Chapter Twelve

La Luna

MY FIRST ROSOLIO DROPS, thinks I, became my fond acquaintances on this journey to a moon world. But like all sugary sweets, they proved in the end to be fickle friends; at least that’s what I’ve come to believe. They tempted you with their sweet aroma and bright colours, and when you gobbled them up, they gave you ten seconds of happiness before they forsook you, vanishing without a trace. And if you ate too much of them, they would make your belly hurt or rot your teeth or make you fat like the Prince of Wales. Can anything sweet be faithful and wholesome?

In the wake of our triumphant performance at Casa Castiglione, Doña Marisa and I created a sensation as a dancing duo. From casa to casa, we performed our brilliant bolero, and after our fifth such performance, Doña Marisa exclaimed, ‘Basta! We must leave this place to find la luna.’ A fit of packing ensued, and once the servants had fastened our travelling-trunks and what not onto the carriages, we set off for our destination, it being some place near the sea. On the second day of our journey, as we traversed the Apennines, I begged Doña Marisa to tell us about la luna.

‘What is la luna like? Are the moon-folk good there?’

She considered my questions for a moment. ‘I have no doubt la luna is a magical place.’

‘A magic place?’ My toes and fingers began to tingle.

‘Very much so. Listen, and I shall tell you how I came to know about it. Once upon a time,’ Doña Marisa began, ‘a maja dancer rose from obscurity, and after she had given up her infant daughter, she married a Spanish nobleman and that is how she became a Doña. Some days she suffered greatly from her husband’s violent temper, other days she loathed his cruelty to others, yet it was the only life she knew, and she swore she would never be poor again, roasting chestnuts and begging for food. She and Don Rafael had removed to Seville, to his ancestral home, and after one season, he became disenchanted with her, and she with him.’

‘He’s a bad man.’ I thought again of her scarred temple.

‘True, but he was wealthy and titled. In Spain, one must marry such a man to be free,’ she revealed to me. ‘You see, it is customary for a Doña, being a married woman, to choose a cortejo, an escort, and thus she needn’t see her husband that much.’

This confused me as to why a husband and wife didn’t want to see each other, and when I glanced at Emmerence, she seemed just as puzzled as me.

‘One day,’ continued Doña Marisa, ‘a handsome nobleman, he being an avid art collector from Inglaterra, wandered to Seville to view the paintings by Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo. This English nobleman, known to all as Lord Scapeton, came under the Doña’s spell, and he consented to be her cortejo, escorting her in town, serving her chocolate, whispering sweet words into her ear and paying her a thousand attentions.’

I gaped at her, nearly falling from the seat. ‘Lord Scapeton, the ogre? I kicked him good and hard.’

‘You kicked him? When?’ Señor Gonzalez was all astonishment. ‘Why was I not told of this?’

Doña Marisa shushed him. ‘The Doña and her English cortejo became inseparable. Together they sojourned in Cádiz, to find the Doña’s real father, Don Luis de Luna, who, to their surprise, was a prosperous Genoese merchant. He had obtained naturalisation and the status of hidalgo in Spain, and thus the Spanish pronounced his surname de Luna instead of di Luna.

‘When the Doña claimed to be his natural daughter, Don Luis cast a sceptical eye upon her, for he was a childless man. She showed him the ancient key that had once belonged to her mother – the key that Don Luis had given her mother an age ago when the two of them had been lovers. Startled at first, he gathered his wits, and he pronounced that if she could find Villa La Luna – a hidden villa in a place near the sea in Liguria – and if the key opened the door to his villa, then he would acknowledge her as his natural daughter.’

My eyes became round as saucers. ‘Where is the key?’

With great care, she removed a necklace that she wore underneath her clothes. She dangled the chain, attached to which hung an ornate iron key with la luna, the full moon, at one end. My fingers tingling, I cupped the key in my hands, to feel the weight of it, the magic of it. Señor Gonzalez pointed to the handle of the ring, which he called the bow. The middle part he called the stem, and the bottom part he called the wards, which reminded me of the teeth on a rake.

‘On their return to Seville,’ continued Doña Marisa, in a low voice, ‘the Doña’s cortejo became drunk from a flask of red wine, and he revealed to her that his younger brother had fathered a child with a “low creature” in Portugal during the war and had brought the child to live with him and his wife in the town of Scarborough.’

