Gardens in the Dunes (47 page)

As the
professoressa
said, the heat made the walled city unbearable in early August, but here in the hills they were cooled by the steady stream of cool air off the mountains. Though the
professoressa
was disappointed to learn their visit must be brief due to Edward's business in Corsica, still there was ample time to show them the restoration of the gardens with her collection of Old European artifacts.

Their rooms had high ceilings richly adorned with frescoes of birds and flowers in lovely delicate colors. Indigo lay on the bed at once to study the painted figures of fluttering gray doves in blue clouds above cascades of white and pale pink roses. The windows were open wide to catch the cool breezes, and the
professoressa
's housekeeper showed Indigo how to tug, tug, tug on the long cords to lower or raise the window cover to keep out insects or the sunlight.

Indigo opened Rainbow's travel cage and he climbed out to the cage top and flapped his wings. She scratched the top of his head and he ruffled his feathers with pleasure. She looked out the window at the driveway gently ascending the meadow edged with groves of great trees. If this were her place, she would have herds of cattle and sheep graze there.

She opened her valise and took out the green silk notebook with the names of the medicinal plants written in English and in Latin. She took the little pencil that belonged with the notebook and practiced copying the Latin names and the English names on a blank page: monkshood, wolfs-bane, aconite,
Aconitum napellus
. Aunt Bronwyn had pointed out how the topmost petal on the dark purplish blue flower spike was shaped just like a helmet or a monk's hood. Indigo drew the long stem of petals, but she had difficulty drawing the top petal so it did not look too large in proportion to the other petals. Below the picture she copied its medicinal uses from Aunt Bronwyn's list: anodyne, febrifuge, and diuretic. Hattie added these words to her spelling list, so Indigo wrote their definitions right beside them. “Anodyne” is Greek for “no pain”; “febrifuge” she remembered as “refuge from fever.” Hattie told her the English word “febrile” came from the Latin
febris
, for “fever”; “diuretic” was from the Greek for “urine.” Indigo studied
the pencil lines of her sketch before she carefully erased the monkshood petal that was too large, and tried again.

Hattie and Edward's room was down the hall. Indigo was amazed to see the big bed with a roof and side curtains on a raised platform. The curtains kept out the cold draughts in the winter, Hattie explained. With a roof like that, one could sleep outdoors in that bed. They laughed together, and Edward joined in. He was seated comfortably in the plump armchair with his shirtsleeve rolled up, soaking his injured hand in a basin of warm water.

The
professoressa
's house was full of good spirits; Indigo felt them at once. She could tell Laura was kind because her eyes did not shift away when she saw Indigo with the birdcage. Rainbow relaxed his grip and Indigo lifted him off her shoulder and set him gently on her lap, petting his head constantly until he allowed her to cradle him in her arms on his back like a baby. She watched his pale yellow eyes watch her anxiously as his body remained poised to spring away from trouble. She loved how he made her smile even when she was sad. She missed Sister and Mama; were they together now? Hattie was very kind to her but she missed her sister and mother so much.

Hattie opened the French doors to the balcony to show Indigo the Moorish fountain and garden below, enclosing the back of the villa entirely. In the afternoon light, the surfaces of the blue tile on the fountain and pool were instantly transformed. Indigo was amazed and called out her delight with the intense blue. Bright red bougainvillea crisscrossed the blue tiles of the garden wall. Could they go downstairs and walk through it? Oh wonderful!

Indigo leaned into the mist from the fountain and asked Rainbow how it felt; the parrot fluffed his feathers and opened his beak to catch the mist. The long narrow pool of blue tiles was too shallow for fish. Indigo was disappointed and a bit indignant; what were pools for if not goldfish? Hattie explained: In this instance, the pool's purpose was refreshment and beauty for the benefit of people. Fish left the water smelly. Indigo frowned. She enjoyed the fishponds in Oyster Bay a great deal.

The terra-cotta pots of lemon trees around the pool's edge perfumed the air. Indigo was delighted to see green and yellow lemons, and Laura invited her to pick lemons for the custard tomorrow. Great spiked agaves and great python-size cactus were separated from the Joshua trees and big yuccas by the smaller yuccas and aloes of all sorts including a yellow aloe and orange aloe and a red-flowered aloe Hattie had not seen before.

