wife thinks you don’t believe it,’ said the President teasingly, his accent and dramatic intonation suggesting he was reciting the lyrics of a song. ‘Perhaps you think we are too’ – he had to search for the word – ‘proud of ourselves?’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said, my cheeks heating up under their continuing scrutiny, ‘I just find it…paradoxical that the house of the Marescottis depends on the goodwill of the Salimbenis to survive, that’s all.’
The President acknowledged my logic with a slight nod, as if to confirm that Eva Maria’s superlatives had been appropriate. ‘A paradox, yes.’
‘But the world,’ said a voice behind me, ‘is full of paradoxes.’
‘Alessandro!’ exclaimed the President, suddenly all jollity and game, ‘you must come and meet Signorina Tolomei. She is being very…severe on all of us. Especially on you.’
‘Of course she is.’ Alessandro took my hand and kissed it with facetious chivalry. ‘If she was not, we would never believe she was a Tolomei.’ He looked me straight in the eye before releasing my hand. ‘Would we, Miss Jacobs?’
It was an odd moment. He had clearly not expected to encounter me at the concert, and his reaction did not reflect well on either of us. But I could hardly blame him for grilling me; after all, I had never called him back after he stopped by my hotel three days ago. All this time, his business card had been sitting on my desk like a bad omen from a fortune cookie; only this morning I had finally torn it in half and thrown it in the bin, deciding that if he had really wanted to arrest me, he would have done so already.
‘Sandro,’ said Eva Maria, misinterpreting our intensity, ‘don’t you think Giulietta looks lovely tonight?’
Alessandro managed to smile. ‘Bewitching.’
‘Si-si,’ intervened the President, ‘but who is guarding our money, when you are here?’
‘The ghosts of the Salimbenis,’ replied Alessandro, still looking straight at me. ‘A very formidable power.’
‘Basta!’ Secretly pleased by his words, Eva Maria pretended to frown and tapped him on the shoulder with a rolled-up programme. ‘We will all be ghosts soon enough. Tonight we celebrate life.’
After the concert Eva Maria insisted on going out to dinner, just the three of us. When I began protesting, she played the birthday card and said that on this particular night – ‘as I turn another page in the most excellent and lamentable comedy of life’ – her only wish was to go to her favourite restaurant with two of her favourite people. Strangely, Alessandro did not object at all. In Siena, one clearly did not contradict one’s godmother on her day of days.
Eva Maria’s favourite restaurant was in Via delle Campane, just outside the border of Contrada dell’Aquila, that is, the Eagle neighbourhood. Her favourite table, apparently, was on the elevated deck outside, facing a florist’s shop that was closing down for the night.
‘So,’ she said to me, after ordering a bottle of Prosecco and a plate of antipasto, ‘you don’t like opera!’
‘But I do!’ I protested, sitting awkwardly, my crossed legs barely fitting beneath the table. ‘I love opera. My aunt’s housekeeper used to play it all the time. Especially Aida. It’s just that…Aida is supposed to be an Ethiopian princess, not a triple-wide wonder in her fifties. I’m sorry.’
Eva Maria laughed delightedly. ‘Do what Sandro does. Close your eyes.’
I glanced at Alessandro. He had sat behind me at the concert, and I had felt his eyes on me the whole time. ‘Why? It’s still the same woman singing.’
‘But the voice comes from the soul!’ argued Eva Maria on his behalf, leaning towards me. ‘All you have to do is listen, and you will see Aida the way she really is.’
‘That is very generous.’ I looked at Alessandro. ‘Are you always that generous?’
He did not reply. He didn’t have to.
‘Magnanimity,’ said Eva Maria, testing the Prosecco and deeming it worthy of consumption, ‘is the greatest of all the virtues. Stay away from stingy people. They are trapped in small souls.’
‘According to my aunt’s housekeeper,’ I said, ‘beauty is the greatest virtue. But he would say that generosity is a kind of beauty.’
‘Truth is beauty,’ said Alessandro, speaking at last, ‘beauty, truth. According to Keats. Life is very easy if you live like that.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I’m not an urn.’
I started laughing, but he never even smiled.
Although she clearly wanted us to become friends, Eva Maria was incapable of letting us continue on our own. ‘Tell us more about your aunt!’ she urged me. ‘Why do you think she never told you who you were?’
I looked from one to the other, sensing that they had been discussing my case, and that they had disagreed. ‘I have no idea. I think she was afraid that…or maybe she…’ I looked down. ‘I don’t know.’
‘In Siena,’ said Alessandro, preoccupied with his water glass, ‘your name makes all the difference.’
‘Names, names, names!’ sighed Eva Maria. ‘What I don’t understand is why this aunt – Rosa? – never took you to Siena before.’
‘Maybe she was afraid,’ I said, more sharply this time, ‘that the person who killed my parents would kill me, too.’
Eva Maria sat back, appalled. ‘What a terrible thought!’
‘Well, happy birthday!’ I took a sip of my Prosecco. ‘And thanks for everything.’ I glared at Alessandro, forcing him to meet my eyes. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t stay long.’
‘No,’ he said, nodding once, ‘I imagine it is too peaceful here for your taste.’
‘I like peace.’
Within the coniferous greens of his eyes, I now got a warning glimpse of his soul. It was a disturbing sight. ‘Obviously.’
Rather than replying, I clenched my teeth and turned my attention to the antipasto. Unfortunately, Eva Maria did not pick up on the finer nuances of my emotions; all she saw was my flushed face. ‘Sandro,’ she said, riding what she thought was a wave of flirtation, ‘why have you not taken Giulietta around town and shown her some nice things? She would love to go.’
‘I’m sure she would.’ Alessandro stabbed an olive with his fork, but didn’t eat it. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have any statues of little mermaids.’
That was when I knew for sure he had checked my file, and that he must have found out everything there was to know about Julie Jacobs – Julie Jacobs the anti-war demonstrator, who had barely returned from Rome before heading off to Copenhagen to protest against the Danish involvement in Iraq by vandalizing the Little Mermaid. Sadly, what the file would not have told him was that it was all a big mistake, and that Julie Jacobs had only gone to Denmark to show her sister that, yes, she dared.
Tasting the dizzying cocktail of fury and fear in my throat, I reached out blindly for the breadbasket, hoping very much my panic didn’t show.
‘No, but we have other nice statues!’ Eva Maria looked at me, then at him, trying to grasp what was going on. ‘And fountains. You must take her to Fontebranda—’
‘Maybe Miss Jacobs would like to see Via dei Malcontenti,’ proposed Alessandro, cutting her off. ‘That was where we used to take the criminals, so their victims could throw things at them on their way to the gallows.’
I returned his unforgiving stare, feeling no further need for concealment. ‘Was anyone ever pardoned?’
‘Yes. It was called banishment. They were told