Abroad (13 page)

“A hippie,” Luka said. “I’m not into that.”

“He was an artist. Like you, Luka dear.”

“How
did
you get home then, Taz?” Anna asked.

“My flatmate.”

“The American?” Jenny asked. “The strange one?”

“I never said she was strange.”

“You said she was a tomboy.”

“Oh, I don’t like that,” Luka said. “Dykes are always so touchy.”

“
You
are a dyke,” Jenny said.

“Recreationally,” Luka retorted. “Not the sort that wears work boots and stomps around making little cakes for her girlfriends.”

“What are you even talking about?” I asked. “I never said Claire was gay.”

“So which is it then?”

“She’s just, I don’t know—American. Your outdoorsy type. Independent. Goes to pubs alone.”

“Alone?” Luka scoffed. “Don’t get me wrong—I love a drink, as we all know. But even
I
don’t go out alone.”

“It is whorey,” Jenny said. “I’m actually intrigued.”

My frustration was building. “She’s a good friend, all right? And she was really nice to me last night, unlike some of you, so I’d rather you all shut up about her.”

Luka poured herself another glass of wine.

“Sorry, Tazzie,” Jenny said. “We’ll give her a chance. You know her better than we do.”

“I do.”

“Just remember, though—she’s an American,” Luka said, looking at herself in the mirror.

“So?”

“It’s more than an ocean. That’s the phrase, isn’t it? She’ll never really get you.”

“Bull.”

“Wait and see,” said Jenny, patiently twirling her fettuccini into a plump bite.

“I’m going to go.”

Jenny chewed delicately. She took a sip of wine and swallowed. “Won’t you just come up for a smoke first?”

“I don’t think so. I’m feeling—”

“Just one. Keep me company, yeah?”

I gave a little sigh for show, then left the others and followed her up the stairs to Luka’s roof deck, an intimate spot with a whitewashed trellis struggling under a massive tangle of trumpet vines and clematis.

“Look, I’m really sorry about last night. I really thought you were off with someone. We all did.”

“Only I
told
you I was sick.”

“I didn’t hear you. I swear it.”

I picked off a leaf, pressing it with my nail.

“We do look after one another. It’s just … not in a girls’ school way. We can’t be expected to know where everyone is at all times. That would be impossible. People need space, after all.”

“I just think sometimes you act quite strange. I mean, why don’t you ever ask me to this lake house of yours? We’re supposed to be so damned close, but you seem to go off to Trasimeno with every other girl in Enteria.”

“Taz, I’m so glad you asked,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

“Well, where to start?” She took a breath. “You’ve probably been wondering how we’re so connected here.”

I shook my head, a little embarrassed. “No. I just—”

“You just thought I was invited to every good party in town? Me, a college girl from Nottingham?”

“Well.” I paused. “You are posh.”

She tipped her head back and laughed. “Posh. Please, Taz. You’re so dated. We’ve got a little business going on here, you see. Nothing serious.”

“A business?” God bless me, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was talking about.

“I’m sure you’ve guessed it.”

“I’m sorry?” I said softly, as if she had said something I couldn’t quite hear.

“Oh, you’re making me spell it out. Christ, I hope you’re not wearing a wire! We’re the Enteria connection. You’ve heard of that, at least?”

I thought back to the conversation I’d had on that horrible night with Marcy at the beginning of the program.
At least wait for the Enteria connection
, she’d said to the Belgian girl wanting to get high.

“It’s drugs!” I said triumphantly. “You all are selling drugs?”

“Taz, don’t be disappointing. It’s not as tawdry and simple as that.”

“So you don’t sell drugs?”

“We
are
the drug.” Jenny ran her fingers through her hair, yanking girlishly at a tangle. “We provide an image. Yes, you can buy coke from us, or hash, or zanopane, or whatever you want. But by doing business with us, what you really get is the privilege of having us in your life.”

“Do other people know?”

“
Everyone
knows, Tazzie. I honestly can’t fathom how you didn’t.”

“But how does it even work? Where do you get it?”

“Luka does it. She goes in a car to pick it up in different spots every week. Anna houses it. And I sell it.”

