Читать книгу Juliet - Anne Fortier - Страница 9

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake

It took the bells of the basilica across the piazza to finally stir me from sleep. Two minutes later Direttore Rossini knocked on my door as if he knew I could not possibly have slept through the racket. ‘Excuse me!’ Without waiting for an invitation, he lugged a large suitcase into my room and placed it on the empty baggage stand. ‘This came for you last night.’

‘Wait!’ I let go of the door and gathered the hotel bathrobe around me as tightly as I could. ‘That is not my suitcase.’

‘I know.’ He pulled the large handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ‘It is from Contessa Salimbeni. Here, she left a note for you.’

I took the note. ‘What exactly is a contessa?’

‘Normally,’ said Direttore Rossini with some dignity, ‘I do not carry luggage. But since it was Contessa Salimbeni…’

‘She is lending me her clothes?’ I stared at Eva Maria’s brief handwritten note in disbelief. ‘And shoes?’

‘Until your own luggage arrives. It is now in Frittoli.’

In her exquisite handwriting, Eva Maria anticipated that her clothes might not fit me perfectly. But, she concluded, it was better than running around naked.

As I examined the specimens in the suitcase one by one, I was happy Janice could not see me. Our childhood home had not been big enough for two fashionistas and so I, much to Umberto’s chagrin, had embarked upon a career of being everything but. In school, Janice got her compliments from friends whose lives were headlined by designer names, while any admiration I got came from girls who had bummed a ride to the charity store, but who hadn’t had the vision to buy what I bought, nor the courage to put it together. It was not that I disliked fancy clothes, it was just that I wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction of appearing to care about my looks. For no matter what I did to myself, she could always outdo me.

By the time we left college, I had become a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Cute, but still a weed. When Aunt Rose had put our graduation photos side by side on the grand piano, she had smiled sadly and observed that, of all those many classes I had taken, I seemed to have graduated with the best results as the perfect anti-Janice.

Eva Maria’s designer clothes were, in other words, definitely not my style. But what were my options? Following my telephone conversation with Umberto the night before, I had decided to retire my flip-flops for the time being and pay a little more attention to my bella figura. After all, the last thing I needed now was for Francesco Maconi, my mother’s financial advisor, to think I was someone not to be trusted.

And so I tried on Eva Maria’s outfits one by one, turning this way and that before the wardrobe mirror, until I found the least outrageous one–a foxy little skirt and jacket, fire-engine red with big black polka dots–that made me look as if I had just emerged from a Jaguar with four pieces of perfectly matched luggage and a small dog called Bijou. But most important, it made me look as if I ate hidden heirlooms–and financial advisors–for breakfast.

And by the way, it had matching shoes.

In order to get to Palazzo Tolomei, Direttore Rossini had explained, I must choose to either go up Via del Paradiso or down Via della Sapienza. They were both practically closed to traffic–as were most streets in the centre of Siena–but Sapienza, he advised, could be a bit of a challenge, and all in all, Paradiso was probably the safer route.

As I walked down Via della Sapienza the façades of ancient houses closed in on me from all sides, and I was soon trapped in a labyrinth of centuries past, following the patterns of an earlier way of life. Above me a ribbon of blue sky was crisscrossed by banners, their bold colours strangely vivid against the mediaeval brick, but apart from that–and the odd pair of jeans drying from a window–there was almost nothing that suggested this place belonged to the modern world.

The rest of Italy had developed around it, but Siena didn’t care. Direttore Rossini had told me that, for the Sienese, the golden age had been the late Middle Ages, and as I walked, I could see that he was right; the city clung to its mediaeval self with a stubborn disregard for the attractions of progress. There were touches of the Renaissance here and there, but overall, the hotel director had sniggered, Siena had been too wise to be seduced by the charms of history’s playboys, those so-called masters, who turned houses into wedding cakes.

As a result, the most beautiful thing about Siena was her integrity; even now, in a world that had stopped caring, she was still Saena Vetus Civitas Virginis, or, in my own language, Old Siena, City of the Virgin. And for that reason alone, Direttore Rossini had concluded, all of his fingers spread on the green marble counter, it was the only place on the planet worth living.

