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When I opened the glass door I felt something strange, as
if everything I saw or felt from that moment on would determine the course of
my life to come. I stopped in front of a kind of landscape, a Surrey landscape
from Johns's early period, that looked to me at once sad and sweet, profound
and not at all grandiloquent, an English landscape as only the English can
paint them. All at once I decided that seeing this one painting was enough and
I was about to leave when a waiter, maybe the last of the waiters from the
catering company, came over to me with a single glass of wine on his tray, a
glass especially for me. He didn't say anything. He just offered it to me and I
smiled at him and took the glass. Then I saw the poster for the show, across
the room from where I was standing, a poster that showed the painting with the
severed hand, Johns's masterpiece, and in white numerals gave his dates of
birth and death.

I hadn't known he was dead, said Norton in her letter, I
thought he was still living in
Switzerland
,
in a comfortable asylum, laughing at himself and most of all at us. I remember
the glass of wine fell from my hands. I remember that a couple, both tall and
thin, turned away from a painting and peered over as if I might be an ex-lover
or a living (and unfinished) painting that had just got news of the painter's
death. I know I walked out without looking back and that I walked for a long
time until I realized I wasn't crying, but that it was raining and I was soaked.
That night I didn't sleep at all.

•

In the mornings Espinoza would pick Rebeca up at her house.
He'd park the car out front, have a coffee, and then, without saying anything,
he'd put the rugs in the backseat and occupy himself polishing the trim. If he'd
been at all mechanically inclined he would have lifted the hood and looked at
the engine, but he wasn't, and in any case the car ran perfectly. Then the girl
and her brother would come out of the house and Espinoza would open the
passenger door for them, without a word, as if they'd had the same routine for
years, and then he would get in the driver's side, put the dust rag away in the
glove compartment, and head to the crafts market. Once they were there he
helped set up the stall and once they finished he'd go to a nearby restaurant
and buy two coffees and one Coca-Cola to go, which they drank standing up,
looking at the other booths or the squat but proud horizon of colonial
buildings surrounding them. Sometimes Espinoza scolded the girl's brother, telling
him that drinking Coca-Cola in the morning was a bad habit, but the boy, whose
name was Eulogio, laughed and ignored him because he knew Espinoza's anger was
ninety percent put-on. The rest of the morning Espinoza would spend at an
outdoor cafe in the neighborhood, the only neighborhood in Santa Teresa he
liked, besides Rebeca's, reading the local papers and drinking coffee and
smoking. When he went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror, he
thought his features were changing. I look like a gentleman, he said to himself
sometimes. I look younger. I look like someone else.

At the hotel, when he got back, Pelletier was always on the
terrace or at the pool or sprawled in an armchair in one of the lounges,
rereading
 
Saint Thomas
or
The
Blind Woman
or
Lethaea,
which were, it seemed, the only books by
Archimboldi he'd brought with him to Mexico. Espinoza asked whether he was
preparing some article or essay on those three books in particular and
Pelletier's answer was vague. At first he had been. Not anymore. He was reading
them just because they were the ones he had. Espinoza considered lending him
one of his, and all at once he realized with alarm that he'd forgotten all
about the books by Archimboldi hidden away in his suitcase.

•

That night I didn't sleep a wink, said Norton in her
letter, and it occurred to me to call Morini. It was very late, it was rude to
bother him at that hour, it was rash of me, it was a terrible imposition, but I
called him. I remember I dialed his number and immediately I turned out the
light in the room, as if so long as I was in the dark Morini couldn't see my
face. To my surprise, he picked up the phone instantly.

"Piero, it's me, Liz," I said. "Did you know
Edwin Johns is dead?"

"Yes," said Morini's voice from
Turin
. "He died a few months ago."

"But I only found out just now, tonight," I said.

"I thought you already knew," said Morini.

"How did he die?" I asked.

"It was an accident," said Morini, "he went
out for a walk, he wanted to sketch a little waterfall near the sanatorium, he
climbed up on a rock and slipped. They found his body at the bottom of a
ravine, one hundred and fifty feet down."

"It can't be," I said.

"It can," said Morini.

"He went for a walk alone? With no one watching
him?"

"He wasn't alone," said Morini, "a nurse was
with him, and one of those strong young men from the sanatorium, the kind who
can pin a raving lunatic in no time."

I laughed—for the first time—at the expression
raving
lunatic,
and Morini, at the other end of the line, laughed with me,
although only for an instant.

"The word for those men is orderlies," I said.

"Well, he had a nurse and an orderly with him,"
he said. "Johns climbed up on a rock and the man climbed up too. The nurse
sat on a stump, as Johns asked her to do, and pretended to read a book. Then
Johns started to draw with his left hand, with which he had become quite
proficient. He drew the waterfall, the mountains, the outcroppings of rock, the
forest, and the nurse reading her book, far away from it all. Then the accident
happened. Johns stood up on the rock and slipped, and although the man tried to
catch him, he fell into the abyss."

That was all.

We were quiet for a time, said Norton in her letter, until
Morini broke the silence and asked how things had gone in
Mexico
.

"Badly," I said.

He didn't ask any more questions. I listened to his steady
breathing, and he listened to my breathing, which was growing steadily calmer.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said to him.

"All right," he said, but for a few seconds
neither of us was able to hang up the phone.

That night I thought about Edwin Johns, I thought about his
hand, now doubtless on display in his retrospective, the hand that the
sanatorium orderly couldn't grasp to prevent his fall, although this was too
obvious, a false representation, having nothing to do with what Johns had
actually been. Much more real was the Swiss landscape, the landscape that you
two saw and I've never seen, with its mountains and forests, its iridescent
stones and waterfalls, its deadly ravines and reading nurses.

