The Ancestor Page 5

  He leaned over and kissed me, and it was as if we were who we used to be, unguarded, me and Luca with the whole of our future ahead of us.

  “I’m sorry about asking you to move out,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder, feeling the scruff of his beard against my cheek. “I just didn’t expect everything to be so . . . difficult.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” A bus stopped on the corner below, its brakes squeaking. “But maybe we should think about adoption.”

  “Of course, yes, we should,” I said, closing my eyes and feeling the snow on my cheeks. We kissed again, and I felt, suddenly, that I could be happy with the life I had then and there and could forget about the futures that might have been.

  Back inside, we fell into bed together and made up for the months of separation. As I lay in Luca’s arms, I thought back to the moment I had opened the letter and the sharp feeling of foreboding that had fallen over me. If the letter had not arrived, we would never have had this time together. The premonition of danger had been wrong: the letter had brought me and Luca back together.

  We showered and changed into the clothes Enzo had left. Luca put on a new shirt and the leather jacket, while I zipped into the silk dress. Everything fit except the black suede boots. This was no surprise. I had inherited my grandfather Giovanni’s feet, wide and flat, and it was never easy to find shoes that fit. I sat on the bed and looked at them, wiggling my long second toe. My ugly feet had caused me no small amount of embarrassment growing up. I never allowed anyone to touch them, and aside from Luca and my parents, no one had ever seen them. As a child, I had avoided swimming. In the summer, when I wore sandals, I always kept my socks on, something Tina, who knew how much I hated my feet, had teased me about. Luca always said I was too sensitive, that nobody would even notice, but I had never been able to feel good about them. I slipped on my boots from home, glad the dress was long enough to cover them.

  “That dress is perfect,” Luca said. “You look beautiful.”

  As we left, I paused before a full-length mirror. Luca was right: the clothes had the effect of transforming me. From the liquid reflection of the mirror, I saw someone else, the kind of person I’d always imagined I could be one day, after graduating and getting a job—tailored, elegant. Powerful. Alberta Montebianco. It wasn’t vanity, but recognition: I knew this woman. She had been waiting for me there, in that hotel room in Italy.

  Six

  Torino was not a primary destination for most tourists. It didn’t have the grand monuments of Rome or the cafés of Paris or the charming bars of Barcelona. But that night, as Luca and I walked hand in hand through the dark streets near the hotel, I had the impression that Turin, with its palazzos and small shops, was the most romantic city in the universe.

  We wandered through the city without paying attention to street names, skirting the river Po before turning back in the direction of the hotel. We waded through a crowd standing before a theater and walked alongside a park, where wreaths of Christmas lights hung from lampposts, casting red and green and white halos over the sidewalk.

  It was an hour or so before hunger drove us to look up one of the restaurants Enzo had programmed into the phone. We typed the address into Google Maps and five minutes later we walked into a rustic, dimly lit osteria on the Via Guiseppe Verdi. From the outside, the place appeared quiet, but when we went inside, the restaurant was nearly full. Wine racks lined the walls, bottles rising between framed photos of Alpine landscapes—deer and bear and snow-laden mountain huts. As we followed the host to a table in a back corner of the room, I saw plates of pasta, pots of fondue, and baskets of black bread on the tables. Hunger twisted through me. I hadn’t eaten for hours. I sank into my chair, in full anticipation of dinner.

  When the waiter arrived, we ordered the nightly special from a handwritten card. As each dish appeared, the waiter explained the courses: antipasto, primo, secondo, and dolce. The fondue that I had spotted earlier was called bagna cauda, a bubbling bath of olive oil, anchovy paste, and garlic eaten with raw vegetables. Then came a creamy, fresh pasta called tajarin, served with a glass of white wine, a smooth, nutty Nascetta. This was followed by steak and Barolo. Then a dessert of hazelnut cake and a shot of espresso.