I wrinkled my brow. ‘Scarbro’? That’s my home.’

Doña Marisa nodded, and she resumed her story. ‘No thanks to his brother’s foolery, he said, everyone in Inglaterra knew of this illegitimate child and her origins. He grumbled that the Portuguese mother of the child was not of their rank; for, had she been, a good match could have been made for the child, and his family would have benefitted from the alliance.’

I stared blankly at her, wondering what this meant.

‘Do not you understand?’ Doña Marisa grasped my hand. ‘Lord Scapeton is your papai’s brother. I had no idea until then. Believe me, when I say, no two brothers could be more dissimilar.’

Thunderstruck, I cast down my eyes, recalling Lord Scapeton’s cold contempt for me. ‘My papai says I’m his love child and his creature.’

‘You are my creature, too,’ Doña Marisa assured me, squeezing my hand.

‘Lord Scapeton and Colonel Fitzwilliam are brothers? What insanity is this?’ Señor Gonzalez uttered a ferocious growl. ‘What happened to this English cortejo?’

‘He disappeared one day with the south-west wind,’ recalled she. ‘Upon learning the identity of the child, the Doña suffered a shock, and when she dared to whisper the name of her child – the child whom she had believed lost to her for ever – it broke the spell that had bound the cortejo to her. Without so much as a proper leave-taking, he forsook her once he had obtained his true heart’s desire – a rare copy of Goya’s controversial Los Caprichos that Don Rafael had kept hidden behind a false wall in his library and had finally agreed to sell to him.’

‘Ay! What a tragedy to give up those rare prints.’ Señor Gonzalez bemoaned the loss of what he referred to as Goya’s critical eye of Spanish society.

I puzzled my wits together. ‘Lord Scapeton tricked everyone?’

Doña Marisa paused for a moment to rub her maccaroni-filled belly. ‘He cared not a whit for his lady,’ admitted she. ‘The Doña served as a means for him to get close to Don Rafael. With a celerity that astounded many, the Doña chose a new cortejo among her many admirers, he being a kind and honourable Spaniard named Sábado Gonzalez, who agreed to escort her to Inglaterra, although he nor anyone else knew at the time of her secret plan to find her long lost daughter. How intractable she was of her desire to see Inglaterra, so much so that Don Rafael gave her a small chest containing many gold escudos in exchange for leaving him in peace. “Begone for ever,” thundered he. She set out in the world then, determined that she, with her daughter by her side, would find Villa La Luna.’

Señor Gonzalez grasped her hand to kiss it. ‘Mi amor, I shall help you find this Villa La Luna.’

‘What if we can’t find it?’ worried I.

Doña Marisa wiped a tear or two from her eyes. ‘We must find it. I cannot return to Spain because of the bargain I struck with Don Rafael. He gave me the money for the journey on the condition that I begone for ever.’ Soon the story-teller in Doña Marisa turned melancholy after relating her sad history to us, and she thereafter dozed with her head resting on her cortejo’s shoulder.

At the summit of the Bocchetta pass, where we espied a dazzling city far off in the distance, I swore I could taste the salty air. ‘The sea!’ enthused I, rousing Doña Marisa from her deep slumber. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t seen the sea since our departure from Rotterdam. Emmerence, having never seen the sea before, wondered if it ended at the horizon, until Pico explained to her that no one ever reaches the horizon – it runs away from you – and, once out on the high seas, you’re surrounded by this wily horizon, which is why some folks get lost and end up captured by pirates or blown overboard by a French man-o’-war.

I had a better theory. ‘God made the sea touch the sky where He lives. He likes to dip His toes into the cold water to refresh Himself.’

‘Dip his toes into the water like a dandy? Yer nincompoop,’ exclaimed Pico. ‘When God wishes to refresh Himself, He makes it rain. Once He soaps up, He stands underneath a rain cloud an’ makes it shower. That’s why the next mornin’, the air smells fresh an’ clean.’

‘God doesn’t bathe much in the summer,’ observed I, recalling the dry summer days in Portugal.

Pico slapped his forehead in exasperation. ‘That’s why God makes flowers bloom in the summer. All the heavy perfume in the air masks His manly odour.’

