The Light in the Ruins Read Free Page A

this, aware that Francesca would probably have interrogated the pair if she had been present and Lorenzetti had just announced that he knew Vittore. “Why didn’t you tell us this back at the villa?”
    “I started to. But your sister-in-law didn’t seem especially pleased by our visit.”
    “More the reason you should have.”
    He shrugged. “Neither Colonel Decher nor I has any need to curry her favor.”
    “Does Vittore know you’re here?”
    “No.”
    “Are you an archeologist? An art historian?”
    “The latter,” said Lorenzetti. “I could bore you to death with what I know about Donatello and bas-relief. These days I am merely a soldier—or, to be precise, the host for Colonel Decher. The colonel has joined us from Paris. He’s come to the Uffizi because apparently there has been some discussion that select artistic treasures may have to be moved to Germany for safeguarding until the end of the war. Lately there seems to be a particular interest in Etruscan artifacts.”
    She understood that safeguarding was a euphemism for theft. According to Vittore, the Germans were much more likely to commandeer art from the museums and cathedrals in the occupied lands than they were from their ally here in the Mediterranean, but as it grew apparent that Italy would be invaded, the German presence, measured in both curators and tanks, was growing.
    “Of course, I know very little about the Etruscans,” Lorenzetti added. “I find their bucchero aesthetically interesting but understand next to nothing about the firing process—how some of their pottery wound up that remarkable black. But ask me about the oldsacristy in San Lorenzo? My lectures could have you sleeping like a baby in minutes.”
    She turned to Decher. “Is your specialty Etruscan art?”
    He dipped his chin and for the first time offered the tiniest hint of a smile. “Before the war I was an architect. Now I’m a soldier. All I know about the Etruscans comes from a single book I read in my quarters the other night.”
    “Well, they were a great mystery as a people. Vittore finds it intriguing how little we know about them.” Then: “And you both work with Vittore at the museum? He’s never mentioned you.”
    “I’ve known him since February,” said Lorenzetti. “But the colonel has known him barely a week. He and his adjutant just arrived. We all happen to be billeted at the same hotel and are all, to varying degrees, a part of the same little museum … team.”
    “What do you do, Major Lorenzetti?”
    “Just like your brother,” the Italian officer said, his voice delighting in the irony, “I oversee and preserve our nation’s rich artistic heritage.”

    For a long moment, Cristina watched as the two officers stared at the arched doorways cut into the stone. The German paused to decapitate a couple of mushrooms with the tip of his boot. She had taken guests here before—family friends, her father’s business associates—and she had been present when Vittore had led his fellow students on tours. Initially everyone was unimpressed.
    The thin path opened upon a small cul-de-sac, the earthen and rock walls composing it little more than three meters high. Field grass grew along the roof of the tombs, and the roots and longer strands dangled over the archways like bangs. Altogether, two rectangular windows had been unearthed, and four arched doorways. And then there were the remains of the columns: one seven feet high, and a pair that barely would reach the knees of a grown man. Once the columns had helped to support a great sloping roof that in all likelihood had spanned the cul-de-sac. Now the roof wasgone and weeds climbed up between the stones. The artwork and ornamentation that long ago had graced this section had faded into nothingness over time, and it looked primitive—the home of cavemen, Cristina thought.
    It was only when visitors ducked their heads and wandered underneath the archways, extending before them their