  Whether it was because I had never tasted such food or because it was my first and last meal with Luca in Italy, I have never, not before or since, tasted anything quite like that dinner. I think of it as akin to the last meal of the condemned, one eaten in the final moments of a life to give comfort and strength before an unknown journey. Because a treacherous journey awaited me, and while I had no idea of the difficulties I would face, and the ways in which my life would be forever changed, I did embark well fed. The pasta paired so perfectly with the white wine that I wanted to order a second plate. The grilled steak dissolved into the rich earthy flavor of the Barolo. The sweet hazelnut cake hovered over the meal, a delicate top note. I looked at my husband, happier than I had seen him in years, and I felt a rush of gratitude that we were together. No matter what happened—bad news, good news, tragedy or good fortune—I could get through it as long as we could talk about it over dinner.

  As the waiter cleared the plates away, I couldn’t help but wonder how Nonna and her family could have left such incredible food behind. But of course, they had never eaten like that. Such luxuries didn’t exist in the village of Nevenero. In that remote, barren place, there was little more than dry goat meat and polenta and vegetables pulled from rocky soil. It was the Montebianco family, living in the castle above the village, that feasted on steak and drank fine wine. I know, because I have been in the cellar below the castle, walked through the enormous caverns carved into the granite of the mountain, and pulled a bottle of hundred-year-old Bordeaux from the shadows. I have opened bottles that collectors would pay a fortune to acquire and drunk them alone at the fireplace, watching the moonlight on the snowcapped Alps. My palate has become refined, my expectations engorged, but I have never forgotten the experience of drinking that simple Barolo with Luca on my first night in Italy, its earthiness grounding me, even as the rest of my life dissolved into thin air.

  By the time we finished, the tables were empty. Waiters moved from place to place, carrying dishes to the kitchen, removing tablecloths, clearing glasses to the bar. The waiter cleared our table, and when he’d left, Luca slid his hand over mine.

  “You’re worried,” he said. “I can tell.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said, pulling my hand away to fidget with the tablecloth. I was lying, of course, and he knew it. “I’m sure that the meeting with the lawyers will be just fine.”

  “There’s no need to be anxious.”

  “I’m just tired. Jet-lagged, probably. That’s all.”

  “It’s been quite a day,” Luca said, signaling the waiter for the check, his eyes gleaming with happiness. It had been a monumental day, the day our futures had realigned.

  “I keep thinking about what they’ll say tomorrow,” I said.

  “That’s understandable, considering.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said, feeling suddenly emotional. “I feel like I’ve been deceived. Like my parents weren’t honest with me.”

  Luca took my hand again and squeezed it. “Maybe they didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Maybe my grandfather didn’t tell them anything about his family. But if your grandmother knew that there was something odd in my grandfather’s past, then surely other people did, too, don’t you think?”

  Luca stared at me as if he wanted to say something, but the waiter arrived with the check. I pulled out the pouch and paid with euro notes.

  “Let’s get back,” Luca said, standing and helping me with my coat. “We both need sleep.”

  As we walked toward the hotel, I felt my spirits revive. The cool night air cleared away the anxiety and left me with thoughts of the good my inheritance could bring. “How much do you think the Montebianco family is worth?” I asked Luca.

  “Way more
than I originally thought,” Luca said, smiling in a way that made me laugh.

  “A million?”

  “The private jet? The hotel and the cash? More.”

  “Wouldn’t it be amazing to pay off the house and my student loans?”

  “And the mortgage for the bar?”

  “It would feel incredible to have some security.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, shielding them from the wind. “There’s something I keep trying to figure out, though. Why didn’t you tell me what Nonna thought about my family?”

  Luca stopped, zipped his new leather jacket against the cold. “Come on, Bert, you must have noticed.”

  “Noticed what?” I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks, the throb of my pulse in my chest.

  “How your family was always . . .”

  “Always what?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and I could see that he hadn’t meant to take the conversation in that direction, that he was a little drunk and had said something he already regretted.

