Giovanni's Gift

by Bradford Morrow

  “Hard snow,” my uncle shouted.

  “—can say that again.” Our words were blown in circles by the busy driving winds.

  “No, don’t mean it’s snowing hard. I mean this’s called hard snow—freak, different from hail, colder.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t see it too often. That’s good enough; let’s get back to the house.” We clambered down the ladder, stowed it alongside the building, made our way—Henry half running before me—down the bank, across the narrow bridge, up the already whitened rise past the garden, the grainy snow percolating in the grass and percussing off my stiff jacket. “Won’t last long,” he said, once we managed to get back to the porch.

  We removed our jackets, shook them, pulled off our soaked shoes, even left our trousers at the doorsill, so wet were we both. Edmé had towels for us, and while it might be true that this was a moment when we stood together as a family, a moment when after a couple of days’ laboring side by side I might have been fairly given to feeling connected, even emotionally contiguous, with my aunt Edmé and uncle Henry here at Ash Creek, I had the oddest apprehension of just the reverse. What I felt in the kitchen by the door was my extraneousness, an intrinsic alienation. What was I thinking?—that I would simply continue to live on and on and on here with them? It was the sudden squall that brought this upon me, I knew. Somehow, with the weather still warm, I had been enjoying with my father’s sister and her husband just another of my summers at Ash Creek. But now, the air having turned gray with hard snow, however early in the season it had come, I glimpsed that my stay could not continue forever. It would have been an upsetting revelation under other circumstances, but its precipitant character—the fact it barreled down on me with exactly the speed of the storm itself—made it all the more intense. The house had become abruptly very small, to my mind. The three of us, moving around in the kitchen (Edmé’d lit the cast-iron stove in the corner and Henry had gone below, dressed in socks and a long coat from the rack by the door, to fetch up fresh coal from the bin), seemed now to bump into one another. When I climbed the stairs to change into dry clothes, even the staircase was, I swear, narrower than it had been only a few hours before. To be sure, this was in my mind. But just because it was did not mean the thought was specious. Out the dormer you could not see the tree line along the creek, so thick was the storm with vapor from the warm soil and with flying snow as well. In a lifetime punctuated by moments of feeling myself destined to be a perennial vagrant, occasionally pausing to build my own nest before finding some nice way to tear it apart, more often than not just camping out in someone else’s roost, I had never felt quite as bereft as this.

  Get a grip, I warned myself. In the armoire, where I’d gone for some corduroys, I encountered the green and gold corner of Giovanni’s box winking from beneath a stack of clothing. “Fuck you,” I whispered to the box. Unchallenged by its contents, I might never have gotten into this tangle with my uncle and the pasts of others; it did not occur to me that I was now in the middle of just what I’d come here for in the first place. Diversion from my own worries. The irony was that mine were now enmeshed with those of the very others I had hoped to use as a distraction, a gloomy frolic of sorts. I changed, returned downstairs.

  The storm did not pass through as quickly as Henry’d predicted, and if anything it seemed that although the wind had died down, the freak snowfall was even steadier than before. Because the earth was warm, the snow did not accumulate except in shady places, so when it finally petered out, we looked across the fields and down along the creek and what we saw was like a negative print of a winter scene. The fields seemed blackened, and so did the trees and barn roof and so forth, but beneath the boughs and eaves, and along the lee of stone walls, the sheltered places where usually it was dark with shadow, now it was white with unmelted snow. Only the sky, which was low, and which dropped occasional tardy flakes that corkscrewed their way down instantly to thaw on contact with the world there, did not fit into this negative-print image: neither black nor white, it was the most peculiar gray-green any of us had ever seen. It was as if a whole new color was born that day, mixed from equal parts beauty and grotesquerie. We had soup in the kitchen, and I drank so much tea my head spun.

  After lunch, I wanted to be alone. From my bedroom I retrieved The Wonder Book, then came back downstairs to ensconce myself in a deep-cushioned wing chair in the greatroom, which ran the length of the back of the house, by which I mean to say the room that runs adjacent the steep rise. My uncle’s game trophies hung on the walls here and on the floor was a bear hide, with claws and a head whose mouth opened as if in a languid if stiff yawn. When I was young, one night wandering around in the dark, I’d managed to step into the lower jaw of this august stuffed head, hard as that may be to believe, and got for my efforts a handsome puncture wound that necessitated a visit to the doctor for a tetanus shot the morning following. Ever since, I believe I avoided this room because of that incident (the mounted prizes of the hunt never much caught my fancy, either). This afternoon, however, here was where I wanted to be. I settled in, opened Hawthorne to the next chapter, entitled “The Paradise of Children.” Just enough light now came through the window at my back that I could read without a lamp.

  Long, long ago, the story began, when this old world was in its tender infancy, there was a child, named Epimetheus, who never had either father or mother; and, that he might not be lonely, another child, fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent from a far country, to live with him, and he his playfellow and helpmate—yes, I will admit I misread, playfellow and bedmate first, then reread the words and saw them for what they were—playfellow and helpmate. Her name was Pandora.

