Knife Party at the Hotel Europa

by Mark Anthony Jarman

  “Weren’t we going to go out?”

  Two cars packed with eighty kilograms of ammonia nitrate explode outside a crowded market in Iraq and ignorant armies clash by night and the dead in their postures in the rubble by the river and the living wearing night-vision goggles — that vision thing.

  “And do something?”

  Choppers circle the rubicund Vatican and rotary blades whump and drone like weird gods hovering above my rooftop terrace (and Roman gods line the silhouette of each building), the sky solid with metal and rotors (here come the warm jets), choppers supplying that hot LZ soundtrack, and irritated travellers are delayed as Rome’s da Vinci airport shuts down for this puzzling man’s security. Ah, the President, our shining example when cynics argue that you can’t change the world.

  My world is changing in its small way. In the Court of Queen’s Bench, Family Division. Financial Statement Form 72J. I hereby make oath and say the details of my financial situation are herein accurately set out, to the best of my knowledge, information and belief.

  And verily, Eve saw the fruit of the tree was pleasing to the eye and tasteful to eat and she took it between her lips. The Chaldeans listened to reggae and conquered and ruled Babylon in biblical times, well before 7-Elevens and ammonia nitrate and drone missiles. Chaldea, the southernmost Tigris and Euphrates Valley, may have included Babylonia and the original Garden of Eden, where the young Iraqi woman had to flee the American soldiers and a giant Abrams tank tupped her golden Mustang.

  Tiny Canadian tanks burnt here in Italy in 1943, burnt in the grain fields, the Canadians had popguns and such thin armour compared to the German armour and 88s, take a hit and boys trapped inside the burning hull, the crew brewed up and no one climbed out. Now touts and tourists with bare legs and iPhones and vineyard passes. Medium tanks hid themselves in the orchards under the hills. The soldier who was in Iraq said that sometimes it’s better to be clueless. Thou shall kill, thou shall not kill, thou shall not lie with her, thou shall not put a pillow under her ass. Eve and I steal past ladders in the orchard and I look up and stars are fucking pulsing!

  Fireflies and jets blink overhead in the stars and a firefly moves deep in the black riverbank verge, the firefly swerves happily toward us and flutters right over my brain. I enjoy that the firefly flashes then blinks out, disappears, so I have to guess where it will blink to life next, a pleasing game. We hold hands, I like Eve’s small hands. The firefly almost wanders into a wall, and we worry, but the charmed firefly rises at the last second and clears the barrier.

  Bats too move in the dark air, driving at us and skirting the giant swaying tree. Eve and I both like bats; I believe bats wake up feeling peppy and want to show off their flying skills in the dusk. What a marvellous night to be outside in the dark, simply staring up, so content to sit. My modest empire of weeds and flowers, bats and beetles and fine beer. What more could anyone want?

  Bats fly and students riot in the street and I love the look of her face asleep so close to me on the pillow. I see a tiny spider on the ceiling making a mini-fresco; I will not tell her of the spider. My anxious cousin dreams a hedgehog chases her, starts beside me in my starched bed. Her sleepy voice now like a little girl, describing the hedgehog dream: it was awful. She sounds English, favours words like sozzled, dustbin, loo, horrid, naff; lying in bed with lager and wine is, in her eyes, a naughty afternoon and I’m a naughty chap. I like staring into her lovely green eyes, I touch her and she vibrates.

  She asks me if I’m a fox or a hedgehog. Before I can reply, she says, I think you’re a hedgehog.

  We are learning about art in Rome, learning that too much art is like too much salt, too much doctrine. More Canadians died fighting in the streets of Ortona than died on the beaches of D-Day, but who knows anything of Ortona and the Italian campaign? All the dead Canadians and no one cares, D-Day is more widescreen, Hollywood. Is Ortona on the east coast of Italy, the west coast of Italy? And what of the fighting and rubble of Monte Cassino, the Liri Valley, and the gory Gothic Line? Dropping bombs did not help matters, the heaped rubble from the bombs made the fight more difficult. I will try to learn from this; I resent the constant memory of Natasha but will try to give up my ill will, my desire for revenge, to make Natasha suffer. Bombs do not help.

