Belladonna Page 2

  June also wanted her cousin to go away, back home, but people seemed to like her. Even Hogarth. Especially Hogarth. It was terribly aggravating.

  June looked in the mirror, preening after Hogarth left. Her dull blue eyes stared back at her. Everyone talked about her cousin’s dazzling green eyes. Men, handsome and strapping young men, who should be paying more attention to June. After all, June had all the money and the letters to society people that her mother had finagled for her. Her cousin had nothing. Well, June’d show them. She’d go to this fabulous costume ball and then go back to Minneapolis with a tiara and a handsome and strapping young husband with a title or something and a swanky accent. A husband who knew how to shoot and ride and had a big house in the country with lots of dogs and servants, a house that June could invite all her little friends to and they’d be so jealous because their own lives were so boring.

  But June couldn’t go to the very exclusive costume ball. Something was terribly wrong with her stomach and she wasn’t getting any better. She was still too sick to get out of bed, except to run to the bathroom. Must have been something she’d eaten the last time they’d all gone to the Ivy or the Café de Paris. She accused her cousin of poisoning her so she could go to Hogarth’s party all by herself.

  "I’ll never forgive you, June screamed from her bed. You did this on purpose.

  "I won’t go if you don’t want me to.

  June was torn. What if her cousin went and met someone interesting and he had an older brother who was even richer and more handsome and he ‘d take one look at June and fall madly in love with her and"

  "Oh, I don’t care what you do, June said, pouting. I don’t care if you ever come back.

  PART I

  The Oracle

  of the Fountains

  (1947–1951)

  Belladonna doesn’t know

  What to think or where to go

  Who can teach her, who can tell

  Where is heaven, where is hell

  Wander blindly, hold your breath

  Belladonna walks toward death

  1

  The Secret of

  perpetual youth

  “He’s staring at you again. That one, over by the fountain.”

  Belladonna looks at a chubby man sprawled on a chaise and dismisses him with a shudder. She tucks a soft pink mohair shawl tighter around her daughter, Bryony, napping peacefully in her lap. “He looks like an overboiled chestnut.”

  Matteo smiles, pleased she can joke about a man. As long as the man doesn’t come anywhere near us.

  Wait. This is not quite right. I beg to interrupt already. She is not yet Belladonna; I am not used to thinking of her as what she had once been, frightened and weak.

  No"I must remember to call her Ariel. Her given name once upon a time was Isabella Ariel Nickerson, and her traveling name, written neatly in one of her several fake passports, is Ariel Hunter. I am using the false name of Thomas Smith, and my brother is calling himself Matthew. I can thank my training in the Resistance for the development of one of my many talents: the very particular art of forgery and counterfeiting.

  “Yes, he does look like a flabby chestnut, especially with those lovely bulging eyes. I hereby christen him Mr. Nutley,” I say, not wanting to think of the Resistance. “And look, all the regulars are out today.”

  Ariel closes her eyes, but I know she is alert to their presence in the limpid spring air. My blather distracts her, because she is easily spooked by the few passersby, casually curious about the fragile lady with the seven-month-old baby and the two men with luxurious dark curls; smooth, pale, hairless skin; and soft, round bellies.

  “Signora Mange is in fuchsia today. She appears to have had her hair fluffed again,” I report about the plump matron in the too-tight capris and clattering mules topped with"what else?"powder pink poufs, smothering her revolting ratball of a shihtzu with smooches. “And let’s see … Madame Twenty Carats has exchanged her tiara for a simple parure of cabochon emeralds. From Woolworth.”

  “Is the other one there, too, the Count of the Sorrows?” Ariel asks, her eyes still closed.

  “Yes, in his usual spot,” I tell her. This is what we call the slim, elderly gentleman with the full head of white hair, slicked back sleekly, and the shapely Roman nose, who walks with a beautifully shaped mahogany cane topped with the golden head of a lion. He bows to us with the utmost courtesy every morning but never says a word. Nor do his lips curve into the semblance of a smile. I respect him for that, lost in his melancholy as we are in our own.

