A Rather Curious Engagement (33 page)

Now I did gulp. That was a tall order from the spirit world. I doubted I was up to the task. Surely they must be looking for some other redhead.

Jeremy, ever one to get down to brass tacks, said in his calm way, “Diamanta. We are looking for a Lion aquamanile that we heard was taken from this place. Is this true, and how did you come to possess it?”

Diamanta said very simply, “It belonged to our family for many, many years, because the head of this house made it with his own hands for the woman he loved.”

“Ohhhh!” I breathed. I turned to Jeremy. “The boy who made the aquamanile and fell in love with the German girl!” I turned to the girl. “Oh, what was his name?” I said. “Nobody I talked to seems to know.”

Diamanta stood up. “Come,” she said. “Grandmother wishes to see you.”

She led us out of the formal parlor, past a few closed doors and into a kitchen at the back where four women were sitting: a very old lady, shelling peas into a basin in her lap; a middle-aged woman, stirring something in a big cast-iron pot on the stove, and two girls in gingham dresses, one slightly older who was braiding the hair of the younger one. The adult women wore black. From the way they looked at Diamanta, I could see that she was the pride of her family, the city girl who had made good, but came back to visit and help her relatives.

Diamanta gestured for me to approach the old lady. As I drew closer, I saw that the woman had strange bluish-white eyes that seemed to look permanently upward; and I realized that she was blind, and was performing her task by “feel” rather than by sight. This was the grandmother who had predicted my arrival.

“Here she is,” Diamanta said softly to the old woman, who turned her head and then put aside the bowl she’d had in her lap. Diamanta gestured to the little girls, and they abandoned the kitchen chairs they were seated on so that Jeremy and I could sit by the grandmother. The old woman waited, her head cocked, alert, as if listening to the breeze that wafted in through the open windows of the kitchen.

“Talk to her,” Diamanta murmured to me. “Just tell her your name, and why you came.”

“Will she understand English, or . . . French?” I asked, hesitantly.

“It doesn’t matter what you say. Just talk to her.”

So in English, I said my name, and said that I had come to learn about the Lion, and the young people who, many years ago, had fallen in love but were parted.

“Please, tell us your family’s story about the Lion, and what happened to your ancestor who made it,” I concluded. Diamanta translated this question for her. The grandmother had been listening closely to the sound of my voice, and now she leaned forward, picked up my hand and placed it in her own. It was like being grasped by a gnarled old tree.

What happened next is somewhat open to interpretation. Jeremy told me later that, technically, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. But I felt something, like a distinct wave of energy, passing through me, as the grandmother uttered several words that I did not understand. The effect on the room was palpable, and even Jeremy admitted this later.

The grandmother continued to speak in a low rumbling murmur. Diamanta rapidly translated for us. I listened carefully, not only to Diamanta, but to the lyrical rise and fall of the grandmother’s voice with its poetic inflections that spoke to me on another level.

“Our family goes back many, many years. The person you want to know about was named Paolo. He left Corsica when he was a very young man, to apprentice in Vienna for a German metal-worker. His boss taught him to read and write. They say Paolo was greatly gifted with his hands, and could sculpt animals out of clay that were, how would you say, ‘real enough to bite you.’ Everyone wanted the things that Paolo made.

“One day, a fine German man asked Paolo to make a Lion for his daughter’s piano teacher, who was a great musical
maestro
. Paolo fell in love with the rich man’s daughter, whose name was Greta. Her father would not let her marry a poor boy, and the man was so displeased that he would not pay for the beautiful Lion when it was done, and ordered it to be returned. Paolo was fired from his job. But Paolo and Greta plotted secretly to run away together, until her brothers found out, and locked her in her room so she could not get out of the house! Then, one night, Greta’s brothers went out to ‘teach Paolo a lesson.’ But Greta found a way to warn him, through a servant who was returning the Lion to him. The servant told Paolo to flee for his life, and said that Greta promised that she would find him again and they would be reunited before their son was born.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Their
son
?” This was more than Mr. Donaldson had known.

