Chapter 17

17

In the middle of the night, I woke to find the room shrouded in darkness except for the soft glow of light from the hallway under the door. I reached out instinctively to the other side of the bed, only to find it empty. Lillian was gone. A pang of sadness hit me. Her passions had won out over our friendship, at least for the night. But could I really begrudge her that? Besides, Ignazio seemed perfectly capable of exerting control over me despite me being in the company of others. What use would it have been if Lillian stayed?

I tossed and turned, the sheets tangling around my legs as my mind replayed the evening's events. Ignazio's kiss, the vision he'd conjured, the unsettling mix of desire and apprehension he stirred in me—it all swirled in my thoughts like a tempestuous sea. Sleep remained elusive. But I had to admit, Dalí had ultimately been right. Nothing had harmed me last night. I had not eaten a seed. Though I'd lost myself in a fit of tears on my friend's shoulder, perhaps I had not needed to be so afraid after all.

Finally, as the first rays of dawn began to paint the sky in hues of pink and gold, I heard the door creak open. Lillian tiptoed into the room, her face flushed and her eyes shining with a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. She caught my eye and gave me a sheepish grin.

"Please don't be mad," she said as she crawled into bed next to me.

"I can never stay mad at you," I replied.

"We have one more hour to sleep," she said, her eyes already closing.

I chuckled. "You mean you only have one hour to sleep." But she was already lost in the arms of dreams.

I had thought we might return to Proserpina's bench to paint that day, but Dalí had other plans. Instead, he led us to the strange, exposed tomb we had seen a few days before.

"It's Etruscan," he declared when we arrived, drawing out the word for effect. He said he had asked Ignazio about the tomb. "Nearly three thousand years ago, a body was buried here. Worms devoured the flesh. Eviscerated the organs."

"Thieves probably stole the lid and animals must have taken away the bones," Gala informed us far less dramatically than Dalí had. "Now strip down, Julia, and climb in."

I stared down at the mysterious space. The rock where the grave was carved wasn't big, perhaps eight or nine feet long and four feet wide, mostly buried in the earth. It was so nondescript that it would be easy for any man or beast stumbling across the rock to fall into the little grave. It looked horribly uncomfortable. The burial spot itself was a simple square rectangle carved down about three feet into the rock, with a ridge around the top where a lid must have rested. I wasn't entirely sure my body would fit within it. Jack bent down and began clearing out the dirt and leaves that had collected in the depression.

"Here," Lillian said, recognizing my discomfort. She took off her long black wool coat, folded it, then leaned into the grave and arranged it so my backside would have some cushioning.

After removing my clothes and handing Lillian my thin cape, I sat on the edge of the grave. Despite the intense sun, the stone was ice-cold, and I did not remain there for long. I lowered myself into the shallow hole, grateful for the soft warmth of Lillian's coat.

"Excelente," Dalí exclaimed, looking down at me. "Now, to make you a delight for the worms." And with that, he and Gala squatted on the edges of the grave and began arranging my body so I looked as corpse-like as possible, my legs straight, my hands folded below my breasts. Gala arranged my hair so it curled slightly against my shoulders.

Dalí reached down and closed my eyes. "Imagine the worms crawling across your skin, the beetles slicing up your organs with their pincers."

I opened my eyes. "That is not what I want to imagine while lying in a grave."

"Shush!" He closed my eyes again, and I tried to lie still, as still as possible. The coat filled the recessed space beneath me but did not afford me any pillow, and I wondered how long I could manage to rest upon the peperino before a headache or neck ache set in. I opened my eyes again when I heard Dalí instructing Jack to set up the easel.

"I told you that you'd have to take off your clothes," Lillian teased. "I just had no idea it would be so creepy."

"It's definitely creepy," I said. "And cold."

"I'll make sure you get to warm up," she said.

"No, you won't." I laughed. "You'll be too busy warming up Paolo."

She looked off in his direction and grinned. "Guilty as charged."

Annoyed by the distraction, Dalí shooed her away, but I reached up to stop her. She took my hand. "Ask Paolo about Julia's diary," I instructed her. "There must be more to it. The ghosts pointed me to it for a reason."

