She had no idea when the vague interest had turned into obsession. If she had to guess, she would have said that it happened three months ago when the rain started. It was like some giant floodgate was kicked open and the water that had been lying dormant all those dry summer months was finally released. And of course she did not have an umbrella. She never did. She believed umbrellas to be cumbersome and generally quite ugly. On that particular day in late September, the rain was relentless. It was the kind of rain that made everyone wonder in half-religious whisper: what have I done to deserve this? The moment when it started, she was standing at her usual spot - by the four lanterns, over the grave of Luigi Tassistro. She did not leave when the first wave hit the rough edges of the granite tombstone. If anything, she enjoyed being soaked through.
The ritual was quite straightforward, and to an outsider it looked like she was an overly devoted relative lost in thought. That the tombstone was that of a 15-year old boy who had died more than a century ago was immaterial. After all, the old Italian cemetery was full of old tombstones, and most of them looked tidy and well taken care of. The ritual was her standing over the concrete grave recounting the tragic and extraordinary story of Luigi's life. She was standing there, by the four lanterns (which she herself had brought - she had the habit of replacing the oldest lantern with a new one at the start of each month), looking at Luigi's face slightly blurred by the crumbling stone and trying to uncover his secret. The secret was his story and the early death which still made no sense to her. Early deaths never do make sense, though, and so it was only natural that when she first came to this cemetery, more than a year ago, she stopped by the tombstone of a handsome boy who died on August 1, 1921. The date of his birth was scratched away by the wind and the heat but she could still make it out: March 11, 1906. Somehow, the figures did not add up. They made her feel uncomfortable. Anxious. It was a blistering summer day in mid-July, and she just stood there sweating under the sun and wondering about the fate of one Luigi Tassistro. There was no answer. That day she came in as a depressed tourist, and she came out as... well, she came out as someone more than that.
The story got changed occasionally. Or, rather, it grew and expanded, it evolved and it acquired more details. Sometimes she tried to search online, but there was no information. There were multiple Tassistro families around Veneto region, but what could she do with them? So instead - she dropped the search and began to unravel the story of Luigi Tassistro the way she herself could see it. And even if it was not the authentic story, or parts of it were not, what did it matter a century later? The story was developed gradually, with each visit, and it was all in the old face of the young boy and the way he looked at her from beyond the grave. A mysterious, ghost-like look (the eyes were completely transparent, which may have been the effect of the sun), and yet there was dignity in them. A dignity that must have come from an aristocratic Italian family. All through his childhood, Luigi had it all. Elaborate toys with complex mechanisms, private tutors and an ornate swimming pool whose edges were decorated with small statues of Greek goddesses. Luigi loved that swimming pool, and he could be seen dipping and diving late in the evening, his golden hair soaked and stuck to the sides of his head - emphasising his beauty and the slightly effeminate facial features. Luigi had everything. He even had a lavish black suit which his grieving family would choose for a tombstone photograph and which was tailor-made for him by the famous Mr Rosetti from Venice.
There was, however, a problem. It took her some time to figure it out but then, on a nippy morning in early April, the image came to her in graphic details. Back when Luigi was seven or eight, he saw something which would leave a lasting impression on him. That day, he was standing on the terrace and looking into the neighbour's garden when the said neighbour came out of her house and looked at him. A young woman of thirty, disturbingly beautiful and completely naked, was looking straight into his eyes and smiling at him. She did not try to hide the obvious fact that she could see him. No, she knew full well, and she carried no shame around her breasts or her thighs. His face got red and, later that evening, he felt sick and his mother had to call a doctor. Since then, he got a clenched throat and a patch of green light appeared in his eyes every time when he caught even a glimpse of a female body. This aversion, of which nobody else knew (not even the local priest who was apt at making boys confess to 'acts of impurity'), was especially strong when Luigi was joined in the swimming pool by his mother and his two sisters. The aversion would even spread to the small statues of Greek goddesses whose nakedness would sometimes feel more real than his own embarrassment.
At which point she knelt down, took out a piece of cloth she always had in her pocket and wiped the bottom part of the tombstone. This was a habit, a ritual, and besides, there was always a speck of dust or perhaps a few sandstones eating at the granite.
