A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  “That’ll teach you to respect your mates proper,” he heard Wayne’s high, almost girlish voice say.

  His room in the convalescent ward was sunny and cheerful. His parents stayed for two weeks, supportive as he knew they always would be. Warden could hardly bare to look at them.

  Rebekah visited in the afternoons, sitting with him in the light-filled bay windows. She tried to hide her shock at the changes in him and the way he just stopped talking in the middle of a sentence as though he’d lost his train of thought.

  Outside, summer had returned, all things renewing themselves with a fervour and faith in their abundance. Rebekah suggested a walk around the hospital grounds.

  “Of course, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” she chided, hoping to goad him into action. “I’ve seen old men in wheelchairs with more enthusiasm.”

  Warden stared past her out the window. He appeared not to be listening.

  “Really, you can be most exasperating, Warden! The least you could do is answer. Some days you’re like a large house with a lot of empty rooms in which I could stumble about for hours looking for someone to be home.”

  He smiled feebly.

  “There—a response! That’s all I wanted!” She touched his arm. “I’ll leave you alone now. You’ve no doubt had too much of me for one day.”

  “I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”

  She clasped his hand. “I understand how you feel. But you can’t stay like this forever. You’ve got to get on with things. Life won’t wait.”

  She pulled on her gloves and, turning her sad smile on him, went out.

  In the bathroom mirror, he traced a red sickle from his right ear to a spot just below his eye. The ridge crossed his cheekbone like an elevation line on a map. The other scar was smaller and deeper, like a crater on the moon. It had barely missed a lung.

  He scarcely recognized the person looking back. He’d been stripped of his identity. At first it had all seemed unkind, undeserved. Now he thought it might have been an act of liberation.

  That night Warden dreamed about his mother. He was on Isola d’Elba again. She walked toward him down the mountainside. It seemed he hadn’t seen her in many years. Her hair was long again, as it had been in her wedding picture, but she walked with the use of a stick, her body gnarled and withered like the rock itself.

  “You’re back,” she said simply.

  It wasn’t the greeting he’d expected. He listened as she spoke about her life, its triumphs and disappointments. On the ledge above them sat a beautiful little girl, naked except for her long blonde hair. He understood she was Lisa’s daughter, though he knew in reality she had none.

  “All things come to pass in time,” his mother explained.

  The girl sat high on the mountaintop and did not come down. Looking around him, Warden asked his mother how she managed to maintain suitable living conditions in such a barren place.

  Her face was serene. “I use the work of my ancestors as a foundation whereon I build my city. Neither am I limited to this by any ordinance, but use also cedar from Lebanon and gold from Ophir, if it suits my purpose.”

  “It’s very hard,” Warden said, wanting her comfort.

  “You must be strong,” she said.

  As she spoke he was aware of the changing colours of her skin, brilliant hues he’d never noticed before. What of his sister and father? he wondered. How were they managing?

  “What more do they require of me?” she replied. “Surely not happiness, for that is theirs to have or not have, as they wish. How can I give them anything if they don’t know what they are missing? You, being bodiless, can better understand and see immortality in the leaves and the sky and the water. They will just go on getting older. Open your hands, Warden. You will see they were never empty.”

  A tiny dog yelped at her feet. She turned and did not come back. When he woke he was crying. In the dream he felt he’d understood everything she said. It no longer made sense when he thought about it now he was awake.

  That afternoon, Rebekah did not come for her daily visit.

  “It’s all right,” Warden told her over the phone. “I’m going to take a walk in the garden.”

  By the time he returned to his room, he knew he was ready to move on.

  He did not return to Canada on his release. Despite his parents’ wishes, he couldn’t think of going home. They protested, but respected his decision that was borne as much of guilt and shame over his past behaviour as a simple desire not to go backwards. The prodigal son unreturned. If he were ever to return, he knew, it would be a long jagged line he followed to arrive back where he began.

  For now, Italy was calling him. He phoned Andreo to say he would be coming.

  “Va bene, bello! Leave that world. It is not for you. I cannot wait to see your lovely face.”

  By the time the plane landed, however, Warden wasn’t sure he hadn’t made a mistake. If he’d hoped for a miraculous recovery from all that had befallen him, it didn’t happen. Andreo was shaken by his appearance, as if some essential part of him had been stolen.

  He’d booked a hotel near the Albergo Sirtori, but Andreo insisted he stay with him. Warden had no plans to approach his old agency, even just to say hello. He wanted nothing to do with Maura or Calvino and their chimerical world, and was content to leave his presence in the city unknown to them.

