PrologueBomarzo, Italy, 1547–1560
It took me years to find Giulia Farnese, but no time at all to win her confidence. I did so with an unassuming cherry rose tart. It had been nearly a hundred years since I last looked upon her face, but from the moment she pulled the golden tines of her fork away from her lips and she looked to me, not her husband, I knew my influence had taken hold.
“You truly are a maestro, Aidoneus,” she said, closing her eyes to savor the sweet, floral flavors. “And a welcome addition to our kitchen.”
“Madonna Farnese, you flatter me.” I gave the couple a polite bow, my gesture more fluid than human custom, and turned back to my earthly duties.
“It seems you will eat well when I am gone,” Vicino joked behind my back. “But don’t eat too well, my beauty, or you won’t fit into those lovely dresses.”
Giulia laughed, and my heart warmed. Oh, she would eat well, I vowed.
Very well.
The next day, as Vicino Orsini gave his wife a peck on the cheek and vaulted onto his horse, I watched from the rooftop terrace, my gaze lingering on the horizon where earth met sky—a threshold I knew all too well. Then, with a flick of the reins, he led his men down the road into the valley. They were headed to Venezia to escort the Holy Roman Cardinal, Pietro Bembo, to Rome. Afterward, Vicino would depart for Napoli and Sicilia on business for Papa Pio IV.
Jupiter had blessed the region of Lazio with a warm spring, and a week after Vicino left, Giulia asked me if I wanted to take a walk. I suggested we explore the wood in the valley below the palazzo. She readily agreed, which did not surprise me. It was impossible for her to ignore the aphrodisiac qualities of my food, let alone the timbre of my voice, and the brush of my hand against hers. The first time she startled at my warmth—no human runs as hot as I—but she did not ask me to explain. In all the centuries past, she never has. This alone stoked the fire of hope within me.
She led me on a thin path through the verdant tapestry of the forest, where sunlight, diffusing through the emerald canopy, dappled the woodland floor with patches of gold. Beneath our feet, a carpet of fallen leaves, still rich with the scent of earth, crunched softly. We moved through clusters of ancient evergreen oaks, their gnarled limbs reaching out like weathered hands, and past groves of squat pomegranate trees with their ruby-hued fruits catching the sunlight and casting a warm, inviting glow.
Upon reaching a clearing surrounded by several large tufa stones jutting up through the grass and weeds, I was immediately drawn to one of the stones embedded in the hillside. The exposed side was round and flat, and it hummed, a song of the earth, a low vibration that warmed the deepest depths of me.
Giulia could not hear the humming, but she was surely aware of it in some hidden part of her, for she turned to me then.
“I love this wood,” she said, her arms outstretched toward the stone. The early morning light brightened her features, making her blue eyes shine.
“I can see why.”
She twined her hand in mine. “I come here often to bask in the feeling. The moment I arrived in Bomarzo, I felt like I had been called home, to my true home. And this wood, this is why. It reminds me of a fairy tale, or a place from the ancient, heroic myths.”
It was then that I had the idea. The stone—it hummed because the veil to the Underworld was thin there. Perhaps...yes...if the wood was enhanced, and energy from the darkness was better able to pierce the surface into this realm I would no longer have to spend years attuning to Giulia when she reappeared in the world. Instead, she would be drawn closer, and I would find her faster. It would work. I was sure of it.
“Vicino doesn’t like me walking here alone. Too many wolves and bears, he says.”
I could sense a wild boar in the far distance, but no wolves or bears. “I think we’re
safe here.” I gestured toward one of the big misshapen rocks. “Sometimes I like to imagine rocks as mythical creatures. Like that one. It could be a dragon poised to fight off danger.”
“Ooo, I can see it. The big open mouth, ready to take on any wolf, or even a lion.” Her enthusiasm was exactly what I had hoped for.
I waved my arm toward the large, round, smooth rock behind it. “And that should be a great big orco, with a mouth wide open. And it eats up and spits out secrets.”
“An ogre that spits out secrets?” Giulia laughed.
“Oh yes. This orco would tell all. Ogni pensiero vola.” I made my hands look like a fluttering bird.
