Chapter 8

8

"You're all right," Jack exclaimed, taking me up in a bear hug as I made my way to the front door, where the Dalís and their entourage were milling about. I fell into him, glad for the comfort after my ordeal. "Gala told us about the fire," he said when he had pulled away.

"She's perfectly fine," Gala hissed, glaring at me as she slipped a possessive arm around Jack. "Come along, amore ."

Jack gave me an apologetic smile and then left with Gala.

"Where's Ignazio?" I asked, though I didn't want to see him. I was bracing myself for the moment when we'd meet again. The night was unusually warm, and I probably could have done without my cape, but I wrapped it tightly around me nonetheless.

"He is already down in the wood," Dalí said. He was dressed in a gray tweed suit with a pink tie, an unusual choice that worked for the eccentric artist. "Come, Paolo, bring the equipment." He pointed toward a camera bag with the silver-tipped end of his walking cane, capped by a detailed ram's head, also made of silver, then extended his left hand to me.

Paolo picked up the bag and dutifully followed us as we walked toward a dark car waiting at the bottom of the hill.

"No truck this time," I observed.

Dalí was horrified. "No. Not for dinner."

"I'm sorry I missed the sitting today," I told him as we walked toward the driveway. I was glad Gala and Jack were out of earshot. I didn't want her derailing my apology or deriding me again for fainting.

He gave me a broad smile. "You are lovely, my Proserpina, but you are not the only thing in my painting. You are recovered, no? We will resume tomorrow. There will be sun, I predict."

The car took us the very short distance to the entrance of the Sacro Bosco, which was lit by several tall torches. The closer we got, the tighter the knots in my stomach became. I still didn't understand what had happened at the well. I felt healthy and hale, not as if I had just inhaled a ton of oily smoke from the lantern fire. But it was puzzling that a doctor had checked me out and for something as debilitating as smoke inhalation, suggested I could merely sleep it off. And why would I have slept for an entire day as though I was recovering from some drunken bender? I had so many questions, and each one made me more and more anxious at the thought of seeing Ignazio once more.

This anxiety came to a peak when our host greeted us by the entrance to the garden. He wore a black tuxedo, and his hair had been slicked back, giving him a mysterious and somewhat sinister air. I couldn't meet his eyes. To my surprise, he didn't ask me if I was well, or even mention the incident in the basement. In fact, he acted like nothing had happened. While I found this baffling, I was also grateful that I could follow along and say little as he led us into the boschetto .

The trail's lanterns cast a dim glow on our path, and as we moved into the garden, like before, a strange familiarity enveloped me. A sense of déjà vu; I couldn't help but feel I had walked this path in some distant, forgotten life. Ignazio kept up a lively narration as we went, giving us the details of the stories and myths each statue evoked. I had worn my chunkiest heels, but I clung to Dalí's arm for balance as we navigated the overgrown path that led us past the looming statue of the giants.

We approached a massive turtle, steadfast with the winged goddess of Victory upon its back, an embodiment of triumph frozen in time. Next to the turtle was what must have been an ancient fountain, with Pegasus standing in silent guardianship at its center. Alongside them both, hidden within a shadow-filled ravine, an open-mouthed whale jutted upward, surrounded by the murmur of a bubbling brook, its low gurgle a haunting serenade to the night.

A sharp sense of being watched prickled at my skin, a gaze unseen but palpable, as if the statues themselves held a life force within their weathered contours. The feeling intensified as we moved past the statues toward the heart of the garden.

The trail wound through what Ignazio explained was known as a nymphaeum—a sanctuary dedicated to water nymphs—a small area of the boschetto , full of beautiful, curved benches and alcoves with worn images of the Three Graces and nymphs carved into the wall. According to Ignazio, a vaulted ceiling once covered the area.

As I peered at the worn carvings, a faint green luminescence flickered in the hollows of their eyes—a glow that vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving me to question whether it had been there at all. The statues seemed to watch us with a silent intensity, their gazes following our every step. The nymphaeum held a dark undertone, a sense that we were intruders in a realm where the past was not quite asleep.

Beyond the nymphaeum, the footpath led us to the remains of an amphitheater, now covered in moss.

