“I’m trying to make this easy for you,” he says absurdly, trying to justify himself, but she continues to struggle with him, screams loudly for help, and beats away the glass so that it flies onto the tiled floor, where it shatters. For a moment he wonders if he should abandon everything, give himself up to her, not so much out of fear but out of horror at what he is doing and repulsion for himself. At the same time, he knows that he cannot retreat now. It is too late.
Instead, he rips the cord from her white silk robe, sits behind her, and slips it around her neck. “For God’s sake!” she cries out, tugging at the cord with both her hands, arching her back and kicking. He holds on and pulls even harder with all his force, dragging her head and neck back against his own body, as he had with his chain on the guard’s neck, but now his strength seems to fail him with this weak white woman. He feels so feeble, exhausted, and unable to hurt an elderly woman who has given him back his life. She yanks the cord away from her neck, turning and kicking out at him brutally, thrusting at his sex with her knee and thrashing wildly around with her arms on the bed, and for a moment he feels he will not have the strength to hold her.
Driven now more by her violence than his own, remembering the electrodes on his genitals, trying to protect himself from her fury, he fights back. He is overtaken by some force that seems outside of himself, like the voice that speaks in his head. Watching himself from afar, he tightens the cord again and pulls so tightly that she cannot slip her fingers under it. Her hands give way, and he pulls tighter and tighter. She makes a strangled, gurgling sound, murmurs a name, as he, with as much pleasure as he had with the guard, listens to her gasp for breath before her long, bony body sinks down limply before him, back onto the soft white pillows behind her head. White on white. Is she dead? For a moment he thinks he sees her flat chest rise and fall beneath the white gown. Is she just pretending, waiting for the moment to strike out at him like a snake? He cannot bring himself to touch her body, to feel her pulse.
At the same time, he is aware that the light is brighter, the sky whitening. He must hurry. He must make a plan. The couple must not find her lying here. He forces himself to put his fingers around her wrist, where he feels a faint flicker of a pulse that vanishes at his touch. He knows what he must do. He picks up the keys for the boat. Trembling, he forces himself to slip his hands under her and lift her long body in his arms with one strong sweep. She is surprisingly light. Her head falls back over his arm, and he recalls coming to her villa for the first time, and how in his excitement at the beauty of the place he had extravagantly swept her up and carried her over the threshold like a new bride. How heavy she had felt to him then.
Now he carries her easily down the corridor and pushes open the front door, lifting the latch with one hand. They go up the stone steps of the path, climbing the hill to the car. As he strides fast away from her house, he realizes he has grown strong and she weak in his time here. She has fed him and taken care of him, and now he has ended her life.
He wants desperately to lie down, to sleep, to forget. He is utterly exhausted after his battle with her on the bed. He is distracted again, too, noticing absurd things, the amanti del sole drooping and in need of water, the sky a faint pink. He must get her away from here. He manages to open the door to the white car and slips her onto the black leather seat. Her head falls back, but propped up, she looks almost alive. He cannot bear to look at her white face. He concentrates on the road before him in the faint dawn light, driving fast down to the hotel at Cala di Volpe.
He remembers her telling him about the place for the first time. He hears her hoarse voice saying, “Yes. It means the Bay of Foxes.” Now he is the fox running from death.
XXIII
THEY DRIVE TOGETHER IN THE WHITE JAGUAR, GOING DOWN to the glittering bay below as they have so many times. He parks in the hotel parking lot and sits a moment under the eucalyptus trees. He looks around the shadowy place, remembers the happy times when they have come here together when he delighted in her wit and her gaiety. He hears her laugh and say, “Everything reminds you of Ethiopia!” He cannot move, has no desire to go on, but as he sees no one about he forces himself to get out and lift her out of the car. Her head falls back against his arm, her legs dangle limply, but he cannot look at her face. He can only hope that if anyone notices them they might think she is sleeping or drunk or he is gallantly carrying his love to their boat.
Fortunately, at that early hour of the morning, there seems to be no one around yet. The guests, surely, must all be sleeping soundly after the revels of the night in their elegant hotel suites. None of the staff seems to be about yet, either, though he sees lights in the basement kitchens of the hotel and hears voices as he goes quickly along the quay.