She wore a wide grin. “All thoughts fly! How perfect. But if he eats up secrets, there should be a table inside this orco. It could be his tongue.”
As we wandered through the wood, dreaming up new lives for the monstrous rocks left eons ago by a force of nature, I was delighted to see how invested she was in the game.
“There are so many stones,” she said, clapping her hands together. “We could make a whole park of statues. I will write Vicino tonight.”
I did not expect it would be quite so easy. Usually it took a long while to convince Giulia of the merit of my ideas. But the pull of the Underworld was strong here and my influence was far greater than it would have been in Paris, or some backwater hill town in the wilds of Bavaria or Transylvania.
On the walk back, she paused by another enormous stone that jutted out of the ground, the size of a giant. She leaned against it. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked coyly.
“Of course.”
“This secret is only for you.” She leaned forward and grasped the edge of my cloak, pulling me toward her. Our lips met and she melted into me.
In the years following, as Vicino began work on the garden, a change was palpable in the air. Each evening, as the twilight deepened, a subtle energy began to emanate from the heart of the valley. I found contentment not just in the evolving grove, but also in my closeness to Giulia. Our time together, so abundant and intimate, felt different. I had never waited so long to make my attempt, but I nurtured this earthly bond, knowing it was essential for the garden’s growth.
The day finally arrived when Vicino ushered Giulia into the heart of the Sacro Bosco—the Sacred Wood—the name he had fondly bestowed upon the garden. As she crossed the threshold, I sensed it—a strengthening of our connection, more profound than ever before. It was time
That night, the chicken with pomegranate sauce I prepared was met with Giulia’s usual lavish praise, although I knew she took in the single pomegranate seed garnishing the dish as a courtesy, not a desire for the fruit. As she savored each bite, I felt a loosening in the ethereal shackles binding her heart. A vivid, red-hued hope blossomed within me.
Postdinner, I retreated to the palazzo’s highest balcony, my gaze drawn to a nascent light in the wood below. The light, though barely perceptible, was imbued with a power that seemed to bridge the realms of mortal and divine. A faint green luminescence that whispered of unwanted things to come. It pulsed like a languid heartbeat, beckoning to something—or someone.
I was immediately compelled to find Giulia. Amid the soft murmur of the salon where she played with her children, I enveloped her in my senses and the flower of hope within me withered. Her heartbeat, steady and unsuspecting, echoed the rhythm of the garden’s glow.
1Rome, 1948
“Julia, I still don’t think you should go,” Lillian said as we sat down at the base of the Spanish Steps near the entrance to the famous Babingtons Tea Room. It was late in the afternoon and the sunlight glowed against the boat-shaped fountain that Bernini’s father had designed nearly three hundred years before.
I sighed. Lillian and I had been arguing ever since I had received the invitation to sit for Salvador Dalí. “You know this is an opportunity I can’t pass up. And you also know how much I need the money.”
Dalí had made waves in the city papers because he was in town creating sets for the Rome Opera. But he was also painting on the side, which was good for me. I had graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in the spring but continued to take classes to maintain my student visa, and I modeled to pay the bills. Dalí had inquired about me by name—I don’t know how he’d heard of me, but it was often difficult to find a naturally blond model in Rome and I assumed that another person I had sat for referred me. He wanted to paint me in the guise of an ancient goddess—Proserpina, the Roman counterpart to Persephone. Lillian was convinced it was a bad idea.
“Come on. He admires fascists, for god’s sake. You have to be pretty bad to get kicked out of the Surrealists for having weird views.”
“I know, I know. But he’s been spending a lot of time in New York, so maybe he’s changed. It’s only for a week. He’s one of the best painters in the world, Lil, and watching a maestro like him at work isn’t something I can pass up. It’s only a week.” But I hated that she was right and felt guilty that I still planned to go.
Lillian tried a different angle. “Okay, then. But he’s also a deviant. You’ll be naked in front of him.”
“His wife will be there,” I protested. “There’s nothing to worry about. He only has eyes for Gala.”
