The Honeymoon (45 page)

Johnnie, exhausted from battling them, began to submit to Ricchetti, taking in the spoonfuls of liquid. Gradually he grew limp, his eyelids began to droop. The medicine seemed to be taking effect.

“We must get him onto the bed. Take him in there,” Ricchetti ordered. “Do not leave him alone. Clean him.
Provate a pulirlo
.” They pulled Johnnie’s big, sagging body up and into the bedroom, his head lolling, his mouth agape. The doctor followed and they slammed the door behind them.

Gerita drew Marian into her own bedroom and onto the divan, and sat down next to her still holding her hand.

There was a knock.

In the doorway stood Marseille again, next to a small, dark-bearded man in a black suit, with a group of uniformed policemen behind them.

“Madame,” said Ricchetti, “it is the police inspector.”

“No,” she cried. “No police. Not the police!”

Marseille said something to the man in Italian. The Italian murmured back in a firm, low voice. He was standing his ground.

“The inspector say he must speak to you,” Marseille insisted.

She sank back, and the man entered. “Inspector Basso,” he said. Behind him she saw a pool of darkness, men in navy blue uniforms and white-banded caps, crowding him. He sat down and drew out a notebook and pencil from the inside of his jacket. In the semidarkness of the room, she couldn’t see his face clearly, but he seemed youngish, perhaps in his mid-thirties, beginning to go a little bald, with a small, neat beard, trying to keep his face expressionless in the surrounding storm.

“I don’t want the police,” she said again.

“I am sorry, Madame, but I must ask you some questions.” He spoke English. He must have some education.

Her heart beat hard, her head throbbed, her mouth was dry.

“You are Mrs. Cross?” He seemed nervous, perhaps newly promoted.

“Yes!” she said, as if he should know.

He lifted his pencil to write, then looked at her uncertainly. “You are the mother?”

“No! No! I’m his wife!”

He bent his head down and wrote. There was silence.

He looked up again. “Please to tell me his full name and age.”

“John Walter Cross. He’s forty years old.”

“And you own age, Madame?”

“Why must I tell you?”

“It is the rule, Madame, for the police report.”

“A police report?”

“Yes, Madame,” he said patiently.

“I am —” The cruelty of his question. “I am … sixty.”

“Both are English citizens?”

“Yes.”

“Your address please?”

She told him and he wrote that down too. Thank God, he didn’t seem to have any idea of her other identity, that she was also George Eliot, the English writer.

“Now, can you tell me please, what happened?” he asked.

She took a breath, still holding on to Gerita’s hand.

“He jumped …,” she said. “I don’t know …”

“Did you see this? Were you in the room with him?”

“There with him? What do you mean? In the room? No. Of course not. I didn’t see it! I would’ve stopped him!”

“What time did this happen?”

“You know when it happened! Just now.”

He made more notes.

“How was it discovered he had done it?” the inspector asked.

“What do you mean? I heard it down below!”

He nodded, wrote. There was quiet in the room. Behind him, the men had not moved, but stared down at her, a phalanx guarding him. Strangers, hearing it all. Perhaps they didn’t speak English. She could only hope.

The inspector looked up from his pad. “Had the signor been acting in any way oddly?”

“Oddly?” She couldn’t bear to tell him, a stranger, who didn’t care.

He prompted her. “Was this unexpected? Was the gentleman behaving in an unusual manner?”

She delayed. “He was agitated,” she said slowly.

“The agitation. What was the agitation about?”

Was he going to blame her? Yes, she
must
be to blame. She’d agreed to marry him. She’d let him try to make her happy.

“He had trouble sleeping,” she said dully. “He wasn’t eating. He said he needed exercise.”

“Hmm,” the man said, as if he didn’t believe her. He made a few more notes, then stood up and tucked his notebook back into his jacket. He sighed. “That will be all for now, Madame. I leave you in the doctor’s care.”

So, he wasn’t going to — arrest her, blame her. He left, followed by his men.

The doctor, Ricchetti, had come quietly out of Johnnie’s room.

The manager, Marseille, lingered. “Is there anything I can do for Madame?” he asked.

“No. Why must that gondolier be with him?” The man who had led him in the darkness to the Rialto, to the
taverna
, who’d gotten him drunk, who had started this.

Marseille looked surprised. “The man works for the hotel, Madame.”

“I don’t like him.” It was not in character for her to say such a thing. She couldn’t help it.

“I am sorry, Madame. There is no one else. The doctor instructs us we must not leave the gentleman alone.”

This was the final, terrible punishment. That the one who had caused all this should now be with him at all times, visible to her as a reminder.

“Is there anything else, Madame, that we can do?”

“No. Please, leave us.” Another unexpected rudeness from her.

“He will soon sleep,” said Ricchetti. “The chloral works quickly. Madame, let us speak privately, if you will.”

She clutched Gerita’s hand, she could feel her nails digging into the girl’s flesh. “God, I’m sorry,” she said to her, releasing her grip. “Please, stay with me.”

“Of course,” the girl said.

Ricchetti, seated opposite her, bent forward, elbows on his knees, his long, greasy gray hair hanging around his face. “He will sleep now,” he said. “For many hours. Someone must be with him at all times.”

“What will happen now?” she asked. “What should we do?”

“We must see the course it takes,” he said. “Is there someone you can send for?”

“I’ve sent for his brother, William, in England. I don’t know how long he will take.” She looked at Gerita helplessly, as if somehow
she
would know.

