Beautiful Animals

by Lawrence Osborne

  “But why?”

  “Maybe he was expecting a call from Jimmie and it never came. We have to expect this sort of thing. We just have to play it cool.”

  Sam flared up for a moment.

  “I knew we should have just gone to the police. Now we have to play cat and mouse with one of your dad’s army buddies? How do you know he’s just an army buddy?”

  “Well, as I said, he’s not the police, is he? That’s the good part.”

  The hysteria rose in both their voices, and yet they were not shouting, they were barely whispering. “You better think fast,” Sam said. “Or we’re fucked.” Naomi reminded her that they were doing this for Faoud, not for themselves, and after it had all blown over it would be different.

  Sam lowered her voice, which had been rising, on the off chance that her family were close by, making their way back across the fields.

  “Did it occur to you that he might’ve been using you?”

  Naomi was so astonished that she merely blinked.

  “Using me?”

  “Maybe he didn’t care if he had to kill them or not, he just wanted the cash.”

  “But I gave it to him.”

  “Because you’re a white girl. Of course you gave it to him. He knew you felt guilty, and he took advantage.”

  “That’s absurd, and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t know it. I don’t know anything. All I know is that you and I are stuck on this tiny island with an old man who likes to ask questions. It’s starting to freak me out.”

  The returning family suddenly came into view. They were sunburned and brimming with energy, carrying bundles of wild flowers and knapsacks, the Swiss Family Robinson crackling with chatter and unconscious satisfactions. When they saw that Naomi would be joining them for dinner Amy appeared a little cool at the idea, but Jeffrey took the lead in stirring up some enthusiasm. The maid had already made her famous moussaka and the wine had been opened. They were, in reality, too hungry and too happy to care either way.

  They showered with extraordinary efficiency and were seated at table within fifteen minutes. Night had fallen now and donkeys in heat brayed in the darkness, aroused by something new. Sam ate in silence while the others bantered, a fact that did not escape the notice of her mother. Amy, in fact, had become vaguely and almost unconsciously suspicious—but of what she wasn’t yet sure. Something in Naomi’s body language, something in the taciturn silence of her daughter. But there was nothing to be said. Before desserts were served, she caught Sam alone for a moment in the kitchen as they made coffee. Amy touched her arm for a moment and said, “Everything all right, sweetheart?” The girl shuddered away from the touch and then collected herself.

  “I’m fine,” she said tersely. “I just have a headache.”

  “Where did you go last night?”

  “I did what you told me to. I went to a party and met some Americans.”

  “That’s great, sweetheart. I hope you had fun.” Amy was hugely relieved.

  “It was cool,” the girl replied.

  At the table, Naomi told stories about Hydra life—from days gone by, as she said—and the Haldanes listened until Jeffrey took out his pompous pipe and lit up, signaling a change in the conversation. He and Christopher had been reading The Odyssey every night before bed. They had come to Book 5, and Christopher kept asking him if the island of Ogygia, home of Calypso, was Hydra.

  Of course it was not. But when Homer described the island rising up “like a shield,” well, it was suggestive of this island too. Jeffrey puffed on his pipe and turned a vacant tobacco eye on his guest.

  “Then Christopher said the most beautiful thing to me. He said, isn’t Odysseus just like the refugees today? How does he put it?—tossed on the stormy waves, destroying himself on the barren sea. The foiled journey home, the current bore him there, or something like that? Scudding across the—scudding across the sea’s broad back—scudding somewhere—how did it go with the scudding, Chris?”

  The boy looked up sheepishly. “Left to pine on an island in the nymph’s house?”

  “Yes, that too. That’s how he ended up. Pining and weeping for home, nowhere to go. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “About what?” Naomi said.

  “About how it’s all the same. Nothing ever changes.”

  “That’s a stretch, to put it mildly.”

  But the look of self-satisfaction on his face was disarming, and she left it at that. After all, she should be the last person to disagree when she thought about it. But even if she did disagree, what difference would it make to either herself or the bore?

