by Craig Nova
The minister continued, and as he came to “I now pronounce . . . ,” Tim and the men from Boston pushed Stas and the others out of the cemetery, around the headstones and out to a car, where Tim now pushed them in, and the local constable and the two cops from Boston got in, too, a close fit, and drove down the river, toward the closest town. Tim stood in the dust. The river was in the distance, so calm and constant, its movement as always.
Robert and Pia came out the church door and got into Robert’s car, both of them glowing. Then the guests came out, too, all of them pretending that nothing had happened, aside from the man with a walker, who said, “Jesus. And I thought a graveyard was a dull place. I wonder if anything like that will happen when I’m here?”
Then his wife helped him into a car, and everyone, minister included, drove up to the reception. That left just Tim, me, and Alexandra, and Tim said, “Well, I’ve got to tell you one thing. That Aurlon Miller? Boy, was he pissed off when we picked him up on a rape warrant from Florida. He said he had a deal with you.”
“Well, not quite,” I said.
“That old girlfriend of yours?” said Tim. “She was crying when she called me. So, maybe she isn’t so bitter anymore.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s have a glass of champagne.”
“You know, Frank,” said Alexandra. “I think you’re going to have to keep your word to me, though.”
“And what’s that?”
“You remember the trip to Rome?”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
We went through the churchyard, and there, by the small stone that marked my father’s ashes, I rubbed those crimson spots, some as big as a silver dollar, into the soil, and when I couldn’t do it with the dirt that was there, Tim scraped some sandy loam, too, to cover it up.
“Let’s have a little respect for the dead,” he said. “Right, Frank?”
•••
At the reception, at the farm, with that white tent in front of the trout ponds, with the guests in their cheerful clothes, with that band playing a schmaltzy version of an old song, “As Time Goes By,” Pia and I had that dance that is required of all fathers and all brides. She put her palm in mine, and her hand on my shoulder. I was reminded of those hours we had spent on the river, with those chips of light, so much like an impressionist painting.
She said, “So, that little bastard was trying to blackmail you?”
“Let’s not talk about it,” I said.
“You’re beginning to sound like your father,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“They could make it look like I had gotten rid of Aurlon and because of that, I might lose you. And a lot of other things. But mostly you.”
We swayed to that schmaltzy but still effecting sound of “Just remember this . . . ”
“I see,” said Pia. “Well. I think Robert is right.”
“About what?” I said.
“You know what he said?” said Pia. “Loving someone takes a lot more balls than you’d think.”
“He said the same thing to me about marriage,” I said.
“It’s the same thing,” said Pia.
[ CHAPTER THIRTY ]
IN LOS ANGELES, before the trip to Rome, Alexandra and I went to a party for a classmate of mine from Yale, Jack Middleton, who had worked for the studios in public relations and was going to retire. The party was in his house off Mulholland Drive, and we stood where we could see the hillside, which was more like Greece than anything else. At least that’s what it probably looked like before they built all those houses. Jack told me that when he first bought this house thirty years ago, deer had come into the backyard, but now the deer were gone although the coyotes were moving in. I asked him if he was going to miss working at the studio, and he glanced at that brown hillside, where the coyotes hunted, and he said, “You can’t imagine what scandals we faced. Fatty Arbuckle seemed shocking a hundred years ago, but let me tell you, things have gone downhill from there. You can’t believe.” He shook his head. “You can’t believe.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe I can.”
So, we left for Rome from California. Since this was a sort of honeymoon for Alexandra and me (and she promised me, too, that we would have fried zucchini flowers, as a way of sharing some romance of Rome with me), we went first class. And to Rome from California the best way was over the North Pole.
Our flight left early, around noon. I drank that good scotch and sat by the window, while Alexandra slept in her leather seat. Well, I thought. We will go to the Borghese gardens. We will eat a gelato and go to the Marcus Aurelius monument. It will not be that we are young, but that we are wise.
I couldn’t sleep.
When I go somewhere, I want to check my pockets to see that I have my passport, my tickets, my confirmation of a rented car, a hotel room, directions to a house I have rented. It is a sort of ceremony of anxiety, and even now that I am all grown up and know better, I still do it, and that is how I took the twenty-celon note from my pocket. It had that nude woman riding a spiral galaxy, lightning bolts coming from her fists, her expression somehow more relaxed than usual. Still, as I put it in the pouch for trash, I saw, on the back, the Raver’s script: “Be content to seem what you really are.”
