The Silent Fountain. Victoria Fox
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make me feel alive, remind me I’m still breathing.
Thirty minutes later, I’m hot and thirsty. I’ve long since left the village behind and entered an ochre landscape, fields of maize and barley rolling wide on both sides, as I climb dusty lanes and take refuge in the occasional dapple of the olive groves. Silver-backed leaves offer flickering shade and I rest a while beneath them, drinking from my bottle and starting to feel faintly worried that I shall never find this place.
Then, beneath the smell of almonds and the sweet hint of blue-black grapes, a brighter scent: I spy a crop of lemon trees over the hill, running as far as the eye can see, each richly laden with yellow fruit. Squinting against the sun, I step up to the wall. On the horizon, melting to a blur in the fragrant heat, there is a building. It is enormous, its façade the colour of overripe peaches and with a sprawling, age-damaged terracotta roof. There are turrets, and the dark outline of arched windows.
I look at the map. This is it. The Castillo Barbarossa.
The road winds in a great loop around the estate and, making a decision, I topple my bag over the wall and opt for the shortcut. If the size of the castillo is anything to go by, it owns this grove and several other hectares beyond. I pick my way among the fruit trees. The lemons make me want to drink. I picture the owner of the house welcoming me with a refreshing glass, but then I remember what Bill told me. I remember what the woman was like on the phone – that strange, stilted interview, disconcertingly brief and undetailed, as if she hadn’t wanted to speak to me at all and was doing so under duress. I was relieved to know she wasn’t Italian, as I was planning to learn the language on the job; instead, I met a hint of an American accent, blunted by years in Europe and carrying with it the sharp plumminess of wealth and power. Afterwards, I told myself the connection had been bad. It would be better when we met in person. The follow-up message I received to tell me I’d been successful was testament that I had passed muster. There was nothing to doubt.
As I come closer to the house, dwarfed now by its massive proportions, the sun slips behind a cloud. The place looks ancient, and curiously un-lived-in, its wooden shutters bolted, its creamy walls more cracked and dilapidated than they had appeared from a distance. A sprawl of dark green creepers climbs like a skin rash up one side. I frown, checking the map again, then fold it and put it in my pocket.
Wide stone steps descend from the entrance, spilling on to a gravel shelf that rolls on to a second, then a third, then a fourth, at one time grand and verdant but now left to decades of neglect, their oval planters crumbling and full of dead, twisted things. At the helm is a fountain, long defunct, a stone shape rising from its basin that I cannot decipher from here. I feel as if I have seen the fountain before, though of course that is impossible. I emerge on to the drive and when I pass the fountain I do not want to look at it. Instead, I stop at the door and raise my hand.
The woman hears the door go. They have so few visitors that it shakes her with a jolt. She hasn’t been sleeping but she hasn’t been awake: somewhere in between.
Distant voices. One is Adalina’s; the other belongs to a stranger.
The woman sits, unease racing from her toes to her stomach, where it settles. She watches the walls, listens for the telltale creaks of a board, wonders how long it will be before Adalina explains her absence. What will the maid say? How much will she elaborate? The woman has been clear about the story she wishes to tell, but whether that story gets translated, behind locked doors, in hidden corridors, in hushed voices in the old servants’ quarters, is another thing. She is no fool.
It is an effort to bring her legs out of bed, but the floor feels welcome on her naked soles. Sometimes she pictures the materials of this house, the solid wood and hard marble, the cool stone, absorbing every thought and feeling her body has expelled. If she squeezes the drapes, tears will seep out, like the wringing of a cloth; if she scratches the stairways, secrets will plume and curl in a thin ribbon: grey smoke.
She goes to the door and checks it is locked. At the window, she parts the shutters and checks the approach for some clue of the girl who has entered her home. There is none. Just the distant spread of olive groves and a wide, empty sky.
Her reflection is transparent in the glass, a see-through woman. It is forgiving, this trick: it makes her appear young, no shadows, no creases – no evidence of the painful years that have scarred her face. She can seldom recall the person she was; it is like peering into someone else’s life, a life that bears no relation whatsoever to one’s own. It is peculiar to think of that other self. She sees the photographs and watches the movies; she reads the items they printed about her in magazines, that bright white smile, the lacquered waves of blonde hair, that slick of raspberry lipstick… She’d been beautiful. There was no denying it. She’d been charming. She’d been witty. She’d been scintillating. Everybody had wanted to know her.
How quickly the world forgot. How efficiently tragedy brought leprosy on whomever it inflicted. She ought to be grateful for her obscurity. Most days she was, but on others she thought about the woman she had given up, or who had given up on her, and the difference between her life then and her life now was so staggering, so acute and painful that it stole her breath away. That vanished her would have flung the door wide and gone to greet their guest. She would have intimidated her with beauty and standing, and enjoyed the effect those assets had. No female would have got the better of her. But that was another world. She has learned a lot since then.
The shutters close, blink-quick. One glimpse of the fountain is enough. Adalina cannot understand why she doesn’t switch rooms. It might make her sleep better, chase the nightmares away. But she cannot. Instead she rests her forehead against the wall, a shiver of cold rinsing her body. She fights the bleeding cough that rattles in her throat, fights with all her might but still it breaks free, a warning, a candle slowly licking itself to extinction. A thread of sunlight filters through the shutters and on to the floor, where it pools, and at its centre a black beetle circles pointlessly, round and round, round and round, intent on its journey, going nowhere.
She’d been going somewhere, once. Years ago, in another life, a young girl with her toe on the brink… She’d had it all ahead of her, the map undrawn.
Vivien, America, 1972
It was April, the hottest on record. In the little chapel in Claremont, South Carolina, Vivien Lockhart and her mother stood side by side, Vivien careful not to slouch or round her shoulders because her father told her off for that, and when he told her off she’d be better off dead. Her white cotton dress stuck uncomfortably to her waist and she longed to tear it off, run in her petticoats down the aisle and out into the fresh air where the other teenagers were leaping into rivers and sunbathing on the grass, climbing trees and kissing boys. But instead she stayed where she was, every part of her yearning for more, pretending to pray and not to be having any of these thoughts.
Eventually, the silence was broken. Both Vivien and her mother straightened, just as they did at home, where, when the man of the house opened his mouth, all else ceased to exist. He demanded to be heard, and never more than when he was talking about God. His congregation clung to his every word. Vivien thought of him at the breakfast table that morning, wiping dots of fatty milk from his moustache, flipping out the newspaper and telling them that the blacks were getting away with murder.
‘And what did the Lord say when the blind man came to Him, and asked to see again?’ Gilbert Lockhart paused, forehead beaded with sweat and excitement. He leaned forward, extending one talon-like finger, like a vulture peering off a tree branch. ‘He said, in all His Glory and Almighty Power, I grant you eternal sight!’
The crowd exploded in applause. Even the prim Mrs Brigham, in her neatly pressed frock and a hat that resembled a bowl of fruit, shook with elation.
‘And what did the Lord say when the deaf man came to Him?’