Via Dolorosa

by Ronald Malfi

  And the bell captain left, walking out into the night and the rain and the bugs as if he never existed at all.

  From behind him, the Palauan said, “Sir.”

  Nick’s eyes focused on the Palauan’s reflection in the glass of the lobby doors. Then he turned. “What is it?”

  “Sir,” said the Palauan. “I have many beautiful shells. I have—”

  “Have you seen my wife?”

  “No, sir, I have not. You have misplaced her?”

  “Never mind.” He began walking toward the elevators.

  “Sir! Please wait! You must purchase something.”

  “You have nothing I want.”

  “There is always something, sir. There is always something someone wants.”

  Nick paused. In the semi-darkness of the corridor, he could see his mural. The painting had come alive, the painted characters actually moving…

  No; there were cicadas creeping along the wall, crawling across the mural, scaling it. Bugs. Big bugs.

  “Sir,” the Palauan said again, and Nick turned.

  “What?” His voiced echoed down the otherwise empty hallway.

  “I have something for everyone.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Ahhh,” said the Palauan, “but I do, sir. But I do.”

  And the handsome, dark-skinned Palauan held something up in one hand. He held it draped around two fingers, and it hung from those fingers, faintly swaying in a nonexistent breeze.

  “What is it?” Nick asked, taking a step closer. The Palauan didn’t answer, but Nick suddenly knew what it was: strung to a length of hemp adorned with colorful seabed stones hung a small plastic card. The keycard to unlock hotel room doors.

  “For you, sir.” The Palauan extended the item as Nick approached. The man brought his fingers out and let the hemp cord spiral into the palm of Nick’s good hand.

  “Is this…for…?”

  “Yes, my friend.”

  “How did you get it?”

  Quite simply, the Palauan said, “There is something for everyone.”

  “How much?”

  “Two dollars.”

  Nick dug around in his pocket and came out with two weathered bills. He laid them on the dais.

  “Ke kmal mesaul.”

  “Thank you,” Nick said, and quickly headed toward the elevators.

  Back upstairs, standing outside Isabella Rosales’s door, he used the keycard to gain access to her room. He expected it to be unchanged—that her clothing would be everywhere, and that her bathroom would be suffused with glossy photographs, her tub a cryptic puzzle of random items. But no—much like the rest of the hotel, the room was empty, deserted. All her belongings were gone. Had she left? Had she checked out of the hotel?

  “Isabella?” He called out her name nonetheless, as if in doing so would force her to materialize before him. “Isa—”

  The first thing he saw was the painting he had done of her, still tacked to the wall beside the bed. It was the first time he’d seen it, and in that instant he did not know what it was or what to think of it. Then it settled into him, and he could see it for what it was. In painting it, he had only used one color—green. This struck him as odd, for he clearly recalled using a multitude of paints. Had he simply (and mistakenly) dipped his paintbrush in the same tub of paint each time he went down to refuel? Surely…surely…

  The second thing he noticed was that it was not a portrait of Isabella Rosales. The lines were more delicate, the expression less defined, the details and features more close to the center of the face. It was his wife, Emma. He had attempted to paint Isabella and it had come out being Emma.

  Paint with your heart, he could hear Isabella whispering now at the base of his skull. Paint what comes.

  Paint what comes…

  The next thing he noticed was a stack of eight-by-ten photographs in the center of the bed. Nick walked around its side and gathered the photographs in his one good hand. His unsteady right hand coming up, he shuffled through each photograph one by one, digesting them all.

  The first was Emma on the beach with Leslie Hansen. They were talking, looking cheerful, and it was a candid shot, presumably photographed from some distance with a telescopic lens. Each subsequent photo revealed different stages of Emma and Leslie Hansen’s conversation. Finally, in the last chill moments, the final few photographs caused in him a blossom of cold anger and trembling fury, as he saw Emma on the bow of the Kerberos, Leslie Hansen grinning, shirtless, in sunglasses, standing behind her.

