

“Buongiorno, Signora.”

“Signora Nardi, buongiorno. Sono, sono, mi dispiace…” “Speak in English.”

“I apologize. For arriving here without warning. I’ve been wanting to come see you again. You’ve heard nothing from Adriana?”

“Nothing. Come sit with me.” Signora Nardi led her to the chairs on the far side of the glass cabinet. The cook appeared and transferred from her tray a little pewter coffeepot, hot milk and sugar, and a plate piled with meringues and chocolate biscuits.

What did they talk about? Even as soon as the afternoon of the same day, Claire wouldn’t clearly remember the content of their conversation. They talked of Adriana — her education, her talents, her fellowship at Oxford. Signora Nardi had said something about Adriana’s sullenness — what, exactly? Talk had turned to the island economy. The struggling iron mines on Elba. Local quarries. The inlaid serpentine on the library floor. What predictions had the Signora made about the island’s future? Claire couldn’t remember. What had she said about her own health? Claire couldn’t remember.

Strange for Claire to remember their first encounter so vividly, the second with such difficulty. If she’d gone to the Nardi villa in search of understanding, she came away with no better sense of the Signora than before. But if, in fact, she’d gone for reassurance, somehow she’d received a fair dose. She’d left feeling comforted, though why or how she couldn’t say. She felt certain that the Signora was more than just a good woman. She was a deserving woman. And she was powerful. And, as Claire had already sensed, she was potentially impetuous. Despite what others said about her, Signora Nardi hadn’t finished with the world.

Spring on Elba that year was variable, with the sun rising behind storm clouds, burning through noon mist, and sinking from clear skies. It was hard to believe during a crystalline afternoon that we’d woken that morning to the sound of rain spilling from the roof. Single days were broken into pieces by the weather. My brothers never went back to school. Everything seemed mysterious to us. If a week might last a month, how could we make plans? We could only make up ways to occupy ourselves from hour to hour.

Only Murray made plans. He planned to buy more land in Cavoli, Chiessi, Pomonte. He’d heard about a grotto filled with tourmaline outside of San Piero. He roamed the area for days looking for the cave but never found it.

He considered purchasing an old farmhouse and the surrounding land in the plain between Marina di Campo and Porto-ferraio. He wired his mother for money, but she refused and again advised him to come home. He wrote to his uncles. They didn’t bother to write back.