off her and her time in the windy garden had teased her hair to a tangle. She was still standing at the door, peering out through a crack, her back to the room.
That was when Adriana saw it. She marched over, grabbed Sibilla by the neck, dragged her to a window, and pulled the collar of the girl’s shift down. Under the light, Adriana examined her daughter’s scars – the white stitches, black buttons and red and gold medallions running down her spine. Then she turned Sibilla to face her, bent down, and with the presumption of motherhood, parted the curtain of hair between the girl’s legs. Nothing unusual, though it was no longer bare there and the sickly sweet musk grew slightly stronger. Adriana tilted back up and demanded an explanation.
Sibilla knew better than to lie to her mother so she spoke honestly about the nightly soirées at Villa Serra, using a monotone to temper the revelation. She obviously had no idea how familiar these parties were to her mother, even beyond the dread archaeology of cleaning them up every morning. When Adriana had first started working for the Signora at Villa Serra, she had in fact attended these very same soirées. She had mostly stood in the corner, dressed in borrowed clothes, too drunk on the spectacle to bother with the wine. She could still picture the salon in its glamorous heyday, the burgundy curtains lush as blood, the chandelier’s bitterbright jewels. She still remembered Giacomo’s eyes the night he recognised her from the butcher’s stall and asked her to dance…
As Sibilla spoke, this elaborate tapestry of memory was weaving itself in the steamy kitchen air before Adriana. Sibilla, on the other side, could of course only see its back: knots and strings and washed-out colours giving semblance to the barest of shifting shapes. She did not seem aware that something other than her own little story was happening here in the Signora’s kitchen. She prattled on, dribbling out her little stories about spinning and hair, freedom and softness. Then she said something about the Colonel and his hunting knife, and as if it had appeared in the flesh, in the very mettle, the word ‘knife’ pierced it all – the tapestry tumbled.
Oh how Adriana wept! Oh how she castigated Sibilla for her recklessness! But even as she ranted, Adriana was not thinking of her daughter, but of the Gavuzzis. Adriana no longer loved Giacomo. She had barely mourned him when he died, a casualty not of the war, but of the flu that had swept through Alba in ’43. He had merely been a conduit for something beyond Adriana’s cuttingly narrow life to enter her world – something as big as a war and as small as a man. She had always known deep down that he was a trifling person. And as for the Signora, Adriana could see now that it had just been a piece of amusement for Lina: to invite maids to parties they would be obliged to clean up.
This blip in the Gavuzzis’ relentless pursuit of distraction had been the peak and the tragedy of Adriana’s life. And now the curse that had issued from it was standing before her, smelling up the kitchen, boasting about the bright nights on the other side of their drudge days. Did Sibilla not realise that she was not a guest at those parties, but a sideshow? Adriana knew now that the Gavuzzis would never accept her daughter. It was time for Sibilla to come home.
* * *
Had they left Villa Serra immediately that day, perhaps things would have turned out differently. As it was, there was still work to be done, so Adriana locked Sibilla in the larder to wait until nightfall. It was several hours before she came back to fetch her daughter for the journey home. As Adriana unlocked the door, she found herself oddly nervous – ashamed in advance for what she was about to do – and so she started chattering about the mess she’d had to clean up today.
‘A brassiere clogged a drain and the Colonel, you cannot imagine, he brought the Signora the most bizarre gift, some kind of African bird. Grey, dirty. What noise! What shit!’ Adriana bustled into the larder. ‘What—’ She stopped short. Sibilla was kneeling on her oriental pillow, facing away, gazing up at the one high window. And she was completely shorn, her head bald, her arms and neck a little patchy. She looked