Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea

by Sara Alexander

  “Here, Santina, let me help you now,” she said, slipping in beside me.

  “I can’t take my eyes off her.”

  “Not many can, Santina,” she said, turning toward me. “I haven’t done half as good a job as you would have.”

  I looked at her, still not quite believing my favorite woman in the world was beside me again at last. “She’s luminous,” I said, determined not to cry, “like her mother.”

  “You took the words out of my mouth.”

  We smiled then, years creasing into little lines around our eyes, glistened with tears.

  “We’ll cry later, yes, my friend?” she laughed through a sniff, lifting a heavy ceramic terrine from the table, the remnants of olive oil and parsley smudging the base. She followed me into the kitchen and began wiping out the bowls before filling the sink with hot soapy water.

  “Listen, Maddalena wants to go out with Elizabeth and the others, is that alright with you?” she asked.

  “With me?”

  “Well, I don’t know if her father is in any state to make these decisions, do you?”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Down to the bay, I guess—I can’t keep Maddalena in one place for long at the best of times!”

  Her face widened into a broad smile. I put down the dish in my hand and wound my arms around my friend. We laugh-cried.

  “It is so wonderful to stand next to you, Rosali’!”

  I could feel her shudder into me. “Tell me why I keep wanting to hear that you forgive me, Santina?”

  “Because you forget what we did was out of love.”

  “I stole the most precious thing from you. It’s a knife inside.” Her cries deepened.

  “No, my Rosalia,” I whispered into her ear, my voice thin and watery now, “we gave each other what we needed most. Because we love one another. My heart could burst with what I feel. And now you are here. There is no better gift. She is a special girl. And that is because of you.”

  Then the words trickled away into more sobs, because no clever sentences could express the elation and pain we had carried all these years; for the child she thought she’d never have, for the child I thought I may never see again, for the long-lost newborn who floated in the periphery of my dreams like a nebulous shadow, trailing my waking hours each time I met a child at the market, next to me at church, wailing on the street. The memory triggered at the slightest prompt, catching me at inopportune moments, so that I’d be forced to hide in a doorway in the middle of town while the tears fell and dried. Even years later, the scar toughened by time, it took the briefest glance from a tiny soul to make my heart split in two, and for that moment I was back in my room, cradling the mewling infant, her charcoal eyes glinting in the shuttered moonlight, minuscule fingers wrapping around mine.

  Rosalia and I pulled away from each other, and we wiped our tears, the young help clattering around us, mistaking us for mourners.

  “I’ll tell them the girls can go, yes?” Rosalia asked, wiping her cheeks with her fat fingers, smeared with watery makeup, which she never used to wear.

  “I’m sure that will be fine.”

  I left the kitchen to bring more plates inside. The major was face-to-face with Elizabeth. I watched the pack of youth wind out of the door to mischief.

  He closed the door and looked at me.

  I walked over to him.

  His eyes were glazed. “Maddalena is astonishing.”

  I nodded, sighing a faint laugh. The sound of her name from his lips was molten. A moonlit kiss.

  “There is some sort of bizarre beauty in the absurd timing of it all, Santina.”

  He looked into me then. For the third time that afternoon, the order of events seemed to flow through unexpected conversations. “Everything has a way of returning until it is well and truly dealt with,” he added.

  His expression was calm, his eyes lit with unquestionable warmth. “That child was born out of something very beautiful.”

  The memory careened through me like lightning.

  “Sorry,” he stuttered, off my silence that he mistook for disdain, “that was clumsy. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know what you intended.”

  “Of course you did,” he said, his voice a warm whisper.

  “And I know how I feel at this moment.”

  “Tell me?”

  I stumbled then, censoring my thoughts. Too many years had passed. Too many growing seasons where we had worked at a pleasurable, respectful distance, nurtured our trust and friendship like well-fed soil, vital with volcanic minerals, endless possibilities for growth. I wasn’t about to ruin it now, at Adeline’s wake, with a confession that from the moment the girl we made together stepped onto the terrace this afternoon, I saw everything around me through the filter of our night together. Reality slipped into the moonlit shadows of my memory. Every touch, brush of his lips, fingertip trace upon my body rushed to the surface, like a hot spring, tingling my skin with a ferocity I had long buried.

  “Full and hollow,” I replied, finding my voice because the words were desperate to escape. “Lost to a yearning I thought I’d fed and satisfied. But I haven’t. Not really. Perhaps that’s the truth of what we have to face right now?”

  His face lit with an echo of a smile, at once sad and hopeful, unnerving in its openness. There was nowhere he’d rather be standing at that very moment. Twenty years of cultivated friendship, platonic peace, was forgotten for a heartbeat. I crushed the thoughts because I suspected only I was thinking them. We stood wordless, hovering in our unspokens, in the mechanical sounds of the dismantling wake around us. We were back in our shuttered secret. A familiar fear crawled over me, like a spider weaving a deft web in haste. I watched him relive it too. This wasn’t the place for this conversation, and we both knew it. Or maybe, in the safety of the crowd, it was the perfect place; it’s why we dared inch toward the watery edge of this shared memory now, stepping back from the lapping cold at the first lick of our toes. We daren’t wade in. Not just yet.

