A man dragging a woman. This is the first thing Suzanne sees as she leaves the station, which is painted a pale yellow. She has burned her fingers on the cash machine buttons, which are exposed to the unrelenting sun, and would have liked to put them into the water that sprays the naked bodies rising up above the mermaids and wild horses. Hades is carrying off a struggling Persephone to his kingdom, the entrance to which is here in Sicily. On the edge of the fountain vagrants sit with their feet in the water and bunches of grapes in their hands.
The taxi takes her over roads of volcanic rock, between green pyramids of huge watermelons, past run-down apartment buildings and stately palaces, straight through the heart of the city, normally clogged with cars and Vespas but now completely deserted. Like black carpet runners, broad straight streets roll out to the sea and Mount Etna. Etna erased all traces of earlier Catanias and created tabula rasa for the architects to erect this baroque city that is so infused with vitality. Nine times the city had been rebuilt – nine times on the same spot, in between fire and water. Nowhere do people live so in the moment as here, and nowhere are people so resigned.
When she came here for the first time twenty years ago, she rode through Catania like Alice through Wonderland; now this foreign city feels oddly familiar.
Never before has he failed to pick her up. He was always there at the airport, on time and reliable. The last time he had come towards her wearing his white suit, which hung much too loosely on him. She could see his skull more clearly beneath his skin than during the previous visit, skin now flecked with even more age spots. He smiled happily. In the past, she had felt proud as he came towards her, even though he was much older than she was. Broad shouldered, erect and elegantly dressed, his eyes a surprising blue beneath his brows, which were still black then.
She was going to his house for the first time, the palazzo that all those years she had only imagined and had just once seen from a distance.
Suzanne had lived with him in his dream house in Taormina, the opulent town atop Mount Tauro, an hour’s drive from Catania. That was where Roberto had led his dolce vita, and for forty years he had kept this entirely separate from his working life in Catania – the large city where, in addition to his work as medical director of a psychiatric institution, he also performed the role of husband and father in the house where he had been born. In Taormina, Suzanne was his wife. Everyone knew her as il professore’s beloved. With her he moved as freely and easily as if there were no other spouse. Roberto phoned his wife every day from his house in Taormina to see if all was well. His wife never called. He had not had an intimate relationship with her since he was forty, but of course she was still the mother of his two sons. The youngest son was a psychiatric patient and lived at home. Roberto made sure they lacked for nothing, and his wife accepted the fact that he had another life. But as her relationship with Roberto had deepened, Suzanne had increasingly tried to imagine what his other life was like, that other house. How he ate and slept there.
Once she had stood looking at the house from a distance while staying in a nearby hotel. A stately palazzo with wrought iron balconies and high windows through which she had been able to see dark ceilings and walls with painted designs.
Although Suzanne’s relationship with Roberto had ended fifteen years ago, they had remained friends. They called each other regularly and until a few years ago she had even gone to visit him occasionally.
After his wife’s death a year ago he had become depressed. He no longer went to Taormina, had sold the clinic far too cheaply and hardly ever left the house in Catania.
Lately his phone calls had become increasingly gloomy and he had nearly begged her to come and stay with him, “as one of the family.” Not in Taormina this time but in Catania.
She would have her own room.
“If you want to see me while I’m still alive, you’ll have to be quick,” he had said. She felt sorry for him.
He hoped she would inspire him to go to Taormina one last time. She would also like to see it again herself.
She would be able to go to the sea every day, he said, also in Catania. Since her return to Amsterdam she had often thought back longingly on the Sicilian beaches. Perhaps she could use her visit to write an article for the paper about Catania, which had been restored to its old baroque splendor with money from the European Union. Besides, she was curious about that house, which had always been off-limits.
The taxi comes to a stop.
On top of the columns on either side of the entryway sit two lions, one with no head. Below the headless predator hangs a sign written in curlicues: “Prof. Colafore: Doctor of Psychiatry.”
Before she can ring the doorbell, she hears her name. She looks up and sees Roberto waving from the balcony.
The door opens. A dark-skinned man comes down a wide marble staircase. She puts out her hand, which he clearly does not expect. This is Madu, the Sri Lankan butler – she has known his name for twenty years and watched his family grow, through his employer. He also used to live in this palazzo with his Sri Lankan wife. The birth of their daughter had brought joy to the house, especially when the little girl began to walk. Roberto would tell how he clowned around with his two-year-old girlfriend. But when the next child arrived it became a little too lively and the family had to find somewhere else to live. Madu was now the father of five children.
He takes her suitcase and she follows behind. His mother had carried Roberto up these stairs, here he had taken his first steps, and left for El Alamein as a soldier; this was where he had walked up towards his wife and back down again on his way to Suzanne.
