The Faces of Angels (52 page)

‘She isn't the first,' I add. ‘There've been two others, one in January, and one about three weeks ago. I think they're connected to Indrizzio. That's why I've come. I think someone's copying him. It's almost as if they're trying to finish what he started.'

Gabriel nods, as though my turning up and telling him this out of the blue isn't completely crazy. Then he takes my elbow and we begin to walk again. Our feet pace the worn stones, treading in the footsteps of generations of men who walked here, heads bent and hands folded. My loafers click and flap, but Gabriel's wearing espadrilles, the old-fashioned, rope-soled kind, so his footsteps make no sound at all.

‘Are you very frightened?' he asks finally, and I realize no one else, not even Pierangelo, has actually asked me this before. They've assumed it. But they haven't asked.

‘I don't know.' The answer surprises me. ‘Maybe I'm just too tired to be frightened,' I add. ‘I can't sleep. I feel as if there are things I should know, and I don't. Or'—I struggle for how to put this—‘as if there are things I do know, but can't see. It's like someone touching you in a dark room. Sometimes I think it's Indrizzio. Then I think it's someone else. I came to see you because I thought—'

The words die on me. Probably it's fatigue, but I don't know if I'm sure now, how to end this sentence. Because I thought if I could ask the right question then, bingo, I'd suddenly know who killed Billy. It seems ridiculous, but Gabriel Fabbiacelli doesn't seem to mind. Perhaps that's what drew Eleanora to him, that he didn't mind, wasn't fazed or weirded out because she was a nun.

He throws me his sideways glance, and says, ‘To me it doesn't matter, signora, who killed Eleanora.' And the strange thing is, I know what he means. Annika said the same thing. In the end, the brute fact is the absence, not how it came about.

‘Whoever's doing this,' Gabriel adds, ‘must be in a great deal of pain. I think killing must be like a fungus that creeps across a canvas and eats what's there. Destroys something beautiful in the soul.' He smiles, suddenly. ‘Eleanora was a great soul,' he says. ‘Pure, you know? Some people are just put on earth like that. My mama says they haven't been born before, that they're brand new. But sometimes I think they've been born so many times before that all the creases have been smoothed out. Or maybe they've always been like that. Some people are just better.'

‘Yes, they are.' And it's a shame we can't always love them for it, I think. Eleanora Darnelli was lucky. Luckier than my husband was.

We walk on for a second, then I ask, ‘Could you tell me what she was like? I mean, as a person?'

I start to give him my spiel about what connects us all, or doesn't, and then I stop. I remember sitting on the cold floor of my room at Signora Bardino's, my door locked, studying the dead women's faces. Why lie? I wanted to know who they were. To meet the other members of the club.

‘I feel as if I know her.' I must be exhausted, but it's a relief to actually say the words, and somehow I don't think Gabriel will think this is crazy. ‘After Indrizzio attacked me,' I add, ‘when he almost killed me, I used to think I knew her. It was as though she'd touched me. Her hand, I mean. Sometimes I used to dream we were sisters.'

The words hang in the air between us, mix with the chattering of the sparrows and the sweet drifting scent of the first roses that cluster in the sparse beds, fighting for space with bushes of scraggly lavender.

‘Eleanora loved God,' Gabriel says finally. ‘And me. I consider that a great blessing in my life,' he adds. ‘That she loved me.'

He stops, and when he looks at me I see that his eyes are crystalline with tears. They don't fall, and he wipes them away with the back of his hand. It's an unusual gesture for a man, with nothing furtive or overly dramatic in it.

‘She was the youngest of a big family, all boys,' he goes on. ‘Her family didn't have much. That's why they sent her up here to school. I think she would have liked a sister.' I have no idea if that's true, but it's a kind thing to say, and I appreciate it. ‘She was funny,' Gabriel says. ‘She had—how do you say it?—a sense of humour like a fairy?'

‘Impish.' I use the English word.

He smiles at me. ‘Yes, that, exactly. That's why children loved her. She could laugh like them, you know? Play tricks. Probably her brothers taught her that. I think boys are better at it. Anyways, she wanted to be a teacher. Sometimes, I feel worse for the children who never knew her, you know? It was the convent school that interested her, and the orphanage they run.'

