The Demon Catchers of Milan (8 page)

Xoxo,

Mia

Dear Mia-boBIA,

Sorry to answer your long one with a short one, but I have, like, ten essays due, and that’s before I start memorizing.

Poor you. I don’t even know what to say. This has thrown all of us for a loop. But I did get to see some of what they did with you, and I have to say, I think they have big plans, and they know better than anyone how to defend you. Maybe it’s like school, you have to learn to count before you can add and subtract, and so on. And Emilio: he’s way more than just good-looking, you know. He’s the real deal, just like his grandfather.

On a completely different and more cheerful note, Ariel does not get to kiss anybody, least of all Luke, who is playing the Duke of Naples. Bummer. Ariel is Prospero’s odd-job fairy, though, so I get the most excellent supernatural costuming and a twenty-minute makeup job.

The rest of your life sounds alternately boring and totally awesome, by which I mean staying inside all the time blows, even if inside includes the balcony, but the
food and the culture and the whole family history thing are fundamental, it sounds like. If I wasn’t insanely busy, I would envy you.

Love,

Gina-banana

Finally one morning, about five weeks after I arrived, I felt brave enough to start on the pile of Italian history books. I had been avoiding them. I had tried one in the first week, but after referring to my dictionary fifteen times in the first paragraph—I am not joking—I decided they hurt my head too much and exiled them to a corner of my desk, where they sat and glared at me. Then one day I just reached for one of them, and I didn’t need a dictionary every five seconds, although, granted, it was a children’s history of Milan. I read. And read. And read. I didn’t take in a lot of what I was reading, because it felt a bit too much like school, but at least I could read it—and that made me ridiculously happy.

I noticed my progress in other ways, too, like at dinner at night.

Francesca and Égide always came home at the same time, walking in the door together, one or the other carrying a battered grocery bag with orange flowers on it that always contained something Nonna had asked for: fresh milk, fresh bread, a half kilo of mushrooms, a bottle of wine. One night, as often happened, Uncle Matteo and Aunt Brigida were with them. Giuliano greeted them, asking, “No children with you
tonight?” To which they replied at the same time, “A date,” and “A study crisis,” meaning Anna Maria and Francesco respectively. It was easy to tell which was which, since Anna Maria had left school to become a model.

I was helping make ravioli. I am completely useless in the kitchen, but this did not stop Nonna, who ignored my pleas (I think she knew they were really protests in disguise). I never liked to help cook at home, but I was starting to enjoy filling the little pasta squares and running the cutter along the edges of the ravioli molds. Nonna hovered over a sauce on the stove, then darted away to shred endive for a salad.

Uncle Matteo opened a bottle he had brought with him, and poured out for all of us, tucking a glass in by my elbow with a smile.

“You’re doing a good job,” he said, patting my shoulder before thumping into a seat at the table beside his wife.

I could follow some of the conversation now; there were still lots of words that just flowed by as a river of sound, but even those were starting to puddle into the shapes of sentences. At least everybody here had the same accent. Sandro, a neighbor who sometimes stopped in at the shop, had moved up from Sicily, and I couldn’t make sense of even the simplest things he said.

While they talked, Uncle Matteo pulled out a slim, battered, black case from his jacket pocket and opened it on the table, idly picking over its contents. I knew I had seen something like this before, but so much had happened, I couldn’t remember
where. I was pretty sure that Giuliano had one of these, and Emilio, too.

The case was bound in leather, with lines of gilded writing running down the lid. I couldn’t read the words from where I was standing. The interior was made of light-colored wood, carefully varnished. Various objects were held in place between slats of wood or under leather straps, among them two candle stubs of different colors of wax, a book of matches, a tiny hand mirror, a small copper bell, a thin, leather-bound notebook, and a pen. I thought I saw nails lined up in a row, too, and some other things I didn’t recognize.

“Brigida, help me remember that I have to get this strap repaired,” he said, pulling on a bit of broken leather. I didn’t need to understand all the words to see what he meant. Brigida nodded and turned to Giuliano.

