The Woman in the Castello, page 2
“Yes, darling. The squirrel is in the tree now.”
I adjusted my sunglasses. I couldn’t tell my mother the real reason. That when she was gone, it would just be me and Lulu, and I was scared. One of my neighbors in our Los Angeles apartment building was a single mother, and I’d seen the social workers arrive unexpectedly to harass her, and I could still hear her screams the morning they took her sweet baby away. I didn’t know if I’d be able to provide for Lulu by myself. I needed help. I swallowed around that sharp thing in my throat again. “I just thought I’d like to meet her. We are here in Italy, after all.”
“She won’t give you any money for Lucy. I know that’s what you’re thinking. Why don’t you ask her father?”
Now it was my turn to be shocked. Lulu’s father didn’t know she existed, and I’d make sure he never would. He was a struggling musician whom I’d moved in with impulsively, whose moods ricocheted between charming and cruel. He’d hit me when he’d been drinking, more than once, his dry, guitar-player’s hands lean and callused. Aside from Lulu, my improved skills with makeup were the only thing of value I took away from that relationship.
“How dare you suggest such a thing.” I studied my mother, who retied her chic white-and-blue floral headscarf around her chin and smirked at me. She favored ladylike swing dresses that accentuated her wasp waist, one feature we both shared. I was partial to shift dresses with contrasting colors, especially black and white, big button accents, and big sunglasses. Soon, we might have to sell off our nicest items. The headscarf was real silk, and I wondered what price it might fetch.
“You see? Now you understand. Some people we cut out of our lives for a reason, Silvia. We won’t speak any more about this.”
I nodded, but it was another lie. Because I’d seen the letter my mother received from Italy three months ago, the one she’d tried to keep hidden. She’d saved it, packing it in her worn leather suitcase for our journey, the envelope creased and the ink smeared. I’d found it when going through her things looking for something of Lulu’s, and I hadn’t read it—I wouldn’t invade her privacy so deliberately—but I had noted the return address. Gabriella Conti, Castello del Lago. I’d looked on a map and found that it wasn’t so far from Rome: a little town about forty miles outside of the city.
I didn’t want to go against my mother’s wishes, but just knowing there was another person in the world who might help, whatever my mother said, made our circumstances slightly more bearable. Even the name of the town sounded alluring, and it seemed to beckon me.
If my mother wouldn’t go see her sister, perhaps I would.
CHAPTER 2
On what would have been the first day of the movie’s production, I kissed my mother’s sallow cheek and squeezed Lulu before leaving our charmingly worn hotel room, with its wrought-iron bed and old wooden armoire and big windows facing the street. My mother wished me good luck as I left, and the bitterness of the lie nearly made me confess. Instead, I smiled at her and reminded her I’d probably be back quite late.
Then I headed to the nearby Via Veneto, the most fashionable street in Rome, its sidewalk crammed with cafés where Americans smoked and laughed and drank in the open air. I passed the Excelsior, the city’s best hotel, and caught a blast of air-conditioning and expensive scent as a rich American woman pushed through the elegant revolving door. The movie stars sometimes stayed here when they came to town to film, and I’d glimpsed someone last night, although I couldn’t have said who. All I’d really seen was the insect-like swarm of aggressive photographers they called paparazzi waiting outside for her, camera bulbs flashing in the dark.
I had imagined they might be waiting for me, someday. But I hadn’t come here to daydream. Instead, I entered one of the cafés and asked a harried, skinny male waiter in my sweetest Italian if I could speak to the manager. Luckily, I spoke fluent Italian, thanks to my mother.
I’d spent the last few days pursuing acting and modeling opportunities, to no avail. So now it was time for plan B. I needed money, and I wasn’t above waiting tables to get it. I’d waited plenty of tables in Los Angeles. When I’d been heavily pregnant with Lulu, I’d had to trade my modeling work for a steady waitressing job, and I’d never forget my swollen ankles at the end of the day, the body-deep exhaustion that made me fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.