‘So, where else have you lived?’ I had asked him, innocently.

‘I was in Rome for two days,’ he had replied with dignity. ‘Who needs to see more? When you take a bite of a bad apple, do you keep eating?’

From my immersion in the silent alleys I eventually surfaced in a bustling, pedestrian street. According to my directions it was called the Corso, and Direttore Rossini had explained that it was famous for the many old banks that used to serve foreigners travelling the old pilgrim route, which had gone straight through town. Over the centuries, millions of people had journeyed through Siena, and many foreign treasures and currencies had changed hands. The steady stream of modern-day tourists, in other words, was nothing but the continuation of an old, profitable tradition.

That was how my family, the Tolomeis, had grown rich, Direttore Rossini had pointed out, and how their rivals, the Salimbenis, had grown even richer. They had been tradesmen and bankers, and their fortified palazzos had flanked this very road–Siena’s main thoroughfare–with impossibly tall towers that had kept growing and growing until at last they had all come crashing down.

As I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni I looked in vain for remnants of the old tower. It was still an impressive building with a positively Draculean front door, but it was no longer the fortification it had once been. Somewhere in that building, I thought as I scurried by, collar up, Eva Maria’s godson, Alessandro, had his office. Hopefully he was not just now paging through some crime register to find the dark secret behind Julie Jacobs.

Further down the road, but not much, stood Palazzo Tolomei, the ancient dwelling of my own ancestors. Looking up at the splendid mediaeval façade, I suddenly felt proud to be connected to the people who had once lived in this remarkable building. As far as I could see, not much had changed since the fourteenth century; the only thing suggesting that the mighty Tolomeis had moved out and a modern bank had moved in were the marketing posters hanging in the deep-set windows, their colourful promises interrupted by iron bars.

The inside of the building was no less stern than the outside. A security guard stepped forward to hold the door for me as I entered, as gallantly as the semiautomatic rifle in his arms would allow, but I was too busy looking around to be bothered by his uniformed attention. Six titanic pillars in red brick held the ceiling high, high above mankind, and although there were counters and chairs and people walking around on the vast stone floor, these took up so little of the room that the white lions’ heads protruding from the ancient walls seemed entirely unaware that humans were present.

‘Si?’ The teller looked at me over the rim of her fashionably slim glasses.

I leaned forward a little, in the interest of privacy. ‘Would it be possible to talk to Signor Francesco Maconi?’

The teller actually managed to focus on me through her glasses, but she did not appear convinced by what she saw. ‘There is no Signor Francesco here,’ she said firmly, in a very heavy accent.

‘No Francesco Maconi?’

At this point, the teller found it necessary to take off her glasses entirely, fold them carefully on the counter, and look at me with that supremely kind smile people fix on you just before they stick a syringe in your neck. ‘No.’

‘But I know he used to work here…’ I did not get any further before the woman’s colleague from the booth next door leaned in on the conversation, whispering something in Italian. At first, my unfriendly teller dismissed the other with an angry wave, but then she began to reconsider.

‘Excuse me,’ she said eventually, leaning forward to get my attention, ‘but do you mean Presidente Maconi?’

I felt a jolt of excitement. ‘Did he work here twenty years ago?’

She looked horrified. ‘Presidente Maconi was always here!’

‘And would it be possible to speak with him?’ I smiled sweetly, although she did not deserve it. ‘He is an old friend of my mother, Diane Tolomei. I am Giulietta Tolomei.’

Both women stared at me as if I were a spirit conjured up before their very eyes. Without another word, the teller who had originally dismissed me now fumbled her glasses back on her nose, made a phone call, and had a brief conversation in humble, underdog Italian. When it was over she put down the receiver reverently, and turned towards me with something akin to a smile. ‘He will see you right after lunch, at three o’clock.’

I had my first meal since arriving in Siena at a bustling pizzeria called Cavallino Bianco. While I sat there pretending to read the Italian dictionary I had just bought, I began to realize that it would take more than just a borrowed suit and a few handy phrases to blend in with the locals. These women around me, I suspected, sneaking glances at their smiles and exuberant gestures as they bantered with the handsome waiter, Giulio, possessed something I had never had, some ability I could not put my finger on, but which must be a crucial element in that elusive state of mind, happiness.

