being extraordinarily acute, and perfume has had the added benefit of brightening the atmosphere around her, which is often tainted by an unsavory odor. While I have given her vials of eau de toilette and some bottles of cologne, this is her first real perfume. It is called Mitsouko, by the French perfumer Guerlain, and is rather strong in character, which, I believe, suits Vita very well. After all that she has suffered, I hope the gift will give her some happiness. Indeed, she smiled for the first time since the incident after smelling it.
June 1930
The doctor returned today to see Vita. Her recovery has been remarkable, he told me, much faster than expected. He watched her feed—one can hardly call it eating—in the chamber outside her rooms. We gave her a chamois, fat and old, with thick, curved horns, and it was reduced to bones in a matter of minutes. Our good doctor was astonished at this but said nothing. Money has made him discreet. The chamois will hold Vita for nearly a week.
Now that the village doctor is accustomed to Vita’s abnormalities, he has become a kind of guardian to her. He has taken to teaching her about the medicinal mushrooms he used to cure her—varieties that grow in the shady, moss-heavy crevices under the spruce trees. He explains how to find them and how they heal the body. One afternoon, after rambling in the mountains, Vita and the doctor made a list of the mushrooms they had collected:
—Boletus
—Lentinula edodes
—Trametes versicolor
—Inonotus obliquus
—Grifola frondosa
Vita is happy—this child who grew up without a father’s love—to have a teacher. When they returned from their excursion, she placed the mushrooms in a line on her table and studied them, lifting the delicate caps, brushing her fingernails over the fibrous stems. Then she ate them and asked for more. The doctor asked if he might take her to the forest regularly, to show her where the mushrooms grow. “She might find pleasure in the hunt,” he said.
“But, Doctor,” I said, making sure we were alone. “You have heard of her violence. Aren’t you afraid for your life?”
He looked at me for a moment, as if weighing his response. Finally, he said, “No, madame. She is violent only when violence is acted upon her first. When shown kindness, she is kind. That is the way of animals and humans alike.”
I wanted to cry at this simple wisdom. He understood my child the way her father never had.
Promising to come back the next month, the doctor tipped his hat and left.
He kept his promise and returned some weeks later. He wore thick-soled boots made for climbing the foothills of the valley. But Vita was too ill to search for mushrooms. A malady had come over her suddenly, leaving her lethargic. She couldn’t eat or leave her bed. She stared out the window of the northeast tower, gazing past the pond to the mountains beyond.
I had brought in a priest, believing it a spiritual malady. The spring in Nevenero is a trying season, with its bursts of brilliant warmth obliterated by snow and ice. But it wasn’t melancholia that had got ahold of Vita. After the doctor examined her, he informed me that Vita would have a child.
There are many ways we could kill the child. The nurse could feed it poison. Or drop it from the window of the tower. Or bring it to the kitchen, where it would be quietly strangled. The only certainty is that it must be done. I must redeem myself for the weakness I showed with Vita. The legacy of the Montebianco family must dissolve into the mountain air, disappearing from the earth like the fog at sunrise.
It would be best if it were to die before it lives, its heart stopping in the womb, before it sees the world at all. I lost three children in this fashion. Stillborn, marbled in blood, they were taken away and buried before I could love them.
But Vita’s child is healthy. If one watches the strength of its movements in her belly, the thumping of its feet against her body, it becomes clear that there is little hope for a miscarriage. It is strong. It grows. And thus I must be resolute. I must become as hard-hearted as Ambrose.
The doctor comes every week to examine Vita. He has agreed to help me. He has promised to tell no one. And in return, I will give him land outside of Nevenero. A house for