Italian Fever

by Valerie Martin

  She succeeded in this operation and determined that the blood was seeping from her gums and was not the result of an injury to her tongue. It was disquieting to have bleeding gums, but much less so than finding hard evidence of a supernatural encounter. She was alone, she was sick, but surely not dying, and DV was dead, but surely not murdered. She was ravenously hungry and cold. Her head was clearer than it had been in many hours. Whole sentences containing not only sense but grammar passed through her mind and she followed them with pleasure. Her stomach, though empty, felt calm. She tried a few swallows of water, careful not to gulp it down, though it was tempting to do so. “What good water,” she said, setting the glass on the counter. A few moments passed without incident. She drank a little more, watching her reflection in the mirror, a pale, ill woman in a sweatshirt, drinking water. Her hair needed washing and her face looked haggard, but her eyes were clear. “I’m making a comeback here,” she said. She would try the tea again, and if that went well, maybe a cup of bouillon.

  Chapter 8

  LUCY WAS NEVER ABLE to recollect, though she tried often enough, the sequence of thoughts that led to her decision to leave the apartment that evening. Doubtless she was overconfident, restless from being ill and cooped up in bed. She had drunk the tea, the bouillon, and even nibbled at a few crackers she found in the bread box, all with no ill effects. It had stopped raining. She had become obsessed by the problem of DV’s missing car keys. She feared a relapse, which might make it impossible for her to look for them in the morning. Though she had no idea where she would drive, she felt trapped without access to the car.

  So she pulled on her jeans and sneakers, took up the house keys, and went out onto the terrace. It was chilly, damp, and breezy. The air was alive with the odors of wet vegetation. The geraniums in their planter boxes stood tall on their turgid stems, presenting, like jewels on velvet, the drops their petals could not absorb. The sky promised more rain; the clouds were thick, black, moving like water on the upper air currents. Best to go now, she advised herself, before it starts up again.

  She was careful on the steps, which were wet and slippery. The effort it took to get down them reminded her that she was still unsteady on her feet. It was equally difficult to negotiate the gravelly decline of the drive, but she achieved the second terrace without mishap. Beneath the dripping shelter of the bougainvillea arbor, she turned the locks and opened the door into the sparsely furnished sitting room. She closed the door firmly behind her—she didn’t want to be surprised by unexpected visitors again—and deposited the heavy key ring on the table just inside. Then she crossed hurriedly to the staircase. She was thinking that there was another reason for her visit: She wanted to look at that letter again.

  When she turned on the light in DV’s bedroom, she recalled the scratching sound she had heard the night before. She leaned against the door frame, studying the blank plaster wall behind the bed. It was mice; an old house like this must be mouse heaven. That was why everything in the kitchen was in jars and tins. She went to the nightstand, opened the drawer, took up the letter, and shook it open. She read again the fervent address, then scanned the first paragraph for words she recognized. These were mostly adjectives, sincero, appassionato, furioso, combined with occasional nouns, i tuoi occhi sereni, i tuoi capelli come un fuoco d’oro. This last bit about hair like a golden fire was strong evidence on two counts: first, that this was in fact a love letter, and, second, that it was intended for Catherine Bultman, who, Lucy remembered, gazed out upon the world from beneath a cascade of thick blond curls of the type commonly referred to in romances as a “mane.” Lucy turned the page over and looked at the closing. The handwriting was strong, the name Antonio so firmly pressed into the paper that she could fairly feel the pressure of the pen. She tried to picture Antonio Cini, fired with passion for his American neighbor, bent over some antique desk in his somber mansion, concluding his paean of praise and longing with this clear and resolute signature.

  She couldn’t picture it. He seemed to her too lifeless and, though he was certainly not thin or frail, too desiccated. Why would a woman as confident and energetic as Catherine Bultman give such a man, no matter what his lineage, a second glance?

