Tourmaline (23 page)

Hello, Claire.

Murray, look at you!

Do you like me this way?

You’re…you’re…

Yes?

Amazing! Beautiful! I can’t believe it! Like she’d really say this. Claire always the one anchoring him to responsibility. Don’t touch me, not until you take a bath, Murray.

Seriously. Let’s back up, Dad. Tell us about Claire when you first met her. Following her from a party, watching her walking along Central Park West in the rain in her bare feet, holding in one hand high-heeled shoes that belonged to a friend and were too small for her. Claire, your boss’s secretary. Shall I carry you? The way curiosity flares into hope, is dimmed by restraint, is relit, is confirmed. Married in City Hall to avoid the Averils. Time measured by the establishment of new routines — Friday’s dinner, the weekend ahead, Sunday morning in the apartment, sunlight, sheets bunched at the foot of the mattress, haphazard toss of pillows, pulp of fresh orange juice, a paragraph from a newspaper article read aloud. The two of you. Then three, four, five, six plus a cat.

And then, on a lark, the island of Elba. What went wrong? The simple act of leaving home creating the possibility of leaving the past behind.

Up and down and quick, up again, and “I see stars,” as the expression goes. But they don’t look like stars. They look like fragments of diamonds drifting in clear liquid around my head. My back to the darkness of the cave. In front of me, the mountains making a bowl filled with daylight, the mist lifting, dispersing like steam from soup. Did I really ride a donkey this morning? Why? Why do I do anything?

I was a boy once, too. Hard to believe, eh? Your dad in pin-striped shorts held up by suspenders, sneaking off to school with a live mouse in his pocket! Four cats against a little mouse outside the 89th Street stable. Some images survive time completely intact: that little mouse cowering against the doorjamb and four scrawny cats pawing and pacing with devilish languor, stretching out the torment for as long as they could. Sorry to disappoint you, kitties. I caught the mouse by its tail. Monsieur Petit, I called him, with some pretension, for I was learning French. Turned out Monsieur was a Madame, and three days later my mother found seven little pink worms in my sweater drawer. The only time I ever heard her shriek.

My mother. My father. My wife. My children. The pronoun a convenient reduction of personal history. Your father. Your husband. Your son. Oh to have been in Bisbee in January of 1881, receiving a short option of one million dollars for the Copper Queen Mine. Our family suffering from what an uncle on the Murdoch side called congenital greed. Sires training their offspring to want what had been missed, overlooked, and lost, generation after generation. You’ll see how it happens. First you laugh at your parents. Their ridiculous habits and hopes. Then you learn to want what they had. Then you learn to want what they wanted and didn’t have. And then, after a series of misunderstandings, you leave the island and go home.

I am Malcolm Averil Murdoch. Did you know I am naturally left-handed but was forced to use my right hand in early grades? What else would you like to know about me? Here I sit, my back to a cave, my face to the sun, having reached the peak of indecision. What next? Trapped by an impressive record of misjudgments. Oh for the ease of Catholic absolution. Or the carefreeness of the Epicureans. But remember where Dante puts Epicure! I’d rather be —

Myself as I’d planned to be when I was a young boy looking forward. Instead I’m the ass riding the ass. Deterioration provoked by stupidity. The way the lungs turn black and calcareous, like the inside of a cave, from cigarette smoke.

What had he done? Excluding the last six hours or so, he hadn’t done much. Misty island of misty dreams. What happened? Signor Americano couldn’t say exactly. So why did he hit a feeble old man? Good question.

It wasn’t an accident, was it, Dad?

No.

Your one decisive action since we left America. You went to see Francis Cape with the intention of hurting him.

Yes.

Why?

Consider the life of a rock.

Cut it out, Dad.

Sediment compressed to form sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock heated to form liquid magma. Magma blown to the earth’s surface, cooling to form igneous rocks. Igneous intrusion causing contact metamorphism. Igneous and metamorphic rocks eroded into sediment. Buried sediment compressed into rock. I’d put myself at the igneous / metamorphic stage. More igneous than meta-morphic. A crusty, coarse-grained piece of gabbro.

Say what you mean, Dad.

Compare minerals to rocks. It’s not their luster, their rarity, their hardness that makes them desirable. It’s their chemical composition. They are what they are, unlike most everything else in the world. Why is a diamond the most valuable gem? Because it has the simplest chemical composition. Diamond equals C. Not much in the world is as simple. And now you can see my fundamental mistake. I thought tourmaline would prove my worth. What’s tourmaline? Tourmaline is a mix of boric oxide, silica, water, iron, etcetera, etcetera. The chemical composition of tourma-line is longer than the alphabet. What’s tourmaline? Everything and nothing. Tourmaline is what a man looks for when he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

In fact, you didn’t think any of this, did you, Dad? And you never got further than the mouth of the cave. For all I know, there was no cave. What you found might have been no more than a shallow gouge in the limestone outcrop. You didn’t even bother to look around your feet for the broken shards of tourmaline that would have indicated a rich vein nearby.

