he gave out a tremulous squeal of joy, “Antonia!”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s me.”
He appeared to have been waiting in the foyer; now, as he shuffled back into the library, his thin knobbly hands fumbled in his breast pocket in search of his cigarettes.
“Scusi, ha una sigaretta?”
“There’s a pack of Marlboros on the desk.”
“Grazie, grazie.”
Long minutes went by after his jerky efforts to light the cigarette; then the obvious question was asked, “Any news?”
“Not so far,” I said.
“The investigatore was here.”
“Who?”
“Agente di polizia. They put Missing Person signs all over London. I said to offer one thousand pounds reward. That’s okay? You can pay?”
“Of course. I would have done the same if I could think straight.”
“The agente said the sniffing dogs followed her smell to York Bridge, in Regent’s Park.” He paused and seemed to struggle with a language he was not comfortable with. “What was Antonia doing at York Bridge? Voglio dire, why did she go there?”
“It’s one of her favourite walks. More so after she got the dog.”
I stirred the logs in the fireplace and felt their heat on my cheeks, my neck. Steaming hot and surprisingly disagreeable. The crackling noises were unable to drown out Piero’s footsteps pacing back and forth, followed by his heavily accented words.
“The agente asked if Antonia is depressed.”
“I wonder how they would know that.”
“Know? She is depressed?”
“Yes.”
He looked startled by the information, which might imply his own failure as an intuitive parent.
“I had no idea,” he mumbled, through a cloud of smoke.
“Nothing dreadful,” I said. “More like the blues. Or a locked-up sadness she’s been unable to express.”
He nodded, dropping ashes in the fireplace, then asked through another cloud of smoke, “You have marriage problems?”
I felt myself blush and quickly turned away, leafing through the bundle of letters, bills, gallery accounts, that were piled up on the desk.
“We do,” I said, at last. “But no more than any other couple.”
“The agente thinks Antonia has a lover. That is true?”
I slammed my fist on the desk and turned to him a face both outraged and distraught.
“Those bastards,” I said. “How dare they accuse her of infidelity?”
Startled by my outburst, he hastened to offer an explanation. “The agente said a jealous husband, un cornuto, feels a sudden hurt. Mi perdoni, Trevor,” he added miserably. “That’s what he said.”
I felt immensely sorry for him – mostly because he was unaware of the depths of sorrow he might be destined to experience. I wished I could play straight with him, or, at least, that I could stamp out the fear in his eyes.
“The agente wants to talk with you,” he said quietly.
“They already have. But I’ll talk to them again and again. As long as necessary.”
“With Dante, too.”
“He’s a good friend. He’ll do whatever he can to help.”
“He came this afternoon.”
“Did he?” I said, feigning surprise.
“Brought a bottle of Montepulciano. To calm the nerves. Want some? A glass of red wine is not going to hurt while we wait.”
Till when? I wondered, as I uncorked the bottle and poured two large goblets. For him there was no harm in waiting. He enjoyed the protection of his ignorance, which justified his hope, his optimism. Unlike my own devastation, which left me unanchored, a man with a future as murky as his past.
“Antonia wrote me a letter a month ago,” he said, gulping down his wine. “Lo stavo leggendo when you came in. Want to hear the funny part? I translate for you.
“Please.”
He put on his reading glasses and scanned the letter for the morsel that might amuse me.
“So, you see, Papa,” he recited, “the English people think that all we do is eat and drink and get fat. Which makes me laugh so much when they see that I’m tall as a pine tree and skinny as…”
He interrupted himself, searching for a word. “Hmm… What you call, in the fields, what frightens birds?”
“Scarecrow.”
“…and skinny as a scarecrow.”
He folded the letter and returned it to his breast pocket.
“Thanks, Piero,” I said, relieved that there appeared to be no mention of quarrels, of anger, of guilt, of wounding and being wounded.
The wine was beginning to soothe my nerves. I no longer felt threatened, on the brink of just enough misery to spill a burst of mea culpa into our dialogue. I swirled the last of the wine in my goblet, inching toward a lighter mood.
“I need to change my clothes and tidy up a bit,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ve looked in the mirror since –”
“I understand,” he said, and smiled his Antonia smile, bright and disturbingly haunting.
“Then we can go out and have supper somewhere. What do you think?”
He didn’t respond for a long time. When at last he did, he spoke hesitantly, as if afraid he might say more than he had intended.
“I’m just a foolish man, sometimes. And I don’t have… how you say, things with value. Except my daughter and my faith.” He paused, and added humbly, “Molto bella la fede, Trevor. So I go and pray now. I pray that Antonia comes home soon.”
SEVEN
June 16, 2005
I rushed out of my home as if I were leaving a spook house. Couldn’t get away fast enough. But outside the headlines were vociferous.
REGENT’S PARK MYSTERY: SUICIDE OR MURDER? MISSING LOCAL RESIDENT LAST SEEN IN PARK. FEW CLUES IN WOMAN’S DISAPPEARANCE. TRAIL DEAD ENDS AT BRIDGE.
However fast
