Anne lowered her gaze from the sky to her husband. “Where am I?”
“The Tuscany Hotel, dear. Remember?”
“How long have we been here?”
He paused, gathered himself for a smile. “All of our lives, dear.”
“Oh . . .” She looked around again, as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s beautiful.”
Phillip squeezed her hand lovingly and laughed. To Vitto, he said, “Humor is the universal language, is it not?”
Vitto nodded in agreement, and then Anne looked at him and pointed to her husband. “Who is this man holding my hand?”
“Your husband, Mrs. Rosenberg. Phillip.”
She lowered her voice so only Vitto could hear. “He’s handsome.”
It was clear Phillip heard her anyway; he smiled and gave her hand another squeeze.
Vitto said, “I think you should marry him, Mrs. Rosenberg.”
“Oh, call me Anne.” She looked up at her husband. “And I just might.”
Phillip took both her hands in his. “Will you marry me, Anne?”
She blushed, looked away. “Well, I don’t know. We’ve only just met.”
Phillip forced a smile; her words had stung him, but he tried hard not to show it. He looked into his wife’s eyes. “What do you say? I predict we’ll have six children. Twenty-three grandchildren. And six great-grandchildren.”
“Oh my. We’ll have to get busy then,” she said.
Phillip laughed and teared up at the same time. He said to Vitto, “You try hard to make humor of the things that upset you, because what else can you do?”
“What else can you do?” Vitto repeated softly to himself.
“Show her the painting,” said Phillip. “See if it registers.”
Vitto held it in front of his chest while she stared at it, knowingly, he hoped. The silence was awkward, so he felt the need to explain. “You struggle to remember the past, Mrs. Rosenberg. So I painted it for you. In the present.” He swallowed, suddenly nervous. “I’m painting the real.” She seemed to be ignoring him, her eyes focused on the painting. Vitto felt foolish and said, “That’s you and—”
She pointed at the canvas, glanced at her husband as if the memory had suddenly hit her. “That’s me and you, dear. In the vineyard.”
“Yes,” said Phillip, excitedly. “Yes. That’s me and you in the vineyard. Good. Good. Would you like to take a walk there now?”
She nodded, slowly, eyes alert for now. “Yes. I think I’d like that.”
Vitto painted six other canvases throughout the day, recalling his memories of others from recent weeks and months and showing them to those who’d lost them, all with similar results to what had occurred with the Rosenbergs. By nightfall, two patients who’d stopped drinking the water had given in and gone to the fountain again. They had returned to the state they’d been in before, their memory restored, although they now showed a hint of trepidation and fear as they moved about.
Valerie was out on the piazza with a few stragglers after last call, playing her violin, possibly finding new purpose with her music, just as he had with his art. Vitto walked William to their room and tucked him into bed and pulled up the covers to his chin. Outside, the piano started up in accompaniment to Valerie’s violin. Vitto assumed it was Mrs. Eaves, although he’d felt certain she’d retired to bed when the night’s stories ended. Out the window he found Juba at the piano, playing as well as any concert pianist. Seeing the two of them play together again was a blessing in itself.
“Can you tell me another story?” William asked from the bed. “Like last night.”
Vitto faced the bed, tried to recall what story he’d told, and then remembered after glimpsing the ceiling fresco. “What kind of story?”
William shrugged. “I dunno. Start from the beginning.”
The beginning of what? Vitto sat on the side of the bed facing William’s and chewed the inside of his mouth while he thought of something to tell. He spotted William’s stethoscope on the bedside table. “You going to be a doctor when you grow up?”
“I already am.”
Am what? thought Vitto. Already a doctor or already grown up? The way he talked with the elderly guests, Vitto thought both could be accurate. “You looked good out there today.”
William shrugged, still waiting for his story. Vitto thought back to the stories his mother used to tell him at night and decided to start there. The thought of duplicating them for his own son made his heart warm, especially now that he could see the reflections of their lives in the stories more clearly. “How about we start with the ancients?”
“The who?”
“The Greek gods and such.”
“Are they funny?”
“Well, no, not really, although some of the stories are so fantastical that they could be a bit humorous.”
“Okay. Are there giants?”
“Yes. And those one-eyed beasts called Cyclopes too.”
William grinned and nodded for Vitto to go on, so he did. He thought back to exactly how his mother had started, and all the weird names came back in a flash. “There was a guy named Hesiod, who wrote something called the Theogony.”
“This is boring.”
“It gets better. Now, Hesiod claims the first deity was—”
“What’s a deity?”
“Like a god. As my mother and Hesiod tell it, the first deity was named Chaos. And out of Chaos jumped Erebus.”
“What’s that?”
“The god of darkness. But that’s not all. Out came Aether too. That’s the god of light. And Nyx—night . . . and Hemera—day. Tartarus, the underworld. And Eros.”
“Who’s that?”
Here he paused. “The god of procreation.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Another night.”
“So Eros is the god of another night?”
“No, forget him. For now. But these primordial gods typically depicted places. Like Gaia. She was the goddess of earth, or Mother Nature.”
“What’d she look like?”
