The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  “They went that way.” I point to the door the man left by. She turns and sees the accordion player and the little girl at the far end of the platform, begging from a group of tourists, and starts toward the door just as the train jerks to life and the doors begin to shut. She stumbles and nearly falls in my lap. For a second I feel the heat of her and smell some exotic oil in her hair, and then she’s gone in a flourish of printed cotton that beats the air like wings. She escapes through the door just before it closes, alighting on the platform with the grace of a dancer. As the train moves away I watch her turn toward the accordion player and the girl, but instead of approaching them she turns in the opposite direction and walks away.

  What in the world? I think, staring out the window until her figure disappears in the distance. What was all that about? Was she the girl’s mother, or was she another beggar protecting her turf? I play the scene over again in my head, searching for clues, but the events remain as elusive as the murals in the Villa della Notte. A modern-day mystery rite. I try to dismiss the whole thing from my head, but I can’t forget the woman’s cries or the look in the girl’s eyes or the way she clutched my wrist. At the memory of her touch I look down at my wrist and find the clue that unlocks at least part of the mystery: my watch is gone.

  The trip back seems endless—perhaps because I no longer know what time it is, perhaps because each vehicle I board is a little hotter and a little more crowded than the last. By the time I get out of the funicular station, the street back to the hotel looks as steep as the slope of Mount Vesuvius. I trudge up the hill, listening to my lungs wheeze at every step. I’m almost there—I can see the hotel’s awning—when the edges of my vision begin to turn black. I put a hand on the wall and lean up against it, so if I faint I won’t fall into the street. The surface I’m leaning against is fluted marble, smooth and cool to the touch, one of two Corinthian columns that frame the entrance to a church, the interior of which looks cool and dim. I’ll just go inside for a minute, I reason, and sit in a pew until I feel better.

  The church is tiny. Fewer than a dozen pews are on either side of a center nave lined with Corinthian columns. A shallow apse holds a small statue of the Madonna and child set in a niche and surrounded by candles. The floor is marble, too, so old and worn that there are grooves from where worshippers have knelt over the centuries. I imagine that it was built on the site of a Roman temple, as many early churches were, and I wonder if it belonged to the convent that’s now my hotel. The faded frescoes lining the deeply shadowed aisles no doubt tell the story of some saint’s life, but I’m too tired to look at them. Besides, I’d feel a little guilty acting like a tourist in a Catholic church, even though I haven’t gone to church since I was twelve. I had started complaining about going after my mother died. Around that time my grandmother told me I ought to thank God every day that we were Catholics because “your mother wanted to have an abortion but Grandfather and I forbade it.” That unwelcome piece of knowledge did not have its desired effect. I stopped going to church altogether. Maybe because I suspected that my grandparents’ religion might have saved my life at the expense of my mother’s.

  I’m surprised at how restful it is here. I light a candle for Odette and one for Barry Biddle in front of the worn figure of the Madonna, and head back to the hotel, holding in my mind a picture of its rooftop pool—its circle of turquoise water beckoning to me like water in the Sahara.

  When I ask for my key at the front desk, though, Silvio informs me that not only the pool but the rooftop restaurant as well are closed tonight for a private party.

  “What do you mean ‘closed’?” I ask, my voice sounding dangerously close to tears. “The website promised a pool!” I sound like a spoiled child who’s been denied some treat, but I don’t care. “And where am I supposed to eat?”

  “There are many excellent restaurants just a short funicular ride away.”

  “Fuck the funicular,” I say, shocking both myself and Silvio. “I am never, ever getting on that glassed-in cattle car again. And look!” I hold up my bare wrist meaning to tell Silvio about my stolen watch, but he flinches as though I had been about to slap him. My hand drops of its own accord, all the fight sapped out of me, shame flushing hot through my face. “I’m sorry. I’m just really hot and tired.”

  “Of course, signora, you Americans are often unprepared for the heat. Why don’t you take a nice cool shower and then have something to eat?”

