Frustrated with myself for not having interrogated Maestro Lippi about the Marescottis while I had the chance, I walked slowly up the stairs, the cuts on the soles of my feet stinging with every step I took. It didn’t help that I wasn’t in the habit of wearing high-heeled shoes, especially considering the miles I had been logging over the last two days. As soon as I opened the door to my room, however, all my little aches were forgotten. For the place had been turned upside down, possibly even inside out.
Some very determined invader-if not a whole group-had literally pulled the doors off the wardrobe and the stuffing out of the pillows to find whatever they were looking for, and clothes, trinkets, and bathroom items were scattered everywhere; some of my new underwear was even hanging limply from the chandelier.
I had never actually seen a suitcase bomb go off, but this, I was sure, was what the site would look like afterwards.
“Miss Tolomei!” Panting heavily, Direttor Rossini finally caught up with me. “Contessa Salimbeni called to ask if you were feeling better, but-Santa Caterina!” As soon as he saw the devastation in my room, he forgot everything he had been meaning to say, and for a moment we both stood there, staring at it all in silent horror.
“Well,” I said, aware that I had an audience, “at least now I don’t have to unpack my suitcases.”
“This is terrible!” cried Direttor Rossini, less prepared to look at the upside. “Look at this! Now people will say the hotel is not safe! Oh, careful, don’t step in the glass.”
The floor was covered in glass from the balcony door. The intruder had clearly come for my mother’s box, which was-of course-gone, but the question was why he had proceeded to trash my room. Was there something other than the box that he had been after?
“Cavolo!” sighed Direttor Rossini. “Now I have to call the police, and they will come and take pictures, and the newspapers will write that Hotel Chiusarelli is not safe!”
“Wait!” I said. “Don’t call the police. There’s no need. We know what they came for.” I walked over to the desk where the box had stood. “They won’t be back. Bastards.”
“Oh!” Direttor Rossini suddenly lit up. “I forgot to tell you! Yesterday, I personally brought up your suitcases…”
“Yes, I see that.”
“… and I noticed that you had a very expensive antiquity on that table. So, I made myself the liberty of removing it from this room and putting it in the hotel safe. I hope you do not mind? Normally, I do not interfere-”
I was so relieved, I didn’t even think to bristle at his interference, or to marvel at his foresight. Instead, I grabbed his shoulders. “The box is still here?”
Sure enough, when I followed Direttor Rossini downstairs to his office, I found my mother’s box sitting very snugly in the hotel safe amongst accounting books and silver candelabra. “Bless you!” I said, meaning it, “this box is very special.”
“I know.” He nodded gravely. “My grandmother had one just like it. They don’t make them anymore. It is an old Sienese tradition. We call it the box of secrets, because they have hidden rooms. You can hide things from your parents. Or from your children. Or from anybody.”
“You mean… it has a secret compartment?”
“Yes!” Direttor Rossini took the box and began inspecting it. “I will show you. You have to be a Sienese to know how to find them; it is very sneaky. They are never in the same place. My grandmother’s was on the side, right here… but this is different. This is tricky. Let me see… not here… not here-” He inspected the box from all angles, enjoying the challenge. “She had a lock of hair, nothing else. I found it one day when she was sleeping. I never asked-aha!”
Somehow, Direttor Rossini had managed to locate and trigger the release mechanism to the secret compartment. He smiled in triumph as a quarter of the bottom fell out on the table, followed by a small, rectangular piece of card stock. Turning the box over, we both examined the secret compartment, but it had contained nothing except the card.
“Do you understand this?” I showed Direttor Rossini the letters and numbers that were typed on the card with an old-fashioned typewriter. “It looks like some kind of code.”
“This,” he said, taking it from me, “is an old-how do you say it?-index card. We used these before we had computers. It was before your time. Ah, the world has changed! I remember when-”
“Do you have any idea where it came from?”
“This? Maybe a library? I don’t know. I am not an expert. But”-he glanced at me to gauge whether I was worthy of this level of clearance-“I know someone who is.”
IT TOOK ME A while to find the tiny secondhand bookstore that Direttor Rossini had described, and once I did, it was-of course-closed for lunch. I tried to look through the windows to see if there was anyone inside, but saw nothing but books and more books.
Walking around the corner to Piazza del Duomo, I sat down to pass the time on the front steps of the Siena Cathedral. Despite the tourists milling in and out of the church doors, there was something tranquil about the whole place, something very grounded and eternal that made me feel that had I not been on a mission, I could have sat there forever, just like the building itself, and watched with a mix of nostalgia and compassion the perennial rebirth of mankind.
The most striking feature of the cathedral was the bell tower. It was not as tall as the Mangia Tower, Direttor Rossini’s virile lily in the Campo, but what made it the more remarkable of the two was the fact that it was zebra-striped. Slim, alternating layers of white and black stone continued all the way to the very top, like a biscuit staircase to Heaven, and I could not help but wonder about the symbolism of the pattern. Perhaps there was none. Perhaps the purpose had simply been to make it striking. Or perhaps it was a reflection of the Siena coat of arms, the Balzana-part black, part white, like a stemless wineglass half filled with the most stygian red wine-which I found equally perplexing.
Direttor Rossini had told me some story about Roman twins escaping their evil uncle on a black and a white horse, but I was not convinced this was the underlying narrative of the colors of the Balzana. It had to be something about contrasts. Something about the perilous art of uniting extremes and forcing compromises, or perhaps about acknowledging that life is a delicate balance of great forces, and that good would lose its potency if there was no evil left to fight in the world.
But I was no philosopher, and the sun was beginning to let me know that it was the hour when only mad dogs and Englishmen exposed themselves to its rays. Walking back around the corner I saw that the bookstore was still closed, and I sighed and looked at my watch, wondering where I should seek refuge until it suited Direttor Rossini’s mother’s childhood friend to return from lunch.
THE AIR IN THE SIENA CATHEDRAL was full of gold and shadows. Around me on all sides, massive black-and-white pillars held up a vast heaven sprinkled with little stars, and the mosaic floor was a giant jigsaw puzzle of symbols and legends that I somehow knew-as one knows the sounds of a foreign language-but did not understand.
The place was as different from the modern churches of my childhood as one religion from another, and yet I felt my heart responding to it with mystified recognition, as if I had been there before, looking for the same God, a long, long time ago. And it suddenly occurred to me that here, for the first time, I was standing in a building that resembled my dream castle of whispering ghosts. Perhaps, I thought, gaping up at the star-spangled dome in this silent forest of silver-birch columns, someone had brought me to this very cathedral when I was a baby, and I had somehow stored it in my memory without knowing what it was.