He hears footsteps. Someone is coming along the quay behind him. Quickly he steps back into the shadows of an alleyway with his burden and waits, his heart drumming, as the man goes past. He watches as one of the staff stands smoking a cigarette in the dawn light, a bloody apron tied around his waist. The man stretches and then goes back into the kitchen below.
Almost running now along the quay, he reaches the motorboat tied up in the harbor with all the others, and drops her body down on the cushions. He has another thought, goes back along the quay, and picks up a length of heavy mooring chain.
By the first light of day, with the moon still a pale face peering at him from the sky, not another boat in sight on the sea, he unties the motorboat and steers it slowly and quietly out of the harbor, going across the calm, milky waters, using only the oars with a soft lapping sound, trying not to make any other noise or call attention to the boat. Not until he is farther out does he start the engine. He plans to take her to the place she loved, off the island of Mortorio, in water deep enough to hide her body. He remembers how she had said she would like to be buried there or rather left to sink down into the sea. Well, she will have her wish. He hears her saying, “Terrifyingly happy.” Had she known then what might happen?
He goes fast now across the calm, clear sea, toward the island, stopping where the water seems deep enough, turning a dark blue here. In the glare of the rising sun, he ties the heavy chain tightly three times around her thin body. He looks down at her for the last time, brushing her hair gently from her face, and then, with a heave, his breath going from him as though it were he who will enter the water, he tips the chained body over the gunwale. He continues to hold his breath, watching as M.’s white gown fills with air and bubbles up, the white hair spreading out in the water, as though she were reluctant after all to sink down into the sea.
He sits for a while, watching the surface anxiously as the boat bobs in the calm sea. He peers down into the blue water but can see nothing. He wonders if the body has been pulled down into the very depths, if the knot he has tied with the chain will hold. Where is she resting?
On an impulse, he decides to dive into the water to make sure the chained body has gone down into the depths and lies securely on the sandy bottom. He wants to see her resting place. He pulls off his shirt, trousers, and underwear, stands naked on the side of the boat, fills his lungs with air, and dives into the water, going through the rays of sun into the depths of the blue sea, down and down. He sees a shape he thinks might be the body, but it is a large gray fish that swims like a bat flying through water, with wide wings and a kite tail. A stingray. He goes deeper but is not able to see the body. It seems to have vanished. He is confused in this strange, silent world of blue water, with only an occasional bright fish, flashing its round eye at him. He swims around trying to find M. down there in the depths. He panics, going deeper and deeper, his lungs bursting, it seems, as they did in the torture sessions in the prison, his head and shoulders held down in the filthy water. He tries desperately to follow her body to the watery depths, his head spinning. He must find her, make sure she has come to rest, whatever it costs him.
Now, swimming even deeper, he no longer feels the need to breathe. Instead he is filled with a strange
, sleepy euphoria down there in the depths of the Bay of Foxes. He wants to keep on going down, to be with M. in her death, to entwine with her lifeless body in this world of the deep, as he was never able to do above. He feels he could enter her body as she had so wished he could, and this coupling would restore her to life.
It seems to him he hears someone calling him. It must be M. calling him down to lie beside her in her silent grave. Then he realizes it is his mother’s voice. She is calling his name. “Dawit, Dawit, Dawit, my darling boy!” she calls out to him urgently. “Happy birthday!” she says, her voice chiming in his ears like a bell. It comes to him then that it is the sixth of September, his birthday. Of course. This day of all days is the day of his birth. Today he is twenty-one. The realization brings him back to his senses. Vaguely, at the back of his mind, he remembers hearing about the dangers of diving too deep, and the false sense of euphoria it can cause. He forces himself to give up his search and regain the surface, struggling up as fast as he can to the air, which never seems to come. Up and up he swims, desperate, his head spinning, until, gasping and sputtering, he emerges into the dazzling light.
