Dusk and Other Stories (6 page)

“Yes, I like to do that.”

He smiled. When he was drinking he was strangely calm. In Lugano in the park that time a bird had sat on his shoe.

In the morning across the canal, wide as a river, the buildings of the Giudecca lay in their soft colors, a great sunken barge with roofs and the crowns of hidden trees. The first winds of autumn were blowing, ruffling the water.

Leaving Venice, Frank drove. He couldn’t ride in a car unless he was driving. Alan sat back, looking out the window, sunlight falling on the hillsides of antiquity. European days, the silence, the needle floating at a hundred.

In Padua, Alan woke early. The stands were being set up in the market. It was before daylight and cool. A man was laying out
boards on the pavement, eight of them like doors to set bags of grain on. He was wearing the jacket from a suit. Searching in the truck he found some small pieces of wood and used them to shim the boards, testing with his foot.

The sky became violet. Under the colonnade the butchers had hung out chickens and roosters, spurred legs bound together. Two men sat trimming artichokes. The blue car of the
carabiniere
lazed past. The bags of rice and dry beans were set out now, the tops folded back like cuffs. A girl in a tailored coat with a scarf around her head called,
“Signore,”
then arrogantly,
“dica!
”

He saw the world afresh, its pavements and architecture, the names that had lasted for a thousand years. It seemed that his life was being clarified, the sediment was drifting down. Across the street in a jeweler’s shop a girl was laying things out in the window. She was wearing white gloves and arranging the pieces with great care. She glanced up as he stood watching. For a moment their eyes met, separated by the lighted glass. She was holding a lapis lazuli bracelet, the blue of the police car. Emboldened, he formed the silent words,
Quanto costa? Tre cento settante mille
, her lips said. It was eight in the morning when he got back to the hotel. A taxi pulled up and rattled the narrow street. A woman dressed for dinner got out and went inside.

The days passed. In Verona the points of the steeples and then its domes rose from the mist. The white-coated waiters appeared from the kitchen.
Primi, secondi, dolce
. They stopped in Arezzo. Frank came back to the table. He had some postcards. Alan was trying to write to his daughter once a week. He never knew what to say: where they were and what they’d seen. Giotto—what would that mean to her?

They sat in the car. Frank was wearing a soft tweed jacket. It was like cashmere—he’d been shopping in Missoni and everywhere, windbreakers, shoes. Schoolgirls in dark skirts were coming through an arch across the street. After a while one came through alone. She
stood as if waiting for someone. Alan was studying the map. He felt the engine start. Very slowly they moved forward. The window glided down.

“Scusi, signorina,”
he heard Frank say.

She turned. She had pure features and her face was without expression, as if a bird had turned to look, a bird which might suddenly fly away.

Which way, Frank asked her, was the
centro
, the center of town? She looked one way and then the other. “There,” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said. He turned his head unhurriedly to look more or less in the direction she was pointing.

“
Si,”
she said.

They were going to Siena, Frank said. There was silence. Did she know which road went to Siena?

She pointed the other way.

“Alan, you want to give her a ride?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

Two men in white smocks like doctors were working on the wooden doors of the church. They were up on top of some scaffolding. Frank reached back and opened the rear door.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked. He made a little circular motion with his finger.

They drove through the streets in silence. The radio was playing. Nothing was said. Frank glanced at her in the rearview mirror once or twice. It was at the time of a famous murder in Poland, the killing of a priest. Dusk was falling. The lights were coming on in shop windows and evening papers were in the kiosks. The body of the murdered man lay in a long coffin in the upper right corner of the
Corriere Della Sera
. It was in clean clothes like a worker after a terrible accident.

“Would you like an
aperitivo?”
Frank asked over his shoulder.

“
No,”
she said.

They drove back to the church. He got out for a few minutes with her. His hair was very thin, Alan noticed. Strangely, it made
him look younger. They stood talking, then she turned and walked down the street.

“What did you say to her?” Alan asked. He was nervous.

“I asked if she wanted a taxi.”

