“Did you ride in the gondola?” Omar asked.
“No,” she said. Omar could tell by her voice that she was remembering something.
“Never?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t used. Not after Jules’s father died. I don’t know why, really, but it wasn’t. I never saw Jules or Adam in it. Perhaps they didn’t know how, but I think it was something else.”
“It’s an amazing thing,” said Omar. “To have brought it here with them. To have escaped with it.”
“They didn’t,” said Arden.
Omar turned around.
“They didn’t bring it with them,” said Arden. “They brought hardly anything with them. The gondola didn’t come until after the war.”
“But in the book—” Omar began, and stopped.
“It’s a novel,” said Arden.
“Yes, I know,” said Omar. “I just assumed—So the lake wasn’t built until after the war?”
“No,” said Arden. “At least I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” said Omar. He sat back down beside her. For a moment they did not speak, but both looked out over the sunstruck landscape, as if there were something to discern in it. Then Arden said, without turning her head, “Did you know I was an actress when I was a child?”
“No,” said Omar. He looked at her. Her face was passive yet intent and her eyes were focused on something far beyond them, as if there were enemies on the far shore only she could see.
“Yes,” she said. “After my grandmother died, and I moved to England. My father was a director. He was a bit of a drunk, and I was scared of him. He taught me to act by scaring me. Cry, he would say, and I would cry.” She looked quickly at him, then resumed her face-off with the horizon. “I was always an orphan in the movies, or a sick girl. A girl who cried. People like to see girls cry in movies. It was all there, everything he wanted, just beneath the surface. Sometimes I think we’re born with a finite store of emotion. When I was on ships as a child I’d think about how everything, all the food, all the water, all the supplies, was stored somewhere, how it could all run out, how every day the ship was getting lighter, the food passing through us and being flushed into the ocean. And the ship buoyed up by its increasing emptiness. I thought growing up was like that: a process of being hollowed out, emptied. That adults were quick and mean because their emotions had been deplenished. I thought it was a good thing, worth aspiring to. And so I would cry when my father told me to cry, take after take, as many takes as it took, and it was all real, I wasn’t faking it, and in some way I thought I was freeing myself from that sorrow. That it couldn’t come back.”
Again, she glanced at him, and again looked away.
“You make me think of all this. It’s odd. I don’t understand it.”
“What don’t you understand?” asked Omar.
“I don’t cry anymore. I mean, not at all, for years. Not when Jules died. Not when—” She shook her head. “Never. Never, in years and years. But in the last few days, since you arrived—”
She did not finish. Apparently she could not.
“Why?” Omar asked.
She looked at him, directly, and her face was tense and full of emotion. “I don’t know,” she said. She smiled a little. “I don’t even know what it is. Fear, perhaps. Or sorrow. I don’t know if it’s you. Or if it is you, why.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here. I just seem to have upset everyone. I was just thinking, this morning, that I shouldn’t have come.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s if you hadn’t come—”
They were sitting side by side, on the ground, rather close to each other. Perhaps they were touching. They felt as if they were touching. They were touching. Arden’s hand was on Omar’s cheek, and then—it was like falling in a dream: inexorable and terrifying but simultaneously euphoric—they were leaning their faces toward each other, closing their eyes, and kissing.
And then they sat there, struck, wondering, silent. Omar’s hand was on Arden’s leg. And then after a moment, they turned again toward each other, and kissed again.
Then Arden stood up. She brushed herself off, although she was not dirty. She could not look at him. They had kissed, but they could not acknowledge it. “Let me show you the gondola,” she said. She nodded toward the boathouse.
Omar stood up and followed her around back, where she stood unlocking the padlocked door. She pushed it open and motioned for him to enter. He walked past her and into the boathouse. She stood standing, just outside the door, in the daylight.
It was dark and cool in the boathouse and it smelled of silt and rot. The few windows were grimed over. Omar turned back toward the door. “Aren’t you coming in?” he called.
“No,” Arden said. She looked pale, or perhaps it was just the brightness of the sun on her, the difference in light.
Omar understood that she did not wish to see the gondola, and suddenly he was scared to see it himself. As if seeing it would change something, or alter him.
“I don’t like it in there,” Arden said. “It gives me the creeps. But go, look. I’ll be out here.” She disappeared from the doorway.
Omar turned around. There was a canoe and a rowboat sitting on the wooden floor, and past them, overturned on risers, the gondola. It was smaller than he had thought it would be. He walked around the other boats and touched its hull, whose color he could not discern in the gloom. He squatted and tried to look up into it. It was too dark to see anything, but he could smell the moldering leather and velvet. And suddenly he felt foolish—or not foolish, he felt wrong, like he was committing a sin. He felt that his desire to see the gondola was inappropriate, almost prurient. He felt ashamed of himself.
And it made him sad, there was something very sad about the fact of it there, overturned, locked up in darkness beside the absent lagoon.