She squeezed my hand. "I will. And don't worry, we won't leave the garden," she said as Dalí shouted at me to put my hand down. And then she was gone, and the maestro appeared at the side of the grave to reposition me and close my eyes again. Once he was satisfied with my pose, he placed something in my hands, and I didn't need to open my eyes to know it was a pomegranate.

After quite some time, I was startled by a rustle and a soft coo at the edge of the grave. I opened my eyes and saw a turtledove looking down at me, its head cocked in curiosity. A moment later, five more joined, the orange of their wings shining bright in the sunlight.

"Magnificent. How very Dalínian," Dalí whispered so as not to scare them away.

I lifted my head slightly to look at him. A glare and a fast motion of his hand made clear that I was to remain in position. Then his brush began flying across the canvas again.

I laid my head back down, but I didn't want to close my eyes for fear one of the birds might land on me. I tried to soothe myself by listening to the sound of Dalí's brush flying across the canvas again. Still, all I could think about were the birds at the tempietto on the day we first came, and the turtledoves that flew into the window the night of the Hypnerotomachia dinner. Their presence at the grave wasn't coincidental, of that I was sure. My mind went to Ceres and the immense flock that had surrounded her the day before. Each of the deities had birds they called their own. And while I didn't have my Bullfinch's Mythology or a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses to verify this idea, I was confident turtledoves were beloved of the goddess.

I watched the birds through half-closed eyes. They did not leave but continued to stare down into the grave, occasionally pecking at the moss on the edge of the opening. What would happen if they decided to descend upon me? These dark imaginings were worse than what Dalí had suggested. Instead of worms, I pictured the doves ripping out my hair, pecking at my skin, and poking out my eyeballs. Finally, I could take it no more. Sitting up, I waved my arms at the birds, and thankfully, they flew off without incident.

"I need a break," I told Dalí.

"Yes, yes, fine."

"Ignazio is setting up lunch," Jack said from his camp chair nearby. His eyes alighted upon my bare chest.

I pulled Lillian's coat around me and scrambled out of the grave. After I'd dressed, I went to look at Dalí's work. He grunted but sat back to let me see the canvas. It was a sketch in oil and not nearly finished, with half of my body missing, but the heart of it was already there. It was a stark painting, with a dark background and the open grave in its center, my body aglow in the recess of the Etruscan tomb. The pomegranate in my hands had split and the jeweled seeds were ruby bright. I had never imagined myself looking quite so beautiful. But it was me—Dalí hadn't embellished my features with his wild imagination. He had omitted the turtledoves.

"We'll bring the final back to Paris," Gala said to Dalí as she looked over my shoulder. "Rouchard will buy it for a small fortune." I had no idea who Rouchard was, nor did I care, but I couldn't help but wonder if he'd keep it in his private collection or loan it to a museum. Letting my imagination run wild for just a moment, I imagined myself standing before it in a gallery, people milling around, wholly unaware it was me glowing in that grave.

Gala took both her husband and Jack by their arms and led them the short distance to the orco , leaving me to follow. But the path they took went past the statue of Ceres, and I wasn't keen on being anywhere near it if I could avoid it. Glancing around, I spotted Paolo and Lillian descending the stairs near Proserpina's bench.

I headed in their direction, though it meant passing the vase where I'd first heard the ghostly whispers. I'd happily subject myself to those over the imposing statue of Ceres, though I was relieved the only audible sound that caught my ear was of Paolo and Lillian chattering away. Lillian's parents had died in an accident when she was a teen in Seattle, and she had come to live in Rome with an aunt. Her Italian was far superior to mine.

"Oh, Jules, Paolo told me all about the diary," she explained when they reached me.

I motioned to her to lower her voice. We could see the orco from where we stood, and who knew how the sound might travel. "The acoustics in the boschetto are weird," I explained.

But she waved me off and wrapped her arms around me in a bear hug. "The cook that Giulia Orsini mentions... Aid...o..." She looked at Paolo.

"Aidoneus," he said.

"At first, I thought Ignazio might be a descendant of Aidoneus or maybe a reincarnation of him. But what if...?" She paused for dramatic effect.

