Twenty

I woke at the first light of day to the creeping sensation of fingers on my feet. I jerked back, a reaction that was pure animal instinct.

“There, there,” a male voice said. “No need to get upset. I’m just taking a look at your beautiful hallux.”

The owner of the voice sat on a chair at the end of the couch. He was an older man, perhaps sixty, with a trimmed white beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a ski jacket, unzipped to reveal a bow tie. A notebook, tape measure, and camera sat on the table nearby. Pierre and Justine hung back behind him.

I glanced toward the window. The snow had stopped falling at last, and bright light drifted through the shutters. Had this man come in a helicopter overnight? Had I really slept through helicopter noise? Maybe Pierre and Justine had given me something to make me sleep.

“Are you aware that twenty-five percent of the bones in the human body are located in the feet?” the man said. “One-quarter. Exactly twenty-six bones in each foot. Quite a feat of engineering, wouldn’t you say?” He laughed a high-pitched, childlike laugh at his facile pun. “But that is in the human foot. I can’t say what we’ll find when we X-ray your feet. Your feet are quite unusual. Not at all like human feet. More like the feet of the Gigantopithecus, wouldn’t you say?”

I met Justine’s eyes and she looked away. She felt guilty for doing this to me. I could see it.

“My name is Ludwig,” the man said. “And you are Alberta Montebianco.”

“Dr. Ludwig Jacob Feist,” I said, remembering the card that had fallen from Justine’s book. “The cryptozoologist.”

That I should know his name and profession startled him. “Why, yes, that is correct. But do call me Ludwig. And I am here today in the capacity of a civilian, a gentleman scientist if you will.”

I must have sneered, because he looked hurt.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked. “When Justine spoke with me last night and informed me she had a live specimen in her care, it wasn’t professional duty that compelled me to be dropped in by helicopter on a moment’s notice. If this were an official collection, I would have needed clearance from Lausanne, which takes twenty-four hours minimum, and I would have needed another scientist to accompany me to document everything. No, this is personal.” He shifted in his chair. “My professional life has grown around the search for exotic, undocumented life-forms, but you, you are something else. You are an impossibility. A wonder of evolution.”

He placed his hot hands on my feet and I flinched. But as I pulled away, he only gripped my ankles harder.

“Do you mind, monsieur?” he said, glancing back toward Pierre. Pierre walked over and placed one hand on each ankle, pinning my feet to the couch.

“Very good. Much better,” Dr. Feist said, smiling at me like a dentist about to extract a tooth. “I need you to be still while I get a proper look.” He bent over my feet and looked at them. For two, three, four minutes he stared. Finally, he said, “Come, Justine. Look what you’ve discovered.”

Justine joined him at the end of the couch. Dr. Feist traced a line across the bottom of my foot with his finger as he spoke. “The width is similar to that of the Almasty, as it was documented in the Russian steppes. There is no arch to speak of. The padding is more pronounced than a human foot, fuller, more rounded. And, of course, the secondary hallux next to the primary is a classic trait. But what I find extraordinary, what I didn’t expect when you called, my dear Justine, is that except for her feet, she appears to be totally and completely Homo sapiens.”

“That is why we didn’t know,” Justine said. “It wasn’t until I removed her shoes that I saw she was . . . different.”

“No doubt this is how she has managed to live as she has for so long,” Dr. Feist said. “She looks like us, behaves like us.”

“Her features are totally human,” Justine said.

“And yet, who knows what is hiding under the surface. As you surely know, the composition of our genomes is ninety-nine point nine five percent the same. That leaves point-oh-five percent variation that accounts for the differences in eye color, hair color, skin color, inherited diseases, and so on. What would the world be like, I sometimes ask myself, if we relied on this truth—that we Homo sapiens are one group with large patterns of kinship—rather than holding fast to the superficial differences that have caused our species so much suffering?”

Dr. Feist looked at me, tears in his eyes. The man was insane, I realized, laughing one minute, crying the next.

Collecting himself, he said, “But I digress. Clearly, she is more than she appears to be. Looking only at phenotype can obscure what is really going on underneath the surface. Please forgive me for prying, Alberta, but I am so curious: Has anyone else in your family displayed such traits?”

I stared at him, refusing to answer.

“She mentioned she is related to the Montebianco family,” Justine said. “An old family from this area.”

“Until we run tests,” Dr. Feist said, “we won’t know if it has been inherited or not. If others in her family show this trait, she may carry the genetic material for this strange characteristic.” He turned back to Justine. “You said she spoke to you at length?”

“We had a long conversation,” Justine said. “She’s quite articulate.”

“Therefore no anomalies of the temporomandibular joint. Both humans and apes—and the creatures we call Bigfoot or Yeti, one might suppose—have thirty-two teeth. Humans, however, have a parabolic-shaped jaw, while apes have rectangular jaws. The reason apes don’t speak—other than the cognitive reasons—is because of this primary structural difference. But,” he said, looking at me with a mesmeric fascination, “we know very well that the smallest difference means everything for the survival of a species. What is it that Charles Darwin said? ‘A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die—which variety or species shall increase in number . . .’”

