Arcadia Burns

SICILY


ROSA’S CONNECTING FLIGHT FROM Rome landed in Palermo late in the afternoon. A limousine met her at the airport. As the driver stowed her suitcase in the trunk, she was already dozing off in the backseat.

Somewhere along the way she woke up, freezing, and realized that ever since that night in Central Park, cold temperatures had new and unwelcome associations for her. She asked the driver to adjust the air conditioning, and soon after that the sense of being hunted and the heavy weight of winter started to drain away from her limbs.

Golden sunlight shone in through the tinted panes. Although it was mid-February, on the island it already looked almost like summer. Outside temperature fourteen degrees Celcius—around fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit—Rosa read on the dashboard, and it rarely got any cooler during the day in Sicily. The difference from the biting cold in New York was so great that she was going to have a hard time adjusting to the climate change as well as jet lag over the next few hours.

The expressway passed across a wide, ocher plain with mountains rising steeply on either side. Abandoned farmhouses falling into ruin, the remains of feudal Sicily, lay on their yellowish-brown slopes. Now and then a billboard shot past beyond the guardrails, and then there was nothing but sunlit emptiness again. The rectangular white buildings of a mountain village dotted one of the peaks like a cap. Behind them small clouds drifted across the deep blue sky.

Rosa had never said much about the love she’d felt at first sight for this landscape, but now she felt it again—this was a place so close to the ancient history of the Mediterranean. After tightly packed New York, where everything aspired to height—buildings, expectations, egos—this was the exact opposite. The world went on and on, far beyond the horizon.

She couldn’t wait to see Alessandro. There was a lot that she anticipated with distaste: meetings with her advisers, with the managers of her companies, many of them women, and—worst of all—with Avvocato Trevini. But looking forward to seeing Alessandro helped her feel better about the pressure and terrors of the last few days. She would have liked to ask the driver to take her straight to Castello Carnevare. However, Alessandro was in the conference room of one of his firms in Catania; she hadn’t told him when her flight was landing, only that she was on her way home. What she had to discuss with him wasn’t a subject for phone calls or crowded airports. And there was something new that they did have to talk about. An address: 85 Charles Street. An apartment that had belonged to Tano.

The memory of Mattia briefly surfaced in her mind. She saw his face before her, his last desperate leap through the flames in his panther form. Had the other Carnevares caught up with him? Michele would show no mercy to the man who had saved her life.

At the Mulinello exit they left the expressway and raced along Route 117, going south. After a while the domed church tower of Piazza Armerina and the rooftops of the town appeared behind the bare trees. Rosa had expected to feel uneasy on her return, but it was just the opposite. She was glad to be back.

A good six miles outside of the town, right after the road forked off for Caltagirone, a driveway on the left led into the wooded hills. When the two guards recognized the car and its driver, a heavy iron gate slid aside on a guide rail, clattering.

As they closed the gate behind the limousine again, Rosa glanced through the rear window. A silver BMW passed the entrance to the drive and continued south. It had been following them ever since they’d left the expressway. Judge Quattrini’s anti-Mafia team had only a limited number of cars at its disposal, and Rosa knew most of them. This one had shadowed her a few weeks ago. She sent the judge a text message with a brief thanks for the welcome committee.

The driveway rose gently uphill for just over a mile. Gnarled olive and lemon trees covered a large part of the slope, and pines grew here and there. When the rooftops of the Palazzo Alcantara appeared above the crowns of the trees, she finally felt the uneasiness that she had been expecting ever since she landed. There was only one car parked in the courtyard of the palazzo: a decrepit red Toyota, none of the flashy roadsters that her business managers drove. Thank God. The old rust heap belonged to Signora Falchi, Iole’s private tutor.

The fountain with the stone statues of fawns wasn’t back in working order yet, but the gardeners had stopped collecting birds’ nests in it. One of Rosa’s first acts had been to revoke Florinda’s orders for the regular removal of all nests from the trees around the palazzo, to be burnt in the stone basin of the fountain. She’d decided to make sure that water flowed from the blackened jets again as soon as possible.