It took him a moment to adjust to the light outside. He did not see Arden anywhere. For a moment he thought she had left him there. He looked all around, and finally saw her standing behind him, back in the shade of the trees. She walked down the slope and passed him without speaking. She went and locked the door of the boathouse, and picked up her bag, which she had left on the ground. Then she walked past him again, down toward the edge of what had been the lake. She stood there, in the hot, bright expanse, waiting for him to join her.
When they emerged out of the woods into the little orchard they found Pete on a ladder, trying to shroud a tree in netting to save the fruit from the birds.
“Hello,” he called to them.
They had not talked all the way down, so Pete’s interruption was welcome. They went and stood beneath the tree he was netting. “Do you need help?” Omar asked.
“Yes, thanks,” said Pete. “It might be easier with two.”
“I’ll leave you, then,” said Arden. She walked back toward the house.
Pete climbed down the ladder. “Where have you been?” he asked Omar.
“We went up to see the gondola,” said Omar.
“Did you like it?” asked Pete.
It seemed an odd question: it was not something you liked or disliked. “I am glad to have seen it,” said Omar.
“Come,” said Pete. “I will show you the hive.”
It stood in the long grass at the edge of the field of fruit trees. It was made of wood and looked like a dresser. Slender vertical drawers could be pulled from it. Pete pulled out one containing a honeycomb thronged with swarming bees. The bees crawled onto his hand, covered it, like a buzzing glove. He held it out toward Omar but Omar shrieked and shrank back. Pete laughed. He waved his hand in the air as if he were making slow figures with a torch. The bees drowsily flew from it. He replaced the drawer in the hive, and stood beside Omar. They watched the bees turn about in the air and return to the hive, flying in through the bottom.
Pete reached up and pulled a peach off a tree and handed it to Omar.
> “Thank you,” said Omar.
Pete selected one for himself. They were small peaches, bursting ripe, with very thin, pale blushing skins. The flesh was pale, too, and tasted a bit like banana. Perhaps they were something other than peaches. Pete ate his in a few big lunging bites, holding it out in front of him so the juice would drip on the ground. He sucked the flesh from the stone and then threw it toward the woods. He lay down in the long grass on the sun-dappled ground beneath the trees and put his arms behind his head. His T-shirt rode up and exposed a stripe of skin around his middle. He tugged the shirt back toward his pants, but it ascended as soon as he returned his arms behind his head. He closed his eyes. Apparently he meant to nap.
Omar finished his peach and tossed the pit into the tall grass. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. Stay, or leave Pete. But it was nice to just stand there. In the quiet he could hear the hive humming. He had to urinate. He walked off a ways and peed into the long grass.
He walked back and sat near Pete. After a moment Pete opened his eyes and sat forward. He looked toward the hive, around which a few bees were still hovering. “How old are you?” asked Pete.
“I’m twenty-eight,” said Omar.
“So am I,” said Pete. “We are like brothers.”
It occurred to Omar that brothers would not likely be the same age, but he said nothing.
Pete stood up. So did Omar. “Let me get another ladder,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Omar sat down. He watched Pete walk back toward the garden. He was alone. He could hear the hive humming, it was a low, gentle rumble. He could almost feel it. I have kissed Arden, he thought. He lay back in the grass. He heard Pete return with the ladder. When he sat up Pete had leaned both ladders into a tree, one on either side.
“It will be easier if we are both up in the tree,” he said. He began to climb one of the ladders. Omar got up and walked over to the tree. It was the one Pete had taken the fruit from. The tree was full of fruit. Some of it was rotten. Omar climbed the ladder, which wobbled beneath his jouncing weight. The limbs of the tree were not strong but they were supple. He could not see Pete through the dense foliage. The buzzing was coming from the tree, too: it was full of bees.
“I will throw the net over the top,” said Pete. “Try to catch it and pull it down, okay?”
“Yes,” said Omar. He could hear Pete struggling with the net. And then a whoosh as the net landed on the tree.
“Do you see it?” Pete called.
“No,” said Omar.
“Shit,” said Pete. “Let me try again.”
Omar waited and heard Pete throw the net again. This time part of it hung down, not far from him.
“Do you see it?” asked Pete.
“Yes,” said Omar. “Let me grab it.”
“Be careful,” said Pete.
Omar reached out for the net. He felt a burn on his hand, as if he had reached into a flame. And then he was falling.
PART TWO
That golden evening I really wanted to go no farther; more than anything else I wanted to stay awhile …
—Elizabeth Bishop, Santarém
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He understood that he was in a hospital and that something was very wrong with him. He could not move; it hurt, even, to think. And he would struggle out of the arms of sleep only to fall almost immediately back into them, but they did not hold him well, they kept dropping him, he would fall through sleep into something deeper and darker, and then he swiftly rose up once again to consciousness and opened his eyes. A woman stood and looked down at him. She was speaking but he was underwater and could not hear her.
He realized they had taken him out of his body and put him in something else. He told her this. He asked her for his body back.
The next time he woke there was a doctor leaning closely over him, as if they might kiss. Can you feel this? the doctor asked, tenderly touching his cheek. If you can feel this, blink your eyes.
He blinked.
The doctor took his hand away. Can you feel this? he asked again. If you can feel this, blink.