“She was beautiful.”
“Like Mommy?”
“Yes. Just like Mommy.”
William’s eyelids grew heavy, and Vitto wondered if Magdalena had told the story better, but he plowed on regardless; he found the remembrance of it all somehow cathartic. “So in other words, Gaia was another daughter of Chaos. Along with Uranus, the god of the heavens, and Pontus, the god of the sea, and several others.”
William yawned as if to say something good better happen fast.
“Well,” said Vitto. “Uranus and Gaia—”
“Brother and sister?”
Vitto nodded. The kid was half-asleep but still sharp as a needle. “They gave birth to the Titans. The Titans ruled during the Golden Age.”
William closed his eyes but said, “Keep talking.” So Vitto did, reeling off names of Titans as he remembered them, and before he could exhaust his mental list, William snored softly.
Vitto whispered that he’d continue where they’d left off tomorrow. Tonight he’d only begun setting the stage. The various generations of gods would eventually go to war against each other, but that was a story for another day.
Vitto hovered at the bed for a beat, then bent to kiss William’s forehead before leaving the room. As he reached the door, William said, “Good night, Dad.”
Vitto’s heart grew warm for the second time in ten minutes. “Good night, son.”
Twenty-Six
The next morning Vitto joined Valerie for a quick breakfast at one of the scattered piazza tables. Both of them found enjoyment in watching William make his rounds. He’d added a small leather bag to his doctor ensemble, and from it, after he’d briefly spoken with a “patient,” he would pull out a pad to jot down notes. This reminded both Vitto and Valerie of Magdalena, but in a way that brought them smiles instead of sadness.
Mr. Rosenberg patted William’s shoulder.
Vitto finished his bacon and wonde
red what had been said during that conversation, what little William had written down. John had fixed bacon and eggs and toast, all soft enough for the guests to chew without trouble. Cowboy Cane had suggested as much early on in his stay. “Personally,” he’d said, “I could still chew through a rare steak with my eyes closed, but some of these people’s teeth aren’t even real.” So John made sure all his food was easily chewable. Vitto wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and dropped it on his empty plate.
Valerie sipped her hot coffee, reached across the table to give Vitto’s hand a quick squeeze, and they shared a smile as William moved to his next patient. Those gestures said more than words could. He got up with a boost to his step, ready to paint the real, ready to help some of these old folks remember the present.
The Rosenbergs stood together, only a few paces from the fountain, and something about the way Anne held Phillip’s arm told Vitto that she’d started drinking the water again. He watched some of the others, specifically some of the ones who’d stopped drinking in fear of the possible repercussions, and noticed that a handful of them also looked more together and aware than they’d been yesterday. Then he spotted Juba walking through the piazza with a tray of tiny cups and handing them out as he usually did. The daily doses of medicine. But today the doses looked smaller.
Vitto called Juba over. “What’s going on?”
“An experiment,” he said.
“What kind of experiment? These people are old, Juba, but they aren’t mice.”
“Nothing like that.” Juba smiled and handed out another cup to an elderly woman who quickly downed it, smacked her pale lips like it was sweet nectar, and placed it back on his tray. “It was William’s idea—so simple I can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.” He handed another cup to a man who sipped on his way to a table of friends. “We were so distracted by the thought of what could be,” said Juba, “that we overlooked the obvious.”
“What are you talking about?”
“William, he comes to me this morning . . .” Juba stopped as William himself approached. “Here he is. William, you tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“What you told me this morning.”
“About the eggs being good?”
“No, about the . . . chocolate bar.”
Vitto knew why Juba had paused, probably realizing too late the significance of what those two words would mean to Vittorio. What the chocolate bar he’d given to that concentration camp victim had ultimately done. But William held no such qualms, or perhaps didn’t realize how badly the memory still hurt.
“Oh,” he said with a snap, as if just remembering what Juba was talking about. “You know how you gave that chocolate bar to that man at that place? In the war?”
“You heard all that?” He recalled someone walking William away that night so he wouldn’t hear it.
William nodded. “You were talking real loud. Anyway, I wondered what would have happened if you didn’t give him the entire chocolate bar? Maybe if you gave him just a pinch at first he wouldn’t have died.” Vitto stared, not because some revelation had just struck him, but because he’d thought the same thing for months. That was the burden he carried.
William bravely went on. “Mommy always tells me too much of anything isn’t good, even too much of a good thing. That’s why when she gives me candy, she only gives it to me in pieces.”
“Smaller doses,” Vitto whispered to himself.
“What’s a dose?” William didn’t wait long for an answer. “Anyway, I asked Juba what if we give ’em smaller pieces of the water to drink? Then they won’t die as fast.”
Vitto looked over at Valerie and covered his smile. Oblivious, William moved on to the next table.
Juba said, “So I cut back on the doses. I didn’t pressure anyone, but some of the guests who’d stopped drinking decided to try it and see what happened. Maybe it won’t last as long. Or maybe it won’t work as well. Only time will tell.” He focused on Vitto. “But if it doesn’t work as well, I figured you could help fill whatever void ensues.”
“How might I do that?”