  Andreo’s flat was an old-world sanctuary filled with ornate wooden furniture. Gilt-edged paintings, hand-drawn maps and rich tapestries covered the walls. When Warden arrived, he was busy preparing a meal with his own hands: spaghetti with fresh basil and a raw meat crudo. They ate on the patio at dusk. Afterwards they walked through the streets together. Warden felt restored somewhat by the sight of the city’s tall grey monuments to other eras.

  “I’d forgotten how much I missed this place,” he acknowledged.

  “Non è vero. It is this place that has missed you,” Andreo asserted.

  Warden helped out in his studio in the daytime, though he refused to step in front of a camera lens. None of the models passing through seemed to connect Andreo’s helper with the glowing face of the Fabiano Boy.

  Evening walks became a part of their routine. The luminous dusk hinted at unspoken mysteries in the air. Soft folds of cloud arrayed themselves around the intense indigo sky. People passing in the streets seemed to smile like silent Buddhas, glimmering faces of hope strung together in the twilight, and everywhere a river of voices like a living gospel.

  One evening Warden saw a teenage boy at a bus stop who reminded him of himself a few years earlier. The boy looked so young and enviable. Watching him, Warden felt for a moment as though he’d come to ask his own forgiveness.

  When they returned to the flat, Andreo indicated for them to sit outside on the patio. Fading light held on the edge of the sky.

  “Once again I have been doing all the talking,” Andreo said, settling into his favourite chair. “And now it is your turn.”

  Warden leaned on the edge of the railing. “I don’t know what there is to say,” he said. “Sometimes everything seems so unnecessary. So unreal. Like when you stare at something for too long and it loses its perspective. I feel as if I’m not really here and all this is happening to somebody else. And then…”

  “And then?” Softly, gently.

  He shrugged. “And then I just feel there’s no use. Why bother to say or do anything at all?”

  “Because you are here. Because you have to go on for now.”

  “I keep thinking none of this really matters. One day I’ll die—we’ll all die—and it’ll be like waking from a dream.”

  “But that is no reason to give up. Living means dying to anyone who can truly see it. Time pierces us like a marvellous arrow, toying with us, until it grows tired and puts us aside eventually.”

  Warden remained standing at the railing. It was a long while before he spoke.

  “While I was in prison I had a lot of time to think about everyt
hing that happened. I kept wondering where I would find any meaning in this whole mess. A lesson, or something. I tried to be open to some sort of voice, but nothing came to me.”

  “I think you will find that truth is found in silence, as you once told me that love is colourless. And Justice being blind, as they say, then we are truly lucky we can ever know anything at all.”

  Warden came and crouched before Andreo as the photographer had once crouched before him on the day they met.

  “I’m not saying I was unjustly treated. After all, I did walk into that bank and try to cash those bonds.”

  “And you admitted your mistake and accepted your punishment. So now you must go on.”

  Warden’s face seemed lost in a problem too simple to be understood properly, like the warmth of a dying day or how a shadow manages to resemble in utmost detail the thing from which it is cast.

  He looked up. “While I was in prison, I kept thinking back to when I was a kid and I used to deliver the morning paper. In the winter I had to get up early, while it was still dark, and walk all the way through the snow. The only sound I could hear were the church bells. Before I began I would stand and let the snow fall on my face, waiting for the bells to ring. For one single moment everything else seemed to disappear in that sound. Then, when they stopped ringing, I would deliver my papers and watch the house lights come on one by one.”

  He paused for a moment, picturing the scene to get it exactly right.

  “By the time I was done I was pretty cold. Sometimes I wanted to run to get home faster, but I knew I’d get there eventually. So I made myself walk slowly. And by the time I returned, the tracks I made when I left were already filled in by snow, as if I’d never been there. I used to think about that all the way back home. Sometimes I found it almost unbearable as I watched hands lifting blinds and unlatching doors, going off to their place in the world, to think that all our footsteps will eventually be obliterated by snow.”

  He sat back and put his hands on his knees as if to conclude what he’d been saying.

  “And then what?” Andreo asked, leaning forward.

  “And then? And then I pulled up my collar to keep the wind off my neck. And I walked on—as I had to,” Warden answered with a trace of a smile, resting his chin on his hand.

  “As you had to,” Andreo said, nodding. After a minute, he stood and opened the door. “Come in when you are ready,” he said, leaving the door open behind him.

  He hadn’t been there two weeks when he got a phone call from Rebekah. He could tell from her voice it was unpleasant news.

  “I thought you should know—it’s Joshua’s young brother Troy…”

  “What happened?”

  “They think it was a drug overdose. They’re not sure if it was an accident.”

  Warden’s heart skipped a beat. He was barely able to speak. “That’s terrible...”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I thought I ought to tell you.”

  “Yes—thank you.”

  “So young,” she said, shaken. “And so talented. I can hardly believe it.”

