My Brother's Keeper

by Marcia Davenport

  And from her pallor, her closely set lips, he knew that she too was struggling with the terrible questions at the heart of this simple event which should be a commonplace in any child’s life, but a milestone also of pride and hope and rejoicing when one’s child was as bright as John. She only looked at Randall, with a burden of pitiful anxiety her eyes. He could not speak for a moment either. He sat watching her, sitting there in the lamplight with her work in her lap, her hands crossed on top of it in such a way as to suggest that if she moved them she would betray her agitation.

  “Randalo,” she said, after a long time. “You have thought? You have been thinking?”

  “All the time. More and more … every time I look at him. Oh, Renata,” he sighed, “there is so much I am afraid to say.”

  She nodded heavily. “I too.”

  “Even to approach it … to begin at the beginning … the very first question. Where is he to start school?”

  He had to bend towards her to hear what she said, her head was bowed so low. “Is for you to say, Randalo.”

  “It means. It means that a number of things have to be decided,” he said, with all the reluctance which proclaimed his loathing of such crises.

  “I know.”

  “If I take him back to America soon—”

  Her head came up slowly; he saw her swallow and strain to hold a posture of imperturbability. She said, “In America is the Simorr, Randalo.”

  “Oh, not again with him,” he said quickly, with a note of panic. “Not anything like that.”

  “How you know?” she asked in the same still voice. “How you can say? Is the Simorr afflitto, a tragic man, helpless. You suppose he remain always alone like this? Such a thing could not be. One day needs you very much the Simorr. With your good heart you think you refuse him?”

  “If I have to choose between him and John.”

  “Is not reasonable what you say. Is not what happen in the life. Will become the boy a splendid man, a man able to make the life for himself.”

  He put his head in his hands and sat bent over, his elbows braced on his knees. She said only, “What you decide, should be only what seem the very best for—for—” he looked up and stared at her because of her hesitation. “Sebastiano,” she finished firmly. He dropped his head again. He spoke from behind his hands.

  “Is that your way,” he asked, “of suggesting you think he ought to stay in Italy?”

  “Not necessarily. If were different some things, is possible I would suggest it. You yourself, many times, you have say he is happy here, is not like you have keep him hidden in New York.”

  “But I wouldn’t be in New York—”

  “No,” she said, with something ominous in her voice. “Not until the Simorr he need you.”

  “And if he—John—were to be educated here,” said Randall slowly, “there is the question of—everything. His name, his identity.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked up at her and she almost shrank from the bewildered, suffering look of his blue eyes. They seemed unnaturally dark in color. “I suppose,” he said, “it would be solved if—if we married?”

  He had not expected to see the cold curtain of evasiveness which immediately veiled her face. He was nonplussed. At the same time he was aware of his own deep sense of uneasiness, a startling realization that he had forced himself onto ground where he would have preferred not to step. He waited for her answer in miserable suspense; he found he was afraid to hear it. She said, “Would be solved that question, Randalo, but it is not something I would do.”

  He looked at her in great surprise. “But, Renata—”

  She shook her head, very slowly and with a strange suggestion of age.

  “But, Renata,” he said again, “you have just said this thing has got to be decided entirely for the sake of John. You are right. If you mean that, I don’t see how you can refuse to marry me since that would give him the name he must have if he were to be brought up and educated in Italy.”

  He heard her say something so softly that he missed her words altogether and had to ask her to repeat them.

  “I asked,” she murmured, “if you have overlook’ my reason for refusing?” She raised her eyes to give him a long probing glance, and dropped them again and whispered, “You do not want to marry me either. For the same reason.”

  A gulf of pain lay open between them, a spectre in its depths. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, my God …”

  After a time he raised his head and sat looking at her, opening his mouth to speak, and shutting it again because the words would not come. Then he pulled himself upright in his chair, rose quickly, walked around the table and put his hand under her chin. He raised her face and stood looking down into it. His own skin was pallid beneath the warm color dyed upon it by the sun. He could have closed his eyes to avoid the sight of hers, dark with mortification and suffering. But he forced himself and said slowly, “Have you any way of knowing, Renata? Can you possibly tell me—for sure—which one it was?”

  She put up her hands and seized his right one holding her chin, and thrust it away so that she could bow her head and not have to look at him any more. He saw her head shake heavily, right and left. She said nothing. Never had her simple, rational fortitude struck him as so heartrending as at this moment. He stood there for a long time, looking at the top of her bowed head, himself so drained of strength that he felt the numbness of his feet and knees. He heard again the beating of the dark, heavy wings, once more he felt the flailing at the sealed doors; the prison of himself, the prison of his heritage. As he had done in other awful urgencies, he fell upon his knees and took her hands and said, “Renata, help me. Help us both, all three of us, John too. Tell me. Say. Say—anyway—” he put his face upon her knees. He felt her trembling. “Tell me that you know,” he pleaded in a throbbing whisper. “Say whose he is.”