The palazzo had four wings, arranged in a square around an inner courtyard. Plaster was peeling off the pale brown facade in many places. And the tuff statues looking out of niches and down from the edge of the roof were also in urgent need of restoration. Wrought ironwork on the balconies nodded to the property’s former magnificence. Today it was a sad, neglected sight.

The limousine rolled through the tunnel beyond the gate in front of the house. The flower bed in the center of the inner courtyard was still overgrown with weeds; the four facades around it were the color of terra-cotta that had been outdoors for too many winters.

The car stopped at the foot of the double flight of steps leading up to the main entrance on the second floor. Rosa got out before the driver could open the door for her. The smell of damp, crumbling stone was everywhere, even in high summer, and you certainly couldn’t ignore it in February. Once again she wondered whether it would be a better idea to find somewhere else to live. Another decision that she kept putting off.

There was a sound of frantic barking as a black mongrel raced down the steps, leaped at Rosa, and planted his paws on her shoulders. He exuberantly licked her face, panting with excitement.

“Hey, Sarcasmo!” she managed to say, crouching down to hug the dog. Smiling, she ran her hand through his woolly coat, scratched him behind the ears, and buried her face in his neck. “I’ve missed you, boy. Wow, you still smell just as good as I remember.” No wonder; Sarcasmo lounged about on the antique sofas and rugs in the palazzo all day long. At night he jumped up on Iole’s bed and snored for all he was worth.

The driver carried Rosa’s suitcase into the house, and almost collided at the door with a frail-looking woman who came hurrying out at the same moment. She wore wire-framed glasses and a white blouse, and her jeans had creases ironed into them.

“Signorina Alcantara,” she cried, sounding as if she might suffer a stroke any minute. “Ah, signorina, it’s high time you were back here!”

Rosa hugged Sarcasmo one last time, and stood up. The dog ran into the building ahead of her as Rosa climbed the steps, looking at the tutor through the unruly hair that fell over her eyes. Raffaela Falchi was in her midthirties but looked fifteen years older, and seemed to have given up fighting against her advancing age. She looked sober and a little matronly, and that was why Rosa had trusted her impressive references. It would never have crossed the mind of a woman like Signora Falchi to have her résumé produced in some Sicilian forger’s workshop. She didn’t seem likely to be an informer for the public prosecutor’s office, either. Ultimately, though, Rosa had left the choice to her secretary in Piazza Armerina. Her own high-school days were barely a year behind her, and she felt totally unequipped to be the judge of a tutor’s competence.

“Signorina Alcantara!” cried Raffaela Falchi for the third time. By now Rosa was wishing she was surrounded by the advisers she usually disliked, so that she could hide behind them.

“Ciao, Signora Falchi,” she said unenthusiastically.

“Now then—about your cousin. I just don’t know where to begin…”

Irritated, Rosa pulled her blond hair back from her face. They had said that Iole was her cousin in order to avoid unwelcome questions. “Didn’t we agree that you’d decide all that for yourself?”

The tutor’s feathers were obviously ruffled, and as she was still standing a few steps above Rosa, it made her look quite intimidating. “Iole won’t discuss it with me, and it would be better if you didn’t make the same mistake, Signorina Alcantara.”

Rosa sighed. “What happened?”

“Iole doesn’t turn up regularly for her lessons. She talks to herself. She scribbles in her exercise books. Sometimes she hums to herself, and not even in tune. She won’t accept my authority.” And so it went on, while Rosa mentally ticked off the complaints she’d already heard before she went away. “She does her makeup while I’m teaching her. And she goes ‘la-la-la’ when I ask her to listen to me.”

“‘La-la-la’?” Rosa raised an eyebrow.

“In a loud voice!”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing. She just does that.” The tutor was wringing her hands. “Yesterday she belched like an uneducated peasant! The day before yesterday she insisted on wearing a hat with a veil. Heaven only knows where she found it. And then there are those dreadful scented candles.”

“Scented candles?”

“She ordered them on the internet, she says. Do you know how many hours a day that child spends in front of the computer?”

“That child will soon be sixteen.”

“But we both know that she hasn’t reached the intellectual level of a sixteen-year-old.”

“Iole isn’t mentally challenged, Signora Falchi,” said Rosa firmly.