  “No,” I whispered to myself, a smile breaking on my face.

  The first thing that Pandora saw, when she entered the cottage where Epimetheus dwelt, was a great box.

  In fact, I’d never really known the story, but merely known the image of Pandora’s box, and the tradition that once it was opened, all the demons who’d been tenanted within would escape, never to be recaptured. Breaching the box was an act that had marked the divide between an Edenic time, when everybody was a child, and the world we live in now, according to this version of the tale. This was something I hadn’t known. I read on, intrigued. Epimetheus and Pandora lived in perfect splendor, as the story had it—No labour to be done, no tasks to be studied; nothing but sports and dances, and sweet voices of children talking, or carolling like birds, or gushing out in merry laughter, throughout the livelong day. Troubles of any sort were unfamiliar in this paradise; that is, of course, until Pandora developed such a persistent interest in the mysterious box, and became so obsessed that one day she declared, “I am tired of merry times, and don’t care if I never have any more!” You poor little idiot, I thought, knowing just how she felt.

  Remarkable, too, was the description of the box—of dark wood, with the most beautiful face carved in the center of the lid, a face with a garland of flowers about its brow … which was uncannily like that on my own wicked box upstairs. How could I fault Pandora when, left on her own in the house, after Epimetheus decided to go outside and play with the other children, whose interests ran more to games like gathering figs and grapes than fixating on a box, she began to curse it, push it, kick it, even, before setting to the task of unknotting the gold cord that held the lid down tight? How could I not feel some shared trait when I read how, once she was engaged in trying to undo the knot, she heard the voices of the other children outdoors, happily calling to one another in the sunlight, even while her fingers took on a will of their own, busied themselves with the golden thread. But just then, as Hawthorne wrote, by the merest accident, she gave the knot a kind of a twist, which produced a wonderful result.

  The result we all know, and we know also what happened once the lid was raised—buzzing winged ugly creatures, the whole family of earthly troubles, was loosed into the room, evil passions, dread and sorrows, plagues and pestilence, t
he whole lot—and I sat there huddled into the corner of the wing-back chair and read as some child might, enraptured by the story. It was just before the last of the creatures emerged from the box, a sunshiny figure who would announce she was to be called Hope, that the telephone rang and Edmé called my name.

  Leaving Hawthorne on the seat of the chair, as I had one more page to read before the story was finished, I walked around the luckless bear and made my way toward the kitchen, only now noting that the sun had begun to emerge again and that the world outdoors was back to normal. A feeling of contentment, even exhilaration—why not say it?: of hope—washed through me when I took the receiver from Edmé, whose face displayed anything but contentment or these other pleasant thoughts.

  “Grant?” I heard from a voice I didn’t know, but which seemed familiar.

  “Speaking.”

  “I understand you’ve been asking around about Giovanni Trentas and some rubbish about a murder, and hear you were even up at the office, and thought to myself, Tate, if young Grant’s so interested in the history of our community he’d go all the way over to Red Hill and ask Margery, who doesn’t remember what pair of shoes she put on this morning, and has gone down to the Clair to speak with Noah, why not get together with this interested fellow and let him ask some questions right from the source?”

  “I—”

  “Seeing as you asked for an appointment—next week, was it?—why not let’s skip formalities and meet tomorrow, you come on over and have a drink at my place in the evening, where we can talk about whatever your heart desires in privacy, man-to-man, just the two of us.”

  “I don’t want to cause any—”

  “What time’s good for you?”

  “Well, whenever.”

  “Let’s say six.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m sure your aunt Edmé, or your girlfriend Helen, even, would be happy to give you directions to the house.”

  “All right,” I again began to say, but he was gone, and a dial tone was what I heard.

  “What did he want?” Edmé asked.

  “Nothing; he just wants me to come by for a drink.”

  “What for?”

  “I guess, well, that he wants to talk about Giovanni with me. He’s heard I’m interested. Where’s Henry?” and with that avoided any further inquiry from Edmé, leaving the kitchen, wearing another of my uncle’s coats, to join him down at the studio, where he’d gone to inspect the roof.

  Once outdoors, I changed my mind. Henry could examine our handiwork without me. I began to hike up behind the house, ascended the knoll, which was a little slippery from the blizzard, and rounded the crest path that hugged the hillside edge, and continued on past the mouth of the gorge, up into the gorge itself. Though it wasn’t all that cold, I could see my breath steam before me as I walked. The sky was brilliant blue in patches now, and festooned with great scraps and tatters of clouds at every periphery. Below me a hundred feet, the creek raged. It was as if twice as much water roiled in its banks as usual. All the branches of all the trees dripped black runoff and glinted silver when the sun struck them. I must have climbed for an hour before realizing the shadows were growing longer and the afternoon waned. Turning back toward Ash Creek, I thought of Tate, and the sureness of his voice, and thought of Pandora and the stubbornness of her whimsy, not to mention the consequences of her persistence. Maybe it was possible my every trepidation was ridiculous, my running around prodigal and absurd, my romance with Helen doomed because ungrounded in anything other than the fear of getting on with my life, an interest in studying trouble—like some modern male Pandora who would rather petulantly fiddle the ribbons of a forbidden box than take his chances out in the real world.