Lillian, who worked as a shopgirl at a luxury clothing store, had never understood how I could be just as comfortable dressed as I was undressed. But the art scene had always been comfortable with nudity, sexuality—and promiscuity—while the rest of the populace was not.
My friend pulled a ribbon from her pocket and began tying up her long, dark hair. “You don’t even like surrealism.”
“That’s not true,” I insisted. “I just hate most surrealism.”
In fact, I was somewhat obsessive about surrealism, but it was no longer in vogue to say so. Abstract expressionism had taken the art world by storm and I wanted to sell my work, so I followed the trends, inspired by the likes of Kline and Rothko. But, oh, the surrealists tugged at my heart and soul. It had been Dalí’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Waking that had lured me in when I was in Madrid. The painting of a naked woman—Dalí’s longtime muse, his wife, Gala—resting on rocks in the middle of the ocean, a pomegranate by her side, had a lot going on. In the sea, another monstrous pomegranate births a rockfish that spits out two tigers, their mouths wide open, their claws ready to rip the woman apart. There was also a floating gun and Dalí’s first spindly-legged elephant. But it was the pomegranate that had really caught my eye—how it opened up, bursting with life, and yet the woman lay asleep, unable to react to all the emotion and life around her, lost in a dream.
There was something in that painting that resonated with me, that made me feel a little less fragmented. I couldn’t explain that to Lillian. She would never understand. She knew the newest version of me, a fabricated tale: born in Italy, raised in Manhattan by an eccentric aunt after my parents’ tragic deaths, and educated in Boston before returning to Italy postwar.
But the truth is, my earliest memory is emerging from the Pantheon years before into the streets of Rome and a stranger’s kindness to help me reach the accademia. Beyond this, my past is a void; I have no recollection of family, childhood, or schooling. A doctor once dismissed my amnesia as temporary, but it never resolved.
To dispel any awkwardness, I concocted a fictitious past. This story satisfied the curious
and accounted for my advanced intellect and erudite speech—traits I never fully understood in myself. I claimed an education at Radcliffe and feigned ties to high society, a narrative that seemed plausible enough to explain my idiosyncrasies.
But the way I felt when I looked at that painting by Dalí was one of the reasons I couldn’t turn this job down. There was a connection there and I had an inexplicable need to discover what it was.
Lillian looked at her watch. “I really should go. I don’t want to be late for my shift. But I hate you gallivanting off to some town no one has ever heard of with a couple of fascists to pretend to be some Properseena goddess in a wild garden of monsters.”
“Proserpina. Pro-ser-pin-ah,” I corrected. “I know, the name is confusing. You could just say Persephone. And don’t worry. I’ll be home before you know it, and much richer. I’ll take you out for dinner on the Veneto.”
“On the Veneto?” She whistled. “I never did ask how much he is paying you, but now I want to know.”
I pulled out the invitation with the details and handed it to her.
“Holy mackerel, Jules,” she gasped. “Seventy-five thousand lire a day for seven days? That’s what, about a thousand bucks? Dear lord.”
“I know. Pennies from heaven. It will be nice not to be a starving artist for once.” And with that kind of cash I’d be far from starving. “But, Lil, this is less about the money. It’s the chance of a lifetime. To learn from a master, to be depicted as one of my favorite mythical heroines, and to be...”
“Dalí’s muse,” she finished for me. “I know.” She kissed me on the cheek and hugged me goodbye, giving me one last admonishment to be careful.
At four o’clock on the dot, a sleek black-and-red Alfa Romeo pulled up, with a wood-paneled Fiat station wagon following behind, laden with luggage and easels strapped to the roof. Salvador Dalí stepped out of the elegant car, walking cane in hand, and looked around. The artist wore a beautiful dark gray double-breasted suit, complete with a pink-and-gray tie, and I worried that he might find my outfit, a simple black sweater over a red dress, lacking. I approached slowly, working up my courage, but Dalí caught sight of me and waved me over.
“Are you my modelo?” he asked with a thick, clipped Catalan accent. His mustache curled upward just barely and his hair was slicked back, his eyes dark and piercing. His ears, which stuck out a bit too much from his head, were his least attractive feature. He had about twenty years on my twenty-four.