Edward's attention was on dozens of potted lemon trees around the pool.
He hoped he might see the thick scaly rind indicative of
Citrus medica
, though at a glance they all appeared to be lemons. The
professoressa
pointed out the old Persian rose he wanted to see; its root base was thick as a small tree but the branches were carefully pruned and small but fragrant red roses bloomed in profusion. Indigo called in a hushed voice for Hattie to see the hummingbird in the big red hibiscus blossom overhanging the pool. Tomorrow they would see the other old gardens in the woods below.

When Indigo was in her room again she took out the notebook and pencil and tried to draw the hummingbird in the big flower. Rainbow shelled sunflower seeds from his perch atop his cage. Indigo already explained to him what Hattie said: they were guests here, and although Aunt Bronwyn welcomed a parrot and told stories about dogs at the dinner table, it would not be polite to bring Rainbow to Laura's table. When Hattie called her to dinner, Indigo put her face gently against the parrot and whispered for him to wait; she wouldn't be gone for long.

That evening a wonderful display greeted them as they entered the dining room: a flock of white porcelain swans floated and preened amid white calla lilies and fragrant blue water lilies in the center of the dining table. Each place setting was guarded with smaller swan figures in vigilant postures on silvery white linen. Indigo loved the way her napkin was folded and tied with blue satin ribbon; she had not seen so many glasses and forks and spoons on a table before. She slipped the piece of ribbon into her pocket to give to Rainbow, while Hattie expressed her delight with the swans and Edward asked their age.

The dressing of the table must have required as much time as the preparation of the courses of vegetables and pasta. The
professoressa
was happy to hear about their visit to the excavations in Bath. She began her studies with Roman antiquities, but the earlier cultures won her over. Hattie described the tin mask, pre-Roman, crude, but quite powerful, which interested the
professoressa
a great deal because a number of pieces in her collection were figures in masks. Edward preferred to examine the exquisite old glass and porcelain of the place settings, especially the tiny gold cups atop carved marble faces. The
professoressa
and Hattie carried on a lively conversation about masks and terra-cotta figures of goddesses that were half snake or half bird. How clever the Italians were! Edward thought; if one happened to be bored with the topic of conversation, as he was, one had only to turn one's attention to the table settings and the centerpiece and decorations for amusement.

After dinner Indigo brought out her color pencils and drawings; Laura
asked Indigo if she might look, and Indigo shyly handed her the notebook. Laura nodded and smiled as she looked at Indigo's drawings and notes on medicinal plants. She got up from her chair, the notebook still in her hand, and opened a drawer in the tall mahogany cabinet. Out came a flat wooden box with a brightly colored label on its top; Laura lifted the lid, and there Indigo saw dozens of pencils in all colors. Would she accept this gift? Indigo looked at Hattie hopefully, and Hattie nodded. Indigo was delighted; now she could draw the flowers with the right colors and make the hummingbird's feathers purple and green. Laura reached deep into her dress pocket and brought out a small brass pencil sharpener. Edward looked at his watch and told Indigo it was time for bed—she could look over the pencils before the light was put out.

One of the pencils was the color of the dune sand at the old gardens—so pale that the first strokes on the white paper of the notebook were difficult to see. She made a low dune, the dune they called the Dog because it reminded Grandma Fleet of a sleeping dog. Runoff from above accumulated there when the big rains came, and the big sunflowers and biggest datura thrived there with the devil's claws they used for decorating baskets. She drew the yellow flowers of the silvery blue brittlebushes after a rainstorm in late autumn, when the datura still bloomed but the sunflower petals dried to seeds.

As she washed her face and brushed her teeth, Indigo studied her dark face in the oval mirror of the washstand and laughed at herself because she realized she was forgetting how dark she was because all around her she saw only lighter faces. Grandma Fleet would really laugh and Sister Salt probably would pinch her and tease her for becoming a white girl, not a Sand Lizard girl. She didn't care. Wait until they saw all the seeds she gathered and the notebook she brought back with the names and instructions and color sketches too.

