Chang-rae Lee

by The Surrendered (v5)

  FOURTEEN IN SIENA THEY HAD to share quarters again, as there were only six guest rooms in the residenza, a converted townhouse looking out over a tiny cobble stone piazza. Like everything else Hector had seen in this country it was old, beautiful, more than slightly decrepit, its façade saturated in the exact color (at least in his memory) of his mother’s light-brown eyes, this burnished, timeless wood. But the constant, nearly inescapable sighting of exquisite landscapes and antique architecture was wearing on him. Maybe he was imprinted too deeply by modest Ilion, or war-ravaged Seoul, or forgettable, low-slung towns like Tacoma and Fort Lee and then the many other crumbling, forlorn places he’d drifted through in between, and after these few days he felt that he was being overwhelmed, that his eyes hurt. The feeling that he should be comforted and uplifted by the beauty only made him feel more misplaced than ever, misguided, lost in a museum of someone else’s life. Their room was very large, a half-floor suite with high coffered ceilings and marble-tile floors and rich draperies and decorated with old rugs and paintings. The furniture, June had commented, was top quality. Hector had never seen such a place, much less stayed in one. The bath had a tub carved from a single block of marble and the fixtures were burnished brass and the bath and bed linens had been freshly starched and ironed, the crisp hand of their fabric pressed to a high sheen. Vases of sunflowers were set on either side of the single king-sized bed (he would sleep on the red velvet sofa), its baronial walnut headboard carved with a scene from the Palio di Siena, the famous horse race held in the main plaza, a tight phalanx of charging horses and riders thundering to the finish, the town’s huge clock tower serving as the background. The Palio was held in July and August, but in some years (like this one) there was also a special race in September; this was to be run tomorrow. He had parked their car in a lot on the northern end of the old city walls and taken a taxi toward the center. The only reason they were able to get a room at all was an unexpected departure due to illness by a Swiss couple at one of the most expensive lodgings in town, which the driver knew of because he’d driven the couple less than an hour earlier out to their parked car. The cabdriver, named Bruno, was a brightly garrulous young man who spoke a distinctive English and told them all about the “garish” and “anomalous” Palio tomorrow, about the history of the race and the contrade, groups from different wards of the city, each of which backed a horse. After he delivered them to the hotel and spoke to the owner (they would pay only twice the printed rate, normally tripled because of the race), Hector gave him fifty dollars and explained he was looking for someone and asked him to come back in an hour, to be their translator and guide. June had planned to accompany them after a quick bath. But when she was done she called weakly for him and he had to help her once again from the tub, this time blotting her wet skin and hair with the towel. She wavered there before him like a terribly sick child, barely able to stand upright. She was partly revived by the warm water but perhaps altered, too, and she spoke with a breathy delirium about how deeply grateful she was to him, saying again that her lawyer would ensure he was well compensated. She wrapped her arms around his neck and fell into him in her full nakedness and murmured that he could do whatever he wished to her, kissing his ear, his neck. He could feel the cling of her damp legs about his thigh and although he could not in a lifetime accede to so wrong an invitation, the barest instinctual shiver crept up from his groin to his chest, momentarily rousing him before a flood of shame clogged his throat. She collapsed into him and he wrapped her in a robe and helped her to the bed. She said she would just rest for a moment, but after lying down she asked him for a shot of morphine. He opened her kit and prepared the shot, unable to quell the thought of doing the same for Sylvie Tanner, to numb and pleasure, too. “Where are we, now?” “In Siena.” “Oh yes, yes. Will you go find Nicholas?” “I’ll try.” “Bring him back here soon,” she said, a waxy veneer dulling her eyes. “Very soon.” He rolled her onto her side and injected her in her rump and she drifted off to sleep. It was easier for him to do it for her, of course, rather than watch her struggle with the vial and syringe, to twist and try to find a good spot. When he did it her breathing would quicken and she might even reach out and hold tightly to his shirt and then softly exhale with a certain