‘But you said God isn’t a dandy,’ protested I.

Señor Gonzalez scoffed at us. ‘Qué absurdo! What nonsense! God does not smell. And He’s not a dandy. He’s a true majo who wears a capa flung over His left shoulder.’ Señor Gonzalez muttered that he would go distracted, and if he had his way, children would be sent up to the moon until they could speak sense.

Thereafter, we descended into the heights of San Pietro d’Arena near the entrance of Genoa – the native city of Don Luis de Luna.

‘Genova, la superba, ti saluto,’ Señor Gonzalez greeted the city in the Italian way.

‘Genoa, the proud,’ his lady agreed.

‘Mira! There’s the ancient light-house, La Lanterna, at the entrance to the harbour.’

She viewed the busy harbour with her spyglass. ‘There must be a thousand boats and vessels floating on the water.’

‘Oh, how the marble palazzos glow. Such wealth. Such brilliance.’

‘I wonder which palazzo is ours?’ she teased him.

It seemed to me, though, as if Genoa had been enchanted into a state of drowsiness. Did Napoleon, he being a stregone or sorcerer, cast a spell on the Genoese long ago to trick them and render them powerless? From our lofty position here on the heights, the life below reminded me of tiny insects, creeping along inch by inch, and the lateen sails, like triangular ghosts, drifted in the harbour and beyond, as if weary from finding nothing much to haunt on the water.

Señor Gonzalez had praised Genoa. But a seasoned traveller I had become, at least I thought so, and a city from afar often presents a vision of magnificence, filling you with the highest of moon hopes and expectations. Then, more often than not, you end up having the great misfortune to journey inside such a city, where the poverty and misery and rot press up against your carriage window, stirring up many an unpleasant sensation in your weary traveller’s soul.

Sure enough, as our carriages conveyed us through the crooked, stinking lanes of Genoa with its tumble-down tenements, I suffered yet another keen disappointment, because a moon this was not. Oh, if the maids in Rotterdam could scrub these streets clean. The lanes here were so narrow that the tall houses, each painted a different colour and covered with dirt, seemed to lean towards each other, leaving just a sliver of blue sky above. My spirits low, I closed my eyes to feel a prayer. Ti saluto! God! Please do not hide Villa La Luna in one of these miserable lanes.

I pressed my nose to the glass, observing the streets teeming with endless activity. The Genoese gathered amidst the twists and turns of the vicoli or alleys, chit chatting in high spirits. Señor Gonzalez drily remarked that conversazione seemed to be the favourite form of amusement here. We drove by a knot of men playing a noisy, rapid game with their fingers, shouting bets and arguing and hurling insults at each other. Having my own fingers and knowing how to count fingers, I wished to learn the game, and so Señor Gonzalez promised to teach us this thing known as Mora. For a moment, I convinced myself that life here wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it would be, until we came across the churches and convents, where hundreds of friars, monks and priests swarmed in the squares, some of these religious men carried in sedan chairs with utmost ceremony to avoid the stenches and squalor and dirty people.

As if he could read my gloomy thoughts, Señor Gonzalez ordered the driver to advance towards the centre of the city, to Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano. He had heard of this confectioner’s shop, and he believed it would be just the thing to cure what ailed me. We stopped in front of an elegant shop with tall glass windows and two cherubs poised above the entrance to greet patrons. There, inside this sweet-smelling shop, stood many a French-designed glass case displaying brightly-coloured candies, or rather ‘sugary gewgaws’, which was how Señor Gonzalez referred to them.

A wealthy signora dressed in the French fashion and attended by her escort, swept forward to buy boxes and boxes of candies, fixing her eyes, ever and anon, at us children and Señor Gonzalez. ‘She assumes I’m their father,’ he whispered to Doña Marisa. This confused me until the escort handed his lady into a carriage where two young children awaited them, and I overheard the shop-keeper’s remark that the signora had seven children fathered by her cicisbeo. ‘Seven!’ Señor Gonzalez drew back in horror, and he fumbled with his bolsa to buy sugar-coated fichi or figs for his lady and a box of rosolio drops for us children.

‘Genova, la superba,’ mumbled he, as he sucked on a rosolio drop.