  My bachelor uncle died near here, Italy, Christmas 1943; he survived the debacle of the “raid” on Dieppe in the summer of 1942. He was one of thirteen kids on a homestead; he was not trying to save the world, the army was a way to get off the farm. At Dieppe the Canadian guests were expected, mobs of green soldiers trapped by seawalls and cliffs and cut apart by German mortars and heavy machine guns intimate with each inch of the holiday beach, Churchill tanks stuck on the stones, men’s tears and blood on the steep stone beach and at the conclusion of slaughter the dead men’s corpses directed to a mass grave. I would have gone mad on the beach at Dieppe, but my uncle kept his head and stayed alive.

  My uncle is also Eve’s uncle, he is one reason we are both in Italy for a visit. In Italy in 1943 he was using a solid stone wall for cover and the wall exploded and my uncle vanished. Our uncle left behind several cedar canoes, sleek vessels like vintage pieces of art, and Eve ended up with one, her cedar canoe hung upside down in her carport, thwarts and polished ribs gleaming inside like the best maple syrup.

  The food in Rome, our love letters to the market stalls, to bright heaps of fruit and peppers, to pasta sliced on wires and wondrous wines and gleaming grapes. Honey for my tea! Olives and oil, figs and dates, hazelnut cookies, loaves and fishes. Brava! This giant orange is going to change my life. Molto bello!

  Eve says, “The thing with the pillow is hot.” But she also says I’m insensitive, aloof, Prufrockian. She said that.

  “Are you on the pill or anything?”

  “Or anything. Don’t you think it’s a bit late to ask that?” Still, she smiles.

  Halfway across the bridge in Rome there is a sharp cracking sound, not the bridge under us, but an explosion just past the other end, blocking the way to the piazza. The first sound is blunt, but it is also the loudest noise I’ve ever heard, soft and hard at the same time. A yellow-orange flash leaps high into blue Roman sky while pulverized dust rushes sideways, the air cleaved, a frenzied blur, a tertiary sandstorm beneath the sunny orange mushroom and a small shockwave making my eyeballs tingle. The deafening noise ricochets away off ancient city walls, holding and gone in bald daylight.

  In the dust we are nearly run down by the corner of a red truck; an elderly woman slowly crossing the street is brushed aside by an escaping Vespa. The older woman seems to not notice the panic of fleeing cars and scooters. I also have to recover a bit, reboot. She lies flat on the road as if nervously kissing the ground and a tiny Fiat 127 tries to avoid her.

  We lift the tiny woman, a weightless moth, and she looks to us, puzzled by our hands; a taxi driver cups her ribs, eases the woman into his cab. Fleeing cars flash by so close to my legs, an inch that way, an inch this way and the cars can shatter our light bones, they can kill us in the smoking light. Will my hearing ever come back?

  Some humans run toward the explosion, some run away. I have no plans, as right now I am made of jelly. Some humans run, but my cousin and I stay still, my head aching from the concussive noise, almost a sinus pain, my ears not working right, my monitor needs way more volume.

  In the shade of a pine tree a woman sits, her forehead cut and blood falling into one eye in slow heartbeat cadence. An ambulance with blue flashers loads up an embassy employee; the poor guy started opening the morning mail and now he has no hand. Our dear old uncle killed in Ortona: was the wall where he took shelter booby-trapped or did he hear a German 88 shell whining closer as he hugged his heart to the earth and thought of his horses in the foggy hayfield, his Chestnut canoe crossing right through flooded islands, his canoe bumping trees and behind the canoe the big head of his dog swimming. In a high willow two bald eagles study my uncle and his dog until they vanish.

  We cr
oss the river just to get away, to not be there, and then my cousin and I sit down as soon as we can, attempt to relax by jittery fountains, to forget in the liquid light of the piazza, water falling on stone statues and water breaking in heated air. The knifing at the party, the bomb in the street; am I some sort of jinxed magnet? But we are not hurt; so does that mean good luck? I remember my euphoria in the pulsing night orchard, around us our minor whirlwind of bats, and I remember her clean form like steam in the tiled shower, a pleasing image.

  “That was really fun yesterday,” I whisper as if we are in a chapel.

