The Faces of Angels (54 page)

I think of the radio, the priest, and what Dinya's silent life must be like, closeted below our apartment with Signora Raguzza. Maybe life was much the same for Karel Indrizzio. I don't know how much English he spoke, or Italian either.

‘How much of the economy do you think is made up of that?'

‘Illegals?' Sophie shrugs. ‘A lot. Most of it probably, in service anyways. Everyone complains about the Albanians and the Roma, but no one else wants to do those jobs.'

I pour boiling water into the mugs and the teabags float to the surface like little bloated animals. The concoction I've brewed up is roughly the colour of sewer water, but it seems to cheer Sophie up. ‘Foul!' she exclaims when she tastes hers.

The tea is revolting, but in a bracing way, sort of like those awful herb liqueurs. Sophie regards me over the rim of her mug, her face suddenly impish. ‘I knew you were Catholic,' she says. ‘I could tell, the first time I saw you.'

‘How?'

She shrugs. ‘The way you walk.'

This is ridiculous and we both laugh, but I know what she means. It's tribal recognition, something like the way zebras identify each other from the pattern of their stripes. She grins at me, and I see the seventeen-year-old Sophie—round-faced and soft, a little shy, but gutsy. All of a sudden I hate Big Paolo too. He should have picked on someone who was fair game, some lean, sharp-boned creature who cares about silk sofas and wouldn't have fallen in love with him.

‘At our convent,' Sophie says, ‘everyone was frightfully interested in the martyrs, and had anorexia.'

‘We made macramé pot-holders.'

She giggles, reaches for the bottle and pours a little more into both of our mugs. ‘I think things are nicer in America,' she says.

We sip our tea, which is mainly whisky now, for a few more seconds. Then Sophie puts her mug down. ‘Did I scare you?'

I consider this. The light's falling onto the irises, making them look as if they're made of velvet. A couple of dust motes swirl through the air. Below us I hear footsteps and the sound of the security gate clanging closed. ‘A little.'

‘I'm sorry.' She studies her immaculate pink-polished fingernails. They're cut short and rounded, like a child's. ‘My mother says I cry like a broken Hoover. I think people who don't cry much don't really know how to do it properly.' She glances up at me. ‘It's not the affair, you know,' she says. ‘I've known about that for ages. He takes her away sometimes, on “business trips.” I don't mind. I haven't minded for a long time, not until I knew I was going to have this baby.' She shakes her head and reaches for her mug. ‘I actually used to think I'd make a life for us in England. Me and Little Paolo. I had it all worked out in my head. Don't know why,' Sophie adds. ‘I hate England.'

She studies the flowers on the mug, then says, ‘It was the letter that did it. The fact he went and discussed it all with some man in an office and then had them write to me like that.' She looks up. ‘I think that really proves he hates me,' she says.

‘Take Paolo anyways,' I say suddenly. ‘Just take him and go.'

Sophie smiles as if this is a nice idea, but impossible. ‘I'll be all right,' she says, more for herself than for me. She sounds tired. Deflated. As if the tea, or maybe the whisky, has drowned the little flame of defiance that flared up in her.

‘Sophie, look, if I can do anything—'

‘No.' Sophie shakes her head. ‘No, honestly. I'll be fine.' She takes a sip of her tea. ‘It was the shock, that's all. Of the letter. I'm sorry I frightened you.' She laughs but the look in her eyes isn't funny. ‘I'm better now,' she says. ‘Really. I'll get used to it.'

I get up to leave maybe ten minutes later. Sophie says she has to meet Paolo at school, and while she runs upstairs to change out of her crumpled crying clothes I wash the mugs in the white porcelain sink. Then I wait for her in the big room, looking at the portraits and the bowls of flowers, and imagining Sophie spending the next eighteen years here, waiting for her children to grow up so she can leave, and getting used to it.

Back in Signora Bardino's apartment, I lay clothes out on the bed. Pierangelo will be here any minute. I survey my collection of high-necked blouses and turtlenecks, my jeans, the skirt and jacket I bought to win Piero back when I was convinced Graziella was a secret girlfriend. My life to date, piled up in a few square feet. I have some stuff in Philly, but nothing I really care about, and it seems odd to be packing the past into a duffel bag and a suitcase. If there is anything of Billy's I want to remember her by, I think, I should take it now. I won't have another chance.

I know she wouldn't mind, but in the end there isn't much. Her clothes are all too big for me, and so are her shoes. I try a few on anyways, but they won't work. The black-patent lace-up almost fits, and it might be nice with pants, but I can't find the other one, even under the bed, so I abandon it, and take a few of her books instead, the ones Kirk left—her Burkhardt, her dog-eared copies of Gombrich and
The Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance
—more for sentimentality than anything else. I'm tempted by the blue wristwatch she never wore, but it has an engraving on the back, ‘B. 4/7/92', so it was probably a gift her family would like back. I do snag the belt and earrings I borrowed. No one will miss those.

The buzzer is still broken, so Pierangelo calls when he arrives. He offers to park and come up and help me, but I tell him not to bother. All I have to do is put my bags in the elevator, close the door and say goodbye.

Outside by the lemon pots I turn and look back, but this time there's not even a shadow behind the linen panels of the French windows. I can't hear the echo of Billy's laughter, or smell her cigarette smoke. She's gone.

