The Ancestor Read online

  “Coffee?” she asked. “Milk or sugar?”

  “Black,” I said, eyeing the paperback she had been reading: Amore proibito. A bare-chested hulk of a man held a redheaded pixie in his bulging arms on the cover.

  Nonna returned with the coffee. She had trouble managing, so I took the cups, set them on the coffee table, and helped her sit. When she had settled in, I pulled out the envelope from Turin.

  “I was hoping you could help me with something, Nonna,” I said, slipping the papers from the envelope and giving them to her. “This came in the mail, but I don’t know what it says.”

  Nonna spread out the pages over the table and picked up her magnifying glass. The lens tracked over the lines, the words popping into view. She paused at the golden seal and a blaze of foil exploded at the center of the glass.

  “My goodness, I never thought I would see this again,” she said.

  I leaned across the coffee table to get a closer look. She angled the magnifying glass over the seal and I saw it again: the castle above two mountain peaks.

  “This was everywhere in Nevenero,” she said. “All over town. In the post office, on street signs, on the door of the café. Everywhere.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The Montebianco coat of arms.” She put down the magnifying glass. Her face had gone ashen. She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “Where did you get this letter?”

  “It came this morning,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Registered mail.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.” She sighed a deep and resigned sigh. “It was only a matter of time before they found you.”

  I considered this a moment. Before they found you. The way she said it, her voice accusatory, her eyes filled with a sudden wariness, made it seem as though this was my fault and that I had been hoping to be found.

  “Who is they?”

  “The House of Montebianco.”

  The name on the letter flashed in my mind. Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco.

  “According to this letter, the Count of Montebianco died six months ago.” She tapped her magnifying glass against the edge of the coffee table, as if the rhythm helped her think. “The lawyers representing the family estate looked for his heir.” Tap, tap. “They have come to the conclusion that there is not one Montebianco left in the world.” Tap, tap, tap. “Except you.”

  I must have appeared utterly baffled, because Nonna said it again, only more slowly.

  “This letter is from the legal team representing the House of Montebianco. They claim that you, Alberta, are the last of the Montebianco family line. They want you to come to Turin for an interview regarding your inheritance, which is explained”—Nonna shifted through the papers and pulled out the fancy-looking one with the golden seal—“here, in the Count of Montebianco’s last will and testament.”

  “What else does it say?” I asked, a mixture of wariness and wonder bubbling up in me, the same restrained hope I felt when a pregnancy test came back positive: a new possibility was forming in my life.

  Nonna bent over the pages with her magnifying glass. “I can hardly read this, there is so much legal language here, but this page outlines what you could inherit if you are proven to be the heir. There is the title and a property.” She bit her lip, her expression going somber. “Montebianco Castle,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “A death trap, to be sure.”

  “But there is obviously some kind of mistake,” I said. “My name is Alberta Monte, not Montebianco.”

  She leveled her gaze at me. “You are Giovanni’s granddaughter, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

  “Then you belong to the House of Montebianco as sure as that seal does.”

  Although I had heard everything she said, I could not process what was happening. Pieces of information were coming to me, but they didn’t make sense. There was the Montebianco name, an inheritance, my grandfather, a golden seal. The facts collected in my mind, but I couldn’t read them.

  “You knew about this before?” A shade of an accusation slipped into my voice.

  “Of course we knew,” she said, dismissing my question with a shrug. “Your grandfather Giovanni was born a Montebianco. He shortened his name when he naturalized as a citizen. Many of us did that, you know, to fit in. Jews. Eastern Europeans. Italians. But he had a more specific reason, of course. Oh, he was a proud man, your grandfather, not one to speak badly about his family, but we knew he’d run away from them. Who were we to blame him for trying to bury the past? We were all doing the same thing.”

  As she spoke, I felt more and more confused. Who had he run away from? And why would he speak badly about his family? “But what was there to bury?”

  A shadow passed over her features. “It has been almost seventy years since I left,” she said at last, her voice trembling. “And nearly that long since I have spoken of it.”