"What if?" I nodded at her to get on with her thought.

"What if Aidoneus and Ignazio were the same person?"

I had already thought of this, of course, when Paolo had first told me about the mysterious cook. I'd never met anyone like Ignazio, with his mesmerizing eyes, electrifying heat, heady scent, and it gave me the distinct impression he was more than what he appeared to be.

But before I could admit that perhaps my friend was on to something, Dalí interrupted us. "Come! Eat!" He was standing in the Hell mouth, waving to us.

"We don't pay you to dawdle," Gala chimed in.

Lillian rolled her eyes at me but was the first to step in that direction. "This is truly the most incredible thing," she exclaimed as she went up the stairs and into the Mouth of Hell. "To dine inside such a creature—how many can say they have done such a thing?"

I wished I had the same sort of excitement my friend had. But I dreaded every step I took toward the monster. Every time I entered it, something terrible had happened. I hadn't seen Ignazio since the staring contest, and the memory of our encounter lingered in my mind, leaving me unsettled yet yearning, trapped in a whirlwind of emotions I couldn't fully understand and wasn't sure I wanted to. Yet he greeted me with a broad smile, as though nothing had transpired between us.

"Julia, welcome."

I hated myself for the way my body responded to his presence, every fiber gravitating toward him while my mind told me I was utterly foolish for harboring such desire.

"Thanks," I said nervously. The previous night's reprieve from the seeds was unlikely to continue. I wondered what he would do when I refused another pomegranate seed, and what might happen to me if I ate them all. I was damned no matter what I did.

"Mmm, heaven," Lillian murmured as Ignazio described the decadent meal before us: saffron risotto with white truffles, baked scallops in a rich béarnaise sauce, warm pheasant paté, and fresh oysters, each dotted with a dreaded pomegranate seed. She bit into one of the gold-dusted arancini and, while raving on and on about the succulent flavors, positioned her half-eaten rice ball quite purposefully, so that I could see a single pomegranate seed embedded within.

I stared at my plate, fuming.

Julia...

I heard the ghost but didn't look up. Thinking back to the vision of me in the empire-waist dress from a couple of days past, three fingers outstretched, it dawned on me. Every time I had seen my ghost, it had held up three fingers. Suddenly, I understood what the visions were trying to tell me. I placed two arancini on a plate and turned to Ignazio, my heart pounding with desperation, desire, and no small amount of fear. "You'll join us for lunch, will you not?" I asked.

He visibly brightened but shook his head. "Thank you, Julia, but I must not."

"You must," I insisted. "We enjoyed the game with you last night, so why not today? And it is only fitting that you enjoy a meal with us after you have done so much to make this week so...special." I struggled with the last word—there were no words to describe our time in Bomarzo.

Gala took my bait, as I hoped she would. "Yes, you must stay." She took Ignazio by the arm and sat him down between us. A jolt of heat went through me as his knee brushed up against mine.

"Here," I said, handing him the plate before he could say no. "Take one."

He began to rise, but Gala pulled him back down. "Stay, please."

I took his other arm and echoed Gala. "Yes, please stay."

Lillian added her voice into the mix. "Please, as the others said, we'd love for you to stay."

"The ladies rule the room." Jack laughed.

Ignazio turned his head and looked at me.

"For me," I said, barely loud enough for anyone to hear. Boldly, I pressed my knee against his.

I felt him soften. "Very well, Julia. But I'm not hungry."

Gala glared at me, recognizing that he had decided to stay because of me.

Jack and Gala raised their arancini, and we all followed suit. I glanced at Ignazio. Our eyes connected, and for a moment, I was lost, wishing the rest of our companions were no longer there, that it was just us, alone to dine upon each other.

I examined the golden rice ball in my hand. If I ate it, I would be consuming my fifth pomegranate seed. Paolo and I had already determined that if there really was some curse upon the Julias of this place, it would manifest after I'd eaten the sixth seed. But if my theory was right and I could get Ignazio to eat a seed as well, it might be worth it. I took a bite and swallowed.