  “He must be someone important,” I say. “All the staff shower him with a special sort of deference.”

  “Do you think the waters will cure what ails him?” Ariel asks.

  Matteo looks at me. There is no cure for what ails us"only time, and plotting. Meticulous plotting. Careful planning. The thought that someday, perhaps, we really shall find the men we are looking for.

  The necessity of revenge.

  She loathed Matteo and me at first, not understanding who we were or why we were in that house in Belgium. She couldn’t stop herself from flinching in either terror or revulsion when, laden with her meals on a tray, either of us entered the large room we’d painted the color of clotted cream, lined with books, a baby grand piano near the window. And she responded with a more tangible fear to anyone closely associated with the man we’d been instructed to call Mr. Lincoln. This included the dreadful Moritz, “cousin” we were told, of the dreadful Markus, the keeper of the locked gates. Equally taciturn, squat, and broad of face as Markus, reeking of cheap damp tobacco, Moritz patrolled the grounds with a shotgun tucked lovingly under his arm and gleefully hunted down the rabbits spoiled by easy accessibility to the lettuce in my vegetable garden.

  When she first arrived, Hogarth had said her name was Doula, that she was a “special companion” to Mr. Lincoln, and instructed us to stay out of her way. To keep her doors locked. Or else. Especially not to talk to her. Or else.

  Or else we’d risk the wrath of the dreadful Moritz, who always seemed to be underfoot, shotgun in tow, watching us and waiting for the slightest infraction.

  She had been there for several months before I dared even to say hello. But I couldn’t help it when I noticed her belly growing large and the lavender circles under her vivid green eyes deepening.

  “Do you need anything?” I risked asking her one day as I tip-toed in to pick up her tray.

  She turned away from the window and stared at me, her eyes flashing emerald orbs of fear and disdain. She opened her mouth to speak, but had to clear her throat first. I got the wild idea that she wasn’t used to speaking. “You’re not supposed to talk to me,” she said.

  “I don’t care what I’m supposed to do,” I mumbled. I couldn’t yet tell her about the tiny peephole in her room, hidden near one of the Corot landscapes Hogarth gloatingly showed up with one day, and that Markus and Moritz sat there for hours. On Mr. Lincoln’s instructions, no doubt. That day, Moritz was hunting and Matilda was browbeating the shopkeepers in the village, so Markus was guarding the gates, and it was safe to have an unspied-upon conversation.

  “Is that so? Who are you, anyway?” she said. Her voice was foggy, rusty almost.

  “Tomasino Cennini. My brother is Matteo.”

  “You sound American.”

  “Haven’t been there for a long time. Doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. “I’m still worried about you.”

  “He’s not, and you work for him, don’t you? Why else would you be here?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Do you belong to him?”

  “Belong to him? What do you mean?” I said, taken aback.

  “Can’t you get away?” she pressed.

  “We owe him our lives. Besides, Matteo can’t cope with people yet, and I don’t know if I can, either.” Only when I said it did I realize how true it was. “You’ve seen Markus. And Moritz. Try getting past them"and that gate is the only way out. There’s barbed wire the entire length of the fencin
g around the property. We’ve checked. They’ve even rolled it into the hedges. The charming Moritz enjoys skinning all the animals that get caught in it. He’d kill us in a second.”

  “Markus and Moritz I understand. The rest I don’t.”

  Oh ho, take the plunge, Tomasino. She’ll be the first person you tell the embarrassing truth to. What does it matter? She despises us anyway.

  So I told her. To my surprise, the world didn’t stop turning and come crashing down on my crimson cheeks. I watched her eyes soften slightly as she rubbed her ring, a dazzlingly large emerald flanked by two yellow diamonds. At least she didn’t laugh.

  “You can’t …?” she began.

  “No. I can’t even try. There’s no desire to try. And Matteo’s even worse. His tongue scarred over badly and left him with a peculiar lisp. He hardly ever says a word, not even to me.”

