From the first Safiye had felt a mild distaste for the way her employer Se?ora Del Olmo talked: “There was such an interesting exchange rate in this woman’s mind . . . whenever she remembered anyone giving her anything, they only gave a very little and kept the lion’s share to themselves. But whenever she remembered giving anyone anything she gave a lot, so much it almost ruined her.” Apart from that Safiye had neither liked nor disliked Se?ora Del Olmo, preferring to concentrate on building her mental inventory of the household treasures, of which there were many. In addition to these there was a key the woman wore around her neck. She toyed with it as she interviewed gardener after gardener; Safiye sat through the interviews too, taking notes and reading the character references. None of the gardeners seemed able to fulfill Se?ora Del Olmo’s requirement of absolute discretion: the garden must be brought to order, but it must also be kept secret. Eventually Safiye had offered the services of her own green thumb. By that time she’d earned enough trust for Se?ora Del Olmo to take her across town to the door of the garden, open it, and allow Safiye to look in. Safiye saw at once that this wasn’t a place where any gardener could have influence, and she saw in the roses a perpetual gift, a tangled shock of a studio where Lucy could work and play and study color. Se?ora Del Olmo instructed Safiye to wait outside, entered the garden, and closed the door behind her. After half an hour the Se?ora emerged, short of breath, with flushed cheeks—
“As if she’d just been kissed?” Lucy asked.
“Not at all like that. It was more as if she’d been seized and shaken like a faulty thermometer. I asked her if there was anybody else in the garden, and she almost screamed at me. No! No. Why do you ask that? The Se?ora had picked a magnificent bunch of yellow roses, with lavender tiger stripes, such vivid flowers that they made her hand look like a wretched cardboard prop for them. Se?ora Del Olmo kept the roses in her lap throughout the carriage ride and by the time we’d reached home she was calm. But I thought there must be someone else in that garden—the question wouldn’t have upset her as much otherwise, you know?”
“No one else was there when I was,” Lucy said.
Safiye blinked. “So you’ve been there.”
“Yes, and there were only roses.”
“Only roses . . .”
“So how did you get the key?” They were watching each other closely now; Safiye watching for disbelief, Lucy watching for a lie.
“In the evening I went up to the Se?ora’s sitting room, to see if there was anything she wanted before I went to bed myself. The only other people the Se?ora employed were a cook and a maid of all work, and they didn’t live with us, so they’d gone home for the night. I knocked at the door and the Se?ora didn’t answer, but I heard—a sound.”
“A sound? Like a voice?”
“Yes—no. Creaking. A rusty handle turning, or a wooden door forced open until its hinges buckle, or to me, to me it was the sound of something growing. I sometimes imagine that if we could hear trees growing we’d hear them . . . creak . . . like that. I knocked again, and the creaking stopped, but a silence began. A silence I didn’t feel good about at all. But I felt obliged to do whatever I could do . . . if I left a door closed and it transpired that somebody might have lived if I had only opened it in time . . . I couldn’t bear that . . . so I had to try the door no matter what. I prayed that it was locked, but it opened and I saw the Se?ora standing by the window in the moonlight, with her back to me. She was holding a rose cupped in her hands, as if about to drink from it. She was standing very straight, nobody stands as straight as she was standing, not even the dancers at the opera house . . .”
“Dead?”
“No, she was just having a nap. Of course she was fucking dead, Lucy. I lit the lantern on the table and went up close. Her eyes were open and there was some form of comprehension in them—I almost thought she was about to hush me; she looked as if she understood what had happened to her, and was about to say: Shhh, I know. I know. And there’s no need for you to know. It was the most terrible look. The most terrible. I looked at the rest of her to try to forget it, and I saw three things in quick succession: one, that the color of the rose she was holding was different from the color of the roses in the vase on the windowsill. The ones in the vase were yellow streaked with lavender, as I told you, and the one in the Se?ora’s hand was orange streaked with brown.”
Lucy mixed paints at the back of her mind. What turned yellow to orange and blue, purple to brown? Red.
“I also saw that there was a hole in the Se?ora’s chest.”
“A hole?”
“A small precise puncture”—Safiye tapped the center of Lucy’s chest and pushed, gently—“It went through to the other side. And yet, no blood.”
(It was all in the rose.)
“What else?”
“The stem of the orange rose.” Safiye was shivering again. “How could I tell these things to a policeman? How could I tell him that this was how I found her? The rose had grown a kind of tail. Long, curved, thorny. I ran away.”
“You took the key first,” Lucy reminded her.
“I took the key and then I ran.”
The lovers closed their eyes on their thoughts and passed from thought into sleep. When Lucy woke, Safiye had gone. She’d left a note: Wait for me, and that was the only proof that the nighttime visit hadn’t been a dream.
—