Arcadia Burns

THE VISITOR


“YOU CAN’T MOVE IN here, Signora Falchi, and that’s my final answer.”

The tutor was standing on the flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Palazzo Alcantara. Rosa herself was only just back from the coast when the woman drove her Toyota into the inner courtyard. Now her two bags were sitting on the dusty pavement in front of the steps, with Signora Falchi between them, and Rosa strongly wished that she were anywhere else.

Raffaela Falchi crossed her arms. Her glasses flashed in the sunlight, making her look even readier for a fight. “You wanted a good tutor, right?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted the best tutor available for this difficult child.”

“Yes.”

“And you wanted her for six hours a day.”

“Yes!”

“Well, now you’re getting her for twenty-four hours a day. At the same price.”

“But that’s not the point!”

“In this house, I have witnessed toothpaste tubes lying around with the tops left off. The desecration of graves. Whipped cream sprayed straight from the can into people’s mouths. The desecration of graves. Dirty shoes on parquet flooring. Oh, and did I mention the desecration of graves?”

Rosa groaned. “You’re always complaining. You’re in a bad mood all day. You get irritated with Iole, and you think I’m too young to look after her. So why do you want to come and live here?”

“First: You are too young to look after her. Second: You don’t want to be responsible for Iole; you can’t even cope with being responsible for yourself. And third: I’ve split up with my boyfriend.”

“You had a boyfriend?” Rosa had expected almost anything, but not that Raffaela Falchi might be in a relationship. Having sex.

“He’s a musician.”

“Plays the flute, maybe?”

“Singer. In a rock band.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

Rosa realized that she was standing on the stairway as if defending it with her life against the unwanted intruder. Legs apart, right in the middle of the steps. The pair of them must look ridiculous.

“Why would I want you to live with us?” Rosa asked, sighing.

“I have green thumbs. Ten of them.”

“We don’t grow plants.”

“My cousin in Caltagirone has a florist. She’ll give me a discount. And then there’s my other cousin—she runs a perfumery. She could get you—”

“Okay. All right.” Rosa could hardly understand why, but she went down the steps, picked up one of the bags, and nodded in the direction of the porch over the entrance. “But if I see—or smell—either of your cousins, you’re fired.”

For the first time, she saw Raffaela Falchi grin, and for a moment, for a fraction of a second, she thought she saw something behind the tutor’s usual reproachful expression that might even attract a rock singer.

“Did you go on tour with him?” she asked, as they hauled the baggage up the steps.

“I’ve had tinnitus ever since.”

In the entrance hall, Iole came toward them in one of her white dresses. She stopped dead when she saw her tutor there with Rosa.

“Oh,” she said, as her eyes fell on the luggage.

“You’d better put on something else,” said Signora Falchi, her tone of voice skeptical. “Whenever you wear that outfit I feel as if I’m seeing the world through white highlighter.”

Iole wrinkled her forehead. “Maybe your glasses are clouded up.”

Glancing sideways at Rosa, the tutor raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t buy her those clothes, did you?”

Rosa raised her hands defensively.

“I bought them online,” said Iole. “They have such lovely music on that website. You don’t get nice music on every site, but you do on that one. I think it makes the dresses even prettier. And if you order three, you get a free packet of sunflower seeds and a CD to help you meditate. Only no flowers came up. I planted them all—well, the seeds, I mean; not the CD. And I watered them. And talked to them.”

“I can show you how to grow sunflowers,” said Signora Falchi, a little less sternly. “And then we’ll order you something new together.”

Rosa nodded when Iole looked at her doubtfully. “Signora Falchi is cool,” she commented, with a touch of sarcasm. “Her boyfriend is a musician.”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

Iole glanced at the two bags. “You’re going to live with us now?”

Raffaela Falchi looked inquiringly at Rosa.

Rosa nodded again. “For the time being. It’s better not to have so many rooms standing empty. To air them. They’re damp from the walls.” She had expected opposition from Iole, but the girl only rubbed the back of her neck thoughtfully and then shrugged her shoulders.

“Okay,” she said.

The tutor beamed.

“Which room is she going to have?” asked Iole.

Rosa gestured in the direction of the ceiling. “We have twenty-three empty bedrooms. Take your pick.”

