34
THE TRIP WAS HALFWAY ALONG and they decided it was time to do what tourists are supposed to do. They armed themselves with the guidebook and maps and the camera and spent the next three days going to the major and minor museums, the plethora of cathedrals, the war memorials, the Venetian landmarks. They shopped for souvenirs, buying key chains and art prints and T-shirts. They found local markets and Elisa bought a handmade scarf and tablecloth and Cohen got himself a leather belt and he bought Elisa a silver ring that he planned to give her on the plane ride home. They rode the water taxis across the channel and through the major canals to save themselves time and to keep on track. The overcast skies remained and they were chased into a café now and then by a rain shower but the showers were brief.
At the end of the three days, after having seen all they felt like they needed to see, after having bought keepsakes and taken hundreds of pictures, they returned to the earlier pace of sleeping late and perusing the city looking for a good place to sit. A good coffee. A good bottle of wine. A good meal. These were the priorities.
They sat outside at a table in Palazzi Soranzo. Elisa had her feet propped in an empty chair and she wore a Band-Aid on the cut over her eye. Cohen leaned back with his hands behind his head. A carafe of red wine and a carafe of water sat on the table. It was a busy plaza and across the way they watched members of an orchestra take instruments from black cases and sheet music from black folders and begin to get comfortable in their seats. On the stage were several levels of stairs meant for a choir, and milling around the stage and around the center of the plaza were dozens of children in white robes.
“They’d better hurry,” Cohen said, looking up at the cloud-covered sky.
“I hope it holds off. I wanna hear them,” Elisa said. He took the wine carafe and refilled their glasses.
The orchestra began to warm up. The violins and the deep throbbing of the kettle drums, the higher-pitched clarinets and the strumming of harp strings, the tremble of the oboes. As if the instruments had sounded an alarm, the children in robes began to migrate toward the back of the stage. A woman in a sleeveless red dress ushered them and then a man in a gray suit passed by the orchestra and made sure each musician saw the three fingers he was showing.
“That’s weird,” Elisa said. “I just thought about something I haven’t thought about in a long time.”
Cohen reached for his wineglass and asked her what she remembered.
“Something I read back in college. Death in Venice. You ever have to read it?”
“If I did, I don’t remember it.”
“Well, then you didn’t. Because if you read it, you wouldn’t forget it. Especially now that we’re here. I can’t believe I just now thought about it.”
“So. What was it about? A double murder?” Cohen asked.
She stared across the plaza toward the children. “No,” she said flatly. “It’s about this man, an old man. He was an artist or maybe a writer. Anyway, he decides to come to Venice for a vacation and he ends up seeing this boy, this beautiful young boy and he falls in love with him. Crazy love. He becomes completely obsessed by this boy.”
Cohen sipped from his glass of wine. “Old pervert,” he said.
“But that’s it,” Elisa said, turning from the children and looking at Cohen. “He wasn’t an old pervert. It seemed that way at first but if you really looked at it, when he thought about the boy, it’s like he was thinking about a work of art or a sculpture or something. I think I remember something about him comparing the boy to a Greek statue. That’s how it started out. He was an artist and he saw the boy as art. But then when he started following the boy around was when he began to lose it some. He watched the boy all the time. Followed him in and out of the hotel, around the city, to the beach. Wherever. I think he even went to try and leave but couldn’t.”
The sounds of the tuning orchestra began to lessen and the children, who earlier stood in a huddled mass, had broken into lines and were waiting behind the stage with their hands at their sides. The woman in the red dress had come onstage. Across the front of the stage were four microphone stands and she went to each one to make sure that they were on and ready.
“What’d the boy do?” Cohen asked.
Elisa shrugged. “Nothing, really. He noticed the man but didn’t seem concerned. He had a governess or servant and they noticed him following them around but nobody ever said or did anything. The whole thing was strange. He loved the boy, it seemed like to me. But not in some weird sexual way. He just loved him. At least that’s what I thought.”
Elisa took her wineglass but didn’t drink. She held it up and watched the wine move around in it. Then she set it back on the table.
“The end?” Cohen said.
She shook her head. “The strangest part to me was that the old man found out there was a plague in Venice but that everybody was keeping it quiet so the tourists wouldn’t get out of town. The boy and his family were staying at the same hotel he stayed at, and I said he loved the boy, but when he found out about the plague, he didn’t warn the family. He didn’t do anything to try and protect the boy, though he knew that the plague was already killing people.”
“Did the old man leave?”
“No. He waited it out. Finally the family was getting ready to go and the old man kept on watching the boy and then he died sitting in a chair on the beach. I guess he got the plague, but you’re never really sure.”
Cohen emptied his glass and poured himself more. Across the way, the orchestra was silent for a moment and then began to play.
“I don’t know if he loved him,” Cohen said. “If he did I think he would have told them.”
Elisa raised her glass and drank, trying to decide.
“And he killed himself, basically,” Cohen said. “Right?”
Elisa set the glass down and emptied what was left of the wine carafe. The orchestral song echoed across the Palazzi Soranzo, echoed through the streets and alleyways, echoed against the thousand-year-old stone buildings and underneath the arched walkways.