Strolling on, feeling more clumsy and displaced than ever, I had a stand-up espresso in a bar in Piazza Postierla and asked the buxom barista if she could recommend a cheap clothes store in the neighbourhood. After all, Eva Maria’s suitcase had, fortunately, not contained any underwear. Completely ignoring her other customers the barista looked me over sceptically and said, ‘You want everything new, no? New hair, new clothes?’

‘Well…’

‘Don’t worry, my cousin is the best hairdresser in Siena–maybe in the world. He will make you beautiful. Come!’

After taking me by the arm and insisting that I call her Malèna, the barista walked me down to see her cousin Luigi right away, even though it was clearly coffee rush hour, and customers were yelling after her in exasperation as we went. She just shrugged and laughed, knowing full well that they would all still fawn over her when she came back, maybe even a little bit more than before, now that they had tasted life without her.

Luigi was sweeping up hair from the floor when we entered his salon. He was no older than me, but had the penetrating eye of a Michelangelo. When he fixed that eye on me, however, he was not impressed.

‘Ciao, caro,’ said Malèna and gave him a quick peck on both cheeks, ‘this is Giulietta. She needs un makeover totale.’

‘Just the ends, actually,’ I interjected. ‘A couple of inches.’

It took a major argument in Italian–which I was more than relieved to not understand–before Malèna had persuaded Luigi to take on my sorry case. But once he did, he took the challenge very seriously. As soon as Malèna had left the salon, he sat me down on a barber’s chair and looked at my reflection in the mirror, turning me this way and that to check all the angles. Then he pulled the elastic bands from my braids and threw them directly into the bin with an expression of disgust.

‘Bene…’ he finally said, fluffing up my hair and looking at me once again in the mirror, a little less critically than before. ‘Not too bad, no?’

When I walked back to Palazzo Tolomei two hours later, I had sunk myself further into debt, but it was worth every nonexistent penny. Eva Maria’s red-and-black suit lay neatly folded at the bottom of a shopping bag, matching shoes on top, and I was wearing one of five new outfits that had all been approved by Luigi and his uncle, Paolo, who happened to own a clothes store just around the corner. Uncle Paolo, who did not speak a word of English, but who knew everything there was to know about fashion, had knocked thirty per cent off my entire purchase as long as I promised never to wear my ladybird costume again.

I had protested at first, explaining that my luggage was due to arrive any moment, but in the end the temptation had been too great. So what if my suitcases were waiting for me when I returned to the hotel? There was nothing in them I could ever wear in Siena anyway, perhaps with the exception of the shoes Umberto had given me for Christmas, and which I had never even tried on.

As I walked away from the store, I glanced at myself in every shop window I passed. Why had I never done this before? Ever since high school I had cut my own hair–just the ends–with a pair of kitchen scissors every two years or so. It took me about five minutes, and honestly, I thought, who could tell the difference? Well, I could certainly see the difference now. Somehow, Luigi had managed to bring my boring old hair to life, and it was already thriving in its new freedom, flowing in the breeze as I walked and framing my face as if it was a face worth framing.

When I was a child, Aunt Rose had taken me to the village barber whenever it occurred to her. But she had been wise enough never to take Janice and me at the same time. Only once did we end up in the salon chairs side by side, and as we sat there, pulling faces at each other in the big mirrors, the old barber had held up our ponytails and said, ‘Look! This one has bear-hair and the other has princess-hair.’

Aunt Rose had not replied. She had just sat there, silently, and waited for him to finish. Once he was finished, she had paid him and thanked him in that clipped voice of hers. Then she had hauled us both out the door as if it were we, and not the barber, who had misbehaved. Ever since that day, Janice had never missed an opportunity to compliment me on my beary, beary lovely hair.

The memory nearly made me cry. Here I was, all dolled up, while Aunt Rose was in a place where she could no longer appreciate that I had finally stepped out of my macramé cocoon. It would have made her so happy to see me like this–just once–but I had been too busy making sure Janice never did.

