part of His presence, a ministering angel to help her through the worst.
But when it came time for the ritual to begin, I couldn’t go into the northeast tower. It was too much for me to bear, knowing that I created such suffering. Or perhaps I was afraid that the priests would make me confess my sins. I would have no choice but to tell them the truth: I want to kill my daughter. I have protected her, and yet, in my weakest moments, I question the goodness of such protection. It is as Ambrose said: Vittoria should die. If God, in all His benevolence, does not take her life, it is time that I, who gave her life, take it away. God will forgive. Who is He to judge me? He in all His wisdom and glory has created a monster.
The priests want a confession from the devil, but it is we, the Montebiancos, who must confess.
September 1930
The British naturalist returned to the castle this morning. It has been years since he first came to us. Years since I made it understood that he would not be allowed access to Vita. And yet, here he was again.
Ambrose has been dead a year, and still, I felt afraid of what he might say to find me alone with such a person. We do not receive visitors, even if they are known to us, especially foreign ones. I told the groundskeeper to ask the naturalist to leave, but the man was persistent. The groundskeeper returned with a stack of letters of introduction. His name is James Pringle, and he is apparently very well connected among the men of science in Germany and was a student of Dr. Huxley in London.
I invited him to sit with me in the salon for tea, fully intending to send him on his way back to Switzerland. But he was a charming man, and it was pleasant to speak English again; it has been so long. And so I invited him to join me for lunch in the grand hall. I ordered that a chicken be roasted and sent for a bottle of wine from the cellar. When we ate, I asked why he should be interested in my child, and he confessed that it was his specialty to document and study the irregularities of the human race. He apologized profusely, but was nonetheless bold enough to ask of the particulars of her affliction—from what did she suffer? How did it come about? Can she express herself with language? What is her diet? Could he sketch her? And, if he could be so bold, could he offer his learned opinion of a method of treatment for Vita’s ailments?
By the end of our lunch, he had charmed me. I trusted him and gave him permission to visit Vita.
In the northeast tower, we entered to find Vita bound to her bed. It had been a difficult morning, apparently, and the nurse had called for help in securing Vita’s hands and feet in restraints. She was quite wild when we arrived, screaming, uncontrollable. She made no sense whatsoever, and I blushed in shame at the exposure of her inferior mind.
It had little effect upon the good naturalist. In fact, this spectacle pleased him immensely. Upon seeing her, he went to the side of the bed, where he stared at her as if she were a rare jewel. He pulled up a stool and began to draw her. One hour turned into two, then three, and at the end of the afternoon, the naturalist had a book of sketches. He seemed overwhelmed by the experience and was in a hurry to go, presumably to show his sketches to colleagues. Of course, if he had known that my groundsman waited outside the castle gates to confiscate the drawings, he would not have been in such a hurry.
“Don’t let anyone tell you she is deformed,” he said, as he packed his pencils and brushes into a leather case. “She is not deformed. She is special. She has simply arrived here from another time.”
Arrived here from another time! Those words have perplexed and sustained me. She is not deformed; she is special, my Vita. I did not have the heart to tell him that my child has killed a human being.
Despite the seizure of his drawings, James Pringle returned the next month with books for our library. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, and other, more obscure authors whose names I came