Looking around in the early morning glare, he realizes that he has been down so long that the boat has drifted away from him in the current, or perhaps he has swum away from it in his fruitless search. Terrified, he looks around him, searching for the boat in the dazzle and gleam of white light. He can hardly see, his eyes smarting from his search through salty water. Around him there is nothing but clear blue sea. Then he catches a glimpse of something bobbing in the distance. At first he fears it might be M.’s body in its white shroud and chains. Then he spots the wooden trim of the gunwale and realizes it is the white boat, faintly visible. Wildly, he strikes out, terrified it will drift away, leaving him to drown, his body going down into the depths with M.’s on this day of his birth. He is already exhausted from his night of vigil, his struggle with M., and winded from his deep dive. He is unable to swim fast. He is drifting farther and farther away, carried by the current from the boat.
With a final effort, thinking of his mother’s beautiful face and her loving gaze, he manages to strike out again and reach the boat. He flings an arm up to cling to the side, realizing then that he has not let the ladder down and will have to hoist himself up with his exhausted arms. He has no strength left. His head spins; his limbs are heavy. He thinks of all the stories he has heard of people in this predicament, swimming around and around a boat until they are so exhausted they drown. He feels the little strength he has left quitting his body, but he hangs on to the side of the boat with one hand, trying to gather enough energy, thinking of his mother’s face, her dark, bright eyes looking at him so lovingly.
Hand over hand, he manages to get himself to the back of the boat, which is lower in the water and where the motor lies. Taking hold of the motor with a heave and a final effort, he manages to hoist himself up and fall into the boat, scraping the skin of his bare stomach. He falls exhausted, scratched, and bleeding, unable to move, lying flat on the cushions where M.’s body had lain. He forces himself to put his clothes back on, start the motor, and return the boat to the docks. There he ties it to the quay. Luck is still with him, and he sees no one about as he slips along the dock and back into the white car.
As he drives up the hill to the villa, images continue to come to him. He sees the body coming loose from its chains, floating up to the surface, and some fisherman hauling it up from the sea. Perhaps the traces of alcohol and sleeping pills he had forced down M.’s throat will cause it to be taken for a suicide if the body is found. He sees the body slowly decaying, the blue water of the whole bay gradually becoming murky, flecked with gray skin and bones, contaminated with death, M.’s death. Will the skin slowly peel from the thigh? Will a white thigh bone be caught in some swimmer’s hair? He shudders. She died, he tells himself, not unlike Virginia Woolf floating down through the waters of the Ouse with stones in her pockets, surely a fitting death for a writer.
XXIV
ON ENTERING THE HOUSE, HE FORCES HIMSELF TO GO BACK into M.’s room. For a second, faced by the sight of the disorderly bed, the rumpled sheets, the shattered glass, he feels his legs will give way. He must clean up the room. It is after nine o’clock, and the couple will soon be here.
The voice is back in his head. Feverishly, he gets a broom from the kitchen and sweeps up the shattered glass, pushing the pieces carelessly under the bed, throwing the blue bedcover with its bright embroidered flowers over the rumpled sheets. He catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and realizes he has blood all over his shirt from his climb back into the boat. He is frantically changing his shirt into one of M.’s in her gray-tiled bathroom when he hears the couple arriving in their car. Soon Adrianna is singing gaily in the kitchen. He takes a great gulp of air, as if about to dive down again into the depths, and enters the blue-and-white-tiled kitchen.
Without wishing the couple a good morning, he announces that the signora has had to leave for a while. She asked him to let them know.
“But the signora always stays through September!” Adrianna exclaims, turning from the stove toward him. She clasps her hands together with disappointment and surprise. Michelino just stands there in the middle of the room, frowning at Dawit with concern.
“Something came up. She may be back sooner,” Dawit says uncertainly. He feels unsteady on his feet, as though he is still in the boat, which is rocking beneath him. He can hardly see the couple. They sway before him alarmingly, and he is obliged to steady himself against the blue-and-white-tiled counter. His eyes smart from the saltwater and sun. He desperately wants them to leave, so that he can lie down and sleep. But they linger on, reluctant to go, staring at him, looking concerned. Adrianna asks him if he is ill, his eyes look red. The signore has not slept well?