Presidente Maconi was a courtly man in his sixties, dressed in a subdued suit and tie and astoundingly successful in combing the long hairs from one side of his head across the crown to the other. As a result, he carried himself with rigid dignity, but there was genuine warmth in his eyes that instantly put me at ease.

‘Miss Tolomei?’ He came across the floor of the bank to shake my hand heartily, as if we were old friends. ‘This is an unexpected delight.’

As we walked together up the stairs, Presidente Maconi went on to apologize in flawless English for the uneven walls and warped floors. Even the most modern interior design, he explained with a smile, was helpless against a building that was almost eight hundred years old.

After a day of constant language malfunctions it was a relief to finally meet someone fluent in my own tongue. A touch of a British accent suggested that Presidente Maconi had lived in England for a while–perhaps he had gone to school there–which might explain why my mother had chosen him as her financial advisor in the first place.

His office was on the top floor, and from the mullioned windows he had a perfect view of the church of San Cristoforo and several other spectacular buildings in the neighbourhood. Stepping forward, however, I nearly stumbled over a plastic bucket sitting in the middle of a large Persian rug and, after checking that my health was intact, Presidente Maconi very carefully placed the bucket precisely where it had stood before I kicked it.

‘There is a leak in the roof,’ he explained, looking up at the cracked plaster ceiling, ‘but we cannot find it. It is very strange–even when it is not raining, water comes dripping down.’ He shrugged and motioned for me to sit down on one of two artfully carved mahogany chairs facing his desk. ‘The old president used to say that the building was crying. He knew your father, by the way.’

Sitting down behind the desk, Presidente Maconi leaned back as far as the leather chair would allow and put his fingertips together. ‘So, Miss Tolomei, how may I help you?’

For some reason, the question took me by surprise. I had been so focused on getting here in the first place, I had given little thought to the next step. I suppose the Francesco Maconi who had until now lived quite comfortably in my imagination knew very well that I had come for my mother’s treasure, and he had been waiting impatiently these many, many years to finally hand it over to its rightful heir.

The real Francesco Maconi, however, was not that accommodating. I started explaining why I had come, and he listened to me in silence, nodding occasionally. When I eventually stopped talking, he looked at me pensively, his face betraying no conclusion either way.

‘And so I was wondering,’ I went on, realizing that I had forgotten the most important part, ‘if you could take me to her safety deposit box?’

I took the key out of my handbag and put it on his desk, but Presidente Maconi merely glanced at it. After a moment’s awkward silence he got up and walked over to a window, hands behind his back, and looked out over the roofs of Siena with a frown.

‘Your mother,’ he finally said, ‘was a wise woman. And when God takes the wise to heaven, he leaves their wisdom behind, for us on earth. Their spirits live on, flying around us silently, like owls, with eyes that see in the night, when you and I see only darkness.’ He paused to test a leaded pane that was coming loose. ‘In some ways, the owl would be a fitting symbol for all of Siena, not just for our contrada.’

‘Because…all people in Siena are wise?’ I proposed, not entirely sure what he was getting at.

‘Because the owl has an ancient ancestor. To the Greeks, she was the goddess Athena. A virgin, but also a warrior. The Romans called her Minerva. In Roman times, there was a temple for her here in Siena. This is why it was always in our hearts to love the Virgin Mary, even in the ancient times, before Christ was born. To us, she was always here.’

‘Presidente Maconi…’

‘Miss Tolomei.’ He turned to face me at last. ‘I am trying to work out what your mother would have liked me to do. You are asking me to give you something that caused her a lot of grief. Would she really want me to let you have it?’ He attempted a smile. ‘But then, it is not my decision, is it? She left it here–she did not destroy it–so she must have wanted me to pass it on to you, or to someone. The question is: are you sure you want it?’

In the silence following his words, we both heard it clearly: the sound of a drop of water falling into the plastic bucket on a perfectly sunny day.

After summoning a second key-holder, the sombre Signor Virgilio, Presidente Maconi took me down a separate staircase–a spiral of ancient stone that must have been there since the palazzo was first built–into the deepest caverns of the bank. Now for the first time I became aware that there was a whole other world underneath Siena; a world of caves and shadows that stood in sharp contrast to the world of light above.