  I stopped and turned to face Luca. “My family was always what, Luca?”

  “Shunned.” Luca took a deep breath, the kind of breath one takes before diving into a cold pond. “Your family was always shunned.”

  The word stung like a slap. “That is not true.”

  “Did you ever wonder why you weren’t included in the church youth group?”

  “No. Well, I wondered, but I didn’t care . . .”

  “Or why your parents weren’t part of any of the community events?”

  “Like what?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat. “The Lent potlucks?”

  “Or the Christmas bazaar or the Saint Joe’s fund-raiser?”

  I hadn’t thought of any of these things for a long time, but a sense of shame fell over me as Luca listed them. Yes, my family had kept to themselves, and yes, there was definitely a sense that we weren’t welcome, but I had never thought of us as being shunned. No one had ever articulated our status in Milton quite so clearly, and it hurt.

  “The older generation wouldn’t even talk to your grandparents,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Nonna warned me before I married you,” he said. “She said your family was tainted.”

  I stared at him, shocked and hurt. “Tainted?” I asked. “Did you really just say the word ‘tainted’?”

  “Bert, I’m sorry.” Luca looked sad and unsure of himself, but I could see that he had been carrying these feelings around with him for years. “I didn’t listen. I loved you anyway, Bert. With everything that’s happened, I’ve always loved you anyway.”

  “I need a little air,” I said, turning away and leaving him standing alone. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  I wandered through the snow-covered streets, tears in my eyes and a headache throbbing at my temples. I was angry but also relieved. In thirty seconds, I understood why there had been such resistance to me in Milton, why I’d never felt a part of the same community as Luca and his family. Clearly, whatever had happened in Nevenero so many years before had not been left there. When our families had immigrated to America, they had carried this bad blood with them.

  I walked for a good hour and was about to turn back toward the hotel when, at the corner of a narrow, cobblestone street, I saw a bookstore. It was a small shop with wood-framed windows stacked high with books. The thought crossed my mind that maybe there would be something in the store about Nevenero, a travel guide, or a book of Italian history that could help me understand the place my grandparents had left.

  A bell rang as I pushed through the door and walked into a warm space that smelled of tobacco and old paper. A man with gray hair and a matching mustache smoked at a counter, a book open before him.

  “Buona sera,” he said without looking up.

  “Buona sera,” I replied. I looked around, at the high wooden shelves crammed full of books, and wondered how anyone found anything in such chaos.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you speak English?”

  He looked up from the book and put out his cigarette. “A little.”

  “Do you have a book about a place called Nevenero?” When he looked at me blankly, I added, “It’s a village in the Aosta Valley.”

  “Valle d’Aosta.” It sounded beautiful when he said it. “I think . . . no. But follow me.”

  He walked through a narrow passage between bookshelves, stepping over stacks of magazines on the floor, until we came to a shelf filled with travel books. He ran his finger over the spines—Francia, Grecia, Roma, Sicilia—stopping at an oversized hardcover, Fortezze della Valle d’Aosta. Fortresses of the Aosta Valley. He slid it out and gave it to me, then turned, leaving me to page through black-and-white photographs.

  Mountains dominated every picture. There were fortresses and castles framed by mountains, herds of goats on limestone crags, stone village houses nestled into valleys. Ibex, with their long, sharp horns, stood on granite precipices. I couldn’t read much of the text, but the images gave the impression that the region was stark and breathtaking, all steep inclines and vertiginous descents. It made me wonder at my grandfather, how his character must have been formed by such high and low points, his personality shaped by extremes. I remembered his propensity for long hikes in the Catskills, the cold of his farmhouse in the winter, and skating on the pond in our bare feet, and I understood that these traits had to have been carried with him from the Alps.