  He felt well up inside him the gritty tornado of helplessness, followed by a moist wave of panic.

  Like a shadow moving through darkness, her voice filtered back to him now: We won’t let little things ruin us, will we, baby?

  He’d promised her they wouldn’t. In a time so unlike now, he’d promised her they wouldn’t. And he had let her down.

  Again—a coward.

  He was out the door before he even knew what he was doing. This time, for the first time, he could not wait for the elevators. He rushed through the stairwell and burst out the fire exit onto the outdoor veranda. The wind was icy cold and flecked with rain. The rain was strong and hard, pelting him like bullets fired from a gun. He struggled through it, one hand up shielding his vulnerable eyes, too conscious of the angry bite of the rain against his hand, along his arm. Then he realized it wasn’t the rain: it was the cicadas, rebounding off his body in their blind, stupid angst, straight from nearly two decades of hibernation and into furious oblivion. Almost blind himself, he shoved his weight off the veranda and dumped his wracked body into the wet sand. The wind was like heavy breathing into a microphone. Tears streaming his face, his teeth rattling against the chill, he was able to raise his head enough to look out over the black sea. He was closer to the shore than he’d originally thought. Black, rocky crags stabbed the sky; all around him sounded the crash and sizzle of the waves breaking over the shore. Out on the sea, he could see the distant yellow light glowing from the pilothouse windows of the Kerberos.

  He pushed himself to his feet and flung himself forward, propelling his legs into motion. Cicadas drummed against his skull, his face, his chest and thighs. Several were caught in his hair, and he could feel them needling against his scalp, and could hear their futile, hopeless twitter as they struggled to free themselves from his wet hair. One shuttled into his left ear, and for the brief moment it lingered, all he could hear in the world was the zzzt-zzzt-zzzt of its furious decree.

  Gathering speed, feet pounding the sand, he raced toward the sea. With his eyes open, he could see the shaky visage of the single golden light out on the water; with his eyes closed, he could still see it, projected like a filmstrip on the undersides of his eyelids. Each inhalation seared his throat; each exhalation secured in him the notion that his lungs were two tiny, shriveled raisins, and that he would die of asphyxiation before he ever even reached the water, before he ever even reached the boat—

  Lieuten—

  And then he was there: crashing through the freezing surf, soaking his pants and suctioning his shoes to the sand. At one point, both his shoes were sucked off his feet, but he hardly noticed. He continued to run, not slowing down until the freezing water was too high, too high and hugging his waist, and he pushed on until he could lift his legs no more. The crash of the ocean thundered around him and filled his brain as he dove beneath the waves. Sounds filtered out; he was caught inside his own head, trapped, unable to escape. The turbine struggling to turn over was his heart in his ears. He had become nothing but heart, nothing but a single kinetic mechanism furious with the pump of blood, the grind of muscle, the contraction of impulse after impulse after impulse. The world slowed to a single frame. He could not tell if he was moving, swimming, breathing…or if he was dead and watching himself from somewhere just to the left of him…

