“Not music, fortunately.” She tried to sound flippant. “You can’t own a song. It can’t be taken away from you.”
“And do you still sing your opera songs—the ones you performed in Munich?”
Her forced smile faded. “No.”
“So you lost them somehow. Or someone took them away. You let someone take them away.”
Her fiery anger, the anger I had missed the opportunity to share, had burned down to a private smolder.
“Anyway,” I continued, “The Discus Thrower is a marvelous work of art. You can’t possibly disagree with that?”
She looked down at her stained dress, as if noticing for the first time what a mess she had made, with broken crockery scattered over the terrazza, out into the yard. “I don’t know anything about art.”
“You have an opinion. Tell me.”
She reached for a cloth behind her, wiping each finger slowly. “You want an opinion? All right. The body is perfect—young, muscular, athletic, and realistic, of course. I understand all that. But the face is empty.”
“You’re not understanding. It’s an issue of development over periods. This isn’t a Renaissance—”
“See? I knew you would say that.”
“I’m sorry. Go on. Please.”
She took a breath before starting again. “The eyes are empty. The face has no personality …” The cloth was now balled in her hand. “There is no emotion, no intellect or individuality. For the sculptor, everything above the neck was an afterthought.”
“That’s a matter of style.”
“No, it isn’t, Ernesto. It’s a statement about ideals.”
“Well, it was ideal in its time, a very long time ago.”
“No. It is an ideal in our time—among some people, the people who were willing to pay millions of lire for it. I’m sure you have a great respect for the past, for history and art, but this isn’t about that. It’s about using an icon from the past to justify the future, don’t you think? Why else would they go to so much trouble to purchase it?”
“Are you blaming me for working for such people?”
“No.”
“Do you think those are my ideals—to be thoughtless and without emotion, to be without individuality?”
“I don’t.”
“So?”
“So I just want you to be more, for one night.”
“Be more than what?”
“I want you to be more than the reason you came here. That’s all.”
Cosimo had appeared at the edge of the terrazza. His eyes widened, taking in the yard’s broken dishes and the spatters on Rosina’s forearms.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, ignoring her brother’s silent arrival. “I’ve hurt your feelings. I’ve insulted your favorite sculpture.”
“Who said it was my favorite?”
“I’ve insulted your work.”
“Of course I’m not insulted. It’s all very interesting.” But as soon as I said it, I heard myself sounding again like the person she didn’t want me to be: detached, pedantic, single-minded, able to lecture at length without divulging anything that really mattered. But how could I, when even I hadn’t decided which parts of the past could be safely remembered, and which should only be forgotten? “Let me tell you—I’ll show you a book, my di Luca guide. A colleague—a very good friend—gave it to me. It has excellent pictures. You will see the progression, from Greco-Roman to Renaissance, including some of the same developments you’ve noted. It’s very interesting, all the same.”
Cosimo said nothing as we walked to the truck together, climbed into the back, and surveyed the statue and the remaining crate bottom. We took everything he had hauled outside—an old stained and ripped mattress, several blankets and lengths of rope—and formed a cocoon around the statue, lashing the padding down to the pallet-like bottom and stuffing extra padding between the crate and the inside walls of the truck. If anything, it was better protected now than it had been before.
“I’m glad to see you’ve washed up,” I told him. He had refused to shave until after the burial and had begun to look like a walking corpse himself. Now, there was some improvement. But still, he looked on the verge of collapse. “You didn’t sleep last night, I imagine.”
“Not really.”
“How long would you last tonight?”
Cosimo looked up at the sky, a washed-out blue. “We have maybe two good hours, then some difficulty driving in the dark, but we can go a little ways. At least we can start heading for Milan, and after Milan, tomorrow, the roads will be much better.”
“You’d have every right to stay here, to make me go alone.”
“But how would you find your way? Mechanical problems, language problems—and you’re still not such a good driver, even with practice. And then, someone has to return the truck.”
“You’re not thinking about the truck.”
“No.” Cosimo attempted a smile. “But you got my brother here. So I will get you to the border. It’s only fair.”
“Thank you, Cosimo.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “We are not leaving tonight?”
“We’re innocent, Cosimo. That should stand for something.”
His empty look told me that he stopped seeing the world in those terms long ago. Perhaps it was the policeman in him, or perhaps the Catholic, or perhaps simply the grief-stricken man who feels we’re all being punished for something.
“Domani,” I said firmly. “Meglio. Better, early domani.”
Cosimo lifted his eyebrows—whether at my slowly improving vocabulary or at my questionable decision, I’d never know.
CHAPTER 12
An hour had passed when I pushed open the barn door. Rosina looked up from her bed, startled and guilty, closing the di Luca guide with one finger still holding her place.
“You said it had excellent pictures. It was just sitting on top of your suitcase. I thought—”
But I could see it in her face. I remembered, now, sitting under the tree and then sliding it into the book, for safekeeping.
“You found the postcard.”
“Were you really going to send this to your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you write it?”