“Julia Lombardi,” I said, extending my hand to the artist. Dalí clasped it with both of his and kissed it, his lips caressing my skin in a way that would make any woman swoon.
“You are a goddess,” he said, rolling the r in a most dramatic way. He stared at me as though I were a landscape or a rare, precious object. “You are exquisite, your skin so pale, like you have just stepped forth from the darkness. I was right to ask for you.”
I blushed.
He let go of my hand and looked around at the crowd. “Am I stealing you from a boyfriend? Has some dark Italian knight swept you off your feet before I got here, my Proserpina?”
I swallowed, thinking about Lillian’s warning of him being a deviant. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time some man asked me that within a minute or two of meeting. I thought of my last boyfriend, a Roman who was controlling and manipulative. “I sent him away. He was inadequate.”
Dalí fell into a fit of deep laughter. “All are inadequate for the beauty that is Proserpina. Only the darkest knight will satisfy the light within you.”
“A princess in need of a knight?” said a woman with a heavy Russian accent, as she stepped out of the car. “It’s a good thing you aren’t a knight, Salvador.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had heard so much about Gala. The woman was not just Dalí’s wife, but also his manager. She had inspired many a poet and artist: Éluard, de Chirico, Ernst, and Breton, to name just a few. It was said that many of the surrealists did their best work during the time they had been in love with Gala. I found that particularly interesting because she was rather plain of face, with a long nose and a disapproving stare. Yet she moved with a sexuality and an assurance I envied.
She walked up to me and took my chin in her hand, her grip harder than it needed to be. “Good. Your skin really is like porcelain.”
“Imagine her as Proserpina, pomegranate seeds across her flesh, dotted like a thousand ants,” said Dalí. He had long been known for adding lines of ants into his paintings. Together, they eyed me like I was a treasure in a museum.
I stood there awkwardly, until finally, Dalí tapped his cane on the ground twice. “Are you ready? I must warn you that where we are going is like nothing you have ever seen. I was in Bomarzo fourteen years ago with my friend Maurice Yves Sandoz, and I saw the wild wood there. A surreal place full of monstrous statues. Giants, a screaming ogre, sirens, a Pegasus, gods and goddesses, and of course, Proserpina.”
I lifted my suitcase and gave him a nervous smile. “I am ready, Signor Dalí.”
“No!” He tapped me on the shoulder with his silver-tipped walking cane. “I am Dalí.”
I jumped, surprised at the strength of the gesture. “Very well, Dalí,” I said, wondering if perhaps Lillian was right about not going. But no, I couldn’t back down now. I drew a breath and gave him a nervous smile. “I look forward to vanquishing the monsters.”
His driver retrieved my suitcase to put in the boot, then escorted me to the seat next to him. As we sped out of Rome, it felt like I was traveling through a tunnel, and every mile we drove, it was as though the light was growing a little brighter, that we were heading toward a beacon that might help me navigate the uncertain path of my future. Strangely, just as my past was blank, so, too, was my ability to envision a future, leaving me with a sense of emptiness and an unshakable feeling of being different. But for the first time, I
felt a spark of something like hope.
The engine roar made it difficult to hear the Dalís’ conversation, and the driver didn’t seem interested in small talk, so I enjoyed the ride in silence, mesmerized by the beauty of the Lazio hills beyond Rome’s walls. I hadn’t traveled far outside the city and was glad for all the fall colors.
We could see Palazzo Orsini long before we arrived in Bomarzo, the boxy castello looming high above the trees, its ramparts gray against the blue of the November sky. A cluster of medieval houses crept up the hill and tumbled against one another until the line of buildings blurred into the edges of the palazzo itself. A lone bell tower stood out higher than all the rest of the edifices, jutting coarsely skyward. It looked like a place out of a dark fairy tale.