  I bite back the temptation to tell him I’m not an American, I’m a Texan, and I know from heat. Let him come to Austin in August and see how he does! Instead I nod meekly and say, “Yes, that sounds lovely. Something light. I’m sure I’ll feel better once I’ve taken a shower and gotten some sleep.”

  I go upstairs to my airless cell, strip off my soaked clothes and take a long, cool shower. The water’s chill doesn’t penetrate the layer of heat under my skin, though. By the time I’ve brushed out my wet hair, I’m sweating again. I put on my lightest cotton T-shirt and lie on the bed. I’ll just take a nap before dinner, I think, and then maybe I will brave the funicular. The thought of being stuck in this cell all night is almost more unbearable than the thought of going out again.

  When I open my eyes again I see by the window that it’s completely dark out, which means that it must be past nine o’clock. I can’t tell exactly what time because there’s no clock in the room and my watch is gone. It’s probably too late to get room service, which is okay, because I’m not hungry, only very, very thirsty. I get out an aqua minerale from the mini fridge and gulp half of it down in one long swallow and then lie back down in the fleshy embrace of the overstuffed mattress and feel myself being sucked into a tunnel of flesh-colored tufa. It’s as if the rock that covered ancient Herculaneum had turned liquid again and swallowed me whole.

  I fall into a deep sleep and land in a room painted red as a beating heart, its walls covered with figures from the Villa della Notte: Demeter, Persephone, Hades, Dionysus playing his lyre, and the three winged sirens. Hades wears a suit and tie, his face speckled with unshaved stubble. With flaming footsteps, Demeter walks toward Dionysus and seizes the instrument in his hand. It’s not a lyre; it’s an accordion. When she squeezes the accordion it makes a sound like an animal being slaughtered, a keening of wild cats…

  I open my eyes to the room at the Hotel Convento and hear the sound coming from outside my window. I get up to close it, lingering for a moment in the faint stir of air playing over my soaked T-shirt. Had I gone swimming after all? I wonder. I can’t remember. My whole body aches as if I had swum the length of the Bay of Naples. My lungs feel as if I’ve inhaled dirty seawater, and the air in the room ripples as if even now I’m underwater.

  I start back to the bed, but find myself on the floor. It seems like too much trouble to get up and, besides, I notice that the majolica tiles around the base of the wall are decorated with little figures: a miniature version of the murals of the Villa della Notte. No wonder John Lyros recommended this hotel, I think, lying flat on the stone floor so that I can see the tiles better. And of course I see now why the air-conditioning wasn’t necessary—the floor is deliciously cool! I lay my cheek on it and feel waves of cold emanating up from the stone. Why, it’s like a Roman bath! There must be cold water running underneath to cool off the room. I can hear it, flowing like a river beneath me, carrying me along. The figures in the tiles fly by now, like dioramas in a Disney ride: Hades steals Persephone; Demeter ravages the earth, demanding vengeance in sacrifice; her daughter’s companions turn into winged sirens; and they in turn sacrifice a young girl. They hold her down as the god approaches. I feel their wings beating the air above me, pressing the air out of my chest like a giant bellows, their bony hands sharp as birds’ beaks pecking at my wrists.

  Later in the night someone changes the temperature of the water beneath the floor. It’s hot now and the water seeps through the tiles. It soaks my T-shirt and my hair. If I don’t move soon I’ll drown. When I open my eyes, though
, I’m distracted by the pictures on the tiles. They, too, have changed. They tell the same story only with different actors playing the main roles. Hades, I see with little surprise, is now played by Elgin Lawrence. I’d always thought that with his high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and pointed ears he looked like a blond Satan.