  “Yes,” she says in a flat voice, “and that’s all that’s important.”

  Behind Eve’s dark glasses — do I detect a new critical tone? I wonder if you can ever pin such things down to a precise moment, the first shingle blown off the roof, the band no longer playing “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” a small boat about to tip and when do you leap from the gunwale.

  On a train near the Rebibbia Metro station, the driver finds a “device” made of metal tubes and powder. Perhaps it is an al Qaeda device, or perhaps a device connected to the rioting Roman students and anarchists. Or perhaps it belongs to one of the Italian Prime Minister’s famous underage girlfriends, could it be Ruby the Moroccan belly dancer who steals hearts at the PM’s ribald bunga bunga parties in Milan? Ruby the dancer’s brief moment.

  The train will not leave the station, though the device is not a true bomb, there is no detonator, and the Vatican says The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence is not a true Caravaggio and now the Pope is on Twitter, but you cannot confess to a priest on an iPhone, despite earlier statements leading some of us to believe that you could confess on an iPhone.

  But what if I need to confess?

  No one speaks of Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Staple Gun Guy, no one says who sent the severed pig’s head in a parcel to Rome’s Great Synagogue.

  “This heat. It’s always so damn hot.”

  Her voice sounds more stressed than I’d realized and I decide I better pay attention. Her walk is so confident, but at times she lacks confidence.

  “All these amazing antiquities, but then look at that apartment building. Zero aesthetic sense, not a thought about design, and honestly, these bombs are freaking me out a little.” She pauses. “Can we maybe get out of the city a while? What do you think?”

  Yes, we can, surely we can go where we wish. We are free. Bombs now in the road and the knife party not leaving her mind, the world a flower, the world a floating dagger, a chalk-face Noh play-acted in both our heads. Her tension breeds tension in me, perhaps both of us a little freaked out and the melting city pavement (what glorious ruins paved over a few feet beneath?) packed with more and more people and tiny cars powered by teeth and hatred and the temperature higher with each summer day that opens an eye and unrolls its arms.

  I want to please her, really it’s all I want. So yes, we can get out, we can exit the holy city’s crowded streets. All I need is a T-shirt or two. So the coast, the sea, the skuas and scoters and shady vistas somewhere cooler, a tranquil bay, a beach, a full red moon glowing on the strait and glass-green waves collapsing on pebble beaches like a constant industry. To a harbour’s scattering of picturesque skiffs and ropes and rattling pebbles and mute swans and a moon drowned and the sea pulling its milky weight around the globe.

  My cousin and I rent kayaks for a week and pack our picnic and sunscreen in watertight compartments, a tiny seaside village clinging to the face of an uncooperative cliff, houses above us stuck like colourful mussels, people’s lives; how do they hang in place?

  The coastal world holds audacious islands, pyrite-yellow strands lacing glowing red cliffs standing over us in the sea and Iceland gulls and jagged peaks of dark lichen and cold seawater running down the paddles onto my arm and my hips soaked in the easy waves and this cooling breeze so welcome in this murderous greenhouse! It’s lovely on the water, the shallows such beautiful shades of emerald, azure, jade, and cobalt.

  Eve and I kayak a new coast threading islands and greenshanks and whiskered terns and we see so far and glide so smoothly and cover such distances without engine noise or oily exhaust. Our long, conjoined paddles dip in the sea and lift dripping in the sun. Kayaking is like snow skiing in that it alters me quickly, makes me happy that the natural world can be so exhilarating, my lungs full of fresh air and my eye full of beauty. Sand, cliff, sand, cliff, the sun setting as Eve and I spin in easy circles and drift and drink water, kayaks tied together near gatherings of pygmy cormorants and noisy mobs of pale-throated birds; that night we sleep like children undersea.

  In our chamber we sleep so warmly and a larger night ship waits off the coast in strong seas; a smaller boat moves away and struggles in the darkness, the open boat bobs and yaws, tilts in the rocks and pours them out before the passengers are at shore, they are thrown from the boat as it capsizes in white surf on the dark land like lace at a neck.