I licked my lips in anticipation.

‘Niños?’ He cupped his ear.

The three of us giggled. ‘La superba.’

‘Bueno. And now for your reward.’ He placed a rosolio drop onto each of our tongues, where the tasty sugar pebbles burst into a flavoured liquid – violet for Emmerence, mint for Pico and rose for me.

We set off next for Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where, with our letter of introduction from Marchesa Castiglione, we would stay as her guests at Villa Leone. Señor Gonzalez claimed that our bolero dance had intrigued the Marchesa, who had taken a liking to Doña Marisa, thereby saving us many a franc. Did not we look forward to being served cioccolato every morning? I bounced with eagerness at the mention of chocolate, because cioccolato italiano was like no other chocolate on earth, and I hadn’t savoured it since we quit Milan. Pico declared it a cup of tasty mud, as did Emmerence, who pondered whether Jesus would drink it. When I told her that Jesus ate maccaroni – he having told me so in my dream – she laughed good naturedly when I insisted that he did.

‘What are you writing, Señor Gonzalez?’ inquired I.

He scribbled something in a small journal-book that he always carried with him. ‘Hmm? Oh, I’m just imagining how an object without a mouth could eat maccaroni.’ Lost in his thoughts, he turned to gaze out the window, as if something on the street would reveal the answer to him.

As I’ve said before, I’m of the opinion that grown-ups often don’t make any sense, and when they do utter nonsense, it’s best to ignore them. So when we reached the grand Villa Leone, and he and Doña Marisa broke out into silly raptures with the elaborate frontage of carved lions, the captivating loggia, the number of glazed windows, &c., I gave an inward shrug. Those sorts of things did not signify to me. We children had come under the spell of a rather large frog that chirped in the fountain. Señor Gonzalez bemoaned that here, surrounded by wealth and beauty, the sole thing we cared for was a silly frog and whether it would eat maccaroni.

‘Señor Gonzalez, may we give froggy a rosolio drop?’ I held out my hand.

‘Absolutely not,’ Señor Gonzalez guarded his box of sugary gewgaws.

‘If he croaks “la superba”, may he have one?’ pleaded I.

‘Humph. If your frog can talk, then I am emperor.’ He struck a mock pose, raising an imaginary sceptre.

I pointed to one of his boots. ‘Señor Gonzalez, what’s that thing on your foot?’

‘Ay! Scorpion!’ Of a sudden he turned into a wild man, swinging his arms and kicking his legs high in the air, while the odd little creature dashed off to safety, snapping its pincers. Once Señor Gonzalez had regained his breath and manly composure, he flung his brown capa over his left shoulder, and he hastened to join his lady. She, having watched this spectacle with undisguised mirth, awaited him near the balustraded flight of steps.

Inside Villa Leone, the two of them broke out into raptures with the marble floors, the double staircase, the tapestries, the frescoes, the ornate furniture and the chandeliers, their duelling cries of ‘look here’ and ‘look there’ in each salon making my head spin like a teetotum. I imagined that a king and queen must live in this palace and that they mustn’t have any children, because no child would be allowed to sneak and play at bowls inside any of the long passages, or press his greasy fingers on the highly-polished furniture when the butler wasn’t attending to him, or throw his pease out the window while the grown-ups amused themselves in one of the salons.

Each day at our lavish abode, where we supped on omelette, potage au macaroni and crème au chocolat, Doña Marisa would puzzle her wits together to find Villa La Luna. Some days she and Señor Gonzalez journeyed eastward on the coast; other days they journeyed westward. While they were from home, we children sometimes received a visitor named Padre Pozzi, he having formed an acquaintance with Emmerence during his sojourns in Brieg. The padre and Emmerence would converse in Italian and discuss the history of Genoa while Pico and I sat under a fig tree, playing a noisy game of Mora or throwing mounds of fig leaves at each other.