‘Welcome to the Bottini,’ said Presidente Maconi as we walked through a grotto-like passageway. ‘This is the old underground aqueduct that was built a thousand years ago to lead water into the city of Siena. This is all sandstone, and even with the primitive tools they had back then, Sienese engineers were able to dig a vast network of tunnels that fed fresh water to public fountains and even into the basement of some private houses. Now of course, it is no longer used.’

‘But people go down here anyway?’ I asked, touching the rough sandstone wall.

‘Oh, no!’ Presidente Maconi was amused by my naïveté. ‘It is a dangerous place to be. You can easily get lost. Nobody knows all the Bottini. There are stories, many stories, about secret tunnels from here to there, but we don’t want people running around exploring them. The sandstone is porous, you see. It crumbles. And all of Siena is sitting on top.’

I pulled back my hand. ‘But this wall is…fortified?’

Presidente Maconi looked a bit sheepish. ‘No.’

‘But it’s a bank. That seems…dangerous.’

‘Once someone tried to break in,’ he replied, eyebrows up in disapproval. ‘Once. They dug a tunnel. It took them months.’

‘Did they succeed?’

Presidente Maconi pointed at a security camera mounted high in an obscure corner. ‘When the alarm went off, they escaped through the tunnel, but at least they didn’t steal anything.’

‘Who were they?’ I asked. ‘Did you ever find out?’

He shrugged. ‘Some gangsters from Napoli. They never came back.’

When we finally arrived at the vault, Presidente Maconi and Signor Virgilio both had to swipe their key cards for the massive door to open.

‘See?’–Presidente Maconi was proud of the feature–‘not even the president can open this vault on his own. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

Inside the vault, safety deposit boxes covered every wall from floor to ceiling. Most of them were small, but some were large enough to serve as a luggage locker at an airport. My mother’s box, as it turned out, was somewhere in between, and as soon as Presidente Maconi had pointed it out to me and helped me insert the key, he and Signor Virgilio politely left the room. When, moments later, I heard a couple of matches striking, I knew they had seized the opportunity to take a cigarette break in the corridor outside.

Since first reading Aunt Rose’s letter, I had entertained many different ideas of what my mother’s treasure might be, and had done my best to temper my expectations in order to avoid disappointment. But in my most unchecked fantasies I would find a magnificent golden box, locked and full of promise, not unlike the treasure chests that pirates dig up on desert islands.

My mother had left me just such a thing. It was a wooden box with golden ornamentation, and while it was not actually locked–there was no lock–the clasp was rusted shut, preventing me from doing much more than merely shaking it gently to try and determine its contents. It was about the size of a small toaster-oven, but surprisingly light, which immediately ruled out the possibility of gold and jewellery. But then, fortunes come in many substances and forms, and I was certainly not one to scoff at the prospect of high denomination paper money.

As we said goodbye, Presidente Maconi kept insisting on calling a taxi for me. But I told him I did not need one; the box fitted very nicely in one of my shopping bags, and Hotel Chiusarelli was, after all, nearby.

‘I would be careful,’ he said, ‘walking around with that. Your mother was always careful.’

‘But who knows I’m here? And that I’ve got this?’

He shrugged. ‘The Salimbenis.’

I stared at him, not sure if he was really serious. ‘Don’t tell me the old family feud is still going on!’

Presidente Maconi looked away, uncomfortable with the subject. ‘A Salimbeni will always be a Salimbeni.’

Walking away from Palazzo Tolomei, I repeated that sentence to myself several times, wondering precisely what it meant. In the end I decided that it was nothing more than what I ought to expect in this place; judging by Eva Maria’s stories about the fierce contrade rivalries in the modern Palio, the old family feuds from the Middle Ages were still going strong, even if the weapons had changed.

Mindful of my own Tolomei heritage, I put a little swagger in my gait as I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni for the second time that day, just to let Alessandro know–should he happen to look out the window at that exact moment–that there was a new sheriff in town.

Just then, as I glanced over my shoulder to see if I had made myself absolutely clear, I noticed a man walking behind me. Somehow he didn’t fit the scene; the street was full of chattering tourists, mothers with strollers, and people in business suits, talking loudly into their mobile phones at some invisible other. This man, by contrast, was wearing a shabby tracksuit and a pair of mirrored sunglasses that did nothing to conceal the fact that he had been looking straight at my bags.

