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Edo followed Samantha out of the museum and directed her down the side of the hill that would take them to Cypress Alley, a popular spot with the tourists where the steep path went down between two towering rows of cypress trees. He tried to shake the weird funk that had settled over him as Samantha had pushed him to talk about tourists. It had brought up so many memories—memories he wasn’t ready to deal with right now, in part because the sights and smells and sounds around him were making every memory feel real again, not dull and fuzzy like he’d been able to keep them in America.
He scuffed his foot on the path, trying to pull himself back to the present through physical sensations. It was part of why he’d found himself putting his arm around Samantha earlier, and leaning close to her on the wall. But that had worked too well—he hadn’t been expecting to like being in the same space as her, and that was another thing he wasn’t ready to process yet.
He wasn’t the only one who was feeling unsettled, though. As he watched her dodge other tourists, her ponytail swinging from side to side as she marched down the hill in her t-shirt and jeans, he could tell she wasn’t quite back to normal. The story about the girl who’d once kissed him had seemed to bother her, but something about the last dish of china she’d been looking at had changed her mood again. It was interesting, to watch that subtle shift and recognize it—in part because he was not used to spending so much time with one person anymore, enough time to learn to read their moods. And even with his friends, he might have noticed their mood, but it would not have made him so curious.
He looked away, at the trees around him, the sculptures that she was passing now without stopping to study. This place was more than you could see in one day, more than you could know in one season. It had always been his favorite place, but when he’d brought people before, he'd usually given them a time to meet him at the exit and then gone off on his own. He had never wanted to show a tourist around before, take them to his favorite spots.
But Samantha was not like most tourists. He thought about their trip to the market when she’d gotten mad at him for translating—that had definitely never happened before. With her, he was actually torn between letting her explore the place on her own and telling her to turn left after the bathrooms ahead so they could go find the old boundary wall.
Just as he was getting ready to say something, she pulled to a stop, looking at a signpost next to a fenced-in grassy nook beside a building. The sign had the name and date and picture of a sculpture that sat back in the grassy nook, barely visible from here.
“Oh, this looks beautiful. Is there a place where we can get a better look?” Samantha stood on her toes, craning her neck to try to see the sculpture better. It was a mother with child, but the details were indistinguishable from this distance. She looked around to the side where a path ducked back along the edge of the grassy nook. “Can we go this way?”
She was going to find it on her own. If she kept walking on this path, past the statute, through the overhanging limbs of the trees, she would find the wall, and the door. She was one of those who was willing to leave the bigger path, see more than just the highlights of the city. “Of course.”
They went along the side of the wall, Samantha craning her neck to try to see over or around, to see if there was a way through up ahead. After a bit they came to where an old gate sat in the wall, with steps leading up to it. The steps on their side were clean brick, but the steps on the other side of the gate were covered in moss. They would not be going through.
Samantha climbed up to the edge of the wrought-iron gate and peered through, standing on her toes and leaning sideways to try to see the statue inside better. “So close, but still too far. Why do they have it back here instead of where people can see it?”
Edo shrugged. “Maybe they felt there are enough sculptures elsewhere for people to mess with; maybe this one needed a little privacy.”
Samantha looked over her shoulder at him. “Privacy, huh?” She hopped down the steps and almost ran into him, but pulled up right as he was about to step backward. “You're starting to sound like you see the statues as people.”
“I guess you're rubbing off on me.”
“So, do we go back that way?”
Edo hesitated. He had thought she was heading off the beaten path, but really she'd just been searching for the sculpture. Perhaps she wasn't an adventurer after all.
But then, why had she chosen to stay at Il Castello Mio? True tourists stayed in the city, where they were in easy walking distance of all the restaurants, museums, and entertainments. True tourists didn't pack their own lunches.
Samantha turned, looking at the path that ran away from the Pitti Palace, deeper into the woods. She glanced over her shoulder at him with an eyebrow raised, then started down the path further into the woods.