“I think he was willing to die for the boy and he forgot everything else,” she said. She turned her head and looked across the plaza, up into the sky, as if trying to see the music. “I don’t think he knew the difference between right and wrong. Not because he didn’t care. He just lost touch with it.”
Cohen watched her. Could see her head and heart working together. He had always loved her this way and had seen this look on her face many times before as they sat on the beach and stared out across the ocean.
“It sounds like a good story,” he told her.
The orchestra played and the white-robed children began to file onto the stage and fill the rows of stairs. The woman in the red dress stood at the front of the stage with her back to the orchestra, her hands folded in front. People from across the plaza and from the extending streets began to drift toward the stage as if pulled by invisible strings. When the children were in place, the woman raised her hands, held them there. She brought them down gently and the angelic voices of children spread softly across the day.
35
IT WAS COLD AT FIRST but he got used to it and the propane burner helped in time. The first thing he did was clean the gunshot wound in his thigh, turning the water pink. When it was clean, he stood and let the dirty water run out and then he ran a new bath. Then he sat down in the tub and he stared at the wall and tried to figure out the best way to get back to the Jeep.
He figured they couldn’t have come more than twenty miles or so. He closed his eyes and slumped down beneath the water. Felt it cold and refreshing on his head like the spring’s first dive into the Gulf. Twenty miles didn’t seem like such a long way, not if the weather gave a little. He held his breath and stayed down as long as he could and then he came up with a gasp, wiping the water from his face and when he opened his eyes she was there, holding the candle in front of her as if keeping a vigil for the lost. Her overcoat was gone and her flannel shirt was
gone and she was in a too-big T-shirt and jeans and barefoot. Her shadow rose behind her against the wall and up onto the ceiling.
They were right, he thought as he looked at her. She had not taken a bath. She stood still and stared at Cohen. He sat up straight and looked away from her, down into the bathwater. Then she walked across the room to the lantern and she turned it off.
He slipped under again, floating some, the images of the Jeep and the storm and the hole in his leg disappeared and his mind wandered off into a vast, empty place, and this time when he came up, her clothes and the candle were at her feet and she held her arms close against her body. Wild patches of hair at her armpits and between her legs. Her wavy black hair fell down across her breasts and reached her belly, like black silk cords of a velvet curtain that could be pulled back and allow you into a secret room. The beating of the rain against the roof and across the land and the light from the candle dim but pure as she came to him. He sat up with his arms on the side and she stopped at the edge of the tub and traced her fingers across the top of his hand. He didn’t look up at her but stared at her hips as she stepped over into the tub and nestled herself between his legs and she lay flat against him and held her mouth close and he smelled her and she waited to see if he would come to her.
He didn’t move. There was betrayal and hope and fear and love and hurt and yesterday and today and tomorrow twisting around in his head like a bed of snakes striking against one another for supremacy.
She moved her head down and leaned her face against his chest and her arms slid down into the water and wrapped around his back and she lay there. This black night and this nowhere and this rain that wouldn’t cease and downstairs the endless crying of the baby who seemed to have taken time to acclimate to this world and had now decided to rage against it with his angry but feeble voice that was as helpless against the grasp of nature as everyone and everything else.
In the corner of the room, water began to drip from the ceiling and it tapped the floor rhythmically as if readying for the strings to join in. One two three, tap. One two three, tap. The rain and the thunder and the crying infant and the one two three tap and the dull yellow light and the shadows long and this woman or maybe this girl but this person across him. Close to him. As close as she could be. Her head against his chest and her arms around him and their bodies together in the cool water and he moved his hands from the side of the tub and he moved them to the curve in the small of her back. She then lifted her head and he felt her tongue across the nape of his neck and he slowly exhaled, as if allowing the years of solitude to escape from him, if only for a little while.
36
THE BABY CRIED THROUGH THE night, never wanting to eat and randomly spitting up something thick and sticky. He slept only in half-hour intervals, his forehead and arms and belly hot like a rock in the sun. The floorboards were plentiful and kept the fire going and with the vague light of dawn they had all risen and were standing together in the kitchen, looking out of the windows at the storm. It had gained strength through the night and several times caused the old house to crack and bend in ways that a house shouldn’t. And now, as they stood together in the early morning, the wind came hard and there was the sound of wood splintering and a lengthy groan.
“It’s never gonna let up,” Evan said.
“Something ain’t right with him,” Nadine said. She had held him most of the night. His head was wet with sweat. “I say damn it all and let’s go. We try to sit this one out, we could be here for two weeks.”
“We can’t go out in this,” Cohen said. The house cracked again somewhere. “But we might not have a choice.”
“We got to get the baby to a doctor,” Kris said. “We can’t let him die out here.”
“Look at him,” Nadine said and she showed him to the others as if they had never seen him. His strained face and damp head and dry lips and gasping cries.
Mariposa moved over to Nadine and touched the child’s forehead. She looked at Cohen and nodded.
“So. What the hell?” Evan asked Cohen.
“Nadine’s right. God knows how long it’ll go on.”
