But maybe they were Germans. The war had ended a decade ago now, and even some Germans these days were finding the money to travel. The pair was roughly her age. She speculated what they might have been doing eleven or twelve years ago if indeed they were German, and she didn’t like the images that passed through her mind. She told herself once and for all that they were from the United States.
A thought came to her: Had Enrico and Teresa seen the irony that they were sheltering her from the Nazis in a tomb? They must have hoped she would live but believed she would die. Had the British arrived even a day later—perhaps hours, according to that British doctor—they most certainly would have found but a corpse.
She looked at her watch. It was finally time to go in. She started across the piazza toward the museum.
Giulia Rosati looked at the calendar, the telephone pressed against her ear, and found herself wrapping the cord anxiously around her fingers. “So,” she said to her husband, “the funerals will be in two days.”
“Yes. But I’ll be home tomorrow,” Vittore said. “Cristina and I are both hoping to leave for Rome in the morning. Our mother’s body—and Francesca’s—will be sent straight to Monte Volta.”
“What do you think we should do about the children?” Tatiana was two and had only a toddler’s connection with her grandmother. But Elisabetta was four and adored Beatrice. Neither child had even the vaguest notion that a woman named Francesca Rosati had ever existed and had been, technically, their aunt. Still, Giulia would soon have to tell Elisabetta about her grandmother, and she dreaded that. Beatrice had always been far more of a warm and enveloping nonna than a dignified marchesa around her granddaughter. Giulia resolved that when the children awoke from their naps, she would try to explain to her daughter that Nonna was in heaven with Mary and Jesus and the angels.
“I’m not sure. Obviously they understand nothing of death,” Vittore answered. Then he added, “Who would have thought I would ever have said something like that about a Rosati? For a while there, from Marco’s death to my father’s, it seemed we had more than our share.”
In the hallway she heard the officer flipping through the newspaper. Matteo was one of three police officers who were rotating in and out of her and Vittore’s apartment.
“I want to bring them,” she said after a moment. “Even if they don’t understand the significance of what’s occurring, I don’t want them out of my sight.”
“That’s fine,” he agreed.
“And it will be interesting for Elisabetta to see the crowd at the church in Monte Volta and the number of people who come to the Villa Chimera for your mother.”
“It will be a lot smaller than you expect.”
She recalled her father-in-law’s funeral. He had died blocks from where she was standing right now, while strolling one Sunday afternoon through the Villa Borghese. The war was still fresh in everyone’s memory and so the family had decided to have a graveside service only. The priest from the village had come to the estate, but otherwise no one but the family had been in attendance. Afterward, Beatrice had felt that they had made an egregious mistake and shamed her husband’s memory: he had done nothing, in her opinion, to be buried in a manner more befitting a criminal than a marchese. Vittore and Cristina never forgot their mother’s despair and vowed that her funeral would begin at the church in Monte Volta. At the time, however, they hadn’t imagined that the funeral would occur when their mother was a mere sixty-four. They had supposed it was still years and years in the distance.
“Don’t you think people have forgiven your parents by now?” Giulia asked. “The war was over and done ten years ago. And remember, until the middle of 1943, we were all on the same side as the Germans. Besides, your mother was a marchesa.”
“A silly title.”
“Maybe. But think of how many people once depended on your parents.”
“Or, arguably, how many people they exploited.”
“And don’t forget what a magical place the Villa Chimera once was. Really, Vittore—people forgive.”
He sighed. “Apparently, my love, not everyone does. Not everyone …”
Roberto Piredda, the director of the museum in Arezzo and for years the curator in charge of the collection’s Etruscan artifacts, was a giant of a man. Serafina wouldn’t have been surprised if he measured six and a half feet tall and tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His shoulders looked as if they wanted to split his sand-colored suit at the seams. She guessed he was in his late sixties now, his hair completely white, but he was still vibrant and vital and he struck her as a rather energetic patrician. His size made him seem a little intimidating, but she hoped he might in reality be a rather gentle giant.
“I was devastated when I read about the marchesa’s death,” he said to her as together they lumbered down the long corridor to his office. “I must have missed the detail in the first stories that Francesca was Antonio and Beatrice’s daughter-in-law.”
“It’s tragic. The whole family is tragic,” she said. Her heels echoed along the tile. She recalled what he had said to her when she had called him to set up this interview: he would never forget the sound of the jackboots in the hallways whenever the Germans from the Uffizi would come calling.
“I know just what you mean,” he agreed, nodding. “How is Vittore? Of all the Rosatis, of course I knew him best. After the war, my wife and I were both saddened when he chose the Vatican Museum over us. But we understood his decision. Still, my wife thought the world of him. We both did.”
“I think Vittore is fine,” she answered. “But honestly? I think he’s angry. He’s always going to be disappointed in his family. He’s always going to be a little ashamed of the … the concessions they made in the war. Himself, too. The way they allowed the Nazis into their lives. He hasn’t forgiven them and he hasn’t forgiven himself. As a result, he’s a pretty hard-edged customer.”
“Well, he wasn’t always angry. And I’m sure he’s not precisely himself these days.”