Whenever Doña Marisa complained of head-ache, Señor Gonzalez would take us children to Genoa. One time he took us to a puppet theatre where the marionettes performed a comedic ballet that turned into a bizarre riot where the puppets hit each other with sticks. ‘Qué ridiculoso!’ exclaimed Señor Gonzalez. Another time he bought bright red Genoese caps for Pico and me, and a mezzaro or white veil for Emmerence. But if there was one thing Señor Gonzalez dearly loved to do in Genoa, it was to drive through the stench of the city to reach the Strada Nuova and Strada Balbi – the streets of palazzos – where he goggled at ‘the extravaganza’, and thereafter to visit the Annunziata, a church made of pure gold inside.

One day, when the winds presented favourable, he hired a small felucca, an open boat with two lateen sails and six rowers and steered by an able mariner. Here, afloat in the noble harbour, we sailed by small boats called gondolas and many a picturesque felucca, some of the larger open boats having three lateen sails and twelve rowers.

‘La superba,’ Señor Gonzalez saluted Genoa. ‘See how the marble amphitheatre of palazzos rises from the sea, surrounded on high by a dozen hills the colour of crème au chocolat and dotted with white country-houses?’

‘La superba,’ we obedient pupils agreed with him.

‘Otra vez,’ commanded Señor Gonzalez. ‘Again, but with feeling.’

‘La superba!’ We waved our hands high above our heads.

‘Bueno. And now for your reward.’ Señor Gonzalez placed a rosolio drop on each of our tongues.

I closed my eyes, eager for the sugar pebble to explode on my tongue in a burst of flavour. ‘Mmm, I got lemon this time.’

Bom! Bom! Bom! The brass-cannons situated on the jetty saluted an important personage. Having espied three royal carriages, Señor Gonzalez announced that the Queen of Sardinia had arrived to join the King and that the Queen’s suite was en route to the Palazzo Doria. Our Genoese boatmen spat into the sea on hearing this piece of news, and I wondered why. Señor Gonzalez explained that Genoa had once been the capital of an independent republic for eight centuries until Napoleon vanquished it, and now that Napoleon had been vanquished, Genoa belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

I wrinkled my forehead. ‘Is that why they speak Genoese and not Italian?’

Both Señor Gonzalez and the mariner laughed as if at a good joke, and I prided myself on being clever even though I had no idea why I was so. But I dared not ask them about it. Papai always said there’s nothing worse than spoiling a good joke afterwards by trying to explain it.

We disembarked at the landing-wharf near a galley filled with a gang of slaves chained at the ankles. With mingled feelings of compassion and terror, I gaped at the sweaty, ragged men. Señor Gonzalez learnt that they were criminals, and he asked us, did not it instil a fear of being punished likewise for committing a crime? I nodded in reply. ‘Libertas,’ said he. ‘One must never take freedom for granted.’

Further down the pier I observed children a few years older than myself wearing a tin medal of Infant Asylum round their necks and embarking on a voyage to a destination unknown. Some of the shoe-less children stared at me as if they knew I had been a foundling. Once you are a foundling, you are always a member of the foundling club, thinks I, because the taint and sorrow of it always seems to follow you – to remind you of it – even if your papai is of noble blood.

Upon our return to Villa Leone, we found Doña Marisa reclined on a chaise longue, weeping into her handkerchief. How glum she looked. Alone in the villa with no one to speak to, she had been struck with sudden doubt. She feared we would never find Villa La Luna and we would be homeless, for ever to roam the continent like gipsies. Señor Gonzalez grasped her hand to kiss it, and he begged her to repeat what Don Luis had told her.

Doña Marisa became thoughtful. ‘Don Luis said it was “a hidden villa in a place near the sea”. Those were his exact words.’

‘Ay! What a conundrum,’ lamented he.

‘A riddle? Almost every village here in Liguria is “near” the sea. We shall never solve it.’ Doña Marisa sobbed into her handkerchief.

‘A place near the sea…’ repeated Emmerence. ‘Padre Pozzi knows the history of many a village here.’

As quick as can be, we got into the carriage, our destination being the Santa Maria del Prato to speak with Padre Pozzi. He disappeared for several minutes, when he returned carrying a large, ancient book, its binding crackling with age. For the next fifteen minutes, we waited patiently while he turned the musty pages until he found something of interest. He mentioned there was a small fishing village about four miles distant to the east called Nervi, the name of which might come from a Celtic phrase, for the Celts once settled there before the Romans. ‘Guarda!’ cried he, pointing to a drawing of the Nerviese coat of arms with its motto ‘near av inn’ or ‘place near the sea’.