“I needed to tell someone.”
“But you weren’t going to send it.”
“I hadn’t worked that out. This entire trip has shaken my faith in the idea of planning ahead.”
I walked over to the stool next to the washtub, carried the stool across the room, placed it next to her bed, and sat down opposite her. She was sitting with one leg folded under the other, wearing a silky gray-and-blue robe patterned with gingko leaves—out of place here, but not out of place in the world she’d once inhabited. I could imagine her in an opera-house dressing room, with her hair piled on top of her head, in front of a brightly lit mirror.
She noticed me staring at the robe and pulled her legs up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. “Pretty wrapping for a plain box, I’m afraid.”
“You’re forgetting. I’ve already seen the box.”
“I’m not forgetting anything.”
There was an awkward moment as she scooted to a more upright position, back against the headboard. She patted the side of the bed, and I left the stool to sit closer to her, still not touching.
“Do you want to talk more, about art?”
“Not at all.”
“Va bene.” She smiled, self-consciously. “Perhaps you should tell me more about yourself. I’ve told you a lot about me.”
“Not so much.”
“I’ve told you I was married. I’ve told you I’m defective. That should frighten you away, unless you think it is a convenient defect.”
“You’re not defective, Rosina. Anyway, how long were you married?”
“Two years.”
“That’s all?”
“It was two years t
oo long. And trust me, a man like Gianni can’t wait to see his face reflected in new faces all around him.” Now she laughed. “You have no idea. You’re so young! At least ten years younger than I am. No, don’t tell me.”
“You are trying to frighten me off, aren’t you?”
“Look at you—not a wrinkle, not a blemish.” Her fingers touched the front of my shirt. “And you probably have no idea that you are good-looking or athletic because no one your age can appreciate—”
“Now you’re being condescending. You’re trying to make me feel young and foolish, so I’ll leave you alone.” I unbuttoned my shirt, methodically, and left it hanging open. She watched, a serious look in her eyes.
“I will tell you something,” I said.
“What, you can’t get pregnant either?”
I didn’t laugh, didn’t smile. Then I started to tell her, slowly at first. It wasn’t easy to talk about. I’d never told a soul, not the librarian who had befriended me and first showed me the great books of classical art; not the antiques dealer who had given me my first job; not any of the coaches who’d been annoyed by my tendency to dress and bathe away from the other boys; not Gerhard or any other work colleague or friend. Only Doctor Schroeder had known, and my mother and I had left his office before I was subjected to his questions or procedures.
I told her about how I hadn’t noticed at first, as a boy; about how my mother had helped me cover it up; about how it had embarrassed and later enraged my father. I explained about the summer campouts and group hikes I had missed, as well as the youth organizations I had failed to join, and the impact that had made on my life in a day when military preparedness and group affiliation and the appearance of cooperation were everything. Even now that the problem was no longer visible or tangible, it had left a stain on my life.
Maybe it was my fault for building it up, for leaning closer and closer, for lowering my voice at the awkward moments. Our foreheads were nearly touching. “I don’t have it anymore. But I did, as small a thing as it was, and that’s the story.”
Her brow furrowed as she listened, trying to understand.
“But what is it—what was it—exactly?”
“A mark.”
“But what kind of mark?”
I opened my shirt and let her see the long, puckered scar across my ribs.
“But is that it? Or was it there before?” She ran a delicate finger along the jagged, salmon-colored line.
“The scar came after. It was much smaller.”
“But what was it?”
When I told her, she pulled away. She threw her hands to her face. She buried her eyes. It was a reaction that made my heart race because I had visualized it so often before—the revulsion and judgment of a stranger. She couldn’t help it; she was trying to hide it and squelch it. It took me a moment to realize she was convulsing, not with disgust, but with laughter.
“That’s all?” she said, just beginning to catch her breath. “It probably looked like a mole. That’s really all?”
My face blazed.
“I’m so sorry.” She reached for my shirt, my chest—and missed, because I had scooted back and was leaning as far away from her as I could lean without falling off the bed. “No, I shouldn’t have laughed. But don’t you realize how common that is?”
When I didn’t answer, she reached for me again, hand on my knee. “My goodness—hundreds of people have an extra nipple, I’m guessing. Thousands of people. I knew a girl with the same oddity. I knew a boy with six toes. I had a cat with six toes. I’m sure extra nipples are just as common. Liebling, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to embarrass you. Wait—don’t go.”
But I was only going as far as the stool. I didn’t want to be touched, or laughed at, or condescended to, or sympathized with; I didn’t even want to hear the word she had said twice already, the name for the extra thing I once had. I had in fact already learned, in just the last few years, that my own birth defect—the visible part, anyway, because there always would be the question about what lurked inside, what other cellular strangeness or hereditary weakness existed—was minor and common.
“As common,” I said, continuing my thought in midstream, “as being an imbecile. Or an incestuary. Or a gypsy. Or a Jew. Or infertile.” I was clutching the bottom of the stool just to keep my hands occupied. I was afraid of my own hands. “Yes, I am well aware that it is common.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a mistake to tell you.”
