Heritage (45 page)

But Violet was by Pietro's side, pulling at his arm, trying to drag him back towards the house.

‘Stop it, Pietro, stop it!' she was yelling. Violet was terrified her father would kill him.

It was Violetta, Pietro realised, and she was very upset. She must not be upset – it was not good for her, and it was not good for the baby. The insane rage that had overtaken him abruptly disappeared, and he was left bewildered and concerned.

‘I am sorry, Violetta,' he said. He put his arm around her and faced the powerfully built man who confronted him. He'd assaulted Violetta's father. How could he have done such a thing? But Violetta's father should not have treated her in such a way.

‘I do not wish to behave like this,' he said, ‘is not right. But you do not treat Violetta in such a way. That, too, is not right. I wish to be good son to your family. I wish also to be good husband and good father.'

Cam looked from the Italian to his daughter, and Violet nodded.

‘I'm going to have a baby, Dad,' she said.

‘We go inside now.' Pietro took her by the arm and led her away. He needed to get inside. He needed to sit down, he was feeling very strange.

Cam stood dumbfounded on the dusty pavement and watched them as they walked arm in arm across the little front yard and up the steps to the cottage.

Violet breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door. Pietro had behaved heroically, and she would no doubt relish the drama a little further down the track, but for now she was glad it was over.

‘Well, at least it's all out in the open,' she said.

Rescued from a private confrontation with her father, Violet had recovered remarkably quickly, but she noticed that Pietro seemed shaken, which she supposed was not surprising.

‘Don't you worry, sweetie,' she assured him, ‘Dad won't do anything. We just shocked him, that's all.' And she added with a smile, trying to make light of the situation, ‘You should have seen the look on his face.'

But Pietro didn't smile, he didn't even hear what she said as he sat on the arm of the sofa. His legs were weak, and his head was starting to throb.

‘Oh.' She registered that he'd suddenly gone pale, and wondered if he was about to faint. ‘Stay there,' she said, worried, ‘put your head between your knees, I'll get a glass of water.'

‘No, Violetta.'

She stopped halfway to the kitchen.

‘The leather strap,' he said, ‘in my coat pocket.' He breathed slowly and deeply, calming himself as he felt his left eye start to flicker.

She raced out to the verandah and her bedroom and when she returned with the piece of leather he was sitting on the floor, his back against the sofa. She knelt and handed him the strap. He was going to have a fit, and the thought of it terrified her; she'd thought his fits were a thing of the past. He'd assured her each time she'd asked, which was often, that he'd been taking his pills religiously, every morning and every evening.

‘Is there anything I can do, Pietro?' she asked desperately. ‘Tell me how I can help you.'

‘You cannot help me, Violetta. Please, you must not be frightened, it will not last long.'

He'd said that to her the last time, and it had seemed to go on forever, she'd thought he was going to die. She felt useless and panic stricken. Should she call for a doctor?

‘But there is something you can do for me,' he said.

‘Anything. Tell me. Anything.'

‘I wish for you to talk to me.'

‘Yes,' she nodded fiercely, ‘I'll talk to you.' Perhaps if she could distract him, it might avert the fit, she thought. ‘What do you want me to talk about?'

Pietro smiled, though his head was now throbbing. ‘No, no,' he said, ‘when it is happening, I wish for you to talk to me, like the doctor say.'

Of course, she remembered.
During the actual seizure, did you try to converse with him?
That was what Doctor Vanpoucke had asked her, and she'd been amazed when he'd told her there was a possibility she might have been able to make contact with Pietro.

‘I wish for you to ask me questions,' Pietro said. ‘It is most important.'

Now more than ever, Pietro was determined to discover the key to his past. He was to become a father, and a father needed a history to share with his children. Perhaps this was the way, he thought, and he welcomed the symptoms that he'd dreaded for as long as he could remember.

‘I wish for you to ask me about the house, Violetta. Why I cannot see inside the house? I wish to know this.'

His deep breathing was no longer calming him, he was becoming agitated and he could feel his jaw start to clench.