As the old woman continued, Diamanta kept translating. “Once back in Corsica, Paolo tried to get word to Greta, but she had returned to Germany and he could not find her. By this time Paolo had become gravely ill with pneumonia, but he kept hoping that Greta would appear at his bedside and present him with his son. But the girl never came, and he died.”

There was a long silence.

“What a sad story,” I said softly. I hesitated. “So, it was Paolo’s grave that you made the procession to in November?”

Diamanta nodded. I had been mindful all along of something I’d learned from an art history teacher, years ago. When searching for family secrets, he said,
Tombstones speak
. Tentatively, I asked if we could see Paolo’s grave.

Diamanta translated this for the older woman, who paused a long time. I held my breath, as the moment hovered over us. Then the grandmother murmured something. Diamanta said to us, “Come with me.”

Jeremy had been watching the whole time, like a bodyguard, glancing round at everyone else in the room. As we moved to follow Diamanta out the kitchen door which led to the back of the house, the middle-aged woman at the stove suddenly looked up and spoke in an angry tone which even my ears knew meant something along the lines of,
What are you, crazy? Don’t show her anything, look where it led the last time a stranger visited.
The two little girls stopped chattering and looked wary. The grandmother gave a short, decisive answer, holding up the index finger of her right hand, indicating that she had the last word on the subject.

“You must understand,” Diamanta murmured when she saw my expression, “that we have always been a very private family. Only once did we allow a stranger in, and he took pictures that caused us to be robbed. But Grandmother understands that you are here to restore the balance that was disturbed. I will take you now to Paolo’s grave.”

Diamanta silently led us out the back door, beyond a fenced-in garden redolent of flowers, vegetables and herbs, through an arched wooden gate that led us up a grassy hill. The surrounding shrubbery was fragrant, and when I asked Diamanta about it, she told me that it was called
maquis
, a wild flowering variety that grew very tall and could be used as an herb in cooking.

We reached the crest of the hill, where, flanked on two sides by low stone walls and eucalyptus trees, was a small hut carved right into the rocky cliff. This, she told us, was a shepherd’s hut which had been converted into a family crypt. I recognized it from Clive’s photo. Diamanta had a key that unlocked it. We stepped inside. It was cool and damp, with an earthen floor. The walls were of carved rock.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that the floor of the hut had three headstones in an area that was marked off by small round flat stones all around it. Diamanta had brought a flashlight, and now she pointed at the headstone in the center, which was the largest and most prominent.

“There Paolo sleeps,” she said simply. I felt a slight chill on my skin, rippling up to my neck. But, I had come very far for these answers. I had to see it. Jeremy and I leaned forward intently, reading the name carved on the headstone. There was no birth date, only the date of his death. It said
Paolo Andria
on the biggest stone, followed by the words
padre caro, 1805
.

“Dear father,”
I murmured.

I asked Diamanta if I could make a rubbing of the tombstone. When I assured her that we would take care not to damage the stone, she agreed. I had brought my tools with me—a roll of white paper, and colored chalk. Jeremy held the paper against the headstone, while I carefully rubbed the chalk stick across the letters and numbers. When I was done, the tombstone inscriptions appeared on the paper as ghostly white writing against the colored background.

Jeremy nudged me, nodding toward the smaller gravestone on the left. As I peered closer, Diamanta aimed her flashlight at it. The letters were harder to read, so we traced them on the paper with the chalk, and I read them aloud as each letter emerged:
G-R-E-T-A . . .

“Von Norbert!” Jeremy whispered. “No wonder we’ve got two families telling the same story.”

“Look.” I pointed to the last stone, the one on the right, which bore the name
Aldo Andria von Norbert
, and the words
figlio amato, 1884
.

“Beloved son,” I said. “Wow. This must be the child of Greta and Paolo. Is that right?” I asked Diamanta. She nodded. “But your grandmother said that Greta didn’t show up,” I reminded her.

“Years later,” Diamanta explained. She led us out of the hut, and she sat on one of the low stone walls that flanked it. She had left the door to the hut ajar. Squinting a little in the sunlight, gazing up at us, she continued the tale of the Lion.

