The breeze coming in through the window was surprisingly hot. Tommy felt weak and began to sweat. He shut the window and moved over to his bed and lay down on it. In a moment, the heat passed and Tommy felt cold. He started to shiver and his teeth chattered. That had not happened since he was a little kid. Tommy curled himself up in a ball, wrapping himself in blankets and burying his head in his pillow. He got colder and colder, and just when he thought he could not stand it anymore he felt a flash of heat pass through his body.
Tommy threw off the covers and got up, sitting on the edge of his bed. He sat quietly for a moment, feeling almost at peace with himself. Then his nose began running again. He dabbed away at it frantically, blowing into a handkerchief and disgusting himself with the mucus that filled the small piece of cloth and spread out over his hand. Annoyed, Tommy wiped his hand on his bedsheet, but his damned nose was already running again.
He tried to sit quietly, to fight down the rising panic, the ever-increasing disgust with his own body. When he thought he had things almost under control, something happened to his breathing. He could not get enough air. Nothing was coming through his nose.
It was probably normal, he thought. Probably to be expected.
He tried breathing through his mouth, but that did not do any good, either. His breath came in short, jerky gasps, and he suddenly knew, beyond any doubt, that he was going to die. He began to cry. He wanted to call for help. He wanted more morphine.
That’ll make this go away. I know it.
But he would not let himself call out. He concentrated hard on his breathing, working to make it normal, and to his surprise, he succeeded.
Then the chills started again. Tommy went back to the window, to the steam radiator in front of it, and tried to turn the heat valve. It did not work. Back to the bed, curling up in blankets, burying his head under his pillow, Tommy fell asleep.
He awoke with a start, fully and instantly awake. It was dark outside. His room was dark. The hospital around him was deathly silent except for some moans and screams somewhere far in the distance.
Tommy lay in bed for a moment, almost at peace with himself, and then began yawning again. The yawns grew bigger, more frequent, more demanding. In five minutes’ time, they had become so overpowering that it felt as if all the muscles in his neck were being stretched and pulled apart. He thought that this must be what a man feels when he is being hanged.
His jaws ached and then went on, beyond aching, to pure pain. Tommy began to shiver again. It was cold, so cold. The yawning stopped and he began to sneeze.
The first sneeze was not so bad. The second was a little worse. By the tenth—or was it the twentieth?—he felt as if his lungs were being ripped out through his mouth. His chest was heaving and the back of his head was aching, feeling as if it were being banged against a brick wall harder and harder with each sneeze. That too stopped just before dawn.
Tommy walked to the window to watch the sunrise. He tried to feel a moment of peace. He would have, too, except for the chills that he felt and the fact that his eyes would not stop watering.
He thought it still had not been too bad. And it had been a long time now. A week at least.
He wondered how much longer it would be until the withdrawal period was over.
He was considering that very question when he began to suffocate. Suddenly Tommy knew he was dying. Somebody had grabbed hold of his throat, from behind, and was collapsing the air passage. He let out a strangled cry for help and tried to turn to see who had hold of him.
Whoever it was had cleverly hidden himself, because there was no one in sight. Tommy began to cry and, when that did no good, to scream.
Someone came. He could never remember who. They moved him to his bed and stretched him out, covering him with two blankets. After a while, the suffocating feeling passed and Tommy sat up. Outside, birds were singing.
Tommy got up and began to walk to the window. He had gone no more than three steps when he felt a stabbing pain in his left foot. He hopped back to his bed and sat down. The pain was beginning to spread, sending spears of agony up his leg and into his groin. In a few minutes, his entire left leg was pulsating in wave after wave of stabbing cramps. Gradually they subsided, and Tommy, who had been biting his lips to keep from crying out, muttered a quick Hail Mary. It was the first time he had prayed since France, since he had been shot and carted back to the field hospital. After more than an hour, the pain in his left leg showed no sign of slackening. Then it was joined by pulsating cramps in his other leg as well. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the pain was gone.