Or was I imagining things? Had Presidente Maconi’s parting words ruffled my nerves? I paused in front of a shop window, hoping very much that the man would pass me and continue on his way. But he didn’t. As soon as I stood still, he paused, too, pretending to look at a poster on a wall.

Now for the first time, I felt the little fleabites of fear, as Janice used to call them, and ran through my options in a couple of deep breaths. But there was really only one thing to do. If I kept walking, the chances were he would eventually sidle up to me and snatch the bags right out of my hand, or, even worse, follow me to see where I was staying, and pay me a visit later.

Humming to myself I entered the store, and as soon as I was inside, I ran up to the clerk and asked if I could leave through the back entrance. Barely looking up from his motorcycle magazine, he simply pointed at a door at the other end of the room.

Ten seconds later I came shooting out into a narrow alley to nearly overturn a row of Vespas parked side by side. I had no idea where I was, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that I still had my bags.

When the taxi dropped me off back at Hotel Chiusarelli, I would have happily paid anything for the trip. But when I overtipped the driver, he shook his head in protest and gave back most of it.

‘Miss Tolomei!’ Direttore Rossini came towards me with some alarm as soon as I entered the vestibule. ‘Where have you been? Captain Santini was just here. In uniform! What is going on?’

‘Oh!’ I tried to smile. ‘Maybe he came to invite me out for coffee?’

Direttore Rossini glared at me, his eyebrows suspended in a pointed arc of disapproval. ‘I do not think the captain was here with carnal intentions, Miss Tolomei. I very much suggest you call him. Here.’ He handed me a business card as if it was a holy wafer. ‘This is the number of his telephone, there, written on the back, do you see? I suggest’–Direttore Rossini raised his voice as I continued past him down the hall–‘you call him right now!’

It took me about an hour, and several trips to the hotel reception desk, to open my mother’s box. After trying every tool I had, such as the hotel key, my toothbrush, and the telephone receiver, I ran downstairs to borrow tweezers, then nail clippers, then a needle, and finally a screwdriver, only too aware that Direttore Rossini looked less and less friendly every time he saw me.

What finally did the trick was not actually opening the rusty clasp, but unscrewing the entire closing mechanism, which took me quite a while, since the screwdriver I had borrowed was too small. But I was fairly sure Direttore Rossini would explode if I showed up at his reception desk one more time.

Through all those efforts, my hopes and expectations for the contents of the box had grown increasingly more wild, and once I was able to open the lid, I could barely breathe with anticipation. Seeing that it was so light, I had become convinced there was a fragile–and very costly–item in the box, but when I finally looked inside, I realized my mistake.

There was nothing fragile in the box; in fact, there was barely anything at all except paper. Boring paper at that. Not money or stocks or deeds or any other kind of securities, but letters in envelopes and different kinds of texts typed out on sheets that were either stapled together or rolled up with rotting rubber bands. The only actual objects in the box were a notebook with scribbles and doodles, a cheap paperback copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and an old crucifix on a silver chain.

I inspected the crucifix for a while, wondering if perhaps it was extremely old and somehow valuable. But I doubted it. Even if it was an antique, it was still just made of silver, and as far as I could see, there was nothing special about it.

Same story with the paperback volume of Romeo and Juliet. I flipped through it several times, determined to see its value, but there was nothing about the book that struck me as the least bit promising, not even a single pencil-note in the margin.

The notebook, on the other hand, had some interesting drawings that could, with a bit of goodwill, be interpreted as having something to do with a treasure hunt. Or maybe they were just sketches from trips to museums and sculpture gardens. One sculpture in particular had caught my mother’s eye–if indeed this was her notebook, and these her drawings–and I could see why. It represented a man and a woman; the man was kneeling, holding a woman in his arms, and had her eyes not been open, I would have guessed she was asleep or even dead. There were at least twenty different drawings of this sculpture in the notebook, but many of them dwelled on details, such as facial features, and in all honesty, none of them made me any wiser as to why my mother had been so obsessed with it in the first place.