"Paolo, you were telling me that you like poetry," Jack said loudly enough for all of us to hear. "What would you recite?"

" Sì , recite something." Dalí waved the cameraman to the center of the amphitheater.

Paolo's face reddened but he acquiesced. "It's a bit of Ovid, from the Metamorphoses . I must speak Italian for this," he said, his voice shaking a bit. But as he began to speak, he seemed to gather courage, and his voice steadied, ringing out through the sacred wood.

Ignazio translated Paolo's words for us. "‘I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it but follow the wrong.'" He eyed me intently as he spoke, as if to suggest that I was the one following the wrong way. I turned my head, unable to breathe beneath the heat of his gaze.

"Brilliante," I told Paolo as he made his way down the mossy stairs.

"Some serious razzmatazz," Jack said, clapping Paolo on the back. The Italian looked puzzled.

"Fantastico," I translated in the best way I could.

Paolo grinned, clearly pleased that his recitation was well received.

"Come now, dinner awaits." Ignazio pointed at a structure a little farther down the trail. It was a small, two-story building that looked more like a guard tower than a house, but it was leaning into a hill at a forty-five-degree angle. A stone bridge led from the crown of the hill to the top floor. There was a little clearing below the building.

"The tower was once the first thing you would see when coming through the garden entrance," Ignazio explained. "Remember the sphinxes I told you about?" He pointed to an overgrown path that was, indeed, guarded by two stone sphinxes.

"The warning that the visitor must decide if what they are seeing is trickery or art?" Jack asked.

"Exactly. And there—" he lifted his hand toward the tower "—you will have another opportunity to decide."

On top of the flat roof, a musician sat with his legs dangling over the edge. He began playing a mournful little tune on his trumpet.

"Something to remember," Dalí whispered. "Beauty in the dark."

He rocked slowly in time with the exquisite strain. The mournful melody of the trumpet floated down from the tower, wrapping around me in a soft, invisible veil of sound. In that shared moment of silent reverence with Dalí, a small kinship formed. For the first time, I thought that I understood a little about him—he became less of an enigma, less of an anomalous intrusion upon the world. I realized that this was a Dalí few might ever see. After a long moment, Ignazio laid a hand on Dalí's shoulder. "Come, we don't want our food to chill." He motioned for us to keep walking.

"This is the Casa Pendente," Ignazio said.

The leaning house.

"There are two ways in. From above and from below."

"Like heaven and earth," Dalí said.

"Our dinner will begin below," Ignazio announced, leading us up the little set of stairs to the lower entry. There was no door and the windows had no glass or shutters but were open to the elements.

The room was barely big enough to hold us, and the slant was disorienting. I knew we were all standing up straight, but we looked like we were impossibly angled, leaning forward, toward the far window, even though the house leaned the opposite way. The Casa Pendente didn't just lean, it also twisted up our equilibriums.

"Now, this is surreal ," Jack joked, giving Dalí a little sock in the arm.

"As it should be," Dalí said, nodding in agreement.

To my dismay, I was seated with my back to the door, facing the glassless window that was tilted toward the stars. I didn't like not knowing who—or what—might come through the open door behind me. It also didn't escape my notice that Gala was careful to place herself between Jack and me. Fortunately, the table and chair legs had been altered so that we would not be subject to the slant of the building as we ate. Even so, I felt like I might fall backward at any moment. Once we were all seated, the room's snug dimensions left no space for the servers to navigate behind our chairs, forcing them to awkwardly reach around me from either side to serve each dish.

A meow at my feet caught my attention, and I was delighted to see Orpheus there, looking up at me. I reached down to pet him and he rubbed his head against my hand for a minute, then lay down beside my chair, staring at me. It was as though his blue eyes were pleading with me, but for what, I did not know. Perhaps he was as unenthused by the tiny gray dishes we were served as I was. The mushroom soup, oysters, sardines, mackerel, and gray cheeses with weird gray crackers were a far cry from the previous colorful dinners we'd been fed at the castello .

Paolo, who sat to my right, looked as uncomfortable as I felt, and neither of us ate much, which prompted Gala to admonish us for wasting food.