  I left him upon the terrace, reaching Paolino at the far end of the garden, where he was folding the several dozen deck chairs he’d lent for the occasion.

  I lifted one.

  “No, Santina—I’ve got this,” he said.

  “A chair isn’t going to break me, Paolino.”

  He stood and leaned on the folding chair in his hand.

  “You’re amazing.”

  “You’re drunk on praise.”

  His leathery skin cracked into that familiar smile.

  The pause lasted a little too long.

  “Someone dies, it makes you think about what’s important, don’t you think?” he asked. His eyes were shrouded with a philosophical gloom.

  “I’m exhausted,” I replied, “that’s the only thing I’m thinking just now.”

  He nodded and broke his train of thought. I watched him choose to increase his pace and start folding and piling up the chairs with renewed energy.

  After a few clanks of the wooden frames I offered an apology.

  “I didn’t mean to sound cold, Paolino—I’m just empty and full. My best friend is here, and I feel more alive than ever. But the picture of Adeline across the earth is not going to leave me. Not for a long time.”

  He stood still and looked at me, unhurried. For once, silent.

  It was unnerving. “Say something. You’re making me feel . . .”

  My words trailed off, all of a sudden useless, like they often are after a funeral. I slipped into the cooling silence, the gentle respite of early evening creasing across the garden, impervious to the storms that had coursed through the villa over the past few days.

  “I know what I want to say and that you may not want to hear it,” he said, at last.

  I recognized that look, and I knew he was right.

  “But I think I’m going to say it anyway.” His tone slipped into a soft whisper. “I need you to know something, Santina.”

  My eyes lifted t
o his.

  “I want you to know why I did what I did.”

  “Please, Paolino. We’ve made our peace. You’ve got a wonderful family. There is no need.”

  “For you maybe. Not me.”

  “Why have all the men I’ve known been so anxious to get me to hear their side of the story? Perhaps it’s fine that they don’t? Have you ever thought about that?” My hair slipped out of the pins I’d used to pull it off my face, and several strands fell in front of my eyes. I whipped it away with irritation. “Perhaps silencing the thoughts is fine. Because thoughts and explanations are part of a past—and a past doesn’t exist any longer. Our strength is looking ahead. Or even, just looking at the precise moment we’re in, no further.”

  “For you maybe.”

  “For all people. Men or women. It doesn’t matter. But what does matter to me is this continuous need for people making me stop to listen. I’ve listened a lifetime. What I’ve witnessed over the past few days makes me wonder whether it’s not time to stop listening for a moment? To really enjoy the silence.”

  We hovered in it. A beautiful pause. His face framed with the passiflora trailing along the end wall of the garden, a purple flash of floral halo.

  “Isn’t that what death teaches us, really?” I asked. My speed ebbing now because I was sure he wouldn’t, at last, interrupt me. “Silence is a beginning and ending. A little silence while we live is a wonderful thing.”

  “I have been silent! For a lifetime.”

  Why I thought he wouldn’t find a fight I couldn’t know.

  “And I’m tired of it killing me,” he concluded.

  “Killing you? You own half the town! Everyone loves you. You have a beautiful life. The only thing that’s killing you is that I won’t give you an audience.” My hands tripped now, forceful twists and turns like a dancer deep inside the music. “I’m the one person who won’t hang off every word. Your ego is killing you, not your silence.”

  I turned to leave. He grabbed my wrist.

  “That’s no way to get me to listen!” I spat, under my breath.

  He loosened his grip.

  “Marco threatened me.”

  His words halted my stomp toward the villa. I turned around.

  “He told me that I was on their hit list. That if I married you, you would be a widow within the year. He was protecting you, he said. He told me no one else would be kind enough to give me the heads-up. I was a broken man, Santina. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  I stood, frozen.

  “He made me disappear, till it was safe. He made me promise I’d never say anything to you. He told me he was in grave danger, and so was I if I didn’t listen to him. He looked like a madman when he told me. Eyes bulging with panic. He was a sweaty mess. No more cool, cocky Marco. It was awful to see him like that. And terrifying. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You waited twenty years to tell me this?” I choked, through a whisper.

  “What was I supposed to do, Santina? I came back knowing it was too late to fix anything. I loved you too much to put you through all that. To tell you who your brother really was. To tell you that my family was wrapped up in the sorry mess of Rosalia’s brother’s murder.”

  I let the white noise of the admission penetrate me. Familiar memories brandished my mind with flickering images, snatched pain, buried pleasure, like glass smashing to a ceramic floor, piercing shards splintering across it.

  “What are you doing, Paolino?”

  “Telling you the truth at last.”

  “Why now? Why today, with everything happening around us? What’s the plan—see how far you can push me till I break?”

