“Afraid?” Cristofana lets one of the kittens sidle up her embroidered arm, where it purrs into her neck. “Do you not think it fate? Our hour of dying?”
The kitten’s fur is dull, a greasy gray over a thin frame, but it’s too young not to hope. Its eyes brim with it.
Cristofana offers a velvet cape from the next trunk, her eyes expectant. “You won’t play? Perhaps you see such fine things every day where you come from?”
“Thank you, no.” May sighs, sick with dread and exasperated. She isn’t about to get into the details of pandemic and public health when Cristofana and her whole generation haven’t even mastered basic hygiene. Irrationally, May almost smiles, imagining her double squaring off against Ms. Bestle in health class.
Cristofana drapes the cape over her arm and sprays herself with perfume from an ornate bottle. It’s Venetian glass, or at least looks like one of the bottles May almost bought for her mom in the market. The smell seems to inspire Cristofana. All of a sudden she’s twirling in her borrowed garments, in silk and velvet and feathers, humming madly under her breath.
One of the kittens teeters on Cristofana’s shoulder, its paws kneading at the shawl, and May imagines herself moving in such layers, of the artist considering her in them, which is kind of ridiculous, really. She can’t remember the last time she wore anything but jeans or shorts or a skirt and T. What would a man like that, trained to see beauty, make of her typical wardrobe and her long, wild dirty-blond hair tied back in a scrunchie? Would he even give her a second look? She almost wishes she could get the blue gown back, the one she stole from a clothesline and left abandoned in the alley by the portal.
He already has, May thinks — again with that secret smile. More than one.
The would-be center of attention is not amused. “It can’t harm you,” Cristofana complains, examining the green velvet cape and flinging it away like a striptease artist. She sets down the kitten before adjusting her remaining layers, leaving her own clothing, rags mostly, in a puddle at her feet. She scoops up the animal again and with a sigh of scorn spits on the pile.
May follows her out through eerie, deserted rooms with high ceilings and secretive hangings. They move without a sound.
She can’t understand why the streets are so quiet until it occurs to her that there are no bells ringing. Every other time she’s been here, there were church bells tolling almost constantly in the background, too regular to take note of. They tolled for the dead, Cristofana has explained. They were a record of the taken. Is everyone dead now? How long has she been away? Is the artist dead? she wonders, seized by terror. Did he survive these early weeks of the plague? “Where are the bells?”
Cristofana tilts her head thoughtfully, closing her eyes to enjoy the softness of the little cat nuzzling her ear. “The officials forbade them. . . . Too much ringing. Too much despair.”
“It’s too quiet now.”
Cristofana looks deflated suddenly, broken, and since May has never seen her twin reveal any emotion at all beyond a kind of ruthless curiosity, she can only stare, which seems to snap her double out of it. “Most of the shops have closed,” she adds haughtily, as if this explains everything.
A deafening commotion a street away rivets her double’s attention. Hurrying to a gap between buildings, Cristofana turns down the narrow walkway, veers a moment midway, the kitten swaying on her shoulder, and disappears into the chaos and glare on the opposite side.
May can just make out a group of onlookers over there by the street, surging toward an even bigger crowd passing in the roadway, wailing in grief and lamentation.
Her eyes lock on a shape in deep shadow by one of the walls between the buildings. A dog, she thinks at first, or some other animal nosing for food scraps, but when the figure starts shrieking and writhing in pain, she realizes it’s a man slumped on the cobbles.
“He begs,” Cristofana says, reemerging to his right — translating in that obliging way of hers and not bothering to whisper in passing —“for God to loose his soul.”
Get away from him, May wants to warn, but there are others like him, so many others, she supposes, all over this city, gaunt in doorways, spitting up blood behind shutters. The man is convulsing now, howling, and May swallows hard, trying to keep down the nausea. The dread.
“The crowd follows the procession,” Cristofana reports. “They’re parading the fingernail of Saint Roch through the streets to ward away the Pest.”
“What?”
