Arcadia Awakens Read online

  “No,” she said, but she took the magazine out and put it on her lap.

  “Interesting?”

  The amused glint in his eyes drew her glance to the cover. A self-help manual for men. Ten Tips to Make HER Happy said the caption above a photo of a couple who looked like waxworks. And in smaller print: She’ll never get enough of it.

  Rosa looked up at him. “I write for them. Tips, firsthand personal stories. Tough job, but somebody has to do it.”

  “You want me to leave you alone, right?”

  “If I did, I’d just say mind your own business.”

  His eyes darkened. Turning around, he started to sit down.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “Why are you flying to Sicily?”

  “Family business.”

  With that he disappeared from view. She heard him settling into his seat. The back of it vibrated slightly against her knee, making her legs tingle gently and giving her goose bumps.

  She opened the magazine and studied the ten tips.

  They didn’t make her any happier.

  As they were coming in to land in Palermo, Rosa peered through the small gap between the seats in front of her and saw the veins and sinews standing out on the back of his hand. His fingers were clutching the arm of the seat tightly. He had slender, suntanned hands with neat fingernails. On the other side of his seat, beside the cabin wall, she could see part of his leather jacket. It was no trouble at all for Rosa to reach into the side pocket.

  A moment later she was holding his passport. Alessandro Carnevare. He’d be eighteen in a few weeks’ time, three months older than Rosa. An intriguing address. Castello Carnevare, Genuardo. No street, no house number. She’d never heard of Genuardo, but that meant nothing. She’d been four when her parents took her to America, and she hadn’t been back to Sicily since then.

  Alessandro Carnevare.

  She was annoyed because he’d brushed her off with such a brief answer. Family business. She was here on family business as well, and it was complicated.

  Instead of putting the passport back in his jacket pocket, she dropped it on a vacant seat near the exit as she left the plane. The flight attendants could decide whether to give it back to him. It wasn’t Rosa’s problem.

  The eyes of the female flight attendant burned holes in Rosa’s back as she went down the gangway. She didn’t turn around.

  Family business.

  She wondered whether, for once in her life, Zoe would be there on time.

  The opaque glass doors hissed apart, revealing the people waiting beyond them. Behind the barrier stood generations of Sicilian families, with wrinkled grannies dressed in black—Me in eighty years’ time, thought Rosa gloomily—and bawling little kids holding balloons. Young women, all dressed up, were waiting for their husbands—or lovers. There were parents looking forward to the annual visit from their grown-up children living in the north. People in dark glasses holding handwritten signs and placards.

  But no Zoe anywhere in sight.

  Rosa was the first to enter the arrivals hall. She wondered, yet again, what they had done to her suitcase in Rome. Then she found that she’d lost the form with the number to call for compensation. It was a shame, because she’d whiled away the time during the flight by making up a highly imaginative list of expensive items of clothing.

  She stepped out into the open air, which was hot, even in early October. There was a concrete roof over the entrance area, with taxis parked by the sidewalk. On the other side of the road stood a low-roofed parking garage. She could see the Mediterranean through its latticework structure—white foam and the crests of blue waves. Falcone e Borsellino Airport, Palermo, named after two judges who had been murdered by the Mafia, lay on a promontory of land running out into the sea.

  No trace of Zoe here either.

  Rosa’s sister was three years older than she, and had been twenty for a month now. Two years ago she had moved to Sicily from the States. Zoe had been seven when their father, Davide, died, shortly after their parents had taken them to the United States against the wishes of the Alcantara clan. Unlike Rosa, Zoe could remember a good deal about Sicily. The old family property among gnarled olive trees and prickly pear cacti. Their aunt Florinda Alcantara, their father’s sister, who was now the head of the family.

  To Rosa, her aunt was only a blurred memory, even more unreal than her father, and nothing but emotions, hardly any clear images, linked her to him.

  All around her, people were streaming into the airport and out again. She stood there, lost, in the brooding heat, amid the exhaust fumes of taxis and buses, her carry-on bag dangling from both hands in front of her knees, and tried to dredge up from her mind some sense of coming home.