‘You will do this for me?' he asked as he placed the strip of leather between his teeth.

‘I'll talk to you, Pietro, I promise. I'll ask you questions.'

Violet watched, breathless with fear, as his eyes started to roll in their sockets. Then seconds later, she watched aghast as his body contorted and he thrashed around on the floor, growling noises coming from deep in his throat. She wanted to scream, but she steadied herself and called out to him instead.

‘I am here, Pietro. It's me, Violetta, can you hear me?'

The awful convulsions continued, but she didn't give up. Squatting beside him, she called over and over.

‘It's me, Violetta. Can you hear me, Pietro?'

Again and again she called to him, and gradually the thrashing eased and the noises faded until finally all was quiet except for his laboured breathing. He lay rigid on the floor, his muscles twitching involuntarily, his eyeballs rolling back in his head.

‘It's me,' she said, ‘Violetta. Answer if you can hear me.'

He spoke, and the voice sounded barely human. Through the clenched jaw, the leather strap and the foam of saliva, it was tortured and strange, and the word that he said was barely intelligible. But she recognised it as her name.

‘Violetta.'

‘Yes. Yes, it's me, Pietro. It's Violetta. I want you to see the house, Pietro. Can you see the house?' She felt fearful, frantic, but she forced herself to say the words clearly and methodically, urging him on.

‘The house, Pietro. The house and the steps, and the door. Can you see the house?'

In the dim recesses of his brain, Pietro clung to her voice. And then he clung to the words as they started to make sense. He must see the house, Violetta wanted him to see the house. He willed it into his mind. And there it was. The house and the steps and the door. He had not seen the door before. Only the steps. He tried to tell Violetta.

She wasn't sure of the words, but she knew she'd made contact. He could see the house, she was sure of it.

‘Go up the steps, Pietro. Open the door. Go inside the house.'

He tried to do as she asked, but he couldn't. He was unable to go up the steps. He was unable to approach the door. He willed it to open before him but it remained shut, and the harder he focussed upon it, the more the door remained steadfastly closed.

Then suddenly he found himself beneath the house, looking up through the floorboards as he had been before. Violetta had called it a cubby. And to his side he could see the man's shoes standing on the steps, and he could hear the man's voice calling him. ‘Pietro! Pietro!' But he didn't want to hear the man's voice, it was getting in the way of Violetta's, and he tried to block it out, to hear only Violetta and to do as she said.

‘Open the door, Pietro. Go inside the house.' Violet kept repeating. ‘Go inside, Pietro, go inside.'

There was no response, and she was frightened. He was shaking his head, his face tortured with the effort; perhaps she was doing more harm than good.

He focussed on the floorboards overhead. He could see the light shining through them and he tried to will his way into the room above. And then, as he concentrated on the floorboards, he realised that he was seeing them not from below at all. He was looking down at them now. He was in the room: he was in the house.

‘I am inside.'

The words were clearer this time, and Violet leaned in close.

‘What do you see, Pietro? Tell me what you see,' she urged.

But he could see only the floorboards. He tried to look around the room, but his vision remained focussed on the floor, and he could hear the man again.

‘Pietro,' the man said.

The man was not calling him this time. The voice was nearby, it was coming from directly above him. Then something else entered his vision. On the floorboards before him he saw the man's shoes, and they were peering out from beneath the hem of a cassock. He was kneeling before a priest, he realised, and slowly he willed himself to look up, seeing the tassel of the cassock, the priest's hands holding a Bible, then finally the priest's face.

‘What do you see, Pietro? What do you see?' Violet asked.

‘The priest.'

She wasn't sure if she'd heard correctly, it sounded like ‘priest'.

‘Tell me what it is that you see,' she urged again.

He could see nothing but the priest's eyes now, looking down into his, burning into his brain. The eyes of the priest frightened him.

‘I see the priest!'

The words were coherent. Distorted as they were, she heard them distinctly.