“Mi scusi,” I tried again, but the man just shrugged me off and continued serving customers, delivering a tray of Pellegri-nos and caffè Americanos to a large and boisterous group. At another table, an Italian man read a newspaper attached to a wooden pole and asked the waiter to bring him stamps.
“You look like you could use help,” I offered as the waiter passed. “I’m looking for a job.”
He just laughed derisively. “There are no jobs here, little girl.”
I bristled. I was twenty, but looked older; I was hardly a little girl. My throat constricted. It was a popular café, maybe too popular. I hadn’t necessarily expected to find an opening on my first try, but I thought I’d at least get a nicer rejection.
“I speak perfect English. Like an American.”
The waiter kept walking into the interior of the café and ignored me.
I sighed and decided to try the café next door. Surely with so many American customers jamming themselves elbow to elbow, filling up the ashtrays and tipping more than was expected, someone would find use for another pair of hands.
Maybe hiding I was an American was a mistake. I’d been told the Italians were wild for our magazines and our movies; perhaps being an American model would carry some weight. I’d even seen a peeling old poster on a brick wall of John F. Kennedy, the sad sight of his ripped paper cheek giving me a little pang of sadness at the memory of his assassination two years before. Our country’s first Catholic president had been very popular among the Italians, according to my guidebook.
I tried several more spots on the Via Veneto and made it clear, this time, that I was an American expat, but that went over even worse. Maybe it had been foolish to think I could just waltz in and get a job. It had always worked back home; managers usually liked a pretty face. I couldn’t think about what would happen if I failed. Being penniless in a strange city was too awful to imagine.
I’d probably aimed too high, going to the Via Veneto. I moved on to the side streets, consulting the little map in my purse as I made my way toward the Piazza del Popolo, and tried all kinds of places—cafés, boutiques, a grocery store. I paused out on the sidewalk after my twentieth inquiry, my mouth tasting of failure and my cotton dress damp with sweat. Cars and Vespas zoomed by, and two nuns passed around me as if I were a stone in their path. Just beyond them was a young Italian woman wearing a miniskirt with a daring hemline and red lipstick; the contrast of her against the nuns distracted me a little from my concerns. If I’d been in a better mood, it might have made me smile. Rome seemed to be like that, the modern and the ancient, the carnal and the godly all mashed up together.
By the time I reached the Piazza del Popolo, I was hot, and tired, and depressed. There was a large church on one side of the square, its facade weathered and pockmarked travertine, a set of grand shallow steps leading to its door. Despite my worries, I marveled at it for a moment. Rome wore its history carelessly, its ancient churches and Roman temples and fountains as commonplace as the cats who wandered them. But I was astonished by it all. There was nothing even close to this old in Los Angeles, where everyone seemed obsessed only with what was new. I hadn’t been inside a church in about a year, and the idea of its cool dark interior tempted me to enter.
I sat in one of the pews for a while, resting my feet, gazing reverently at the vaulted ceilings and stone pillars. I offered up a quick prayer for guidance, inspired by the setting and guessing it couldn’t hurt, even if I was hardly the most attentive Catholic.
After I’d regained some energy, I took a moment to walk around the church, and in one of the side chapels, a couple of tourists were pointing at the paintings and consulting a guidebook. I peeked and was struck by the dark moodiness of them, the dramatic lighting of the figures. In one, a man was about to be crucified. Not Jesus—Saint Peter, maybe. The startling violence of the scene sent a chill down my spine.
I emerged again into the bright sunshine, unsure what to do next. I felt the full force of my foreignness, and ignorance, and wished my mother still had friends here who could help us.
I heaved a breath. She may not have friends, but she did have a relative. Maybe the church had given me some clarity after all, because I could see only one path left open to me. It would mean another long walk, since I didn’t want to waste any money on the tram, but it was still morning. I had time.