Tommy sat quietly, afraid that if he moved even a muscle, he would start the whole thing over again. The door opened and the homely nurse came in again. He knew he had not seen her in weeks, maybe months, and today, she looked especially beautiful.
“Good morning, Tommy,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day out, isn’t it? Did you manage to get any sleep last night?”
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been waiting for you for weeks.”
She shook her head sadly. “I only work the day shift, Tommy. I was here with you yesterday. And I’ll be here for you today. And as many days as I have to be.”
Tommy looked at her through bloodshot eyes.
She’s lying. It’s been two weeks at least. Of course, she’s lying. But I won’t let on that I know.
“How much longer?” he asked. “How much longer does this go on?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it will be too long. And you’ll be glad when it’s all done. You’ll feel much better. Now eat your breakfast. I know about growing boys like you. I raised two of my own. So eat up.”
Meekly, Tommy obeyed. When he was done, the nurse removed his tray and Doctor Singer appeared at the door. Tommy was rising to greet him when the pain kicked him in the stomach. It was totally unexpected. It felt like a knife tearing through his guts while at the same time someone tightened a belt around him until he was squeezed into the shape of a barbell.
Singer helped Tommy stretch out on the bed, but it did no good. The pain grew worse and worse. The chills began again and then the sweats. The bedclothes, after a few minutes, looked as if they had been left out in the rain. The pains in his belly would not stop. Tommy turned on his side, trying to make it go away or at least abate. It did not help and, as he turned back, he could feel his breakfast coming up. He tried to hold it down but was unable to. Bits of egg and pancake and sausage and pineapple, all embedded in a thick yellow-green bile, erupted from him. Tommy jerked back, trying to miss the doctor, but was not successful.
When the doctor wiped Tommy’s face with a towel, the diarrhea started. And the chills again.
Tommy began to cry. He wanted more than anything to beg for another shot of morphine, anything to ease the pain, the suffering. But he would not let himself beg. He told himself that he would wait five minutes and then ask for it.
And when the five minutes were up, he made the same bargain with himself again. Wait five more minutes and then ask.
Periods of sheer agony alternated all day long with moments of respite. The physical pain kept getting worse and worse; the times of reprieve were never long enough.
When lunch came, Tommy tried to make himself eat, but as he brought the food to his mouth, its aroma set off another bout of vomiting and stomach spasms. He finally gave up the effort. He made himself drink a glass of water, but that only made the pain worse.
He tried then to make himself sleep, thinking that he could pass the worst of the time that way. But sleep never came. Instead, he began twitching all over, the muscles from one end of him to the other going into frantic spasms.
When the nurse came back to help, Tommy realized he had an erection and he turned on his side so she would not notice. She stroked his back and he ejaculated.
That seemed to ease the spasms in his legs, and the nurse left. Then the next wave of stomach cramps attacked.
It kept up all day, a cons
tant replaying of the previous agonies.
Again and again, Tommy decided that in five minutes he would beg for a shot of morphine. Again and again, he delayed the begging. Again and again, he prayed. Again and again, he suffered.
At sunrise the next morning, there came one of those moments of near tranquility. Tommy felt little discomfort and went to the window once more to watch the dawn. But while he was looking outside, his vision doubled, then tripled, and then dissolved to a totally meaningless blur.
Tommy closed his eyes and cried. Then he called out. But not for morphine. He called out for his brother, Mario.
Then the pain came back, and he crawled across the floor to return to his bed, where he lay in his own vomit and wept and shivered.
One day.
Another day. And another.
On the evening of the fourth day, Tommy Falcone fell asleep.
* * *
NILO SESTA WOKE WITH A START. His tongue was thick in his mouth and he ached in every part of his body. The ache between his buttocks turned to pain and he wanted to cry out. But that would not do. A man, even an eighteen-year-old man, did not cry—at least, not because of physical pain. A broken heart, yes. Other things, perhaps. But not for physical pain.
