This foreign postcard, which I received about a week ago, here at the office.
Now I stare at this flat cliché rendering of the onion-shaped domes, the black-and-white stonework, and consider whether I dare to turn it over and read the message on the other side. Whether I’m better off tearing that postcard to shreds and dropping it in the wastebasket for the night janitor to consign to oblivion.
In the end, I turn it over, if only to confirm the suspicion that Sumner Fox has planted in my head. The funny thing is, I’m not surprised at all by what it says. I’ve always known it would come to this. I’ve always known Iris would wind up in the worst kind of trouble there is, ever since Sasha Digby walked into her life on a spring day in 1940 and smashed us all to pieces.
Iris
Late March 1940
Rome, Italy
The woman flailed against the giant who held her against his ribs. His hands snatched at her waist and her naked thigh with such force, his fingers sank into the tender flesh. How she fought him! With one hand, she pushed his head from her breast. Her curls flew into the air. But she didn’t stand a chance, did she? Not a chance in the world against all that bulging muscle, all that solid, masculine bone.
Iris couldn’t strip her gaze away. She stood hypnotized before the white limbs—the living skin—the long, curling ropes of hair. The robes that fell from waist and hip and shoulder. If she reached out to touch the marble, she would surely find it warm beneath her fingers. She’d feel the thrum of emotion—fear, desire, revulsion, passion, triumph—inside her own pulse. Once a week she visited the gallery, sometimes twice, and she couldn’t decide whether it was hatred or rapture that drew her back to this particular statue. Whether she was mesmerized by the beauty of the human shapes—the struggling Proserpina, the mighty Pluto; whether she was repulsed by the violence, by Proserpina’s helpless struggle; whether she was ashamed because she couldn’t stop staring into this intimate, brutal act. She wanted to stop it somehow, to wrest Proserpina from Pluto’s arms. But sometimes she caught herself in Pluto’s thoughts, so consumed by lust for this tender flesh that he couldn’t let her go—he couldn’t survive without Proserpina’s warmth in his cold, dark underworld, even though she hated him.
Some other visitors trickled around her. Iris didn’t really notice them. That was why she visited in the middle of the week, or on a rainy afternoon, so there weren’t as many people around to witness her in her trance, or to wonder why the small, young American virgin couldn’t turn away from that riot of licentious marble. Today was a Tuesday, and a delicate spring rain pattered on the windows. Also, there was a war on, didn’t you know. Only Americans went on vacations anymore, and even Americans weren’t exactly thick on the ground. So nobody bothered Iris, and Iris didn’t bother anybody, and when at last she broke the trance and turned to leave the gallery, she almost missed the bright blond head studying The Rape of Proserpina from the other side.
Almost, but not quite. You couldn’t really miss a mane like that, especially in Italy—sleek and gold, propped up high on a pink neck, its pink ears tucked neatly back. Iris couldn’t see the rest of him very well, hidden on the other side of all that writhing stone, and anyway she was on her way out and pretending not to look. All she could make out was a tall suit of dark blue, and a hand shoved in a trouser pocket, before she passed out of the room.
That was all. A glimpse of a golden head and a blue suit. So why did Iris feel as if she’d lost something precious, as she stood before another sinuous Bernini in the next room? A maiden who held the radiant sun in her hand as some invisible force pulled away the drapery that covered her.
He was just a stranger in a museum. She was never going to see him again, anyway.
But as Iris moved from room to magnificent room, she did see him again. And again! Well, maybe that was to be expected. They were floating down the same river, after all—following the same prescribed path around the ground floor of the Villa Borghese, taking in the masterpieces one by one. That head bobbed in and out, moving above the little clusters of other visitors, and Iris now saw the body it was connected to, tall and lean and long armed. The beautiful tailoring of his blue suit made the most of his rangy shoulders. When he stopped to contemplate a painting or a statue or an ancient Roman bowl, or the gorgeous decoration of the ceiling, he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and tilted his head thoughtfully.
Once, Iris passed him straight on, when she left a room just as he was entering. She had just an instant to see his face, which was plain and no-nonsense, a prominent brow over a pair of wide-set eyes, maybe thirty years old. So near as Iris could tell, he didn’t notice her, but then she took care not to catch herself looking at him, either. Were they playing a game, or not?
Oh, of course they weren’t. It was all in her head. A silly, lightning infatuation. For a stranger! Iris stared at a David holding out the severed head of Goliath. The last room on the ground floor, and it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon.
A woman stood next to Iris’s right shoulder, a man to her left. The woman stepped away, and for a minute or two, Iris and the man contemplated the painting in silence.
“We seem to be interested by the same pieces,” the man said.
Iris startled and looked to her side.
The man with the golden hair.
He stared straight ahead. He had a long, sharp nose and a firm jaw.
“Do we?” Iris said.
“Pluto and Proserpina,” he said, tactfully avoiding the word Rape. “Truth Revealed by Time. David and Goliath.”
“Isn’t everyone interested by those? They’re the masterpieces.”
He nodded to the painting in front of them. “You’d think the artist would model David after his own face, if he were going to model himself at all, but actually that’s Caravaggio on the Goliath.”
“Yes, I know.”
The man turned his head and looked at her sheepishly. Beneath those heavy brows his eyes were very blue, almost ultramarine. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to condescend. I was just trying to make conversation.” He smiled. “We’ve met, you know.”
“Have we?”
“Don’t remember?” He stuck out one enormous, bony hand. “Sasha Digby. I work with your brother, at the embassy.”
“Oh! Of course.” She shook the hand.
“Party last month? At the ambassador’s residence? You were there with Harry and your sister. Of course you don’t remember. It was the end of the evening before I introduced myself. I guess we all had a little too much champagne.”
Iris tried to recall the party, but Mr. Digby was right. She had drunk a lot of champagne that night, and she wasn’t used to it. Her memories of the evening were . . . well, kaleidoscopic was a nice way to put it.
“I’m awfully sorry. I should remember you.”
He laughed. “Yes, I do stick out in a crowd, don’t I?”
“It’s just that I don’t usually have so much to drink. They kept refilling my glass when I wasn’t looking.”
“Ah, well, they do it on purpose. Without wine there would be no diplomacy. Anyway, I should have introduced myself earlier.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m shy, Miss Macallister.”
“No, you’re not! Didn’t you just walk up to me and introduce yourself?”
“Only after spending an hour wandering around after you, working up the nerve.”
“Oh,” Iris said.
Mr. Digby looked at his watch. “Say, I’d ask you to coffee, but I’ve got a silly appointment coming up.”
“Then you shouldn’t be late.”
“No, I can’t, I’m afraid. But I’m glad I spotted you here. I mean, I’m not surprised to see you in a place like this. I knew there was something different about you.”
His ears were pink. A bright raspberry stain covered his cheekbones.
“I’m glad too, Mr. Digby,” she said.
“Sasha.”
“Sasha. I’m Iris.”