“I know that. And I’m well aware of what she’s been through. Six years in the hands of criminals…but that doesn’t change the fact that she has to adhere to certain rules if I’m to help her catch up on those six years. I’m not a therapist, but as a teacher I know what I have to do. And what’s necessary to make Iole an educated young woman. But to do that she’ll have to take my advice to heart whether she likes it or not.”

Rosa took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’ll talk to her.” She continued climbing, and reached the tutor’s side on the wide step in front of the entrance. “But I’m not Iole’s mother. Or even her big sister. Maybe she’ll listen to me, maybe not. Where is she, anyway?”

Signora Falchi straightened her glasses, puffed out her cheeks, and then let the air escape with a plopping sound. “In the cellar!” she uttered.

“What on earth is she doing in the cellar?”

“How on earth would I know?”

There it was again. Responsibility. For the business affairs of the Alcantara clan, for her relationship with Alessandro, for herself—and for Iole as well. She felt a sudden urge to get into one of the sports cars in the garage and race off toward the coast at high speed. Or through the mountains. Anywhere so long as she was alone.

“Talk to her,” said the tutor, adding, surprisingly gently, “and if you need my help or advice, I’m here for you. For both of you, Signorina Alcantara.” It was one of the few moments when she showed that she knew very well that her employer wasn’t much older than her pupil.

“Okay,” said Rosa. “Thanks. I’ll see to it.”

The indignation disappeared from Signora Falchi’s features, and suddenly there was understanding and sympathy in her face. She was a good teacher, and although she could also be a terrible battle-ax, so far Rosa hadn’t seriously regretted hiring her.

“Iole is a clever girl,” said the tutor. “She just has to give herself—and me—a chance.”

Rosa nodded, and headed down to the vaulted cellar.

“They smell of vanilla! And mango! And amber! And snowflakes!”

“So what do snowflakes smell like?”

“I’ve never smelled one. I’ve never seen a real snowflake. Only on TV.”

“Amber, then?”

“Like honey. Honey with raspberries!” Iole laughed happily, took Rosa’s hands, and, doing a silly dance, swung her around in a circle. “They smell so good! And there are so many different kinds! And if you order five hundred they cost hardly anything!”

“You ordered five hundred scented candles?”

“Only in that one shop.” Iole let go of Rosa but kept dancing in a circle by herself. She had often done that for hours, all alone and chained at the ankle, when she was the Carnevares’ hostage.

Rosa groaned. “How many stores did you order from?”

“All of the ones that had great offers!” she gushed, and looked at Rosa out of her pretty eyes as if she couldn’t imagine that her friend wouldn’t understand. “That’s why they have them on sale, see? So that everyone can buy them cheap. Even people who don’t earn much money. It’s so, so great!”

“And what exactly do you do with all those candles?”

“I light a different one every hour. Signora Falchi likes the place to smell good, too.”

“That’s not true.”

But Iole was already changing the subject, as she turned a final pirouette and came to a halt, swaying slightly. “Alessandro called.”

Rosa chewed a fingernail. “So?”

“Don’t you want to know what he wanted?”

“You’re about to tell me anyway.”

Iole lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He asked me how I was.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“I think he still worries about me.”

“Alessandro worries about a lot of things.”

“But he likes me.”

Rosa smiled, took Iole by the shoulders, and held her close. “Of course he does. Everyone likes you. Including Signora Falchi. Or she would if she saw more of you.”

The dank smell of the cellar clung to Iole’s short black hair. She must have been down here for some time.

“But he likes you best of all,” said Iole.

“Maybe.”

“You know he does!”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“He’s had Fundling moved. To a hospital near the sea.”

Rosa felt guilty for not having asked about Fundling herself. He’d been in a coma ever since the exchange of gunfire at the Gibellina monument. The doctors had removed the bullet from his head, but four months later he still hadn’t regained consciousness. Alessandro paid all his bills, and he had made the decision, some weeks ago, to have Fundling taken from the public hospital to an expensive private sanatorium. Rosa still wasn’t sure why. Alessandro said very little about it, but she sensed that he felt responsible for Fundling, maybe because of the crucial role Fundling had played in opposing Cesare Carnevare, the murderer of Alessandro’s parents.

Iole picked up a lock of Rosa’s hair and smelled it, as if that were the most natural thing in the world to do. “Have you asked the judge yet?”