  Was this Hope whispering in my ear, or just plain sanity? In either case, I arrived back at Ash Creek resolved to disentangle myself, if Tate was able to convince me that nothing unusual had happened here. With an open mind, I would give the man my honest benefit of doubt.

  Henry’s news that the shingling was a success and no water had leaked through into the studio came as an independent verification, somehow, that things were on the right track. I tried Helen on the telephone, after Edmé and Henry had gone up to bed, but there was no answer. Whereas I suppose some concern about her absence might have been the more apt response, instead I felt a kind of relief at not having to tell her just then about my upcoming meeting with inimical Tate. In bed later that night, I finished the final page of Hawthorne, and was not surprised by its auspicious ending, where all but one of the fantastical creatures had fled the box, and the last then finally emerged as expected—that lovely and lightsome little figure of Hope! What in the world could we do without her? Hope, I read, hope spiritualizes the earth; Hope makes it always new. Yes, what would we do without her? I reasoned then, as I fell asleep, book splayed open like the wings of a fallen bird on my chest, and with the bedside lamp unextinguished, as had become habit with me.

  I remember all this so well: When I awoke some few hours after, to the stunning sound of a heavy object like a baseball bat or tire iron bludgeoning and crashing above my head, pommeling the raw tin sheeting on the roof of the house, my heart sank even as my adrenaline raced. It was so clear to me, as I moved quickly to switch off the lamplight, that the same pretty figure of Hope disappeared into the darkness now, too, and once more demons were loosed on the house.

  III

  Giovanni’s Gift

  For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

  —LUKE 8:17

  LIKE HELEN TRENTAS, Willa must never have seemed a true native of this place. As one of the Richardson family, the wealthiest in the valley when she was growing up, she lived a more privileged life than most. But it was her manner, her sweet imperturbable presence, that set her apart more than, say, her clothing, her governess, or any of the other characteristics that might be associated with one of her class. Willa was never haughty. Never arrogant. Indeed, she was a guileless young girl with a bit of a faraway look in her eyes. —Willa just has something about her, parents of childhood friends would say, a uniqueness that made her seem an outsider. She did her best to ignore the feeling of being estranged. But all who knew her assumed that once she was old enough, she’d leave the valley behind in a heartbeat.

  Their predictions could hardly have been less accurate. Of anyone, Willa was least likely to renounce this place as home. She adored the rural ranchlands and outback mountain villages connected by slender highways. She loved her pastoral and somewhat provincial life. She knew, from as early as she bothered to contemplate such things, that this was where she would always live. Every walk she took down avenues of the so-called great cities of the world, every time she ventured away from the valley—her parents were persistent in their efforts to educate Willa, to give her access to culture and history and things they thought were valuable—she always returned, only appreciating home the more. What its quirky culture of husbandry and hymnals, of rodeo and radio and a thousand homespun folk rites, might have lacked in urban elegance, it more than made up for with plain old natural soul. Willa loved this valley and these mountains, and though her bearing might have suggested to the casual observer a sophistication more often associated with the city—the urbane as urban—it would be the observer’s mistake to believe Willa wasn’t through and through a country woman.

  The life she led with her husband was by all appearances not unhappy, either, no matter how different from Graham Tate she was, how utterly dissimilar were their backgrounds and even their values. Willa had always been full of surprises, and marrying Tate suddenly upon her return to the valley after a year away was not the least of what she was capable of doing. Without a doubt, her friendship with Giovanni Trentas, which was taken by some to be outrageous in light of her husband’s open animosity toward him, was one of her most sterling displays of independence and, to some, eccentricity. Even then, however, those who clicke
d their tongues barely knew the half of it. Willa went her own ways, and kept her own counsel as she went along. No one, even Tate, was going to tell her how to behave. Not that she hadn’t made certain sacrifices down the chain of years. She had.

  Because he’d graduated from high school and gone on to college before her, Henry never knew Willa when they were growing up. He knew of her family, of course, and had met her brother once, a boy who’d gone to Vietnam in the early years of the war, only to return in a box. By the time Willa left to attend that same university where Henry met his future wife, Edmé, he’d moved to the coast to complete his graduate work. It was when she came home in summer 1963, after three years of diligent study but with no interest in going back to finish her degree, that she was introduced to this poised man, Henry Fulton. To Willa he was a romantic older figure who, in his early thirties, was designing libraries and theaters and other metropolitan buildings for a living but kept returning to his childhood home because, like her, he had this place in his blood. Henry was mysterious and familiar at the same time. His wife, Edmé, was in her way mysterious, too, with a brother who was a diplomat of some sort in Europe, with a name that sounded French and proved to be Scottish. And with their young friend and compatriot Giovanni Trentas, who was adopted by the Fulton family, this chaste ménage à trois attracted her intense curiosity.