  “Of what, Nonna?”

  “Nevenero,” she said, emphasizing each syllable. “The village we left behind. Do you know what it means?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea.

  “Black snow.” She gave me a dark look, as if the words pained her. “Neve, snow; nero, black. Such a cruel place, Nevenero. An ice village, so cold, so brutal you froze to death if you wandered too far from home. We ate what we killed—ibex and rabbit. We wore goatskin trousers and marmot furs. Our houses were made of simple materials—wood and slabs of granite—with high, wedge-shaped roofs that kept off the snow. Simple but strong. And always, no matter the position of the sun, the village was trapped in the shadow of the mountains. Day and night, it was dark. But the castle, built higher than the village, built right into the rock of the mountain, was even darker still.”

  Nonna leaned forward, her eyes filled with emotion. “The village was so dominated by the mountains that roads were nearly impassable, so narrow that trucks jammed the sheer, glacial passages. It is a miracle we were able to leave at all. But we did leave: brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, friends and rivals—we all fled. We all came here to start over. And that is why we all forgave Giovanni. Despite his name, we forgave him. Forgiveness, however, is not the same as trust.”

  I sat back in the recliner, trying to understand why so many people had fled Nevenero and what my grandfather had done to require forgiveness.

  “Does Luca know about this?” I asked at last. “Or Bob?”

  “We came here to start over,” she said. “We didn’t want the children to know.”

  Nonna pushed her glasses up her nose and adjusted her wig. “I have photos somewhere around here,” she said. She pointed to a cabinet near her bed. “Look in there.”

  I went to the cabinet, found an album in a drawer, and brought it to Nonna. She flipped through the pages, and I saw a series of black-and-white images of stone houses, miserable-looking children, goats knee-deep in snow. There was a family portrait of people whose features were a half rhyme to Luca’s—Nonna’s brothers and sisters, I guessed. Her parents. Her grandparents. Nonna pulled out a photo of a narrow valley carved between two snowcapped mountains. At the center of the valley, lifting like a sinister wedding cake, was a castle. It stood dark and solitary, surrounded by sharp peaks. All else was ice and shadow.

  “That is Montebianco Castle,” she said, her expression filled with fear. “I never saw it up close. We were not allowed to go anywhere near it.”

  I took the album and looked at the picture. “My grandfather lived there?” I asked, astonished.

  “They didn’t mix with the villagers,” she said. “I didn’t meet your grandfather until we made the crossing.”

  She turned the pages until she came to a yellowed newspaper clipping. “Here it is,” she said, pulling a photo from a page and giving it to me. A young man stood before a steamer, the words “S.S. Saturnia” painted on the side. The quality of the photo was degraded, so grainy that Giovanni seemed little more than a stain of sepia bleeding through the page, but I could see th
at he was packed for a voyage. There was a suitcase in his hand and a steamer trunk sat at his side. An expression of wonder colored his features, a reckless readiness, the kind of expression that accompanies an act of faith. I could see that Sophia had been right about our resemblance: my grandfather was tall and broad-shouldered, with a wide forehead, large hands, and a deep cleft in the chin. Like me.

  “That was the ship that took us from Genoa to New York,” she said, running a yellow fingernail over the picture. “I didn’t have the same class berth as your grandfather—I was down below—but we played cards up on the deck. Look here.” She glided the magnifying glass over the photo, so that it hovered about the steamer trunk. There, in tiny gold letters stamped into the leather, was the name: montebianco. “It was July 1949,” she said, her voice sad suddenly. “We didn’t want to go, but we had no choice. After they took my younger brother, Gregor, all of us left.”

  “Wait,” I said, thinking I had misheard her. “Who took your brother?”

  Nonna closed the album. “The beast. It watched from the mountains and took the most vulnerable.” There was a tremor in her voice. “The smallest children. The ones left alone to play in the village. Gregor was playing in the trees near the mountains when it happened. That’s where they hid, where the trees grew thick. They killed our goats, ate them right there and left nothing but bones. We never found the bones of our children, though. The children just disappeared.”