  He felt her hands move and fall softly upon his head. “I cannot,” she said, her voice laden with tears.

  “You have no way of knowing? Not even by instinct? Does not something tell you?”

  “I only know,” he heard her say, “whose I wish he were.”

  He gave up the struggle with himself. When he could speak, he said, “And that is why you will not marry me?”

  “And also why you will not marry me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I believe I would do anything to solve this, to retrieve our wrongs. To make it up to John. Wouldn’t you?”

  “If I can believe is right what I do.”

  “Renata, has your church, your priest told you we cannot marry?”

  “On the contrary.”

  “Then who are you to set yourself above—”

  “I am not doing that. I am trying to think what is the best for the child. Is most important he have a name, a fine education, the opportunity for the place in the world. He has a brain, Randalo!”

  “But you are contradicting yourself. He must have a name, you are right, and I do not see how you can refuse to—”

  “A name, yes,” she said, looking up suddenly with flaring resolution. “But why yours?”

  “Why mine?” He sat back on the floor, leaning on his hands, squinting with bewilderment. “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  “If you will try to understand me,” she said, with a faint, wistful smile. “If you will have the patience. First you must have guess’ I have not lived here like this not thinking about this question? Is not so?”

  He nodded, wondering that she had so much determination where he lacked it. He could not say he had put thought on the matter; he had kept his head in the sand.

  “Naturally,” she said, “I cannot know what is your intention—even if you have any intention. I cannot ask you, I would fear to ask. But also I cannot help to think.”

  “Well?”

  “If you go in America and take the child with you, is the end of the situation here. What you do there cannot concern me. But sometimes it come to
me—Randalo, you understand, is very hard what I am trying to explain.” She put her hand on her breast as if to assuage a pain.

  He nodded again, slowly, watching her face intently. He said, “Go on, Renata. This is no time to be afraid to speak.”

  “Dio ti benedica,” she murmured. Then with a long, uncharacteristic sigh, she said, “Sometimes it come to me, this feeling, like—like, oh I do not know the word in English. Something you see in the future.”

  “A premonition.”

  “I suppose, yes.”

  “What is it you see?”

  “The Simorr,” she said, her voice trembling, low and dark. “Only because we do not speak often about him does not mean we do not think about him.”

  “You know me as well as that,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I know you. And so I know, if happen something which make you feel you must go and take care of the afflitto, the blind Simorr, I think you will not take the boy again into that bad place, that life of tragedy. Is not I would ask,” she said, slowly putting her hands on either side his face and looking deep into his eyes. “Is you would choose.”

  He felt helpless in the presence of her wisdom. He could only stare at her, searching her face as if for proof that she had become indeed the woman who was speaking now. Where was the person who had led him into all this, where the will-o’-the-wisp, the sparkling creature of his illusions? He felt for a time as if lost in the spaces of his search; then he came back to her grave, tender face looking so earnestly into his.

  “I love him so, Renata,” he said. “I love him—oh you cannot imagine how much. More than I ever loved anyone, my mother—more than I ever loved you.”

  “That is right. It should be so.”

  “And I cannot bear to think of life without him. To give him up—” he turned away, burying his face in his hands. He felt her touch his shoulder, the nape of his neck, his tense, clasped hands. There was a brooding silence. At last he raised his head. It was only with effort that she could sit so still, inwardly harrowed at the sight of his suffering. She spoke very quietly.

  “Is your love,” she said, “will tell you what to do for him.”

  “Even—oh, merciful God!—even to giving him up?”

  “Even. If is best for him.” Her eyes were heavy.

  He knew that she did not think his anguish unmanly, nor anything that he did a cause for shame. When he was able later to go on talking, he said, “Now is the time to tell me what you meant by what you said about his name.”

  “It occur to me when I have thought of all this. When came in my head the possibility he might remain here. Then I see is not so surely the best thing for him we marry and he have your name—especially if you must go away. If he should be Italian,” she said with great deliberation, “could be better he have an Italian name. An Italian identity. Everything to make for him most normale his situation.”

  “An American—an English—name; would that be a handicap?”

  “Not precisely. Only he would be something different, something always to explain. Here in the paesino would never be necessary explain anyway. Everybody know the truth, everybody love him, di fatti everybody protect him. But outside—in the cities—in the world. If he is Italian, he should have with pride a good Italian name.”

  “And how would you give him that?” Randall’s imagination had moved with some revulsion to what he expected to hear her say. Instead it was with amazement that he heard, “I would have adopt him my Zio Matteo.”

