A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  Matthies, the boy who’d spoken, introduced Warden to his friends Hans and Oliver. They sat in a circle on the wooden deck while a series of searchlights played over the dark water below. Schools of fish had gathered, turning and flashing in the light, while a crowd on the beach threw chunks of bread into the surf.

  The boys asked him what he did, where he came from in Canada, curious about his recondite country. Others joined them, expanding their circle in the pursuit of momentary joy while they laughed and talked and lingered. For a moment Warden was lost in the lamp-lit revels on a beach on a small island he’d never heard of before that summer. Suddenly, Matthies pointed to the broad sweep of light across the water.

  “Look,” he said, as the others clambered around, pressing against one another.

  At first all Warden could see were the floating chunks of bread tossed out to the fish, bobbing like calcified sea foam. Then he saw what Matthies had been pointing at, a long scaly body moving in and out of the water like a fabled sea serpent crossing the patch of light-filled water.

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  A drunken Italian girl, seeing nothing but the shredded bread afloat on the water, answered a bored, ‘È pane.’”

  “Pane! It’s bread!” Matthies shouted, as a howl went up among the temporary cross-legged companions.

  The night seemed to outlast the limits of ordinary time. Finally someone noticed day had begun, pointing out a shivering patch of dawn as the partiers began to make their way home.

  “Where do you sleep, Warden?” Matthies asked.

  He explained he hadn’t made any arrangements.

  “Then you must share our tent. We are staying at the camping ground. Let us find Hans and Oliver and we will go.”

  In the morning they washed and trekked back to the beach. They found it populated by hordes of sun worshippers who spent their time oiling and stretching their golden limbs, as if the entire beach were posing for a family snapshot.

  Matthies and his friends had brought bathing suits; Warden hadn’t. Without looking around, he lifted his T-shirt over his head and stripped to his undershorts. The Germans were amused when he replied that with all the half-naked bodies lying around no one would notice he was running down the beach in his underwear. He was right. He grabbed the waistband of his cotton shorts to prevent them from jettisoning their cargo as he dove under, coming up gurgling and splashing. He felt revitalized as the salt sponged away all the aches his muscles had gathered since leaving Milan.

  They spent most of the afternoon on the hot sand or in the cool water, sleeping and waking in the sun. That evening they went to town to eat, the four of them like blood brothers. Afterwards they passed along the darkened beach back to the bar where they’d met. Again they stayed till dawn was not far off, saying goodbye to their island friends and promising to return the following summer. Hans had to be disengaged from the embraces of a girl who’d finally succeeded in enrapturing him after a week of sly courting. That night Warden shared their tent for a final time.

  In the morning he woke to a raw pinching. Barnacles gripped his arms and chest and legs where he’d been over-exposed to the sun the day before. He was amazed to see the bronzed hue his skin had taken on. After a breakfast of instant cereals out of packs he helped the boys pack their tent and belongings. They exchanged addresses and promises to keep in touch. He went with them as far as the crossroads, saying goodbye there.

  Not wishing to spend another afternoon on the beach, he followed a trail up into the mountains, using a pole as a staff on his climb over terrain more desolate than anything he’d ever seen. He was surprised to find, hundreds of feet up in the dry air, a gravel road cutting across his path before disappearing among the twists and turns ahead. There were no other signs of civilization. All he could see in any direction were mountains and, beyond that, the cool sparkling water. Looking outward, he felt as though he could jump effortlessly from one hilltop to another. Far below, a handful of offshore rocks took on the appearance of stepping stones, like the backs of giant grey-shelled turtles.

  He left the road and cut straight down to the sea, stumbling and sliding, the staff preventing his fall. He passed layers of rock folded and sliced open to reveal startling colours, stigmata bleeding from stiffened veins in an anxious journey to the water. At the bottom, he stepped onto a stony beach. In the tidal pools lay the small islands he’d seen from above, the largest no more than twice his body length.

