looming above her on the crest.
The wind had swelled and was now sweeping straight down the valley toward him, pouring in a constant flow, like invisible liquid. He stood stock-still, staring into it, letting it wash past him into the trees. His eyes started to water. He blinked a few times.
That's when it came to him.
Gregor Mendel.
A name from his school days. Biology classes. Mendelian genetics.
He pulled the photograph of the Doccis from the notebook. His eyes darted across it—from father to mother, then to each of the children in turn.
Emilio, Maurizio and Caterina all shared their parents' obsidian eyes; but even if they hadn't, even if one of them had been born with blue eyes, that would have been okay by Mendel. It would simply mean that both parents carried a recessive gene for blue eyes, which, if combined, would make for a blue-eyed child. They were more likely to have dark-eyed offspring, but it was possible. It was impossible, on the other hand, for two blue-eyed parents— each carrying a double dose of the recessive gene—to produce a dark-eyed child.
If Adam was right, then the same rule held for another physical trait: the earlobes. Unattached earlobes, where there was an indentation between the bottom of the ear and the side of the face, symbolized the dominant gene. Which meant, therefore, that two 'recessive' people with earlobes directly attached to the side of the face could not have a child with unattached earlobes. It seemed ridiculous, but it was true.
He checked the photo one more time.
There was no mistake. Emilio Docci was the only one in the family whose earlobes hung free. Not dramatically so. But it strongly suggested that he was not his parent's son.
No, it was possible to be more precise.
The clear physical resemblance between Emilio and Signora Docci placed her maternity beyond doubt. It followed, therefore, that Emilio was not his father's son, or rather, that he had not sprung from the loins of the man standing to his left, the man gripping the back of the divan in a parody of patriarchal self-importance.
The unavoidable question had barely formed itself in his head when the answer came to him. Maybe it had always been there. Maybe it was written in his conversations with Signora Docci, but he had failed to read it.
The air of mild alarm conferred on Emilio by his large eyes and his long neck had struck a dim note of recognition in Adam, but he was wrong to have ascribed these traits to a passing similarity with some indeterminate creature or bird. He had seen the look before, yes, but it had been in an old framed photograph hanging on the wall of a room in Cambridge: a photograph of the Jesus College rowing crew, eight gangling young men clutching their oars like pikestaffs.
'Don't be too impressed,' Professor Leonard had said to him when he remarked on the photograph, 'I'm not sure we ever won a single race. In fact, I know we didn't.'
ADAM WAS LATE FOR LUNCH, NOT THAT IT MATTERED. The other guests were considerably later, and Antonella herself was running well behind schedule. In fact, she was foraging around in a sorry-looking vegetable patch beside the farmhouse when he appeared up the track. She was wearing a crumpled T-shirt, shorts and no shoes. She looked magnificent. And angry.
'Someone has been stealing my tomatoes.'
It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to steal her tomatoes; they were so small and pitiful.
'Forgive them. They must really be in need.'
Antonella's affronted scowl softened to a smile, and she laughed.
It was a narrow house built around two sides of an open yard paved with bricks. On the third side rose a barn, connected to the house by a high wall with an arched gateway bearing a carved escutcheon of the Docci family, with its rampant boar. The stucco on the house had crumbled away in parts to reveal stone walls beneath. An exterior staircase led to the human accommodation on the second floor—'The animals live downstairs, well, not at the moment.'
The rooms were barely furnished; they didn't require it. The floors, doors, ceilings and walls were all features in their own right, all ancient, all handcrafted. Her bedroom consisted of little more than a wrought-iron bed, a chest of drawers and a couple of pictures. It was enough. The sight of her discarded nightshirt on the unmade bed was mildly distracting.
A ham was boiling away on the stove in the kitchen, the largest room in the house by some margin. Its beams were browned with age and smoke, and there was a table big enough to plan an invasion on. They weren't going to be eating here, though; they were going to be eating outside. Which is where Adam came in.
His job was to rig up a tarpaulin as a sunshade in the yard. Everything he required was in the barn, including the trestle table and chairs.
Antonella approved of his construction, and once he'd laid the table and folded the napkins and found cushions for some of the chairs, she joined him outside, rewarding him with a glass of the wine he'd brought. She examined the label approvingly before she poured.
'I thought you were a student.'
'Grandmother's best.'
'To grandmother,' she said, offering her glass to be clinked.
'Grandmother. May she live to be a hundred.'
'Oh, don't worry, she will. Maurizio is convinced of it.'
'Maurizio?'