Doña Marisa hung her head, confessing to the padre that she had overlooked Nervi, not thinking it of consequence, or rather, not befitting her station. Now humbled, she thanked the padre, and she begged for God’s forgiveness. The padre told us that Nervi is known for its excellent air, lofty views, rich gardens and groves, and temperate weather all the year round. It serves as a place to heal, he believed, and several wealthy families have built villas there – Grimaldi, Gropallo, Saluzzo, Gnecco. Near Villa Bonera, the noble Ponte Romano provides passage over a torrent. Once, as a young man, when he had suffered from doubt, he walked across this ancient arched bridge, and when he reached the other side, he obtained clarity of mind.

In Nervi the next day, all this sleepy fishing village offered as far as I could see, besides the small harbour, were the ruins of a castle and hay tower, and several villas half-hidden in the green mountain sides. But on closer inspection, I espied lemon groves, orange groves and olive trees scattered throughout the peaceful hamlet. And near the wild cliffs, the views of the sea abounded. Doña Marisa appeared half-anxious, half-determined as she searched the hills with her spyglass.

‘I don’t care if it’s a mud hut,’ declared Doña Marisa. ‘We shall be happy at Villa La Luna.’

Señor Gonzalez examined the large, ancient key on her necklace. ‘Mi amor, it must be a very large mud hut.’

This made her laugh, and it was then that I knew without a doubt that Señor Gonzalez truly and sincerely loved her and that he would live in a mud hut if it pleased his lady. The two of them linked arms, and they strolled off. For the first time, their romanticking didn’t bother me.

Having found the Ponte Romano – the one that had helped a young and confused Padre Pozzi – we determined to cross this ancient Roman bridge. While Doña Marisa and Señor Gonzalez stood atop the highest point of the arched bridge, speaking in whispered tones, we children descended to the other side where a young italiano and his donkey cart approached us. He was a handsome italiano with nut-brown skin and curly raven hair, and he whistled a sprightly tune.

‘Buongiorno,’ I waved my red cap at him.

He touched his cap. ‘Buongiorno.’

‘Sì?’ I pointed to the donkey.

He nodded, and thus I petted the gentle beast. I nudged Emmerence with my foot, giving her the broadest of hints.

‘Come ti chiami?’ inquired she.

‘Luca,’ said he with a blush.

‘Ask where he’s going?’ I half-whispered to Emmerence.

‘Dove andate?’

‘Villa La Luna.’

Emmerence and I shared a look of amazement, whereupon we became nearly wild with excitement. Our burst of loud squeals startled poor Luca, who wobbled about as if his legs had turned to maccaroni. Emmerence gleaned from our shy friend that he was the gardener, the ortolana, at Villa La Luna, and he would guide us there; otherwise, we would never find it – so well hidden it was. Pico rushed back to the bridge, shouting ‘La Luna! We found La Luna!’

Doña Marisa cried out in wonder ere she fell into a half-swoon. ‘Help me, Pico,’ ordered Señor Gonzalez. Pico fanned Doña Marisa with his cap, while Señor Gonzalez placed a small phial under her nose, giving her a whiff of orange-blossom scent to revive her. ‘I’m quite recovered,’ protested she, when Señor Gonzalez carried her down the bridge. But I thought she looked as pale as an orange blossom.

Worried that Doña Marisa could not walk far, Señor Gonzalez placed his brown capa inside the donkey cart for his lady. There, situated amongst pots of flowers and baskets of fresh vegetables and grey kittens with yellow eyes, Doña Marisa reclined inside the cart in a most noble fashion, shading herself with a parasol. She laughed at herself, saying, ‘Is it not befitting that I’m being conveyed to Villa La Luna in a donkey cart? It serves me right for thinking so highly of myself. Andiamo!’

Luca led us in a long march west, after which he turned seaward. He approached a thick grove of dark cypress trees, where a dirt path wound through it until it ended at an unadorned iron gate. Señor Gonzalez handed his lady out of the cart, and he escorted her into a small park of sorts. Luca, who served as cicerone, pointed out pine trees, olive trees, oleanders, myrtles, and in the distance, a bowling-green and a magic orange grove protected from the strong winds. An Italian garden came into view, and Luca, with great pride, drew our attention to the rows of potted lemon trees, low box hedges, flower beds and octagonal fountain depicting all sorts of moons – crescent moon, half-moon, gibbous moon and full moon. He swept his arm upwards to the villa at the end of the gravelled path.