  “No! Because I can. That danger that’s hung over my head for years is finally gone. Marco has seen to that. You have no idea how I’ve lived all this time!”

  “What do you mean, Marco has seen to that?”

  He shifted then. Regretting his outburst. “I promised I wouldn’t say any more than that. Your brother, he saw to things. Made good. I did as he asked all this time, so he pays me back with my freedom. My safety.”

  “You’re cruel. Spouting lies about my brother. About what you chose to do all those years ago. You stand there trying to get me to believe that criminals were waiting to kill you for marrying me? An orphan from the mountains?”

  “Don’t you see, Santina? Watching all this today makes me see how little time there is for all of us. You deserve the truth.”

  “No. I deserve space.”

  “You deserve a wonderful life.” He scooped my hand in his then, cradling it. His voice eased into the familiar song I recognized from our youth. “You live here but none of this is yours. You’re still the wallpaper. You deserve more. And I want to give that to you. I can do that. Now more than ever.”

  “Paolino, you sound more mad than usual,” I replied, trying to diffuse the situation and failing.

  “Death makes us drop our shields. Even your soldier man was able to talk to the whole party and seem like he was enjoying it.”

  The nerve was hit like a bull’s-eye, and he knew it. I whipped that stubborn strand of hair from my face. “I’m tired of you talking about the major like that. Enough.”

  “I hate the hold he has over you.”

  “I work here!”

  “Call it what you like. I see what you don’t want to. And it breaks my heart, Santina.”

  “Why? Because from the moment you cut off our engagement I threw myself into my work, my life, rather than collapsing? I chose to survive, yes. I chose not to live in your shadow, yes. That’s called strength. Did you want me to jump off a cliff for the memory of you?”

  “No. Because I never stopped loving you. Your temper. Your strength. Your ability to pick yourself up and do whatever you set your mind to. I can think of nothing more exciting in a woman than those things. And you made me realize how weak I’d been. And I know you probably hate me just as much as I hate myself.”

  I pinned him with my glare.

  “Stare me down all you like.”

  I had to laugh then because I didn’t want to cry. “Now you want my pity? Or you just going to stand there and tell me I’m irresistible when I’m angry and then I’ll run into your arms?”

  “Be serious, Santina. You haven’t watched this charade today? All these wasted years.”

  I took a breath to slow down my racing thoughts. “You have a beautiful family, Paolino. You disrespect them talking like this.”

  “No. I mean them no harm. I have a right to tell you how I feel.”

  “Do you?”

  He adjusted his linen collar. The pale pink set off his sun-kissed neck.

  “Maybe not,” he replied, “but look at me now and tell me you’re happy not to have a lover light up your body?” He cocked his head a little to one side; Paolino the puppy. I hated myself for admitting his age hadn’t diminished his charm, nor his ability to shine a light where there appeared to be none. My anger evaporated like steam. His far-fetched story about my brother seemed all of a sudden like a frantic fiction to get my attention, which it did, and I berated myself for it. Childish games for a faded childish romance, that was all.

  I shook my head with a sighed laugh. “You will always make me smile, Paolino.”

  I turned away from him then, listening to my feet crunch across the cooked earth. He stepped in before me. I was sure someone would start to notice.

  “I want to give you what I meant to years ago, Santina. Let me do that.”

  I stood motionless. My mouth was dry.

  “You will step aside and let me return to my work,” I replied, after a beat. “We will forget this crazy conversation of an older man who’s been in the sun too long. You’re sciroccato, that’s what this is! That scirocco wind from Africa that wailed through here last week has left you with your brain inside out.” I laughed.

  “I will win you, Santina,” he said, as I brushed past him, reaching the reassuring clink of cutlery within the kitchen. I fitted in between the t
eam of girls restoring the villa to our usual order. One by one they left. Paolino may have called out to me from the garden during that time or he may have slipped into a sturdy silence once again, piling up the chairs beyond the door. The rest of the afternoon faded in echoes of clunking furniture, stacking of crockery, the rhythmic swish of the mop or cloth, aimless chatter; the percussive eradication of death.

  The last girl left.

  Rosalia and I sat on the terrace, a small teapot steaming upon the table, offering a light reassurance; I had become more British than I would like to admit.

  Paolino reached us. “So, that’s it, all packed up.”

  He pulled his shirt down over his round abdomen and hovered for a moment in the awkward pause; we were all young again, unskilled navigators; his words from earlier still prickled, tiny thorns along my skin.

  “You’ve done so well, Paolino,” Rosalia said, coming to our rescue.

  “Says the americana!”

  Her smile was warm, if a little guarded.

  “It’s not so easy as people say, you know. Pasquale worked like a horse. Perhaps if he hadn’t had to struggle so much for us all he would still be here today. His time was used up too soon. But Maddalena has what she needs. That’s the important thing. It’s good to be home. Grass is always greener. But you knew that already.”

  I watched emotion ripple over his face, which he let crease through him. I admired him that. He wasn’t scared of feeling. He welcomed it, lived by it, even. Perhaps I envied him a little.