“‘And which shall decrease or finally become extinct,’” Justine said, finishing Dr. Feist’s sentence. It was a religion, I realized, this worship of Darwin. A cult.

“Yes, precisely,” Dr. Feist said. “She’s been hiding in plain sight.” He looked down at me, his eyes narrowing. “Perhaps she didn’t even know herself what she was. What do you have to say, Alberta? Were you aware of how special you are? Of your function as a transitional form?”

I stared at him, angry and humiliated, but the truth was his words hit me with particular force. I had known that I wasn’t like everyone else. My wide, flat feet were abnormal. The secondary hallux, as Dr. Feist had called it, was a constant embarrassment. But I had found a way to live with it and never considered it to be anything but a superficial defect, a weird flaw, like being double-jointed.

“She is what you have been looking for, then?” Justine asked.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. She is of great interest to cryptozoology.”

“What do you think she is, exactly?”

“I will know more once I get her to our facility in Lausanne,” Dr. Feist said. “I’d like to do some genetic tests. But I would wager that we will find her to be Homo sapiens expressing long-dormant genes of a pre–Homo sapiens hominid. A throwback, if you will.”

“There were many kinds of pre–Homo sapiens hominids,” Justine said. “Dozens.”

“True,” Dr. Feist said. “The earth was once filled with earlier varieties of human beings. We—the last and only survivors of these ancestors—inherited everything.” He stared at me intently, studying my features. “I would guess she carries a large number of Neanderthal variants.”

The words stung. I imagined a hairy, inarticulate thing, ugly and ungainly. Did I really have the features of a Neanderthal?

“Surely not,” Justine said. “She is much too . . . human to be a Neanderthal.”

“Ah, that is where you are wrong! In the past fifteen years, we have proven the hominids we call Homo neanderthalensis to be much more like us Homo sapiens than previously believed. They were not hairy, apelike creatures that jumped around in caves, as they have so often been depicted. They were elegant, even beautiful archaic human beings with language, developed societies, family structures, and even artwork. Recent technology in dating cave paintings has shown that Neanderthals actually created pictures and symbols in their dwellings, which proves they had the capacity for higher thought processes. Fossils reveal that their vocal cords were swollen, suggesting complex language. They evolved during the European ice age and could withstand conditions that Homo sapiens would never have been able to live through, although it is clear that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted for a period of time. Some theories suggested that Homo sapiens waged war on the Neanderthals and killed them off. I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were friends and partners. Genetic material taken from a finger bone of a fifty-thousand-year-old Neanderthal male has recently yielded models of a hominid with blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. The Neanderthals may account for what we now recognize as Northern European coloring. They may have looked a lot like”—Dr. Feist looked at me, his eyes glistening—“Alberta.”

“She is a missing piece to the puzzle of evolution,” Justine said, looking at me as if I were a prize she had won.

“And the reward?” Pierre asked.

Dr. Feist looked a bit lost for a moment. “Oh, yes, that,” he said. “The reward is yours. Every cent.”

Turning his attention back to me, he lifted the tape measure and began taking measurements, scribbling them down in his notebook as he went. Balancing his notebook on his knees, he lifted the camera and snapped a series of photographs. Sweat soaked my clothes. No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break free from Pierre’s grip. I was trapped. The helplessness and rage I felt at this moment is hard to relive, let alone describe. The most secret, hidden part of myself was being exposed, documented, recorded. Knowing there was no way to stop him, I closed my eyes in horror and shame and resigned myself to his touch.

 

A loud noise cracked in the room. From my tied-down position on the couch, I couldn’t see what was happening, but I heard the heavy wooden door fling open and felt a burst of cold as air rushed into the room. I heard Sal’s voice shouting my name; I saw Pierre step away from the couch to go for his rifle. There was the sound of gunfire and Justine’s sharp, high scream as a second shot was fired, then a third. The quick succession of sound and movement in those seconds seems as much a blur to me now as it did then. I don’t know who fired the first shot—Pierre or Sal—or who died first—Pierre or Justine—but I was left with the impression that it had all happened just the way Sal had planned—quick, cold, and efficient.

The one thing that has remained clear in my memory is Ludwig Jacob Feist. He had been so entirely absorbed in his examination of me, his concentration so fixed, that even Sal’s explosive entrance didn’t tear him from my side. At first he simply froze. His pale eyes went wide behind his glasses, registering that he was conscious of a disturbance. And then he calmly slipped his notebook full of measurements and his camera filled with photographs into a pocket of his ski jacket, stood, and ran.