The villa was anything but a mud hut. The colour of it reminded me of a pale lemon, while the shutters were a peculiar green – something that Señor Gonzalez referred to as Veronese green – but now weathered with age. On the ground floor stood the entrance with an arched wooden door. Above it, the first floor boasted several arches, which Señor Gonzalez described as an open loggia with a view of the sea. And above the loggia, on the second floor, a row of round windows brought to mind full moons.

But the most fascinating feature of the villa, at least for me, was the lofty tower that rose in the centre, as if it had burst through the roof. I imagined myself in the evenings sitting high up in this fortress, where I would reach out to the starry heavens and rearrange the stars to my liking, and once I had done creating new constellations, I would curl up to sleep, safe in my celestial dream.

Doña Marisa pressed her hands to her face. ‘I must be dreaming,’ murmured she, staring at the grand vision before her.

I nodded like a wise man. ‘It’s a waking dream.’

‘How do you know what that is?’

I shrugged at her. ‘My papai has them often.’

Doña Marisa and I advanced towards the wooden door, her hand trembling in mine. She kissed the ancient moon key, and with a deep breath, she inserted the key into the lock. This key, being rather large, required both of her hands to turn it, so turn it she did two-handed with alacrity. Click. Click. The door opened, creaking on its hinges, and we stepped inside as silent as thieves. There, in the spacious entrance-hall, she knelt to embrace me with happiness and relief, the tears sparkling on her cheeks like tiny diamond stars. She spoke to me in a quiet, confidential tone.

‘There are those who say you and I are low creatures, but mind you, we are descended from a titled Spaniard, Don Luis de Luna, he being a native Genoese.’

I wrinkled my brow. ‘Is Emmerence a low creature? What of Luca?’

This gave her pause. ‘The truth is, we are all equal before God.’

Thereafter, our companions joined us inside, and Doña Marisa and Señor Gonzalez broke out into raptures with the fine frescoes, the lofty ceilings, the great staircase, the niches with statues, &c. Doña Marisa found the bell-pull, and within seconds, a robust housekeeper appeared. She bowed to us, introducing herself as Ninetta, the housekeeper and cook for Villa La Luna. To Doña Marisa’s surprise, Don Luis had written to Ninetta several months ago, instructing her to ready the villa for her new mistress, Doña Marisa, and so she had done. ‘He must’ve recognised the key when I showed it to him,’ murmured Doña Marisa. Ninetta left us then to prepare a small repast for us.

Of a sudden, Doña Marisa clutched at her belly.

‘Ay, I’ve felt it move,’ marvelled she.

‘Is your maccaroni swimming in there?’ wondered I.

With a broad grin, she patted my cheek. ‘I’m having a baby, and you will have a new brother or sister.’

I goggled at her swollen belly. ‘Truly?’

‘Indeed,’ confirmed she.

‘Will you put it in the roda?’ I frowned at the thought of my baby brother or sister eating meagre soup every day, sleeping on a patch of straw and begging for alms.

This shocked her. ‘I shan’t go near a foundling turnbox wheel again.’

‘Do you promise?’

‘Sí, I promise,’ said she in a clear and quiet voice.

She placed my hand on her belly, and I felt something mysterious move therein. Had I ever lived inside of her belly? I certainly didn’t remember having done so. And that is how I discovered the best thing in the world would happen and by far much better than a moon, namely, I would have a new brother or sister. That night I dreamt of a tender-hearted boy, a sweet boy, with golden hair, rosy cheeks and clear blue eyes as pretty as rosolio drops, the two of us sitting under an orange-tree arm in arm, feeding each other sugary gewgaws. I kissed my little brother, and I tickled him on his belly. ‘Ha! Ha!’ giggled he, my half of a brother. Thereafter, I dressed him in my majo costume, and he leapt high in the air, crying ‘Olé!’ He possessed the spirit of a true bolero dancer, because he was the brother of my soul.