As the taste of the arancino filled my mouth, a strange sensation overcame me, a mysterious pull into the shadows of my own mind. I saw myself strolling through grand, torch-lit corridors, the walls lined with black marble and hung with dark tapestries depicting scenes of an unworldly splendor. I wandered through shadowy gardens filled with twisted, thorny vines and blossoms that exuded a heady perfume. The air was cool and tinged with the scent of damp earth, echoing faintly with the murmurs of unseen rivers. An inexplicable joy surged through me, a contentment in the darkness that was profound and enveloping, yet bewildering. The place was both beautiful and foreboding, a palace that was at once my sanctuary and a maze hiding secrets.

A chill tingled my skin as the vision receded, leaving me at the table with a lingering sense of having touched something ancient and profound. I looked around, slightly disoriented, my heart filled with an odd yearning for the dark splendor I had glimpsed.

"Your turn, Ignazio," I egged him on. Leaning toward him, I brought another arancino , a pomegranate seed embedded within, to his mouth. He didn't turn away. The rice ball touched his lips, and he bit it and swallowed, closing his eyes.

This time, the earthquake's grip was immediate and violent. But as the world shook around us, something peculiar happened. Ignazio seized my hand, and it was as if we were not simply fleeing the chaos, but directing it. The ground quaked beneath our feet, yet it moved with us, not against us. We rushed out from the orco , and the earth roared around us, a symphony of destruction nearly deafening in its intensity.

I was terrified, but I couldn't shake the sensation that Ignazio and I were somehow at the center of the tempest, like puppet masters pulling at unseen strings. A long crack opened in front of us, an unsettling dance of destruction, its edges grinding and shifting as if beckoning us closer. It was as if the chasm was a mouth, and we were both its voice and audience. Trees shivered, chestnuts pelted the ground, and yet, amid the pandemonium, a pomegranate rolled to a gentle stop at my feet, a symbol of something I couldn't quite grasp.

Down the path, it seemed Ceres's eyes flashed bright green for the barest second, but I could not be sure. I stared at the statue, but there was no movement, only cold stone.

"Are you all right?" Ignazio's voice was tender in my ear, yet laden with something I couldn't identify.

I nodded and reluctantly pulled away from the comforting heat of his arms and our inexplicable connection, the magnetic pull that had briefly united us with the chaos.

"Now do you believe us about the earthquake we felt the other day?" Jack asked Gala, his eyes wide with the remnants of terror and confusion.

Paolo slowly went toward the place where the crack had been, Lillian in tow. "It's gone," he said. "As though it was never there."

"All of this is very Dalínian," Dalí cried out. "Even the ants declare it so." He pointed at the earth. Instead of a crack, there was a growing line of dark ants.

"Death marches forward," Gala breathed.

Dalí waved his cane in the air. "Our mortality is evident. Impermanence is all around us."

"So, ants mean death?" Jack asked.

" Sì! Sì! Or sometimes they mean overwhelming sexual desire." The artist winked at me.

I took Lillian and Paolo by their arms. "Will you walk me back to the tomb? I'm not hungry anymore."

"Certo." The cameraman grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "We can take some more photos while we wait for the others."

"Excellent idea," Dalí declared. He waved us off toward the path to the Etruscan hole in the stone, then stepped gingerly over the line of ants and headed back into the Mouth of Hell, Gala and Jack following behind.

"Hot damn. What happened back there?" Lillian exclaimed when we were far enough down the trail to be out of earshot.

"You ate another seed, Signorina Julia," Paolo said, incredulous. "If you eat one more, you might—"

"—die," I said, finishing the thought for him. "I know. But I wanted to make sure Ignazio had one too."

"Wait, you want him to eat the seeds?" Lillian asked me.

I told them about the ghosts' signs and Orpheus's warnings. "I don't know what else they could mean other than I should try to get him to eat three seeds. And when he has eaten them, wild things have happened." I cited the birds hitting the window as evidence. "But I don't know. I'm just guessing." I was starting to question if finding out about my past was worth endangering my future. I looked to Lillian for guidance. "Maybe we should go back to Rome."