“With those paintings. Capture everything you see here. Paint the memories for them, just in case they start forgetting. Then show them the paintings like you did for the Rosenbergs. It helped them, Vitto. And—” He broke off, attention diverted across the piazza. Vitto followed his gaze and saw Robert emerge from his room and step out onto the sunlit piazza, more alert and steady on his feet than he’d been when they followed him to the cliff. Robert shook hands with several of the guests, patted a few others on the back, and then made his way to his untouched sculpture, where he picked up his hammer and chisel and resumed his now signature pose in that chair, waiting for inspiration, for an idea.
Waiting for his muse.
Vitto caught Juba’s eye. “I assume he’s drinking the water again?”
“I’m afraid so. But to what end I can’t say.”
* * *
“What does castrate mean?”
Vitto sat on the edge of the bed, stumped over how to explain the word and mentally kicking himself for letting it slip out during tonight’s bedtime story. But the word had been crucial to the story, and if the boy was to become a doctor one day, a real doctor, it was a word he probably should know.
“When the Titans were in power,” he had said, “Uranus ruled over all the universe. But he hated his children.”
“Hated his children? Why?”
“He just did,” he’d told William. “He even locked up some of them, like the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires”—William had enjoyed learning about them—“in the depths of the earth, the place called Tartarus. That’s Hades,” Vitto had explained.
“Why’d he send them there?”
“I don’t know, but probably because they were big and ugly and looked different. Gaia, their mother, didn’t appreciate this too much, so she decided to take revenge on her tyrannical husband, Uranus. She created a giant sickle—that’s like a huge knife—and told her children to castrate their father, then overthrow him.”
That’s what had prompted William’s uncomfortable question, which Vitto decided to answer as simply as he could. “They cut off his manhood.”
William nodded, serious looking, like he understood but really didn’t, but that was good enough for Vitto. “Hyperion was a Titan, one of the sons of Uranus and Gaia. He married his sister Theia.”
“His sister?”
“Yes.”
“That’s weird.”
“You bet. But listen to this. They had three children, and their names were Helios, Selene, and Eos.”
William chuckled.
“Funny names, I know, but they were gods too.”
“Of what?”
“The sun, the moon, and the dawn.” William’s eyes grew large, and Vitto used the burst of interest as fuel. “Back to Hyperion. He was one of the four pillars holding the heavens and earth apart.”
“Why?”
“So the sky wouldn’t fall down and squash us flat.”
“Like one of Johnny Two-Times’s hotcakes?”
“Exactly,” said Vitto, reminiscing back to when he was William’s age and in bed and Magdalena was telling the same to him, except without all the questions. “Since Hyperion’s daughter was goddess of the dawn, he was probably the pillar of the east. The other three pillars were Hyperion’s brothers: Coeus in the north, Crius in the south, and Iapetus in the west. These were the four Titans who held their father Uranus in place while Cronus did what he did with that sickle. The blood of Uranus fell down and splattered on the earth, creating three more sets of children.”
“How’s that even possible?”
“I don’t know, but it happened, according to this Hesiod guy.”
“And Grandma.”
“And Grandma. The blood created the Gigantes, or giants.” William’s eyes flashed with excitement. “They were mean and ugly. And the Furies, these three goddesses of vengeance, who woul
d punish people for bad things they did. And then there were the Meliae. They were tree nymphs or something. But the blood of Uranus that fell upon the sea created Aphrodite. The goddess of love and beauty. Born of sea foam.”
William blinked like he couldn’t believe it and didn’t want to. Vitto said, “Although Homer claims Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus.”
“Who’s Homer?”
“Another ancient storyteller, like Hesiod.”
“Okay. So who’s Zeus?”
“Oh, I’ll get to that.”
“What happened to the guy who got it with the sickle?”
“Well, Cronus overthrew him, and he became the ruler of the universe instead of his father.” Vitto held up a finger. “But not before Uranus made a prophecy.” Vitto anticipated William’s question: “That’s sort of like a prediction. A telling of the future. His prophecy was that Cronus would also be overthrown by his sons. So, fearing the same fate, Cronus became a paranoid, tyrant god like his father. He put his brothers in Tartarus.”
“In Hades.”
“Very good. And so his own children wouldn’t turn on him like the prophecy said, Cronus, he, uh . . . he . . .” Vitto bit his lip, contemplating how to explain this one.
“What did he do to them, Dad?”
“He ate them.”
William’s eyes popped. “Eat ’em in bites like a cookie? Or in one pop like an olive?”
“Probably in one pop. Remember, he was a god. He could do that. But he didn’t manage to eat them all, which is where Zeus comes into the story . . . But that’s enough for tonight.”
At that point Valerie had come in, so he halted the story in fear of her disapproval of the content. “I’ll tell you that story tomorrow night.”
William was asleep ten minutes later, and Vitto was at the window watching his father watch that slab of marble on the piazza. He wanted to go down there and tell him that it wasn’t going to carve itself, that he wasn’t getting any younger, and if he was going to carve that last great masterpiece he’d better get started before the water finished him off.
Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel Page 23