There he is, standing in the doorway. Even thinner and frailer than before.
“Piccola, benvenuta.”
She gives him a kiss. When she puts her hand on his shoulder she can feel his bones. His eyebrows and lashes have turned white.
“Come in,” he says, and goes on ahead. He walks with a slight stoop.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you the luxury of Taormina.”
“It’s a beautiful house.”
“It was beautiful once. When it was lived in.”
The large entryway is dark. In the villa in Taormina, light poured in from all sides.
They pass through a hallway and enter an elegant salon, the walls of which are covered in silk. The room is furnished with heavy antique furniture, which is reflected in the tall gilt-framed mirrors. The upholstery on the chairs is worn, the dark wood is covered with dust, and the parquet floor has lost its sheen. Some of the walls show darker rectangles where paintings once hung. A television occupies the place beneath the large marble mantle where logs should have been laid out for a crackling fire.
A table set for a meal stands beyond the open sliding doors. Suddenly she sees it in its former glory. A large family at a bountiful table, with the radiant mother center stage. The guests are animated and laugh, and after a while they dance. Roberto’s mother made sure the house was full of life.
Could the lovely woman in the portrait be his mother?
“Enrico!”
Muttering.
She peers into a darkened room and sees Enrico sitting on the bed through the half-open door. He is putting on his shoes.
“Ah, he leads his own life,” Roberto mumbles.
She looks again at the portrait of the woman. She is wearing her shiny black hair up, and the large blue eyes glow beneath black lashes. The blue gemstones around her white neck pale by comparison. Her lips are as full and sharply outlined as Roberto’s.
“Che bella donna.”
“My mother. You know she died in front of my eyes. There, in the kitchen.” He points to a door. He had told her about it often. A stroke.
He had been thirteen and idolized his mother – she was everything to him, his defender.
Suzanne had forgiven him many things because before her she always saw that little boy, the one who went to the cemetery every day to pray for his mother’s return. They had had to drag him away from the place.
“This is your room.”
He pushes open a door that leads to a cavernous room with a large bed in the middle.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep here?”
If you don’t come and bother me, she thinks to herself. He had expressly said they were family now.
Her suitcase was standing beside the bed.
The room is quiet. Curtains hide a balcony with a view onto a garden with palm trees. She can put her clothes in a large, hand-painted wardrobe. Roberto opens the door. She can see the butler’s eyes in the mirror on the inside of the door; he disappears immediately.
Adjoining her room is a huge bathroom with a bathtub and sink made from green-veined marble. The copper taps have also turned green. There is just one small, tattered guest towel.
“I didn’t bring any towels with me.”
“Madu!!” Roberto shouts, clearly irritated.
The man appears immediately and gives a subservient nod; a short while later he reappears and hands her yet another poor excuse for a towel.
During her first visit to the house in Taormina, when she had gone to freshen up after the trip, Alfio had handed her a pile of large, luxurious ones. A tall blond man with blue eyes that betrayed his Viking ancestry. A muscular body, sometimes covered only by shorts if he was working in the garden, and sometimes by an elegant suit with a white apron if he was serving guests. He used to move more gracefully then. He could do everything: He transformed the garden into a paradise and prepared delicious, appetizing meals. A Dutch friend had said, “He has to be a good lover – everything he touches comes alive.” She came there to regroup after a relationship had ended. Even so, she had not responded to his advances. He treated Suzanne with the utmost respect, although she noticed he occasionally watched her from behind the shrubbery when she was lying next to the pool or having a siesta with Roberto. He was intelligent, and had he come from a less humble background he would probably have gone to university.
“You must be hungry,” says Roberto. “Let’s have a bite to eat. Here at home, if you don’t mind. I don’t go out any more.”
She doesn’t mind at all. She is here for him, and hopes she can cheer him up a bit.
“You should go out and eat once in a while – it can help get your mind off of things.”
“I’m too weak. My time is past. In the evening we eat very little or nothing at all. We have our hot meal at lunch.” He had told her this a dozen times already on the phone.
“You can use my office if you want to read or study.” In the old days she had been unable to make him see that she sometimes wanted to spend an evening reading instead of always going dancing or meeting new people.
He walks ahead of her into his study. The leather wall covering is in good condition; on the high ceiling the colorful painted rosettes still bloom in all their splendor.
“The desk is all yours. I never use it these days.” Sitting behind this massive, heavy desk, he would call her on the phone or take her calls. Sometimes he would have to break off the call if he thought his wife was listening in or if he had to see a patient. Not all that long ago.
On the wall is a large photograph of dozens of young men, taken when he graduated from medical school. She recognizes him immediately, the most handsome of them all.