My path to the railroad station took me past the Trevi Fountain, and I paused in awe of its baroque beauty, admiring the grotto-like rock formations and cascading water. A group of laughing young girls sat on its stone edge, eating gelato, letting it melt onto their fingers, and I envied them. It was a hot day, and my dress stuck to my skin. Tourists milled about, and for a brief moment I almost felt like one of them. This was a sight I’d longed to see: the very water Anita Ekberg had waded into wearing her busty evening dress in La Dolce Vita, a moment that had made her an international icon. The right movie, and the right scene, could do that for you, and it made this spot magic for me. I watched as a happy couple tossed coins over their shoulders, making wishes, and the illusion shattered. I had a lot I’d wish for, but I couldn’t spare the money.
I kept walking.
The local side streets interested me, too. Electrical wires overhead crisscrossed between weather-worn stone buildings, and I wrinkled my nose as I passed a fish stand, where silvery bellies flashed in the sun. Another vendor hawked luscious piles of shiny eggplants, bright-red tomatoes, and velvety apricots, which were carefully assessed by a stout matron in sensible square-heeled shoes. I jumped out of the way as a man on a Vespa sped through the alley, heedless of the foot traffic.
The railroad station was a stark contrast to the rest of Rome: a modernist glass and concrete structure. I didn’t like to go behind my mother’s back, and guilt sliced into me. But I didn’t see what choice I had. I pressed through the crowds, overwhelmed and a little lost, until I located a ticket counter. A helpful agent explained the timetables to me and booked me a second-class ticket on the local train to Castello del Lago. He told me conversationally that the town had a castle, one of a number in the region that had become popular filming locations for gialli, a type of Italian thriller.
I headed toward the track he’d pointed out and tucked away the tidbit as interesting. Maybe I could ask around up there to try and find some work. Mostly I was preoccupied with the ticket price: I did the lira conversion in my head and figured out that the roundtrip fare had cost me less than two dollars. Even two dollars was precious now, when every cent counted. After the hotel reservation ended, we only had enough money for a few nights at a hostel.
But this was a chance I had to take.
* * *
The crowded train journey took about an hour, and then I found myself slightly disoriented on a lonely platform without a station house. I walked toward the road and considered my options: the steep downward slope to a strange green-blue lake, perfectly round and still, at the bottom of a bowl of trees. Or up to a little medieval town crested by the castle. The uphill road forked toward the surrounding countryside, and a lonesome donkey made the return journey, its saddlebags stuffed with wilting vegetables. It must have known where to go, since no one attended it. It looked hot, and flicked its tail.
I followed it toward the town, and soon my calf muscles burned from the steep climb. Thankfully my shoes were flat, but the Mary Jane straps dug into my skin.
The moment I entered the town itself, the air seemed to shift, growing weightier and more silent. Even the clacking of my soles on the cobblestones grew muffled. It was more humid than in Rome, and I could almost taste the warm moisture, tinged with earth and must. The contrast to the city was jarring.
I lost track of the donkey, who certainly knew its way better than I did. There hadn’t been a street address on the envelope, just the name of the town, but I was sure that a local resident could help direct me. In a tiny community like this, someone was sure to know who my aunt was and exactly where she lived. So I crept through the warren of narrow streets and tried to shake off my growing sense of claustrophobia. My mother called these little alleys vicoli, and there’s no perfect English translation for the word, for the skinny, twisting slices of cobblestone path, the arches above keeping the walls from leaning in and collapsing into one another. Most tourists would find them charming, but the deeper into the town I climbed, the more my skin prickled from the eerie quiet. The sky was gray, threatening a summer thunderstorm, and little light filtered into the maze. The yellow lanterns hanging by the doorways blazed even in the middle of the day.
At last one of the vicoli deposited me into a small piazza, with an empty fountain at its center and a tiny café. The fountain had green mold along its bottom, and some of the stone was cracked and falling away. Three old men sat outside at the only table, listening to a soccer match on the radio and slapping down well-worn cards. The wine they were drinking stained their lips red. I approached tentatively, and the cards stopped thwacking as all of the men turned to stare at me. I smiled wanly.