Later, when they were alone in their room, Hattie remarked at the rapport she felt with the
professoressa
—she asked them please to call her Laura; she was only a bit older than Edward. She was such an interesting woman—not only a scholar and collector of Old European artifacts, she also hybridized gladiolus. Edward looked up from his newspaper; he would like to see the gladiolus hybrids—they were more interesting than crude artifacts from the fifth millennium.

The calls of three fat crows outside the window woke Indigo the next morning. Rainbow cocked his head to one side to get a better look at them in the top of the big linden tree in the garden. The Messiah and the others
might have passed this way not too long before, though one could not be certain. She looked down into the garden at the rushing water of the fountain and all the shrubs for shade; probably the crows lived here.

Indigo did not think Laura would mind if she and her parrot walked about the house or went into the garden, but Hattie did not want Indigo to go alone; so she waited by the window with Rainbow in the room until she heard their voices from their room down the hall.

After breakfast Laura excused herself to find the rubber garden shoes for them; the garden restoration left a good deal of clayish mud that stuck to ordinary shoes. What a wonderful story Laura told as they changed to their garden shoes, about the first time she visited the abandoned villa among the great trees. Foreigners, relations of Napoleon's sister, owned the property for more than a century, and the local people stayed away. Rumors told of monsters and strange sounds and lights coming from the old woods. The foreigners and their guests came every summer, then suddenly they came no more.

Later, Laura's family received the property in the settlement of an old debt. The house was abandoned, and the gardens were in ruins by then; the bougainvilleas and red climbing roses had gone wild; the great mounds of yellow day lilies overgrew their parterres and spread into the lawn. The grottoes and formal gardens had been stripped of their marble figures and the terraces stripped of marble balustrades and marble vases.

The first time Laura and her brother came there, they had no idea what lay beyond, in the dense foliage in the dark woods. They ventured down the path to see where the water went. It wasn't until they stopped at the first grotto and looked back that she caught a glimpse of something in the deep undergrowth, where an eroded embankment had collapsed to reveal the head and forelegs of a stone centaur. They found a minotaur spying from the shrubbery in the same area, and when a careful survey was made after the first discoveries, a Medusa head was discovered at the foot of an embankment. Hattie and Edward murmured appreciatively, but Edward was disappointed to learn the statues were only late eighteenth century; still, the pieces were quite fascinating. Only recently, after a fierce storm toppled a great many old trees in the
sacro bosco
, workmen discovered a stone grotto behind a wild thicket, tangled with fallen trees and debris from old landslides.

From the fountain and enclosed garden, four stone steps descended to the lawn of the formal garden, shaded by great trees. The morning light played through the canopy of leaves and Indigo saw more colors of green
than she ever imagined—river green, mossy green, willow green, oak leaf green, juniper green, green-golden-green, and shades of grass green all around. She twirled herself around in the delicious green shade as the parrot squawked joyously; around and around she danced, as happy as she had been since she and Sister were parted.

The cries of the parrot attracted the blackbirds they'd seen the evening before. Hattie remarked on the size of the flock; in Bath she remembered only the two or three blackbirds in her aunt's garden. Oh, this area was always known for its population of blackbirds; these hills were thick with hazels and oaks; the local people used to call the run-down old villa the blackbird palace even after she and her husband completed repairs and moved in.

How interesting, Hattie thought; her aunt hadn't mentioned a husband. Was her husband abroad now? Almost as soon as she spoke, Hattie sensed something was wrong. Laura stopped on the path and smiled. She apologized for any confusion: she and her husband were no longer together. Hattie was so surprised at this remark she stammered inanely that she was sorry. Oh, there was nothing to apologize for; all was for the best.

Quickly Hattie turned her attention to the empty stone pedestals and empty niches in the graceful garden walls as Laura explained her reluctance to replace the missing figures with copies; new marble was too bright and would spoil the serenity of the greenery and its subtle shifts of light. When her husband's military command was ordered to Eritrea, she hoped he might obtain interesting stone figures on his visits to Cairo. Hattie glanced about but saw no stone figures; the lichens and tiny ferns and mosses had taken hold on the niches and pedestals where they found just the shade and the sun to thrive. Their eyes met for an instant and Hattie realized the plan to obtain old stone figures from Cairo had gone astray with the husband.