“The priests have procured a relic of the saint —”
“Right,” May says, fighting back bewildered tears, “a relic.”
“The bishop and clergy advise that the procession should march through the city till nones,” Cristofana continues matter-of-factly, her voice rising above the howling of the dying man. “There must be a hundred candles, as large as torches. Come look.”
“No,” May says, and starts walking again. “Thanks.” This street is familiar, and when the alley entrance appears, her heart starts racing.
It’s clear from Cristofana’s smug expression that she’s been leading May here all along, to the artists’ quarter.
It’s all she can do not to run ahead and around the alley corner, but she lets her double keep the lead, and they pause under the entrance sign creaking on rusty chains in the wind.
Aching now to know that he’s alive, May strides past Cristofana to peer through half-closed shutters. Relief hits so hard that she has to swivel away, sighing with her whole ghost body, melting into what she imagines is sun-warm stone, smiling at the ground. May knows the moment she looks up that she’s given too much away, revealed a weakness, but it’s too late.
A smile blooms on the other girl’s face. “As I was saying, most shops have closed. But some are still here.” Cristofana steps closer to the window, stroking the devoted kitten. “You think he’s pretty, bella, don’t you? I thought so, when I saw you together.”
Gazing into the shadows of the workshop, where chickens peck at the dust, May grows hypnotized, watching as Cristofana watches, for the young man is alone inside, lost in dark thoughts, mourning someone perhaps — maybe his two friends, whose easels have been covered with dark cloth — staring fixedly at his drawing board.
May becomes so absorbed in his stillness that she doesn’t notice Cristofana move. She doesn’t see or sense the other girl’s approach until her twin reaches around as if in embrace and tilts a coarse blade toward her neck, its tip extending between phantom May and the unshuttered window. “Do you remember this dagger?”
The knife doesn’t rise, doesn’t move but for the slightest tremble, but May shifts her focus from far to near, staring as if at a snake rising from its basket.
For a second, she holds her breath, waiting for Cristofana to run the blade across her tender neck with all her spite, do what those viper eyes promise (now that May’s had the sense to turn around and face her), but what’s worse than the look in her eye or the knife now vanished into her layers is the terror of what might lurk in her stolen clothing, of the microbes swarming, of death in the weave. Even in ghost form, with logic on her side (if her flesh and cells aren’t active and present, then they can’t be cut; they can’t be infected), it’s impossible not to panic.
May’s done some reading since her last visit to Old Florence, and the Black Death — in an age without antibiotics — is about the scariest thing she can imagine.
The streets are more silent even than before, apart from the soft noise of the kitten on its haunches lapping from a bucket of filthy rainwater at the curb. Inside, the beautiful man stares, unmoving at his easel, but her gaze darts back to where the knife is concealed, in the contagion of her double.
“Relax, bella. You know by now that my knife cannot hurt you,” Cristofana says, as if reading her thoughts. “You don’t yet know or believe it, but you are the merest kind of visitor here, a traveler without footprints.”
May looks in anxiously at the artist with the dark, sad eyes — alo
ne, unaware of them outside his window.
“You worry for your flesh, but have you ever touched anything here, besides the ground you walk upon? Have you ever moved or altered anything or eaten a fig or”— she winks, gesturing —“stolen a kiss? You leave no mark, just as I leave none in your world. None is left on you.”
May winces, remembering her knees, the blood, the strength and gentleness in the artist’s hands, his smell. You’re wrong. I have.
But what if Cristofana’s right? What if passing through all ghostlike and leaving no mark is the real story of May’s life — in Old Florence or New — in Vermont or Boston or anywhere else? Leave no mark and bear none. He had touched her. He touched her and made her shimmer.
“But we can change that,” Cristofana offers, her voice hypnotic.
May shakes her head.
“Or do you imagine, as I sometimes do, that it was all just a very powerful dream — our trade before? Your meeting with Marco? For in dreams we have all we require.”