  There was a point where his head broke the surface. Gasping for air, swallowing water and choking on insects, his eyes located the yellow light of
the cabin cruiser, now blurred and smeared and teasingly false. It was a million miles away. Erratically, he thought of his childhood, of growing up in Pittsburgh, and of the paintings his father used to busy himself with in the basement. He thought of the black steel locomotive barreling along the track high above the quaint New England village. He was on that train now, shuttling through a mountainside tunnel, a rift in the earth. The only passenger now, careening at breakneck speed. He could smell the burning coal from the furnace and could see the way the raw soot collected on the white of his skin. Around him, the train rattled and shuddered and threatened to break apart. Break apart, he willed it. A maniacal laugh wanted to burst from his lungs. Break apart, goddamn you. Why don’t you just break the hell apart? And then he did laugh, or at least attempted to, filling his mouth, his throat, his lungs with freezing water. The train—the world—swung out of control. It was going to spill off the tracks. He would go down with it, spill with it—this fiery missile launching into the air and arching down, down, down to the tiny, quiet, unsuspecting New England village below. He could imagine the explosions, the chaos, the destruction and annihilation. He was there for it. He was there, helping pull young children from a flaming frame house—the mother screaming—the children blackened by soot but otherwise unharmed. He would spend the entire afternoon rushing from burning building to burning building, rescuing the innocent. Are you okay? Can you breathe? Choking, choking on smoke. Watery eyes. Breathe deep—breathe the fresh air. Can you breathe? Can you, can you, can you? Did any of them know he had been on the train that had crashed through their town? That he had been the sole angel fallen from heaven to crush and burn and destroy their world? He could help them and play nice, and they might even believe him…but he knew, he knew, he knew the truth of it all. (Can you breathe?) And beside him, Myles Granger began to laugh and shouted something about divers, Chinese divers, that he’d won a parrot for shooting the most Chinese divers. How many did you shoot? He didn’t know. Can you breathe? He wouldn’t say. Can you? Stop laughing. He wouldn’t stop laughing. Stop it! And he couldn’t tell if it was Granger, Myles Granger, who was laughing or himself, his own mouth, his own bitching sounds coming from his own bitching body—but no, it couldn’t be him, because he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t make the air work for him or even find the air, because there was only water, cold and freezing water, just water, and it was all he knew and all he had—

  Lieuten—

  Have baby, he thought. In stomach.

  It occurred to him that he had stopped thinking. And then he lost his thought completely. When you drown, it registered with him in those last perilous seconds, you can tell exactly when you are about to give up, like watching a clock tick down to zero. You see how long you can hold your head under water, and you try to experience what it is like to almost die, almost drown, almost buy it all. He knew it now—and knew, just as quick, that once you know it, you cannot go back to not knowing it, like being told a horrible secret. You can never forget that secret, and it will resonate with you always. Always. He thought, We won’t let little things ruin us, will we, baby? And he thought, Not as long as the train stays together. But he knew the train would not stay together—that the train was halfway down the mountainside right now, trailing behind it like a comet a black flag of smoke. Always. He thought, Always.

  But everything was fine. He had reached the boat and had rescued Emma from Leslie Hansen, had even struck Hansen in the face knocking him clear overboard, and then pulled Emma to him, kissed her, promising they would never let little things ruin them, baby, and she would say—

  She would say—

  What?

  Just as he drowned, he felt the dreamlike hands of a Chinese diver clamp down around his ankle.

  —Chapter XXIII—

  Nearing dusk in the bombed alleyway…

  “Don’t look at them,” he told Myles Granger. “Just sit still.”

  “It’s bad,” Myles Granger panted. He was propped up against the wall of the alley, trying to strain his neck to look down and see his legs. But movement caused him great pain and he was having difficulty with it. “I can feel it…I can tell it’s bad. Is it bad?”

  “It’s not pretty,” Nick admitted. He was busy trying to make tourniquets from his own shirt to wrap the kid’s legs.

  “I want to see…”

  “You don’t. And stop moving. I’m trying to stop the bleeding.”

  “There is a lot of bleeding,” Myles Granger expelled in one monotone breath. He was beginning to shake.

  “Just hold still.”

  “I want to look. I can’t stop thinking about my legs.”

  “Try.”

  “I don’t want to lose them.”

  “You won’t lose them.”

  “I don’t want to lose my legs.”

  “Quiet.”

  “Shoot me in the head.”

  “Cut that shit out, Myles. You’re going to be okay.”

  “I don’t want to lose my legs.”

  “Then hold still.”

  “I don’t want to lose my legs. I don’t want to lose my legs. I don’t want to lose my legs. I don’t want to lose my legs.”

  “Goddamn it, Myles, you’re going to make us both nuts.”