‘Because she'd been there?'

‘Sure. She wanted to pay something back.'

‘So it was a good experience that she had at the convent?'

‘People always sound surprised about that.' Gabriel stops, watching the sparrows. ‘I don't know why,' he says. ‘It's not so hard to believe. Nuns aren't ogres, they're just women who love God. And parents are not always wonderful for their children. Even mothers. A lot of kids are given away by parents who don't care anything for them. Or ignored. Or beaten. Hit. Even killed. More kids are killed by their parents than by strangers, did you know that? Everyone assumes that children should be with their mothers, but love comes from all kinds of people. Mothers don't have a monopoly on it. Sometimes they hurt more. It's only the things you love that can really destroy you. Not mine,' he adds.

Gabriel laughs, his face and voice changing as fast as wind moving over water. ‘My mama, she's an angel.' He kisses his fingertips and blows the kiss into the air. ‘You see,' he says. ‘I'm a good Italian boy.'

Standing here beside him, I can't imagine the effect this man must have had on a twenty-one-year-old Eleanora Darnelli; Sister Darnelli, who not only was a nun, but had lived virtually her entire life among nuns. Or actually, maybe I can.

He glances at my face and laughs again, as if he can see my thoughts, and I'm disconcerted to find myself blushing. After that, we walk for a few seconds in silence.

‘The day she told me she loved me, I knew I was the luckiest man on earth,' Gabriel says. ‘I asked her to marry me then. That afternoon. On my knees.'

‘And she said yes?'

‘Yes. Yes,' he nods. ‘But I knew it was hard for her. I knew what it would cost her. That's why I took the job in Ferrara. I wanted her to be sure. The last time she spoke to me, she was happy.'

‘And that was in January?'

He nods again. ‘The day before she died.'

‘Do you know if she ever had anything at all to do with San Miniato?'

Gabriel shakes his head, ‘No. I don't think so. She was up in Fiesole. And when she came to see me,' he shrugs, ‘we borrowed a friend's apartment near Fortezza di Basso.' There's no lasciviousness or embarrassment in this because she was a nun. Just the acknowledgement: we were in love, we had to have somewhere to go.

‘What about a priest called Rinaldo? Did you ever hear her mention him? Or a group called Opus Dei?'

Gabriel shakes his head again. ‘Who are they?'

I start to tell him, then I stop. ‘No one,' I say. ‘It doesn't matter. Tell me more about Eleanora. She was happy in the convent, but…?'

‘She wanted a bigger life.'

‘And you.'

Gabriel shrugs. ‘Sure, yes. And me. And she wanted to go to university. Not just for teaching, but for herself. For her heart. She loved poetry—Petrarch, Dante and the English. The “Romantics.”' He rolls the word in English across his tongue. ‘They were her favourites. That's why she took the name she took, you know,' he adds, ‘when she became a novice. Sister Maria Agnes. The Maria, well, that's nun name number one, but the Agnes, that was for that poem by the Englishman. The one who died, coughing in Rome.'

‘Keats.'

‘That's right. Keats.' He winks. ‘Next to God, when she was seventeen she loved Signor Keats.' Next to God and before she met you, I think.

Of course, I loved him too, from the time I was in High School, right after I wanted to be Jane Eyre and marry Mr Rochester. Soft, quiet, perfect Keats, who was so often drowned out by the bombast of Byron and the frantic beautiful madness of Shelley. One more thing Eleanora Darnelli and I have in common.

‘She wanted to know other things too,' Gabriel is saying. ‘About art, especially. That's the first thing Eleanora ever asked me, how I got my ideas. She wanted to know if they came to me in dreams.' He laughs at the memory.

‘And do they?' I ask.

‘Not often.'

Gabriel stops in front of a fresco set into the north wall of the cloister. ‘This is mine,' he says. ‘We're replacing some pieces. A lot was destroyed here during the war. Bombed, mostly by the Allies. That's one of the things the German Commissar here was most afraid of, that the British and the Americans would do what they did at Pisa and Padua and Cassino. So they arranged for the paintings to be taken away, hidden. But the frescoes—so much was lost. Now bits are being restored.'