May’s eyes widen, and Cristofana continues cheerily, “Yes, I know him. I learned his name after you last left us. I made him notice me. Or helped him notice you? I should like very much to see your face when you cannot feel his lovely flesh as I can.” She sighs as if the whole subject is profoundly tedious. “As I will. To distract from all this”— she waves an impatient hand —“death and sorrow.
“I have tried again, as flesh, to find your world. . . . I have labored without your selfish help. Sometimes, my fingers brush its edges. I hear its echoes. Strega, I say to myself, you have only to give back what you take. That is the rule. Until then you’ll keep nothing. You don’t believe me? In spite of all you’ve seen?” Balancing the kitten on one shoulder, she holds out her hand, and May recoils.
“Touch, Ghost.”
“No.”
“Are you afraid? Or you despise me?”
May lets her eyes answer for her.
“If not me, then him. Go inside to your precious Marco and take his hand. We can change fate by changing places, by fooling fate —”
May gapes at her, bewildered, and again at the lone figure inside the workshop. “That can’t happen, Cristofana.” To say the other girl’s name is to humanize her somehow, make her real when she isn’t. She — this — can’t be real. “You know that.”
“If I must stay, then I will do what I will. I will have my will.”
May feels her pulse racing, desperation in every nerve. No, but really, I want to give up modern medicine and hygiene, and the right to vote, and an education and career, and my family, and probably my life . . . to live . . . here . . . now . . . in filth and squalor and disease. “Even if I could change places, I wouldn’t,” she says, staring in at him and fearing, even as she says it, that it’s a lie. “There’s a reason for all this.”
“There is no reason,” Cristofana snaps. “It is chance and my passion: I will you here. It’s a rip in the air, a quirk in your fiber, and you deserve it less than I do.” Cristofana stares at May and past her, stroking the kitten, with its wet whiskers and cloudy eyes.
Unnerved, May turns to the window again. She doesn’t even pretend to hold back, just stares in at him, stricken, and wills him to look back. It’s me. See me. See me again. She doesn’t even know him, not really, but May can’t persuade herself that it matters now. There’s nothing here she understands except him, probably because he made her feel safe . . . in a place where nothing and no one is safe.
Every time he lifts the charcoal — and now that he has, he works feverishly, tilting his head, his shoulder rising and falling, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat as he swallows — his black hair falls forward. He smooths it impatiently behind his ears, smudges the paper with his palm, his knuckles, and she feels his every gesture in her body as if her skin is breathing him, memorizing the way he moves, moving with him.
May has all but forgotten Cristofana, allowing herself to be careless around her for the last time. A cheery whistling calls her back, a little tune like a spell, and when May turns, transfixed, Cristofana is kneeling on the other side of the alley, smiling blackly. “You,” she says, “are nothing here, bella, and you will listen when I speak to you.”
Crouched beside the murky bucket by the door ledge, Cristofana holds the kitten under black water. It thrashes, its nails extended, raking the soft white flesh of her identical arm and drawing blood. Wet lines bloom on skin like marble shining in the Italian sun. The animal’s head bobs out once with a yowling, but Cristofana pushes like a baker kneading dough, and though May tries, straining every muscle, she cannot move or change a thing. She cannot silence the voice chanting the word or reach out or call to the man indoors for help or stop the white arm dipping, the black water splashing, the little bedraggled body writhing, the air constricting. She can only gasp in the white-hot light, her face wet with tears.
“Nothing.”
She is sobbing in the middle of a piazza, with strangers all around casting suspect glances. Pigeons bob and part under her feet as she hurries from alley to alley, finally slipping into the apartment. She retreats to her room and doesn’t answer when Gwen knocks for dinner.
“I thought we could try Cafaggio again. What do you think? They had some OK veggie options.”
“Give me a minute, Gwen,” May manages to choke out. A minute to find my mind. I’ve lost my mind.
“Sure, love. We’ll go grab a table. I could use a glass of wine. See you there?”
“Yes. OK.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“OK? You sound funny.”
