He sounded really pleased with himself. He stood for a while on the doorstep, like a cat purring in the strong noon sun, while Alfredo once again wondered what it must be like to have everyone you met terrified of you. But Uncle Giorgio actually seemed to enjoy it. Strange.
Now he stalked off toward the inn, but started to lean on his stick before they reached it. Alfredo had been expecting that they would simply collect the mules and ride home, but the landlord was waiting at the door, bowing and smiling but still giving the impression that he would have preferred to run and hide in his darkest cellar.
“I trust the signor is in good health,” he gabbled.
“Feeling my age, feeling my age,” said Uncle Giorgio, speaking almost affably. “I shall need your arm up the stairs, I fear.”
The landlord helped him climb slowly to a room overlooking the harbor, where a table was laid for two.
Uncle Giorgio straightened as soon as they were alone.
“A feast in celebration of the occasion,” he said genially.
Alfredo’s heart sank. How could he eat a feast of celebration with this man whom he now believed to be a monster, a murderer? Sitting in the attorney’s office, pretending to be honored and grateful about what his uncle was doing for him—that wasn’t difficult. In a grim sense he’d almost enjoyed it, because each little deception of Uncle Giorgio became part of his secret knowledge. It was all right eating together up at the house, where often his uncle read throughout the meal and scarcely said a word, so that they might just as well have been eating in separate rooms, and where even when they talked their words seemed to be full of secret meanings. But here, like this? He thought of name-days at home, the joy, the family love, Mother’s pride in what she’d prepared for the occasion. That had been true celebration, not this. The food would be sawdust in his mouth, tasteless and unswallowable, and he must pretend to enjoy it.
No, he would not think like that. Soon, soon, before next Monday, he would find proof of what the salamanders had told him. And then…then somehow—something deep and savage stirred in him—then he would take vengeance.
They sat and the meal was brought, olives and bread and oil, of course, and grilled sardines caught fresh that morning, and a salad of wild leaves from the mountain, and a tender young pullet roasted on a bed of herbs, and a strange, sweet custard, and three kinds of wine, and lime water better than the attorney’s—indeed the sort of meal Mother would have prepared for a name-day.
Alfredo settled down to enjoy it, savoring every mouthful with the thought of his vengeance. Vengeance, he discovered, makes an excellent savor. So he ate with gusto until Uncle Giorgio pulled him up.
“We must feed you up but not make you ill,” he said, lightly enough—but still Alfredo seemed to hear the undertone of another kind of meaning. This time, though, he could guess what it was. To Uncle Giorgio each mouthful he ate, each sip he drank, each breath he drew, was not for his own pleasure, but a preparation for next Monday and his mysterious destiny.
He thought about this as they rode up the hill and wondered if he could starve himself until he was too weak to do whatever his uncle expected of him on Monday. Not easily, if he was watched all the time as he ate. But…
That evening, sitting in the kitchen and watching Annetta preparing supper, he wondered where her loyalties really lay. He decided to take the risk.
“Annetta?”
She turned from the stove, eyebrows raised.
“Can you give me something to make me a little bit sick? Not really sick, just so I don’t have to do something. Only for a morning—I can’t explain. He’d see through it if I was just shamming sick.”
She frowned for a moment, glanced at Toni and stared at her hands. Alfredo could see her thinking What if the master found out? He sighed with relief when she straightened, looked him firmly in the eye and nodded.
She laid her spoon down, crossed to her store cupboard and reached to the back of a high shelf for a small lidded pot. She fetched a mug, and her kettle from the back of the stove, took a leaf out of the pot, put it in the mug and mimed filling the mug from the kettle. She pointed at the kitchen clock and made a slow circle in the air. Wait for an hour. She then pretended to drink the contents of the mug.
That done, she tipped the leaf out onto the table and added two more from the pot, rinsed the mug carefully and laid it to drain. She pointed at the leaves, held up a finger, clutched her stomach and pretended to retch into her hands. Two fingers, and this time she was in serious pain and vomiting onto the floor. Three fingers, and she started to curl up in agony, then straightened, smiling.
“One leaf would make me a bit ill, and two properly ill, and three I’d be really sick,” said Alfredo. “If I took just one, how long would it be before I threw up?”
She pointed at the clock again, held up her finger and wrapped her other hand round the bottom half of it. Half an hour.
“And how long before I got better?”
This time she held up four fingers. Then she poured water into a bowl, washed her hands, threw the water away and rinsed out the bowl.
“Thank you, Annetta,” he said. “I won’t use it unless I have to—there may be another way.”
He took the leaves up to his room and hid them in a book. Following Annetta’s example, he washed his hands carefully before he came back downstairs.
“A light supper after our midday feast,” said Uncle Giorgio pleasantly enough. “I think we are both too tired for talk.”
Alfredo agreed, with relief, and took up his book. They did not speak again until they said goodnight. That was Tuesday.
All night Alfredo dreamed restlessly of his vengeance. He woke early, and discovered that his confidence had somehow thinned in the night, as if it had become part of the now forgotten dreams. Yesterday his decision to trust the salamanders, his new hatred of his uncle and his determination to take his vengeance if he got the chance had seemed fixed and certain. Now both trust and determination had become doubtful, and without them what right had he to hatred? And even suppose, miraculously, he found the proof he needed, he could see no way forward, and was heavily aware of how little his power was, how few and small his secrets, compared to all that Uncle Giorgio knew from his study, and his long Mastership of the mountain. Fear had returned—not full-fledged panic, but a steady underlying apprehension, a feeling that he was picking his way along a narrow track with a precipitous drop below, and dared not look down.
The sun was just rising as he went out into the silvery sweet dawn, not with any purpose, simply needing to be away from the house and all it meant. As before he found himself wandering along the overgrown driveway until his way was blocked by the old lava flow.
He gazed a while, unthinking, and then, though it was still full of the chill of night, stretched himself out on it, molded his body to it, made himself part of it, imagined himself seeping down through its hidden veins, feeling his way toward the distant central fires. Faintly now he thought he could hear the singing of the salamanders.
Oh, what is going to happen to me? he asked them.
The singing paused and resumed, but muddled and uncertain. Like a fever dream. Whoever had written the notes he had found had been right— Nobody, not even we ourselves, the salamanders seemed to be telling him, knows what is going to happen, not until it happens. Till then there is no certainty about it, no truth for us to tell.
He wasn’t disappointed. In his heart he had known this to be so, just as he knew, too, that it was no use asking them what Uncle Giorgio was planning. They couldn’t see into the minds of men. But the singing of the salamanders, and the fact that he could hear them, were comforting in themselves, so he lay where he was for a while, and then went back to the house for breakfast. As soon as they had eaten Uncle Giorgio took him down to the furnace room.