  But then, of course, she ran up against a problem, which was that Catherine had given DV, who had not even the recommendation of an impressive family tree, something presumably more penetrating than a second glance. If she had been willing to entertain DV’s inelegant pursuit, might she not have responded to the effusive entreaties Lucy held in her hand?

  It was hard to tell. Lucy had never been much courted, had never received compliments, written or spoken, on the serenity of her expression or the effect of her hair. Your hair, she thought, like straight brown hair; really, it was not surprising that she hadn’t. She didn’t think of herself as unattractive, when she thought about the question at all, which wasn’t often, but she knew she was not likely to inspire the sort of ardor that resulted in secret letters, impulsive trysts, or imprudent promises. She was steady; that was what the occasional admirer had seen in her. She was clearheaded, reliable, and nice enough to look at. That was what her husband had been drawn to: a pleasant, friendly young woman, resourceful and competent, who could support him while he went through law school, which was exactly what she had done. This had meant working hard and not seeing much of him, a situation that she’d believed would be rectified once he finished school. And it did change, but not, as she had anticipated, for the better. She saw less and less of her more and more successful husband, who, she understood at last, was consumed by fear of failure, and by ambition, greed, and an insatiable appetite for attention, driven by these forces as if by furies, so that he had never a moment’s rest or peace of mind. Their marriage had long been a battlefield. They fought about money. When he was in school, there was never enough of it. He was extravagant, preferred silk shirts to health insurance, refused to see the importance of paying bills on time. Then, when he was working and there was quite a lot of money, it still was never enough, and he resented every penny Lucy spent on herself.

  She had applied for the job as DV’s assistant without any definite plan in mind. DV was impressed by her; he saw what everyone saw: steadiness, competence. During the interview, he told her that his former assistant, who was leaving him to marry a Finn, was giving up her rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. Lucy came away with the offer of a good job at an adequate salary and the phone number of a promising lodging. Later that afternoon, as she stood in the sunny kitchen alcove of her future home, looking down over the quiet tree-lined street, she took what felt like the first deep breath since her marriage. And that was how she had come to prefer liberty to passion.

  But now as she leaned against the bed, looking at the letter she could not comprehend, it occurred to her that what kept her from understanding it was not so much that it was written in a foreign language, but that it issued from a foreign universe, the universe of desire, passion, and obsession. If she had never received such a letter, wasn’t that only the inevitable outcome of a condition that rendered her unable to imagine ever sending one? Didn’t the woman who had received these effusions inhabit another plane of consciousness, a place of tempests and transports, where the postmen didn’t drive ugly gray trucks but arrived trailing clouds and folding wings? No, Lucy thought, her conclusion was incorrect. She hadn’t chosen liberty over passion. Passion had never been one of her options, nor was it ever likely to be.

  This revelation left her weary and disgruntled. It was as if the letter offered her a glimpse at an intriguing dramatic scene, but she was allowed to see it only through a keyhole. She had to get down on her knees and peer through the door, knowing that she would mistake everything because of the limitation of her view. And the door was locked. It had always been locked.

  She dropped the letter back in the drawer and, pushing Catherine’s drawing pad aside, lay down across the bed and drifted into a light sleep.

  She awoke with a start. Som
eone had fired a gun outside, nearby, near the drive. She sprang to her feet, staggered to DV’s study, and leaned over his desk to look out the window. It was still dark. How long had she slept? The gravel of the drive reflected a little light; was it the moon between clouds or the dawn? And she was right: There, at the far edge, a man stood bent over his boots, and on the ground next to him she could make out the long metal shaft of a rifle.

  “DV’s ghost,” she said, though there was nothing ghostlike about the man; he looked perfectly solid, preoccupied, as only the living could be, with the matter of his bootlaces. Surely in the ghost realm, petty annoyances like bootlaces and shirt cuffs ceased to be at issue.

