“Holy cow!” I exclaimed, realizing that I had seen the place before, many times, but from very different angles. “I know exactly where we are. It’s the Campo.” I knocked on the sewer cover. “Ow! It’s pretty solid.”
“Hello? Hello?” Janice stretched to see better. “Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?”
A few seconds later, an incredulous teenager with a snow cone and green lips came into view, stooping down to see us. “Ciao?” she said, smiling uncertainly, as if suspecting she was the victim of a prank. “I am Antonella.”
“Hi, Antonella,” I said, trying to make eye contact with her. “Do you speak English? We’re kind of trapped down here. Do you think you could… find someone who can help us out?”
Twenty deeply embarrassing minutes later, Antonella returned with a pair of naked feet in sandals.
“Maestro Lippi?” I was so astounded to see my friend, the painter, that my voice almost escaped me. “Hello? Do you remember me? I slept on your couch.”
“Of course I remember you!” he beamed. “How are you doing?”
“Uh-” I said, “do you think it would be possible to… remove this thing?” I wiggled my fingers through the sewer cover. “We’re kind of stuck down here. And-this is my sister, by the way.”
Maestro Lippi knelt down to see us better. “Did you two go somewhere you shouldn’t go?”
I smiled as timidly as I could. “I’m afraid we did.”
The Maestro frowned. “Did you find her grave? Did you steal her eyes? Did I not tell you to leave them where they are?”
“We didn’t do anything!” I glanced at Janice to make sure she, too, looked sufficiently innocent. “We got trapped, that’s all. Do you think we can somehow”-once again, I knocked on the sewer cover, and once again, it felt pretty rigid-“unscrew this thing?”
“Of course!” he said, without hesitation. “It is very easy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” He got back on his feet. “I made it!”
DINNER THAT NIGHT was pasta primavera from a can, spruced up with a twig of rosemary from Maestro Lippi’s windowsill and accompanied by a box of Band-Aids for our bruises. There was barely room for the three of us at the table in his workshop, seeing that we were sharing the space with artwork and potted plants in different stages of demise, but even so, he and Janice were having a grand old time.
“You are very quiet,” observed the artist at one point, recovering from laughter and pouring more wine.
“Juliet had a little run-in with Romeo,” explained Janice, on my behalf. “He swore by the moon. Big mistake.”
“Ah!” said Maestro Lippi. “He came here last night. He was not happy. Now I understand why.”
“He came here last night?” I echoed.
“Yes,” nodded the Maestro. “He said you don’t look like the painting. You are much more beautiful. And much more-what was it he said?-oh, yes… lethal.” The Maestro grinned and raised his glass to me in playful communion.
“Did he happen to mention,” I said, failing to take the edge off my voice, “why he has been playing schizo games with me instead of telling me that he was Romeo all along? I thought he was someone else.”
Maestro Lippi looked surprised. “But didn’t you recognize him?”
“No!” I clutched my head in frustration. “I didn’t recognize him. And he sure as hell didn’t recognize me either!”
“What exactly can you tell us about this guy?” Janice asked the Maestro. “How many people are aware he is Romeo?”
“All I know,” said Maestro Lippi, shrugging, “is that he does not want to be called Romeo. Only his family calls him that. It is a big secret. I don’t know why. He wants to be called Alessandro Santini-”
I gasped. “You knew his name all along! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew!” the Maestro shot back. “You are Juliet! Maybe you need glasses!”
“Excuse me,” said Janice, rubbing a scratch on her arm, “but how did you know he was Romeo?”
Maestro Lippi looked stunned. “I… I-”
She reached out to help herself to another Band-Aid. “Please don’t say you recognized him from a previous life.”
“No,” said the Maestro, frowning, “I recognized him from the fresco. In Palazzo Pubblico. And then I saw the Marescotti eagle on his arm”-he took me by the wrist and pointed at the underside of my forearm-“right here. Did you never notice that?”
For a few seconds I was back in the basement of Palazzo Salimbeni, trying to ignore Alessandro’s tattoos while we discussed the fact that I was being followed. Even then I had been aware that his were not-unlike Janice’s muffin-top tramp stamps-mere souvenirs from boozy spring breaks in Amsterdam, but it had not occurred to me that they held important clues to his identity. In fact, I had been too busy looking for diplomas and ancestors on his office wall to realize that here was a man who did not display his virtues in a silver frame, but carried them around on his body in whatever form they took.
“It’s not glasses she needs,” observed Janice, enjoying my cross-eyed introspection, “it’s a new brain.”
“Not to change the subject,” I said, picking up my handbag, “but would you mind translating something for us?” I handed Maestro Lippi the Italian text from our mother’s box, which I had been carrying around for days, hoping to stumble upon a willing translator. I had originally toyed with the idea of asking Alessandro, but something had held me back. “We think it might be important.”
The Maestro took the text and perused the headline and first few paragraphs. “This,” he said, a little surprised, “is a story. It is called La Maledizione sul Muro… The Curse on the Wall. It is quite long. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
VI.II
A plague o’ both your houses,
They have made worms’ meat of me
THE CURSE ON THE WALL
Siena , A.D. 1370
THERE IS A STORY THAT NOT MANY people have heard, because it was hushed up by the famous families involved. It starts with Santa Caterina, who had been known for her special powers since she was a little girl. People would come to her from all over Siena with their pains and aches, and would be healed by her touch. Now, as a grown woman, she spent most of her time taking care of the sick at the hospital by the Siena Cathedral, the Santa Maria della Scala, where she had her own room with a bed.
One day Santa Caterina was called to Palazzo Salimbeni, and when she arrived, she saw that everyone in the house was sick with worry. Four nights ago, they told her, there was a great wedding held here, and the bride was a woman of the Tolomeis, the lovely Mina. It had been a magnificent feast, for the groom was a son of Salimbeni, and the two families were there together, eating and singing, celebrating a long peace.
But when the groom went to his wedding chamber in the midnight hour, his bride was not there. He asked the servants, but no one had seen her, and he was filled with fear. What had happened to his Mina? Did she run away? Or was she abducted by enemies? But who would dare do such a thing to the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis? It was impossible. So, the groom ran everywhere, looking for his bride, upstairs, downstairs, asking the servants, asking the guards, but everyone told him that Mina could not have left the house unseen. And his heart as well said no! He was a kind young man, a handsome man. She would never run away from him. But now, this young Salimbeni must tell his father, and her father, and when they heard what was wrong, the whole house began searching for Mina.
For hours they searched-in the bedrooms, the kitchen, even in the servants’ quarters-until the lark started singing, and they finally gave up. But now that a new day had begun, the oldest grandmother of the wedding party, Monna Cecilia, came downstairs to find them sitting there, all in tears and talking of war against these, war against those. And old Monna Cecilia listened to them, and then she said to them, “Sad gentlemen, come with me, and I will find your Mina. For there is one place in the house you have not looked, and I feel in my heart that she is there.”