ripe agony when he finally injected her. In her overly grateful euphoria she once said she loved him. He didn’t know how to answer. Sometimes he may have jabbed harder than necessary, or in a spot that wasn’t fleshy enough, and she’d cry out sharply, gritting her teeth. He did so because a part of him was afraid of her, because he wanted to get away from her but couldn’t force himself to do so. But in guilty compensation he now gave her more of the drug, drawing down a few more lines on the syringe. She was no longer insisting she needed to keep her mind clear. What was left of her body was in charge of her and as such she somehow seemed a bit stronger, fuller, her cheeks not so drawn and wan; she was suddenly eating more, having a butter cookie along with the gelato she had him buy her every other hour or so, which was the only regular thing she consumed, save water; maybe it was all the sugar that was plumping her up, propping her. Earlier they had stopped at the big highway cafeteria and she’d had an anise cookie and lemonade, and she surprised him by rising from her chair like any healthy, sprightly woman and walking out to the car for the Italian phrasebook in order to ask the girl at the register what the best route would be to Lombardy, after leaving Siena. But her exertions had now left her like this, and when it was clear she would sleep for a while he drew closed the heavy draperies, the place as shrouded and hushed as a mausoleum. He bathed and shaved and put on the last of the shirts she’d bought him, which was still in its clear plastic package. Everything else of his stunk. They had been traveling without a thought of doing wash and so he gathered their dirty clothes up into a canvas drawstring sack he found in the closet, rooting through her luggage and pulling out what was unfolded or dirty. Her things smelled only marginally better than his, the odor more of dampness and spoilage than body smells. Someone could easily argue that all of him had spoiled, even as his physique remained remarkably sound, that a special scan of his abstract being would show an unsettling result, revealing a soul neither bountiful nor spare but used up, right down to nothing. Of course Dora would not have said so about him, but he couldn’t help wondering during the long, silent hours in the car whether he had been fooling her and himself, whether she would have eventually seen him for what he was, agreed with June that he was a man who wanted to hide himself away forever. He wasn’t useless (as a gravedigger, a janitor, a driver, a nurse, now a laundry maid), but by any weighing of the present evidence—what one might have banked via family or friendship or love or self-purpose, not even counting the mistakes or transgressions or outright crimes—he was not a worthy man. It was as plain as his thirst. His heart felt smashed every time he pictured Dora, but if he was honest it soon revived with what he had to believe was a rush of liberty, if liberty degraded, this feeling that he was released once again from the onus of having to hope or dream. And yet here he was, dressing for an errand that he could hardly pretend had not partly become his own. He was increasingly curious about Nicholas, too, wondering about the bloodlines that he and June had given him; about its expression in his physical appearance, and then in his undeniably slippery character; what his voice sounded like; and then simply wanting to lay eyes on the young man, take in the shape of him astride the world. He wished he could bump into him and know him and trail him unannounced, peer at him as he sat at a café or on a bus. Maybe this was what comprised fatherhood, at least for somebody like him: a sorry kind of surveillance. He knew he was a thousand light-years from being a respectable adult, his only contact that was even remotely paternal being his sometime counsel at Smitty’s of the slumming suburban kids, muttering they ought to switch to beer before they drove back home on the Palisades Parkway. He certainly couldn’t bear any connection now, any relationship, the prospect of learning too much about Nicholas only trumped by the frightening idea th