"I don't like sardines," I told her. She gave me a look of icy disapproval.

"Neanch'io," Paolo agreed, turning up his nose.

As if on cue, a servant appeared and whisked away our plates, replacing them with flat gray rocks smeared with an unappetizing gray paste dotted with little black seeds. Gala asked one of the servants what it was, but he only gave her a glassy look and departed without a word. Jack, having encountered the unusual dragon fruit on a prewar trip to Mexico, informed us of its identity. Contrasting its unremarkable gray insides, the fruit's skin was a vibrant yellow. I didn't even know cacti bore fruit at all, much less something so delicious.

"This is some spectacle," I observed. But, then again, everything in Bomarzo had been a spectacle. Even Ignazio and my companions were spectacular, like something out of a movie, except with brilliant color. I stared out at the sky beyond Dalí's head, the W shape of Cassiopeia's stars blinking in the darkness.

"All is as it should be!" Dalí responded, launching into a dramatic soliloquy, his hands waving wildly. "This is what other surrealists do not understand. We are on the edge of real and unreal. On the edge of life and death. Of black and white. Of the world and the Underworld! We are in a place where few will ever be. This! This is where the heart is. This is the point where the knife is touching the skin. The second before blood meets air!"

"Did you plan all of this?" I asked in disbelief.

Dalí looked at me as though I were daft. "Of course, my little Proserpina, of course."

Gala shook her head at me, contradicting her husband's words.

Ignazio's voice rang out from somewhere above us. "It is time to leave the emptiness of the Asphodel Meadows and join me in the Fields of Mourning."

"What meadow?" Jack asked. But I reeled with the names of these places, a chill coursing through me as some distant memory stirred, obscured by fog and shadows. An inexplicable sense of dread weighed down on me, as if I were on the precipice of recalling something awful, something that lurked just beyond the reach of understanding, hidden in the dark corners of my mind.

"Asphodel!" Dalí cried, addressing the room. "Now I understand. That's where we are. In the gray place in the Underworld where all the ordinary souls go. But not you, nor I!"

"Sounds like Limbo," Paolo remarked.

"No! Asphodel Meadows!" Dalí reprimanded him. But then he winked. " Sì , Limbo."

Two servants at the door indicated we were to rise from the table and follow them. But before I could do so, Orpheus jumped into my lap, lifted himself up to rub his face against my chin, then settled in as though he planned to take a long nap. His purring was loud and sonorous.

"Would you look at that," Jack said. I petted the little white beast, which, strangely, had the soft feel of an indoor cat, not one that lived outdoors in the elements. He pushed his face against mine again, and I sighed. Holding him gave me a sense of calm that I desperately needed. He was familiar, comfortable, almost like he had been a friend for much of my life. Somewhere in the dark void of my past I must have loved cats, even if I didn't recall ever having one.

"Orpheus should sing his song elsewhere," Gala said, waving an impatient hand at the cat. "Amscray!"

I looked at her, trying to puzzle out the word.

"I've been teaching her pig latin." Jack laughed.

I didn't want to upend Orpheus, but my companions were standing and waiting for me to move so they could join Ignazio upstairs. "Come on, Orpheus, let's go upstairs." I made to pick him up, but he squirmed, then pressed himself up against me in adoration.

"Orpheus worships you, O Queen of the Night," Dalí said. He looked serious.

"I wish he would worship me just a little less." I tried to pick him up once more, but he burrowed in. "He doesn't want me to leave."

Paolo reached over and deftly plucked the cat from my lap, and the beast gave a little cry of protest as the cameraman set him on the ground. Then he put his little body in front of me as if to impede me from making my way to the door.

"Amscray!" Dalí said to the cat, pushing his walking stick toward the feline. Orpheus dodged the stick, hiding behind my legs.

Paolo reached down and picked up the cat once more, holding it until I could exit the building. Once outside in the night air, Orpheus calmed down a bit, but he was still clingy, staying by my side as we followed the wordless servants up the path to the top entrance of the Casa Pendente, which sat at the end of a vast grassy area lined with monstrous vases on pedestals. Ignazio greeted us at the door, his hands folded in front of him. He had changed into a wild suit of red with black accents. I would not have been surprised if there had been a devil's tail when he turned around.

