Tourmaline (7 page)

She wasn’t beautiful. Her hair was black, with short curls so fine and feathery that he could see the white of her scalp. Murray noticed the line of muscle in her thin arm as she tossed a handful of clover into a basket. She was unnaturally pale, and her cheeks had an oily glow, like marble lit by backwashed sunlight. She wore a simple white blouse and brown skirt, garb that didn’t distinguish her from any of the other peasant girls on Elba. Yet there was something different about her, Murray thought, a refinement in her movements, perhaps, or a subtle haughtiness expressed by the tightness of her features. The girl wasn’t just too pale, too fragile. Her condition seemed oddly revealing, as if she were sickly because she was selfish or devious or cursed by bad luck. And though she ignored him, she demanded his attention. Murray was certain that she wanted him to keep watching her. She was lonely, and yet— how did he know this? — she was responsible for her loneliness. She fit the role perfectly. Eve in the garden, leaves floating, falling around her when a gust shook the trees. Just the fact of her presence was a temptation, and yet everything about her warned Murray away.

He stared at her, attempting to settle his impressions into un-ambivalent judgment, telling himself that she was in every aspect a plain peasant girl. He had nearly convinced himself when she stopped humming and spoke.

“You must be Signor Americano.” Her voice threw him back into inarticulate confusion. Her English, though clearly a second language, was precise and had a British ring to it. He couldn’t bring himself to ask how she knew about him. You don’t ask witches and goddesses how they know what they know.

“Yes?” she prompted. Her grin was sly — a response to his confusion. He wanted to remind her that she should be careful with strangers. He wanted to pin her to a name but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

She brushed her hands against her skirt. He thought she was preparing to extend a hand in greeting. Instead, she dipped her hands into the water bubbling out of the rocks, and he watched as she drank from the bowl of her palms, his discomfort growing as it slowly occurred to him that her action should have been private.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing himself up. “I must be going.” He was amused to hear in his own voice a false accent, an involuntary echo of her refined diction. At the same time he realized he wanted to copy her and cup fresh spring water in his hands. He wanted to linger. He wanted to talk to her.

“Good-bye, Signor Americano.”

He hesitated. He didn’t want to leave. He must leave. “Arrive-derci.” He considered asking her for directions, but on second thought decided this would be silly since there was only one path leading out of the garden, and from the top of the ravine Lorenzo’s villa would be in view. He went to tip his hat and then realized that he wasn’t wearing a hat. “Piacere di conoscerti.”

He left her laughing at him, with him, in sympathy, in ridicule, in spite, in imitation while he walked up the path. He laughed at himself for making this simple encounter into something more meaningful than it should have been. He laughed between puffs of breath as he climbed the steep, slippery slope. He laughed at her laughter. He laughed at his own voice that was returned to him by the rock chamber of the ravine. Echoes of echoes, shadows of shadows. Down in the garden, a girl was laughing. He laughed at himself laughing at her as she laughed at him.

We were in Florence for six days. Murray telephoned every day. He told us that the sea was as warm as a bath, and when he swam out fifty yards from Le Ghiaie he could see through the clear water to the sponges and shells scattered on the sand. He told us about the magnificent gardens and vineyards, the orchards full of sweet yellow peaches, the wild goats grazing on hillsides. He said he’d climbed into the mountains and found quartz, pyrite, and a black glassy crystal that a man at a bar identified as tourmaline. Tour-maline! Tourmaline didn’t just come in the blue that he remembered. It came in black, in green and pink and red. The mountains were full of tourmaline. The whole island was a treasure chest for those who knew how to open it!

Murray called to say he’d rented a villa surrounded by vineyards in the hamlet of Le Foci, not far from Portoferraio. The padrone would deliver more beds to accommodate the six of us.

Murray called the next day to say that the beds were in place, and upon the landlord’s recommendation he’d hired a cook, an Elban woman from Portoferraio, along with a young woman from the village of Capoliveri to be our nanny. Since when could we afford servants? Claire demanded. Since the padrone had explained to Murray that the fastest way to gain respect on the island was to become an employer. Wages were shockingly low, Murray said, so he’d offered to double them. He hoped Claire didn’t mind. The expense was negligible, the advantages immense.