Nilo carefully scanned the nearby shore. He was still in the rowboat he had taken the night before. He must have fallen asleep at the oars, and the boat had run aground on a deserted portion of beach. Perhaps he had passed out. He remembered what happened—the shame of it, the pain of it—and for a moment he said a prayer that it had all been a bad dream.
But it had not been. Nilo knew that and there was no use pretending.
Slowly, Nilo remembered Fredo and what he had done to the burly fisherman. He half-smiled at the memory.
The sun was coming up, far off to his right. He had drifted to the west during the night, drifted away from Castellammare and the men he had to kill. That was bad.
By now every fisherman along the coast must have learned that Fredo was dead, and they would all be looking for him, them and the Carabinieri and all of Fredo’s family.
I should have thrown his body overboard. Then no one would know what happened to him and I could have moved freely. I must be more careful in the future.
It was too late to worry about it. Nilo leaned forward in the small boat and carefully unwrapped the shotgun that he had bound in a piece of canvas sailcloth. He inspected it and then, satisfied, rewrapped it. He had no love for guns, but sometimes they were necessary. He remembered Fredo. The fisherman had loved guns, fondled and caressed them as other men might touch a woman. But not him, not Nilo. At least, not until now. But who knows? This gun may become my closest friend.
Nilo set the oars, eyed one of the old Saracen watchtowers more than a mile away, and began drawing slowly toward it. After a few minutes, he realized he was hungry. This surprised him. Thirsty he could understand: the body demanded water regardless of what indignities it had suffered. Thirst could not be controlled. But hunger was something else again. What he had gone through the day and night before should have driven all hunger from him, but it had not. Nilo thought of his mother’s kitchen, thought of the good things she cooked there, and wanted more than anything to be back in those familiar surroundings. It was not that he was babied or pampered. On the contrary: Nilo was an only child and often his mother and father seemed to treat him with disdain and indifference, causing him occasionally to wonder if he had been left with the Sestas as an infant and adopted.
Nilo beached the boat, then hid it between some huge sentinel-like rocks at the water’s edge. He climbed the hill leading to the road, moving rapidly in the early morning sun. If he was where he thought himself to be, he should make it back to Castellammare by noon, even allowing for keeping out of sight and moving through the brush away from the main road.
As he moved along, Nilo began to hum a tune, something he had known since infancy from hearing his mother, an old folk song that from its curiously flat melody must have been brought across the water by some of Sicily’s Arab invaders.
The farther he went, the more he noticed—as he rarely ever had before—the intense beauty of his home island. The trail he was following was edged in vines and cacti. Off to the side were clumps of bamboo and small stands of blue-green olive trees. The air around him hummed with the songs of massive yellow-banded bees, and thousands of butterflies seemed almost to provide a guard of honor for him. A little way off, Nilo could hear the faint whir of hummingbirds going about their lives, collecting sweet nectar from the flowers that bloomed here in every color and shade imaginable. The sun moved higher into the sky, and the air around him grew more and more heavily perfumed with the scents of thyme and other wild herbs.
It could have been paradise, Nilo thought, and could remember no time when he had felt more intensely alive. I have been treated like a woman and yet my heart is light.
It might, to some, seem strange, but Nilo understood the reason for it very well. He was Castellammarese. In other places, in other times, he would not have been expected to feel the way he did. But here, among the hills of western Sicily, there was no need for pretense. Especially in Castellammare del Golfo. The town, all said, had an evil reputation, even for Sicily. Somebody had once told him that eight out of ten men in the town had spent time in prison and that one out of three had taken another’s life. Those things might or might not be true, Nilo thought, but in his hometown there was, at least, no hypocrisy that prevented one from taking pleasure from a righteous killing. He had killed once already and was about to do it twice more.
As he walked, Nilo meditated about the pleasure of delivering death to someone who richly deserved it, then hummed another song, this one happier than the last.