  Was it Antonio Cini? Lucy rapped at the glass, but he was too far away to hear her. He stood up, felt about in his pockets, and drew out a pack of cigarettes. Then, because she was hardly awake, confused by her illness and light-headed from lack of nourishment, she arrived at the unlikely conclusion that the man who now turned his back to the house to light his cigarette, inclining his head in a way she was sure she recognized, was Massimo.

  “He came back early,” she said, rushing headlong from the room, for all the world like a woman running to meet a lover, down the stairs, across the sitting room, and out the door. But no sooner had her feet touched the drive than three hard bits of reality came down upon her with the force of boulders clattering down a mountainside. First, the man, who was surely not Massimo, was nowhere to be seen. Second, the weather had changed for the worse; it was bitterly cold, gusty, and wet. An icy blast sent her cowering back under the arbor, where she discovered a third fact, the most alarming, the most irrevocably hard: The metallic click she had heard as she stepped off the terrace was the sound of the door, which was equipped with an automatic lock, blowing closed behind her.

  “Oh no,” she cried out, throwing herself against the unyielding wood. She twisted the knob, rattled the door in its frame, but to no avail. The keys were inside on the marble-topped table. “Oh no,” she said again. She pressed her back against the door and slid down into a crouch, covering her face with her hands. Her forehead was hot; the fever was back. A few sudden sharp abdominal pains reminded her that her period was due; she had taken the last of the light blue pills in the cycle the night DV died. Her stomach, though largely empty, felt queasy again. She took her hand from her eyes and looked out into the dark night, too sick to feel afraid. The rush of adrenaline that had carried her boldly into her present predicament ebbed away and she found herself barely able to stand. But she would have to move; it was too cold to stay where she was. On the chance that the man was still near enough to hear her, she called out, “Is anyone there?” The words, querulous and weak, blew back at her, mocking her. They had not, she realized, carried beyond the arch over her head.

  Surely there were choices; there were always one or two. She could try to get back up the steps to her apartment in the hope that, somehow, the door there was not locked. But she knew it was. And she knew there were no windows she could reach, and even if there were, they were all closed and locked. She could try to find the man, the cause of her trouble, who must have gone down into the olive grove at the end of the drive. The wind dealt her a rough slap at this presumptuous notion, and she huddled down against it. Then, as if to finalize the reprimand, the dim light of the moon was abruptly shut away behind a cloud and a soft whispering rain swept down from the hills behind the house. “Great,” Lucy said.

  If she had found the car keys, instead of mooning over Catherine’s letter, then she could have driven to the Panatellas’, roused them from their slumbers, and gotten another set of house keys. The rain intensified and a sudden gust of wind sent a cold sheet of it under the arbor. Lucy pressed herself against the door, taking it all on one side. The car was unlocked; of that much, she was certain. Even if she couldn’t drive it, it would provide some shelter from the cold and rain. And wasn’t it downhill all the way to the Panatellas’? If the rain let up, she might be able to coast down the hill. But she would have to do it backward; the car was facing the wrong way. It was a harebrained scheme, requiring more wit and physical coordination than she could presently call upon, but her imagination was enchanted by it, and lit upon it with a great buzzing intensity, like a bee entering the florid, ambrosial chambers of a Venus’s flytrap. Just get to the car, she advised herself, and then see what happens.

  It wasn’t far, but it was far enough to get thoroughly soaked if she didn’t move quickly. She pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the doorknob. Could she run? She shook her head, trying to clear it, but all that did was hurt her eyes, which felt as if they were being struck from behind by hot pistons. The wind was fierce, rattling the thin wooden lattice of the arbor and forcing thick drops through the tight mesh of the foliage. She took a few steps to the edge of the terrace, hunching her shoulders forward, as if a supplicating posture might appease the increasing fury of the storm. The night was black now; she could scarcely see a foot in front of her face. But if she stayed on the drive, bearing always right toward the house, she reasoned that she could not miss the car. She pulled her sweatshirt hood up, tightening the laces at the neck to bring it down close over her face, and rushed out into the rain.