  “Everyone knows the island was Gozo,” Christopher then said. “Not here.”

  “That’s right,” his father said. “But who knows if it even existed?”

  “It didn’t exist,” the boy said.

  “Did you know that Calypso means ‘she who hides herself’?”

  He turned to Naomi, but without knowledge of the ironies he was unconsciously manipulating.

  “Forgive us, Naomi, my son and I are the most tremendous pedants when the mood takes us. Once we get going only wild horses can stop us, and there usually aren’t any wild horses around—are there, Sam?”

  “Only goats, if you’re lucky,” she said.

  SIXTEEN

  Faoud stopped in Fasano. The town was dominated by a long rectangular piazza filled with old men taking in the sun in their shirtsleeves and with crowds of tired pigeons. He went through both men and birds anonymously, aware that now he could pass for Italian without much difficulty. He came upon a shoe store in a street nearby and tried on a few pairs of fine Italian shoes until he found two that fit.

  Five hundred euros seemed obscenely steep to him, but shabby shoes could give a man away, even to an idle eye. It was a question of the economics of appearances. There was no price to be put on the vital element of concealment and the ability to blend in. He was also, he admitted to himself, desperate to step away from the persona of a refugee and step into a different one altogether. Shoes: so banal and yet so magnificently significant. He paid with one of the credit cards, and there was no incident. He wore one pair out of the shop and back into the sunlight, where the tan leather shone handsomely and gave a lift to his self-confidence. Whatever happened now, life or death or prison, he would go into it finely shod. There was an enchantment in the metamorphosis.

  From Fasano a road swung south toward Marina Franca. He decided to follow it, because the Codringtons had marked it on their map and he didn’t want to go onto the autostrada. The smaller roads were safer, less policed. He drove until midafternoon, when he came to Marina di Ginosa, the whole length of it a shambolic and hideous carnival of seaside campsites, pizzerias, clubs, sugarcane fields, and roadside bars filled with people in swimwear. In a quiet way, he was shocked. Where were the superbly dressed and imperious Italians he had seen so many times in films, the Sophia Lorens his father had so admired once upon a time? He went into a cafe and got a spremuta at the bar, and soon he heard a few tones of Arabic coming from the men huddled with him around the zinc bar. They had not fingered him as one of their own, and he was content not to be counted among their ranks.

  By the road the wind swept through the high cane, and along the verges men walked in single file, men from the south in nylon jackets and cheap scarves even in the rising heat. He drove on in the direction of Matera. On the way he passed a roadblock that had just been dismantled. The carabinieri were taking away the cones and loading them into two police vans, some of them standing now by the verge with their weapons cocked. There, in the sour dust, two men sat in handcuffs, their heads drooped and despondent. Ten minutes earlier and he, too, would have been stopped.

  God, once again, had watched over him and saved him among the Unbelievers. But next time he would have to be more prudent. He drove past the policemen slowly, and for a moment their eyes locked and disengaged without incident. It was a shame that he was alone; a couple had a far better cha
nce of not calling attention to themselves. Soon, however, he was in Matera, the modern part of which was like any other Italian provincial town, defiantly morose. He parked the Peugeot on a wide street, took a shoulder bag, and walked down into the ancient labyrinth that lay below it. It seemed to him that there, where few cars ventured, would be a safer place to lie low for a night.

  On the far side of the little town were only rocky cliff faces pocked with caves and slopes of heather and prickly pear. There were signs for hotels everywhere, places built into the long-abandoned caves where peasants had once lived with their animals, like animals themselves. He found a modest one just above a belvedere with views of the ravine and threw his bag onto the bed, then washed and shaved and drank the mineral water that was on the bedside table.

  It was about six o’clock now and the bells were ringing, the echoes thrown back and forth across the ravine, whose far side looked like a place where saints and eremites had once lived.

  He was alone in the hotel and the owners seemed indifferent to his existence, a fact that after all was to his advantage. He slipped out unnoticed and walked along the cool expanse of the belvedere. Soon he was climbing steps at its far end and ascending through tunnels and arched passageways toward an unknown destination.

