The sliding door led to a little dining room with a circular table and eight leather low-backed chairs. Fran sat on the opposite side with Disa two chairs away to her right. The room had a stifling, almost ritualistic aura—a discomforting contrast to the joyful topics they were supposed to discuss.
“Please, sit down.”
Aida nervously took a seat across from Fran. Mo began to sit beside her, but Fran shook her head at the man.
“Fine.” His voice was petulant, like a child. He sat, leaving an empty chair between them.
The table in front of them was bare, save for a little box about half the size of a cell phone with a sleek black surface and a red button.
“Now then,” Disa said, pressing the button. Then Aida understood. The box was a digital voice recorder, although it didn’t look like any recorder Aida had ever seen. “Let us begin. We will ask you a series of questions. You will answer them to the best of your knowledge and ability. There is no wrong answer, so you can set aside all the nervousness roiling inside you.”
“Am I that obvious?” Aida said with a little laugh. A nervous laugh because, for all of Disa’s reassurance, it did nothing to calm her.
“Just get your snark on and you’ll be fine.” Mo leaned toward her as though he were conspiring.
Aida was not about toget her snark onin such a moment. She wished she could take a few deep breaths without it being weird. She needed to calm her pounding heart before she had a panic attack. Staring at the black box on the table, she imagined herself with the same dark shell, able to absorb anything that came her way.
“A reminder, Miss Reale, that you’ll not speak of this meeting with anyone else,” Fran warned. She had worn her long red hair up high and tight on her head in an intricately braided bun. It made her look much older and somewhat severe.
“Understood.”
“Tell us what you felt when you first walked into your new home in Rome.”
Aida faltered. Was this part of the report? Or chitchat? Fran’s question was rather ambiguous. Why would her living conditions be part of this?
“Go on,” Fran said.
“I have to admit being quite stunned. I’ve only seen such historic places when they’ve been turned into museums. I never dreamed I might find myself living in such a gorgeous palazzo.”
“You are happier here than you would be in Boston,” Mo said. It wasn’t a question.
Aida thought of Graham and his tongue in Erin’s mouth. After a moment’s hesitation, she agreed, “I am.” She was thankful they didn’t ask her to elaborate.
They peppered her with other questions: how she got along with Trista and the rest of the staff, how she liked the food, what it was like being in Rome and regularly speaking the language. Aida answered honestly, although she left out the part about feeling weird about her lack of privacy and her concern about surveillance. At last, the questions shifted to her work.
“Why do you think Goethe turned to the Greeks to build his mythology of Faust?” Mo asked her.
Aida was glad she had spent so much time diving into that side of Goethe. “He believed the ancient Greeks had achieved the perfection of humanity, and this is why they were the masters of literature and art. In his own works, he turned to the ancient myths and depicted humanity in battle against the gods. It was his allegory for the Enlightenment.”
Fran sniffed disdainfully.
Worried that perhaps she had given some sort of incorrect answer, Aida continued in a rush. “He thought the Greeks demonstrated their understanding of human nature through the mythology of the classical gods, and he strove to emulate this in his own works, not just inFaust, but in poems such as ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Ganymede.’”
“Enough,” Disa said, cutting her off. “We already know what Goethe thought about the gods. Let’s move on.”
The questions bombarded her with dizzying speed, each a pointed query that dug into her meticulously prepared reports. “What did you think the first time you saw the Tischbein painting in the Goethe museum?”
Why are they asking me this? Didn’t they read my detailed observations?She offered a rehearsed response. “It was like seeing happiness distilled into pigments and brushstrokes.”
The next question shot at her like a bolt. “What made people happy about seeing the Andy Warhol painting of Goethe?”
Her mind raced. She had reported about the blend of modern and classical aesthetics, but was that what they were after? Or did they expect some revelation? “People found joy in Warhol’s subversion of the classical—how he breathed new life into a cultural icon,” she said, aware that she was also questioning her own understanding of happiness with every answer.
Next, they pivoted to her time in Venice, and after forty minutes of questions, Aida wished she had a cup of coffee. She never slept well the night before flying, and in addition to the emotions weighing upon her, the questioning was mentally exhausting.
After his initial question, Mo had been silent through the barrage from Disa and Fran but finally brought up a new inquiry. “Were you happy in the Chapel of the Madonna di Vitaleta?”
“I was till you arrived,” she blurted out, then silently cursed herself. Why did he bring out such a sarcastic side to her?
