Mystery Hostess
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The next day, a Thursday morning, I awoke early. Not that it was unusual for me to wake up on Thursdays and Saturdays. It had been like that since the beginning of this summer break. The previous week I had spent almost all my time with my girlfriend at her house in Tuscany.
That meant we were together pretty much every night, but it wasn’t always just us two. Sometimes there would be others around, or she’d invite them over for dinner, and then they’d stay overnight. And so, as you can imagine, I slept little during those times.
I hadn’t heard from any of the guests the previous evening. But the night before that, when I arrived at their villa after midnight, one guest who was staying in the guest room across the corridor said to me: ‘We’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.’
And now he’s dead.
That night, too. Or rather – no, he hasn’t been killed, exactly. He’s gone missing. And that has never happened to anyone else, not even once. Ever. In all these years since we started hosting, we’ve never lost a single guest. Not ever.
So what does this mean?
It means that someone wants to keep him away from us.
What could he have seen? What secrets might the guests from last Sunday know about our hostess who was also his mother-in-law? They had met each other before, several years ago, and then they both moved back here.
So maybe they still knew some things about each other that the rest of us didn’t know… But surely not enough to kill for. Could they possibly have discovered something really bad about her? Something that made them fear for her safety? And then decided to do something about it themselves, instead of asking us to do anything about it?
If I had only known, I wouldn’t have let her go to the bathroom alone. If I’d only known…
When I came downstairs, I saw that the breakfast table was laid out. The place was already full of people eating and chatting quietly, enjoying the cool morning air from the balcony overlooking the valley. I put down my bag by the door and went into the kitchen.
There I found Mrs. Mazzetti preparing coffee with an old espresso machine. She looked up at me as I entered and smiled. Then she asked how I liked my new haircut, and whether I thought I had grown up quite a bit in the last few months.
‘Mrs. Mazzetti,’ I replied, ‘you look lovely, just like you always did, which is why you’re still my favorite teacher at school. Your classes are always fun. You give everyone attention, which makes everyone feel important. And you don’t tell your pupils off very often.’
She nodded happily as I spoke. When I finished speaking she took a moment to think before answering, as if trying to remember something, before finally saying, ‘I know what you must be thinking, young man.
Because I used to be a headmistress at our school in Rome before I joined the team at Villa Rosa. And it was because I was so strict that you got through the exam year without any problems, and you managed to get into college on scholarship.’
‘But you didn’t say anything about me passing all the exams,’ I told her. ‘You just said that I’d done well. Why? Did I not pass them?’
Mrs. Mazzetti laughed and shook her head. ‘I’ve taught many kids over the years, including some who were difficult to teach. But none as impossible as you. How could you not want to learn everything there was to know about history? History is life! It shows us all the different paths humans have taken, right up until now. I can’t understand how you haven’t wanted to study history.’
She stopped, looked me directly in the eyes, and for a few moments neither of us said another word. She was smiling and shaking her head. I was frowning.
Then I said, ‘How come you didn’t make me read the books that the state education system tells us all to read, instead of all the books in your class? Because I know for a fact that the teachers in Italy don’t teach children to question authority, as you obviously did. If I had only done what they told me, then maybe I would have stayed in the middle group with all the others.’
Her smile grew wider. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s a good reason to become independent.’
The way she pronounced the last word sent chills down my spine. And then she added, ‘Because we all do better when we work independently. We need to know how to think for ourselves.’
With that, she turned to start the coffee maker, but she kept looking at me.
‘Do you know what I miss most?’ she continued without waiting for a response. ‘I miss hearing the voice of a young boy or girl asking me, in all seriousness, why the government does something. Or what happens if someone doesn’t vote every single time they’re allowed to vote.
If I hear a student doing that again, then I know that my life as a teacher has ended. Because I’ll have done my job.’
***
I returned upstairs as Mrs. Mazzetti finished making the coffee and was serving it.
The conversation among the guests was lighthearted, and the laughter coming from their mouths and their voices seemed almost forced. I couldn’t help wondering what happened between the time I left them on the balcony and then came back inside.
Had someone spoken behind my back? Was everyone talking about me? Were they saying I was stupid, that I wasn’t capable of doing what anyone else could do? That I lacked ambition? And did that explain why I didn’t fit in anywhere and had never had friends?
No, surely not…
‘Ah, Mr. Löwe!’ A woman’s voice came from around the corner of the corridor near the front entrance. It was the same lady who’d spoken to me yesterday afternoon – the one wearing an elegant blue dress with matching jewelry. She smiled brightly as she approached me.
‘Mr. Löwe,’ she repeated. ‘I’m Maria. And I’m so glad to meet you.’
‘Maria,’ I replied, ‘and I’m happy to meet you too.’
It hadn’t been long since I sat down next to her at a meeting, but we’d exchanged no more than five words. In fact, I had hardly seen her, even though we were sitting close to each other. This was probably because she had been in her office during the whole evening, attending meetings and working.
She didn’t seem to want to waste any time with me. The same went for the people around her: all of them worked as hard as she did. They all had their noses to the grindstone; none were ever idle. As far as I could tell, they all spent more time in the offices and on the phones than they did in bed.