“No Emilio tonight, either?”

Giuliano shook his head. “Alba.”

“Ah,” said Aunt Brigida, adding something else in a caustic tone that I wish I could have translated. I say I learned a language in order to ask for breakfast; I think I learned it in order to understand the gossip, too.

Well, really, I suppose I learned it for all kinds of reasons. I do remember that dinner, and Uncle Matteo’s case, and I remember that the next day the history books started to make sense, although the history itself did not.

My teachers back in Center Plains were apologetic about teaching us history, but bravely tried to make it interesting by
having us make dioramas, reenact important moments like the creation of the Magna Carta, or pretend to live in a feudal society in the Middle Ages. Sadly, the poor, brave history teachers, bravest among them Ms. Sadler, who once lectured dressed as Genghis Khan, never succeeded in making the subject relevant—just boring.

I could tell the people who had written the Italian history books would not be able to do any better. I gave up on the first one and tried another.

After an hour or so, I started getting really annoyed. The problem was that none of the books agreed with one another. I felt as if the historians were fighting in my head.

“The origins of Milan are lost in the mists of time,” said one.

“No, they aren’t,” said another. “It originated with the Etruscans in the sixth century
BC
. But nobody knows what the name
Milan
means.”

“Yes, we do,” said another. “It’s a shortened form of
Mediolanum
, which means ‘middle of the plain,’ as anybody can tell, and which makes sense because Milan
is
in the middle of a plain.”

“No, it means ‘land of the May’ in Celtic, and in fact the Celts did conquer the Etruscans in May.”

“You’re all idiots! It’s obviously a reference to
lana
, ‘wool,’ and to the sheep that were raised here.”

Together, like some weird animal with too many legs and no brain, we lurched forward, the papery historians and I.

“None of that matters, anyway, because pretty soon the Romans decided that what northern Italy really needed was an
aqueduct or two, and they were just the people to build it. The Romans were one of those peoples that just couldn’t leave anybody alone. They were always invading you without asking. They would come in with their eagles and their big ideas and ruin everything.”

Of course none of the historians was actually saying things this way. I wrote down “eagles and big ideas” and for a fleeting second thought about another country that had both.
Oh
. Wait a minute. These people I was reading about, with their total inability to sensibly name a city, had been
alive
—getting up in the morning and feeling disgusted about stupid politicians making stupid decisions, or eating their mother’s horrible oatmeal and hating algebra, if they had algebra back then. They had hung out with their friends, had crushes on the cute Etruscan boy next door, had wondered whether the Romans would leave them alive. It looked like a lot of times the Romans didn’t. The Romans weren’t the only ones with issues about violence, either. When those early Milanese weren’t rushing off to war, they spent their spare time poisoning one another or arranging for grisly executions or dying of disgusting plagues. There was so much blood, blood on every page.

Someone knocked on my door.

“Come in,” I said.

“Ciao,”
said Emilio, and I remembered that another way the old name for Milan had been translated was “honeyed land.” I felt like I was looking at it.

“Working hard, I see—that’s good, good. What is it today?”
he asked, approaching my desk, then answering himself, “History. Yes, excellent. But don’t neglect the language.”

“How can I, when all of these books are in Italian?” I retorted, glad I could come up with the words fast enough. I wanted to tell him how sick I was of opening my dictionary for every other paragraph—and then finding every paragraph full of blood. I wanted to beg and plead to be allowed to do something else. I opened my mouth to start, then shut it again. More than anything, I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of him.

“It’s coming fast,” he said confidently. “May I sit?”

“What? Oh, sure.”

He picked the one other chair in the room, the old leather armchair that sat by the window. When he sat, I saw the light on his hair and realized with a shock that it was reflected from the lamps in the courtyard outside. It was later than I’d thought. My stomach growled, loudly enough for both of us to hear, and he laughed and said, “Nonna won’t be cooking for another hour, at least. Let’s go down to the shop. I’ll get an aperitif for us from the café. You can practice speaking with anyone who comes in. Let’s go see if Nonna needs anything.”