  “I see. But why"” She stopped abruptly and sighed deeply. “I don’t know how to carry on a normal conversation anymore.” She sat down and stared at the hands she’d clasped over her belly. “Why don’t you try to escape from this hell?” she asked, in such a low voice that I had to strain to hear her. “Don’t you want revenge?”

  She puzzled me exceedingly, but I was too leery to ask more, for fear she’d never talk to me again. “I don’t know who did it exactly. Someone betrayed us, but we never saw the faces of the Fascisti. Besides, they’re all dead. Mr. Lincoln killed them. That’s how we got out.”

  “Who’s Mr. Lincoln?”

  “Him. You know"the master. He said to call him Mr. Lincoln because he freed the slaves. Meaning us.”

  Her eyes widened in astonishment and she burst into peals of hysterical laughter so deep they quickly turned to hiccups. I wanted to pat her back to make them stop, but she cringed as soon as I took a step toward her.

  “Oh thank you. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that,” she said sarcastically between gasps, calming herself. “But how do you know Mr. Lincoln didn’t set it all up because he needed new houseboys?” She smiled thinly, humorless again. “Now get out.”

  I bowed and left, troubled. But the next day when I brought her lunch, she was holding a slim volume bound in morocco leather. I glanced at the title: Secrets of the Ottoman Empire.

  “According to this book, in the harem they called it being ‘shaved’ for duty,” she said, clearing her throat and opening to a page she’d marked. “The Romans invented a special clamp, so that a man would be locked in position, and the serrated edges would cut him cleanly in a single stroke. Did you know that?”

  No, I didn’t know that. What a thrill you’ve shared that tasty tidbit with me.

  “Easier to heal, less mess. They often carved lions on the hilt of the clamp, as a cruel joke about some poor soul’s manhood.”

  Oh ho, my darling not yet even Belladonna, that was such a Belladonna moment.

  I didn’t say she was nice, did I?

  She turned to another page. “It says here that some eunuchs became overly sensitive, some excessively affectionate, some withdrawn and hostile. The quick-witted ones often became effective administrators in the harem, because they owed no clemency to anyone who spurned or mocked them.” She looked up at me, her eyes questioning. “Do you think you might become an effective administrator?”

  I tried to smile, and failed.

  “Here’s something,” she went on, “Juvenal wrote: ‘There are girls who adore unmanly eunuchs"so smooth/So beardless to kiss, and no worry about abortions!’”

  She smacked the book shut, then handed it to me. “Maybe this can help you.”

  “Maybe the Romans knew something I don’t,” I told her, and she gave me the ghost of a smile, this time for real. With that, the molecules in the air seemed to shift, and the smallest smidgen of the fear and bitterness melted from her eyes.

  Each day, as I brought and carried away her trays, we talked a little bit more. Once my tongue loosened, it was not difficult to tell her about myself and my brother, and, eventually, she grew to believe Matteo and I would not betray her. We became allies, friends forever, confidants of the heart. I realized I’d found my true calling.

  Especially when she showed me the diary she’d scribbled, stashed inside a hollowed-out volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to keep from going mad. I told her the little I knew about Mr. Lincoln"she called him His Lordship"and I tried to keep my hand steady as I copied over the diary at her request so it was legible. I told Matteo as much as I needed to, and we started to plan our escape. We didn’t know how we were going to get away––only that we had to.

  That’s what brought her back to life, she once told me. Forcing herself to think again. Plotting. Being able to envision a future in a world that had nearly destroyed her. Being able to have her baby. Being able, somehow, to hope.

  Not that she could ever be able to live a normal life. Not that she ever wanted to, not after"

  I love her, even though I can’t love. I love her more because I can’t.

  What can ever take the place of a woman?

  Of course for me that’s a bit of a problem.