  Laying the staff aside, he stripped off his clothes and swam out to the islands. Beneath him, the black amorphous outlines of sea urchins clung to the rocks, churlish looking in their spiked carapaces. On the largest and farthest of the islands he scrambled out of the water, grasping at slippery footholds as he climbed onto the flat surface. He lay back, shaking the water from his hair and rubbing the droplets across his chest. The air and light stained his skin while his veins sang in a language he could barely understand. He felt as if he’d never existed so fully till that moment.

  When he raised his head again the water had risen. It swept over the rocks nearest the shore, submerged and inaccessible as the sea multiplied itself. He dove in and began to swim. The sea urchins had swelled in number as well until their army covered every shelf and ledge, hovering beneath him like black angels. Nearing the shore he felt a cramped wrinkling of pain, as though he’d connected with flint and a spark had entered his flesh. He crawled up out of the water and hobbled over to a rock, squeezing the detached spine from the sole of his foot. A trickle of blood fell, swept away by the water washing over the stone.

  He pulled on his clothes and picked up his staff, walking back along the quickly vanishing shoreline. He came to a small alcove where the rock was split into striated steps. The waves had obliterated the path ahead of him and he could go no further. He climbed the steps to a clearing that hid the ruins of a stone dwelling. A door half-stood, half-fell into the gloom of the interior.

  In the overgrown yard surrounding the house, a garden of cacti and tall bushes flamed with clusters of red flowers. He made his way through the doorway across an earthen floor like a padding of suede beneath his feet. Rotting timbers had fallen through the roof, leaving a vacant space gaping down. Vines crept in the windows, inheriting the spoils of this improbable, abandoned kingdom. The floor was charred by a history of makeshift campfires. The coals had been used to decorate the walls in a profusion of languages, a vernacular of decay inscribed by pilgrims to the abandoned sacristy on this tiny Easter egg of an island.

  Warden sat on the doorstep over-looking the harbour spread out below like a rippling pond, toy boats crisscrossing the waves and tiny ant figures on the beach just beginning to pack up their insect belongings and migrate back to town. He pulled pen and paper from his knapsack and began to write to his mother, trying to describe the beauty of the place, to encode what he felt in words and capture his emotions like the preserved flesh of fruit, dried and crystallized.

  In the grove of cacti and cypress surrounding him, Warden could easily imagine Apollo’s golden son Phaëton, hair aflame, a luminous star hurtling through the sky. He envisioned Icarus landing with a thud among these islands, and even Absalom, suspended from black boughs by his hair. All the fallen sons of yore. He felt the capriciousness of his existence, as fragile as the caps on the waves glinting on the sea below, sun and sand the only witnesses to his presence.

  The sun set as he watched the nearby hills cascading into hills farther off like the stepping stones of Titans. The falling light seemed beyond such temporal qualities as joy or despair. Shadows stitched up the spaces around his feet as if becoming aware of a presence they hadn’t felt for a long time. Warden was conscious of the forces within pulling him onward like a long dull ache dragging itself to life, to growth. He felt the differences inside him between the boy and the man like the amorphous twilight with its rushes and flares of impurity and the pure clear darkness that follows.

  Lights came on like a series of constellations aroun
d the bay. He heard the ironic scrape and slap of surf and sand like a mad dance in the sepulchral twilight, the great expanse of night paring down. The sound of waves reached him like the stroke of a bell followed by the exquisite nothingness between each crash in the instant of fullness that marks the moment of passing—for there must always be a moment—when we awake and are no more.

  Time rose, luminous, shuffling off to find one more beginning in the dust among the offerings of blood and bone, between the unobtainable poles of wisdom and innocence, not quite human till we have betrayed its urges. Night came on one star at a time, a vast dynasty of perfection under the awakening dome, the trees and the island burning into blackness, stiffening in the Mediterranean night.