Once the parish priest—and at this thought Nilo crossed himself—had tried to take him for the priesthood. Nilo was a good boy, he had said, and could go far in the church. But Nilo’s father would not allow it. The elder Sesta had some private quarrel with God, and he had sworn that he would rather be eternally damned than have any child of his go over to the enemy’s side.
It was a memory from childhood.
And now I am no longer a child. My childhood has ended.
He hardly noticed that he had arrived at the hill overlooking Castellammare. Trying to keep out of sight, he started down toward the center of town. Almost without guidance from him, his feet automatically led him along the various viccolos, the dark and narrow alleyways, leading to his home.
It was fortunate that they had. And it was equally fortunate that his feet stopped him before he turned into the last shadowed way.
Nilo stopped and unwrapped the lupara and moved forward with caution. His eyes, he later told himself, must have been directed by San Giuseppuzzi, his favorite saint, father of Jesus, protector of the family, patron and advocate of lost causes. Because ahead of him, their backs toward him and facing Nilo’s house, were Enzo and Paolo Selvini. Each held a shotgun in his hand. They must have been waiting for him, waiting to shoot him down as he came out of the door of his house.
Nilo walked slowly up behind them and spoke each of their names once, softly. They turned and Nilo fired. One shell for each brother. They went down, crying and cursing. Nilo carefully picked up their guns. Dead men had no use for guns.
* * *
TOMMY FALCONE CAME BACK to life slowly.
Someone was wiping his forehead, not saying anything, not trying to be gentle. He could feel that the hand holding the cloth to his face was big and rough. Still, Tommy was grateful. He tried to open his eyes but had difficulty. They felt as if they had been glued shut. He moved slightly and immediately a ripple of nausea flowed up from his stomach.
The ripple became a wave and Tommy wanted to vomit. He tried, but nothing came. His body was wracked by shudders. He felt his bowels loosen and then he slipped back into oblivion.
Consciousness came back with a start. One moment Tommy was somewhere else, somewhere in some gentle dreamworld, and then
he was awake and lying in his bed. He tried to sit up but could not. He was strapped down on the bed.
“Hello,” he said tentatively.
“Hello, Tommy,” somebody answered. “Welcome back.”
He knew the voice and then remembered the hands that had been wiping his brow.
He tried to open his eyes but quickly gave up. The daylight was too bright; it pierced his brain, stabbing right through his eyeballs. Whoever was beside him got up and walked away. Tommy heard the curtains being drawn, and even through his closed eyelids he could feel the room growing darker.
“You can open your eyes now, Tommy,” the voice said.
“Mario?” he asked. “Peppino?”
“It’s me, Tommy,” the voice said.
He opened his eyes slowly this time. Slowly they focused on the figure next to the bed, the man clothed in the familiar black cassock of the Catholic priest. He was not as tall as Tommy and was bulkier through the shoulders, and his hair was already thinning, but no one could have missed the brotherly resemblance between the two men.
“It is you,” Tommy said. “Does that mean I’m alive?”
He heard his brother’s familiar chuckle.
“If you can call what you’ve been through ‘living,’” Mario said, “then you’re alive.”
Tommy considered that for a moment before speaking.
“Mama. Papa,” he said. “Do they know what’s happened to me?”
Mario shook his head. “They don’t know, Tommy,” he said.
“Oh, Mario. I’m so ashamed of myself.” He began to cry.
The priest wiped his forehead and eyes with a fresh white cloth until he stopped crying.
“I know,” he said. “I know, Tommy. Now the hard part starts.”
Tommy stopped crying. He glared at his brother with a rapidly welling hatred.
“‘Hard part’? And just what the hell do you think this has been? A vacation? ‘Hard part’? Don’t start preaching at me about saving my soul, you high-and-mighty son of a bitch,” he shouted. “What do you know about it? Get out of here and leave me alone. You’re no brother of mine.”
Bloodline: A Novel Page 3