We couldn’t take the cars up to the palazzo, as the medieval streets were far too narrow. Instead, we parked at the bottom of the hill and Dalí hopped out of the car and led us at a fast pace through a short tunnel and up a narrow road lined with centuries-old houses to the unassuming entrance, leaving the two young men in the Fiat with our luggage. I was surprised to see the face of the most important building in the city was so bland, a double door framed with stone, set into a simple medieval wall, chipped and cracked in spots.
“Something is wrong with this palazzo,” Gala said as she raised her hand to the door knocker.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
She rubbed her hand along the worn metal. “It’s just a feeling. That something is out of place.”
But it did not deter her. She lifted the knocker, its sound reverberating off the buildings around us. A man more arresting than any other I had ever seen opened the door for us. He was beyond a cliché, even more beautiful than stars in the movies. He was too perfect, too handsome, too...everything. His eyes were pale green, like shining sea glass. Thick, ridged eyebrows gave him a serious air. His dark hair was long and slicked back on the sides, his lips full. He seemed familiar, but I knew I hadn’t met him before.
“Benvenuti. Welcome,” he exclaimed, his voice deep and rich with the barest trace of an accent, one I couldn’t discern.
Gala moved toward him like a moth to a bright flame, reaching out for a handshake. She didn’t seem inclined to let go of his hand, but somehow, he extracted himself and fixed his eyes on me.
“Julia.”
How did he know my name? I was just the model, a person of little importance. It was surprising that either Dalí or Gala would have mentioned me.
“You are welcome here, Julia.” His eyes never moved from mine as he took my hands in his.
I almost gasped as the heat of his touch lit every fiber of my skin on fire. My mind whirled with the sensation of something terribly familiar. But then he let go and ushered us inside. I looked at my hands. What just happened?
“I’m Ignazio,” he said as I stumbled across the threshold. “I am your steward. I will see
to your every need.”
“Every need?” Gala said, laying a hand upon his arm and winking at Dalí.
I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at Gala’s suggestion. The rumors about her open sexual inclinations were rampant in the art world, but to see her so willfully flirting with another man in front of her husband was something I hadn’t expected. Dalí, however, did not appear upset at all. On the contrary, the conspiratorial smile he gave her seemed to signal his approval. The idea they were in it together, that they both found some measure of pleasure in her flirtatious proclivities, was fascinating.
For his part, Ignazio deftly removed her hand from his arm and carried on as though he had not heard her comment. He led us on a tour of the six-hundred-year-old property with numerous long corridors, rooms full of antiques, weary frescoes, and shabby tapestries. The floors were bare, save for some decorative black-and-red tile in the main halls. Our steps echoed as we walked. It was darker than I liked. The electricity wasn’t bright, and the wall sconces cast queer shadows.
“The palazzo is not as grand as many other places you may visit, but it’s full of history and forgotten memories,” he said, his tone wistful. “So many memories.”
The back of my neck tingled at his words. Someone had walked over my grave, Lillian would have said.
As we walked from room to room, Dalí peppered Ignazio with questions about the Orsini and particularly about Vicino’s obsession with alchemy, which he had read about. Our host was pleased to oblige the maestro and explained that Vicino was interested in the transmutation of the soul, in finding true enlightenment. “And if he turned metal into gold along the way, well, that would be a happy circumstance, wouldn’t it?” he mused as he led us to the ramparts and ushered us outside.
“Below us is the boschetto, the little wood. Beware, there are monsters there.” He pointed to a spot far down in the valley, but, in the fading light, it was difficult to see anything other than the dome of a small white building, which I took to be the tempietto. “Tomorrow you will meet them.”
I thought that sounded rather ominous but didn’t say so.
As we peered down at the garden, the sky began to transform, moving from yellow to pink, to the deepest violet, to dark blue.
“This,” Dalí breathed, “is the only painting I could never paint.”
We stared, mesmerized as the colors flowed across the sky, leaving the landscape awash with nature’s brilliance.
“It’s a gift,” Ignazio whispered to me as he placed his fingers on the small of my back. It was the barest of touches, but it gave me a heady feeling of déjà vu and sent a distinct rush of warmth up my spine. I wanted to pull away, to break free from whatever invisible bond this man had wrapped around me, ...
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