  Not a thing.

  Well, being a stranger would be nothing new; she’d had practice. She was only surprised to feel nothing at all.

  A military Jeep was parked on her left, behind the row of taxis, with a couple of armed soldiers in it looking bored. She had heard that in Italy the army was used to assist the police. But seeing them there with machine guns slung over their shoulders was something new to her. One of the young men saw her standing on her own in the sun and nudged his companion. The two soldiers grinned.

  “Don’t worry,” said a now-familiar voice behind her, “they only shoot at Mafiosi.”

  Alessandro Carnevare, pulling a wheeled suitcase along, had come up to her on the sidewalk. He must have gotten his passport back, or he wouldn’t have passed through customs so fast.

  “Alessandro,” he said, holding out a hand to her. His fingers were no longer cramped like they had been during the landing. They were smooth and strong.

  “Rosa.”

  “Anyone meeting you?”

  “My sister. If she hasn’t forgotten, that is.”

  “We can give you a lift.”

  “We?”

  He pointed to a black limousine pulling up not far from the entrance. Rosa was just in time to see a no parking sign painted on the tarmac disappear underneath the car. It didn’t seem to bother anyone. The soldiers were chewing gum and casting curious glances at the gleaming luxury limo. Cars first, girls second. She was glad of that.

  “Well?” asked Alessandro.

  “Zoe should be here any moment now.”

  “Zoe?” He tilted his head to one side. “Are you and your sister Americans?”

  “Born here, grew up in Brooklyn.” She took half a step back, because being so close made her nervous. Oddly, he made the same movement at exactly the same moment, so that suddenly there were almost three feet of space between them.

  “Of course,” he said, suddenly catching on. “Zoe Alcantara. Related to Florinda Alcantara, right?”

  “Her nieces. She’s our aunt.”

  The door of the limousine swung open. All the windows were mirrored glass. The driver who got out looked surprisingly young. Black hair, rather disheveled, no older than eighteen. A black shirt hanging loose over his belt, black jeans. Brown eyes that fixed on her and then quickly looked elsewhere. He came over, shook Alessandro’s hand, and reached for his suitcase.

  “Hi, Fundling,” said Alessandro. “This is Rosa Alcantara—Rosa, meet Fundling.”

  At this introduction the boy with the odd name raised one eyebrow and swiftly offered her a hand, then quickly withdrew it when she didn’t immediately take it. “Ciao,” he said briefly, and put Alessandro’s suitcase in the trunk of the car.

  She looked at him, surprised, since she thought he seemed like a nice guy, but then Alessandro spoke again. “Don’t mind him,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  “We can drop you off at your aunt’s palazzo if you like.”

  She fidgeted from one foot to the other, craned her neck, and looked for Zoe, but in vain.

  She’d come to Sicily to find peace and quiet. To be alone and think. Meeting new people was definitely not among her priorities. The fact that she now had met n
ew people was beyond her control, and she hated that. Inside, she struggled to feel in charge again. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Don’t let them put pressure on you.

  “It’s your decision, of course,” he said with a smile. He had no idea how that remark made her feel.

  The air temperature around her seemed to drop several degrees. “No thanks,” she said, her tone dismissive. “No need.”

  With that she turned around and walked along the row of cars. God, how she hated that expression. It’s your decision. She’d heard it far too often last year.

  Her decision. She wished things had only ever been her decision. Hers and hers alone.

  She almost expected Alessandro to call after her. To try to hold her back. But he didn’t. And she didn’t turn around.

  A few moments later the limousine passed her at walking pace. Rosa couldn’t help looking at it. But she saw only herself in the reflective panes, with her short black dress and long, tousled hair.

  Once the car was past her, it drove quickly down the street and turned off in the direction of the expressway. She felt dizzy.

  The soldiers were laughing again.

  THE CLAN

  SHE DROPPED HER CARRY-ON bag and had to steady herself.