“In England, too?”

“No. Well, a little, just before we came. Just to try it out. It’s why we came together, you see. After this year, it’s to be over. And then we’ll pass the baton along to someone else.”

“How did you think it all up?”

“We didn’t. No, no. There’s an Enteria connection every year. I just happened to meet someone who knew about the last one. Told me how much money we were going to make. It was all incredibly easy to get into, actually.”

“And you do it at your friend’s lake house?”

“Oh, Taz,” Jenny sighed. “There’s no lake house. It’s a little thing called a code. If I’m going to the lake, it means I have inventory. Didn’t you ever notice I never actually
go
anywhere?”

“But why do the Italians come to you? Why isn’t it just the Enteria students?”

“The Grifonians love us. Why would they want to buy coke from the seedy guys down on Via Saint Elisabetta when they can invite some pretty girls to a party?”

“What’s going on?” Anna asked, emerging on the roof.

“I’ve told Taz about our arrangement. Didn’t want her blundering on about going up to the bloody lake house.”

“I see,” Anna said, looking even paler than normal. “I hope you don’t think of us differently now.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. I’m just surprised.”

“Why?” Jenny asked.

“I thought you all came from money.”

Jenny laughed. “Luka’s dad has three ex-wives. All his royalties go to their plastic surgery. And I don’t believe he’s had a hit since what, 1991?”

“And my father spent all ours,” Anna said.

I looked at Jenny. “And you?”

She turned toward the square. “Me. No. I most certainly am not wealthy.”

“Well.” I hurried to cover the blunder. “Nor am I.”

“Compared to me, you are,” she said. “My father is a science teacher, Taz. A
teacher.
” Her lips curled around the words with distaste. “My mother sits around all day, doing God knows what. Making us disgusting roasts. We were stuffed in a one-floor flat, furniture from bloody IKEA. They think it’s fancy.” She leaned on the railing. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that my parents aren’t good, sweet people. I love them, sure. They just don’t fucking care about the world. Not a fucking iota of ambition in that house except for me. My mother’d be happy if I worked at the grocer’s and got fat and had a baby at twenty-three like the other girls in my class. And, well, people like me, they don’t just
go
to Italy. Even if I worked all the bloody time, I couldn’t afford to be here.”

“But at Nottingham, you—”

“I figured it out,” she said. “That’s what smart people do, Taz. We stay in front of it.” She continued to survey the action below. Whining strains of the theme to the movie
Amelie
were bubbling through the air. “Oh, that damned accordion player! What sort of sin did he commit to deserve such hell? Anyhow Tazzie, welcome to the fold. It’s no big thing, really. Let’s go back down before this music drives me batty.”

She disappeared down the stairwell. I turned to follow her, but Anna’s boney fingers held my arm.

“Don’t let Jenny romanticize it, Taz. We’re just a tiny drug ring.”

“Sure.”

“You won’t tell anyone, will you Taz? It’s a small thing. All I do is keep a satchel in my room, but if Arthur found out somehow, I’d just…”

“It really doesn’t matter to me,” I said. I was telling the truth. They were still the B4. And to me, that meant they were spectacular. “I love all of you. Even if I found out you were a lot of cult murderers, I wouldn’t tell.”

“And it’s not such a horrible thing, is it?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “And I’ll tell you again if you need me to.”

I thought Anna would smile at my reassurance. Instead she seemed to wince, I supposed in deference to the accordion player’s hopeless wails.

10

Heeding Anna’s commands, I arrived only one minute late for our first class on September 15—for me, practically early, really—panting after sprinting up four flights of stairs. Despite my apologies, Anna was incredulous.

“Taz! You live five hundred yards
away
,” she hissed.

I gave her a sheepish grin and looked around. Etruscan Mythology was held in a building on my block, in what seemed to be an ex-palace of a noble. Ours was an unexpectedly exquisite little chamber at the very top of the building, boasting hand-painted murals on the ceiling and views to the borders of Lake Trasimeno. The walls, painted light blue, gave the illusion almost of being suspended in the sky. In the middle sat one large, ancient wooden table, surrounded by well-used library chairs.