  Eventually, he came out into a wide square right on the edge of the precipice, with a church clinging to its far corner and occupying one side of the piazza. It was open and so was a cafe; a Japanese man sat alone at one of the tables smoking a cigarette. Faoud looked around, saw nothing threatening, and walked slowly up to the wall and looked down into the darkening ravine. The noise of birds massed in the twilight was so great that it unnerved him. He wondered if long ago the Muslims had come this far in their conquests of southern Italy and whether it was they who had marked it out as a sanctuary that reminded them of their native lands. The fragrantly dry heat of the late day wafting up from the grass slopes would have pleased them just as it pleased him now.

  The bells had fallen silent. He went into the church, where there was a small gathering of old people, and he wandered down the nave feeling things that had never occurred to him before. He had thought to offer something to the souls of the two people he had destroyed, but there was no way to do this within the unfamiliar parameters of Unbelief. Nevertheless, he sat in the pews and formed the internal words of an apology and a penance. God, all-comprehending, would understand his reasons and even the accursed place in which it had to be performed, since there was no choice but to enter into the church of Pietro e Paulo and pray for the Codringtons, who were even more innocent than he was. More innocent, but clearly less favored by God.

  His penance inside the church had suddenly lifted a certain weight from his mind and he felt freer to enjoy an hour at the cafe where the Japanese man was sitting. So he stopped suddenly and veered to a free table, catching a waiter’s eye. Almost immediately a girl, an Italian he would have guessed, had noticed him in his new shoes and his odd-fitting ivory pants, and while waiting for him to settle down she lit a cigarette. The Japanese man slowly got up and walked off into the night. He and the Italian were alone.

  “Excuse me,” he began in English.

  He had guessed correctly. She was Italian, but her English was good. It was always the way these days among reasonably educated people. Her name was Benedetta. She was twenty-two and an art student; her father owned a furniture-restoring factory in Brescia specializing in the eighteenth century.

  “I saw you go into the church,” she said. “But you’re not a Christian.”

  This was the way that flirtations sometimes began, with subjects one didn’t really want to broach.

  “I was a Christian for five minutes in there.”

  Smile to her, then; it was not true, but it didn’t matter.

  “Five minutes is a long time to be one,” she said.

  They talked for an hour. He lied with a considerable fluency and before long he began to think that she was believing him. Soon they were walking together through the silent old town. He said he was driving to Rome the next day, he could give her a ride if she needed one.

  “I was thinking of staying here for a while,” she replied. “But maybe I’ll change my mind.”

  “Do whatever you want, Miss Benedetta.”

  “Allora ci vediamo domani.”

  “Means?”

  “We’ll see tomorrow.”

  She reached out and touched his hand, but he shook his head, immediately understanding the invitation, and said, “I have to sleep tonight. I slept badly last night.”

  Then, making up for his prurient refusal, he repeated his previous offer to drive her to Rome the next day if she liked.

  With the same coolness with which she had registered the rejection, she affirmed her acceptance of this offer. She then went back to her hostel, while he lay awake in his own unassuming hotel smoking for a long time and thinking things over. This was improvisation from day to day; there was something exhilarating about it. Slowly but surely, it was purifying him. He didn’t need to have a plan or a destination: God had already decided for him.

  He didn’t sleep, and so when she showed up at his hotel at seven the next morning he was already awake, perfectly dressed as a more handsome Jimmie and ready to leave. They took coffee together outside, in front of his room, and he saw that she had a small rucksack with her, though nothing else. He gave her the bread basket. Clouds had massed overnight, and now, spitefully, a few drops of rain fell. There were silent flashes of lightning in the far distance, and under the hostile clouds the slopes looked more intensely green and yet ravaged by neglect.

  They walked up to the new town with their bags and found the car. It began to rain more consistently as they drove to Potenza, passing the villages perched on their towering hilltops, the campaniles watching over the futile centuries and the invaders that came with them.