at he’d have to explain himself, too, go over his background and his history and his bond to June, which would, if Nicholas pushed it, open up every other damn thing. But as he shuffled quietly across the expansive space of the suite to leave, he stopped by the bedroom and the sight of her stilled body, looking desiccated and abandoned in the gauzy raft of the canopied bed, made him think he couldn’t deny her this one last thing, however it might disturb him. At the residenza office on the ground floor he held up the bag of their dirty clothes and tried to communicate to the woman at the desk that he wanted to wash them someplace. She kept talking and motioning and then began pulling the bag away from him and it was only when Bruno appeared that it was sorted out; it had been so long since Hector had stayed in anything but a fleabag hotel that he’d forgotten that such a thing as laundry service was possible. He gave over the bag and had Bruno make sure she knew to leave it outside their door, as the signora was sleeping. Outside they made their plan. Hector had briefly mentioned to Bruno earlier that they were looking for someone and now he showed him the old school photograph and said he was likely working in an antiques shop. “There are many numerous establishments of antiquities here in Siena, signore,” he replied. “But I have cognizance of the very best ones, and we shall be advised to start at these.” He explained that it would be better to go by foot today. They were heading to Il Campo, the large main square, where the most prominent shops were, several of them in the piazza itself and on the street immediately ringing it. This was where they would run the horse race tomorrow. “Excuse me if this is offensive to you, but may I inquire who is this fellow you are looking for?” “He’s her son.” “I see,” he said, openly searching Hector’s face. “This is dolorous. Is the situation due to an estrangement?” “I suppose so.” “You are a good friend, then,” Bruno said. “No, not a good friend.” Bruno nodded curiously. He had a funny way of speaking and was forthright, but he still had a sense of when to keep quiet. He was just about the age Nicholas was now, and Hector decided he was lucky to have him along, so he could get at least some practice dealing with a younger fellow. All along he had assumed that June would be the one dealing with Nicholas, and that if he did anything at all, he’d do as she had asked him, perhaps physically compel him in some way. But now he wasn’t sure what he’d do, and he was glad for Bruno’s presence, to run interference, maybe even to talk for him if necessary. On the way to the main square they passed smaller squares and side streets completely taken over by the contrade. It was as if circus gangs and their families had overrun the town. They were making preparations for tomorrow’s race, making banners and decorating large chariots for the prerace procession. The banners, patterned with medieval-looking crests and designs, festooned the doorways, the motifs rhymed in the smocks and costumes of the mostly young people milling around the long tables on which older women were setting out bread baskets and plates of salami and pitchers of water and wine. Small dogs and children, also dressed in contrada colors, scampered after one another across the cobblestones. Tourists stood to the side, pointing and taking pictures. Some assemblages spontaneously broke into song, rehearsing traditional anthems that sounded like stadium chants crossed with folk ballads, the reports of which would prompt a competing chorus across the way, drawing out yet another chorus, echoes of the bellowed music rounding through the stone-walled city. Hector thought back to certain summer days in Ilion, though those would too often end not in shared song but shouts and strife: a scene of mostly company families picnicking at the river park, the men playing baseball with a keg of beer stationed by first base, the mothers cheering hotly between gulps of their shandies and lemonades, all of it peppy and happily competitive until some red-faced lout (sometimes Jackie Brennan) would shriek about a rough slide or inside pitch; there’d be taunts and shoves, and unsettled scores would rear up and ignite a scuffle or two, until at some point everybody quit going altogether, staying at home and drinking on their own porches and giving familial grief to one another. If he had grown up here instead of in Ilion, would he look forward to sitting cheek by jowl each year with his lifelong neighbors? Would he be drinking in celebration, crooning with them until his chest ached? Serve as an estimable brother, or husband? Maybe even a father? Or would he be just as unsociable as now, maybe more so with the standing expectation that he join in? Surely there were malcontents and miscreants here like anywhere else, and yet to look upon the gatherings he could believe what Bruno was telling him, that near every last able-bodied person took part, at least marginally, that a “communal tide,” as the young man put it, swept up all, even the flotsam like Hector, who would never hold high any colors. “How long will you be visiting?” Bruno asked. “Just today.” “You will not witness the race?” “No.” “The Palio is a spectacle, something not to be missed. This time it is a special