I was the only person leaving the train at La Pentola. It was two thirty p.m., and the station was empty, the ticket office shuttered. The ground was spotted with gummy tree sap, tiny flies squirming in the mastic. By the front entrance a wooden signpost that read ACCADEMIA pointed to the hills above. And true enough, high up over the lake, the bell tower of the academy was poking out from behind sunburnt leaves. I could have broken into a jig. My new home! I corrected myself: our new home. Isabella might even have arrived already.
I stood under the awning at the front of the station, hoping for a taxi. But after twenty minutes of loitering and peering down the overgrown, rutted lane, I decided to walk. Clutching my suitcase and hatbox, I followed the lane between lines of fruit trees cast in nets. The fields were thrumming with cicadas in jouncing waves of noise, the air gritty with toasted grass. After half an hour, the path joined a hill alongside La Pentola Lake. I was squelchy and molten with afternoon heat—it was like being pressed in the center of a grilled cheese sandwich. At last, at the top of the hill I spotted a black-and-white marble staircase. On the right, a large wooden cross was nailed into the earth, its paint blistered from heat.
The wind ruffled through a eucalyptus tree, rallying a squall of brittle leaves that skittered against my hat. The breeze was chalky with hot dust and vaguely skunky from oregano roasting in the hedgerows. I took a deep breath. Isabella and I would have Italy to ourselves for a whole year! My opportunity was finally at hand—we’d study side by side and drink red wine at wobbly roadside tables. We’d stay up talking long into the night, reading Italian poetry, debating Renaissance art. Together. Always together.
The two-story building at the top of the stairs was the academy proper, a sun-bleached ochre square with a mossy terra-cotta roof. To the left of the academy was a chapel with a rough stone bell tower, gray-brown and much uglier than I had anticipated. Farther left, the landscape rose to sparse woodland. I hoisted my cases up the steps toward the grand front door, and on my right the cypress trees thinned out, sunlight flashing on the lake. Finally, I got close enough to read a tarnished panel fixed to the stone: ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI DI PENTILA. I nearly cheered out loud. By the door was a discolored pull cord, and when I yanked on it, a bell echoed inside the building.
Almost immediately, the door opened to a tiny bird of a woman. She was very small and very old. Her face was round as a peach and marked with deep lines.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said, standing aside.
I took off my hat and stepped past her, trying in that step to demonstrate my studiousness, my respectable upbringing, my right to be an academy scholar.
She patted my arm and shuffled behind a desk. The room was dark and faintly musty with the lingering scent of damp plaster. There were two bucket chairs on the right, worn through to the weave at the back, with shiny patches on the arms. Over the desk was a cheap-looking clock that filled the room with its deliberate tick.
“Here,” she said, opening a ledger near the telephone and tapping it with some urgency.
It was a pencil-lined visitors’ book. I scanned the page for Isabella’s name, but there was only one other entry from August, and it was a “Greta Sniegowska.” I wrote my address and name carefully, although my hand was sweaty and left a crescent-shaped mark on the paper.
“OK,” she said, smiling and showing the stumps of three teeth. She crossed to a door on the far side of the room. “Come, come.” She motioned. We climbed up a dark, narrow staircase that opened out onto a bright landing.
“Santa Teresa,” the old woman said, crossing herself before an alcove where a faded tapestry of St. Teresa of Pentila hung. St. Teresa’s red hair cascaded down her back, a golden arrow parted her lips, another pierced her heart. Her hands were folded over her chest in pious contemplation. I crossed myself politely and pretended to gaze upon it appreciatively.
“Galleria.” The old woman gestured in front of us to where the marble landing became corridors with shuttered windows overlooking a central courtyard. The academy was a square building. The top floor contained bedrooms for the students, and on the ground floor there were classrooms, a refectory, and a library. I knew this much from my welcome folder.
The old woman turned to me. “Donna Maria,” she said, pointing at herself.
“Donna Maria,” I repeated, giving her a curtsy and cursing my stupidity.
But Donna Maria smiled and patted my arm. “Good,” she said.
She took a right along the corridor, and I glanced out onto the courtyard. It was paved with honey-colored stone, and in the center was a stunted palm with a circular bench around its base. The upper-floor corridors projected over the courtyard, creating an arched cloister gallery below. On the far side of the courtyard was the convent itself: the church with its ugly bell tower, and a single-story, narrow building, which contained the nuns’ cells. Behind that was another complex of cabins whose purpose I didn’t know. The tips of the Blue Mountains framed the landscape, and to the right, ribbons of fruit trees stretched out as far as I could see. Just then, a figure in a white dress and mantle opened the convent gate and crossed into the sunlight.
“Wow,” I said, gripping a window frame.
Donna Maria paused and raised her head to look out into the courtyard. Her face twitched as she surveyed the scene, and, clearly not able to imagine I’d exclaim over the sight of something as mundane as a nun, she frowned at me. I tried not to blush—it was stupid of me to yell out like that. But a real Italian nun! It was like spotting a zebra or an elephant in the wild.
We followed the shape of the building, traveling parallel to the lake. Lined up on our right were neat little bedrooms. Through the windows on the far side, sunlight glittered on the water. I crossed my fingers over the handle of my suitcase and wished my room would have a lakeside view. But we reached the corner of the building, and as we turned away from the water I cursed my luck.
Donna Maria took me two doors down and unhooked a key from a ring in her pocket. The room was larger than any of those we had passed and had brown floor tiles and two single beds, one on either side of the window. It smelled like cider vinegar and beeswax. The window looked out onto the Blue Mountains, and stretching out below was an apple orchard.
“Grazie,” I said.
She put the key on an oak dresser behind the door and waved good-bye at the doorway. Her slim tread echoed along the corridor.
I tested both beds and settled on the left-hand one, for no other reason than that the two screws at the joist were pleasingly symmetrical. Hopefully, my roommate wouldn’t think I’d been selfish enough to choose the better one. We could swap, I decided generously, so she could see for herself how thoughtful I’d been.
On the dresser was an envelope with my name written in blue ink. As I picked it up, a pamphlet about the “Quickening Miracles of Santa Teresa” skittered to the floor. With it had fallen a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and I turned it over to find Isabella’s cramped writing.