“The screaming or the storm?”
“All of it.”
“You think this is the worst?” Evan said.
“I can’t tell anymore.”
“Shit,” Nadine said. “It ain’t safe nowhere in this fucking world.”
“Hey,” Evan said sharply, pointing at Brisco.
“Hell, I can’t help it.”
“Not the F-word. Damn.”
Mariposa moved from the baby and over to Cohen and she said, “Have you figured out which way to go?”
“Kinda. About like yesterday,” Cohen said. “I do know that somehow Charlie used to make it down here and back all the time in that big truck so there’s gotta be a good road somewhere. We just got to find it.”
“It’s probably out there at the highway,” Evan said. “If we could loop back around to it.”
“We can loop back around to it,” Cohen said. “Just depends on what everybody wants to do.”
“We got to go,” Nadine said. “I ain’t letting him die after all the shit Lorna went through to get him here.”
“I say go, too,” Kris said. “I ain’t a baby professional but God knows how high his fever is and he keeps throwing up when there ain’t nothing in him. It was something pink last time.”
Evan said, “With it like this, there’s probably less chance of running into anybody else.”
“That’s a good point,” Cohen said.
“I’m with them,” Mariposa said. “We could sit here for days but I don’t think the baby would make it. Nobody thinks it.”
“Let’s go then,” Nadine said.
“All right,” Cohen said. “Come on, Evan. Let’s try and load what we can.”
“And hurry up,” Nadine ordered and then she walked around in circles with the child.
Cohen and Evan began to gather canned food and lamps and plastic bags of blankets and clothes. Mariposa helped them get it all to the door and Cohen and Evan ran in and out of the storm, loading the truck. When they were done, Mariposa went out and helped them get the tarp tied.
They ran back inside and the wind slammed the door behind them. The baby screamed and Nadine danced around with him and tried to get him to take the bottle but he wouldn’t.
Cohen picked up the shotgun and the box of shells and handed them to Evan. “Let Nadine drive and put Kris in the middle with the baby and Brisco,” he said to Evan. “You ride against the window. We see anybody, you make sure they see what you’re holding.”
IT RAINED SO HARD AND the wind was so stiff that they had to pull over on the side of the road and wait. In lulls, they had gone east and then been able to maneuver north on Highway 29. But they moved at a walker’s pace, through decimated communities, houses and stores huddled around four-way stops and town squares. It took nearly an hour to manipulate several miles. They finally came to Highway 98, a four-lane running east and west. Fifteen miles to the east was Hattiesburg, a once slick university town that had sprawled with subdivisions and shopping malls and movie theaters. The interstate ran through Hattiesburg, which would get them to the Line most efficiently, but it was also likely that with the abundance of places to hide there would be more risks. This was the debate that they were having through rolled-down windows as they sat at a stop sign.
“I say we keep on this way,” Evan said.
“Which way?” asked Nadine. Evan pointed straight ahead, continuing north on 29.
“Might run out of road that way,” Cohen said.
“Better than getting shot.”
“I agree with that,” Nadine said.
“How’s he feeling?” Cohen asked.
“You hear him, don’t you?” Kris said about the wailing baby in her arms. “And hot. Don’t seem like that’s gonna change.”
“I ain’t interested in the interstate and what might be on it,” Evan said.
“I b
et Charlie came that way,” Cohen said.
“Charlie had some help,” Evan said.
“Yep.”
“Let’s just keep on,” Nadine said and she pointed forward.
Cohen looked ahead. “All right,” he said.
But before they went any farther, he got out of the truck and took a gas can and put a couple of gallons in each truck, the wind pushing him off balance, his clothes stuck to him and his eyes fighting to stay focused on the job. He spilled a little but most went into the tanks and when he got back in the truck cab he was out of breath. Mariposa gave him a towel from the floorboard and he wiped his face and head. Then they crossed over Highway 98 and continued on north.
AFTER ANOTHER HOUR AND TWENTY careful miles, the rain constant and the roads flooded in some places but able to be crossed, they came upon a sign as big as a billboard, sitting solitary in the countryside, that read: U.S. GOVERNMENT–LEGISLATED TERRITORY 10 MILES.
“That’s it,” Mariposa said and she sat up straight.
The next ten miles were a drowning landscape that, as they drove closer to the Line, became littered with the waste of man—shells of vehicles, abandoned government trailers, burned houses, beer bottles and shredded tires and trash like the remains from a crowd that had made a run for it. All of it soggy and stuck to the earth. It was difficult to see that far ahead and they came upon another sign, as large as the first, that said the Line was two miles away. Two more filthy miles along the desolate highway and then they came upon a station, a square brick thing with a metal roof, the illumination of the electric light from inside a patch of yellow in a portrait of gray. A ten-foot-high fence stretched out from either side of the station and reached out of sight, with three black Hummers parked on the other side. A group of men in black coats, the same black coats they had encountered before in the parking lot, looked out at them from behind the thick glass of the station, like some powerful assembly of storm gods who had taken refuge from the work of their own hands.
Rivers: A Novel Page 23