"Did you enjoy your meal in the Meadow?" he asked me with that damned, disarming smile.

"It was, um...unusual," I said.

"Next time, there should be more oysters," Gala griped.

"There are two courses to go, Signora Dalí." He may have been reassuring her, but he extended a hand to me. I ignored it and walked past him.

The tilt of the floor made me slightly dizzy, but I made my way to the open window, my eyes fixed upon the heavens beyond. The air was cool against the back of my neck, and I pulled my cape tighter about me. When I reached the window, I turned, and my world swayed as I watched Dalí and Gala walk around the small room, their bodies slanted.

"This defies all logic," Jack said, laughing.

"Imagine all of life on this tilt!" Dalí took hold of his wife and spun her around, nearly toppling them both. Paolo had entered the room last, and he helped stabilize the couple as five servants swept past us into an adjacent, equally small room where a high, narrow table ran the length of the longer wall, a candelabra in the center. They placed each dish, all red, on the table, then departed. We appeared to be expected to eat standing up—there wasn't enough room for chairs.

A servant deposited a salad of red before me, a plate full of radicchio, amaranth, currants, and strawberries.

"What did Ignazio say the name of this room is?" Jack asked.

"The Fields of Mourning," Gala said as she lifted the ruby-colored, spinachlike greens to her lips.

"The place where love has died! Where Dido resides!" Dalí exclaimed, his voice ringing through the small structure. My heart clenched.

"Maestro Dalí is correct," Ignazio chimed in from the doorway, the flames lighting up his features. "The Fields of Mourning is where unrequited lovers are doomed to eternity. If you've read the Aeneid , you might recall that Queen Dido entered the Fields after she killed herself because her love for Aeneas was unrequited. It is a mournful locale, full of longing, desperation, loneliness, bleeding hearts." He looked at me as though he thought it was something I knew. And he was right—I knew the story of Dido, and while I had all too much familiarity with longing and desperation, there was something else in his look, an expectation that I knew more than just what the legends suggested.

"Why are the lovers doomed there for eternity?" Jack asked, unnerved.

"It is as the gods have willed it." Now it was Ignazio who looked mournful. "And no god may undo what another god has done."

"He quips Ovid again," Dalí chuckled, waving a fork toward Ignazio and, as if on cue, Ignazio faded back into the darkness. I wasn't sure what was more bizarre—Ignazio looking so stricken or Dalí seemingly having committed the Metamorphoses to memory.

I concentrated on my plate, thinking about the dead queen lost to the Fields of Mourning, and said little for the rest of that course, letting Jack hijack the conversation to explain American sports to Dalí. Instead, I focused on the wild array of red dishes that continued to appear on the table: tomato-and-red-pepper tarts, steak tartare, beet pasta with goat cheese and pistachios, little dishes of roasted red potatoes, blood orange pies, red cakes, and tiny bowls of grapes and cherries.

"We're moving toward the Underworld," Dalí announced as the servants escorted us from the dinner table to our next location.

As I moved to walk through the door into the slightly larger main room, I felt two tiny paws upon my leg. Orpheus again. He rubbed against me, purring loudly.

"That beast won't leave you alone," Gala growled.

"I feel like he's trying to tell me something," I admitted.

"It really is as though he's trying to stop you from going," Paolo said.

Somehow, I knew Paolo was right, but I couldn't avoid going along with the rest of the group. I moved around the cat and made my way to the door. But Orpheus raced out in front of me and stood in the threshold, his little cat voice lifting in the most mournful way.

"How strange," Jack said. He'd already crossed through the door and was watching the cat from the other side. "Perhaps he believes you truly are Proserpina?"

"I can't stay here forever, Orpheus," I said, leaning down to scoop him up. He continued to cry in my ear as we exited the Casa Pendente, and we weren't more than a few paces down the torch-lit footpath when he grew stiff in my arms. He dug his claws into my cloak and the hairs on his back began to bristle beneath my fingers.