The next day is Saturday, and Pierangelo and I sleep late, go out for a long lunch, and generally laze about. The football is on in the evening, and when I eventually finish unpacking and come into the living room, I find Pierangelo on the couch, bouncing up and down, punching wildly and swearing every time the ball leaves the ground. He doesn't look especially stylish or elegant, but he does look completely happy, and I wonder how much of a bitch Monika must have been to outlaw something so harmless that gives him so much pleasure. Don't be stingy on the little things, I think, as I watch him. That's one of my resolutions for this marriage. Little things make up life. I kiss the top of his curly head as I pass by on my way to the kitchen.

Our Chinese food has been delivered and the boxes are ranged across the counter. The air smells distinctly of egg roll, something else Monika probably wouldn't approve of. I poke through the offerings to see what tempts me, settle on pork fried rice and some kind of chicken, and have just spooned it onto a plate when the phone rings. It's Henry, wanting to know if I have a picture of Billy. Signora Bardino wants to use one for the Remembrance. Frankly, the idea gives me the creeps, but after he promises there'll be no votive candles, I say I'll see what I can do. When I ask why Kirk can't help, Henry hems and haws, then says that actually Kirk got in a fight with La Signora about the Remembrance, and has gone off to Venice in a snit. It's not all bad, though, he has convinced Ellen not to read Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

‘Oh, Henry, I was joking. Browning's not that bad.'

‘Yes, she is,' Henry says. ‘And Ellen's worse. But now you have to come up with something else for her to read instead.'

‘“I Sing the Body Electric”?'

‘Please,' Henry says, ‘we're talking Signora Bardino here. And while you're at it, she feels it should have an Italian connection.'

‘Easy. Keats.'

‘Better than Shelley?'

‘Much better than Shelley.' Although I think Billy herself would probably have preferred Byron. They would have gotten along like a house on fire. She would have just loved the pet bear.

Henry is asking me which poem, and I suggest ‘Ode to a Nightingale,' or maybe one of the sonnets, let me think about it. We can discuss it tomorrow. He's happy with this, but after he hangs up I stand by the phone, staring at my plate. The football blares from the other room and Piero shouts, ‘
Che cosa diavolo fai!
' What are you doing, you idiot! And rushes in for another beer and rushes out again.

I love ‘Ode to a Nightingale.' Who wouldn't? But my favourite Keats has always been the first one I ever learned. In High School I had to memorize a poem and I chose part of ‘The Eve of St Agnes.' Mamaw suggested it, and she helped me learn it, covering the page with her hand and prompting me. We liked the part about the owl who ‘for all his feathers was a-cold,' and the hare who ‘limp'd trembling through the frozen grass.' Mamaw said the holy man praying over his frozen rosary reminded her of Pennsylvanian winters and of freezing at midnight Mass when she was a girl, before they had real heaters. It was cold in the poem because St Agnes' Eve is in January, which is odd, because Eleanora took the name Agnes because of Keats, and that's when she was killed.

I feel as if someone's slapped me.

Putting my plate down, very slowly, I adjust the fork. Then, as gently as I can, I open the drawer where Pierangelo keeps the phone books and appliance pamphlets. I lift each one aside, as if I'm handling something fragile, and pick out Monika's old Catholic calendar. As I stare at the pages, a picture forms in my mind. Colour bleeds in from the edges, filling it out. Making it real. I shake my head to clear it, but the picture's still there. Walking down the hall to Pierangelo's office, I try to ignore the sound of my heart banging against my ribcage.

I open the filing cabinet carefully. And when I get my hands on the file I hold my breath as if I'm dismantling a bomb.

Finally, I grab a pen and piece of paper, check and recheck, and finally realize the answer has been sitting right in front of me all this time. I just didn't know how to see it.

When I switch off the TV, Pierangelo starts to protest, then he sees my face.

‘
Cara?
' he asks.

‘I know,' I say. I hold the calendar up, and I'm surprised that my hand doesn't shake. That my voice is so steady. ‘I know what connects us,' I tell Pierangelo. ‘I know what he's doing.'

F
RANCESCA GIUSTI'S HOUSE
is a modern villa on the outskirts of the city. I don't know why this surprises me. Maybe I imagined her living in the Questura, or in some palatial Bardino-like residence. But this is a new cream-coloured stucco cube with a bright red-tiled roof, and in this nice suburban neighbourhood, even early on Sunday morning, people are already out mowing lawns and walking dogs.

Pierangelo tells me he grew up in a place like this but that when he was a kid everyone would be in church on Sunday morning, including his aunt and uncle, who probably didn't even believe in God. And, oddly enough, Dottoressa Giusti set up this meeting here, and not at the Questura, for just that reason. Her husband needs to take his mother to Mass, and she promised to stay home with the children. By midnight last night when Pallioti fixed all this, it was too late to make other arrangements.

Now a violent drum roll comes out towards where we are sitting in the garden, on a patio by the pool house, and Francesca Giusti winces. ‘My son,' she mutters, ‘he wants to be a rock star.'

Pallioti, who is wearing the suit I'm beginning to think he was born in, sits beside me, and across from us is a short man who he has introduced as Dottore Babinellio, a forensic psychiatrist. The drum roll dies, and starts again, and everyone looks at me.

The setting is so unreal that I feel as if I'm about to make a presentation in school. When I square up Monika's calendar on the table, I notice there are grubby fingermarks on the front.

Finally, I look at the four expectant faces and meet Pallioti's eye. ‘I didn't understand at first,' I tell him. ‘But it was right in front of me. It's actually very simple, once you understand, because this guy, whoever he is, isn't just killing women.'