The rush of relief that filled Edo was so strange. Why did it matter which path she took? Why did it matter if she saw the wall, saw the door? Edo followed after her, staying behind her, watching as her head moved from one side of the path to the other, arching up to see the branches that stretched overhead, turning to examine the twisted, gnarled tree trunks of the old, old trees that had seen so many visitors. She felt it. She could tell this place was special.
“I wonder if they remember?” Samantha asked, standing in front of an exceptionally large and knotty oak. She ran a hand across its rough, grooved bark, closing her eyes. “These trees—I wonder if they remember princes and princesses walking past when they were saplings?”
Edo stopped beside her and put his hand into his pockets. “I wonder if they remember me?”
She was surprised, but there was something more in the look she gave him, something he couldn't read. “I bet they do. You seem like the type to stick in someone's memories.”
It was an innocent enough remark, but it seemed a little too heavy, and Edo wasn't sure why. “If they do, it's because I was an annoying little brat who always hid beneath them until it was time to meet back up with the tourists. I usually came here alone while they explored the fancier parts of the garden. Most of them were more interested in la Fontana del Bacchino than just trees.”
“What’s so special about that fountain in particular?”
“It’s a naked fat man riding a giant tortoise.”
Samantha laughed and skipped ahead a little in the way she sometimes did, hands on her backpack straps as usual. “I like it over here. Less crowded.” Suddenly distracted by the sight of the wall ahead of them, Samantha jogged over and put a hand against it, looking to the right where the path ran down the hill. “Are we allowed to go down there?”
“As long as you don’t mind having to come back up again. There’s not another path back from down there.”
She looked intrigued. “Well, then.” She started down the path. Watching her blonde ponytail bounce, Edo was suddenly reminded of why it mattered to him that she’d come over here. He’d only ever brought one other person this way. Paola.
The memories hit him without warning, and he sucked in a breath at the remembered joy—and the inescapable pain that always followed. They had been sixteen when he’d first brought her here, and she had followed him willingly off the path and down along the wall. They’d found the door together, the door covered in the names of wanderers, and they’d added theirs, as sixteen-year-olds would. Initials and a heart. He had thought then that she’d follow him anywhere.
He shook his head and started down the path after Samantha, who was already almost to the door. He thought she’d exclaim when she saw it, or say something about the tragedy of graffiti in a place like this, but she stood silently, staring at the hundreds of names and initials carved in all different languages, written in black pen, pressed in with the tip of a car key, or by whatever means necessary. The door was not large, but it bore the touch of so many people, so many lives and experiences. Edo could even now see the edge of the heart that had contained his and Paola’s initials. The rest had been covered over.
The silence stretched for a long time. Edo kept his eyes on the door, taking it in all over again—the metal frame, the knobby metal bolts that had once held sheet metal across the door, though now only a strip of greening metal remained across the top and down the right side, edges jagged and torn; the wooden slats, in layers of different color as pieces had broken off and been replaced, and with vertical slats showing through behind the horizontal ones.
Edo had tried. He’d tried dating other girls after Paola, tried finding a relationship that gave him hope for a future. But Il Castello Mio had always been there, in the back of his mind, reminding him that his future was not in America; and if Paola had taught him anything, it was that you couldn’t expect love to reach across an ocean.
Finally, Samantha spoke. “I’ve never written my name on a wall or a door or a dumpster, but if I were to ever want to, I think it would be here.”
Edo wasn’t into vandalism these days either, but there was a strange pull to this door. “Why?” Even though he felt the pull, he still wanted to know why she did.
Samantha stepped backward, eyeing the door, the wall with its coating of ivy, and then turning to look at the forest behind her. “This whole city is so old, so full of memories that I’m sure even the trees wouldn’t be able to remember everything. I mean, they probably remember you, since you say you hid under them so much as a kid.” She smiled at him, but it was a little wistful this time. “But this wall? This door? It feels like putting a name on them might let anyone be remembered.” Again there was that weight behind her words, and this time he really wanted to know why, but he didn't know how to ask.