  She had gone only a short way, perhaps ten yards, when her left foot lodged in a hole and she pitched facedown onto the gravel. She heard the soft pop as the ligaments in her ankle gave way to the strain, followed by a hard wrench of pain so intense that she howled as she fell. A cynical bystander in the jeering mob that had overrun the center stage of her consciousness informed her that she sounded like a whipped dog. The gravel bit into her hands; two pebbles flew up, stinging her cheek. At once she raised herself to her knees and tried to stand, but the ankle folded under her like wet cardboard and she came down again hard, this time on her arm. The rain poured over her, soaking into the thick cotton of her sweatshirt, adding weight. She rolled over onto her hands and knees and lifted her head, trying to see where she was. A shaft of lightning split the atmosphere and for a moment it was as bright as day and she saw everything—the house, the drive, even the back bumper of the car, which protruded beyond the house wall. The lightning was close. In the next moment, the world was black again and the deafening clap of thunder sent such a shout of alarm through her system that she fell off her hands and lay flat on the wet gravel. For a few moments, she didn’t move. She could feel the rain penetrating to the bare flesh under her sweatshirt. It was cold; it ran down her back and pooled just under the waistband of her jeans. She was dimly aware that she was crying. Just what we need, more water, shouted the mob. “I can’t make it,” she said. “I’m too weak.”

  But she wasn’t allowed to rest. Her stomach began twisting and contracting until she was forced to lift her upper body over one elbow, bracing herself with the other hand while she vomited a thin stream of liquid onto the wet stones. When this process was over, she let herself fall back, away from the disgusting sputum. She lay faceup, but not for long, for the rain was so furious, it poured into her eyes and nose, blinding and choking her. She rolled over, following the decline of the drive, and managed, after the first full turn, to come up on her hands and knees. Then, weeping and muttering, she began to crawl, making steady progress in spite of the elements and with such determination that even the jeering crowd in her head was silenced. As she turned the corner at the end of the house, she could see the gleam of the bumper. “Almost there,” she said, and the crowd, fickle as crowds always are, turned from contempt to admiration and encouraged her with an Italian word—coraggio.

  “Coraggio,” she said, pushing on.

  But it was one thing to reach the car, another to get inside it. She pulled herself up by the door handle, balanced on one foot, and yanked the latch upward. Though she succeeded in releasing the mechanism, she hadn’t the strength to pull the door open. The car was parked on an incline and she had chosen the door on the higher side. Once more, she observed, gravity was working against her. The wind buffeted her as
she tried again. This time, the door opened a few inches, but as she tried to wedge some part of herself into the narrow space, it slipped closed again, catching her sleeve in the process. Struggling to free the sleeve, she lost her footing and slid down onto the soggy ground, her arm twisted up behind her. She was, she knew, well past the point of total exhaustion. Her body was sending distant, unreadable alarm signals, like coded messages. There was throbbing in her ankle and her head; her face was both burning from fever and cold from the icy rain. She held her free hand up to her face and determined that the pain she felt there was caused by a network of cuts and abrasions from the gravel she had crawled across. The rain drove over her; she offered it the wounded hand to wash. “Where am I?” she asked, and a voice she did not recognize responded, “Somewhere in Italy.”

  Her arm began to ache; a knot of pain issued from her shoulder joint. She struggled as well as she could, pulling this way and that, and, to her relief, the sleeve came free. This success encouraged her. She resolved to struggle on a little farther. With dull determination, she dropped forward onto her hands and knees and crawled around the back of the car to the other door. Gravity was her enemy; she understood that perfectly now, and she was on her guard. She knew that a door held shut against her on one side, would fly open and try to smash her down on the other. When she pulled herself up by the handle, this time she was careful to stand clear of the path the door would follow. And she was successful. The heavy door, like those magic doors that welcome princesses into the dark realms of mystery and romance, flew open before her. “Thank God,” she cried out with the last ounce of her strength as she bid farewell to consciousness and collapsed across the narrow, dry backseat of DV’s rented car.