The Detour (14 page)

The rasp of Enzo’s hand against his unshaven jaw was audible. No one hurried to step outside.

“You bring a razor in your suitcase, Mister Vogler?”

“It was left behind at the pensione, when I wasn’t given the opportunity to pack my own things. But that was understandable. The statue was awaiting transport and we were in a great hurry,” I said, hoping now to communicate that sense of urgency we’d all shared not so very long ago. “Do you remember?”

Enzo exited the truck, stretching and brushing the crumbs off his white shirt. Cosimo and I followed him around back. Enzo opened the back door, set up a wooden plank, and wheeled his scooter out of the truck. “More room for sleeping.” He gestured. “There.”

But Cosimo was watching, too—wordlessly, arms over his chest.

I was waiting for the confrontation, waiting for Enzo to admit what he was planning, waiting for Cosimo to demand
more explanation and impose our shared opposition. But maybe I’d been misunderstanding Cosimo all along. Maybe, deep down, he did share some of Enzo’s way of thinking. If Enzo believed this was the best possible night for testing Farfalla’s love, Cosimo seemed to think it was the best possible night for testing Enzo’s fraternal loyalty.

I tapped Cosimo on the arm and gestured for him to follow me around the side of the truck where we could talk privately.

When we got there, he spoke first. “It isn’t Mamma’s ring. All that time in the truck, but he didn’t explain.” His voice was low and stern. “Hers was a simple band. No diamonds.”

This should have been good news. There would be no argument over which brother should have the right to their mother’s ring. As for who had a right to Farfalla, that was another matter, but far beyond my influence.

“You do plan to tell him again that he can’t leave us tonight.”

“I can’t speak to him. Let him speak to me.”

Behind us, the scooter started up.

“He’s leaving right now,” I said, turning toward the scooter, which had—I realized only now—no functioning headlamp. Wherever Farfalla’s family farm was located, on steep side roads climbing into the black hills, it would be a long, dark trip on a moonless night. “We have to get going in the morning, early. What if he doesn’t come back tomorrow? What if we need his mechanical skills and the truck breaks down?”

I took a few steps toward the scooter, a few steps back to Cosimo, pacing. “He went into that food shop and stayed for a half hour, and that was just flirting with a pretty stranger,
never mind proposing to a woman and then trying to leave her family, her bed …”

The scooter motor died; Enzo pushed it onto the kickstand with a metallic groan before approaching. I exhaled, so relieved I wanted to embrace him. But he walked past, ignoring me. He stood next to Cosimo, muttering into his shoulder, requesting something. Without making eye contact, Cosimo shrugged himself out of his own jacket and handed it to Enzo, took Enzo’s jacket and pulled it on, looking miserable.

It took me a moment to find my voice. Enzo was already behind us again, back on his scooter, revving it.

“Cosimo—you gave him your jacket? He’s still leaving, and you traded jackets?”

“Mine was cleaner, maybe.” Dragging his hand across his nose, Cosimo angled his face toward the black sky as if willing the new moon into a fuller phase. “Maybe he’ll change his mind. He drives a little while, in the dark; he thinks a little while.
I
would change my mind.”

“You told me how different you are. Two roads going two different ways, remember?”

“Only the outside. Inside, we are almost the same.”

“He isn’t changing his mind, Cosimo. He’s on the scooter.” I stubbed my foot against the gravel of the road’s shoulder. “Keller shouldn’t have tempted him. There were other routes, other places to park. Keller knows about Enzo’s girlfriend?”

Cosimo nodded. His eyes met mine, alight with a recognition he wouldn’t share, except to say: “I can’t stop him. I’ve never been able to stop him.”

But it was too late for that, anyway. Our ears filled with the sound of spitting gravel, the whine of the scooter’s motor, and then the fading mosquito buzz of Enzo’s departure, leaving us both in silence on the road, only gradually aware of the insects chirruping, only gradually aware of the penetrating cold of a night in hilly country.

Cosimo offered me the front cab, but I didn’t want any favors and I was edgy about being too far from the statue. I insisted on taking the back of the truck.

First, though, I excused myself to empty my bladder, a little ways down the road. When I returned, Cosimo was in the back, pulling at wisps of straw sticking out of the crate. The slats were extremely narrow; he managed to harvest only a few wisps. In his hand was the burlap bag that had come with the lemons, with barely a handful of straw at the bottom.

So this was why Enzo had to hurry off to propose, I thought to myself, less than charitably. And this was why, perhaps, the Italians were better off selling some of their national art. Because they too often thought:
What’s the difference?
A few kilometers off the main road, a few hours off schedule, a few pieces of straw from the crate. Everything was flexible, everything emotional. Decay and disaster, one small step at a time. There was no hard reasoning: the packing material had been there for a reason, just as the schedule had been there for a reason. One more bump and the statue might shift, an outstretched marble finger might make contact with wood—and break.
That finger
,
Cosimo, outlasted the rise and fall of civilizations, outlasted attacks by barbarian hordes. But it might
not outlast your brother’s desire to get under a woman’s skirt on a moonless night
.