“How long will the medicine last?” she asked him. “Will he stay calm now?”

“Six to eight hours is the usual time.” He looked at his watch. “I will return at seven. We will keep the chloral, three times daily, around the clock, until we are sure he is calmed.”

At this, he too left.

She felt as if she were shrinking, fading, ceasing to exist, like a shriveled leaf a sudden wind could crumble.

For the rest of the day, she stayed there in her room, the curtains drawn tight against the heat. She couldn’t bear the light, and the possibility that someone might see in. “Please, would you stay with me?” she asked Gerita. “I will pay you extra.”

The girl looked shocked. “I not accept from you, Madame.”

Through the door, from the
sala
came the sounds of people coming and going to Johnnie’s room, their voices rapid, businesslike.

“How is he?” she asked Gerita. “Do you know?”

“They say he sleep. They are with him. They will not leave him.”

“I am afraid,” she confessed.

“Corradini is with him, and Corradini’s nephew and others.” Again, the thought of Corradini. What would they do to him? Would they try to bathe him, wash the filth from the canal off him? The thought of the gondolier’s dirty hands touching Johnnie’s flesh repulsed her. But there was nothing she could do.

“Does everyone in the hotel know?” she asked. “I think I want to die.”

The girl looked alarmed. “No, Signora. No. Do not say that. Please.”

“Why would I want to live?” she said. She put her face to the wall and closed her eyes.

Throughout the hours, from time to time Marseille appeared, to survey the chaos, to ask if she wanted anything. “I’ll pay for it all,” she said, madly. “The extra people. I’m rich!”

He nodded grimly, said nothing. He was becoming impatient with the chaos, the use of his men, the scandal in the hotel.

When she ventured briefly into the
sala
, she saw Corradini with his gold earring pass in and out of Johnnie’s room, closing the doors behind him.

She went to the window and parted the curtains, but still fearing to be seen, stopped short of stepping out onto the balcony. The terrible heat still hung over the city, the sky was dense and white, the sun invisible behind it.

“You must go home,” she told Gerita.

“I not leave you, Signora.”

“You must,” she said. “
Tua madre
— you must look after your mother. Go — for a little while, dear. Just to see her. It’s all right.”

“I come back soon?” the girl said.

“Yes, come back soon.”

That evening, Ricchetti came again, accompanied by a small, olive-skinned man with large dark eyes and heavy yellow pouches under them. “Signora, this is Dr. Vigna. I have brought him for a consultation.”

“I am honored to meet you,” Vigna said. “I have read your books. I am a great admirer.” Who she was must be known to everyone now.

Ricchetti said, “Dr. Vigna is the director of the new women’s asylum at San Clemente. Before that, he was the director of the San Servolo home for the insane. He is our foremost expert on diseases of the mind, the author of
La Trasmissione Ereditaria Fisico-Moral
and a friend of Giuseppe Verdi’s,” he said, as if that would make a difference.

“Diseases of the mind?” she echoed.

Vigna wiped his brow with his handkerchief. “Perhaps Madame would like some air,” he said. “There is no air in here.”

“The light hurts my eyes,” she said. “But can you help him?”

“You say to Dr. Ricchetti that, prior to this episode, he was very agitated?”

“He couldn’t sleep. He wanted to go everywhere. I couldn’t keep up with him. Then, he just seemed to become like a storm, without warning. He was possessed. I can’t explain it … reading aloud from these pamphlets about art without stopping.”

“Can you tell me,” Vigna asked, “has there been any other illness like this in the family?”

“What sort of illness?” she asked.

“Cases such as this? Mania?”

There flashed in her mind, for a strange second, that moment long ago at Weybridge when she’d asked Mary about the mysterious brother, the one named Alexander, who’d died. Mary hadn’t wanted to tell her what happened, and begged her not to ask their mother, Anna, about it. “I don’t know of anything,” she answered Vigna.

“There is no family history, then?”

“No. Nothing,” she said. “Will he get better?”

“Some do get better.”

“Some?”

“The course of this illness, it can be — very mysterious. We do not know. All we can do is to keep him sedated. Then gradually we withdraw the chloral to see how he reacts. We prescribe warm baths.”

Dr. Ricchetti interrupted. “Dr. Vigna is a pioneer in the use of warm baths and music for the treatment of the insane. It has been used to great effect in his asylum —”

She interrupted, “He can’t go to an asylum! That’s impossible!”

Vigna fixed his grave, dark eyes on her. What was he seeing? Did he too think it was her fault? That she was so old, that her young husband had been so repelled by her that when he realized his awful mistake, he was driven to kill himself?

The little man leaned over and touched her hand. “We will hope for the best, Madame.”

Looking back at those hours, she wondered if God, or nature, or whoever it was, granted humans a kind of mercy at terrible times by dulling their minds with exhaustion and blunting their perceptions. There was much about those days that she couldn’t remember. She felt only numb terror that he would do it again, that he would die.

And then, as her heart settled, and as she lay on the bed, she realized — he was willing to leave her, to give up his life, he didn’t love her. This was punishment for her vanity, to think that he could really have loved her.

Was it possible for a heart to be broken so totally, more than once in a single life?

“I
am here, Marian.” Willie’s tall figure was silhouetted in the bedroom door against the glaring lights of the
sala
, which was lit up so they could conduct the business of his illness.