  “Renata! What?”

  “My Zio Matteo,” she repeated, perfectly impassive. “The younger brother of my Zio Gandolfi. You have seen him. You know him.”

  “But—” He stared. “I don’t understand.”

  “If adopts him my uncle, then he become like everybody else, what is good for a child when it begin to go to school. He would be registrato the son of Matteo Gandolfi, which would understand everybody here. And—”

  “But I don’t understand,” Randall repeated, shaking his head. He was astounded that she had so plainly thought this all out. “Why your Uncle Matteo?” he asked. “Why not—”

  “Because is the law here that is only permitted to adopt a child a person who has no children. Also must be at least fifty years old the person. Always they have lamented, Zio Matteo and his wife, that they had no children. Cosa vuoi? For Sebastiano—” again she pronounced the name with profound import “—would be the best thing. And when he go on to the better schools, where is necessary to be in towns, in cities, when he make his place in the life in Italy—then he have a good, respected name. A name knows everybody is an honest cognome from Lombardia.”

  He sat stock-still on the floor, silent for a long time. Then he said, “All this?” His forehead was puckered, his chin taut with incredulous surprise. “You have thought of all this?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, with her sad smile. “Is not necessary tell you how much I love him too. For this I have study a very long time what I could do if should be given me the opportunity—” she drew herself up as if with one last effort at perfect control; suddenly it was too much; she broke, burst into tears, and sobbed, “The chance to atone. To him. To my son who—” she wept piteously “—must not know the world to be my son.”

  The spring moved on, too dry; the birds turned silent and were followed by the grating racket of tree-crickets. The summer was unnaturally hot that year, bringing swarms of predatory insects and pretty, scuttling lizards with their curious charm. The grass was burnt for the first time in years; there was little fruit and little grain. Autumn came early and furiously, preceded by ferocious hailstorms. Then the heat fled; they had torrents of relentless, persistent rain. The lake erupted in savage tempests. October, usually the most magnificent month of all with its glorious radiance, was a sodden mess. November was worse; dank, dark, and cold. Randall had seen two Novembers past, wonderful interludes of the year’s last color; the blinding brilliant blue borne by the north wind, the golden glory of the poplars, the ripe persimmons glowing like orange-colored lanterns on their graceful, leafless trees. This year they dropped away and rotted in the cold, streaming rain; the hood of clouds never rose from the shoulders of the Grigna, and many people fell ill.

  In their house Randall kept them warm and dry with an extravagance of firewood which quite shocked Domenico and Zio Pepe, who helped him to stack it, and Renata whom he told to burn it. Anxiety was in the air, and misfortune; and because these people and their land were what they were, resignation. Neither for him when the shock came, nor for Renata when she knew about it, was there any real surprise. She looked into the studio room late one morning after the neighbor’s boy had brought the infrequent post, and saw Randall standing, dead white, with a letter crushed in his hand. There, she knew, is the thing I have foreseen, there is the substance of my premonition. He turned his head towards her at that moment and holding out his hand, said, “Here.” The hand was shaking helplessly. “Read this and see. You are always right.”

  She read the letter. Seymour, wrote the person whom she interpreted to be the family avvocato, had fallen down a flight of stairs, “the whole length of the first-floor staircase,” she read. “His left arm was fractured and is now in splints. Much more seriously, there appears to be an injury to the lower spinal column which has affected his legs. Whether the resulting paralysis will be permanent, it is impossible for the physicians to say as yet. Your brother is almost entirely uncooperative with them. He is in poor condition, and the contingent circumstances are such that I feel obliged to inform you, even though your brother, who never lost consciousness at any time, had categorically forbidden me to cable you, and now does not know that I am writing this letter contrary to his express instructions. His situation in that house, however, with no reliable person constantly in attendance, and his absolute refusal to be moved to a hospital, make me unwilling to accept further responsibility for not having apprised you of the facts.”

  Renata looked up at Randall, staring
, with a gleam of something in her eyes very like terror at the accuracy of her own intuition. He was still standing as if asleep on his feet, but with his eyes stretched blankly open. She looked down again at the paper in her hand. There was a final paragraph; he watched her read it, and was conscious of the preposterous irrelevancy which wormed through his mind: how easy for an Italian eye such English must be. He watched her lips moving a little as she finished the letter.

  “It appears to be unknown by any person of whom I have inquired at your bank, or at the offices of Payne, Morrison, and Jerrold, successors to the late judge Bronson as co-Trustees with me of your grandmother’s estate in trust, whether it is your intention at any time to return to the United States. Since I have also never been informed, I am taking it upon myself to suggest that should you have it in mind to return, your brother’s present condition might be a determining factor in your plans. I am, etc …”