He tried to explain how they had taken his body away but the doctor would not listen. He only repeated himself: Can you feel this? If you can feel this, blink.
Dr. Peni entered his office and sat down behind his desk. The woman sat across from him as women do in these situations, her face blank with tension, waiting. For a second he enjoyed her beautiful fervency and his power over her. He touched two fingers to his desk, tapped them lightly. “Well,” he said, “as you know, he has regained consciousness. That is a very good thing.”
“Yes,” said Arden.
“We remain concerned by his fever. And there is, I am afraid to say, a certain amount of paralysis.”
“Paralysis?”
“Yes. You see, the poison affects the central nervous system, shuts it down. That is why it is so important to introduce the serum immediately. Because of the delay in this case, there is a certain extent of paralysis. If you are keeping bees, you should really have some serum available.”
“Is it—will it be permanent?” she asked.
“It is impossible to know at this point. The body can respond quite miraculously. Or sometimes, not at all. He is young and in good health. I am inclined to be optimistic, but without further tests it is impossible to know the extent of the damage that was made to the nervous system.”
“Have you talked to his father? I understand he is a doctor.”
“Yes, he called here this morning. A most unpleasant man.”
“But you got the information you needed?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Peni. “The young man—may I ask: is he related to you?”
“No,” said Arden. “He was a guest, visiting us. A friend.”
“I see,” said Dr. Peni. “A special friend, I would imagine.”
Arden looked puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dr. Peni. “From your demeanor, I assumed he is a special friend of yours. Your concern seems deep. But perhaps I assume too much. I thought if he were a special friend, you might like to see him.”
“Oh,” said Arden. “May I?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Peni. “He is conscious, but unresponsive. His brain—well, we know nothing yet. But it might be good if you see him. Good for him, I mean.”
“Yes,” said Arden. “I would like to see him.”
“In that case, let me take you to see your friend.”
He’s got it all wrong, Arden thought, as she walked behind him down the hall. He thinks we are lovers, but perhaps it is good he thinks that—if he thinks Omar is loved, he will try harder to save him. For me, she thought. He will save him for me.
She cried out when they entered the room. It could not be—something awful had happened—he was bloated and had an old man’s face, an ugly face—
“You know Señor Miquelrius?” asked Dr. Peni.
“Oh!” said Arden, realizing. “I thought—I thought that he was Omar.”
Dr. Peni laughed. “No,” he said. “Your friend is here.” He indicated the screen around the other bed. “If you’ll come this way, we’ll let Señor Miquelrius enjoy his beauty sleep.” He drew aside the screen so they might stand beside the bed. Omar did not look well, but he at least still looked like himself. His eyes were closed. Dr. Peni raised one of Omar’s lids, and peered into the exposed eyeball. He let the lid close. “He is sleeping,” he announced. He held his stethoscope to Omar’s chest, and listened. “It sounds well, his heart,” he said.
Arden looked down at Omar. It was as if it were the first time she had ever looked at him. She let her gaze fall on him.
“Perhaps you would like to touch him?” Dr. Peni wondered aloud.
“What?” Arden asked.
“If you would like to touch him, you may,” said Dr. Peni. “Gently, of course.” He indicated with a forefinger Omar’s cheek. “Here, perhaps.”
Arden reached down and laid the back
s of her fingers against Omar’s cheek. Omar responded to the contact by moving his head slightly on the pillow; a gentleness passed across his face. They both saw it. Dr. Peni smiled.
But when she returned to the clinic the next day, Omar was once again comatose. Dr. Peni was troubled by his loss of consciousness, but assured Arden that Omar’s vital signs were all good. A loss of consciousness is sometimes in the body’s best interest, he explained to her: it is how the body heals itself. It would be good, he thought, if Arden talked to him: the sound of speech was good stimulation for even a comatose brain. He led her to Omar’s room, and left her there.
Señor Miquelrius had been sent home, and the white screen had been removed from around Omar’s bed. Arden sat on a metal chair beside him. For a long while she merely watched him; his face was bloated a bit, as if he had been inflated, and there was an ugly crust around his eyelids. He breathed with effort. There was a washbasin in the corner of the room with cloths stacked upon it; Arden ran one beneath the tap, wrung it out, then gently touched it to Omar’s face.
Talk, she thought, talk to him, but she could not speak. She sat there, for a very long time, thinking of what she should say, knowing it did not matter what she said. But it did matter. She felt it did matter. Even if she were only dropping rocks into a well, they would stay there, in his unconsciousness. It seemed dangerous, almost criminal. To speak to someone who could not resist. And then she thought her silence was perverse, ungenerous, cruel. Why could she not speak to him? If it could help him why could she not speak?
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She sat there looking at him. She wondered if perhaps being near him was, in some way, as beneficial as speech. Who knew how the subconscious was affected? She reached out and touched his bare arm, which lay atop the blanket, but quickly withdrew her hand. I have no right to touch him, she thought. She stood up and tossed the moistened cloth into the basin. She left without saying goodbye to Dr. Peni.
The City of Your Final Destination Page 15