“No.”
Piredda’s office had three large windows, but they were shuttered against either the heat or the sunlight or both. His desk was drowning in papers, and a large worktable was awash in pottery chips, many black and red, on a white cloth. There were shallow metal tubs on each side, as well as a variety of tweezers and small brushes. On the shelves along one inside wall were four rows of broken vases and cracked pots—she recognized amphoras and alabastrons and kraters—each with a handwritten label with the name of the site where it had been unearthed taped beside it. And on the lowest shelf, beside a knapsack, were the tools she supposed he took with him on digs: Trowels and root cutters. A sieve. A utility saw. A dustpan just starting to rust.
Piredda lifted one of the two wooden chairs beside the worktable and spun it around so it faced the desk. Then he sat in his own leather chair, turned on the fan behind him, and aimed the air at her.
“I’m fine,” she said, carefully settling herself in the seat so the ladderback didn’t press against her scars.
“So how can I help you?” he said. “What do you need to know about the tombs that were found at the Villa Chimera?”
She was actually interested in the Germans and Italians who had been a part of Vittore’s world during the war, but she had told Piredda on the phone that the Rosati dig was her reason for coming. And so now she asked a cursory question about Etruscan burial practices and listened patiently as he discussed cremation versus inhumation, urns versus sarcophagi. He told her that he found the tombs at the Villa Chimera intriguing, even though it was a small site.
“We thought at first it was going to be a necropolis,” he told her, steepling his fingers together. “When the Rosatis showed us what they had discovered, I assumed this was but the tip of an iceberg. I expected another Cerveteri. The next Tarquinia.”
“But it’s not.”
“Far from it. Still, for its size it’s noteworthy. The artwork inside the chambers is brilliant. The artifacts we fo
und there are extraordinary. And it has evidence of both cremation and inhumation—and at roughly the same time.”
She nodded and thought of the images she had studied by matchlight on the ceiling and along the walls of the tombs. As if he were reading her mind, he asked, “Have you been there? To the Villa Chimera?”
“I have, yes.”
He smiled. “This is a very thorough investigation.”
“I was actually there during the war, too.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“What a small world! Did you know the Rosatis then?”
She thought about how she should answer, because this really wasn’t about her. She glanced around the room once more, and her eyes rested on the utility saw. On the serrated edge and the beveled point. The blade was about eight inches long. “I met the marchesa briefly,” she said, turning back to him. Then: “You were exclusively in Arezzo during the war, correct?”
“I was. I had to go to Florence sometimes. Siena, too. And sometimes they came to me.”
“The Germans.”
“The Germans, the Italians. Everyone who was interested in either looting or protecting our artistic heritage.”
“Did Vittore have enemies?”
He seemed to think about this. “Vittore’s still alive. It’s his mother and his sister-in-law who are dead. I think the better question is whether those two had enemies, don’t you?”
“I guess I mean the family. Did the Rosatis have enemies?”
“Who knows? Those were very messy years. We all made friends and we all made enemies. Most of us did whatever it took to stay alive. By 1944, if the Germans weren’t lining you up against a wall and shooting you for protecting the partisans, the partisans were lining you up against a wall and shooting you for collaborating with the Germans.”
“And you?”
“Me? I just tried to keep my head down.” He gazed for a long moment at the high collar of her blouse. At her neck. At the side of her face. “I have a sense, my dear, that you were not quite so fortunate.”
Reflexively she touched her head and discovered that the breeze from the fan had blown back her hair, exposing her ruined ear and the scars on her neck. Quickly she pulled her hair forward, pivoting in her seat so it wouldn’t happen again. “A birth defect,” she mumbled.
“No. Burned flesh,” he corrected her. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged and composed herself. Brought their conversation back to his war, not hers. “But you did allow the Germans to send some artifacts from the museum to the Gestapo chief in Rome,” she said. “True?”
He sat back. “I hate to play semantics, but I did not allow them. That would suggest I had a choice. I had none. And allowing a few Etruscan vases and pots to be sent to some fellow in Rome to help keep the peace? Let that be the worst of my crimes.”
“Have you been at a dig lately?” she asked him. “Off in the field?”
“Ah, I wish. There is a dig occurring right now near Volterra. But no, I am chained to my museum these days.” Then he motioned toward the shards on his worktable. “I insist that the students and the professors at the site bring me back the occasional scraps. It’s a tease, but a welcome one.”
She considered pointing at his knapsack and tools but thought better of the idea. Other than the dustpan with its Rorschach of rust, everything, including that saw, was spotless.
Which, she decided, might mean everything … or nothing at all.
Giulia Rosati awoke in the night with a start. She was aware that the moon was low and guessed even before feeling for the clock on the nightstand and peering carefully at the numerals that it was two or three in the morning. It was, she saw once her eyes had adjusted, a few minutes past three. Beside her in her bed were both children. Elisabetta had been devastated by the idea that she would never see her nonna again, even if it meant that her grandmother was smiling at her from heaven with the angels. The four-year-old had howled when Giulia had told her, which, in turn, had set little Tatiana to wailing. The only way Giulia had been able to settle them down was to bring them into her and Vittore’s bedroom, which was, in fact, where they had slept the past two nights and where she had presumed they would sleep until Vittore returned. She had not wanted her girls out of her sight.