  “I don’t want to lose my legs.”

  “Then shut up.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about them.”

  “Try. Think of something else.”

  “I—”

  “What happened to your—”

  And then the kid screamed as Nick tightened the tourniquet around his destroyed left leg. He was going to lose his legs, Nick knew.

  “Shhhh,” he told the kid.

  “Oh God!”

  “Quiet!”

  “Oh God! Oh God oh God oh shoot me in the—oh God!”

  “Think of something. Think of something else.”

  “Oh God!”

  “Goddamn it!” Nick moaned. His single hand was covered in blood.

  “Oh,” Myles Granger breathed, his voice dropping, dropping, dropping to nearly a whisper. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.” He was caught in a skip.

  “Oh.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shhh, now…”

  “Oh.”

  “Goddamn it, kid.” But this time he said it with resignation, with pity. And self-loathing. “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t—stop—thinking—about—my legs—”

  “Try.” Nick’s mind was frantic. Damn it, he couldn’t get the second tourniquet around the kid’s leg with only one hand…couldn’t…

  “Can’t,” moaned Myles Granger.

  “That woman in the street,” Nick said quickly, unable to come up with anything else. “The one who grabbed you. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said something to you. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “Yes…”

  “Myles…kid…stay with me…”

  He realized that he hadn’t brought his eyes up to Myles’s face since he began working on the tourniquets. He did not do so now, either.

  “Yes,” Myles Granger managed. “Yes…yes…yes…”

  “So what did she tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman, Myles. The woman who grabbed your arm. The woman Karuptka wanted to shoot. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh,” the kid said simply, “yeah, I remember.”

  “What did she say to you?” And for an instant, Nick was certain the kid was going to confess that the strange woman had told him they were all going to die, all of them, every last one…

  Myles Granger said, “ ‘Have baby. In stomach.’ ”

  “What was that?”

  “‘Have baby. In stomach.’ That’s what she said. ‘Have baby. In stomach.’ Just like that.”

  “She was pregnant?”

  “Have baby,” Myles said. “In stomach.”

  “All rig
ht,” Nick said. The poor kid had been spooked by a pregnant woman. It wasn’t unusual—they all had their individual moments when the war finally registered. It could be the way the sun set behind a certain silhouette of buildings…it could be the way a wild dog scavenges for food in the sewers…it could be the way you got down to your last cigarette and stared at the empty cellophane package and realized that you wouldn’t be smoking anymore, not whenever you feel like it, not like you did back home, because you were at war and people were dying and expectant mothers begged for your help in the bombed streets and empty cigarette packs stared blindly back at you…

  “Have baby,” Myles said. “In stomach.”

  “God,” Nick muttered, “all right. Think of something else.”

  “Baby,” said the kid. “Stomach.”

  “Myles,” Nick said. It was impossible to work the bandage around the kid’s leg without moving it. And even then, with only one good hand…

  “Baby. Stomach.”

  “You’re going home after this, you know. Where you gonna go? What’re you gonna do?”

  “See Pop.”

  “See your father? That’s nice. Where is he?”

  “South Carolina.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “He works…he…he works at a hotel there…resort…resort hotel… on an island…”

  “That sounds nice. Think about that, why don’t you?”

  Myles Granger laughed, and coughed blood up on his shirt. “What do you think will happen to that baby? The one in her stomach?”

  “Shit, Myles, I don’t know.” He chewed at his lower lip. Still, he would not bring his eyes to meet Myles’s. “Listen,” he said finally, “I’m gonna have to lift your leg here in a minute, so I’m gonna need you to—”

  “I’m going to be haunted by that, you know.”

  “Myles,” Nick began, shaking with pain, feeling the fever of the pain well up inside of himself.

  “I won’t live—I won’t, I won’t, I won’t live—but if I did live—and I won’t, I won’t—but if I did live, I’m going to be haunted by that…”

  “Okay.”