“Excuse me, do any of you know where I could find Gabriella Conti?” I asked in Italian. Now their surprise—already great from seeing a stranger—increased. Bushy eyebrows shot into foreheads, and one man let the cigarette dangling from his lip drop onto the table. Then they broke into uncomfortable laughter.
“You don’t want to see her, sweetheart,” one man said. He tipped the remainder of a carafe of wine into his cup and swallowed it thirstily.
“She doesn’t like visitors. She’ll toss you out on your rump.”
“Remember what happened to Matteo?” At this, all three men laughed more genuinely.
I frowned, my determination wavering. Some people we cut out of our lives for a reason, my mother had said. I hadn’t paid her words much heed; my desperation on behalf of Lulu had made them easy to ignore. Now I wished I’d pressed my mother for more information.
Not that she’d have given it.
“Please. Can you provide directions?”
One of the men shrugged and pointed a crooked finger toward the top of the hill. “Not hard to find. She lives in the castle.”
I opened my mouth in astonishment and shifted my gaze upward. When I’d discovered she lived in the town of Castello del Lago, it never occurred to me that she might reside in the actual castle it was named for. Perhaps they were only teasing me, and would laugh when I climbed all the way up there only to find sheep grazing beside a ruin of stone. But the man’s voice contained no trace of hidden amusement. I couldn’t see the castle well from the piazza, just a glimpse of crenellated towers. I didn’t know anyone still lived in castles: I suppose I’d assumed that they were all museums or religious institutions or something of that sort. That my aunt lived in one seemed impossible, but hope flared up inside of me. If it were true, surely she’d be able to help us.
I nodded at the men and continued my climb. The vicoli beyond the square seemed as if they’d been carved into the rock of the hillside, and the buildings crouched gloomily over them. My legs grew sore as I ascended the hundreds of steep stone steps. They explained the donkey: even Vespas would be useless here, and a car was entirely out of the question. Here and there, laundry lines crisscrossing above reminded me that real people lived here, but I spotted so few faces flashing in the windows that it was hard to believe. It almost seemed like they were hiding from me.
I did see one woman appear suddenly in the mouth of a vicolo, as if she’d materialized out of the sunless air, and the sight of her startled me so much, I paused to stare at her. She wore a black dress down to the ground, and I wondered if she was still mourning someone from the war. I’d seen bullet holes scarring some of the buildings and got the sense that while Rome had moved on, Castello del Lago was stuck in another time. She shouted something unintelligible at me, her mouth gummy.
Finally, I climbed the last set of stairs and ended up in another square, this one empty of people and with only one tiny bar-tabacchi, its door firmly shut. I was thoroughly sick of the cobblestones at this point, uneven under my feet, leaving me off balance. The shutters on the buildings here were all closed tight. There were a few deserted wooden stalls from a long-over vegetable market, their counters strewn with leftover shriveled carrots and zucchini, buzzing with flies.
On the opposite side of the square was a giant stone archway, and I passed through it onto a straight cobblestone path lined with cypress trees that led to the castle. It was slightly cooler above the town, and the trees shivered in a soft wind.
During my climb, I’d imagined a number of ways my aunt might react to my arrival, but now that I’d reached the castle walls, a new problem presented itself: how to get inside. In front of me, a bridge stretched across a ravine, and the plunging elevation as I glanced down the sides made me dizzy. The castle in front of me was imposing, featuring four large round towers, one choked with ivy, and sand-colored stone walls patched up in places with red brick. Most of the windows were small and narrow, with rivulets of green algae staining the rock beneath them.
I crept forward tentatively, and on the other side of the bridge found that a studded metal door hung open, almost as if my aunt had been expecting me. I stepped through into a large stone courtyard populated by no fewer than six scraggly, feral cats. On one wall was a fountain of a lion, ugly mouth gawping, the marble blackened with age, and a gray striped kitten curled in its empty basin. Nearby, an ancient-looking red porphyry column lay on its side, cracked across the middle. On the farthest wall was a two-story arched colonnade, with a wide set of stairs leading to one of the four towers and what I guessed was the front door.