  The next time I open my eyes it’s light. Hovering above me is a woman with the same dark eyes as the beggar on the train, only now she’s dressed in a maid’s uniform. Then beside her appears Elgin Lawrence who tells the dark-eyed woman something and she leaves, shouting someone’s name as she goes, the sound of her voice getting smaller and smaller as she runs down the hall. I close my eyes again and press my cheek against the floor. I feel Elgin’s arms around me and although I realize that he may take me to Hades, I don’t fight. I’m cold again and his arms feel marvelously warm.

  When I open my eyes again, I’m in the bed. Elgin is there and another man who, I think, must be the god come to ravage me because his hands are under my T-shirt. Then I feel something cool and metallic on my chest and realize that he’s only trying to listen to my lungs. He’s a doctor, the small still rational part of my brain tells me. He’ll want my medical history—the shooting, the damage to my lung—but does my “history” start there? Don’t I have to go farther back? Because, really, my history begins with the story of how my mother drowned in the San Marcos River.

  “Yes, I know,” I say when Elgin looks at me doubtfully, “of all places! Home of Ralph the Diving Pig and the Aquarena Springs Mermaid show! My mother picked me up one day from school and without even stopping to tell my grandparents where we were going we drove all the way to San Marcos to Aquarena Springs. Ralph was a bit of a disappointment. In the postcards he looks like he’s soaring through the air, but in real life he kind of skitters up to the bank, herded by a workman in green overalls, and just falls in. But the mermaids were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. There were three of them—a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette—their long hair streaming around them like floating clouds, and they wore seashells over their breasts and had shiny silver-green tails. I loved them so much I cried when the show was over and then my mother did the most amazing thing! She went right outside and bought us tickets to the next show so we could see it again—and when that show was over she turned to me, her eyes shining in the murky light of the Undersea Theater, and asked Do you want to see it again?

  “She looked as pretty as any of those mermaids at that moment, her skin sparkling as if it had been dipped in the same silver as the mermaids’ tails, her long dark hair as light and bouncy as if she were floating in water, her eyes as green as river water. If I said yes, she would be happy for us to sit there all day and watch the Mermaid Show until nightfall. It was an exhilarating idea, like eating as much candy as you wanted, but also somehow frightening, like that part in Pinocchio where the bad boys all go to Boytown. So I said no, I’d had enough, and afterward we sat on the edge of the river, dangling our feet in water so clear you could see all the way down to the bottom, where long strands of river grass waved in the current. A gentle current. How could anyone ever drown in water that gentle?”

  Elgin squeezes my hand and nods his agreement. Of course, he’s been to San Marcos. He knows.

  “So when they told me she drowned in the San Marcos I thought at first it was a lie, but then later…” I hesitate, because this is the part I feel worst about, but Elgin squeezes my hand again so I go on. “Later I thought about how my mother had looked that day at the Mermaid Show and I wondered if she just got lost at the bottom of the river—hypnotized by the sway of the river grass—and forgotten to come up for air. And I couldn’t help wondering, since my grandmother was always telling me how alike we were, if the same thing mightn’t happen to me.”

  The only person I ever told this story to was Ely and when I did he said it was funny because when his brother, Paul, died he heard his parents say that his lungs had filled with water and so Ely had always thought that Paul had drowned, and so it was like we’d both lost the people we loved the most to drowning, and it meant we were meant to be together. That we were the same.

  The two men looked at each other and nodded. The one who’d examined me took out a needle and gave me a shot in the arm. I tried to explain why I couldn’t go to sleep. That I had a hereditary risk of forgetting to breathe and drowning on dry land.

  I fell asleep while trying to explain this theory, but I could feel myself falling, drifting away on the current. They must have understood because Elgin lifted me out of the bed. He lifted me up and carried me out of the room and out of the Hotel Convento. When I woke up next I saw blue sky over me and smelled the sea. Elgin was leaning over me.

  “We’re taking you to the island,” he said. “We can take care of you better there.”

  “As long as you promise not to let me forget to breathe or sink to the bottom of the river,” I say.