  At that same moment she saw Zoe. Her sister came hurrying up with a beaming smile and said something that reached Rosa’s ears as if delayed, and with a curious echo, like a droning old vinyl record.

  Rosa was leaning against the baking-hot side of a taxi, gasping with pain—and then, all at once, the world was back to normal. Traffic moved faster, sounds returned, her dizziness passed.

  Zoe put her arms around her sister and hugged her. “It’s great to see you here at last.”

  Rosa breathed in Zoe’s perfume, which wasn’t the same one she used to wear. Rosa said a few things that she assumed would be expected—she was glad to be here, she’d felt she could hardly wait. They weren’t exactly untrue, just a bit of an exaggeration.

  They let go of each other, and Rosa had a chance to look more closely at her sister. For the last two years she’d seen Zoe only in photos sent from Sicily. She was half a head taller than Rosa, and nothing was going to change that now. Zoe had the same long blond hair right down her back, but cleverly layered in a way that made it look natural. Rosa could see it had been cut by a good hairdresser. And Zoe’s makeup was understated but effective, applied by an expert hand. There was no hint of sweat on her forehead and cheeks, in spite of the heat.

  Rosa herself felt she was standing in a puddle, she was sweating so much. “Hey, you’re so thin!” she said. Skinny would have been more like it.

  “Look who’s talking!” Zoe smiled and blew a strand of hair away from her face. Rosa got the impression she did that only to puff out her hollow cheeks. But there were other things to talk about. The flight, jet lag, the wrecked suitcase.

  Zoe had always looked like their mother, and now that she was twenty you could see why people always said that Gemma Alcantara—or Gemma Farnham, as she called herself these days—had given birth to her own double. Rosa’s resemblance to Gemma was not nearly as close as her sister’s. Neither of the girls was particularly proud of it, and as children they had often wished that they took more after their father’s side of the family, the Italian side. They had liked to conjure up their roots in faraway Sicily, dreaming of riding their own horses among palm trees and cacti, of magnificent parties in marble ballrooms, of yachting trips.

  In the multistory garage, Zoe took her to a yellow Nissan. A sticker on the rear window showed that it was a rental, but Rosa was too exhausted to wonder about it. She threw her traveling bag into the back of the car, dropped into the passenger seat, and stretched her legs out as far as they would go.

  A man in a hideous snakeskin jacket wheeled a suitcase past them and disappeared among the parked cars. As Rosa watched him go by, amused, Zoe shook her head. “Real snakes wear their scales on the inside,” she said cryptically.

  A few minutes later they were speeding southward along the expressway. To the left precipitous rocks and steep vineyards rose above them, to the right the Tyrrhenian Sea glittered beyond the flat shore. Oleanders grew in wild profusion on the median. The sun blazed down from a clear sky, and the absence of shadows robbed the countryside of all its contours. Palms and tall rushes swished past the car windows, merging together in a blur.

  Zoe kept on talking, saying how much she liked it here, but Rosa soon nodded off. She dreamed they were being followed, and Zoe was trying to shake off the other car with hair-raising passing maneuvers. When she woke up, maybe only a few minutes later, the Nissan was driving in the left lane, and Zoe was still in a relaxed and cheerful mood over their reunion.

  “Here,” she said, noticing that Rosa had woken up. “This is for you.” She handed her a little box with a ribbon around it. Inside there was a gilded cell phone. Tiny gemstones were set into the keys.

  “You won’t be able to use your old one here,” Zoe explained. “The frequencies aren’t the same as back in the States. And just so you’ll be suitably impressed—I chose it for you myself.”

  “Wow, and so stylish, too!” Only then did she realize that Zoe meant it seriously. Her sister really did think this thing was beautiful. Feeling slightly remorseful, she leaned over to her and kissed her cheek. “Thanks. That’s sweet of you.”

  She took the cell phone out of the box, turned it on, and discovered that Zoe had stored a photo of their dead father as the background image. He had been a handsome man, black-haired, very Mediterranean.

  “Thanks,” she repeated.

  “There’s something else in the box,” said Zoe.

