Juliet. Anne Fortier

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СКАЧАТЬ room, apologizing all the way. ‘I am so sorry!’ Peppo kept saying, over and over, too mortified even to look me in the eye. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with her! I think she is going crazy!’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, too stunned to feel anything, ‘I don’t blame her for not believing it. It’s all so new, even for me.’

      ‘Let us go for a little walk,’ said Peppo, still flustered, ‘and come back later. It is time I show you their graves.’

      

      The village cemetery was a welcoming, sleepy oasis, and very different from any other graveyard I had ever seen. The whole place was a maze of white, freestanding walls with no roof, and the walls themselves were a mosaic of graves from top to bottom. Names, dates, and photos identified the individuals dwelling behind the marble slabs, and brass sconces held—on behalf of the temporarily incapacitated host—flowers brought by visitors.

      ‘Here.’ Peppo had a hand on my shoulder for support, but that did not prevent him from gallantly opening a squeaky iron gate and letting us both into a small shrine off the main path. ‘This is part of the old Tolomei…hmm…sepulchre. Most of it is underground, and we don’t go down there any more. Up here is better.’

      ‘It is beautiful.’ I stepped into the small room and looked around at the many marble plates and the bouquet of fresh flowers standing on the altar. A candle was burning steadily in a red glass bowl that seemed vaguely familiar to me, indicating that the Tolomei sepulchre was a place carefully maintained by the family. I suddenly felt a stab of guilt that I was here alone, without Janice, but I quickly shook it off. If she had been here, she would most likely have ruined the moment with a sarky comment.

      ‘This is your father,’ pointed Peppo, ‘and your mother right next to him.’ He paused, lost in memory. ‘She was so young. I thought she would be alive long after I was gone.’

      I looked at the two marble plates that were all that was left of Professor Patrizio Scipione Tolomei and his wife, Diane Lloyd Tolomei, and felt my heart flutter. For as long as I could remember, my parents had been little more than distant shadows in a daydream, and I had never imagined I would one day find myself as close to them—at least physically—as this. Even when fantasizing about travelling to Italy, for some reason it had never occurred to me that my first duty upon arrival must be to find their graves, and I felt a warm wave of gratitude towards Peppo for helping me do the right thing.

      ‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, squeezing his hand, which was still resting on my shoulder.

      ‘It was a great tragedy the way they died,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and that all Patrizio’s work was lost in the fire. He had a beautiful farm in Malamarenda—all gone. After the funeral your mother bought a little house near Montepulciano and lived there alone with the twins—with you and your sister—but she was never the same. She came to put flowers on his grave every Sunday, but’—he paused to pull a handkerchief from his pocket—‘she was never happy again.’

      ‘Wait a minute.’ I stared at the dates on my parents’ graves. ‘My father died before my mother? I always thought they died together.’ But even as I spoke, I could see that the dates confirmed the new truth; my father had died more than two years before my mother. ‘What fire?’

      ‘Someone—no, I shouldn’t say that.’ Peppo frowned at himself. ‘There was a fire, a terrible fire. Your father’s farm burned down. Your mother was lucky; she was in Siena, shopping, with you girls. It was a great, great tragedy. I would have said that God held his hand over her, but then two years later…’

      ‘The car accident,’ I muttered.

      ‘Well…’ Peppo dug the toe of his shoe into the ground. ‘I don’t know the truth. Nobody knows the truth. But’—he finally met my eyes—‘I always suspected that the Salimbenis had a hand in it.’

      I didn’t know what to say to this. I pictured Eva Maria and her suitcase full of clothes sitting in my hotel room. She had been so kind to me, so eager to make friends.

      ‘There was a young man,’ Peppo went on, ‘Luciano Salimbeni. He was a troublemaker. There were rumours. I don’t want to…’ Peppo glanced at me nervously. ‘The fire. The fire that killed your father. They say it was not an accident. They say someone wanted to murder him and destroy his research. It was terrible. Such a beautiful house. But you know, I think your mother saved something from the house. Something important. Documents. She was afraid to talk about it, but after the fire, she began to ask strange questions about…things.’

      ‘What kind of things?’

      ‘All kinds. I didn’t know the answers. She asked me about the Salimbenis. About secret tunnels underground. She wanted to find a grave. It was something to do with the plague.’

      ‘The…bubonic plague?’

      ‘Yes, the big one. In 1348.’ Peppo cleared his throat, not comfortable with the subject. ‘You see, your mother believed that there is an old curse that is still haunting the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis. And she was trying to find out how to stop it. She was obsessed with this idea. I wanted to believe her, but…’ He pulled at his shirt collar as if he suddenly felt hot. ‘She was so determined. She was convinced that we were all cursed. Death. Destruction. Accidents. A plague on both our houses… that is what she used to say.’ He sighed deeply, reliving the pain of the past. ‘She always quoted Shakespeare. She took it very seriously…Romeo and Juliet. She thought that it had happened right here, in Siena. She had a theory…’ Peppo shook his head dismissively. ‘She was obsessed with it. I don’t know. I am not a professor. All I know is that there was a man, Luciano Salimbeni, who wanted to find a treasure.’

      I could not help myself, I had to ask: ‘What kind of treasure?’

      ‘Who knows?’ Peppo threw up his arms. ‘Your father spent all his time researching old legends. He was always talking about lost treasures. But your mother told me about something once—oh, what did she call it?—I think she called it Juliet’s Eyes. I don’t know what she meant, but I think it was very valuable, and I think it was what Luciano Salimbeni was after.’

      I was dying to know more, but by now Peppo was looking very distressed, almost ill, and he swayed and grabbed my arm for balance. ‘If I was you,’ he went on, ‘I would be very, very careful. And I would not trust anyone with the name of Salimbeni.’ Seeing my expression, he frowned. ‘You think I am pazzo… crazy? Here we are, standing by the grave of a young woman who died before her time. She was your mother. Who am I to tell you who did this to her, and why?’ His grip tightened. ‘She is dead. Your father is dead. That is all I know. But my old Tolomei heart tells me that you must be careful.’

      When we were seniors in high school, Janice and I had both volunteered for the annual play—as it so happened, it was Romeo and Juliet. After the auditions Janice was cast as Juliet, while I was to be a tree in the Capulet orchard. She, of course, spent more time on her nails than on memorizing the dialogue, and whenever we rehearsed the balcony scene, I would be the one to whisper her lines to her, being, after all, conveniently located onstage with branches for arms.

      On opening night, however, she was particularly horrible to me. As we sat in makeup, she kept laughing at my brown face and pulling the leaves out of my hair, while she was being dolled up with blond braids and rosy cheeks, and by the time the balcony scene rolled around, I was in no mood to cover for her. In fact, I did quite the opposite. When Romeo said, ‘What shall I swear by?’ I whispered, ‘Three words!’

      And СКАЧАТЬ