“I’m good,” May murmurs. “Thanks.”
When she hears their footfalls and the click of the ancient lock, she pads into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. The bathroom mirror is still steamed from someone’s shower, Liam’s probably, since Gwen prefers baths, and May traces her own broad features — Cristofana’s, she thinks, disgusted — on the wet glass, alarmed when her own red-rimmed eyes look back through the smear.
When she has it together enough to step out, she leaves the lower hall cautiously, afraid that the strange unreality of the crowded city streets might suddenly shift again and leave her lost, with or without a portal, send her back where the little animal floated in a bucket of black water. Focusing hard on the streetlights shining shadowy pink on stone and marble, on the busy murmuring of people heading out for the evening, she begins reciting the old rhyme “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” watching one foot move and then the other, and soon she’s standing outside the restaurant, her chest taut with apprehension.
Gwen and Liam already have a table, so she threads her way through the dinner line out front and lets the hostess lead her to them.
Liam doesn’t look up when she sits down, so how can he see that she’s on the edge of tears, that every move she makes feels tentative, wrong, as if her limbs don’t belong to her, though she’s somehow in charge of them? Maybe Gwen sees that something’s wrong, but there’s no way to tell with her, and her cheerful chatter doesn’t hide the fact that Liam spends the better part of the night texting under the table, looking up only when the waiter brings his arrosto misto, a huge, steaming plate of every conceivable kind of meat.
About halfway through the meal, Gwen gets up to use the restroom. The second she rounds the corner, Liam reaches into his jacket for his phone, so May blurts out, as much for Gwen’s sake as her own, “Quit acting like you have friends.”
She says it jokingly: Liam has plenty of friends; he just isn’t the type to chitchat on the phone with them or text back and forth all day, especially from a foreign country when it costs a fortune. He’s avoiding her, and it’s time she called him on it.
But she isn’t prepared for how he responds — for the ice in his eyes and his ugly silence. When she stares him down, he finally blurts, “What’s up with you, May? Maybe no one sent you the memo, but I was only thinking we could have a little fun while we’re stuck over here togeth
er. Don’t let it go to your head.” He lifts a big chunk of lamb from his plate with his fingers and bites off a stringy corner, grease shining on his lips while he chews.
It’s hurt talking, she knows; it’s because she rejected him, but it doesn’t make this any easier; it doesn’t hurt her any less.
“You’re always so sure of yourself and your tidy little world.” He swallows, smiling like the Cheshire cat, taunting. “Well, you’re not my type. You never were. I like a woman with a little meat on her bones, right? Some iron in her blood.”
She concentrates on her dish of uneaten cabbage soup, oily and cold. May would explain if she could, erase what he’s feeling, make up for it, but he’s already paid her back in spades, and she’s tired, determined not to cry. She doesn’t owe him anything. What right does he have, expecting her to have fun and be available at his beck and call? Or did she lead Liam to think she wanted to? Is that where this went wrong? Did I? Do I?
“Got it, Li,” May says, though she doesn’t. She doesn’t get anything anymore. “Loud and clear.”
Standing, she lays her napkin over her bowl, hovering a moment, too embarrassed to let him watch her walk away. The white fabric soaks up broth, drooping into the dish. Li looks tired, too, almost sad now, staring past her.
She finally collects her bag and sweatshirt from the back of the chair, saying, “You think you know me, but you don’t. You don’t know shit.”
He reaches for his phone again.
“Tell Gwen I went home with a stomachache.”
Wasn’t she ever lonely before? May can’t remember. She’s never really understood loneliness. It’s a word in songs — where people are so lonesome they can cry — especially the kind of folky songs her parents like, the kind that echoed from the radio on the cabin porch during summer vacations when they all sat watching dusk on the lake, when mayflies bumped against lanterns and nobody spoke, at least till the sun went down, because nobody had to. But in Maine, they were all feeling it together. They were wistful but content. That wasn’t this.
Plague in the Mirror Page 7