  I flipped through the pages until I came to a map of the region, a splotch of land with Mont Blanc at the northern extremity and the Gran Paradiso National Park to the south. I searched the map, looking for the village of my ancestors, but Nevenero wasn’t anywhere to be found. It must have been too small and insignificant. I tried to remember what I’d found online on the drive to the airport the day before: that Nevenero existed somewhere in the northwest corner of the Aosta Valley, hidden in a fold of alpine granite south of Mont Blanc and north of the commune of La Thuile, one of the least populous communes in the least populous region of Italy.

  I closed the book and was on my way out the door when the bookseller stopped me. “I found another book about the Valle d’Aoste. You want to see it?”

  I didn’t have time to answer before he walked ahead, to the opposite side of the store, to a shelf labeled Occulto.

  “This can’t be right,” I said, studying the books with pictures of pentagrams and reverse crosses, the tree of life and the ouroboros. “Nevenero is a town.”

  “Here,” he said, pulling down a book, checking it against his notecard, then handing it to me. The title read: Mostri delle Alpi. Monsters of the Alps.

  I thanked him and fell into a chair in the corner. It may have been the fight with Luca, or perhaps the events of the past few days were starting to get to me, but my throat was dry and my hands trembled as I turned the pages. The book was filled with pictures of the greatest hits of Alpine monsters—a half goat, half devil called Krampus that supposedly terrorized mountain villages each Christmas and dwarfs called cretins. I later learned that, in the nineteenth century, explorers to the region found entire communities of cretins tucked away in the mountains. These small beings were not monsters at all, but people afflicted with an iodine deficiency. When iodized salt was introduced, the disease disappeared.

  I had never heard of Krampus or cretins, had never seen the twisting, serpentine dragons drawn by the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the seventeenth century. I had never imagined a gryphon, with its lion body and eagle head, or any of the devilish hybrids I found in the book that evening. But even if I had, none of the bizarre life-forms that allegedly existed in the icy crevices of the Alps could have prepared me for an image near the end of the book. It was a black-and-white photograph of a man—at least, I thought it was a man—his skin unnaturally pale, white hair long and tangled over his shoulders, a coat of fine fur covering his chest. He stared out from the photograph, his enormous eyes boring into me, as if daring me to turn my gaze away.<
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  I puzzled over him, finding him both monstrous and fascinating. It was as though I knew him already, those haunting, predatory blue eyes living in a corner of my mind, submerged and half visible as a creature of a nightmare. But it wasn’t until I read the words typed below the photo that I went cold with recognition: La Bestia di Nevenero. The Beast of Nevenero, the very creature Nonna Sophia had warned me about.

  I was a block from the bookstore before I realized that I was running. I had reacted in a rush of blind movement, propelled by fear, the mechanism of thought catching. When it clicked into motion, I remembered my reaction to the picture and the startled call of the bookseller—Va tutto bene?—as I threw a twenty-euro bill on the counter and ran out of the store, book in hand. I was so unnerved I could barely see two feet in front of me. It wasn’t until sometime later, when the cold night air left me shivering, that I came back to my senses.

  I pulled my coat tight against the wind and walked into the night, oblivious to where I was headed. I moved through the streets quickly, without stopping, hoping to exhaust the anxiety thrumming through my veins. I heard Nonna Sophia’s words ringing through the air. The legends were true.

  I walked alongside a park and, after a series of turns, found myself standing before a large neoclassical palace. At last, I stopped to catch my breath. Brushing snow from a bench, I sat and opened my purse. Inside, I found the leather pouch Enzo had given me. It was no small relief to have it. I had walked blindly, perhaps in circles, and had no idea where I was. I could use the phone and the money to get back to the hotel, make up with Luca, and go to sleep.

  And yet, even as I opened the phone and searched Google Maps, I couldn’t stop hearing Nonna Sophia’s voice: Let the past die. Look ahead, to the future here with Luca.

  I picked up the book again, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the description written in Italian. I scrolled through the apps on the iPhone, opened the Google Translate app Enzo had downloaded, typed the Italian passage into a box, and, with the push of a button, I had the following: