Robert told him his opinion was noted but asked John to take him down anyway, which he did, as far as they could go along the walkway to and around the monastery church and then over the rougher patch toward the shoreline. John lifted Robert out of the chair and carried him toward the water’s edge while Vitto wheeled the chair behind them. Then, with Valerie holding one arm and Vitto the other, Robert made his way out into the water—the calm waves lazily lapping around his ankles as he wavered in their hands.
He closed his eyes and inhaled the ocean air, the smell of wet sand and rock and seaweed. Wind blew his thinning white hair against his shoulders and face, and he welcomed it all with a sun-drenched smile, all while Juba watched from the cliff top above. Ten minutes he stood in the low-rolling waves as the tide recycled itself around his ankles and feet. In and out the frothy waves flowed, in and out he breathed in the mist, no doubt remembering the countless times he’d taken to the water for his morning swims. The times he and Magdalena had gone into the water together for private swims under the moonlight or on lazy days in their fishing boat.
“What is the sense most associated with memory, Vitto?” he quizzed.
Seeing that Robert’s eyes were still closed, Vitto guessed, “Smell.”
“Yes. The smell. Nothing can bring the moment back faster.”
Vitto looked back and saw that Landry Tuffant had joined them, and from the tear-filled look he gave Vitto, along with the slight head nod, Vitto assumed he’d found the painting of his father. Another painting of the real, another nudge toward Vitto finding his calling, his faith in the cause. His quest for knowledge somehow complete.
When Robert’s depleted legs began to tremble, John carried him back to the wheelchair, and they processed up the monks’ hillside toward the hotel. By the time they reached the piazza, the sky had begun to darken. The ocean waves behind them pounded higher. Robert eyed the encroaching purple clouds, almost low enough to touch. “A storm is coming.”
But the tempest proved slow moving, the air around them eerily silent. On Robert’s advice they moved dinner early, last call even earlier. But instead of the typical social game and trading of stories, Robert gathered everyone around and said he would tell only one story—a short one, for he was tired and could hear his bed calling.
William said, “I don’t hear anything, Grandpa Robert. And beds can’t talk.”
“I promise at my age that they do. Everything talks, William. The walls, the floors . . . the weather. Your bones. They all have stories to tell.”
“Then tell us a story.”
Robert leaned forward in his wheelchair, bony fingers intertwined, and paused, searching his memory for what he wanted to say. His morning dose of water was well on its way to wearing off. But earlier, when Vitto had offered him a little more to get him through the day, he’d shaken his head in quiet, solemn refusal.
Finally he held up a finger. “Ah, here’s a brief story, a quick reminder to sustain you. It’s about the goddesses known as the Charites, also known as the Graces. They are usually depicted in art as three beautiful naked women holding hands in a circle and dancing.”
William said, “He said naked.”
“Yes, William, naked! These Graces are friends to the nine beautiful Muses. And they are goddesses of grace and beauty and joy. Festivity and dance and song, my friends. Happiness and rest and relaxation.” He grinned and opened his hands, palms to the sky. “You’ve all earned it. Before the thread is cut, my friends, I offer this. Ignore the pains and aches and groans of mortality and instead hold hands and dance.”
William turned to Vitto, confused. “That wasn’t much of a story.”
Vitto squeezed his hand. Then the first raindrop fell, and soon fat drops were splattering all over the piazza, plopping into the fountain water and filling the air with the pleasant aroma of earth and stone.
Vitto stood there for a moment, mindlessly watching the guests hunker against the rainfall and slowly move toward their respective rooms. Then he came to and realized his father meant for him to wheel him out of the rain, but not before he’d given both William and Valerie a kiss good night—a kiss to both cheeks with whispers of buona notte.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” said William, Vitto wondering if he’d almost inflected it as a question.
“Not if I see you first, William.”
The rain fell harder, the drops covering more stone, as Vitto pushed Robert’s chair over the travertine toward his room. Robert, eyes closed, tilted his head up and sniffed. “Petrichor, the smell of rain. Do you know where the word comes from, Vittorio?”
“No, but I assume you’ll tell me.”
“From the Greek words petra, which means stone, and ichor. And do you know what ichor is, Vittorio? It’s the fluid that runs through the veins of Greek gods.”
“Of course it is.”
Robert laughed. “Always so arch, my Vitto.”
Vitto held the door open with his foot and rolled the wheelchair inside. He helped Robert shuffle from the chair to the bed and got him under the covers as the rain pounded harder against the roof tiles and sluiced down in curtains to the piazza. A comforting sound, a soporific sound from his childhood, the sound of spring rains that produced plump olives and fat grapes and never failed to yield eventual sunshine again.
Robert scooted to his normal position against the wall, leaving Magdalena’s side open. His head lolled on the pillow, facing Vitto and the chair he’d just pulled up bedside. His eyes were still so powerfully blue, yet behind them Vitto sensed the onset of confusion, and even more so in the crinkled brow above them.
Vitto leaned closer. “Dad, it’s me. Vittorio.”
“Vittorio, yes.” Robert grinned. His brittle hair whisked against the pillow. “When I first held you, I felt as if you were a part of me, a part of me freely given. The color I’d been granted since reuniting with your mother flickered briefly then, like an old lightbulb might before it eventually goes out. And I somehow knew. I’d always known.”
“Known what?”
He smiled. “That you’d somehow be the death of me.”
Vitto leaned back in his chair.
“I’m only kidding . . .” His eyes searched, suddenly confused again.
“I’m here. Vittorio.”
“Yes . . . Vittorio.” He’d begun fidgeting with the sheets. “Where am I?”
“The Tuscany Hotel, Dad. Your hotel.”
“My temple,” he whispered, and then, “Where was I?”
“I was apparently the death of you.”
Robert grinned, closed his eyes. “The life, Vitto. The life of me.”
“You were afraid of the son just like the gods were afraid of the son.”
“I was . . . until I wasn’t. Until I realized the meaning of my penance here on earth. I wasn’t the sun about which all the planets orbited, Vitto. I was merely one of the planets, one of the moons in need of that sun. In need of a son. To give of myself to.” His pale lips seemed touched by sadness. “Just another god fallen. Or perhaps never a god at all.”
“But look what you created.”
“And what you will continue.” He went quiet again, his eyes now on the ceiling, a fresco of the nine Muses. And then his head rolled toward his son again. “Vitto.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what’s more boring than watching paint dry?”
“What?”
“Watching an old man sleep.” He grinned, shivered. “Go to your wife. And see that both sides of the bed remain occupied, always.”
Thirty-Six
Ticktock goes the clock.
Waves crash, burying rocks in foam and mist: shoreline erased.
Thunder booms, heavy drums. Hotel walls tremble, unseen hands grip from above. Wind whistles a rhythmic song, as delicate as a flute, as powerful as the heavens. Lightning streaks the sky, ripping with knives of gold.
William crawls into bed with them, scared. Vitto and Valerie tell him not to be. It’s just
a storm, and storms pass. And yet ticktock goes the clock, the hands clicking softly, but somehow still audible through the noise.
More thunder. More lightning. Vitto holds close to his family, and at some point he dreams of footsteps. Heavy shoes. Juba’s shoes. They click-clack across the travertine as he walks, a suitcase gripped in each massive brown hand. He pauses at the fountain, rests the suitcases next to the tiles, and fills a cup with the rain. He drinks, sets the cup down, and turns back toward his bar, which is lit but curtained with rainfall. Rain drips from his fedora, the bill of which he touches and tilts toward the bar, the bar behind which his voice has carried for decades. Last call, says the ghost of his voice, now a voice inside the walls, inside every stone. He lifts his suitcases and walks across the piazza. He disappears into the shadows, into the middle of the three Roman arches at the entrance, and ticktock goes the clock.