“I’m very sorry. But Ernesto—”
“Ernst. I’m not Italian. Call me Ernst.”
“But what happened after? Why is there a scar?”
“Another time.”
“Never mind,” she said, swinging her legs over so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She touched her lips to mine, waiting for me to respond, which I couldn’t help doing—which I did and kept doing, until she needed a breath. She let her robe fall open and she whispered into my neck: “Never mind.”
We were experts at starting again, newly coined experts at seizing the moment, but perhaps that was the natural outcome of burying someone. There should be something good that comes from it.
My hands were inside her robe, on either side of her waist at first, holding fast to this first rung on a ladder that stretched farther than my mind dared picture all at once. I moved my hand, and she pressed closer. I followed her curves, surveying everything quickly, anticipating many subsequent explorations, adoring and memorizing her.
When my poorly shaved cheek rubbed against her skin, just above the line of her camisole, she murmured, “You missed a rough spot there,” and when I pulled away, she pulled me back. “I didn’t ask you to stop.”
A moment later, she broke away to whisper, “Tell me what you wrote on the postcard.”
“Ich bin verliebt.”
“So soon?”
“Ich liebe dich.”
“Again.”
“Ti amo.”
“You’ve been consulting your dictionary.”
“That one was easy.”
“But I don’t believe it,” she said. It was a game, but one she didn’t mind playing. It was a game she had played with someone else who sounded like me, maybe even looked like me. What was the harm in that? At least that was her view.
I rolled onto my back, taking her with me, and then changed my mind. Now I was on top, she underneath, and perhaps I was pressing too fiercely. She flinched, and I thought I’d reached a limit, done something wrong or moved too fast. But it was only the sound she had heard. She froze, listening—there it was, the soft, swift scratching. She cursed under her breath, pulling away from me.
Tugging her robe closed, she hurried to the door and slipped through it, hand low to the floor, pushing away the would-be intruder, Tartufa. In a minute she was back.
“Couldn’t we have ignored her?”
“She would have kept it up all night. It’s because I let her sleep in here sometimes. She would have started barking, until Cosimo came and found her, and found us.”
“You scared her off?”
“I put her in the back of the truck and pulled down the door.” Rosina laughed at this, at the desperation of it.
“Won’t she still bark?”
We listened together, and there was the sound—a single muffled bark, a long pause, then another testing bark. But it was very faint.
“That’s all right,” she said, pulling me closer, resuming what we’d started, but more gently now. She reached to unfasten my belt. “Let me help you.”
“I’ll get to that.”
More gently, more slowly, nothing wasted or forgotten. But it was like a phonograph slowing down—not just slower, but changing pitch. The new sound was one of uncertainty, with—here, the truly unfortunate thing—canine accompaniment.
There was nothing fluid in this. Nothing elegant or well practiced. I tried harder, but harder was not better. Like a man drowning, I was only making things worse with my struggles, losing t
rack of the woman beneath my weight—not just a woman, but Rosina—losing track of what had excited me, of all that she possessed when I had first seen her, not only physical beauty, but lack of shame. And all the while, I was still thinking of that dog, pushing its paws up against the door, scrabbling to get in.
“I heard something.”
“She’s fine.”
“Maybe someone … maybe Cosimo …”
“We’re alone.” Then, joking: “There are no ghosts.”
When I stiffened, she apologized. “I shouldn’t have said that. Kiss me.” Küss mich.
But if I was afraid of any ghost, it wasn’t Enzo’s.
Something was off. The interruption, the distant barking, the time pressure, my own recall of her love for someone else, the question of what would come next, the argument we’d been having before which had returned to prick me, a thorn ignored but not forgotten. Something had hollowed out the moment. My hand paused too long, and she noticed, too. She pulled away slightly, though without closing her robe, so that she was sitting on the bed, half reclining, her body in full view.
Her beauty was undeniable. I was not any less drawn to her.
“I’m worried about the dog,” I said, because that was the easiest part to explain.
“Still?”
When I didn’t answer, she began to pull her robe closed again.
“Please don’t. I want to look at you.”
And though she complied, my own body betrayed me. My own vitality had ebbed, my own self-consciousness had returned, and yet the adrenaline was still there, poisonously unspent. Of course she wouldn’t love me. Of course she wouldn’t have desired me if we had moved more slowly, if she had looked carefully and examined me more deeply and considered what she was doing.
And the act itself—it might have been disappointing. While this—looking at Rosina, seeing and memorizing her every contour—was a pleasure that would sustain me for months and years to come. Just as Rosina herself had predicted: a memory for later, but a memory of before.
The moment before had always been the best moment. The moment at the starting line, just before the struggle and before the striving, before the questionable euphoria. None of it used up. None of it tainted, in the way that everything is ultimately tainted—everything and everyone. The moment just before the discus flies, when nothing has happened, when no one has succeeded or failed, won or lost. When everything remains possible.
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