one, as I indicated, a commemoration of the Comune. But I understand. The lady you are traveling with, she is not in good health.” “That’s right.” “My family is close-acquainted to the best general physician of our city. He practiced in Milano.” “Don’t sweat it.” “It is no issue. I will telephone him, whenever she needs.” “She doesn’t need anything,” Hector said. “Not anymore. That’s it, okay?” Bruno nodded. They had reached the large main square, which suddenly opened up from the shadowed narrow street in a brilliant wash of light. Roving hawkers peddled guidebooks and souvenirs, drinks and snacks. The antiques shops in the square that Bruno suggested were open and crowded with customers, but the proprietors, both of whom seemed to know Bruno, or at least recognized him as a local, had no reaction to the photograph he showed them. As they departed the second shop the owner eyed Hector at length, with a kind of pitying disdain, as if he were some sad sack of a parent futilely searching for someone who was no doubt wayward from very early on. Next they went to a shop just outside Il Campo, on the way toward the duomo on the Via di Città; here the proprietor told Bruno that a young foreigner had recently inquired about working there. But hers was a smaller shop than those in the main square and she only needed help on Saturdays, and the young man, whom she remembered as confident and vaguely Oriental-looking, had asked her if there was another antiques dealer who could use an English-speaking helper. She had pointed him to a specialty dealer on the western end of town, a new high-end gallery that catered to wealthy tourists and whose owner was not a Sienese, and thus perhaps in need of a manager. It was near another famous church of the city, the Basilica di San Domenico, and though Bruno didn’t know of it he decided they should go there; if it was unfruitful they could easily loop up and stop back at the residenza, to check on the lady, before trying the last few neighborhoods on the eastern side of town. Barring all that, tonight they could visit the nightclubs and coffeehouses that were popular with students and younger people; if Nicholas were indeed in Siena he would likely be out on the eve of the race. The shop was a new glass-façade gallery across the street from the small plaza in front of the basilica. Three large oil paintings hung in the front display, tame, Impressionist-style landscapes of the Tuscan countryside. They had to push a buzzer to be admitted, and after a moment Bruno pressed again and a pretty, bespectacled young woman dressed in a tailored gray suit and white blouse appeared at the desk and let them in. The gallery was large and double-winged, as it took up the ground-floor retail space on either side, the central room a sculpture and jewelry gallery, with the wings devoted to modern and antique furniture on one side and paintings on the other. The young woman immediately took Hector for a tourist (his new shirt and trousers, no doubt) and introduced herself in perfect English as Laura, and Bruno briefly explained (also in English) why they were there. They showed her the old middle-school photograph. She examined the picture, the scantest ripple crossing her face, and when Bruno asked her again if she knew such a person she said that there was a young Englishman who was recently hired. “You mean here?” “Yes.” “What is his name?” Bruno asked. “What do you want with him?” she said, her voice suddenly less friendly. “Has he done somethi
ng wrong?” “This man is aiding a lady who seeks him. She is his mother.” “I see,” she said, this time inspecting Hector carefully. “His name is Nick Crump.” They both looked at Hector and he acknowledged he was the one. But he was unsettled by how quickly they located him: it was as though Nicholas were hoping to be found, making no effort to obscure his trail. At the other shops Hector thought he was prepared to come upon him, but now his natural impulse was to turn and head for the street, to get out of there before any serious complications set in, everything having revved up too rapidly to full, messy speed. Bruno asked if he was working today and Laura said he was out delivering a purchase to a hotel. He would be back soon enough. They each looked after the gallery four days a week, overlapping one day; “Nick” had apparently taken the semester off from graduate study in art history in Bologna. Somewhat coolly she asked Hector how he knew his mother, and if he lived in London as well. He didn’t know how he should answer, as she clearly had a more intimate interest than just that of a fellow employee. He could only manage to say he was a family friend. But he muttered it lamely and she wasn’t impressed. She then stated: “It’s terrible, isn’t it, how she and her attorneys are trying to disinherit him? After his father dies, and still she can be so horrible to him. Is this why she is seeking him? Is she regretful now?” “No,” Hector said, again for lack of anything better, impressed by the passion Nick’s apparent storytelling had inspired in this intelligent, attractive woman. “Then what is it? Do you have a message for him? Something final?” Hector’s non-reply frustrated her, only stoking her indignation, and after an uncomfortable silence in the gallery, Laura walked to the door in her clicking high heels and held it open. “I am sorry, but I feel I must ask you to leave now. If you tell me which hotel you are staying at, I will let him know and perhaps he will contact you. But that is up to him. I don’t feel, however, that you should stay any longer, as you are not here as a customer of the gallery. Please respect this and understand.” Bruno began rattling away at her in a sharp Italian, but of course Hector did understand, and motioned, him to cease. All he had hoped to do was to locate Nicholas, to let him know his mother wished to speak to him and wait to see if he would agree; if he didn’t, there was really nothing Hector or anyone else could do, no matter what June wanted. Yet what exactly was Hector wanting? Certainly not this. Not this at all. The prospect of having to talk to Nicholas face-to-face at any moment was making him feel as though his insides were being carved out like a gourd, which was the reciprocal sensation of wanting to fill the hollowness with a week’s worth of booze, to raise a small cask of some local liquor to his mouth, to make a river of his throat. He motioned Bruno to the door and had already turned when a tall, slim young man on a pale-green-and-white motor scooter rolled up and parked in front of the plate glass. He wore dark aviator sunglasses, dark slacks, a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt. Sleek, polished loafers. He pushed the scooter up onto its kickstand and approached Laura, who was still standing in the open doorway. He looked inside, in the direction of Hector and Bruno, but could see nothing for the reflection in the glass, and as he entered, Laura met him, and he touched her hand, only briefly, smoothly unclasping it when he saw there were customers present. Otherwise he surely would have kissed her. Laura glanced back at them and muttered a few words in his ear, but his expression didn’t change; if anything, his jaw seemed to ease, and he took off his sunglasses and approached them directly. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said to Hector, extending his hand, his accent tinged British, or maybe vaguely Continental. Hector shook his cool, bony hand. Nick leaned forward and said, quite softly, “Could we chat elsewhere? All right? There’s a café around the corner.” He kissed Laura lightly on the cheek and they whispered a few words in Italian. He led them down the street to the corner café. Bruno had a coffee at the bar while Hector and Nick took a table inside. Nick immediately lit a cigarette; he was a distinctive-looking person, his cheekbones jutting out quite sharply, his nose narrow and delicate. He had wide, large brown eyes and wavy dark hair that he wore in a long, loose style, the ends tucked back behind his ears. He could certainly be Eurasian, in Hector’s opinion, though he didn’t much look like his old photograph. Hector couldn’t see much of himself there, or June either, but then what did he really know? The only varieties he was expert in were the various clans of his family’s tiny Irish-blooded universe, and then maybe the demi-human strains that flourished in the dank, lightless ecology of Smitty’s, identifiable by the bulbous, angry nose, the mustardy pallor, the sorry teeth and hair. Nick was very handsome, but in a perfectly original way. At the orphanage there had been a number of mixed-blood kids, a natural consequence of the war. They were sometimes teased or shunned by the others, but to Hector they looked like no one in creation with their wide, petaling eyes and buttery, earthen coloring. Yet despite their beauty and hybrid vigor he couldn’t help but see them as being somehow vulnerable, too, doomed to their singularity, their species of one, which mirrored, strangely, how he had always felt inside. They could also appear so different from moment to moment, shape-shift when not even meaning to, as Nick was now, the mixing inside him veiling and unveiling this feature and that, depending on the angle, or the light. But one could make the argument: Nick was just about his height, if not build; and he thought he could see something of June’s mouth in the set of his, that certain crimp