Just then, Jack came crashing down the overgrown path, interrupting us. "Dalí wants you ready to go when he returns," he said, throwing an arm around my shoulder as though we had been best friends forever. "Time to lose the coat." He gave me a squeeze.

I chuckled awkwardly and pulled away. "I don't know if I can model this afternoon," I said. "I'm too on edge." I raised a hand so they could see that I was still shaking.

"You'll have the wrath of Gala on you if you don't," Jack cautioned. "She's in one of her foulest moods." He pointed toward the orco , where Dalí and Gala were in a heated conversation.

"Why is she so angry?" Lillian asked.

Jack shrugged. "She is the most mercurial creature I have ever met. When she's in a good mood, she's glorious. But when she's in a bad one, stay out of her way."

"She's always in a bad mood when it comes to me," I groused.

Lillian tried to bolster my spirits. "Only one more day. You can do this." She smiled, then helped me undress and settle back into the grave, arranging my arms and legs, although I suspected Gala would do it again when she arrived. She was a woman who always had to put her mark on things.

"You do look beautiful," Lillian said as she laid some of my hair across my shoulder.

"You're just jealous. You wish it was you lying here, cold and naked for the whole world to view."

"How did you guess?" She swatted my shoulder playfully, then made way for the Dalís, who both repositioned me several times before finally agreeing on a pose. Gala was most definitely in a mood, and she was particularly rough, pulling my hair so hard that I swatted her hand at one point. I expected her to retaliate, but instead, she backed off, spoke a few harsh words to Dalí, and departed, dragging Jack along with her. The tension flowed out of us like someone had released the air from a balloon.

"We have to come back here when everyone is asleep," Lillian whispered, nudging me awake hours later. "I want to see this place at night."

I no longer had any interest in traipsing around the boschetto in the dark but didn't have the opportunity to say so.

Lillian sat next to Dalí on the drive back to the palazzo as he animatedly described one of his surreal visions, his hands gesturing wildly, moving closer and closer to Lillian's face as he spoke.

"A rhinoceros horn curving into the infinite horizon, the perfect symmetry of an ant's antennae in juxtaposition with the chaos of a crumbling world," Dalí raved, his eyes alight with creative fervor. "Imagine a garden of flamingos, each bearing the face of a different philosopher, or a sea so tranquil that it reflects not the sky but the dreams of those who gaze upon it. That's where art transcends reality, you see?"

Lillian, eyes widening as his hand came too close for comfort, instinctively reached out and took hold of his wrist, pulling his palm toward her to avoid being accidentally struck.

"You have a high Mount of Mars," she said quickly, improvising a distraction. "This signals great ambition, and..."

"Genius," Dalí exclaimed, momentarily forgetting his vision as he looked at his own palm, both fascinated and slightly confused by Lillian's unexpected move.

"Yes, great genius," Lillian agreed, smiling as she guided his hand back to his lap, seizing the opportunity to steer him away from his wild gesturing.

"You are a modelo , too," he said, but it didn't sound like a question.

"No, I sell coats and hats and shoes."

"Ah, that is where women can truly excel, in fashion. My shoe hat? My collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli?" He started to gesture again but seemed more mindful of Lillian's space.

"I have seen it. Truly brilliant," Lillian said, her eyes dancing with amusement.

Dalí settled back, seemingly still intrigued by the palm reading, and the drive continued without further incident. Lillian winked at me, a triumphant grin on her face.

"Does anyone know what dinner is tonight?" Jack asked, changing the subject. "I can't believe it's our last night. I can tell you now, I'll miss the food."

"Dinner will be Dalínian!" Gala declared.

"Perfectly so," Dalí agreed. "Gastronomy is the one subject of which I will never tire, and tonight, you will be delighted by my delights. You will be exalted by all that is placed before you. Tonight there WILL be snails." He waved his cane around, whipping it dangerously close to Paolo's head. "There will be frogs. Baby turkeys! Crayfish! Peacocks! Quail! Siren shoulder! Pierced hearts! Toffee with pine cones and old-champagne sherbet!"

"You're making my head spin," Lillian said. "I didn't even know you could eat some of those things."

"This will be a D?ner de Gala ," the artist cried out. "You will see, my little shoe seller. You will see."