•

One night Espinoza took Rebeca dancing. They went to a club
in the center of Santa Teresa where the girl had never been but that her
friends highly recommended. As they drank
Cuba
libres, Rebeca told him that
two of the girls who later showed up dead had been kidnapped on their way out
of the club. Their bodies were dumped in the desert.

Espinoza thought it was a bad omen that she'd told him the
killer made a habit of frequenting the club. When he'd brought her home he
kissed her. Rebeca smelled like alcohol and her skin was very cold. He asked if
she wanted to make love and she nodded, several times, without saying anything.
Then they moved from the front seat into the back and did it. It was a quick
fuck. But then she rested her head on his chest, without saying a word, and for
a long time he stroked her hair. The smell of
chemicals came in waves on
the night air. Espinoza wondered whether there was a paper factory nearby. He
asked Rebeca and she said there were only houses built by the people who lived
in them and empty fields.

No matter what time he got back to the hotel, Pelletier was
always awake, reading a book and waiting for him. This was his way of
reaffirming their friendship, Espinoza thought. It was also possible that
Pelletier couldn't sleep and his insomnia drove him to read in the empty hotel
lounges until dawn.

Sometimes Pelletier was by the pool, in a sweater or
wrapped in a towel, sipping whiskey. Other times Espinoza found him in a room
presided over by an enormous border landscape, painted, one could see
instantly, by someone who had never been to the border: there was more
wishfulness than realism in the industriousness and harmony of the landscape.
The waiters, even those on the night shift, made sure Pelletier lacked for
nothing, because he was a decent tipper. When Espinoza got in, the two men
spent a few minutes exchanging brief, pleasant remarks.

Sometimes, before he went to look for Pelletier in the
hotel's empty lounges, he would go check his e-mail, in the hope of finding
letters from Europe, from Hellfeld or Borchmeyer, that might shed some light on
Archimboldi's whereabouts. Then he would go in search of Pelletier and later
both of them would head silently up to their rooms.

•

The next day, said Norton in her letter, I tidied my
apartment and put my papers in order. This was done much sooner than I
expected. In the afternoon I went to see a film, and on the way out, though I
felt calm, I couldn't reconstruct the plot or think who the actors had been.
That night I had dinner with a friend and went to bed early, though it was
midnight before I fell asleep. As soon as I got up, early in the morning and
with no ticket, I went to the airport and booked a seat on the next flight to
Italy
. I flew
from
London
to
Milan
,
then I took the train to
Turin
.
When Morini opened the door I told him I'd come to stay, that it was up to him
to decide whether I should go to a hotel or stay with him. He didn't answer my
question. He just moved aside in the wheelchair and asked me in. I went to the
bathroom to wash my face. When I returned Morini had made tea and put three
little biscuits on a plate, which he urged me to try. I tasted one and it was
delicious. It was like a Greek pastry, filled with pistachio and fig paste. I
made short work of all
three and had two cups of tea.
Morini, meanwhile, made a phone call, and then he sat listening to me, stopping
me every now and then to ask a question, which I was happy to answer.

We talked for hours. We talked about the Italian Right,
about the resurgence of fascism in Europe, about immigrants, about Islamic
terrorists, about British and American politics, and as we talked I felt better
and better, which is odd because the subjects we were discussing were
depressing, until I couldn't go on any longer and I asked him for another magic
biscuit, just one, and then Morini looked at the clock and said it was only
natural I should be hungry, and he'd do better than give me a pistachio
biscuit, he'd made us a reservation at a restaurant in Turin and he was going
to take me there for dinner.

The restaurant was in the middle of a garden where there
were benches and stone statues. I remember that I pushed Morini's chair and he
showed me the statues. Some were of mythological figures, but others were of
simple peasants lost in the night. In the park there were other couples
strolling and sometimes we crossed paths with them and other times we only
glimpsed their shadows. As we ate Morini asked about the two of you. I told him
the tip we'd gotten about Archimboldi being in the north of
Mexico
was
false, and that he'd probably never set foot in the country. I told him about
your Mexican friend, the great intellectual El Cerdo, and we laughed for a long
time. I really was feeling better and better.

•

One night, after making love with Rebeca for the second
time in the backseat of the car, Espinoza asked what her family thought of him.
The girl said her sisters thought he was handsome and her mother had said he
had a responsible look. The smell of chemicals seemed to lift the car from the
ground. The next day Espinoza bought five rugs. She asked him why he wanted so
many rugs and Espinoza answered that he planned to give them as gifts. When he
got back to the hotel he left the rugs on the bed he didn't sleep in, then he
sat on his bed and for a fraction of a second the shadows retreated and he had
a fleeting glimpse of reality. He telt dizzy and he closed his eyes. Without
knowing it he fell asleep.

When he woke up his stomach hurt and he wanted to die. In
the afternoon he went shopping. He went into a lingerie shop and a women's
Nothing shop and a shoe shop. That night he brought Rebeca to the hotel and
after they had showered together he dressed her in a thong and garters and
black tights and a black teddy and black spike-heeled shoes and fucked her
until she was no more than a tremor in his arms. Ther he ordered dinner for two
from room service and after they ate he gave her the other gifts he'd bought
her and then they fucked again until the sun began to come up. Then they both
got dressed, she packed her gifts in the bags, and he took her home first and
then to the crafts market, where he helped her set up. Before he said goodbye
she asked him whether she would see him again. Espinoza, without knowing why,
maybe just because he was tired, shrugged his shoulders and said you never
know.