  “What was it?” I asked, trying to imagine what kind of wild animal would attack goats and children. “A wolf?”

  “I encountered it only once, but it was enough to understand that it was not like anything I had ever seen before,” Nonna said. “I was fourteen years old when I saw it.” She rubbed her eyes, as if massaging away a headache. “The beast took Gregor a few years later. After that, we left. Our homes, our belongings, the graves of our ancestors, everything. We didn’t look back, ever. Even your grandfather Giovanni, who had so much more to lose, gave up everything. He knew what was happening in those mountains. He knew!”

  Nonna’s eyes had become large and wild. I picked up the letter and shoved it back into the envelope.

  “There’s no need to get upset, Nonna,” I said. “It happened a long time ago.”

  “Yes, a long time ago,” she said, leaning back into the sofa, exhausted. “A very long time ago. But tell me, child, do we ever escape the evils of the past?”

  A chill fell over me, and although I had no clear idea of the evils to which Nonna referred, I felt the same premonition I had felt earlier that day, a premonition of the past bleeding into the future, dark and deadly, a warning to leave it be and go on as if I had never heard the name Montebianco.

  “Do not go to them,” she said, meeting my eyes. “Your family has had such trouble. Such tragedy and pain. Let the past die. Look ahead, to the future here with Luca.”

  I stared at her, wondering what on earth she was talking about. Could she possibly know about the troubles Luca and I had had over the years? We hadn’t told anyone about our struggles to have a child. The pregnancies, the miscarriages, my infertility treatments, the specialists—we had tried to spare them disappointment.

  “Everything is fine, Nonna,” I said. “Don’t worry. It will all be okay.”

  “This is our fault,” she said, her voice anguished, her eyes enormous behind her glasses. “We didn’t tell our children what happened in Nevenero. We didn’t tell our grandchildren. We wanted to forget. We wanted you to be innocent. We thought we had escaped.”

  Nonna trembled as she spoke. She didn’t look well. I felt for my phone. I would call Luca and ask him to come over and help.

  “This is nothing to get worked up about, Nonna,” I said. “Please. Don’t worry. It’s just a letter.”

  “Just a letter?” she said, her eyes growing large. “Don’t you understand? They want you back. The Montebianco family has come for you. They need you back. I am sure this is not the first time they’ve tried. Giovanni must have known they would come. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. That is why he killed himself.”

  “My grandfather killed himself?” I asked, astonished. I leaned back into the recliner for support. “He committed suicide? Are you sure?”

  “Don’t be fooled,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Whatever that family gives you is nothing compared to what you will lose.”

  It couldn’t be true that my grandfather had killed himself. I would have known. My parents would have told me. But suddenly, it struck me how little I knew about my grandparents. My parents had no photos of them, no family heirlooms, nothing at all of our Italian heritage. My parents had never spoken of the past. Could they have been hiding something?

  Nonna tried to stand, but fell back into the sofa, wheezing and gasping. I was afraid she would collapse right there and die, on the floor of her living room.

  “Nonna,” I said, going to her side. “Please, Nonna, calm down. I’m getting Luca. Don’t worry.”

  Nonna grabbed my sleeve and pulled me close. Reaching for my hand, she took it between her cold fingers and brought it to her heart. She looked me in the eye and, her voice shaking with emotion, said, “Listen to me, child. I saw it. The beast came for me on the mountain pass. Its teeth were sharp as razors, its eyes devilish. But worst of all, it was so like us. Monstrous and yet so human. The legends were true.”

  Three

  Devil. Monster. Beast. Suicide.

  These words circled my mind as I walked through the parking lot. Devil. Monster. Beast. Suicide. Nonna Sophia had left Italy nearly seventy years ago, and yet her fear remained hard and tactile, so solid I could feel it there beside me as I kicked through the snow to my car. What on earth had she seen that had scared her like that? An animal? A person? What did she mean by “the legends were true”?