“You see, after Paolo died, his parents and brothers kept the Lion in the house. Meanwhile, back in Germany, Paolo’s son, Aldo, was raised by his mother, Greta, as if he were the legitimate son of her rich old German husband. When Aldo grew up to be a young man, his mother told him the truth about his real father. Aldo insisted he must meet Paolo, so his mother agreed to go with him to Corsica. She did not know that Paolo had died so long ago, until she came to this house, and learned the truth. But, the voyage and the shock were too much for Greta, and she died here and was buried next to Paolo.”

“And—the Lion?” Jeremy asked. “What happened to it?”

“Aldo, the son, asked to buy the Lion so that he could keep it as a memorial of his parents. My family was poor then, and Paolo’s brothers agreed to sell it. Aldo returned to Germany, with the Lion.”

“But,” I said, “Aldo is buried here.”

“Yes,” said Diamanta, “because when Aldo went back to Germany without his mother, the von Norbert family blamed him for her death. And now that everyone knew whose child Aldo really was, his stepfather disinherited him. His rich stepbrother, Rolf, was always envious of the love that Greta had for Aldo, and he was heartbroken over her death. So, Rolf took the Lion, claiming it rightfully belonged to his family. Aldo stole it back from him, and ran away back here to Corsica, just as his own father had done.”

“And the Lion was kept here ever since?” I asked.

“No,” said Jeremy, “what about the auction in Frankfurt in 1890?”

Diamanta looked at him appreciatively. “You are quite right,” she said. “Aldo married and raised his own family here. He had twin grandsons. They were restless young men, tired of being poor. They wanted to sell the Lion, even though the village
mazzera
told them it would be a terrible mistake, taking the Lion away from here, for it would be like stealing the soul of their grandfather, and they would both die within a year.”

At the mention of the
mazzera
, Jeremy elbowed me. I had to ask.

“Diamanta,” I said hesitantly, “is your grandmother a
mazzera
?”

“Oh, no!” she replied. “My grandmother has the second sight, but she is not a
mazzera
. There’s a flower-lady, down by the pier, who is.”

“Oh!” I said to Jeremy. I remembered that the Count had told us that a woman put a curse on him just before he left Corsica. Only he thought she was a beggar.

“But what happened to Aldo’s grandsons in 1890?” Jeremy asked Diamanta.

“The twins ignored the
mazzera
’s warning, and took the Lion to a dealer in Frankfurt, who agreed to sell it at auction for them. But, that very week, one of the brothers was murdered in the streets for his pocket money. The other one took this as a sign, so he demanded the Lion back from the auction, and he fled, bringing the Lion home with him. Ever since then, once a year, on the night of the dead when our ancestors ‘return’ to inspect their graves, the family carries the Lion to Paolo’s grave, to prove to his spirit that the Lion still resides here. They lock it in the crypt on that night, to appease Paolo’s soul. The next morning, they unlock the grave and return the Lion to the house for safekeeping. But as you know, after that photograph came out, with all the publicity, the Lion was stolen right out of our house.”

“You’ve seen this Lion?” Jeremy asked. Diamanta nodded.

“Oh, yes. It always had a place of honor in this house, with its own cupboard. I remember each year, dressing up for the procession from the church, with candles and flowers, and the eldest male in the family would carry the Lion from the house to this grave. And the next morning he would bring it back here.”

“Did you ever look inside the Lion?” Jeremy asked. She shook her head.

“No, that was not possible, for it was sealed shut.”

I reached into my purse for the sketchpad and pencil. “Diamanta, ” I said, “could you tell me exactly what the Lion looks like?”

Intrigued, she described it, watching the pad as I sketched it out. Little by little, it took a form and shape. Standing on all fours, big wild mane, tail, ferocious face . . .

“And don’t forget the monkey,” she said. My pencil stopped. I paused.

“What monkey?” Jeremy asked.

“Oh, it had a funny little monkey in its mouth,” Diamanta said. “The body was sticking inside, so you really only saw the arms and the head and the face. You know of course who the monkey resembled. ”