  Warden said what he could and thanked her for calling. He hung up the phone.

  One evening, Andreo returned late from the studio, beaming and motioning for Warden to get dressed to go out.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  He wouldn’t say more. At 8 o’clock, they arrived at a small restaurant not unlike the family trattoria he’d frequented during his early days in Milan. Andreo ordered for them both, ignoring the door as though he weren’t expecting anyone. After fifteen minutes, Warden glanced up to see Valentino in the doorway. He looked much the same except his head had been shorn of its curls.

  They shook hands hesitantly then Valentino grabbed him in an excited hug, lifting him off the ground.

  “How can it be so long since I have seen you?” he said. “I miss you so very much.”

  They talked excitedly, barely able to eat. Once it began, the conversation rolled on as if they’d never been apart. They spoke quickly, laughing and re-acquainting themselves. How was Paolo? What was training camp like? Had Warden suffered much in prison? Valentino kissed the tip of a finger and traced the scar across Warden’s cheek to where it ended just below his eye.

  “I think we are both in the prison, my friend. The first six months, I work myself to death so I don’t remember I am so miserable. And still I don’t sleep!” Valentino complained. “I miss dancing and having fun and being with you all the time.”

  Since his return he’d been dating girls, but there’d been no one steady since he left. “It is just to keep myself from being bored,” he said, laughing softly.

  As for the future, his first plan was to grow back his hair. Then in the fall he was returning to school to complete his degree in architecture.

  “And then I will build us both a big house where we can live happily,” he said. “And, if we decide to have some wives who like each other the same way we do, even better.” He laughed at himself.

  “And a room for Andreo where he can come and hide out from the world,” Warden added.

  Andreo nodded and smiled. “I would like that,” he said. “But I warn you now, I am planning to be a very cranky old man, so you should beware.”

  “We must go to the Riviera on Paolo again,” Valentino exclaimed. “That is, if you are free.” He winked.

  “I’m free,” Warden said.

  They left in the early afternoon the following day, retracing their route of two summers before. Warden felt something returning with the landscape, the sharp pang of being alive. Racing through the countryside, they approached a giant billboard on one side of the road. It was the infamous Fabiano ad with Warden as both male and female self. It had somehow escaped the company’s censorship or perhaps been left up by some erector of billboards sympathetic to such nameless beauty.

  They passed by, tearing up the mountainside. The wind was picking up. They overtook a car, speeding past and leaving it behind. The air carried an expectant feel, vivid colours erupting in the sky. Valentino shouted something over his shoulder. Warden couldn’t quite make it out. It didn’t matter. They were almost there, returning at last to where it had all begun, restless and parched with thirst for the shapings of time.

  Acknowledgments:

  People who read the manuscript in its various incarnations and offered their invaluable input: John Davison, who encouraged me to go on casting my net when the waters seemed empty, Shyam Selvadurai for the extra push, Douglas LePan, Dawn Rae Downton, Peter Hawkins, Fred Ward, Tara Cates, Linda Spalding, and my generous and insightful editor, David Fernbach, all for their very astute comments.

  People who otherwise helped: my parents, Leonard and Loretta Round, for allowing me to pursue the geography of my own destiny, Irene Dakos, who saw it all so long ago, Joy Brooks, Andrew Burn, Richard Redwood, Michael Ridler, Brian Scott, Tony Spinapolice, Maria Piazza, Barb York, all for various favours, Mark Ganage for the legal counsel, Sarah Martyn who said “Let geography be your destiny” and opened my mind to life, Duncan Roy for his entertaining hospitality in Whitstable, Reza Mahammad and the Star of India for the physical and spiritual nourishment in London, Calvin French and My Models Milan, Joni Mitchell and Chrissie Hynde for the late night company, GianCarlo Cardellicchio and his motorbike Andreo, Francesco di Nepi for his insightful comments on Italy as well as for introducing me to the Riviera, and the numerous other people (Jerry, Joe, Mike, Jörn...) whose lives and experiences enriched this story when our paths crossed briefly.

  Many, many thanks to Shane for all his hard work in helping prepare this new edition.

  Author’s Afterword: I’ve been told in the ten-plus years since the novel’s initial publication that Warden’s story has been an inspiration to more than one aspiring model. If you are one of the lucky ones called then, as my good friend Douglas LePan once wished me, I wish you tanti auguri in letting geogra
phy be your destiny.

  Also by Jeffrey Round:

  The Honey Locust

  Vanished In Vallarta: A Bradford

  Fairfax Murder Mystery

  Death In Key West: A Bradford

  Fairfax Murder Mystery

  The P-Town Murders: A Bradford

  Fairfax Murder Mystery