early explorations, and so Greta stopped to grab a lantern. I gripped the handles of the wheelchair until my knuckles went white.
Finally, we stopped at a set of double doors. Greta opened them and pushed me inside. I lifted the lamp and put it on a table, so that it cast a flickering light over a large room. Looking around, I found a nursery. Or, at least, it had once been a nursery. It was as abandoned as the second-floor ballroom. Cobwebs hung in the corners and a thick layer of dust coated everything.
And yet, from the doorway, I could see that it had been used in the not-so-distant past. The walls were covered with colorful drawings, the kind you see in a kindergarten classroom, only the large sheets were curled at the edges and mottled with mildew, some ripped, others hanging from one corner. Old-fashioned toys—rocking horses and Lincoln Logs and wooden blocks—were mixed up with modern ones: a doll house, its rooms fitted with miniature furniture; puzzles and picture books; a Playmobil village with hundreds of figurines; stuffed animals—monkeys and puppies and kittens with glass eyes. Along one wall, a muddle of dolls lay in disarray, abandoned babies waiting for their mothers to return.
I turned to Greta, who was watching me carefully. “Was this Joseph’s room?”
“Vita let him play here,” Greta said. “This was her nursery when she was a child, then her sons came here, too.” She bent down and picked up a wooden train. “Joseph loved this! He played with it for hours.”
I used the crutch to hobble to an enormous table filled with LEGO pieces. At the center of the table sat a castle, its towers tall and sturdy, its drawbridge raised. Nearby, small houses clustered together into a village. It was a reproduction of Montebianco Castle, with the village of Nevenero below.
Greta walked to the wall and pulled down a drawing. “This was his,” she said. “He liked blue. I don’t know why, but it was his favorite color. He always drew everything in blue.”
I took the drawing. A blue man with long hair and enormous eyes stood alone, surrounded by rocks. The hands were large and the feet enormous, out of proportion to his body. Below the picture, Joseph had written the word “Simi.”
“Do you know what this is?”
Greta shrugged. “Something he made.”
I walked to the wall of drawings. There were more creatures like the first, all drawn in blue crayon. Some climbed rocks. Others stood in trees. There were men and women and children, all with the same characteristics of the Icemen. The wall was full of Joseph’s drawings.
“Did he have a story about these drawings?” I asked. “They all have the word ‘Simi.’ Do you know why?”
“He was always making up stories,” she said, looking at the pictures with care. “And Vita did tell him many things that happened in these mountains. The local legends and myths and such. Some of these might be drawings of those stories.” She turned back to me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Sometimes he liked a toy and played only with it for months. It was like that with the blue men.”
“Was he ever afraid?” I asked. “Afraid of Vita or . . . anything else?”
“Madame Vita is not all bad. She loves children,” Greta said. “She loved Joseph. She helped me. She hired me when I needed to leave Germany and let me bring a child. Not everyone would do that, you know. She was kind to my son.”
“Is this why you stay here?” I said, gesturing to the wall of Joseph’s drawings, to the abandoned toys. “In case he returns?”
“My son is coming back,” she said, and for a moment, hope burned in her eyes, giving her a look of a woman who believed with all her heart in a miracle. “You promised to help me find him. I know you didn’t lie to me, madame. I know you’ll bring him home.”
As we left, I stepped over a rag doll, ripped and stained, its arms torn off, its dress frayed. The cloth was so old it had begun to disintegrate at the seams, and I wondered if it could be the same doll Eleanor had given her daughter, Vita’s first friend. When I picked it up, I saw gashes in the face, the smooth skin deformed by Vita’s sharp teeth. The linen was stained with brown drops of dried blood. The eyes stared blankly, devoid of life.