“Touché. We’ll figure out a role that you’ll find appealing. Think about it.”
“Okay. I will.”
“What can you expect from this Andrea? Will she bring more translations? Whatever you two reveal about this codex, you can expect all hell to break loose,” he said, concern washed across his face.
“It already has. Hell, that is. No telling what will happen next.” Justine attempted to sound casual; she knew efforts to prevent further findings from surfacing could get much worse. Who am I kidding? Myself? Or am I trying to comfort my parents?
“You haven’t tackled the Catholic Church yet, my dear,” said her mother, leaning across the table to refill the coffee cups.
Justine sat back in her chair, watching her mother’s face closely. For several moments she watched the morning sunlight dance across the crystal glassware still on the table. Is that worry? Is she afraid of what the Catholic Church could do to me?
“How about your own work, Dad? No small controversy there. Many Italians insist Etruscans are native to Italy. If we challenge that, maybe we’ll both be thrown out of Italy!” She reached over and patted his arm.
Morgan squeezed her hand. “Italy tolerates controversy a little better than Egypt, my dear. What we uncover about the Etruscans might shake things up, yes. Are you ready for that? But too, Cerveteri has already been combed pretty thoroughly. And Mussolini’s long gone.”
“What does Mussolini have to do with it?” asked Justine, slowly withdrawing her hand from her father’s grasp.
“Mussolini and a few archaeologists, Massimo among them, tried to reestablish the Roman Empire during the 1920s and ’30s,” said Lucrezia, sitting back down at the table, taking up her coffee cup. “Part of those efforts was to portray the Etruscans, who taught the Romans how to build, as militaristic warriors . . . and indigenous Italians, of course. But I don’t think this portrayal of the Etruscans is accurate. They seem very unlike the Romans and the Greeks, I would say.” She paused and let her eyes linger on Morgan, forgiving him for the earlier slight.
Morgan and Justine remained silent. They knew when other thoughts were simmering in Lucrezia’s mind. “I’d like to think women played a greater role in Etruscan society. And yet some things never change,” she said finally. “Look at today. We’re saddled with Berlusconi, who considers women playthings. And he’s corrupt, yet he’s bound to be elected president again next month!”
“I doubt women held as much sway or played as powerful a role among the Etruscans as your mother suggests,” Morgan said to Justine. “The Greek and Roman women who followed them certainly didn’t have as much power as their male counterparts.”
“We know that, Dad! But what if it really was matrilineal culture?”
“Never!” Morgan almost shouted. “And I, for one, am willing to give Berlusconi another go.” He turned toward his ex-wife and displayed the grin that had once swept her away. “By the way, Justine. This Andrea. Is she my type?”
“Decidedly not your type,” Lucrezia answered for her daughter. “She’s a tad independent for your taste.”
“Buon punto!” said Morgan, grabbing the last remaining piece of banana bread as Maria left for the kitchen.
Justine wondered when her parents’ predictable script would morph into tediousness. They could combine forces when it came to protecting her, but they couldn’t bury their individual competitive natures for long. As they sought to arouse one another’s jealousy, Justine slipped into her sandals and extricated herself from their sport.
Gripping the warm terrace railing, Justine stood on her toes and leaned backward, drawing in the fresh scent of lemon. Exhaling slowly, she released the tension that had accumulated during breakfast. Just below, in the garden, the first hint of new growth beckoned. Creeping thyme moved up the stairwell and spread around the stepping-stones. The path led her between widely planted cypresses and the scented jasmine and honeysuckle that filled the air. Lemon and olive trees stood like soldiers on watch among the zucchini and lilies. The plantings were not random.
Tuscans tended to separate objects of all kinds into their respective spaces. Moving further down into the garden, Justine found a newly planted herb garden of oregano, winter savory, sage, and chives, ringed by a low hedge of rosemary. This was the secret place she remembered so well . . . a small, intimate blanket of grass with table and chairs, hedges, hydrangea, and boxed topiaries. This could be the place where I write in my diary.
She did not stop to enjoy the private place of her childhood, for this morning she was looking for Prego. Turning right through blossoming green bean and catalogna chicory, she approached the small potting shed of glass and faded oak siding. Spiders and webs drooped everywhere.
“Ragno, spiders, keep me company. Eat the aphids and beetles,” Prego intoned, as though he were picking up in the middle of an ongoing conversation with Justine. He had not seen her for several weeks, although they had spoken briefly on her return from Egypt before Christmas.
“Thinning the tomato seedlings?” she asked as she spied a box of uprooted sprouts.
“Prego,” he said in agreement. “Babies need room to grow. One by one. Pomodoro-pantano Romanesco. Harvest in June if the weather keeps comin’ good. Need lots of sun.”
“May I help?” she asked. Without waiting for permission, she buried both hands into the moist soil and lifted a fragile seedling from the flat of miniature tomato plants as one would lift a child from its cradle.
They worked side by side in silence for some time. Justine watched as a spider descended on a long fiber of webbing. “How long have you worked here, Prego?”
“All my life, my child. Father came as a young man. My mother, just a girl, worked upstairs. Prego.” In Italian, prego means please, and thank you, and yes, and excuse me, and just about anything, depending on the context. Prego scattered the word about in the way some people overuse “you know”—thus he had been called “Prego” for as long as Justine could remember. She didn’t remember his real name.
“This house, Prego. How was it used during the war?” Justine watched the spider as it crawled back up its web, a geometric tapestry. Nature! Entrancing. Sunlight caught the fibers, and they shone like stained glass windows.
“I was a boy. No memories. Only gardens. See arugula, signorina. Seeds itself. Plants have memory, not Prego.” Blue veins on the backs of his hands bulged ever so slightly as his fingers tightened around the wooden ledge of the table.
She watched his hands, knowing that memories were buried there, deeper than the plants he loved. “What did the visitors wear, Prego? Were there boots?”
“Boots. Si. Many boots.”
“Fiesole remained in German hands until the end of the war. Right? You would have been . . . what? Ten, eleven?”
“Twelve, signorina.” His shoulders moved closer to his neck, his unkempt hair rising above his collar. A weathered hand touched his forehead as he crossed himself. “This house, so beautiful. Much art. Picasso everywhere.”
Justine looked at the man she had known all her life. His body had grown smaller. Always short, he was now shorter. She towered over him. His coveralls with rolled up cuffs, his plaid shirt with frayed collar, were familiar to her. His face was a portrait of a wrinkled, contented man, one who didn’t allow himself to worry . . . or recall the unpleasantries of life. The twinkle in his eyes that had once signaled mischief had quieted, for he had spent those thoughts that life could be something grand. The garden was enough for him, was satisfying in the way old age brings