Arthur, known to the rest of us as Professor Korloff, did not arrive until fifteen minutes after five o’clock. It was the earliest he would arrive during the class’s monthlong duration. When the door finally burst open, we all turned, and the conversation instantly hushed. Professor Korloff threw his bag down onto a desk and stood in front of us, arms folded over his chest, rocking slightly back and forth on his feet.

“Hello,” he said, idly surveying the names written out in front of us, as was the custom on the first day of classes. I looked at Anna in surprise. Well, at least some of Jenny’s questions could be put to rest. There was no way Anna could be in love with Arthur Korloff, I planned to report. He was old. Not as in “father” old, but
old
old, with skin like crushed tissue and hair the color and texture of the first falling of snow. Also, he was hideously dressed—a rumpled blue shirt, worn pants with all sorts of pockets, dirty old trainers. He was at the stage of life where the primary parts of his body seemed to have shrunk, even as his appendages were still growing, so that his ears and nose were out of proportion with his face. To say nothing of his eyebrows. And then there was the clincher: Professor Korloff was American. New York American, to be specific. A girl like Anna—Anna
Grafton
—could never be attracted to a man like this.

I was vastly unprepared for the class. I had waded through the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
, but most helpful, unexpectedly, were my memories of
d’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths
, an oversized, brilliantly illustrated children’s book that Babs had in her room growing up. We used to pore over it, the exquisite illustrations spilling over our small laps, engrossed by the images of angry Athena springing from her father’s head and Icarus falling in flames from the sky. So from that book alone, I had a reference to at least a third of what we discussed in that lovely little room, if not in any particular depth. As for the other gods, I took dutiful notes on them with every intention of looking them up later.

What Professor Korloff lacked in charm, he made up for in exuberance. He was a mesmerizing orator—the sort of person who could speak about used coffee grounds and manage to hold his audience. I spent much of class nodding thoughtfully as if my silence were not simple ignorance. Yet it was painfully clear, once discussion got going, that I was by far the least versed in the classics among the group.

“Let’s talk about Minerva,” Professor Korloff said, his cigarette poised. “The Etruscans revered her—put her on urns, mirrors. Her statue guards tombs. Why?”

“Goddess of war,” said Pascal, a tiny older French student who sat in the very front, without missing a beat. Since the first day, he had been vying with Anna for Arthur’s highest esteem. Word had it that a recommendation from Arthur was a platinum ticket to a graduate program with a healthy fellowship, though personally, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a life of studying the words of the dead.

“The Etruscans were in a constant state of battle against the Romans,” Pascal continued.

“And one another,” Anna added.

“Of course,” Arthur said. “All right, then, thank you. But
let’s
delve deeper, shall we? The Etruscans revered women more than any other ancient society. The Greeks, as you may by now have gleaned, were complete misogynists—everyone always getting raped and carried away. An entire war waged because of a petty fight over something as ephemeral as beauty. Beauty as a good, that is—as chattel—something you stole. But to the Etruscans, goddesses had more power, more agency. To the Etruscans, goddesses were every bit as important as the male gods. From what we can find, men and women were nearly equals. Equal burial rights, equal representation in their artistic renderings. Women, in Etruria, were—how should I say this? The shit.”

The class laughed.

“But now I want to get to the mystery. One that even after studying this stuff for fifty years still keeps me awake. The Etruscans’ reign was as mighty as that of the Romans and the Greeks. Their territories were vaster, reaching as far up as France. A network of twelve great cities. Yet there are no written texts—no historical documents, no hymns, no poems.
Why?
”

“The texts were destroyed by the Romans,” said Pascal.

“A complete eradication,” Arthur said, nodding. “A literary genocide more thorough than that of the Nazis, say, or the Stalinists.”

“Or else—”

The class turned and looked at me. I looked back at them, waiting for whomever it was to keep talking, only to realize with a start that the voice had been my own.

Anna turned and peered at me.

“Well?” Arthur said, stepping closer. “Go on?”

“I was just saying … maybe they did it themselves.”