“There is a leak in the roof,” he explained, looking up at the cracked plaster ceiling, “but we cannot find it. It is very strange-even when it is not raining, water comes dripping down.” He shrugged and motioned for me to sit down on one of two artfully carved mahogany chairs facing his desk. “The old president used to say that the building was crying. He knew your father, by the way.”
Sitting down behind the desk, Presidente Maconi leaned back as far as the leather chair would allow and put his fingertips together. “So, Miss Tolomei, how may I help you?”
For some reason, the question took me by surprise. I had been so focused on getting here in the first place, I had given little thought to the next step. I suppose the Francesco Maconi who had-until now-lived quite comfortably in my imagination knew very well that I had come for my mother’s treasure, and he had been waiting impatiently these many, many years to finally hand it off to its rightful heir.
The real Francesco Maconi, however, was not that accommodating. I started explaining why I had come, and he listened to me in silence, nodding occasionally. When I eventually stopped talking, he looked at me pensively, his face betraying no conclusion either way.
“And so I was wondering,” I went on, realizing that I had forgotten the most important part, “if you could take me to her safety-deposit box?”
I took the key out of my handbag and put it on his desk, but Presidente Maconi merely glanced at it. After a moment’s awkward silence he got up and walked over to a window, hands behind his back, and looked out over the roofs of Siena with a frown.
“Your mother,” he finally said, “was a wise woman. And when God takes the wise to heaven, he leaves their wisdom behind, for us on earth. Their spirits live on, flying around us silently, like owls, with eyes that see in the night, when you and I see only darkness.” He paused to test a leaded pane that was coming loose. “In some ways, the owl would be a fitting symbol for all of Siena, not just for our contrada.”
“Because… all people in Siena are wise?” I proposed, not entirely sure what he was getting at.
“Because the owl has an ancient ancestor. To the Greeks, she was the goddess Athena. A virgin, but also a warrior. The Romans called her Minerva. In Roman times, there was a temple for her here in Siena. This is why it was always in our hearts to love the Virgin Mary, even in the ancient times, before Christ was born. To us, she was always here.”
“Presidente Maconi-”
“Miss Tolomei.” He turned to face me at last. “I am trying to figure out what your mother would have liked me to do. You are asking me to give you something that caused her a lot of grief. Would she really want me to let you have it?” He attempted a smile. “But then, it is not my decision, is it? She left it here-she did not destroy it-so she must have wanted me to pass it on to you, or to someone. The question is: Are you sure you want it?”
In the silence following his words, we both heard it clearly: the sound of a drop of water falling into the plastic bucket on a perfectly sunny day.
AFTER SUMMONING A second key-holder, the somber Signor Virgilio, Presidente Maconi took me down a separate staircase-a spiral of ancient stone that must have been there since the palazzo was first built-into the deepest caverns of the bank. Now for the first time I became aware that there was a whole other world underneath Siena, a world of caves and shadows that stood in sharp contrast to the world of light above.
“Welcome to the Bottini,” said Presidente Maconi as we walked through a grottolike passageway. “This is the old, underground aqueduct that was built a thousand years ago to lead water into the city of Siena. This is all sandstone, and even with the primitive tools they had back then, Sienese engineers were able to dig a vast network of tunnels that led fresh water to public fountains and even into the basement of some private houses. Now, of course, it is no longer used.”
“But people go down here anyway?” I asked, touching the rough sandstone wall.
“Oh, no!” Presidente Maconi was amused by my naïveté. “It is a dangerous place to be. You can easily get lost. Nobody knows all the Bottini. There are stories, many stories, about secret tunnels from here to there, but we don’t want people running around exploring them. The sandstone is porous, you see. It crumbles. And all of Siena is sitting on top.”
I pulled back my hand. “But this wall is… fortified?”
Presidente Maconi looked a bit sheepish. “No.”
“But it’s a bank. That seems… dangerous.”
“Once,” he replied, eyebrows up in disapproval, “someone tried to break in. Once. They dug a tunnel. It took them months.”
“Did they succeed?”
Presidente Maconi pointed at a security camera mounted high in an obscure corner. “When the alarm went off, they escaped through the tunnel, but at least they didn’t steal anything.”
“Who were they?” I asked. “Did you ever find out?”
He shrugged. “Some gangsters from Napoli. They never came back.”
When we finally arrived at the vault, Presidente Maconi and Signor Virgilio both had to swipe their key cards for the massive door to open.
“See?”-Presidente Maconi was proud of the feature-“not even the president can open this vault on his own. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Inside the vault, safety-deposit boxes covered every wall from floor to ceiling. Most of them were small, but some were large enough to serve as a luggage locker at an airport. My mother’s box, as it turned out, was somewhere in between, and as soon as Presidente Maconi had pointed it out to me and helped me insert the key, he and Signor Virgilio politely left the room. When, moments later, I heard a couple of matches striking, I knew they had seized the opportunity to take a smoking break in the corridor outside.
Since I first read Aunt Rose’s letter, I had entertained many different ideas of what my mother’s treasure might be, and had done my best to temper my expectations in order to avoid disappointment. But in my most unchecked fantasies I would find a magnificent golden box, locked and full of promise, not unlike the treasure chests that pirates dig up on desert islands.
My mother had left me just such a thing. It was a wooden box with golden ornamentation, and while it was not actually locked-there was no lock-the clasp was rusted shut, preventing me from doing much more than merely shaking it gently to try and determine its contents. It was about the size of a small toaster-oven, but surprisingly light, which immediately ruled out the possibility of gold and jewelry. But then, fortunes come in many substances and forms, and I was certainly not one to scoff at the prospect of three-digit paper money.
As we said goodbye, Presidente Maconi kept insisting on calling a taxi for me. But I told him I did not need one; the box fitted very nicely in one of my shopping bags, and Hotel Chiusarelli was, after all, nearby.
“I would be careful,” he said, “walking around with that. Your mother was always careful.”
“But who knows I’m here? And that I’ve got this?”
He shrugged. “The Salimbenis-”
I stared at him, not sure if he was really serious. “Don’t tell me the old family feud is still going on!”
Presidente Maconi looked away, uncomfortable with the subject. “A Salimbeni will always be a Salimbeni.”
Walking away from Palazzo Tolomei, I repeated that sentence to myself several times, wondering precisely what it meant. In the end I decided it was nothing more than what I ought to expect in this place; judging by Eva Maria’s stories about the fierce contrade rivalries in the modern Palio, the old family feuds from the Middle Ages were still going strong, even if the weapons had changed.