  When he arrived back in Milan, wandering into the agency like a returned truant, he allowed himself to be scolded and pampered by the secretaries. They’d worried. They’d missed him. They remarked how dark his tan was. He’d exchanged his dirty ragged clothes for clean pants and shirt, and combed his filthy hair, but his hollow sleepless eyes were filled with the enchanted fictions of sunrise and the disembodied dreams of dusk.

  He was prepared to encounter a deluge of abuse from Calvino, who was being informed of his presence. A door opened and his director came out.

  “Darling, welcome back!” he said with a magnanimous wave of his hand, coming over as though he would embrace the prodigal son on his return. “The Fabiano people called yesterday. They want you for a major campaign—billboards, ads all over the country!”

  PART III

  A FEVER IN THE MARROW

  15

  The Fabiano people had seen Andreo’s rush shots. Warden’s dreamy presence suited their image and they wanted him for a comprehensive campaign in fashion magazines and on billboards. He thought of going home for a week, but each time he tried to make plans he found himself with unexpected work. It was just enough to keep him occupied. Calvino had already warned him fall would be busy.

  Following the publication of his photograph with the trumpet, people began to recognize him in the streets. Three teenaged girls followed him in the subway one day, advancing with him stop by stop. The oldest of them held up an imaginary horn and played a few mute notes on it. The girls laughed while the other passengers looked around to see what was happening.

  At the next station he tried a feint, ducking out the door and back in again just as it closed. The nearest of the girls shrieked a warning to her fellows, forcing the doors apart as they clambered back inside. They stayed on, giggling all the way to his stop, following him right up to the steps of the albergo. He turned with a smile and waved as he went in.

  When the billboards appeared, Warden watched the larger-than-life image replicate itself around the city, his face blossoming like a clear pool of joy. It seemed poised on the brink of an everlasting present, looking down from the realm of some alternate, perfect existence. When he saw the sum on the first instalment from Fabiano, he had to read it twice to be certain of the amount. All that for having the right cheekbones, he thought, tucking the cheque into his pocket.

  Warden arrived at Andreo’s one afternoon for a follow-up to the campaign. The model hired as his female counterpart hadn’t shown up. Andreo took a few solo shots of Warden while they waited. After half an hour the photographer began to fidget.

  “I wanted to use this young lady because she looks like she could be your sister, but she is very temperamental,” Andreo explained. “She has stood me up before.”

  “Can’t we get someone else or just shoot around her?” Warden suggested.

  Andreo looked at his watch. “It’s too late to call an agency. What else can I do?”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “Of course! I tell you what we will do,” he said excitedly. “A simple double-exposure. It has been done a million times.”

  He turned the backdrop lights off.

  “Francesco!” he called.

  His assistant came rushing out as though he’d been waiting for the call.

  “I need something very special of you today,” Andreo said. “Our handsome young man here is about to become a beautiful young woman.”

  “What!” Warden cried.

  “Trust me, dear one—it will be wonderful!”

  Warden protested but Andreo wouldn’t hear of it.

  “No one will ever know, I promise you,” he said. “It is the photographer’s art to dictate what is seen. Believe me, you can sell anything if you try hard enough.”

  Warden watched in the mirror as Francesco filled in his cheekbones, investing them with a feminine grace. Under the assistant’s skilful contrivance there appeared a beautiful young woman, altering his identity and usurping the one thing he’d thought unique and inviolable about himself.

  When Francesco finished, Warden moved his mouth slowly as though unused to it. He was surprised to see the one in the mirror move in time with his own.

  “Madonna santa!” Andreo exclaimed at his incarnation, clapping his hands together. “You have been radically feminized.”

  “Father, you use me ill, I fear,” Warden replied, looking in amazement at his ivory cheeks.

  “So serious!” Andreo said mockingly.

  Warden stared at the pantomime in the mirror that followed his every action. “Who do you think we’re going to fool with this?” he asked.