“A peace offering,” Cosimo said, handing me the straw-filled burlap bag, a rough, pathetic imitation of a pillow. “
Buona notte
.”

Cold toes and stiff legs. A hip wedged painfully against the hard floor. A piece of straw, as sharp as a porcupine quill, poking directly into my cheek. The memory of my father’s voice: “You haven’t felt cold until you’ve slept in a wet trench in November. You have no idea what discomfort is.”

There’s no way to sleep
, I thought, trying to rearrange my jacket over my shoulders. The temperature in these hills was surprisingly cold once the sun was down, even in summer.
No way even to nap
, I thought,
no way …

And then it was morning. Warmth heating up the metal floor of the truck. A crack of bright light alongside the bottom of the retractable door.

I sat up suddenly, squinting into the light. What had happened to our early start? What had happened to dawn? I rarely managed to sleep through a night at home, and this was when insomnia finally took its vacation, on a night when I should have stayed alert?

I scrambled to climb out of the truck, still trying to orient my senses while telling my bladder it could wait just a moment, seeing as it had made no effort to get me up any earlier.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded of Cosimo, who was pacing the road’s shoulder, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lip. “Where is Enzo?”

“It is light two hours already.”

“Precisely!”

“Something is wrong.”

“Yes, something was wrong as soon as Enzo decided to run off last night.”

“No. Something is more wrong.” He rubbed a hand against the bristles sprouting from his jaw. “Maybe last night I should have told you. When we traded jackets, Enzo said to me, ‘Don’t worry. Just go along.’ ”

“
Just go along?
Well, that’s precisely what you did. You didn’t even argue.”

“I am afraid there is more. I have been thinking about it all morning. I’m afraid it is worse.”

I prepared for our debate: drive north and leave Enzo behind versus drive toward Monterosso and wake the young Romeo from his blissful and irresponsible slumber. But Cosimo was in no mood to argue. He walked to the truck cab, and I followed several paces behind. He started the ignition before I slammed my passenger door.

“The back is secure?”

“Yes, but you may not make any decisions without me.”

“It is not a decision. There is no choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I had a dream, early this morning.” He was struggling with the words that had been haunting him since before dawn.

“It was a dream about my brother. He is lying down, looking peaceful—”

“I think we know that he is lying down.”

“But there is tall green grass all around him, and he is alone. He is not in any bed. And he is saying, ‘I am sorry, brother.’ ”

“That’s all?”

“ ‘I am sorry. Look in my pocket.’ ”

A
rusty, pale blue Fiat slows down alongside me and a local man in a black wool vest and a matching billed cap rolls down the window, startling me out of my reminiscences. He asks whether I need a ride into town, still several kilometers away. I tell him
grazie
,
no
, the weather is fine, I really don’t mind walking, I’m in no rush. It’s only when he catches my accent that he leans back into his seat, upsetting his cap, which he pats back into place with a quick, embarrassed tap.

“The shops close in less than an hour.”

I try to smile. “That’s not a worry.”

“They stay closed for most of the afternoon,” he says, as if to discourage me from walking into town at all. “If you plan to go to a shop or a café, you may be disappointed.”

“Not a problem, thank you. I will walk until they open again.”

Who knows what an accent like mine means to him, where or under what conditions he might have last heard it, how close or distant, how forgotten or eternal the war that ended three years ago seems to him now.

He takes a while to engage his clutch and drive past, watching to see whether I really mean it—whether I am to be trusted ambling past these rural fields and modest vineyards, whether I am really enjoying my walk. I feel like a fraud, trying to inject some lightness in my step, when just moments ago I was strolling furiously, head down, overwhelmed completely by my memories—by memories
of
memories, really, a paired set of mirrors in which one could get lost and never return.

Back in Munich, I’d thought of my 1938 trip so often that it had seemed more vivid than the present. But even so, more than I realized, some of the details were lost after all, only recoverable here, where the light and the smells and a thousand other things I cannot name bring so much more back: perhaps the scuff of my shoes against the warm, chalky path underfoot, or the slim shadow thrown by a cypress rising up toward a heartlessly blue sky. Now I pass a hand along a low stone wall covered with a trailing, woody plant that looks like rosemary. And yes, rosemary it is—there, pungent and undeniable, but quickly fading from my fingertips—and I am struck by both the power of the scent memory (I remember in a flash what I have allowed to remain forgotten for so long: the desire to be rid of a revolting smell and to replace it with something
cleaner and more sweet) and the fact that I am now a different person, unable to entirely reinhabit the past, unable to step into the same river twice.