“We’re headed for trouble.”

“There’s not going to be any trouble,” Frank said.

His room was on the corner. It was large, with a sitting area near the windows. On the wooden floor there were two worn oriental carpets. On a glass cabinet in the bathroom were his hairbrush, lotions, cologne. The towels were a pale green with the name of the hotel in white. She didn’t look at any of that. He had given the
portiere
forty thousand lire. In Italy the laws were very strict. It was nearly the same hour of the afternoon. He kneeled to take off her shoes.

He had drawn the curtains but light came in around them. At one point she seemed to tremble, her body shuddered. “Are you all right?” he said.

She had closed her eyes.

Later, standing, he saw himself in the mirror. He seemed to have thickened around the waist. He turned so that it was less noticeable. He got into bed again but was too hasty.
“Basta,”
she finally said.

They went down later and met Alan in a café. It was hard for him to look at them. He began to talk in a foolish way. What was she studying at school, he asked. For God’s sake, Frank said. Well, what did her father do? She didn’t understand.

“What work does he do?”

“Furniture,” she said.

“He sells it?”

“Restauro.”

“In our country, no
restauro,”
Alan explained. He made a gesture. “Throw it away.”

“I’ve got to start running again,” Frank decided.

The next day was Saturday. He had the
portiere
call her number and hand him the phone.

“Hello, Eda? It’s Frank.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t understand her reply.

“We’re going to Florence. You want to come to Florence?” he said. There was a silence. “Why don’t you come and spend a few days?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

In a quieter voice she said, “How do I explain?”

“You can think of something.”

At a table across the room children were playing cards while three well-dressed women, their mothers, sat and talked. There were cries of excitement as the cards were thrown down.

“Eda?”

She was still there. “
Si
,” she said.

In the hills they were burning leaves. The smoke was invisible but they could smell it as they passed through, like the smell from a restaurant or paper mill. It made Frank suddenly remember childhood and country houses, raking the lawn with his father long ago. The green signs began to say Firenze. It started to rain. The wipers swept silently across the glass. Everything was beautiful and dim.

They had dinner in a restaurant of plain rooms, whitewashed, like vaults in a cellar. She looked very young. She looked like a young dog, the white of her eyes was that pure. She said very little and played with a strip of pink paper that had come off the menu.

In the morning they walked aimlessly. The windows displayed things for women who were older, in their thirties at least, silk dresses, bracelets, scarves. In Fendi’s was a beautiful coat, the price beneath in small metal numbers.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Come on, I’ll buy it for you.”

He wanted to see the coat in the window, he told them inside.

“For the
signorina?”

“Yes.”

She seemed uncomprehending. Her face was lost in the fur. He touched her cheek through it.

“You know how much that is?” Alan said. “Four million five hundred thousand.”

“Do you like it?” Frank asked her.

She wore it continually. She watched the football matches on television in it, her legs curled beneath her. The room was in disorder, they hadn’t been out all day.

“What do you say to leaving here?” Alan asked unexpectedly. The announcers were shouting in Italian. “I thought I’d like to see Spoleto.”

“Sure. Where is it?” Frank said. He had his hand on her knee and was rubbing it with the barest movement, as one might a dozing cat.

The countryside was flat and misty. They were leaving the past behind them, unwashed glasses, towels on the bathroom floor. There was a stain on his lapel, Frank noticed in the dining room. He tried to get it off as the headwaiter grated fresh Parmesan over each plate. He dipped the corner of his napkin in water and rubbed the spot. The table was near the doorway, visible from the desk. Eda was fixing an earring.

“Cover it with your napkin,” Alan told him.

“Here, get this off, will you?” he asked Eda.

She scratched at it quickly with her fingernail.

“What am I going to do without her?” Frank said.

“What do you mean, without her?”

“So this is Spoleto,” he said. The spot was gone. “Let’s have some more wine.” He called the waiter.
“Senta
. Tell him,” he said to Eda.