Iole reached for one of the bags and was about to go ahead, but then she stopped and pointed to a small table near the porch. A padded white envelope lay on it. “A courier brought that yesterday. It’s for you, Rosa. From Avvocato Trevini. Feels like two cell phones.”

Rosa’s heart sank like a stone. She went over to the packet, picked it up, and saw that it had been opened. “Feels like two cell phones?”

Iole went red. “I was curious. But I didn’t take them out. Word of honor.”

Rosa weighed the envelope in both hands, took a deep breath, and then put it back on the table. She would watch the video—later. Probably.

Iole carried the case upstairs to the third floor. Signora Falchi followed her. Halfway up, Iole remembered something else.

“Oh, yes,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

Rosa had to force her eyes away from the envelope. “Hmm?”

“Twenty-two.” Iole switched the bag over to her other hand. “Rooms, I mean. There are only twenty-two still empty.”

“What happened to the twenty-third?”

Somewhere in the house, Sarcasmo barked. Had he been barking the whole time? It sounded a long way off, as if it came from the other wing of the palazzo.

“You have a visitor,” explained Iole. “She seemed so tired. I told her she could rest in one of the bedrooms.”

“Visitor?” repeated Rosa quietly.

“Very, very tired,” said Iole.

Rosa stood before the closed door.

Nothing else seemed to exist. Even Sarcasmo’s barking had died out. The dog had left his post outside the room and was now standing at a safe distance, wagging his tail and feeling proud of himself for enticing Rosa this way.

She stood in the dark corridor, on cracked flagstones and in front of faded wallpaper, in the yellowish light of the lamp. Stood there staring at the door of the room where her visitor was waiting for her.

She listened, but couldn’t hear anything.

Then she slowly raised her hand to knock. And lowered it again. She took a deep breath. Damn it, this was her house. She didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to go into one of the rooms.

Put her in a taxi to the airport, she had told Trevini. And you’d better book her on a flight to wherever she wants. She sensed another attempt at manipulation on the attorney’s part. If the new video wasn’t enough to upset her—seeing her would do the trick.

Her fingers touched the doorknob. The metal, clouded with vapor, felt cold in her hand. Sarcasmo growled.

When the handle moved as if of its own accord, she realized that someone had been standing on the other side, hesitating, the whole time.

“Hello, Rosa,” said Valerie.

Very tired. Now she knew what Iole had meant. Except that the exhaustion in that face, in those eyes, wasn’t ordinary tiredness.

Valerie looked even worse than she had in Trevini’s dungeon in the hotel, although she must have showered, because her dark hair was wet. Iole had given her clean clothes. Valerie was wearing Rosa’s black There Are Always Better Liars T-shirt. On Val, it struck Rosa as very appropriate, although it hung from her bony shoulders as if it were on a coat hanger.

Her eyes lay deep in their sockets; her nose looked long and thin. Triangles of shadow under her cheekbones were emphasized by the ceiling light. When Rosa had first met her, Valerie had just stopped wearing braces; now her teeth were discolored and yellow, and half of one incisor had broken off. It was only with difficulty that she seemed able to stay on her feet. She clearly needed a doctor.

“I know how I look,” said Val. “You can leave out the comments.”

“Ever thought of giving up smoking?”

“Who wants to get fat?” So there was something still left in there of the old Valerie. Her gallows humor spared Rosa a pang of conscience for feeling no pity.

“What are you doing here?”

Val stepped aside to let her into the room. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Rosa stayed out in the hall. “Trevini has my cell phone number.”

“Your friend Trevini—”

“He’s no friend of mine.”

“He’s just waiting to stab you in the back.”

“Too true. That’s why he sent you here.”

Valerie shook her head. “No. His people bought me a ticket to New York and dropped me off at the airport. Then I ran away.”

“And you can bet they’ve been doing their best to catch up with you.”

Valerie shrugged her thin shoulders. “No idea. Come in. I can’t…I mean, standing is a bit of a strain for me at the moment.”

“Try lying down. On your back. With a couple of guys holding you there.”

Sarcasmo came in and pressed against Rosa’s leg. He growled at Valerie, who took a step back. “He’s been standing outside the door for three hours, yapping,” she said.

“Sleep deprivation is one of our specialties here in Sicily. If we don’t pump our prisoners full of drugs first.”

“Leave the dog and come in. Please.”

Rosa gave her a cool stare. “You shouldn’t have come here. That ticket was your chance to go back to New York.” She looked down at Valerie’s emaciated body. “Although I wouldn’t be too sure that Michele will welcome you with open arms.”