There were also sixteen private letters in the box, sitting on the bottom. Five were from Aunt Rose, begging my mother to give up her ‘silly ideas’ and return home; four were also from Aunt Rose, but they were sent later, and my mother had never opened them. The rest were in Italian, sent to my mother from people I did not know.

At this point, there was nothing left in the box except the many typewritten documents. Some were creased and faded, others were newer and more crisp; most were in English, but one was in Italian. None of them appeared to be originals, they were all–except the Italian one–translations that must have been typed out sometime within the last hundred years or so.

As I looked through the pile, it gradually became clear to me that, in fact, there was rhyme and reason in the seeming madness, and once I had acknowledged as much, it did not take me long to spread out the documents on my bed in some kind of chronological order:

Maestro Ambrogio’s Journal (1340)

Giulietta’s Letters to Giannozza (1340)

The Confessions of Friar Lorenzo (1340)

La Maledizione sul Muro (1370)

Masuccio Salernitano’s Thirty-Third Story (1476)

Luigi Da Porto’s Romeo & Juliet (1530)

Matteo Bandello’s Romeo & Juliet (1554)

Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet (1562)

William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet (1597)

Giulietta and Giannozza Family Tree

Once I had them laid out before me, however, it took me somewhat longer to make sense of the collection. The first four items, all from the fourteenth century, were mysterious and often fragmented, while the later texts were clearer. But most important, the later texts had one thing in common; they were all versions of the story of Romeo and Juliet, culminating in the one that most people knew: Shakespeare’s Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

Although I had always considered myself a bit of an expert on that play, it came as a complete surprise to me to discover that the Bard had not, in fact, invented the story, but had merely piggybacked on previous writers. Granted, Shakespeare was a genius with words, and if he had not run the whole thing through his pentameter machine, it is doubtful whether it would ever have become widely known. But even so it looked, in my humble opinion, as if it had already been a darn good story when it first landed on his desk. And interestingly enough, the earliest version of it–the one written by Masuccio Salernitano in 1476–was not set in Verona at all, but right here, in Siena.

This literary discovery very nearly distracted me from the fact that I was, quite frankly, left with a pretty hefty personal disappointment. There was nothing in my mother’s box that had any monetary value whatsoever, nor was there, among all the papers I had looked at so far, the slightest suggestion of family valuables hidden elsewhere.

Perhaps I should have been ashamed of myself for thinking like this; perhaps I should have shown more appreciation for the fact that I was finally holding something in my hands that had belonged to my mother.

But I was too confused to be rational. What on earth had made Aunt Rose believe there was something tremendously valuable at stake–something worth a trip to what was, in her mind, the most dangerous of places, namely Italy? And why had my mother kept this box of paper in the belly of a bank? I felt silly now, especially thinking of the guy in the tracksuit. Of course he had not been following me. That, too, must have been a figment of my all too fertile imagination.

I started leafing through the earlier documents without enthusiasm. Two of them, The Confessions of Friar Lorenzo and Giulietta’s Letters to Giannozza, were nothing more than collections of fragmented phrases, such as, ‘I swear by the Virgin that I have acted in accordance with the will of heaven’ and ‘all the way to Siena in a coffin for fear of the Salimbeni bandits.’

Maestro Ambrogio’s Journal was more readable, but when I began leafing through it, I almost wished it wasn’t. Whoever this Maestro was, he had had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea and had kept a journal about every single triviality that had happened to him–and, by the look of it, his friends, too–in the year 1340. As far as I could tell, it had nothing to do with me or with anything else in my mother’s box, for that matter.

That was when my eyes suddenly fell on a name in the middle of the Maestro’s text.

Giulietta Tolomei.

I frantically scrutinized the page under the bedside lamp. But no, I had not been mistaken; after some initial musings on the hardships of painting the perfect rose, the verbose Maestro Ambrogio had written page after page after page about a young woman who happened to have a name identical to mine. Coincidence?

Leaning back in my bed, I started reading from the beginning of the journal, occasionally checking the other fragmented texts for cross-reference. And so began my journey back to Siena in the year 1340, and my kinship with the woman who had shared my name.