in her lip, that utter resolve. The waiter brought their order, a coffee for Nick, nothing for Hector. But Nick didn’t drink his, just smoked and rolled his knuckles on the table. He wasn’t looking at Hector, either, but rather glancing over at Bruno, who was standing at the bar, then to the door in the back, as if calculating what it would take to get away. “Well, are we going to do this?” he finally said. “I’m not going to say anything more until I have a lawyer.” “I’m not a cop. I know about the stealing, but that’s not why I’m here.” “You can cut the bullshit.” Hector didn’t reply, just looking at him. “So who the hell are you?” Hector only told him what he’d said to Bruno, to Laura—that he was his mother’s helper. “Well, Jesus Christ!” Nicholas said. He nodded toward Bruno, who was watching the soccer match on the television behind the bar. “What about him?” “He’s a taxi driver.” Nicholas shook his head. He chuckled at himself and drank his espresso. Then he rose to leave. Hector got up and gripped his shoulder, firmly pressing him back down. Nicholas’s eyes flashed in anger and his neck tensed but he instantly mastered himself, Hector almost feeling through his fingers how the young man geared himself back. “So what does she want?” Nick said, lighting another cigarette. “And why did she send you? This is all very bizarre,” he added, intoning the word like a Frenchman. Every other word of his sounded as though he had grown up in a different place. Then he said, with an attitude of propriety, “We’re getting along just fine writing letters. If this is about the money she’s sent, I’m sorry, but it’s all spent. I’m quite broke, in fact.” “She wants to see you. That’s all. She’s here in town.” “Now?” He said it as a boy would say it, more non-wishing than disbelieving. “Where is she?” Hector told him the name of the hotel. At this, Nicholas just smoked for a few moments, then put the cigarette out. “I can’t see her,” he said. “I’ve been away from her for this long, and it’s better to stay away. Tell her I’ll keep writing her, though.” “You think she’ll keep sending you money?” Hector said. “Is that some kind of threat?” “No,” he said. “Just telling how it is. She’s sick. She’s dying.” “You’re just saying that. She never wrote of anything like that.” “It’s true,” Hector said. Nicholas asked what was wrong with her, and Hector described what he knew of her condition, suddenly hearing himself as if he were indeed some lame, defeated dad come calling on a prodigal son, finally armed with the saddest ultimatum. He was better suited to defending himself, or at exacting revenge, than to this soft task of convincing. Nicholas listened in silence, his tongue slowly working inside his mouth. He stared morosely into his empty coffee cup. Hector said they should go now. But the
n he answered, “No. I can’t see her. I really can’t. I’m sorry she’s so sick, but I can’t.” The sentiment was disturbing, but perhaps equally disturbing to Hector was that he was beginning to feel Nick was offending him (this when he believed he could never be offended), offending him to the core with his callousness of course but also because of the fact of their shared blood. It was a terrible new feeling. He wanted to grab him by the throat, shake him silly, maybe even punch him. Their first contact, and this is how he’d play the father: to rough up his own. Hector said: “I won’t tell her what you said. It doesn’t matter to me what you do. You can write her all you want. But you should know, we’ll only be here today. Tomorrow we’re moving on. Then you’ll probably never see her again.” He got up and at the bar he paid for the drinks from the rolled wad of cash he was carrying, while Bruno told Nicholas on which piazza the residenza was located. He didn’t appear to be listening. They were heading back for the hotel when Nicholas caught up with them a few blocks later on his scooter. “Listen,” he said. “What’s your name. Hector?” His tone was now less mellifluously worldly, settling into something squarely lower-brow, as if he now better understood the person he was appealing to. “Listen, Hector. I’m sorry about what I said. I can see you think a lot of my mother and I appreciate that. I was freaked out that you found me. I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I’m wondering about the other people who might be looking for me. I know I’m going to have to leave soon. But listen. I’ll come and see her. I want to. I’m busy at the shop now with a few more deliveries and don’t have any time tonight. But I’ll come tomorrow, tomorrow morning, before the races. You know about the races, yes? Okay? But can you do me a favor? I told you I’m broke, and I’m not going to lie. I’m in some trouble here. I owe money