“I’m here because I want to ask you to forgive me.”

“Well, then everything’s fine again, isn’t it?”

“Could we spare ourselves the verbal sparring? I know I have no right to be here. And maybe I really should have disappeared. But I did want to say it to your face, at least once. I’m sorry. For everything. Not only the party, and taking you there. The lies earlier, too. Not telling you anything about Michele. I want to ask you to believe that I’m sorry.”

Rosa bent down to Sarcasmo, patted his head, and sent him off with a gentle tap. Then she walked past Valerie into the room, closing the door behind her. Slowly, she went over to the window, pulled back the heavy red velvet curtain—and saw, to her surprise, that there was no glass behind it. The tall window had been bricked up. She remembered noticing it once from outside the house. But she’d had no idea that it was this room.

Then she understood. Iole was so much smarter than anyone expected.

Rosa let her eyes wander around the chamber. There was no other way out, only a door to the bathroom, which had no window. Iole hadn’t simply offered Valerie a place to rest. She had shut her in.

“Why is that window bricked up?” Valerie was still standing close to the door, as if afraid that Sarcasmo might be able to press the handle down from outside.

Rosa didn’t know the answer to that. But then she noticed the initials embroidered on the canopy of the four-poster bed. And the fact that this room was almost twice the size of most of the others.

Up on the canopy, it said C. A.

Costanza Alcantara? Had this been her grandmother’s room? The C could stand for all kinds of names, yet she felt a strange certainty.

Had Florinda had the window bricked up? Two months ago Rosa had given orders for all rooms in the palazzo to be thoroughly cleaned. All of them without exception, because she wanted to drive the mausoleum atmosphere out of the walls. Had this one been locked until then? A prison for all the memories linking Florinda to the mother she hated?

She said to Valerie instead, “This is what you might call our condemned cell. You wouldn’t think it of Iole, but she knows exactly what’s up.”

The corners of Val’s mouth twitched, but she couldn’t hide a trace of uneasiness. “If that’s it…if you’re planning to have me killed, go ahead. I’ve told you the truth. I’m only here to apologize.”

“For the rape, too?”

“I didn’t know that would happen. That’s the truth. I had no idea.”

“Michele got you to bring me to that party, and you thought—what?”

“I didn’t think anything. I was in love. I was stupid. God, I’d have done anything for him. He’s a Carnevare. You know how they—”

“Don’t you dare compare Alessandro with Michele!”

“If you say so.”

Rosa felt a macabre fascination in watching the play of expressions on Valerie’s face. At the same time, it disturbed her to see what a stranger her former friend had become. Only in her tone of voice did the old Val come through now and then: the Suicide Queen who fooled everyone else. Sunsets under the Brooklyn Bridge. Nights in Club Exit. Outwardly, the wreck in front of her had almost nothing left in common with the girl of the old days.

“Were you there?” asked Rosa. “When they did it?”

“No!” Valerie’s shoulders sagged even further. “I really didn’t know anything about it. Not that evening. Only the next day—”

“If you felt such a pressing need to apologize, you took your time over it. Almost a year and a half.”

“I was ashamed. Not just ashamed. I made myself sick. And I…I didn’t want you to know that…that I’d been obeying Michele when I took you there. I couldn’t face you. When you were in the hospital, I wanted to visit you.” She shook her head, and avoided Rosa’s eyes. “But I just couldn’t. It didn’t work.”

As if the engine of her car had failed to start. Or her subway train had been late. It didn’t work. You’d have thought someone else entirely was responsible.

“I’ll call you a taxi,” said Rosa. “Don’t try showing up here again. Or anywhere else our paths might cross.”

Valerie didn’t move from the spot. She shifted her weight uncertainly from one foot to the other, again and again, but she didn’t sit down. “It wasn’t only Michele,” she said.

“I know. Tano Carnevare was there. And a few others.”

“Yes. But that’s not what I mean. It wasn’t Michele pulling the strings. Or Tano.”

Rosa didn’t want to listen to any more of this. It would be wise to leave the room now. Call the taxi. Forget Valerie and with her all that had happened in the past.