  By the road, under the shade of spreading trees, African prostitutes sat stoically waiting for clients. On the far side of Potenza town they saw the first signs for Eboli and then Salerno. Before Eboli there was, as he had expected, the first police roadblock. A stab of fear and he slowed, as he had to, and the girl glanced over at him for a moment as if something had suddenly occurred to her. But he was glacial in his calm. The carabinieri here were not stopping the cars, merely looking them over. When they saw the handsome young couple in the Peugeot they waved them past.

  Five miles on the sun returned and they ventured down a side road and got out. They stretched their legs and lay for a while in long grass and a multitude of poppies. She seemed a little shaken by the roadblock, but was hesitant to ask him directly if she had cause to be shaken, though she did summon up the nerve to ask him if he was running away from someone.

  “What an idea,” he said.

  The Africans. They were everywhere now, laboring up the peninsula from the detention centers in Sicily. They had heard all about them in Istanbul. But even with them there was peace in the land of the roumi, when you lay on your back among the poppies staring up at blue space; it was outside of time. There was no gunfire, no chaos, and the quietude of the land was the most striking thing about it, the most salient characteristic of its oddness.

  At noon they came to the sea at a place called Castellabate and saw a village perched far above the sea with a sign for a restaurant and hotel called Il Frantoio. Since it seemed remote and pleasant at the same time, he suggested going up and having a look.

  The former olive mill converted into a hotel clung to the edge of the cliff and looked out at a shadowless sea upon which the ferries from Salerno moved with a lovely indolence. They rang a bell. To the door came a massive man with an eye patch, the owner, and after a cursory up-and-down glance at their clothes (Faoud made up for Benedetta) they were invited into a large dining room and a shot of limoncello in glasses shaped like tulips. The owner spoke to Benedetta, and her ID card was enough to satisfy him. Then Faoud handed over Jimmie’s credit card. Blind in one eye, the owner’
s active eye had an exaggerated keenness that cut into others with intensified precision.

  They went outside to a panoramic terrace. The owner served them from a bottle of cold Falanghina, but Faoud held his hand over his glass.

  “I’m having a day off,” he said with a smile.

  “Bene fatto,” the man said. He went on: “One night or two, Mr. Codrington? We have a set menu in the evening which you will love.”

  Faoud turned to Benedetta as if she were his wife and therefore needed to be consulted on the matter.

  “We’ll try one,” she said. “And then see.”

  They went up to their room drowsily. The windows opened also to the sea; the sun’s glare made the walls mustily luminous. She lay on the bed as if expectantly, but without any nervousness. He went to the window and bathed in the marine light for a while. It was one of those days when the convergence of sea and sky at the horizon was imperceptible to the naked eye. The girl turned on her side and watched him. The fact that he didn’t want anything from her did not seem to have any effect other than amusing her, but there was a soft, baffled contempt all the same, expertly concealed for a while. Her body language spread on the bed was a clear invitation. But he was not sure if he would accept it. It was, after all, a gift from an alien world that he was not entitled to accept. Taking it by force would be more appropriate, but that was not in the code of a gentleman. Eventually, he tired of the struggle with himself and took off his jacket, unbuttoned the Abbarchi shirt, and turned from the windows to the girl, who had now rotated onto her back and was staring up at a small, dusty glass chandelier. The owner had solidly bourgeois and ponderous tastes, but his rooms were cozy and conducive to disarmament. He went to the bed and ran his fingers through her hair and she said nothing, but she didn’t brush the fingers away either.

  During the night he left the windows open and mosquitoes poured in from the forest and ate him alive. He only realized it when it was too late and his body was covered with venomous little lumps. Even the mosquitoes, then, in this sinister and inviting land sensed his hostile blood and went on the attack. He closed the windows—she was still asleep—and the room became suffocating. Cursing, he got up and opened them again. The tiny demons were still there, hovering just out of reach. Suffocate or be eaten alive: such was the choice with which God had tested him.