I put my fingers to my neck and then looked at the second hand of my watch: the pulse was normal, as regular as it had been years before when I was rowing six miles a day. I’d have to send Dr. Stevenson a telegram: no toaster filament was going to be shoved into my heart after all.
This was early enough in the year so that the pole was still dimly lit when we got there. Everyone else in the plane was curled up with pillows or blankets and seemed to be sleeping deeply. I sat there with my scotch, trying to think of nothing at all, but I noticed the plane was losing altitude. Down below, the whiteness had a gray cast, a sort of dusty quality as though something had burned nearby. The plane got closer to the ice.
The intercom came on. For a while it amplified some quiet but still excited breathing. Then the breathing stopped.
“Is anyone awake back there?” said the voice, which I guessed belonged to the pilot.
But, of course, I had no way to answer. Everyone was asleep, and I couldn’t very well shout, Yes, yes, I’m awake. What’s going on? In fact, I thought of getting up and walking through the dim aisle to knock on the cockpit door. But these days, with the marshals here and there, all armed, I thought that maybe it was best just to nod my head, which made me feel stupid.
The plane lost more altitude.
The voice said, “Look out the window.” The voice of the pilot was now intense, boy-like in its amazement, as though it had seen some previously forbidden thing but which was now visible for the first time.
Down below on the gray ice, which looked like the moon, something moved. It seemed gray, or gray-white, almost like the color of the ice, and yet it was brighter than that, more luminescent. And it seemed to move with a gait that was almost familiar.
The plane dropped a little more.
And then, as it lost even more altitude, the plane went into a long, slow turn, one wing dipped down. I was on the side of the airplane that was tipped down.
The thing on the ice kept moving. It seemed to be unconcerned with the texture of the ice cap: here and there cracked ice was pushed together into a kind of icy clutter, like a broken window that has been swept into a pile, and it appeared, too, that the wind had cut long gullies in the ice. It went forward in a straight line, only moving around a pile of ice that was almost vertical: mostly the creature wanted to get away from the enormous thing that could be circling in for the kill.
“Do you know what that is?” said the pilot.
I shook my head, although I was beginning to have my suspicions.
The plane made a wide circle, at an altitude that was pretty low. Perhaps I couldn’t really see the texture of the fur or the flab of the thing as it ran in a way that suggested not haste, not hurry, but a perfect horror. It wanted to get away
. The shadow of the airplane made a large black cross on the ice, slipping over the dry riverbeds like a piece of gray silk, its movement, at once so smooth and seemingly remote from the nature of the landscape, made the bear’s terror all the greater: whatever was pursuing it did so with an ease that had almost no concern for the obstacles the bear faced. Then the bear began to bound, its legs reaching out, its entire aspect like a creature that is trying to jump over the things in its way. It didn’t look over its shoulder, just straight ahead since nothing was to be gained by looking back. And in that headlong rush, I thought of the bear my father and I had faced, and that Robert and I had faced, and the moment of realizing one’s own capacity for the worst. Is that what my father meant when he passed over the rifle? And just who was it for? What self-loathing did that animal inspire in me by its dignity and perfection? Or maybe it is better to say: the animal let me look into the dark, the entire gloom, where all one’s fears reside. At least I had given Robert the Mannlicher that had come down from my grandfather to my father to me and now to him. What else can I call it but the cascade of being a man?
The plane gained altitude, and as it did, as it made a long, deeply banked turn over those broken sheets of ice, the rills all disappearing into the perspective of distance, I looked back at the creature that kept running. Then I went back to that drink and the gentle presence of Alexandra, who slept next to me.
Maybe, she had said, we’ll get away from Rome. Let’s rent a car and drive to Umbria. Hey, Frank, what do you say?
The plane landed. Since we were flying first class, we got off right away, right behind the pilots and the engineer, three of them altogether, dressed in blue jackets with gold buttons and gold strips on their sleeves. Two of them looked very sleepy, but one was wide awake.
“I saw the bear,” I said to this man.
“Did you really?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I saw the bear.”