He called to tell us about Francis Cape, the Englishman who was writing a book about Napoleon on Elba. Francis Cape had been helpful in every possible way. He’d even driven Murray to Porto Azzurro, where Murray bought a little motorcyle.

Murray described how the mountains in the early morning mist looked like shadows behind shadows. He said he’d met a Swedish geologist who had done some temporary surveying work for one of the iron mines outside of Rio nell’Elba. The Swede explained to Murray that of all the precious gems to be found on the island, blue tourmaline was the most valuable of all. To find more he should look in the granite outcrops in the mountains. Murray said he was going to buy a rock hammer and chisel and get to work.

Come on, Murray urged. The island was ready for us. Hurry up and come on. Our father would meet us in Portoferraio. He’d take us to play football on the beach.

None of us remembers the uneventful trip from Florence to the port town of Piombino or the ferry ride to Elba. Among my brothers, the first memory of the island belongs to Patrick: he says he remembers waiting while Claire and Murray greeted each other, kissing and embracing as though they’d been apart for months. He remembers staring at the water sloshing against the edge of the quay. He remembers dropping a coin into the water just to hear the sound of the splash and then looking up to face an ancient, gray-bearded man, who scowled and shook a finger at Patrick for wasting good money.

I Fantasmi

A
CCORDING TO HIS REPUTATION — SOMEWHAT EMBELLISHED
by himself, I came to realize later — our father was a genius at persuasion. He could persuade men to hire him against their better judgment. He could persuade his mother and uncles to lend him money for a vacation they didn’t think he deserved. He could persuade his wife to forget the family’s debts for a while and enjoy life. And he could persuade his children to spend their time searching an island for treasures left behind by pirates and emperors when we already knew that such treasures didn’t exist.

Our father’s art of persuasion played upon the contrary temptations of risk and safety. Even as he’d emphasize the thrilling possibilities of an idea, he’d offer assurances and somehow make the paradox seem natural.
Trust me,
his smile would imply. Go ahead, give it a try, and trust Murray Murdoch to manage the dangers.

While my brothers and I only pretended to believe our father when he told us that the island’s treasure would be found by those who knew how to look, we sensed that the proposition would make a diverting game. During our first days on Elba, we each searched in different ways, following our different inclinations, escaping from the watch of our new cook and nanny whenever possible.

Patrick looked for treasure by drawing detailed maps of the land around our villa. From an early age he’d understood that learning came more easily to him than to others — an ability that was as much a handicap as an advantage, since it threatened to set him apart from the rest of us. But he couldn’t help it — he was our expert. He almost always knew more than we did, and when he didn’t, he’d know how to find out.

Harry looked for treasure as if he were hunting for small animals. He’d move stealthily through the vineyards, sift through broken pottery, pick quartz from the gravel drive. He knew how to find whatever had been lost. He was our detective.

Nat, the bravest among us, looked for treasure by roaming. Treasure can’t be easy to find, he’d insist. It wasn’t enough to draw maps or collect broken rocks. We’d have to go far from home, up into the island’s highest mountains. Every day Nat convinced us to go a little farther. Sometimes we went so far — across roads and meadows, through vines and abandoned olive groves — and became so engrossed in the search that we’d lose our direction. But then Patrick would climb up into a tree or to the top of a boulder and orient himself with landmarks — there was the port in one direction, the peak of Volterraio to the west, and there below him, right down there, the villa we already called home.

And since I was the most helpless and least visionary, I looked for treasure by doing whatever my brothers told me to do. Ollie, get me a shovel! Ollie, go find Harry and bring him here! Ollie, hold this, watch that, do it for me now!

We were eager, inexaustible, confident that even if we didn’t find treasure we’d manage to prove the worthiness of our efforts. We were sure that there was no place more promising than the island of Elba, no time more appealing than the moment at hand, no adventure more exciting. Not once did we ask to go back to America.