They laughed and talked about old times, the days when they were getting eight hundred dollars a week and working ten, twelve hours a day. They remembered Weyland and the veins in his nose. The word he always used was “vivid,” testimony a bit too vivid, far too vivid, a rather vivid decor.

They left talking loudly. Eda was close between them in her huge coat.
“Alla rovina,”
the clerk at the front desk muttered as they
reached the street,
“alle macerie,”
he said, the girl at the switchboard looked over at him, “
alla polvere.”
It was something about rubbish and dust.

The mornings grew cold. In the garden there were leaves piled against the table legs. Alan sat alone in the bar. A waitress, the one with the mole on her lip, came in and began to work the coffee machine. Frank came down. He had an overcoat across his shoulders. In his shirt without a tie he looked like a rich patient in some hospital. He looked like a man who owned a produce business and had been playing cards all night.

“So, what do you think?” Alan said.

Frank sat down. “Beautiful day,” he commented. “Maybe we ought to go somewhere.”

In the room, perhaps in the entire hotel, their voices were the only sound, irregular and low, like the soft strokes of someone sweeping. One muted sound, then another.

“Where’s Eda?”

“She’s taking a bath.”

“I thought I’d say good-bye to her.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m going home.”

“What happened?” Frank said.

Alan could see himself in the mirror behind the bar, his sandy hair. He looked pale somehow, nonexistent. “Nothing happened,” he said. She had come into the bar and was sitting at the other end of the room. He felt a tightness in his chest. “Europe depresses me.”

Frank was looking at him. “Is it Eda?”

“No. I don’t know.” It seemed terribly quiet. Alan put his hands in his lap. They were trembling.

“Is that all it is? We can share her,” Frank said.

“What do you mean?” He was too nervous to say it right. He stole a glance at Eda. She was looking at something outside in the garden.

“Eda,” Frank called, “do you want something to drink?
Cosa vuoi?
”
He made a motion of glass raised to the mouth. In college he had been a great favorite. Shuford had been shortened to Shuf and then Shoes. He had run in the Penn Relays. His mother could trace her family back for six generations.

“Orange juice,” she said.

They sat there talking quietly. That was often the case, Eda had noticed. They talked about business or things in New York.

When they came back to the hotel that night, Frank explained it. She understood in an instant. No. She shook her head. Alan was sitting alone in the bar. He was drinking some kind of sweet liqueur. It wouldn’t happen, he knew. It didn’t matter anyway. Still, he felt shamed. The hotel above his head, its corridors and quiet rooms, what else were they for?

Frank and Eda came in. He managed to turn to them. She seemed impassive—he could not tell. What was this he was drinking, he finally asked? She didn’t understand the question. He saw Frank nod once slightly, as if in agreement. They were like thieves.

In the morning the first light was blue on the window glass. There was the sound of rain. It was leaves blowing in the garden, shifting across the gravel. Alan slipped from the bed to fasten the loose shutter. Below, half hidden in the hedges, a statue gleamed white. The few parked cars shone faintly. She was asleep, the soft, heavy pillow beneath her head. He was afraid to wake her. “Eda,” he whispered, “Eda.”

Her eyes opened a bit and closed. She was young and could stay asleep. He was afraid to touch her. She was unhappy, he knew, her bare neck, her hair, things he could not see. It would be a while before they were used to it. He didn’t know what to do. Apart from that, it was perfect. It was the most natural thing in the world. He would buy her something himself, something beautiful.

In the bathroom he lingered at the window. He was thinking of the first day they had come to work at Weyland, Braun—he and Frank. They would become inseparable. Autumn in the gardens of the Veneto. It was barely dawn. He would always remember meeting
Frank. He couldn’t have done these things himself. A young man in a cap suddenly came out of a doorway below. He crossed the driveway and jumped onto a motorbike. The engine started, a faint blur. The headlight appeared and off he went, delivery basket in back. He was going to get the rolls for breakfast. His life was simple. The air was pure and cool. He was part of that great, unchanging order of those who live by wages, whose world is unlit and who do not realize what is above.