This was probably because they were all as busy as Santa Claus preparing for Christmas. They certainly wouldn’t take the time to sit and talk with an outsider, a nobody. No one was interested in someone like me.
They must have thought I was a fool, and yet I didn’t understand why. I felt completely alone. All the effort I had put into my studies over the years meant nothing. It was as if I were standing at the center of the biggest square in town and then turning around and seeing myself disappearing through a thick fog.
When she finally reached me, Maria took my hand with both of hers and gave it a firm handshake.
‘What a pleasure,’ she said in her crisp, clear voice. ‘We really haven’t had much time to get to know each other.’
Mrs. Mazzetti walked out of the kitchen carrying a large tray of drinks for the adults. Her eyes met mine for just a second before Maria said hello to her. Mrs. Mazzetti looked uncomfortable but said nothing. She hurried past Maria, who nodded at the old lady but continued to hold me by my hand.
Then she led me to one of the chairs that had been placed in the front hallway and gestured to me to sit down.
She poured a cup of coffee from the silver carafe and then handed it to me. As soon as I picked up the cup, she began telling me how she liked the view from the penthouse apartment.
‘I don’t think there are many places where you can see Venice like this,’ she said. ‘You get to the city from here and you already feel the romance, the history of this place.’ She paused for a moment, drinking some coffee before continuing. ‘And then, when you reach the top floor of the building and look out across the Grand Canal…’ She pointed out toward the water.
‘You realize that it was here, on the island of Burano, that lace first developed and that Venice is the center of the art form. We should all be proud that we live in such a magnificent city.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said as I tried to swallow some of the coffee in my throat.
‘But what’s more important,’ Maria added, ‘is that you’re here. So that everyone knows you can make a difference.’ She sipped her coffee and turned to face me. ‘Because we need change.’
I swallowed again. My heart beat rapidly, and I wondered if she saw that it was hot, or that it burned my tongue.
‘How so?’ I asked her.
‘We must find a way to stop all these terrible things happening on the roads and in the streets. You’ve heard about it already, Mr. Löwe,’ she said, pointing to the newspapers on the desk in the corner. ‘There’s always another fatality. More victims of traffic violence and terrorism. Our country needs a new approach, and that’s where you come in.’
Maria smiled at me. She had a nice smile.
‘Do you understand now why you were brought to us? I hope so…’
The next few days flew past. At times it seemed I barely had any time to blink. Maria showed me every corner of the building, introduced me to several people, and explained to me what kind of work they did.
Some days we ate in the office together and others we dined in a small restaurant in one of the side streets nearby. She talked non-stop, and I listened intently. She told me all about the work done by the Traffic Control Commission, and that she wanted me to join as a full-time member of staff – something I would do once my university degree was finished.
She also told me that the best thing about being a commissioner was working with all kinds of people and helping them. She told me it was a privilege to be able to contribute. It made sense. And yet…
It was as if I was on a merry-go-round and could only keep going round and round until I came back to where I started, to my life without meaning. A life where there was nothing.
Then one afternoon Mrs. Mazzetti called Maria to go downstairs to speak with some of the senior police officers who were meeting for their monthly briefing. They needed help from her because of a particularly serious accident. She told Maria to take me with her.
A group of police officers stood around a table piled high with paperwork covered in diagrams and charts. There were two policemen at the back of the room who looked older than anyone else there. They weren’t wearing uniforms; instead, they wore suits that matched the rest of the group’s clothes.
But the most striking feature about the men was the color of their skin. The darker it was, the higher they ranked in the organization. I didn’t want to meet any more white police officers. I thought of my father. He’d never wear a uniform, no matter how high his rank was.
‘Mr. Löwe, I’m Inspector Rückert, this is Detective Sergeant O’Hare, and this is Chief Superintendent Veltri.’ The tall man in the middle of the group gestured for us to take a seat. He was the only white person among them, though he appeared to have more of an Asian appearance than European. His hair was dark and his skin was smooth – almost creamy in color.
Rückert sat down first. Then the chief superintendent. Finally, finally, Maria took her place, leaving me in the corner of the room where I couldn’t overhear anything but felt as though I was part of the conversation anyway.
‘This morning someone ran over a man in St Mark’s Square. That’s just a few steps from here,’ Veltri said, turning towards me. He was holding a piece of paper in front of him that contained a sketch of the victim.
The man lay on the pavement, his head bent slightly backward at an angle, his chest caved in. A pool of blood spread out beneath him. The man in the picture looked so serene that it almost hurt to look at it. If he’d been alive he might have woken up to find himself lying on the ground like a dead fish caught in the tide.
Maria spoke quietly, her voice soft and soothing, and yet I could feel the tension emanating from it. I guessed it was her natural reaction when she saw something terrible. Her face remained expressionless. Perhaps she didn’t even realize her own feelings.
‘Who was this man?’ Maria asked.
‘His name is Michael Schumacher,’ Veltri replied, looking right into Maria’s eyes.
