The Savage Garden by Mark Mills Page A

eye would have driven him from the library steps if he hadn't already been descending.
        "Very interesting," he said pathetically, nodding behind him.
        "Would you like some coffee?"
        "Yes, thank you."
        Maria stopped and turned at the door to the library.
"Orango-tanghi,"
she said, her eyes flicking to the skulls.
        "Oh," he replied in English. "Right."
        The moment she was gone, he reached for the dictionary.
        He hadn't misunderstood her.

        Despite her offer of coffee, Maria barely concealed her relief at not having to feed him at lunchtime. Toward three o'clock, she appeared in the study with a summons from the lady of the house.
        He found Signora Docci sitting in her bed, patting at her face and neck with a wet flannel. A typewriter sat beside her on the bed, an unfinished letter in its jaws.
        "I've asked Foscolo to prepare a bicycle for you," she said. "To spare you the walk every day."
        "Thank you, that's very kind."
        "I don't want your death on my conscience, what with this heat."
        She asked him how his work was going, and he came clean about his dilemma, now resolved.
        "You like the house?"
        "I do. A lot."
        She looked on approvingly as he spelled out why exactly. He asked her who the architect had been.
        "No one really knows. There is a reference somewhere to a young man, a Fulvio Montalto. My father looked into it, but he could find no records. It is as if he just disappeared. If it was him, he never built another villa. A sadness, no? A great talent."
        "Yes."
        "I'm glad you think so. The house does not speak to everybody. Crispin never felt much for it."
        Adam hesitated, still not accustomed to hearing Professor Leonard referred to as Crispin.
        "No," he said, "he hardly mentioned it."
        "What
did
he mention?"
        "Well, the memorial garden, of course."
        He could see from her expression that this wasn't what she'd intended by her question.
        "He said you were old friends."
        "Yes, old friends."
        "He also said your husband died some years back. And your eldest son was killed during the war."
        "Emilio, yes. Did he say how exactly?"
        "Only that the Germans who took over the villa were responsible."
        "They shot him. In cold blood. Up there. Above us." Her voice trailed off.
        He wanted to ask her why and how and if that was the reason the top floor was off-limits. The pain in her drawn eyes prevented him from doing so.
        "You don't have to say."
        "No, you might as well hear it from me."
        She spoke in a flat, detached monotone, which clashed with the sheer bloody drama of her story. She told him how the Germans had occupied the villa, installing their command post on the top floor because of the views it afforded them over the surrounding countryside. She and her husband, Benedetto, were obliged to move in with Emilio and his young wife, lsabella, who lived in the big house on the slope beyond the farm buildings.
        Relations with the new tenants were strained at times, but generally civil. The Germans were respectful right from the first, giving them fair warning to vacate the villa, suggesting that all works of art be stored out of harm's way, and even assisting in this exercise. At no point were the stores stripped, the cattle slaughtered, the wine cellar pillaged. The estate was allowed to function as normal, just so long as it provided the occupiers with what little they required for themselves.
        On the day in question—an unbearably hot July day—the inexorable Allied advance rolling up from the south finally reached San Casciano, and the Germans began moving out of the villa. All day, trucks came and went to the sounds of the fierce battle raging just up the road. Her younger son, Maurizio, arrived from Florence to be with his family for yet