It was a year or two after the incident with the neighbour when a young girl student was brought in to teach English to Luigi. Her family was British, she was twenty-one and she needed the money. The offer was generous, too generous even for the city of Verona, and very soon she got to meet this brooding boy who blushed far too easily and whose face was as sullen as it was handsome. Also, his hair curled in the sun, and she envied those curls which her straight locks could never quite achieve.
They were studying the language by reading English poetry. Luigi did not much care for it, but while he was bored at first, there at one point appeared something that drew him to those hour-long classes on the terrace. A white dinner table was standing there, and she was sitting on his right. It happened on a hot summer day. Her dark blue blouse (she was the one who told him that it was better to wear darker colours in the shade) had its top button undone, and he realised that he could no longer focus on Coleridge and Shakespeare. All he could think of was her right nipple cradled inside her blouse. It looked hard, and perfect, and a feeling was stirred inside and the old aversion to female forms began to subside.
The story was so smooth in her mind now - like she was reading it in a book. Originally, though, it was rough and sketchy and it took a year of these visits to the cemetery to make it wholesome and consistent. All those dead people lying around, humming inaudibly, and she was here on the first day of every month trying to make sense of the troubled past of Luigi Tassistro. And today, perhaps today, she could get that ending right.
The nipple was not always there, but her soft white breasts were, or his idea of them. During the classes, he found himself floundering between two extremes. Either he learned the whole sonnet by heart to impress her, or else he forgot his own name. Did she understand? Did she have any idea of the passion that was crawling all over his body? Well, initially he could not tell. She never unbuttoned her blouse more than a little, and she rarely talked to him about anything other than the uptight pronunciation and the rigid forms of the English language. But then there were moments when she was writing something, and her left hand would brush against his right arm (she was left-handed), and the tension inside his body would convulse and contort with forbidden delights. Besides, he began to notice the lewd subtext in some of those poems, and there was little doubt in his mind that she was choosing them deliberately. With a purpose. Luigi began to have those wet dreams that started with him lying in his bed in the darkness of his room and thinking about his hand touching the white breasts, touching the nipple, and then progressing into these giant swimming pools filled with Greek goddesses coming alive rubbing themselves against his body... He would wake up covered in shame, and at one point he woke up with a plan.
The days were getting hotter now, and she started wearing shorts (which were still rare but which were now coming into fashion) and her bronze legs once made him stop in the middle of a line from Wordsworth and say that he wanted to show her something. "Show?" she asked, confused. "Where?"
He invited her to follow him, and they entered the far area of the garden where the swimming pool stood. "Yes?" she said, looking at him with a half-smile, not noticing the wild contortions of teenage lust overwhelming Luigi from the inside. At which point Luigi took off his clothes and stood naked right in front of her. Thinking his naked body was her body, and thus trying to bring her closer to him. This moment, watched by no one but six nude goddesses of cheap marble, lasted a few seconds, perhaps a whole century, and while he was expecting her to follow him, she told Luigi to get dressed, turned around and left. Without saying a word. Without ever looking back and seeing the fear, the hurt, the desperate intention.
Oh her heart was beating faster now. Because this was it, this was perhaps the ending she had been looking for all this time.
Because when this English girl came the next day, unsure of herself, feeling some strange guilt for which there was no cure, the atmosphere about the house had changed. It was no longer that of languid luxury and unassumed bliss. The very mansion looked downtrodden and oddly compromised. There was an envelope offered to her by the servant - dated August 2, thanking her for her services. She tried to ask, to say something, to reason, but the servant said she had to leave. There was a sob that came from within the house, an impetuous and lonesome sob, and it was like a small crack that was now covering the century-old surface of the granite.
She shivered. It was winter now, the first of December and the thin layer of snow was covering each tombstone of the cemetery. It was quiet and calm, but she could not stop hearing that ancient hum of the dead. For the first time ever, the hum was coming from within, and as she looked around and saw the hundreds upon hundreds of black and white tombstones, she realised what it really was, and she screamed. But the scream was but a whisper. Or, rather, it was the hum that someone outside, in the real world, could hear. That is, if he cared to listen.