  Try as I might, I couldn’t put her words out of my mind. The way she held my hand to her heart and the beseeching look in her eyes—she had been terrified. Don’t be fooled. Whatever that family gives you is nothing compared to what you will lose.

  At my car, I looked out over the vast grounds of the Monastery. It was three thirty in the afternoon, snowing heavily, the sky a fog of indigo against the river. The days were at their shortest, and dusk had fallen, darkness rising from the river to the heavens like watercolors seeping into paper. I brushed a layer of snow from the windshield, wishing that Luca had come with me. Surely, he would have known what to say to calm Nonna. He was always better at these things than I was.

  Yet, even Luca would have found Nonna’s reaction to the letter extreme. I leaned against my car, feeling unbalanced, dizzy. Had my grandfather really committed suicide? Why would my parents have kept that from me? Had they, like Nonna Sophia and the older generation, tried to protect me from the truth?

  As I got into my Honda, I heard something behind me. I turned, expecting to find a visitor, maybe even Luca. There was nothing but the empty parking lot, the wash of darkening light, the snow swirling in the wind. And yet, I felt a presence, an eerie human presence, close as breath on the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right.

  I locked the car door, turned on the heater, and called Luca, telling him everything. After he promised to come to the Monastery to check on Nonna, I threw the car into reverse, did a U-turn, and headed back toward Milton. It was three forty-five. The town hall closed at five.

  Mrs. Thomas, head of the Vital Records office, was my friend Tina’s mother. In high school, there had been weeks when I had slept at the Thomases’ house more often than my own, partially because Tina and I played softball together, but also because, being an only child, I loved Tina’s brothers and sisters, the big chaotic family dinners, and the sense that there was always something exciting happening at the Thomases’ place. I’d compared her house with mine and, finding life quiet and dull with my parents, chosen to be with Tina.

  The Vital Records counter was abandoned, but I could smell coffee from somewhere beyond the rows of metal filing cabinets, so I kne
w someone must be back there. I rang the bell and waited. Office hours were 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, but even if Mrs. Thomas had left early, someone would help me.

  “Well, hello there, Bert Monte!” Mrs. Thomas said, stepping out from behind a cabinet. She was a tall black woman in her fifties with an abundance of gold rings stacked on her fingers. “You looking for Tina?”

  I was glad to see Mrs. Thomas. She had a way of putting me at ease. Maybe Tina had told her about my troubles at school, or my crippling shyness, because Mrs. Thomas always made me feel welcome. “Isn’t Tina in the city?” I asked.

  “Brooklyn,” she said, shaking her head. “That girl left the day she graduated and is never coming back.”

  “I heard you’re a grandma,” I said, aware, suddenly, how much time had passed since high school. I could hardly believe Tina and I had graduated ten years ago.

  “Blessed many times over,” Mrs. Thomas said. “Three grandbabies. Two boys and a girl.”

  Mrs. Thomas reached for a framed photograph on her desk, but I was too preoccupied to see her grandchildren. “I know you’re closing soon, but I was hoping to take a look at the Monte family records before you leave for the night,” I said. “Birth and death certificates. I’m doing some research.”

  “Not you too,” she said, flipping up a square of countertop and letting me pass into her domain.

  “You’ve had other requests for Monte family records?” I asked.

  “No, silly,” she said, swatting my arm. “We are totally overrun with genealogy requests. I have been photocopying and mailing records all over the place. Just last week I priority-mailed twenty-three birth records to a lady in Florida. She took a genetic test and realized her dad—the man she grew up with and whose name she carries—wasn’t actually her biological father. Her mother told her the name of her real father is Joe Johnson, from Marlborough, New York, so I went through every one of these cabinets hunting down that name. There were twenty-three Joseph Johnsons born between 1899 and 1935.” Mrs. Thomas gave me a look of exhaustion. “I know I shouldn’t complain. Vital Records revenue is up by about a million percent.”