The Faces of Angels (2 page)

The assumption enraged me, which was at least a form of feeling, and therefore something of a relief, so I suppose I owe him that. Even now, about two years later, I can summon up the feeling of Rinaldo's eyes on my face that afternoon. They were like a physical touch, prodding and pushing. Soft, squishy fingers against my skin.

And yet. And yet. A lifetime of obedience, of hope, of Mother Church herself, cannot be so easily set aside. So, on that Sunday when Father Rinaldo finally turned and walked away from us, even as much as I hated him, I had to hold myself back. I had to physically stop myself from running after him, from dodging past the families and their children and the lovers who walked arm in arm, and throwing myself, right there in public, onto the gravel, and begging him—no, pleading with him—not to abandon me.

I remember how I stood there, feeling the need for absolution quivering inside me and tamping it down—one of Pavlov's dogs finally rebelling—and I wonder now if that's when the pieces started sliding. If it wasn't in that exact moment, the second when I did not run or plead, that the words that had made up my life until that day began to fall from the board, and if what came next wasn't just a kind of completion.

My husband was a natural leader. That's the kind of thing people used to say about Ty, and on that afternoon in the Boboli Gardens that's exactly what he was doing: leading. Up to the Belvedere fort and the Porcelain Museum, to be exact. The other three teachers had only been in the city a couple of weeks, and they all wore running shoes and carried water, big plastic one-litre bottles, as if they were expecting to cross the Sahara. They flocked around Ty as he read aloud from a guidebook, his voice ringing out, clear and flat amidst the babble of Italian, as he elaborated on the ruins of the mazes that had once been in the gardens, on the statuary and on the marvellous view they would see from the top of the hill. Then, when he was done, he opened his arms and made little flicking motions with his hands, herding them upwards, shepherd to sheep.

Ty excelled at shepherding, and in the normal course of things, he shepherded me. I think, deep down, he knew I was errant, and was convinced he had a duty of care to keep me on the straight and narrow. In Ty's book, love was vigilance, and while I'd given in to it passively before, once I met Pierangelo it drove me crazy. So I was alert for any opportunity to escape, and that afternoon he was distracted. He'd brought me to the Boboli before, but now he had a newer and bigger audience, one that wasn't already bored by descriptions of crumbling fountains and sculpted bushes, and as I stood there watching him, I realized that, for the first time in months, he wasn't paying any attention to me at all. No one was.

Below me the black column of Rinaldo's back grew smaller and smaller as he walked down the hill, while above me Ty herded the teachers away. Their chatter dissipated as they climbed, the words growing fainter, thinning like the vapour trails of planes. A bunch of children in their Sunday clothes ran down the wide avenue. The little girls wore dresses blotched with the white dust that rose from the gravel, and the boys wore navy-blue shorts and shirts with ties. Their parents pretended not to notice as they swatted each other with sticks, almost hitting me in the process so that I had to step away, which was when I felt the stone, and bent down to take my sandal off and get rid of it. I redid the buckle, then straightened up, looked around, and saw the tunnel.

Furry and disguised with new leaf, it opened like a mouth in the thick line of the trees. Thin branches laced overhead, their shadows throwing leopard spots on the path. I didn't know where it went, and I didn't particularly care. I could smell the damp undergrowth, and as I stepped off the avenue I was surrounded by a wavering light that was as inviting and green as the sea on a hot day.

At first, noises followed me; the sound of voices, barks of Sunday afternoon laughter, the clop of horses' hooves as the
carabinieri
rode up towards the fort, ramrod straight and two by two, like something from the ark. But they faded. As I walked on, the laughter fractured and died, and the horses passed. And then there was nothing, just the soft scrunching of my own footsteps and the slippery rustle of winter leaves no one had bothered to rake away.

I didn't know the Boboli Gardens all that well, but it was one of Ty's favourite places, and he'd told me quite a lot about it, so I thought that if I walked far enough I would eventually come out at the Mostaccini fountain.

The fountain is really a series of fountains, more like a little elevated canal. Before he showed it to me, Ty had described it in such glowing terms that when I actually saw it, it was a serious disappointment. Once, its grinning faces, every one different, spat water into a long stepped trough that had been designed to lure songbirds. But for years their mouths have been shut, stopped with leaves and clogged with gobbets of moss. Now their lips spit nothing but curlicues of vine, and the trough is dry and mottled with lichen. Like the ruins of the mazes the Medici built, the Mostaccini is nothing but a bone in the skeleton of the gardens, a fading line that marks the southern wall of the Boboli. Which was where I was heading, or so I thought, when I heard footsteps.

The truth is, I wasn't even sure they were there. I think I glanced back, half expecting to see Ty coming after me—which I was sure he would, eventually—but the path had gotten wilder and more overgrown, and I couldn't make anyone out. I turned a corner and leaves rustled. I thought I saw a shadow move. But I told myself that this was a public park and of course there were other people. I wouldn't be the only one who was drawn away from the glare and dust and noise of the main avenues. In fact, I was surprised I hadn't stumbled over lovers already, heard the snuffling sound of kisses in the bushes. I forced myself to smile at my attack of the willies, but, even so, something altered in my head and I walked a little faster, lengthened my stride and tried to calculate how much further I had to go. I heard the low hum of traffic, which meant I must be near the southern wall. And then a branch snapped, and I started to run.

