The Vanishing Point by Louise Hawes

Author:Louise Hawes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Vini hears Silvana in the kitchen, and when she walks into the close, luscious-smelling room, the old woman is scolding her daughter. “Not hot,” she tells Betta. “It is supposed to be warm, like for a baby, no? How many times did I say it, how many times?”

“Hot soup,” Betta tells her mother, shrugging, “will turn warm.” She gathers up the laundry and walks to the door. “Right, Signorina?” she asks, passing Vini; then, without waiting for an answer, she is gone. Betta could have filled a tub here, but Vini knows she prefers to do the wash with the other maids at the fountain in town. She has seen them, in a laughing cluster, a knot of rough goodwill and loud, off-color jokes.

“That one is always in a hurry,” Silvana says to nobody in particular. She pulls a chair out for Vini but does not stop pounding batter against the sides of the large wooden bowl she holds. “Never listens, never did.”

Vini sticks a finger into the bowl and gets a rap on the knuckles from Silvana’s spoon. But not before she has tasted the sweet, thick paste. She rolls it around in her mouth, smiling, then whistles to the heap of fur in the corner by the hearth. Cesare opens his eyes and lifts his snout. He sniffs the air and blinks, then yawns and ambles toward her to be lifted up.

“Mama is sleeping,” Vini tells Silvana. She pulls the little dog onto her lap and scratches the tender hollows behind his ears. “But she would not take any of the soup.”

“Good.” Silvana stops beating and puts down the bowl. She twists some leaves from one of the herb bundles above the hearth, then crumbles them into a mortar. She talks as she grinds. “You must add this to the cooled soup. A few leaves every day. It will give Signora strength.”

“Silvana,” Vini looks over Cesare’s tiny head, “will Mama be all right?”

“She will be better by spring, Preziosa.” Silvana must be telling the truth, Vini decides; her pestle is making steady, reassuring thumps against the mortar. “Long before her birthing time, the sickness will stop.”

“And the baby?” Vini watches the old woman closely, sees the way her hands suddenly slow, then stop. She remembers the other waiting times, the times that led to nothing but her father’s crusting over, turning away, hardening his heart.

“The baby?” Silvana is grinding again, but faster, wilder. “I cannot say.”

“Will it live this time?” Vini remembers her mother’s bright, urgent eyes.

“God knows this, Preziosa. You must ask Him.” Silvana puts the mortar aside and wipes her hands on her apron. “Tell me about the class now. Did you show those upstarts a thing or two?”

The elderly servant takes a seat across from her, and suddenly Vini is telling her everything, everything she did not tell Antonia: how the whispers of the others tunneled into her heart, how the teasing made her wish she could work alone with her father. How she curtsied to Carracci.

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