Waves soar as they hit the rocks at the shoreline, and Juba stands before it all, looking up, looking in, a suitcase in each hand. He looks up to the cliffs and then again at the sea, the raging waters, and walks right into the roil, singing, his voice deeper than the ocean floor, more powerful than its cresting waves. And as soon as he enters, the water calms. The thunder grows silent, the sky dark, and the clouds float quietly like his hat atop the water. The fedora disappears into the shadows, giving way to a sun that rises yellow and bold, and ticktock goes the clock.
But slower the hands go.
And Vitto hears his father’s voice as a child.
“I am the Renaissance.”
And the hands on the clock grow slower.
Ticktock.
And then they stop.
* * *
Vitto’s eyes shot open.
He sat up quickly in bed, stirring both William and Valerie with his sudden movement.
“Vitto, what is it?” Valerie hugged her pillow, groggy.
“Just a dream.” Sunlight shone through the window, bright white and yellow. He put his shoes on and tucked in his shirt. The storm had passed, leaving in its wake a morning to be painted, a cloudless blue sky and air fresh with spring and birdsong.
“What time is it?”
Vitto didn’t know, didn’t care, was suddenly afraid to look down at his watch as he stepped out onto the piazza, where a handful of guests stood around chatting and noticeably staring toward Robert’s closed door.
“Hey, Gandy?” Vitto turned toward John, who added, “I can’t find Juba anywhere.”
Valerie and William emerged from the room, catching what was just said. “Where do you think he’s gone?”
Vitto ran to the bar and noticed the clock on the wall, the hands no longer moving. The clock had finally stopped. “Not with Magdalena’s death, but . . .” He hurried to Robert’s room, found his father on the bed, unmoving, peaceful, hands folded, fingers interlocked on his chest as if praying.
Valerie had stopped William at the door and then knelt next to him when he asked why Grandpa Robert wasn’t moving. Tears, both silent and loud, from all three of them. On Magdalena’s side of the bed lay a leather journal. On Robert’s side, close to his body, his hammer and tools had been left. Next to them lay a note. Vitto unfolded it.
Vittorio,
Your father asked that I give you this journal upon his passing. In it is the last story written by your mother, the one she told at her last call. I translated it from the Italian so that you would understand her words. In a style only befitting your father, he wishes to be buried at sea. Behind the bar, in a freshly cleaned glass, you will find two coins to pay the boatman.
Ta leme (Greek for till we speak again)
Juba
Vitto folded the note. Below his name Juba had drawn a symbol, a small picture of what looked to be an instrument—on second glance, a lyre.
“Vitto, what is it?” Valerie stepped into the room, eyeing what had been left on the bed.
He handed her the note, then whispered, “Apollo.”
Weeping sounded across the piazza. Word of Robert’s passing had spread quickly, and soon all the guests had gathered—milling aimlessly around the fountain, around the scattered tables, around the slab of marble still covered in the large brown cloth.
The note was now in William’s hands. Vitto knew the boy could read the words but would not understand any of the meaning. But he’d heard what Vitto had whispered aloud. “Who is Apollo?” he asked.
Vitto walked his son out into the brightly lit piazza, any sadness now suddenly replaced with a warmth and sense of pride he wasn’t yet ready to explain.
“Dad, why are you smiling?”
Vitto stopped, knelt down eye to eye with William. “Juba drew a picture of a lyre. It’s the instrument known to symbolize Apollo. He’s a very important god, William, the son of Zeus and the god of many things. Of sunlight and knowledge. Of music and art. Of medicine. He’s always depicted in art with a face forever youthful.” He patted William’s tiny shoulders. “And he’s the leader of the Muses.”
William stared. “Why did Juba draw it?”
“I don’t know.” But perhaps he did and didn’t know how to explain it. He took William by the hand and led him toward the marble slab Robert had covered with the brown cloth, concealing what he’d carved the other night, what he’d called his final masterpiece. Together, he and Valerie and William pulled it off. The guests stepped closer, pinched in to get a better view.
The marble appeared as it had for the past several months, seemingly untouched. Vitto walked around it, looking for signs of the chiseling he knew he’d heard.