Nevertheless, last night she hadn’t expected that they would all have retreated to the bedroom quite so early.
Which, Giulia told herself, was why she had woken up now. She had already been in bed a long while.
She saw that both children were sleeping peacefully, Tatiana on her back with one small arm draped across her tummy and Elisabetta curled on her side, her face buried deeply in the pillow. They were all on top of the sheets. Giulia sighed, relieved that everyone was safe, and for a moment listened to the sound of their breathing. A floor below them, outside on the street, she heard a car—a cab, she presumed, at this hour of the night.
Only then did it dawn on her: the light in the hallway was off; the lights in the living room were off. They were all supposed to be on. That idiot guard must have fallen asleep.
Furious, she climbed gingerly over Tatiana, careful not to wake her, and started across the bedroom toward the hallway. And then, in the doorway, she stopped dead in her tracks. The guard might have dozed off, but why would he have shut off the lights? It didn’t make sense.
She stood there, thinking, and then she felt it. The small, barely perceptible breeze. She and Vittore had lived in the apartment since before Elisabetta was born. She knew the drafts, the way the eddies of wind might cool their home during the night, and the way the heat from the kitchen when she was cooking might settle for hours in the living room; she could sense when a window was open or closed, which doors were ajar. And even before she had peered anxiously down the corridor, she knew that the front door was open. Wide open. She knew it—and all that anger turned instantly into terror.
1944
THE COUNTRY WAS not broken, and he was relieved. At least not all of it was. At least not yet. The sheer speed of the German retreat, Marco Rosati decided, was going to spare his beloved Crete Senesi, this land of vineyards and olive groves and endless fields of sunflowers south of Siena. Although the sun had been rising for easily forty-five minutes now, he continued to walk. In the night he had struggled up the long hill from San Quirico d’Orcia to Pienza, allowing himself in the smallest hours to actually traipse along the side of the road, where the travel was far easier than through the brush. One small convoy of German trucks had passed, but their arrival had been heralded by the sound of the engines struggling to make headway up the steep switchbacks, and Marco had had plenty of time to crawl into the broom and hide amid the yellow flowers.
About four in the morning, when he had reached the parapets on the outskirts of Pienza, he had murmured a small prayer of gratitude as he gazed up at the silhouette of the Duomo. Then he had detoured slightly to the west of the town, picking up the road to Monte Volta a kilometer beyond the arch that led to the piazza and the Corso il Rossellino. He had been walking for three nights, hiding and resting during the day, since he had managed to run away from the work crew somewhere to the southwest of Mount Amiata. He had been more or less slave labor for the past five months, repairing the roads and railway tracks the Allies had bombed or building fortifications it was clear the Nazis were never going to use. Instead they were going to make their stand, everyone understood, much farther north, along the mountains that crossed the boot beyond Florence. And that, perhaps, was how he had been able to escape. The Germans were so fixated on staying ahead of the Allies that the guards had grown lax; self-preservation mattered more than ensuring that none of the Italian help slunk away in the night. He was one of three former Italian army officers who understood where they were and how they might be able to walk to their homes within days or weeks, and who had decided it was time to disappear into the countryside. They had slipped into the woods and then separated, and Marco had thought less and less about those other two so
ldiers, especially as he drew nearer to Francesca and Massimo and Alessia. He had not been able to communicate with his family since May. A German captain—like Marco, an engineer—was going to spend a few hours taking in the hot springs in Bagno Vignoni on a brief leave and took mercy on him. He agreed to drop by the Villa Chimera and reassure the Rosatis that Marco was alive and well—or, in any case, as well as any of the laborers could be, all of them working long hours in the summer sun with a daily bread ration that wouldn’t have filled the stomach of a toddler. When Marco told the captain that his younger sister was involved with a German lieutenant, the fellow had grown especially obliging.
Now Marco wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. Before him loomed no more than a dozen kilometers, though two of them were almost straight up. The last hill was the steep climb to Castelmuzio. Then he would pass the fountain with the statue of a wingless angel beside a toothless lion. This wasn’t war damage; the sculptures had been that way since well before he was born. From the summit on the far side of Castelmuzio, he would be able to see his beloved Villa Chimera and the cedars that marked the entrance and dotted the hillsides. He sighed and inhaled deeply. The morning air was still cool. Ahead of him was a small farm he recognized from his childhood. He didn’t know the peasants who lived there, but they would know him, or at least they would know his name. Marco, the marchese’s older son. He decided he would rest there. He would knock on their door and sleep on whatever bed or straw they could offer. Then, after dark, he would go home. When his children awoke in the morning, he would be waiting.
Cristina sat on the ground and stared at the columns of black smoke and white dust as they curlicued together into the sky, her horse’s head on her knees. She was stroking the dead animal’s mane, but her eyes were on what was left of the medieval granary. A single tower. A moment ago there had been two.