  Rosa put the cell phone in her jacket pocket and found an ID card and a driver’s license at the bottom of the box. They were both made out in her name. When she glanced sideways at her sister, eyebrows raised, Zoe was smiling. “Look at the date of birth,” she said.

  January thirty-first, that was right. But the year was wrong. Both documents made Rosa sound a year older than her real age. That would mean she wasn’t a minor.

  “Everyone here has them,” said Zoe, laughing. “Nothing special about it. You can drive, can’t you?”

  Rosa had gotten her license when she turned sixteen, just before Zoe left. “Yup. I can steal cars too.”

  “We leave that to other people here,” explained Zoe, perfectly seriously. “That and a few other things. The family hardly touches them.”

  The family. Of course. Their mother had married into the Alcantara family, well aware of what she was getting herself into. Only later had there been a rift between Gemma Alcantara and the clan, once she and Davide had begun a new life in the States with their daughters. After Davide’s death, her scruples, maybe her wish for independence, prevented her from accepting any support for the two girls from her sister-in-law, Florinda, so Rosa and Zoe had to put up with being permanently short of money. Only recently had Rosa found out that Florinda had secretly sent Zoe checks now and then. Some of the money was meant for Rosa, but she never saw it. She didn’t hold it against her sister. As kids they might both have dreamed of the fairy-tale wealth of the Alcantaras, but by now Rosa had lost all interest in money and social status. She’d always been happy enough wearing some of Zoe’s better castoffs, and at fourteen or fifteen she had felt mature and grown-up in them. But a year ago, fate had taken the grown-up bit too literally.

  Zoe had gone back to Sicily when she turned eighteen, hoping for a different, more comfortable life. For Rosa, on the other hand, the money and the prospect of luxury held no temptations. She was coming here to find herself, or so she thought on good days. On bad days she knew she was running away.

  A honk roused her from her thoughts. Zoe was passing a cattle truck. Ostriches with ruffled feathers looked out through the gratings. “Why don’t you text Mom to let her know you arrived?”

  “Later. Maybe.”

  They had been driving for less than half an hour when Zoe left the expres
sway, turning onto a country road that wound its way through vineyards and ended in a gravel driveway leading up a bare hillside.

  At the top of the hill a helicopter was waiting.

  “Does everyone here have one of those as well?” asked Rosa.

  Zoe left the key in the car and took Rosa’s carry-on bag off the backseat. They walked over to the helicopter together. The pilot gave them a monosyllabic greeting and helped them to climb in. Zoe thanked him with a smile, but Rosa was too tired to bother. They were both given ear protectors that looked like heavily padded earphones, and had to strap themselves in before the chopper took off.

  When Rosa looked back at the ground below, she saw a long cloud of dust moving uphill from the road. A second car drew up beside the Nissan they had left there. A man and a woman got out, both in leather jackets and sunglasses. The man was speaking on a phone and pointing up to the sky.

  “Not taking much trouble to lie low, are they?” shouted Rosa above the noise of the helicopter.

  Zoe shook her head. “They want us to know they’re watching us. Some new kind of strategy being tried out by the public prosecutor’s office. It’s worst around Palermo and Catania. They’re not quite as obvious about it in the mountains and other places. It’s kind of a game—they really know exactly where we’re going.”

  Rosa realized that her pulse had quickened only very slightly. She’d known what she was getting into. The helicopter ride was more exciting than the fact that the police and the public prosecutor’s office had their eye on the Alcantaras.

  She’d been questioned for the first time when she was twelve, although by then it had been eight years since she’d had any contact with her father’s clan. And again at fourteen, and once a year after that. If her mother could have afforded a good attorney, very likely he could have put a stop to that, but as it was she simply let the questioning wash over her, feeling more and more bored each time.

  If Rosa really had something to hide, at least that would have made it exciting. As it was, however, she just replied, “No,” and “No idea,” to all the questions, while someone made squiggly marks on a sheet of paper, someone else translated for the Italian prosecutor, and then they all went their separate ways.