  On a beach we share black cherry juice and pale bread and buffalo mozzarella and then we kayak past cliffs and a sunlit village and beach and over there: should we stare or look away? We glide past men roped to each other in the surf, men searching the water for bodies and three bodies already laid in a row on the sand of the beach; three bodies in sodden coats drowned near this narrow accumulation of sand under the cliffs.

  Men with mustaches, with suitcases and wet sand glued to their black coats; this crescent beach was not their destination, but now they are stopped on the sand, their mouths stopped, now they are at their destination. Their skiff sank in riptides and long lines of spray, their hands let go and their mouths let in the sea and sky.

  Far offshore a red Zodiac inflatable lifts on rhythmic waves, scuba divers surfacing around a boat. Why all the divers gathered like gleaming black seals? Diving for pearls, diving for our café’s seafood? We paddle closer and then Eve steers away sharply; her eyes are better than mine. I don’t know if I can understand this scene on the water, divers and floating bodies tethered to a boat, a rope tied to each body so they don’t drift away from the red inflatable.

  A drowned man lies on his back beside the Zodiac in a short-sleeved shirt, his face under the water, his face almost under the bobbing boat. I don’t want the hull to hit his face. The man’s face is under the waves, but two clenched hands reach out of the waves toward the sky. His head under water, but his big arms lifted up in the air; now does that make any sense in terms of evolution or human design? A rope is tied to the man’s shirt and runs through the open fingers of his left hand, as if he is grasping the rope, doing his bit to help the divers.

  Herring gulls float on the rolling surface as a diver holds up a small girl from the water and a uniformed man balancing inside the boat takes the girl in his hands. She is perhaps ten, has a long black braid, and seawater runs from her braid into the boat, her jacket and hair dripping water, water running off her face. A gull stares.

  The girl’s eyes are closed as if she is calmly sleeping, her large closed eyelids, her small fingers, the sea a beautiful azure, and she is so quiet in the man’s tender arms. This drowned girl makes me think of the Pietatella chapel hidden in that Napoli alley, the delicate details in stone of Sanmartino’s Christ lying under a thin shroud, how can it be, one piece of marble suggesting both body and light veil.

  Eyelids and fingers, a mother gave birth to a daughter, this tiny wet creature slipping from between her legs like a tadpole and pulled from silky water and now a man stands in a boat, a girl lifted in his arms, a lamb as offering to the wide summer sky.

  This uniformed man’s motor-launch and its strange cargo, this turquoise sea and golden photo light of tourist brochures — can death visit here, this pleasing sea rolling under the summer sun, the water muscled, like muscles and curves on a living body. A diver visits the sea and ties a person to the rise and fall of a motorboat.

  Will the mother grieve or did the mother also drown here, thus spared this sight of her daughter? She and her family were so close to
the shore, so close to Hotel Europa. Daughter, mother, father. Tell me, did you learn to swim in your village in the far desert? No. Their flat desert was sea bottom once, but that doesn’t help these travellers with this sea bottom. Where are they from? Who knows. Sand blowing in the desert and sand roiling under the sea, the surf comes strolling to them, sea ringing to the stars and comets. They brought nothing with them, they are moving, untethered astronauts. Hurry, get to land, get sand under your boots. But where in the riptides is the bottom? We begin in a warm sea and we end in the cold.

  The girl with the braid so peaceful now, but villagers heard screaming in the dark under the cliffs; the villagers couldn’t see where the migrants rolled in water and rocks and now in daylight these people collected on ropes, now in daylight the girl’s long dark braid dripping seawater and bodies and babies roll in the waves like glossy dolphins. Are they from Iraq? Tunisia? The family came so close and I wonder will they be buried in Italian soil, remembering words carved on the gravestone in the Protestant Cemetery: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.

  Eve can’t watch the divers do their work, Eve glides away in a bright kayak and I follow her, hearing an old blues tune, Reverend Gary Davis’s raspy voice stuck in my head, death don’t have no mercy, death don’t take a vacation in this land. In this land of vacation, in this perfection, our bows whisper water’s music and Eve whispers childhood prayers under the walled cliffs and I try to remember the childhood words, and our dead uncle and his dog follow us on the water in the ribbed Chestnut canoe.