Maria nodded. This sounded like a real crime investigation. One I hadn’t known about until now. I felt my mouth grow dry, and the heat grew inside me until it reached boiling point. I looked up and tried to catch Maria’s eye, but she ignored me and focused instead on Veltri.
‘What happened?’
‘We’re not sure. We know that a van hit Mr Schumacher, knocked him off his bike, then drove away – which is strange enough in itself – but the weirdest thing about the whole incident is that the man responsible was nowhere to be found when the driver arrived at the scene. He must have jumped straight over the barrier, crossed the road, and escaped through a side alley.’
Maria turned to the men and raised her eyebrows expectantly.
‘I don’t understand why anyone would run over a fellow human being,’ one of the detectives mumbled.
‘He probably had no idea what he did. He didn’t even see the victim – or maybe he thought he hit a dog.’
Another detective added, ‘They can be quite violent when they don’t know they’ve killed someone, you know.’
Veltri shook his head and smiled, shaking his hand to indicate that he agreed with the second officer’s words.
‘You think so?’
‘Of course,’ the other detective answered.
There wasn’t much time left before the end of the day when Maria called me out of my room and told me we needed to talk.
‘Come,’ she said, standing in front of me with a pen in her hand. She held the pen above a sheet of paper. I followed her to the dining room, where she handed me the page she’d drawn earlier that day and told me to draw something similar with the pen.
The paper was already laid out in front of me: an aerial view of a square full of people walking around with shopping bags, some sitting on benches eating ice cream and drinking coffee while others chatted with friends.
‘It doesn’t have to look exactly the same,’ Maria said. ‘But make it as realistic as possible.’
I concentrated hard, trying to follow Maria’s instructions and copy her drawing exactly. I drew a rectangle with four lines inside it. Next came the three buildings in the center of the square, and the street behind them.
I’d studied enough pictures to know that a square without any buildings is rarer than a unicorn running across St Mark’s Square. The third building was missing its roof, but apart from that, it looked exactly like the ones I knew.
‘Now add everything else,’ Maria said.
‘The trees and the benches.’
She nodded and pointed to the corners of the drawing, where the leaves of the tree should be.
‘And put some rubbish bins there.’
She pointed again and I understood her meaning. There was nothing worse than having rubbish lying about everywhere.
‘And now draw all the people.’
I concentrated even harder. My hands were trembling. But I managed to do as she instructed, drawing the faces and bodies of those sitting and walking around on the streets. And then the next step: a man in the middle of the square carrying a white plastic bag. Maria had drawn it first so I copied it exactly, only making sure that the color was different from hers and mine was larger.
‘Good,’ Maria said. ‘Draw more rubbish bins.’
More rubbish? What was she playing at?
‘And put people behind him,’ Maria said. ‘Where’s his wife and children? Where are all the other people in the square?’
‘There aren’t any,’ I answered, confused.
She nodded, pleased with me.
‘Yes, there are,’ she said, pointing to the bottom-right corner of the paper.
I leaned closer, looked down at the floor for a moment, and then back up to see dozens of little figures standing in front of me – tiny humans who had suddenly appeared out of thin air. All wearing the same black T-shirt and jeans, all staring intently ahead. And then I saw them turn and look towards me. They stared right past me, their faces contorted by fear and anger.
I turned and ran from the table, screaming as loud as I could, trying to escape my own nightmare. Maria chased after me, asking me what was wrong. I stopped short of opening the door to the kitchen, knowing that if I went in I wouldn’t be able to find a way out again. Maria reached me just as I started climbing up the stairs.
‘Bella! Bella!’
A teary voice answered her call. Then Maria was holding me and hugging me tight until I calmed down.
‘Are you okay?’
‘No,’ I sobbed. ‘They’re watching me. It’s horrible.’
She hugged me some more, whispering soothing words into my ear until she was certain that I was safe.
‘Who’s following you, Bella?’
She had asked me this question before and I had always been unable to answer because I couldn’t explain how it felt to feel eyes on me. I’d never heard of anyone who understood the sensation, so I simply said there were many people in Venice who seemed to know me. When Maria asked me who these people might be, I told her that they were mostly tourists, although I didn’t really know any of them personally.
Maria looked thoughtful. ‘Could they all be your family?’
I had no clue what she meant and told her as such.
‘Maybe they’ve been waiting for you to come home so they could talk to you? Maybe some of them have known you since birth, or before then. Some of them might be dead, and the rest have lost touch with you, but they want to reconnect with their long-lost daughter? That’s probably what happened.’
That sounded crazy. How was everyone from my previous life connected to me? Or maybe I was just imagining things again.
Maria hugged me once more and told me not to worry because they weren’t real. She took my hand, walked me up the stairs, and sat me in my chair while telling me that the world wasn’t as dangerous as I made it seem and that most of the people I encountered in Venice were actually very nice.
When I calmed down a bit, Maria went back downstairs to get ready for work. After she left, I closed the curtains, switched off the lights in every room except the one I was sleeping in, and lay down on my bed. Once more, I was being haunted by a dream, but instead of the nightmare from earlier in the morning, I fell asleep to a different type of horror – a nightmare about my father.
The End