Gabriel laughs and shakes his head. ‘The Americans bomb us, then they come and lecture us on how to fix it,' he says. ‘In time, maybe none of us will be able to tell the difference. After all, all of it's made by the hands of men.'

In the fresco that faces us, a group of angels crowds around Jesus. They hover over his shoulder, beating their great wings; they flock about him, reaching out to touch his hands, and hem and the bare skin of his sandalled feet. There must be fifteen or twenty of them, and their faces are exquisite, mobile and full of expression. But that's not what makes me gasp. It's one face, in the back of the group. Even here, he's taller than the others. The familiar golden eyes almost seem to move in the shadow of the cloister. He holds a lily in his long lean fingers, and, for just a second, I see not the white flower, but a crimson tulip.

‘That man.' I point. ‘In the back. What's his name?'

Gabriel looks at me, curious. ‘I don't know,' he says. ‘Do you?'

‘No. No, I don't.' I stare at the fresco, at the face so familiar that I expect it to move. Then I ask, ‘You've seen him too? You must have.'

‘I'm sure.' Gabriel shrugs. ‘I've seen them all. I collect faces, and eventually I paint them.' He points at a chubby laughing angel. ‘That's the woman in our
salumeria
. And,' he says, ‘that's Eleanora.'

He points again, and suddenly I see her, not dead as I've always seen her before, but alive and laughing, and looking out at me. Gabriel is watching me, studying my face. He nods towards my El Greco saint.

‘Who is he?' he asks again.

I shake my head. ‘I don't know. I see him, though. I gave him some flowers once because he—' I stop, embarrassed. ‘It doesn't matter.'

Gabriel touches my arm. ‘Just say it. It won't hurt.'

I look at him for a second, then I take a breath. ‘He, that man, in your painting, I see him, in the street. I mean, I have seen him, more than once. I think he works as one of the white men. I don't know who he is, but the strange thing is, he has my husband's eyes, my husband who was killed. They're not similar. I mean, when he looks at me, they're exactly the same.'

‘Then he's still with you.'

‘I don't believe in that kind of thing,' I say quickly. ‘And besides, we weren't—' My voice trickles off. ‘We weren't very happy together.'

Gabriel laughs. ‘What makes you think that makes any difference? That you didn't love him?'

I start to protest, to say that's not what I said. But of course, it is.

‘For that matter, why do you think that what you believe makes any difference?' Gabriel asks. ‘Our belief in it doesn't make love real, it exists on its own. Whether or not we want it to. We think we have a choice. We like to think we have choices about lots of things. But we don't.'

We start to walk again. ‘Isn't that really what Christ meant?' Gabriel shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘That we're loved, whether we like it or not?'

‘I don't know.' I shake my head. ‘Maybe.' I'm tempted to tell him that I don't think I'm very well qualified any more to have any idea what God means. The truth is, I probably never was.

‘I see Eleanora, all the time,' he says suddenly. ‘I mean, really see her. In the street or in a shop. Or sitting on a train. Truly. Sometimes I think there's a whole other Florence. A city of the dead that no one ever leaves. And sometimes a curtain is pulled back and we get a glimpse of it.' Gabriel shrugs. ‘Perhaps they're lonely,' he says, ‘and they need to look at us. Or perhaps we're the ones who are lonely, and we need to look at them. Maybe that's why we paint them over and over again.'

He laughs at the look on my face. ‘Haven't you noticed?' he asks. The professors and art historians analyse it and write about it and call it “The Florentine School,” but really all it is is what we see. Every painting in Florence, centuries of them, they're nothing but our ghosts. Ghosts, and the faces of angels.'

T
HE BUS RATTLES
and swings down the hills towards Porta Romana. I hold on, staring out of the windows at the big villas and green-leafed trees, my own face looking back at me, watery and indistinct. When we come into the city, the doors open and close, and more faces flick by, coming out of shops, standing in lines, one after the other, as if they're pages of a book being riffled by the wind.

Angels, Gabriel Fabbiacelli said, and ghosts, as though there was no difference. I think of him seeing Eleanora and me seeing Ty. I didn't ask Isabella Lucchese if she sees her sister, if she glimpses Benedetta on the street. But maybe she does. And maybe Rosa Fusarno and Ginevra Montelleone's mother will someday see their daughters alive in the faces of other women's children.