Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
CASALTA, 14 APRIL 1985
LUCREZIA
‘You’re back, you’re back!’ Bianca whispered in my neck; I pulled away from her and we took each other in. A beautiful aura, light blue dotted with silver like a twilight sky, emanated from her.
‘You have no idea how much I’ve dreamed of this moment. Oh, Lulu !’ She held me tightly again, and I couldn’t breathe but didn’t care.
How could I put in words all that was in my heart? How could I tell her all that had happened in those years?
What do you tell your sister, your twin and the other half of you, when twelve years of absence stretch between you? Why did you stop writing? Why didn’t you answer my letters? All I could do was hold her to me again, and we rocked from side to side, smiling like nothing bad had ever happened, like we’d just been parted for a little while…
Our moment was diffused by a soft, silvery voice behind me.
‘You’re here. At last!’ A small girl, all dressed in black and with long, dark, wavy hair, threw herself in my arms. Little Mia, the youngest of my sisters.
‘ Mia! ’
‘I knew you’d come!’
She was a whirlwind, as small as a fairy, with those huge eyes, one brown, one blue. ‘I need to show you something,’ she said before I could find my bearings.
Mia radiated pure joy in seeing me, and this surge of affection and tenderness warmed every corner of my heart. I didn’t quite have time to say anything before she slipped her small, tanned hand in mine and almost dragged me outside. I walked after her, her hair bouncing on her back, through the garden, towards the back of the house.
‘Mia, Lulu has just arrived, we’re not even giving her the chance…’ Bianca began, but her words trailed away as we arrived at the small thicket of maritime pines behind the house, and stepped through a fairy-sized arched door. This was where my mother’s studio used to be, though she mostly painted outside.
The pungent smell of paint, so familiar to me, filled the air – it was a little eerie, as if my mother’s spirit lingered there… Now the place was empty of furniture, apart from a few pieces covered in white sheets. Its walls were covered in frescoes that hadn’t been there when I was a child. Mia must have painted them. But I didn’t get the chance to see them properly, because Mia pulled me on: they passed on both sides of me, like the view from a train window.
We climbed the winding stairs to the turret – butterflies of different species and colours had been painted on the wall – it was as if a cloud of butterflies flew alongside us as we climbed. We came to the top, round and stone-floored, with a window opening on the grassy hill it leaned against. Here there were canvases everywhere, some finished, some works in progress, bright splashes of colour against the grey stone. A ladder leaned against one of the walls, painting materials were meticulously organised on a table and the floor was covered in white, paint-stained sheets.
Mia stopped in front of a rectangular canvas that sat just underneath the window. I couldn’t normally see the aura of objects, but this painting gave off such strong vibrations I could see a small rainbow around it.
And the subject of the canvas was me.
The Lucrezia in the portrait was vibrant, alive, her eyes looking straight at the viewer, and not withdrawn like I’d become.
Perhaps this was the woman I could have been.
‘Do you like it?’ Mia asked. She was beaming. This girl I didn’t know, so full of talent and joy, was my sister, my baby sister…
‘It’s amazing. But I’m not that beautiful, in real life!’ I smiled.
‘You are .’
‘I never sent photos of myself. But the resemblance with me is uncanny,’ I said. Yes, Bianca and I were identical twins and Mia could simply reproduce her face, but the portrait was unmistakably me, down to the hairstyle, long and wavy, and the exact shade of red. Even stranger, I recognised the top I wore, a red and white short-sleeved shirt with a high neck that I’d bought not long ago in Paris.
Her gift. Of course.
‘I knew you were coming back,’ Mia said cheerfully. ‘I saw you.’ I couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t seem touched by grief. It didn’t seem to me like my father’s death had broken her heart, or even really affected her.
Finally, as our heads were close together while we admired the portrait, I had the chance to look at little Mia properly. She was little no more, but a vibrant young woman. I could see the family resemblance, and yet she didn’t quite look like our mother nor our father, but seemed to have been born from a shell, like Venus in the painting by Botticelli. She was tiny while Bianca and I were tall, and fine-boned like a little bird. She seemed childlike and ancient at the same time, somehow.
‘You saw me?’ I asked, all the while contemplating this wondrous sister of mine, this stranger who was so surprising, and yet shared my blood.
Bianca and I exchanged a glance. Once again, I recognised my mother’s family’s gift, and the way it manifested itself in different ways in each of us.
‘She inherited this talent from Mum too,’ Bianca said with a smile.
I turned around, taking in the canvases of all shapes and sizes, the landscapes and portraits, the scenes of ordinary life – gathering of the olives, cutting of the grapes, the cellars full of bottles – Bianca sitting outside with a stripy cat by her side, Matilde on a small ladder dusting in my father’s study, Nora looking to the viewer from a field, caught by surprise like a wild animal on camera.
‘These are… what can I say? It’s like I can see all this happening right now, in front of me,’ I said.
‘Her art is magical ,’ Bianca said simply. ‘Just like her.’
Mia smiled towards me with total trust, as if there had never been any separation at all and she knew me like the back of her hand.
‘Sorry, we’re talking about you as if you weren’t here. Big sisters, I suppose!’ Bianca laid a hand on Mia’s back. The bond between them was palpable. There was a little stab in my heart… The wall inside me was beginning to crumble. And what was behind that wall was endless love… and endless resentment and regret.
‘I… I think I need a little fresh air…’
Mia fussed over me. ‘I’m sorry! You do look a little pale… Must be the paint fumes. Sometimes they get to me, too…’
‘The paint fumes. That would explain the way our family is,’ I murmured, and Mia laughed heartily.
‘Well, you’ve seen two sisters out of three! Nora is at the stables as always,’ Bianca said. ‘Let’s go.’
We walked back through the frescoed room on our way out. Two walls of the four were divided into squares, each representing a little scene. While the paintings were colourful and spontaneous, all wide brushstrokes, the frescoes were precise, meticulous, almost geometrical. They reminded me of medieval paintings, each figure detailed to perfection.
‘What will you do when you run out of space?’ I asked Mia.
‘Paint the rest of the house,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘I’m working on this, now.’ She crouched and showed me a little tableau that bloomed near our feet, although the word ‘tableau’ is a little too gentle for the scene. There was a richly dressed woman, a gold circlet around her head, holding a sword – and lying beside her, a man in agony with a wound on his neck, his head thrown back.
It was a brutal representation, in contrast with the peacefulness of the other scenes that were all calm, domestic.
‘Can you guess what it is?’ Mia asked.
‘Maybe… is it Judith and Holofernes?’ I guessed. ‘From the Bible? He was a cruel king, wasn’t he, and Judith killed him?’
‘Yes. She chopped his head off,’ Mia replied calmly. ‘And he didn’t bother them again.’