"What is wrong with you?" Gala griped when I suddenly halted, causing her to run into me. She swiped at my shoulder with the back of her hand, a nudge to keep me moving.

I didn't bother answering as I pulled Orpheus from my shoulder and set him on the ground. He stood in front of me, hissing at something in the darkness.

"What is wrong with him ?" Jack asked.

"Maybe there is a wild beast of some sort out there," Gala said, her voice lower, with a touch of nervousness that I hadn't heard before.

"Do not worry, Signora Dalí," Paolo said. "There are only boars and bears around here, and they wouldn't come so close with our voices and all the torches."

Jack walked a few paces in the direction of Orpheus's ire, past the torchlight. "There's a statue here, a big one, of a woman with a planter of flowers on her head," he called back. "Look, the orco is just up there." He pointed in the direction away from the woman, then looked back up at the reclining statue. "This is the statue Julia and I were looking at when we felt the earthquake the other day."

"Ceres," I said, an unexplained warmth spreading through me and the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I hadn't realized the monstrous goddess was so close. Was that what Orpheus was trying to warn me about?

"The mother!" Dalí's voice was loud in the dark silence.

I looked toward the statue, suddenly dizzy.

"No," I said.

"But she is. Ceres is Proserpina's mother. It is for her the earth weeps every winter as she seeks divine retribution for Pluto stealing her daughter."

"Ceres isn't her mother," I said, the memories slipping away like sand through my fingers but leaving a conviction behind.

"But she is," Gala broke in, parroting her husband. "Don't you know the myth of Demeter and Persephone—Ceres and Proserpina? It's the story of a mother protecting her daughter."

"Yes, I know what is written, but the myth is wrong," I said, adamant, my voice filled with an emotion I couldn't quite place. "That's not what happened. I'm telling you, Ceres is not her mother."

Dalí raised an eyebrow at me.

"You disagree with centuries of this known myth? And with the great Dalí?" Gala's glare was sharp, and I remembered how she was wont to slap people, and how quickly she had snatched away a chunk of the sum that had been promised me. I shook my head and turned away, even though I knew in my heart Dalí was wrong. That the mythology was false.

"Andiamo," I said to Paolo, who was standing next to me. He nodded and walked with me in pursuit of Orpheus, who had trotted off down the trail.

"Who is Ceres, if not the mother of Proserpina?" he asked me once we were out of earshot.

I answered instinctively, this truth welling up from someplace hidden inside me. "Ceres and Proserpina were lovers."

Paolo chuckled. "Now, that, amica mia , was not what I expected you to say."

I could tell from his voice that he didn't believe me. I hadn't expected him to. Many centuries of mythology stood against me, and I had no proof beyond a deep internal certainty, nothing that would ever give anyone pause to rethink the ancient stories.

The orco was a short distance away, its eyes and mouth lit by fire. Servants came and went from its mouth, dark shadows against the wild brightness. We started to head in that direction, but Dalí redirected us.

"Come, I want to see where this trail leads!"

I groaned but dutifully followed him to a dark clearing, where we found a massive rock embedded in the ground. A rectangle carved out of the rock's center looked awfully like a hole for a grave. The light from the torches on the path made the scene look even more sinister, but Dalí stepped up and lay down in it, unfazed. Paolo snapped photo after photo, his flash blindingly bright.

"Now you." Dalí waved his walking stick at me.

I hesitated, but Jack gave me a little push at the small of my back. I stepped forward a pace.

Julia... I stopped in my tracks. Julia...do not. Julia... I thought of the woman I saw in the flames that morning, the woman who wore my face, and suddenly felt short of breath yet again.

"No, no," I managed, my voice sounding more strangled than I would have liked. "I don't want to dirty my dress."

Dalí couldn't disagree; he was brushing dirt and leaves off the back of his suit. Besides, the servant leading us along the path, devoid of any emotion or spoken word, simply extended a rigid, unyielding arm toward the path ahead, a clear, mechanical indication that we mustn't dally. Not wanting to argue with Dalí about lying in that creepy tomb, I immediately turned and followed our guide.

"We will return here to paint," Dalí said behind me.

I cursed under my breath but didn't pause. I was ready to be out of the dark woods.