  This makes him laugh. He leans down close to me and I see his eyes are the same blue as the sky. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “I promise I’ll remind you to breathe. And I won’t let you sink. I’m going to hold on to you the whole way.”

  And he does. It’s a long boat trip, but he holds my hand the whole way and every time I feel like I’m falling he squeezes my hand and says, “Hold on.” So I do. When I open my eyes I see an immense tower of rock above me climbing from the sea to the sky. Swallows are looping through the bright air. Houses so white they look like they’ve been carved out of sugar cling to the steep slopes. The air is so sweet that no one could ever forget to breathe here. We’ve come, I think, to the island of the sirens.

  I wake up in a white room that smells like the sea, surrounded by the sound of falling water. I’ve been here some time. Days, I think, but it might just as well be weeks. And I’ve been sick. There had been an IV, but it’s gone now. There had been a wheezing that in my delirium I had thought was the accordion player from the train, but that I realize now was my own breathing. Now, though, the only sound is from falling water that is somewhere beyond an open doorway. There’s a glass of water on a wooden table by my bed.

  When I sit up, the room moves a little, like a boat rocking on the sea. Then it steadies. I drink some water and listen. The sound of water is real. I get up and find that I can stand. I can walk if I take very small, very slow steps, but it seems like an age before I reach the doorway. I lean on the door frame and look out into the courtyard.

  In the center of a circular fountain stands the bronze statue of a veiled woman. I recognize the goddess Night by her star-studded veil, the poppies in her hair, and the owl that sits upon her shoulder. She’s less foreboding than I would have thought, standing in the sunlight that turns the sprays from the fountain into streamers of jewels that glisten in the woman’s hair and in the profusion of flowers growing around the fountain. It’s so bright and colorful that it hurts my eyes and I focus on the shaded walkway that rims the courtyard. What I see there only makes my head spin more. The figures from my dream have followed me here. Beneath the colonnade across from me I see black-cloaked Hades seizing Persephone, fiery-footed Demeter turning the girl’s companions into shrieking sirens. When I turn to the long wall along the back of the courtyard I see the outlines of figures, insubstantial as ghosts. The only two figures that have bulk and color are a man with a shaved head and a plump, bearded satyr. It’s only a painting, I tell myself, but then one of the figures detaches itself from the wall and turns toward me. As he walks into the sunlight I see his eyes are the light purple of dusk. He moves quickly toward me, as if afraid I’ll escape, but I could tell him it’s not necessary. The only place I’m going is down.

  When I wake up again I’m back in bed and the man with the lilac eyes is sitting in a chair reading a newspaper.

  “I thought you were Hades,” I say, “but then I guess Hades wouldn’t be reading a newspaper.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, lowering the paper and smiling at me. “I think it would please him to
see the current state of the world. I can’t claim such an impressive lineage, though. I’m John Lyros.” He puts out his hand for a formal shake.

  “My new boss,” I say, putting my hand in his. “How’m I doing so far?”

  He laughs. “Well, you’re going to live, which is more than we were sure of a few days ago when Dr. Lawrence found you at the hotel.”

  “So it was Elgin,” I say. “I thought I might have dreamt him.” I wince at a painfully vivid image of myself lying on the floor of my room in the Hotel Convento in my T-shirt and panties, and Lyros’s eyes narrow with concern. He takes a bottle of pills out of his pocket and shakes one out. “What was he doing at my hotel? I mean, how did he know I was sick?”

  “I told him where you were staying and he went to see if you wanted to go to Sorrento with him. The concierge said you hadn’t left your room since the afternoon before and that you hadn’t seemed well.” I wince again, remembering cursing at Silvio, and wonder what else he might have told Elgin. Lyros helps me sit up and gives me the pill. He holds the water glass to my lips and waits for me to swallow before continuing. “Dr. Lawrence insisted the maid open your door and check on you and they found you feverish and delirious. He called me and I sent for a private doctor who diagnosed pneumonia.”