“I eavesdropped on conversations,” Valerie went on. “Conversations between Michele and Tano. And for a long time I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d overheard. But I had so many months to think about it…Tano persuaded Michele to go along with the whole thing. No, I don’t mean persuaded. That sounds like I want to defend Michele. Tano recruited Michele and his men to help him.”

“Help him rape me?”

Once, Valerie had never been at a loss for a smart retort; now she was beating around the bush. Then, hesitantly, she nodded. Her chin was quivering. Exhausted, she let herself drop onto the edge of a chair.

“Tano supplied Michele with drugs for years…some kind of stuff, I don’t know what it was. I never tried it, but Michele was crazy about it.”

Did Valerie know exactly what the Carnevares were? What Rosa was? Had she ever seen Michele in his leopard form? Or did she still think the worst thing she’d tangled with was the Mafia?

“Glass vials?” asked Rosa. “With a yellow fluid inside them?”

Valerie nodded. “Michele always had ten or twenty of them in stock. He kept the stuff in this refrigerator that he could lock, like a safe. Tano got hold of it from somewhere, which was weird. Michele had contacts of his own in Colombia and Southeast Asia.” She took an unsteady step toward the four-poster bed and dropped onto the edge of it. For a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Tano promised Michele even more of the drug, in return for his…his support that night. After that, they fought over the deal. I was listening. Michele wanted more of the stuff than they’d agreed on. Or he wanted to pay less for it—I’m not sure which. Tano was furious. He said they’d had an agreement, and now his supplier wouldn’t come up with any more.”

“Tano’s supplier?”

Valerie’s nod looked undecided. “The whole thing wasn’t Tano’s idea. He talked two or three times about someone who had given him the order to attack you. Michele must have known him. I think he’d met him at least once himself.”

Rosa’s throat felt clogged with disgust, and aversion, and a sense of panic that she’d thought was all in the past. “And now you’re saying it wasn’t Tano’s own idea? Someone gave him orders to do it?”

“I think that was it,” said Valerie. “When they were talking, Tano and Michele, it seemed clear enough. Tano had bought Michele’s services, and in turn this other man had bought Tano’s.”

Rosa’s voice was hoarse. “If they discussed him, I suppose they mentioned his name.”

Valerie nodded. “An Italian. I think.”

“What was he called?”

“Apollonio.” For a moment Val pressed her lips together, and then she said, “That was the name they used. Mr. Apollonio.”

Rosa slowly approached the bed. Valerie looked as if she was about to flinch, but she seemed to summon all her self-control and stayed where she was. Rosa turned and dropped onto the mattress beside her. There they sat, thigh to thigh, staring at the empty room.

“Do you know him?” asked Valerie after a while.

“No.”

“But it’s not the first time you’ve heard the name.”

“No.”

Val hesitated. “Okay,” she said quietly.

Rosa still wasn’t looking at her. “What are you going to do now?”

“No idea.” A shudder ran through Valerie’s body. Rosa could feel it in her leg. “Or maybe I do know…there’s still someone in New York.”

“Mattia,” Rosa whispered.

Valerie’s head swung around. There was surprise in her wide eyes. And a question. But she didn’t utter a sound.

“I met him,” said Rosa. “When I was in New York. Michele was trying to kill me, and Mattia helped me. He guessed that you’d show up here. He wanted me to tell you something—to say you could go to him anytime, whatever happened.”

“He said that?”

“Yes.”

“Then he doesn’t hate me? Because of Michele? And because I ran away?”

Rosa shook her head.

“He…he once told me he liked me.” Her voice was vibrating slightly, and it was a second or two before Rosa realized that what had upset Valerie’s self-composure was hope. More hope than she had felt for a long time.

“He’s dead,” said Rosa. “Michele’s men murdered him.”

Silence.

After a while, a whisper as quiet as a breath passed Valerie’s lips. “That’s not true. You’re just saying it to hurt me.”

“They burned him. Maybe he was dead already. Or maybe not.”

A high-pitched sob made its way out of Valerie’s throat. That was all. Just that one awful sound.

Rosa stood up and went to the door. “I’ll call a doctor for you. You can stay until tomorrow morning. Then you’re getting out of here.”

Val didn’t watch as Rosa left. She just sat perfectly still, like someone in a photograph, almost entirely black and white and two-dimensional.

Rosa walked out and closed the door. Sarcasmo ran over to her and sat down outside the room, asking to be praised. She scratched his throat, and then she went away.

Behind her, the dog started barking at the door again.