I pushed the sliced goat meat around my plate, unable to eat.
“When I first arrived,” Basil said, “I was very critical of the local fare, too. I had been living in Rome and had grown accustomed to dining well. But I have found that one comes to accept, even to appreciate, what one experiences with regularity.”
“You don’t mind it, then?” I asked. “Being so far away from everything?”
“Mind it?” he said, finishing off his glass of wine. “I choose to live this way. It makes the truth more bearable.”
“Which is?” I asked, curious to know what he meant by such a grandiose statement.
“That we are not separate from all of this,” he said, waving a hand toward the window, at the expanse of mountains beyond. “Language and education, good and bad manners, careers and friendships—such social constructs are not important up here. Here, we are a part of nature.”
Greta stepped to the table with a pot of tea, poured out two cups, and left the room, her heavy boots clomping.
“Is she always like that?” I whispered when Greta was out of earshot.
“Greta?” Basil said, lifting an eyebrow. “She’s been that way ever since Joseph disappeared.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was gone. “She took this position some four years ago, after a nasty divorce, and arrived with a child, a boy named Joseph. I think she may have accepted the position without informing the boy’s father, or the courts, if you know what I mean.”
I glanced out the window at the vast emptiness of the valley. This would be the perfect place to disappear with a kidnapped child.
“I do think such extreme measures may have been justified,” Basil added quietly. “Considering those scars on her face. But even here Greta wasn’t safe from tragedy. Two years ago, Joseph vanished. One minute, he was in the courtyard playing; the next, he was gone. We all searched high and low for the boy. He was only six years old, all blond curls and rosy cheeks. He brought such sunshine to this place. We never found him.”
“My God,” I said, feeling sorry for my critical assessment of Greta. “Did he get outside the gate and get lost?”
“My personal theory: the father. He discovered Joseph’s location and took him back to Germany.”
I felt a wave of empathy for Greta. I had never lost a six-year-old son, but I knew what it felt like to long for a child. Absence had formed a hollow space in my life, one that I still hadn’t learned to fill. When Greta returned to clear the plates, I was unable to face her. When the cuckoo clock chimed in the distance, the birds chirruping and the bell ringing twice, I put my napkin on the table and stood to go.
“Finished already?” Basil asked, pushing his chair away from the table.
“I’m supposed to meet Dolores in the portrait gallery,” I said, turning to leave.
“Ah, you will enjoy it,” Basil said. “It is an excellent collection. Quite representative of the various styles of portraiture through the centuries. Come, let me show you the way.”
Basil escorted me down the corridor, stopping at a cloakroom near the main entrance. He dug through layers of coats until he found a long, heavy mink. “Take this,” he said. “It is utterly freezing in the north wing.”
I hesitated, stroking the fur. It was feathery, soft, the color of chestnuts, the most sumptuous thing to have ever passed through my hands. “No one will miss it?”
“Frankly, there’s no one here to miss it,” he said, stepping close and helping me into the mink. “If I were you, I would wear this coat and enjoy it. I would take every bit of pleasure you can from this place. The house is full of treasures. Take the paintings to your rooms. Have Greta bring you wine from the cellar, the old bottles. Drink them! No one else will. Find pleasure in what you have inherited. It helps the time pass and renders one philosophical.”
“I’ll definitely do that,” I said, warming to Basil’s eccentric behavior. “But Zimmer is coming back at the end of the week. I’ll be gone soon.”
“That is what he told you, is it?” Basil said, pursing his lips.
“Yes,” I said, meeting his eye, searching his expression. “Did you hear something different?”
As Basil put his hand on my back and steered me in the direction of the portrait gallery, he said, “Of course, there