He puts his hands to his eyes, tells her she’s right, and attempts a smile. Clearly they want more information. They look so crestfallen and, it occurs to him, almost certainly have not yet been paid for their work this summer.
He claps his hand to his forehead in a dramatic gesture and says, “Oh! I almost forgot. The signora left something for you, a little bonus, after all your hard work.” He goes into the living room, where the stack of money M. had left to get him off the island remains. Without counting it, he sweeps it up off the table, goes back into the kitchen, and thrusts the pile into Michelino’s hands. “Here, this is what she left for you,” he says. While Michelino looks down at the pile of bills in his hands, Dawit tells the couple M. had said they must take a week off. They deserve a little holiday. They must leave now. He is frantic to be alone, to sleep.
“Are you certain?” Michelino says, looking at Dawit, puzzled. “We’d be happy to work. We always work through September in the French signora’s villa.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine alone for a week,” Dawit says.
Michelino looks into his face and then back at the stack of bills in his hands. He is too polite to count them. “Are you quite sure?” he asks again, suspiciously. “The signora doesn’t usually pay us until the end of September.”
Adrianna says something to Michelino in the Sardinian dialect that Dawit does not understand. Then she says in Italian, “If the signore needs anything he can just give us a ring. He has our number,” in a bright, cheerful voice as she picks up her cream handbag from the kitchen table. She takes the money from Michelino—clearly she is the one who manages the finances—and puts it away in her bag. “Come on, Miche,” she says gaily and takes him by his hand. He follows her lead reluctantly, looking back over his shoulder at Dawit, who wonders what he is thinking and what he might say if anyone inquired about M.’s whereabouts. Do they believe his story? Or is it just convenient to pretend to? Are they too polite to ask any more questions? They go out the door, with Adrianna leading the way, waving happily, reminding Dawit to ring if he needs their help, and Michelino giving a worried backward glance at the house he has always tended so carefully.
&nb
sp; XXV
HE GOES INTO HIS BATHROOM AND PEELS OFF ALL HIS CLOTHES fast. He turns on the shower tap hard and has a long, hot shower, washing the scrapes on his stomach with soap, scrubbing himself all over. Then he wraps himself in a toweling robe and climbs into his bed. He lies back shivering despite the hot water, the thick robe, the heat of the day. His teeth clack, and he cannot still his trembling body. His heart beats so fast it seems to shake the bed. He rises again to cover himself with a heavy blanket, but the long dive to the depths, the endless swim in the sea, the events of the entire night without sleep, have all chilled him through and through. He has never felt so tired in his whole life.
Eventually he falls into a deep and undisturbed sleep. He sleeps and sleeps. When he wakes it is late afternoon, and he realizes he has eaten nothing since he and M. had eaten their silent meal the evening before. He is now strangely calm and completely famished. It is his birthday, after all. An important birthday. He prepares a huge feast, using everything he finds in the refrigerator. He scrambles eggs and lays out all the prosciutto, figs, cheese, the flat bread and yogurt and honey for dessert. He goes into the cellar and takes out a bottle and then opens the champagne, carrying everything on a tray out onto the terrace, where he sits with his feet up, surveying the beauty of the bay in the twilight. He savors each morsel with deep satisfaction, as though he has never eaten enough in his life before, gluttonously consuming all the flat bread with honey, sucking the sweetness from the tips of his fingers. He drinks the entire bottle of champagne.
He drifts alone through the empty rooms as night falls, listening to the hollow sound of his footsteps. This is my domain now, he thinks. He is free to do exactly as he wishes for the first time in his life, though, in a way, he feels as he did on his escape from prison. He is light-headed, floating through the beautiful twilit rooms as though he were still underwater. He swims across the polished floors, hardly touching the ground, switching on lights, opening closets, drawers, exploring all the secret spaces of the house, ferreting through all of M.’s intimate things, her papers, her clothes, her jewelry. He opens her safe. He knows the combination, which, always forgetful of numbers, she has written down in her address book. Besides, he has seen her open it many times and unlike her he has a good memory for numbers. He counts the money, a considerable sum, and then puts it back.
The Bay of Foxes: A Novel Page 11