The undergrowth got denser. The path itself almost disappeared a couple of times, and branches snagged my dress. They grabbed my purse and pulled it off my shoulder, but I didn't care. I was sure I could hear the sound of running feet and the quick huff-huff of breathing. Then I saw a change in the light. Just ahead of me sun glittered through the leaves, and I was sure that it was the avenue by the Mostaccini and that there would be people there, so I put in an extra burst of speed. I threw myself towards the greening light, and as I reached the end of the path I opened my mouth to scream.

But no sound ever came out. And just before he grabbed me, just before I fell, face down into the new spring grass, I understood. There was no long fountain. No pale grey vein of stone. There was no gravelled avenue ahead of me, and there were no people. I had made a mistake, and the path I'd followed had led me straight to the centre of one of the ruined mazes.

He brought me down from behind, one hand wound in my hair, grabbing me the way I have always imagined Perseus grabbed Medusa. The feral tastes of dirt and blood mingled in my mouth while his other hand moved all over me, caressed me with the soft inhuman skin of a leather glove, and finally pulled the sash off my dress. He tied my wrists together, and rolled me over, and that's when I saw the blade. It was bright and silver and very shiny, and he stabbed it into the grass so he could use both hands to prise my jaws open and stuff my underwear into my mouth. After that he took his time.

Black, that's what I remember. That's about all I could tell the police. A black hood pulled down over his head like something a kid would wear for Halloween. It had nothing but slits for his eyes, which didn't mean I couldn't feel them. I could, just as surely as I felt the touch of his hand. They slid down my body and back up. They stroked my skin and rested on my face, on my hair. Then they moved to the blade.

He cleaned it when he pulled it out of the earth, ran it between his thumb and forefinger, and brushed away tiny bits of dirt that fell on me. Then he reached down and slit the material of my dress. He peeled the flimsy silk back from across my breasts carefully, almost fastidiously, as if he were skinning a grape, and then he carved on my chest.

My breasts became his canvas as he worked his deliberate, intricate pattern; lifting and cutting, and cutting again. The pain was as bright and garish as Christmas lights, and finally I closed my eyes and felt as if we were spiralling through a night sky, just him and me and the blade. It went on for an hour or a minute. I don't know. The cuts flashed around me like blinking stars, and I lost sense of time. Then Ty called my name.

At first, I thought I was dreaming, or that this was death and he was calling me home. But his voice got louder. Bushes cracked and snapped, and I fell to earth, plummeted straight down out of my night sky, a bird with no wings. I could feel the ground, damp underneath me, smell grass and the sharp stink of sweat, and suddenly the possibility of living seemed real and urgent, something that I might be able to grab if I tried hard enough. So I did. I opened my eyes, and tried to scream. I tried to spit out my underwear. And when that didn't work, I kicked. I bucked and jerked like a bull calf, and the knife slipped, and he stabbed me.

There was a lot of weight behind it because I'd thrown him off balance, so the blade went in fast and deep. The man in the hood made a sound, not really a word, just a bitten-off noise, a grunt of anger, and when he pulled the knife out it sucked and slurped like a plug coming out of a bottle. Later, I understood that that's when he punctured my lung.

I could feel anger rising off him like heat, and when he stood up fast, still holding the knife, and stepped back, I was sure that this was it; that in the few seconds before Ty inevitably found us he'd kill me. I remember that I didn't know what to expect. A thrust? A draw across my throat? I had no idea how people were killed with knives, not really, and suddenly I wanted to see my body one last time. So I lifted my head and looked.

Blood swelled in ridges and lines. It ran down the mounds of my breasts where he had carved, and soaked the pieces of my dress. Bright red and strangely beautiful, I couldn't really believe it was mine. And I was watching it, staring at the rivulets and the little webs of pink froth that bubbled up where the knife had gone in, when Ty burst out of the bushes.

He threw himself into the clearing, breaking free of the branches, and his eyes locked on me. My husband had beautiful eyes. They were amber coloured, almost golden, and long lashed, and in that second, they widened, shocked, as if he had stumbled on me doing something obscene. Then, so fast it was like wind moving across water, his face filled with pity, and he froze, staring at me the way you stare at an animal that's been hit by a car, something still alive that's dying. And that's what cost him his life.

The man in the hood stepped forward and shoved the knife all the way up in one strong, fast thrust, and the bright blue purse, which Ty must have plucked from the undergrowth, fell to his feet. They told me later that the blade went straight through Ty's ribcage and into his heart. The man didn't bother to remove it. He left it there and stepped around the body, almost fastidiously, and came back to me. Kneeling, he took my chin in one hand while he lifted the hair off my forehead with the other, caressing, his gloves warm and sticky. Then he kissed me. I felt his lips through the thin fabric, and the tip of his tongue as it ran, damp and hard, across my cheek.