like a penitent in her shift.
‘But how—?’ Adriana stuttered. She felt a pang as she saw the rusty old knife on the ground next to a mound of hair. How much pain Sibilla must have endured to shave and scrape it all from her body! How raw! Adriana shook her head. Was this what she had always wanted? The daughter without the curse? Sibilla did not look more human for it. Her skin was greenish and shadowed with tiny black holes, almost the texture of the snowflakes that were now falling steadily across the high window of the larder.
Sibilla stood and turned around. Adriana’s pity bled briefly into anger – was the girl trying to punish her with guilt? But no. Sibilla’s gaze was kind, gentle even. Christ, she was beautiful! You could see the planes of her face, how articulate it was in the language of form.
‘Don’t preoccupy yourself, Mama,’ Sibilla said mildly. She looked casual, her hands in the pockets of her shift. ‘It will grow back.’
* * *
The moment Adriana trapped her daughter at home, she lost her forever. Sibilla had become a servant and service does strange things to a person. It denies you a sense of self even as it frees you from taking hold of yourself. It stills the mind by busying the hands; if those hands are then stilled, the mind erupts. What will I do? Sibilla fretted as she stalked the cabin. What will I do with my hands?
She began each morning by cleaning the house. Her hands knew how to do this. Then she cut the ends off her hair. It sprouted faster than ever these days, as if to spite her, the locks slithering through the grip of the shears even as she closed them. Her daily trim took almost an hour. She put the leavings in a pail for her mother to scatter in the garden. She ate lunch. Then she sat and stared at the locked door, waiting.
Over the course of their final walk from the Signora’s – Sibilla stunned by the cold, her numb fingers barely managing to unspool the hair from the pocket of her shift – Adriana had tried to replant seeds of fear in her daughter’s mind: boys and rocks, torture and drowning, old partisans who had acquired the taste for guns and women, the world is no Villa, you know, they’ll set you aflame like a beast, they’ll burn you up quick as a blink. Yes, and then? Sibilla thought. Until then, what will I do with these hands?
To have nothing to do was like having your fingernails pulled out, one by one. Sibilla examined them. They were spatulate, each tipped with a quarter-moon, clouded by fur from her fingers. Were fingernails dead or alive? What about hair? What was the exact nature of these felt but unfeeling edges of her body, where the inside met the outside? The Colonel had told her once that human hair keeps growing after death. He had seen it on corpses in the deserts of Abyssinia during the war. Did that make hair the ghost of the body? What did it mean then that Sibilla was covered with it? Better hair than fingernails, she supposed.
She stared out of the small window at the drifting snow, as if the night sky were sloughing its stars. It was winter now. Mama would be home soon. And still he had not come.
* * *
It took Sergeant Corsale a while to notice that Sibilla was gone. Everyone was distracted by the Villa’s latest amusement: the Signora’s African grey. Federico found the parrot repellant – it was scrawny and dishevelled, its beak like a witch’s toenail – but it was amusing to listen to its drawling echo. The guests at the Signora’s parties snickered about the secrets it would spill. Only after the novelty had worn off did anyone think to ask where the spinning girl had gone.
‘Sleeping.’ Lina tossed her head dismissively. ‘Puttana pigra. Come, Sergeant. Let us fetch her.’
Federico picked up a candelabra and followed his hostess as she zigzagged out of the salon, bouncing between guests like a bee drunk on springtime. When they finally reached the kitchen, they found the door to the larder open. They stared at the rumpled, dimpled old pillow. Not a trace of Sibilla to be found. Except – Federico leaned down with his candelabra and pointed – ‘A hair!’
Lina rolled her eyes. ‘Of course there’s hair. The girl sheds like a dog. Too