from the race last month. I wrote to her last week to wire fifteen hundred dollars but obviously you were on the way here. She’s never not sent money when I’ve asked. I’m sure you know this. Do you think she would give me some now, if she were here? Do you think so?” “I don’t know,” Hector said. “Come on, I think you do. She’d give me what I need. We both know she would. So would you be a good fellow and front me some? I see you have a lot of cash. I’m sure she’ll cover whatever you can give me.” “It’s all hers, anyway.” “Well, then. I had asked for fifteen hundred. You may not have that much, but if you can give me a thousand for now, I’d be grateful.” “Here,” Hector said, peeling off some bills. He didn’t want to deal anymore with this, with him. Nicholas quickly counted it: the equivalent of four hundred dollars. “Can you spare another two or three? I’ll come tomorrow, I will. I want to see her. I have to. It’s the right thing to do.” Although he had enough, Hector didn’t give him any more money, telling him he should ask for it himself. His expression must have hardened, for without further plea or argument Nick nodded, even extending his hand to Hector before peeling away in a puff of blue scooter smoke. Hector had taken it, but grudgingly, the truth already clear to him as he walked back to the hotel with Bruno: he would never have any feeling for the kid. No feeling at all. Hector thanked Bruno for his help, paying him for his time, and asked for his telephone number in case he needed him again. Bruno gave it to him but said he was rarely at home, promising to come by the hotel several times before the next day was up. He had not said a word while they were walking, but when he got behind the wheel of his taxi he stated plainly, “Forgive me, signore . But I must say this to you. That is a fright of a man. I would stay far away from him.” Hector lightly rapped the top of the taxi and sent him off. Nick was not just a liar and a cheat, a world-class shit; he was a warning embodied, this alarm-in-the-flesh, a herald of no good that made even Hector’s own worn-down heart gallop and shudder. He should tell June he hadn’t found him, that there was no sign or further clue, and just take her straightaway to Solferino, where she could wait out her fast-dwindling time in peace. The boy would only bring her unhappiness. What struck him was how Nick didn’t in the least try to hide the fact from him, as if he believed that they were somehow allied in regard to his mother, that Hector, too, was angling for something. Had Nicholas picked up on their connection, some whiff of their relation? Or was it something equally evident in Hector, his tumbled, blunted self, ludicrously wrapped in a brand-new creased shirt and cuffed trousers, this fellow masquerading as someone who could help fulfill a dying woman’s hopes? He passed the residenza office and the woman inside called after him as he ascended the stairs; she spoke only Italian and he assumed she was telling him about the laundry, for she gestured upstairs and then down. He thanked her and she kept talking as he went up. But when he reached the second-floor landing he realized that the laundry couldn’t possibly have been both washed and dried already, for he’d been gone just over an hour. And then he saw what she must have been talking about: the heavy door of their room was ajar. He could see light from inside casting a weak beam on the carpeting of the darkened corridor. He pushed inside. The draperies of one of the tall, grand windows directly opposite the door had been drawn back a few inches. Their mostly emptied bags were as he’d left them in the sitting area, set between the sofa and armchair, but he noticed her purse was not on the coffee table where he had last seen it. He was holding most of the cash, but she had all the traveler’s checks. Across the lengthy space of the suite he could dimly make her out on the bed, lying on her side with her back to him. When he approached her he saw the purse on the night table. It was open, and though her wallet was still there, the envelope containing the traveler’s checks was gone. “Are you back already?” she murmured, turning to him, her eyes heavy with sleep and with the drug. Her words were blunted and slurred, running together. “Did you get one for yourself, too?” “Get what?” Hector said. “Oh,” she said, staring at him as if she had forgotten his name, even his face. “It’s Hector,” he said. “Oh, yes,” she said, though she still didn’t seem to register him. “Where is he?” “Who?” “Nicholas. He said you sent him right over. He’s gone to get me a treat. It seemed like a dream but I’m sure it was real. Do you think it was a dream?” “No,” he said, his anger at himself burning inside his