He stood up quickly, but I was the one who felt a rush of vertigo. I held on tight to the back of my chair. Suddenly and unreasonably I didn’t want to leave my cocoon of language CDs and history books. But after I’d made my way downstairs to find myself standing in the shop, surrounded by the smell of old wood and warm wax, I knew I would be all right, at least for now.

“So what would you like? Prosecco?”

I must have looked blank, because he smiled. “I’ll just bring back some different things, and some little bits to eat, and you can decide what you like.”

At the door, he stopped, turned, and came back.

“Mia. Something very important.”

I was still standing in the middle of the room, arms dangling at my sides.

“Yes?”

“You must not blow out any of these candles. In fact, don’t breathe on any of them or try to touch the melted wax or the flame. Do you understand?” he asked urgently. “Tell me what I have said in English, so that I know you understand.”

I repeated the warning back, haltingly but correctly.

“Good,” he said. “But the books, you can touch.”

After he was gone, I took a look at the books. They were mostly history, in very dense Italian. Oh, good. I walked around the room, looking at the candles from a cautious distance. They were very beautiful in all their varieties of shape, color of wax, number of wicks, and so on, but they looked like nothing more than candles. They smelled of honey, mostly, so I guessed they were made of beeswax, though I had never seen it in such a range of colors, from pale white to deep, dirty gold.

As I paced, I started to notice odd things about the candles. Like how one flame wavered as if it were in a high wind, while the one next to it burned straight and still, pointing perfectly upward. Or how two candles made of the same yellow
wax burned with different colors—one with a blue flame, one orange with a green heart. When I stared at one, I thought I could hear music. Another one burned slowly down, the flame drowning in a sea of wax, and went out with a sigh. I heard it: a sigh.

Emilio came back with a tray loaded with glasses, little sandwiches, canapés, olives, and other pickled vegetables that I didn’t recognize.

“Help yourself,” he said. I tried the Prosecco but liked the other drink better:
aranciata amara
, bitter orange, a soft drink with a bite to it. I thought about drinking coffee, and how I drank wine at dinner now, way more than the two or three sips I was ever allowed at home. I felt guilty again.

A man came into the shop, moving so quietly that he startled me while I had an olive in my mouth. I sat up, the olive going one way and the pit going the other. The man looked at me as if he would rather not speak in front of a stranger. I asked Emilio, “Should I go?”

“What?” he said, startled. “No, no, you are fine where you are.” He gave me a hard look. To the man, he said, “Don’t worry. She’s family.”

The man gave me a searching glance, then sat down at the table. I was surprised Emilio didn’t offer him anything from our very full tray, because up until that point, I had never seen anyone visit the Della Torres without being fed. His guest didn’t seem bothered, though. He was a small man, with black, greased-back hair and fine, pale features. There was hardly any red in his cheeks.

“What is it?” Emilio prompted him gently.

“I have come from the street of Signora Galeazzo. You asked me to watch. I mean, your grandfather did.”

“Yes, I know. What have you seen?”

“He told me the signs were already starting to show, your grandfather did.”

The man was still looking at me while he spoke.

“I tell you: she’s all right. Now, the signs are starting to show. And we have had signals here,” Emilio added, gesturing to the room.

“Ah,” said the man, lifting his eyes to the candles. Somehow I felt sure he didn’t like them. “You asked me to watch,” he continued. Then his voice changed, becoming sharper. “She’s coming home. Soon. You need to know this. She’s very angry.”

“We thought she might be,” Emilio nodded. “I would be.”

“You know nothing about it,” said the man.

Emilio shrugged, not put off by his strange manner. “Probably I don’t.”

“I could hear her, in the night. She’s not far off, maybe only a few streets away. You don’t have a lot of time.”

“She has taken years to get here, so we may have weeks,” Emilio said.

“I don’t care about time,” said the man, but he sounded sad.

“I know,” Emilio said. “What can I give you?”