‘But that is all in the past,’ Peppo kept saying, patting me on the back, ‘for now you are here, and we can finally talk.’ But it was hard to know where to begin; there were so many years that must be accounted for, and so many questions that needed answers, including the reason for my sister’s mysterious absence.
‘She was too busy to come along,’ I said, looking away. ‘But I’m sure she’ll come and visit you soon.’
It did not help that only a handful of the guests spoke English, and that every answer to every inquiry had to first be understood and interpreted by a third party. Still, everyone was so friendly and warm that even I, after a while, began to relax and enjoy myself. It didn’t really matter that we couldn’t understand each other, what mattered were those little smiles and nods that said so much more than words.
At one point, Pia came out on the terrace with a photo album and sat down to show me pictures from my parents’ wedding. As soon as she opened the album, other women clustered around us, eager to follow along and help turn the pages.
‘There!’ Pia pointed at a large picture. ‘Your mother is wearing the dress I wore at my wedding. Oh, aren’t they a handsome couple? And here, this is your cousin Francesco…’
‘Wait!’ I tried to prevent her from turning the page, but in vain. She probably didn’t realize that I had never seen a picture of my father before, and that the only grown-up photo of my mother I had ever known was her high-school graduation portrait on Aunt Rose’s piano.
Pia’s album came as a surprise to me. Not so much because my mother was visibly pregnant underneath the wedding gown, but because my father looked as if he was a hundred years old. Obviously, he was not, but standing next to my mother—an attractive college dropout with dimples in her smile—he looked like old man Abraham in my illustrated children’s Bible.
Even so, they appeared to be happy together, and although there were no shots of them kissing, most of the photos showed my mother clinging to her husband’s elbow and looking at him with great admiration. And so after a while I shrugged off my astonishment and decided to accept the possibility that here, in this bright and blissful place, concepts like time and age had very little bearing on people’s lives.
The women around me confirmed my theory; none of them seemed to find the union in any way extraordinary. As far as I could understand, their chirping commentary—all in Italian—was primarily about my mother’s dress, her veil, and the complex genealogical relationship of every single wedding guest to my father and to themselves.
After the wedding photos came a few pages dedicated to our baptism, but my parents were barely in them. The pictures showed Pia holding a baby that could have been either Janice or me—it was impossible to tell which one, and Pia could not remember—and Peppo proudly holding the other. There appeared to have been two different ceremonies; one inside a church, and one outside in the sunshine, by the baptismal font of the contrada of the Owl.
‘That was a good day,’ said Pia, smiling sadly. ‘You and your sister became little civettini, little owls. It was too bad…’ She did not finish the sentence, but closed the album very tenderly. ‘It is such a long time ago. Sometimes I wonder if time really heals.’ She was interrupted by a sudden commotion inside the house, and by a voice impatiently calling her name. ‘Come!’ Pia got up, suddenly anxious. ‘That must be our Nonna!’
Old Granny Tolomei, whom everyone referred to as Nonna, lived with one of her granddaughters in the centre of Siena, but had been summoned to the farm this afternoon in order to meet me—an arrangement that clearly did not fit her personal schedule. She was standing in the hallway, irritably arranging her black lace with one hand while leaning heavily on her granddaughter with the other. Had I been as uncharitable as Janice, I would have instantly proclaimed her the picture-perfect fairy-tale witch. All that was missing was the crow on her shoulder.
Pia rushed forward to greet the old lady, who grudgingly allowed herself to be kissed on both cheeks and escorted into a particularly favoured chair in the living room. Some minutes were spent making Nonna comfortable; cushions fetched, placed, and moved around, and special lemonade brought in from the kitchen, immediately sent back, and brought in anew, this time with a slice of lemon perched on the rim.
‘Nonna is our aunt,’ Peppo whispered in my ear, ‘and your father’s youngest sister. Come, I will introduce you.’ He pulled me along to stand to attention in front of the old lady and eagerly explained the situation to her in Italian, clearly expecting to see some sign of joy on her face.
But Nonna refused to smile. No matter how much Peppo urged her, even begged her, to rejoice with the rest of us, she could not be persuaded to take any kind of pleasure in my presence. He even had me step forward so that she could see me more clearly, but what she saw only gave her further reason to scowl, and before Peppo managed to pull me out of range, she leaned forward and snarled something I did not understand, but which made everyone gasp with embarrassment.
Pia and Peppo practically evacuated me from the living room, apologizing all the way. ‘I am so sorry!’ Peppo kept saying, over and over, too mortified even to look me in the eye. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with her! I think she is going crazy!’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, too stunned to feel anything, ‘I don’t blame her for not believing it. It’s all so new, even for me.’
‘Let us go for a little walk,’ said Peppo, still flustered, ‘and come back later. It is time I show you their graves.’
The village cemetery was a welcoming, sleepy oasis, and very different from any other graveyard I had ever seen. The whole place was a maze of white, freestanding walls with no roof, and the walls themselves were a mosaic of graves from top to bottom. Names, dates, and photos identified the individuals dwelling behind the marble slabs, and brass sconces held—on behalf of the temporarily incapacitated host—flowers brought by visitors.
‘Here.’ Peppo had a hand on my shoulder for support, but that did not prevent him from gallantly opening a squeaky iron gate and letting us both into a small shrine off the main path. ‘This is part of the old Tolomei…hmm…sepulchre. Most of it is underground, and we don’t go down there any more. Up here is better.’
‘It is beautiful.’ I stepped into the small room and looked around at the many marble plates and the bouquet of fresh flowers standing on the altar. A candle was burning steadily in a red glass bowl that seemed vaguely familiar to me, indicating that the Tolomei sepulchre was a place carefully maintained by the family. I suddenly felt a stab of guilt that I was here alone, without Janice, but I quickly shook it off. If she had been here, she would most likely have ruined the moment with a sarky comment.
‘This is your father,’ pointed Peppo, ‘and your mother right next to him.’ He paused, lost in memory. ‘She was so young. I thought she would be alive long after I was gone.’
I looked at the two marble plates that were all that was left of Professor Patrizio Scipione Tolomei and his wife, Diane Lloyd Tolomei, and felt my heart flutter. For as long as I could remember, my parents had been little more than distant shadows in a daydream, and I had never imagined I would one day find myself as close to them—at least physically—as this. Even when fantasizing about travelling to Italy, for some reason it had never occurred to me that my first duty upon arrival must be to find their graves, and I felt a warm wave of gratitude towards Peppo for helping me do the right thing.
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, squeezing his hand, which was still resting on my shoulder.
‘It was a great tragedy the way they died,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and that all Patrizio’s work was lost in the fire. He