“My bedroom is there.” He points to the door next to the bookcase behind the desk and opens it. Instead of a spacious conjugal bed there is a hospital bed with an oxygen bottle underneath. The table is filled with medicines, pill containers, bottles, creams and gauze.
She looks. Says nothing.
“Yes, it’s become something of a hospital here. That’s what it was already. I took care of my wife and my son. There’s no one to take care of me.”
They walk back into the salon. Gesturing towards the dining room, Roberto invites her in. Next to the table a door has been left ajar. Just then Madu enters.
He is going home.
“Everything is ready,” he says, and disappears.
“He always used to stay till we’d finished eating. He takes advantage of me. He comes later and later, goes home earlier and I have to pay him more.”
“So why do you accept it?”
“Ah, well – I’m too good for this world. Everyone has always taken advantage of me.”
“I didn’t.”
“No, piccola, you’re the only one left who hasn’t. I’ve cut my ties to the outside world. I’m disillusioned. So now, where is Enrico? That’s a cross I still have to bear. An old, lonely man who has to take care of his sick son. These Italian laws! I’m writing a pamphlet, but who wants to listen to me. And my other son is no help at all. He’s also nothing but a burden to me. And he’s not normal either.”
She looks at the paintings on the wall near the door to Enrico’s room. Faded nymphs frolic in an arcadian setting. One of them dips her bare foot into a stream, while another dances in veils that barely conceal what is underneath.
“Enrico!”
At that moment a sluggish giant emerges from between the cavorting nymphs, as if out of a cave.
Listlessly, he shuffles towards her over the creaking wooden floor. One of his sandals is broken. He says hello to her blankly.
“It’s been a long time, Enrico.”
A small, shy smile.
They had met each other once, when Roberto gave a party in the villa in Taormina. His family and friends had all been there and so had she, incognito. She had met Roberto’s wife, a friendly matron with short, bleached-blond hair. Suzanne, who had been very nervous at first, made a big impression on Mrs Colafore when she asked her sick son to dance. “What a sweet girl,” she had told Roberto when the party was over. Later, although she came to know there was something special between that girl and her husband, she had never made a problem of it. “As long as I take good care of her,” Roberto had said. And as long as he kept those two worlds separate, which he managed to do with the exception of that one evening.
“Nice, isn’t it, having a woman in the house. She’s come to cheer us up a bit.”
A sad smile.
“Enrico, shall we have something to eat?” his father says.
He nods.
“Shall I help?”
“Go right ahead,” says Roberto, clearly pleased with this domestic initiative.
She follows Enrico into the kitchen.
A neon light illuminates the room, where nothing has changed since the house was built – a room that with better lighting and more cheerful furnishings could have been quite lovely. A television stands on the granite countertop.
“Would you like pasta?” he asks.
“What are you going to have?”
“Bread and cheese.”
“Sounds good to me.”
From a small refrigerator, Enrico takes a few pieces of cheese wrapped in plastic, clearly from a supermarket. He takes some rolls from a paper bag on top of the fridge and puts them in the oven. A package of sliced white bread also appears.
There are no signs of any cooking activities – no oil, no fruit, no vegetables, no strings of garlic or peppers, even though there is an abundance of these on the island.
On the floor are dozens of empty water bottles.
She looks at the old floor tiles. This is the floor where Enrico’s grandmother died. “My tongue, my tongue,” she had said, before losing consciousness.
Enrico gets some plastic cups.
Would she also like to drink out of a plastic cup?
“I saw glasses on the table – that seems like a better idea to me. Why do you drink out of these?”
“Oh, it’s safer.”
“How do you mean?”
“You never know.”
“Know what?”
He sighs. “Whether they’re clean.”
“Do you have a plate to put the cheese on?”
He opens one of the wooden cupboards and hands her a simple white plate. She arranges the cheese on it as best she can.
“I’ll put it on the table.”
She places the white plate between the three ugly ones made of brown glass. She can see wooden lion paws under the plastic tablecloth; long ago they would have provided support for much more festive dishes.
Enrico brings in the bread and two bottles of water. She would have liked to have had a glass of wine, but it turns out they don’t have any.
Roberto does not take part in this domestic activity. He sits in front of the fireplace and watches television, which is turned up loud. At one end of the mantlepiece is a large ceramic vase. The other corner is empty. She thinks of the one and only time Roberto’s wife ever called. They were having lunch in Taormina at an outdoor cafe near the sea, and from the look on Roberto’s face Suzanne could see he had had a shock. He spoke in short sentences.
“When?”
“I’ll come immediately.”
When he had hung up, he said, “I have to go.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, worried.
“My sister has been murdered.”