chest. Nicholas must have ridden right over on the scooter while he and Bruno had walked back. “He didn’t have any money for the gelato,” she said. “I gave him a traveler’s check. I signed it for him.” “More than one?” “Yes, I guess so. I don’t know. Do you think they’ll let him use them?” “They might.” “I hope so. God, I’m so tired,” she groaned. “I want to wait for him but I have to sleep. I’d love some gelato. Will you make sure to let him back in? Please wake me up when he comes. Will you? I’m so hungry.” “Okay.” She closed her eyes. She shivered a little, and so he folded the quilted bedspread from one side of the bed over her. Then he closed the draperies and sat near her in the dark for a long while, thinking about what he would do. He’d search out the nightclubs, as Bruno suggested. He would find him, and not to retrieve any money. Let him have the money. It was by all rights his, anyway. There was no lesson to be offered; Nicholas was certainly beyond any instruction, or shaming. Still, when it came time, he wondered whether he would lose control and try to beat some decency into him. He’d never raised his fists for something as righteous as that. And he kept hearing again his father’s high, rye-soaked voice chirping into his ear while he shouldered him home. You think you’re going to get away with it, boy? You think it doesn’t apply to you? Hector had never bothered asking what exactly his father meant by it, but now, seeing June’s utter frailness, the sad, blunted topography of her beneath the bedspread, her desperate need to believe, he thought he understood at last what his old man had been talking about: life. Life, still undefeated. Not just for June but for him, too. He had never gotten away with anything, could point to most every instance in his days as evidence of such. His odd father had madly suspected he was some kind of immortal, if a lowly one, but maybe his peers (in the army, at Smitty’s) had like notions after certain miraculous escapes, the almost instantly healing wounds; maybe some unlucky women h
ad caught an aura gracing him, this gleam of persistence. But any persistence, he knew, wasn’t his own doing. He’d never asked for such endurance. All concerned would have been better off had he perished during the war, or in the orphanage fire, or under the bumper of Clines’s car, instead of innocent Dora. And so now, at this sojourn’s end, eyeing June’s demise, he was ready to cast off whatever mantle had been mysteriously bestowed on him. He would disappear along with her. To hide wouldn’t be enough. Another good person would happen across his dooming path, start the cycle again. While driving them here he had circled around the way it would happen, but now he was settling on the idea. His was juvenile imagining but he knew it would have to be catastrophic: accelerate before a tight hill turn and burst through the railing. Wind heavy chains around his ankles to bury himself at sea. Drape his head over the steel train track and listen for the clang. He had tried in earnest, in fact, soon after Sylvie died, looping a rope over a tree limb far away from the orphanage (so no kids would have to see him), cinching the noose, but when he kicked away the stool he’d brought with him the cords of his neck sprang up in protest and jacketed his windpipe and after a while he had to cut himself down, his skin abraded in a mocking necklace of futility, his heart sodden with the full deadweight of defeat. For what was worse than dying, if not being able to die? But there would be no more enduring for him now. June stirred, moaning terribly. He could already tell the kind of cry; the morphine was wearing off. “Nicholas?” she gasped. “Are you here?” He froze, not wanting to tell her otherwise. She drifted off again. He quickly went downstairs and across the piazza, to where there was a gelateria. He brought her back a double cone of limone, the refreshing scent of which was somehow enough to rouse her from her sleep. She sat up all by herself and took it from him without hesitating, licking it with the eagerness and focus of a child. Her world was becoming quite small, centering on the simplest things. A sweet, tart flavor. A salve of cold in her parched throat. Sometimes there was nothing better than to offer a little succor. While she ate the gelato he prepared her a heavy dose and when she was finished she surprised him by hugging him as tightly as she was able before lying down again. She even turned herself over when she saw him holding the syringe. “Is Nicholas here?” she said afterward, gazing up past him, searching, her pupils huge, dark. “Not yet,” he answered. “He’ll come back. I know it.” “Yes,” he told her, now looking her straight in her eyes. “He will.”