Just One Evil Act

time of their shared adolescence. He struts, said her girlfriends. He is danger incarnate, said her aunts. He is our nephew and we give him shelter as we must, said her father. So it had begun. And when he walked between the gates of Villa Rivelli with his smoky gaze fixed on the child ahead of him, Domenica’s heart had leapt high in her chest and the thorns of her garments had dug in deeply and she had known not only what she wanted—what she still wanted—but also what was meant to be. Almost ten years of punishment at her own hands, and had God forgiven? Was this her sign?

“This you must do for me” had not been spoken from the mouth of God, but how did God really speak unless it was through his servants?

The child had skipped to him and had looked up and had spoken, and in the distance Domenica had watched him tenderly cup the girl’s head and nod and touch her forehead. And then with his hand on her shoulder, he’d turned her from the enormous villa and he’d gently guided her on the path of amber sassolini and walked its curve to the old camellia hedge where an arch gave way to an expanse of beaten earth upon which the stone barn rose. Seeing him with the child like this, Domenica had felt the first stirring of hope.

From within, she had heard their footsteps on the stairs. She’d gone to meet them. The door was open, for the day was warm, and streamers of brightly coloured plastic kept the flies without and the fragrance of baking bread within. When she’d parted the streamers, she’d looked upon them both: the man and child. He stood with his hands upon her shoulders. She stood with an upturned face lit with anticipation.

“Aspettami qui,” he had said. He was speaking to the child, and she nodded to indicate she understood. “Tornero,” he added. She was to wait in this place. He would return.

“Quando?” she asked. “Perche Lei ha detto—”

“Presto,” he said. He gestured then to Domenica, silent before them with bowed head and heart a beating boulder within her chest. “Suor Domenica Giustina,” he said although his tone was not one of respect. “Rimarrai qui alle cure della suora, si? Capisci, carina?” And the child had nodded. She understood. She would remain here with Sister Domenica Giustina, to whom she had just been introduced.

Domenica did not know the child’s name. She was not given it and she dared not ask, for she was not worthy of the information yet. So she called her Carina, and the child accepted this graciously.

Now, she and the child were among the vegetables, nascent in April but soon to produce. They were weeding in the pleasant warmth of the day. They hummed separate tunes and periodically glanced up at each other and smiled.

Carina had been there less than a week, but it seemed that she had been with Domenica always. She spoke little. Although Domenica often heard her among the goats, chatting to them, she communicated only in words or phrases or simple sentences to Domenica. Many times Domenica did not understand her at all. Many times Carina did not understand Domenica. But they worked in harmony, and they ate in harmony, and when the day ended they slept in harmony as well.

Only in prayer did they differ. Carina did not kneel before the crucifix. Nor did she use her beads although Domenica had pressed into her hands a rosary carved from the pits of cherries. She’d hung it round her neck in a sacrilegious collana that Domenica had removed hastily and pressed back into her hands with the tiny crucifix nested among the beads, with the corpus facing upward so that she could see and not be mistaken about its use. But when she still did not use it for prayer, when she could neither mouth the words nor their responses at Domenica’s side in their morning, noontime, and evening devotions, she understood that Carina lacked the one thing necessary to eternal life. This was a sign from God.

Domenica rose from kneeling among the burgeoning peppers. She pressed her hands into the small of her back, and the thorns questioned her with the pain of their injection into her flesh. Surely, they asked, it was time for their removal now that Carina’s presence suggested that she had been forgiven by God? But no, she decided. Not yet. There was work to be done.

Carina rose also. She looked at the cloudless sky, not fierce as it would be in summer but pleasant and warm. Behind her, clothing hung on a line to dry: the garments of the little girl she was. She’d brought nothing with her aside from what she’d had on her back, so now she wore the white linen of an angel, and through it her child’s form was like a wraith with the spindly legs of a foal and the matchstick arms of a sapling tree. Domenica had fashioned two such garments for her. When winter arrived, she would fashion more.

She gestured to Carina. Vieni, she said. Come with me. She left the garden and waited to see that the child shut its gate behind her and checked—as she had seen Domenica do—to ensure that its latch was fixed.

Domenica led Carina to the arched opening in the camellia hedge that gave them admittance to the immediate area around the villa. The child loved this place and, as long as Domenica could watch her, she spent two hours each day exploring it. She loved the peschiera with its hungry goldfish that Domenica allowed her to feed. She danced round the fish pool’s rectangular length, and at its western end, she perched on the wall that overlooked the perfect pathways and parterres of the giardino below. Once, Domenica had taken her there, among the flowers in their precise arrangements, and they’d stolen a look at the Grotta dei Venti, its cavelike shelter of shells and mortar exhaling cool air onto them, seeming like the breath of the lichenous statues that stood on pedestals within.

Today, though, she took her to another place, not of the grounds but of the villa itself. For on its eastern side, steps led down to a pair of great green doors and within these doors lay the cellars of the villa, vast and mysterious and disused for the past one hundred years. Time was the cellars housed wine, and the ancient barrels and casks spoke of this use. There were dozens of them, dust-covered and bound to one another by the webs of a century’s spiders. Among them, the terracotta urns that once held olive oil were black with mould and the wooden presses that had created that oil bore the rust of disuse upon their gears and a fine down of grime along the metal courses and the spout from which l’oro di Lucca had once seeped with delicious abundance.

There was much to explore in the cellar: vaulted ceilings where the black mould grew, uneven floors of stone and tiles, ladders balanced against huge casks, enormous sieves lying in a forgotten pile, a fireplace with the ashes of long-ago fires still dormant within it. The smells were rich and varied. The sounds were hushed: just the cries of the birds outside, the sound of a goat bleating, the rhythm of water dripping, and above them the faintest vocal music as if the angels of heaven were singing.

“Senti, Carina,” Domenica whispered, a finger at her lips.

The child did so. When she caught the disembodied singing, she said, “Angeli? Siamo in cielo? ”

Domenica smiled to think that this place could ever be mistaken for heaven. She said, “Non angeli, Carina. Ma quasi, quasi.”

“Allora fantasmi?”

And Domenica smiled. There were no ghosts here. But she said, “Forse. Questo luogo e molto antico. Forse qui ci sono fantasmi.”

She had never seen one, though. For if ghosts wandered the cellars of the Villa Rivelli, they did not haunt her. Only her conscience did that.

She allowed Carina some moments to discover that this place held no danger to her. Then she beckoned her to follow. There was more within these dim, damp rooms, and its promise was Domenica’s salvation.

There was faint light. It came from windows at the villa’s base. They were obscured by shrubbery and filthy with having been ignored so long, but enough light came through them to see the passages that led from one vaulted room to another.

The one she sought was deep within the cellar, and their footsteps echoed against the cool walls as they made their way to it. It was entirely different from the rest, lined with barrels but having a harlequin floor, and in this floor’s centre lay a marble pool. From this spot had come the sound of water that they’d heard. It bubbled up from a spring beneath the villa, and it filled the pool and drained from this to a hole in the floor from which it trickled outside to go on its way.

Three marble steps descended into the pool. Along its sides, green mould grew. Its bottom was black. The grout that held the marble in place was dark with mildew, and the air in the room was pungent.