“Here it is, Gandy.”
Vitto moved to where John stood but still saw nothing that could have resembled a sculpture, or even the beginnings of one. Then he looked lower and saw it—not a chisel mark or indentation, but words carefully clinked into the stone, the letters no more than an inch tall but easily readable now that they’d spotted them:
Robert and Magdalena
The Renaissance Man and His Muse
* * *
“Who does this?” Valerie whispered to Vitto that afternoon as they climbed aboard a gleaming yacht in the small private marina south of Gandy. “Who chooses to be buried at sea?”
“Someone who wants to be with his wife.”
“If she’s out there at all. Vitto, I don’t think this is even legal.”
“If we’re lucky, no one will know.”
His eyes took in the rustic wooden casket behind them on the deck. His father’s body stretched out inside—the coins to pay the boatman on his eyes, his body and carving tools rolled inside the brown cloth he’d used to cover his final masterpiece, along with chunks of heavy stone meant to keep him below the waves.
Following Robert’s instructions had taken some doing. Apparently it was one thing to bury a body at sea when you were far from land, but taking one out for that purpose had proved more of a challenge. But Robert had made arrangements that made it easier. He’d had the casket made months before and stored in the basement of Father Embry’s church. And he’d called in a favor from an old friend—a famous writer who lived nearby and remembered the hotel’s glory days—to arrange for the yacht. Clearly intrigued and sworn to secrecy, the man now prepared to cast off while Vitto, Valerie, William, and Father Embry donned life jackets and found their seats.
Valerie hugged her husband’s arm as the yacht’s big motor rumbled to life beneath them. “It just pains me to think of him out there. And what if he washes up somewhere?”
“It’s what he wanted, Val.” Vitto gripped Valerie’s hand. “And something tells me there soon won’t be a body to be found.”
“What, you think it’ll disappear like your mother’s? As if swallowed by some great fish?”
“That would make for a story, would it not?”
“Juba will help us understand it all when he gets back.” Her voice was infinitely sad, and he knew that Juba’s absence was a greater loss for her. No one knew where he had gone. A search of the hotel grounds had reve
aled no trace of him.
Vitto considered telling her about the dream he’d had of Juba, still dressed in his clothes and fedora, walking right into these very waters and disappearing into the ocean. Perhaps one day he would tell her, once he figured out the meaning himself.
Had it been some kind of vision? Had Juba really walked into the ocean? Or had he simply gotten into a car and driven off in the night after the clock on the wall behind the bar had finally stopped ticking and after he’d left Robert’s tools and Magdalena’s last journal.
Her final story told.
But reading what his mother had written would have to wait for later tonight. Because once their current task was through, there was celebrating to do. Even now, back at the hotel, Johnny Two-Times and his staff was preparing a feast in his father’s honor. They would dine on the piazza and bring up vintage wine from the cellar. They’d congregate and tell stories. Those who could play musical instruments would play. Those who could sing would sing. Those who could dance would dance.
It would be a feast and celebration fit for the gods. A festival to honor the Graces. A fitting good-bye to a man who’d once thought himself a god but had managed to grow into an unforgettable human.
Landry Tuffant had offered to write an article on the celebration. He’d already asked permission to write another article on the heroism of Magdalena of the Wheel, to which Vitto had hugged the man and said he’d be honored. Robert would not want the guests to be solemn, would not want the mood of the night to be full of sadness—but of life.
* * *
That evening, while the guests and workers prepared, Vitto stood staring at the slab of marble on the piazza, at his mother and father’s name chiseled low and small and the rest of the stone surface smooth and untouched. All that blank space seemed out of place.
William had sidled up beside him, his eyes red and his cheeks puffy from recent tears. He stood in a way that defied his years, the same upright posture he used when he made his pretend rounds on the piazza, checking heartbeats and asking questions. He held up a hammer and chisel. “I found ’em behind the bar. I don’t think we were supposed to send these ones out to sea.”
Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel Page 30