“I’ll talk to her when…as soon as I see her.”

“She must let me go! I’d love to see Uncle Augusto again.”

Augusto Dallamano was Iole’s last living relation. Six and a half years before, the rest of her family had been murdered by the Carnevares. Iole herself had been held hostage—until Rosa and Alessandro had freed her. She’d been pestering Rosa for weeks to be allowed to visit her uncle. But that was far from easy to arrange.

“Uncle Augusto taught me how to shoot,” announced Iole.

“Terrific.”

“With an automatic pistol. And a shotgun, too.”

“How old were you then?”

Iole frowned, and counted silently. “Eight?”

Rosa groaned.

Dallamano was living, with a new identity, under the witness protection program of the state prosecutor’s office. Rosa had met him once, in Sintra, near Lisbon, and in the park of the Quinta da Regaleira he had answered some of her questions about the mysterious find made by the Dallamanos on their diving expeditions in the Strait of Messina.

“The judge isn’t very happy with me right now, did you know that?” Rosa guessed that her explanations would simply bounce off Iole. She had missed six years with other human beings, six years of contact with the outside world. It was easy to like her, but sometimes she could rile you, without knowing what she had done wrong. She had quit therapy after the first session, and Rosa could understand that. Her own experience with psychotherapy had not been a good one.

“Judge Quattrini never gives you anything for free,” added Rosa. “If there’s nothing in it for her, she isn’t interested.”

“Then we’ll have to give her something.”

“Like scented candles?”

“She could have the pine-scented ones. I don’t like those so much.”

“I kind of think that won’t be enough.”

“How about some sort of Mafia information?”

Now and then Iole said something so disarmingly naive that Rosa wondered whether there wasn’t an element of calculation in it after all. But the girl’s mind had already moved on to another thought. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What else did you buy?”

Iole leaned forward conspiratorially, as if someone might be eavesdropping on them. “I explored the cellar.”

Rosa looked past her and down the long corridor. She’d been down here only once since the deaths of Florinda and Zoe. The light came from yellow lamps held in latticework grilles at wide intervals on the ceiling. In between the circles of light they cast, strips of shadow moved over the masonry. Like striped tiger fur.

“There’s an iron door right at the back, under the north wing,” said Iole, with an air of mystery. “And something mechanical humming behind it. An engine, I think.”

“It’s the old freezer. It still works, but it’s not in use. No one can get in there to turn the thing off.”

“They can now.”

“The door has a lock with a number code.”

Iole nodded, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a grin of pride.

Rosa looked at her doubtfully. “You cracked the code?”

“Maybe.”

“How did you do it?”

“I tried everything.”

The code consisted of four or five digits. Millions of possible combinations. Rosa shook her head, unable to take it in. “Nonsense,” she said.

“Well, I had luck. And five days without Signora Come-Do-Your-Lessons-This-Minute.”

“Did you write it down?”

“Memorized it.”

Shaking her head, Rosa took Iole’s hand and said what she assumed she should say. “I don’t want you running around down here on your own.”

“There’s nobody else around.”

“But it’s…dark.” God, she thought, she was worse than her own mother.

“So?” Iole laughed. “I’m not scared of the dark. It was dark in those places where they shut me up. The huts up in the mountains. The empty farmhouses. Even in the villa on Isola Luna.”

Rosa felt that the role of big sister was beyond her. Zoe hadn’t been much good at it, and she wasn’t doing any better herself. “Okay,” she said, resigned. “I guess there’s no real reason why you should stay away from the cellar. Do what you want, but don’t come to me later and…and complain.” Good god.

Iole looked at her triumphantly. “Don’t you want to see?”

“See what?”

“The freezer. What’s behind the door.”

“Is it important?

“Well, important…” Iole shrugged her shoulders.

“Then it can wait until tomorrow, okay? I’m worn out.” She glanced along the dimly lit cellar corridor again. Dust hovered in the yellow, tiger-striped light. She suppressed a shudder. “Anyway, I’m scared of the dark!” She said that with a twinkle in her eye, but at the moment it was closer to the truth than she liked.

Iole poked a finger into her stomach. “You are not!”

Rosa sighed. “Today I am.”