  “Why, everybody, my dear. Francesco—what do you think?”

  Francesco scrutinized him as though he were a work of art he might consider purchasing. “Beautiful! She is magnificent!”

  “There—you see? And Francesco loves beautiful women.”

  Andreo moved behind the camera and began to shoot his bewildered subject.

  “It will be all right,” he said encouragingly. “No one will ever know. You see, we all have this innocent belief that the photograph cannot lie…”

  He paused to take several rapid shots.

  “The photograph may not lie,” he said smiling, “but the liar can take photographs.”

  He stopped to laugh at his own joke.

  “That is because what the world desires, my dear Warden, is not truth, but flattery wrapped in an image of itself.”

  Andreo’s camera clicked as Warden found himself stiffly responding to the shutter.

  “Totally loose, my dearest one. Be at ease with yourself. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Warden posed as Andreo talked and clicked away.

  “I once created a wonderful story of a young prince. For it I used a young man much like yourself—a construction worker I had found. I cleaned him up, dressed him and photographed him. I said he was a Lithuanian prince of ancient lineage and sold it to a very important magazine. Everybody loved it. When I told them later what I had done they were very angry with me, of course. But it was still a nice article.”

  Warden caught sight of himself in a large reflector.

  “Are you sure it’s all right to do this?” he said. “Aren’t there laws about this sort of thing?”

  Andreo chuckled and put his camera down.

  “In Italy, my dear Warden, there are no laws except the natural ones, which we all obey, whether we like them or whether we do not. To be beautiful…is to be loved.”

  He sighed.

  “If I were a man I should want to ravage you. You make me raw with desire.”

  Warden laughed. He felt an endearing tenderness for this high priest of the sensitive plate with his flowing robes who had talked him into doing something he could never have convinced himself to do, watching him from the eye of a black box as it fixed his image forever.

  The rounds of go-sees had begun again in earnest. Jimmy’s face cropped up occasionally in the various magazines Warden leafed through in waiting rooms and lobbies. It made him nostalgic for the fun they used to have. More than anything, though, he missed Valentino’s joking presence greeting him with his arrival on Paolo at the end of the day.

  He’d all but forgotten the alter-ego photos, looking upon them as a cosmi
c joke, the implications of which, the reactions they caused, he might never have to face, like a misdemeanour perpetrated on the spur of the moment and forgotten.

  The last week of August Warden found himself being shipped with a select group of models to an overnight stay on the island of Ibiza, famed playground of the rich and famous. It was an elite affair with a display of expensive designer wear intended less for the fashion faithful than for the self-celebrated glitterati losing sight of themselves in a blind journey toward annihilation on the seaside paradise.

  After the show Warden found himself spilling into a cab with five others to join in the nightlife beating like a living pulse all around. They sat in one another’s laps, high with the conquests they’d made, and feeling themselves so close as to be friends because they were having such desperate fun together, having hardly known each other that afternoon when they boarded the private plane.

  They made their way to a dance club where frenzied crowds staged their furious, forgetful lives. It was an existence lived outside of time, where beauty and pleasure had been declared the only values worth having. Three young women demanded Warden’s attention, having recognized the familiar face of the Fabiano boy, while someone else claimed to have just met a prince walking along the moonlit avenues.

  At four in the morning the sprawling, ecstatic crowds were watered down with hoses, hands lifted in rapture as shirts and blouses were pulled overhead in sweaty knots. The dawn was confronted by the amazing spectacle of a horde of half-naked baboons, voices raised in orgiastic worship, dancing their frenzied way toward daylight.

  Warden found himself contemplating a hand-held mirror with a dozen white streaks anointing its surface and a straw passing from one face to another. Someone suggested stealing a boat from the beach and taking a harbour cruise, but he wasn’t sure if his body could deal with the simple task—which at that moment seemed monumental—of taking control of its motor impulses, and within five minutes he wasn’t certain he hadn’t dreamed the whole plot.