  No, there is no cure for what ails us. Merano had never been as chic a spa as Montecatini, and is now neglected and quiet. There are few guests, and they have, until Mr. Nutley’s arrival, kept to themselves, as we do. Signor Goldini, the loquacious manager, is thrilled with our long booking and my extravagant tipping, and is obliging with any particular requests. He makes sure we have privacy when Ariel is feeling poorly, which is more often than not. He sent us a lovely grandfatherly pediatrician who lived near the closest village, for Bryony. Merano has become, after several months, a sort of safe haven, as unlikely a place as any for us to hide in plain sight after our escape from Belgium.

  No no no, enough about that. I’ve got so much to tell you, and our escape can wait. Right now, I need my afternoon constitutional.

  Castrati, and all the wounded, have always been soothed by the waters, you see. We sit in the sunshine, and each day is slightly warmer than the last, and we are grateful for the dulling, pleasurable sameness of the hours, the unobtrusiveness of the staff, and the thin plink of the water in the fountains. We get up with the sun to drink the hot, brackish water in the pump rooms, water full of radon and, I think, a hint of arsenic to improve the digestion.

  To kill what remains of the clientele, more likely.

  Matteo gets up, points toward the formal gardens, and strides away. He’s lost his feel for speech, although he babbles softly to Bryony when she fusses, soothing her. I know when she starts to talk she will imitate his lisp when she says, “Tomathino.”

  “He hasn’t said a word in two weeks,” Ariel says, watching him recede, his shoulders hunched.

  “There’s a woman with the Count of the Sorrows,” I tell her as a distraction. “Blond, pretty, expensive-looking. She’s crying. No, wait. Now she seems to be yelling. Hmmm. What can this mean? How can a woman be so sad and so imperious at the same time?”

  “How should I know? How old is she?”

  “Younger than she appears.” When she got up it looked as if the lines on her palms had been imprinted on her face, buried in her hands for too long. “Maybe it’s his daughter. Or a young wife he deserted who’s come to beg him to return home. Or a mistress who pawned all the jewelry.” I watch her walk away. “She doesn’t look at all like him. And he doesn’t appear to be the mistress type. Although you never can tell.”

  At that moment Mr. Nutley decides to saunter by. He tips his Panama hat, then abruptly turns on his heels and plops down on the chaise next to Ariel. She stares at him and freezes, and there is a sudden heaviness in the air around her. He has startled her so much that she’s too scared to move. He is after something; I feel waves of craving rising from his damp brow like mist on the fountains at daybreak.

  Mr. Nutley wipes his face with a starched handkerchief. It is the only part of the beige linen ensemble sagging on his dumpling body that is not wrinkled. Why he
chooses to wear a cravat while taking the waters is beyond me. I reminds me of Hogarth, and I don’t like it.

  “Good afternoon. I do believe it is getting warmer,” he announces, oblivious to the stormy look on my face. He licks his pinkie and lifts it to the nonexistent wind. “Quite stultifying. How lovely it would be to have a storm. A terrific onslaught. Oh yes. How lovely indeed.” He leans back, waving his hankie. I notice the initials J J A.

  “Jasper James Adlington,” he says. “Businessman. Homme d’ affaires. At your service.”

  “Thomas Smith. And this is Mrs. Hunter.”

  “How do you do. And where, may I ask, is the enchanting infant?”

  “With my brother, Matthew.”

  “I see. A male nanny. How divine. How I wish I’d had one. Ah, well.” He heaves a contented sigh. “Have you been here long? I must confess I do adore this place. So decrepit, so outré, so horribly Italian. They are masters of bumbling incompetence, I must say, losing one’s things or disappearing just as one needs them. And the food"all those noodles! Quite wearing for the digestion.”

  He is fussing with his handkerchief as he babbles, but I catch him looking askance, for the briefest of seconds, at Ariel’s magnificent emerald, the same color as her eyes, flanked by two yellow diamonds set into a golden band so thick it reaches up to her knuckle.

  Oh ho, Mr. Nutley, you sly jewelry-loving little devil, working the spa circuit of lonely rich ladies. He must have realized the pickings at Merano are very slim indeed.

  “Who are you?” he says suddenly to Ariel. “Why are you here?”