‘I see the priest!' He said it again. Then the words became garbled, disappearing into animal sounds and he was once again convulsing. But the convulsions were brief this time. In a matter of seconds the seizure was over and Pietro lay semi-conscious beside her.

She fetched a warm flannel from the bathroom and cradled him in her lap, bathing his face just as she had the last time. But she didn't cry as she had then; she was stronger now.

As he came to his senses, he knew immediately who was comforting him, and he did not even think of Sister Anna Maria.

‘Violetta,' he said.

When he regained his strength they sat together on the sofa and discussed what had happened. At first Pietro's recollection was hazy – he was still weak and his head ached.

‘I see the house, Violetta,' he said, ‘but I cannot go inside.'

‘You did go inside, Pietro, you told me you did.'

‘Ah yes,' he remembered now the floorboards. ‘I see the floor.'

‘And a priest,' she reminded him. ‘You said that you saw a priest.'

The priest. It all came back. The man's shoes, his voice, the hem of the cassock, and then the priest's eyes, how frightening he'd found them.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘the priest.' Despite his headache, Pietro was excited; jagged pieces of memory were coming together. ‘It is the priest's shoes I see on the steps, I know it, Violetta. And it is the priest who calls my name. I see him in the house, I am kneeling before him, I see his cassock.'

Violet was equally excited. ‘It's a breakthrough, isn't it?' she said.

‘Yes, yes,' he agreed. He hadn't heard the term before, but he liked it. ‘It is what you say, a breakthrough. This priest, I know him, I have seen him. And I do not know why, but I fear him.'

As Pietro spoke, he saw the eyes again, staring down at him as if they could see into his very soul.

‘There is evil in the priest's eyes,' he said.

But he had seen these eyes somewhere else, he thought. He had seen them not long ago. Where? He struggled to remember.

… you will get headaches and feel tired. Do you understand me?

The doctor, warning him of the dangers if he ceased his medication, the stern eyes peering over the spectacle rims. He'd found the doctor's eyes alarming.

‘The doctor, Violetta.'

‘What doctor?' Violet was confused.

‘The doctor when we see him.'

‘Who? You mean Doctor Vanpoucke?'

‘Yes. The doctor, he has the eyes of the priest.'

She was nonplussed. What a strange thing to say, she thought. ‘But the doctor doesn't have evil eyes.'

‘No,' he said. She was right, he told himself, it was foolishness of his own imagining. ‘No, no, the doctor he does not have evil eyes.'

Pietro dismissed the image of the doctor from his mind, but the eyes of the priest stayed with him. He must not forget the priest, he told himself: the priest held the key. The priest could unlock his past.

‘Pietro?' Violet queried anxiously. He'd gone very quiet all of a sudden.

He had worried her, he realised. It was not good for Violetta to worry. He stood and pulled her to her feet.

‘I am hungry,' he said, although he wasn't. He kissed her. ‘I would like very much to have brunch now.'

‘It's half-past one,' she said as they walked back into the kitchen. ‘It's way past brunch.'

The eggs were cold and the bacon congealed, but when Violet said that she'd cook some more, Pietro had a better idea.

‘We will go into town,' he said, ‘to a restaurant, and we will celebrate.'

‘Celebrate what?' He was still weak from the seizure, and there were shadows under his eyes, but he seemed extraordinarily happy.

‘Our breakthrough, Violetta.' Pietro liked the new word. ‘I remember, is good, yes?'

‘Very good.'

‘Soon I remember who is Pietro Toscanini, and one day I tell our child. One day I say to this child who I am. This breakthrough is good, Violetta. So we will celebrate.'

‘Yes, we will.' Infected by his excitement, Violet decided she would celebrate her own breakthrough. ‘We'll go somewhere very public, and I'll wear my wedding ring and tell everyone I see that I'm married. And I'll introduce you as my husband and all the girls'll be madly jealous that I'm married to a man who looks like a film star.'

‘But your father …?'

‘Dad knows now. He's just got to like it or lump it. That's his problem, I don't care.'

She kissed him, then raced off to the bedroom to change and get her wedding ring from the top drawer of the bedside table.