The next thing I knew, Sal had Feist by the arm and was pulling him out of the house. There was the slam of a door and then Sal returned and unbuckled me, strap by strap, until the blood returned to my arms and legs. I sat up and scanned the house. Everything looked different in the harsh sunlight—exposed and diminished. As I walked out of the house, I paused at the bodies of Pierre and Justine. They had fallen side by side, their blood pooling together over the stone floor.

Outside, the sky was a clear, pale blue, filled with a rare show of sunlight that gilded the mountains gold. The only sign of the storm lay on the ground—high snowdrifts licked at the buildings, covering doorways and windowsills. The snowcat had plowed a path through the snow and sat idling in front of the house, sending clouds of exhaust into the air. Dr. Feist shouted for help from inside the cab, his voice dampened behind the thick plastic windows.

Sal walked out of the house carrying the mink coat I had worn on my trek down the mountain. He must have searched through Justine’s and Pierre’s belongings, because he carried the books on cryptozoology under one arm. The backpack hung over his shoulder. My tennis shoes were in his hand.

“Madame,” Sal said, pausing to look me over. “We had best get going. Vita would like you at the castle.” He walked to the door of the snowcat and opened it. “Come, madame. Get in.”

Right then and there something inside me broke. All that had lain dormant for weeks and weeks exploded in my mind. For the first time, I understood the truth: Vita was not suffering from a genetic disorder. She was not physically disabled. She was a mutation. She was, as Justine had said, a missing piece of the evolutionary puzzle. But she was foremost my puzzle, the mystery that explained me, the ancestor whose defects defined mine. I couldn’t go back to the castle. I couldn’t return to Vita and all that she represented. And so I did the only thing I could: I turned and ran.

Through the abandoned village I went, pushing through the snow. I was barefoot, but I didn’t feel the cold. As I ran, I felt a new power take hold. I was stronger than before. My lungs were bigger, my legs faster, my eyes sharper. These mountains were my habitat. I could run forever and never stop.

I heard the engine of the snowcat grinding behind me. I dove into a narrow passage between two houses, climbed past an old shed, running and running, until I came to the base of the mountain. An enormous ledge of rock loomed above, heavy slabs of granite frosted with snow. But now everything was different. I hoisted myself up, clutching at the rock face, and began to climb. As the snow crunched under my feet, I remembered my grandfather taking me barefoot in the snow. I understood now that he had wanted to teach me something. I understood that this terrain was part of my nature: the snowy rise of the mountain, the ice-covered rocks, the rows of evergreen trees just ahead. With my strong arms, my wide feet—I had been made for these mountains.

When I reached the top of a ridge, I turned to see how far I had come. Nevenero was below, abandoned, a single stream of smoke rising from a single stone house. The castle, tucked into the valley, lay like a cold tile against the snow. The whole world was at my feet. I didn’t know how I would get out of there, but it didn’t matter anymore. I was free of them—Dr. Ludwig Feist, Justine and Pierre, Sal, Vita. My childhood isolation and my failing marriage and the miscarriages. Free. And I knew, as I stood there, looking over the vast mountain ranges, something that I had never known before: I was powerful. Strong enough to survive in the mountains. Strong enough to survive in ice and wind. Strong like my ancestors.

I turned back toward the mountains, ready to climb even higher, when suddenly the crack of a rifle rang through the air. A burst of heat rushed through my thigh, sending waves of fire up my spine. I staggered forward, the hard, cold granite breaking my fall. As I tried to pull myself up, I knew: I had been shot.

 

Sal carried me down the slope and put me in the snowcat, where he bound my leg with dish towels from Justine’s kitchen, creating a tourniquet to stanch the blood. It didn’t work. I lay across the seat bleeding, the pain of the wound shooting through me. The bullet had torn a hole through my jeans and into my flesh, creating a mess of blood and skin and muscle and bone. Nausea overcame me, and I buried my head in the seat, closed my eyes, and tried to make it all go away.

From the sound of it, one would think Dr. Feist had been shot. He whimpered and pleaded from the back where he had been tied up with Justine and Pierre’s hiking ropes. The pain in my leg was too much to bear, and his whining only made it worse.

“Shut up,” I said. I glanced back and saw that his glasses were gone, and a line of blood dripped from a cut above his eye. Gone, too, was the clinical assurance of his position. Now that the roles were reversed, he wasn’t so calm. He looked at me with pure terror. “Please, Madame Montebianco,” he whimpered. “Please.”

Sal drove up the hill, toward the castle. “Is he bothering you, madame?” His voice was kind, deferential. “I can shut him up, if you want.”

Hearing this, Dr. Feist’s terror grew. “Take my camera. Destroy it. I will have no proof of anything. I will never breathe a word of this to anyone. No one would believe me anyway. Just let me go. Please.”

“Yes, Sal,” I said. “Shut him up.”

Sal jerked the snowcat to a halt and pulled Dr. Feist into the snow. “She told you to stop talking,” Sal said. He shot Dr. Feist once, twice, the sound of the shots echoing through the mountains as he climbed behind the wheel and drove up to Montebianco Castle.