It’s as though we’ve stepped out of time, our mother would say in a dreamy soft-pitched voice. How easily the modern world disappears. She’d close her eyes and listen to the sounds carried like bits of debris by the wind — a ship’s horn, the crowing of roosters and chittering of hens, the gabble of servants, the dry rustle of palm fronds, the humming of bees in the oleander. She’d open her eyes and see the scarlet bougainvillea spilling over the terrace wall, the roses filling each frame of the trellis. Inside the villa the marble floors were deliciously cold beneath bare toes. Claire would sink into a chair and stretch her feet out over the floor and ask in a voice rich with irony and pleasure: “What are we doing here? Who gave us the right?”

Murray would say we’d earned the right. Claire would shrug. They’d sip their wine, and when their eyes met they’d laugh a little, as though they were sharing a joke.

After the first quiet week, Claire was ready to spend the second week in the same fashion. She didn’t need other company; though, predictably, Murray did. He needed the few hours of distraction that visitors provided, along with an excuse to mix up a pitcher of martinis, so on Saturday afternoon he rode his Lambretta into Portoferraio, where he found Francis Cape watering the geraniums on the stoop of his building, and he invited him to come out to Le Foci for supper.

Of course Francis Cape would come for supper. He would always come to supper, when asked, and he would arrive a respectable ten minutes early.

“He’s here!”

“Who’s here?” Claire had heard the car coming up the gravel drive but had assumed it was someone coming to visit Lidia or Francesca.

“Francis Cape, the Englishman!”

“What Englishman?”

“Francis Cape. He’s the one I told you about. Francis Cape. He’s here.”

“You didn’t tell me you invited him over.”

“Didn’t I? I thought I did. I meant to tell you. Well, he’s come for a visit. You don’t mind, do you? He’s the one who put me in touch with Lorenzo. Francis lives in Portoferraio, you see. He’s lived there for nearly ten years.”

It was that soft hour of Elban dusk when everything solid hovered on the edge of transparency. My brothers and I had already eaten our supper and were in a bedroom sorting through the day’s booty of rocks. Lidia, the cook, was clattering dishes in the kitchen while she rebuked Francesca for some new fault. Murray’s voice trailed behind him as he stepped outside to greet Francis. Claire felt an odd, unsettling presentiment, probably because she’d been so content to have nothing to do and no one new to meet.

Francis Cape the Englishman was here for a visit. Claire heard his voice first out in the courtyard, a barking, confident voice, then Murray’s, and then a third voice — the subdued voice of a woman, audible just for a moment before disappearing beneath the clamor of Murray’s exuberance.

“Come in, please, come right in, let me introduce you to my wife. Claire, this is Miss Noddi, Adriana Noddi —”

“Nardi,” she corrected. Narrrdi. Adriana Narrrdi. She was a young woman of about twenty, with milky skin and black hair clenched in wispy curls. There was something in her smile that struck Claire immediately as deceptive, tinged with private trouble, though when Claire extended her hand Adriana shook it with a confident, delicate firmness.

“Narrrrrrrdi,” Murray echoed. “Adriana Narrrrrrrrrrdi, the family who owns the land adjacent to Lorenzo’s property, if I’m not mistaken….”

“That’s right.”

“Signorina, it’s a pleasure to welcome you to our house, though you’ll have to forgive me for speaking in English. I’m an idiot when it comes to languages…. Not like Francis, eh Francis? Francis, I almost forgot! Let me introduce you to Claire, my wife. Claire, this is Francis. He’s the one I was telling you about, the historian. He knows more about this island than most people know about themselves, though you could say the comparison necessarily favors Francis, eh Francis? Please, let’s sit down, relax, make yourselves at home while I get the drinks.”

Adriana Nardi sat gingerly on the edge of her chair, pressed her knees together beneath the cloth of her dress — a plain, V-necked solid navy cotton dress. She played with the braided fringe of her white shawl as she listened to Francis Cape, who launched into an account of the Nardi family — one of the oldest and most notable families on the island, with ancestors who had dined with Napoleon and at one point had owned all of Monte Calamita.

Murray brought out the pitcher, stirring it with a wooden spoon as he explained that he’d picked up the Bombay gin for a song in Genoa. Had Adriana ever been to Genoa? As she nodded Murray rattled, “Of course you’ve been to Genoa. Genova, rather. Narrrrdi. More proof that I’m inept with languages. There’s not a foreign name I don’t mangle.”