You smoked a cigarette. Maybe you smoked another cigarette. You watched the day grow brighter. You fell asleep and slept for a few hours. You slept so soundly you didn’t feel the gecko scuttle across the back of your hand on its way to a patch of sun-warmed rock.

Our dad, Signor Americano. Moses on the mountain. Jeremiah in the wilderness. Your one opportunity for discovery, and you slept through it.

When he woke the sun was already in the west, the air was dry, and he had to piss. He pissed into the mouth of the cave, and he headed down the mountain, intending to go right home.

But you didn’t come right home — remember?

The walk was long, so he stopped in La Pila for a bite to eat and a glass of wine, and he got to talking with the barista, who didn’t speak a lick of English. In his own poor Italian, Murray introduced himself, watching the man carefully to see what effect his name had. The barista had never heard of our father. Was that possible? He returned Murray’s stare with frank curiosity. Murray told him he owned land in the Mezza Luna region. The man had never heard of Mezza Luna. Murray began to explain. The man interrupted, rattling something Murray didn’t understand, and motioned to the kitchen. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a liter of wine. They drank together for a few hours.

Anonymity as unexpected as it was welcome. Murray had finally found his refuge in a little bar in La Pila. He asked the barista if he knew of a pensione nearby, and the man offered him the back room of the bar, a little room with a single cot, a curtained window looking out into a dark pantry, crates filled with onions and potatoes stacked against the wall.

So that’s where you were.

Drinking some. Sleeping. Smoking. At Murray’s insistence, the owner and his wife put him to work in the afternoon chopping vegetables. They ate all their meals together. They took great delight in watching our father drink. Ancora, ancora. There was no malice in them. What they saw was the gradual animation of a dreary Americano. He drank steadily from pranzo on. His host and hostess drank, too, both of them, not just wine but Amora and grappa and even rum. Yet as far as Murray could tell, they didn’t suffer any effects from the liquor.

He slept deeply, but only for a few hours at a time. He’d wake, confused, in the middle of the night. The room absolutely lightless. Yet somehow he’d managed to continue to lie quietly in his bed.

Tick tock tick. Signor Americano was alone. He’d never really been alone before. Oh, he’d been by himself, but not alone like this. Discovery no longer an attraction. Only trying to subdue panic. Using thought to try not to think. Then your hand happens to brush against the velvet skin of a peach that your host offered you after dinner. A little orange peach you left on a saucer. And the next thing you know you are remembering the tiny velvet bear your oldest son kept on his bedside table when he was younger and you were still in the apartment on East 74th. A little brown bear, with nose and eyes and eyebrows inked in black. Patrick’s glasses cradling the water glass. Harry still in a crib. The smell of a baby’s scalp. Another son. As many as possible. This was back in the days when fathers would chew on unlit cigars in the hospital lounge while waiting for their children to be born. Your own father dead from heart failure when you were six. Buried in the cemetery in Queens. You don’t even remember the funeral.

Darkness itself the cramping factor. You’d rather be sleeping than thinking, but oh the way the mind works. Thinking about what happens when you stop thinking.

Which of your sons started crying in the middle of the night because he was afraid of dying? Barely able to put words into a whole sentence, and he was fretting about metaphysics. Whatever. Nothing to say other than offering the hypothesis of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Let’s consider the proposition of divinity. Who is God, Daddy? How should I know?

The proposition of heaven and hell. Life directed toward judgment. Don’t you believe it. Hell no more than hatred of the dead. That’s your punishment, in varying degrees. Devils stoking the fires of memory. What you did. And what you didn’t do. You being the sort who always meant well. Claire knew it, didn’t she? She knew you better than you knew you. Our father the prospector. You wanted to give us a future. A father’s effort to secure a place in the paradise of memory. A life judged by its life in the memories of others. The salvation of eulogy. The dishonest pabulum of respect.

He wanted needed loved his wife and children. So why at every turn did he succeed in messing up their lives? The stupidity of ambition. There’s gold in them thar hills! Come on, boys. Claire, I promise, you won’t regret it. Me. Your willingness. The warmth of your body returning life to me in the dark hours of the night. How can anybody ever sleep alone? I am scared, Claire. What good does it do to think it? Or even to say it aloud. I am scared. Don’t even remember my own father’s funeral. If a tree falls in the forest. Failure written in stone. Destined to end with my pockets full of gabbro. Not a glimmer of tourmaline in sight.

We went to look for buried treasure. Our father’s script for success a mishmash of fantasy and jest and showmanship. The prospector’s doomed effort to prove the validity of his wild guess. One version among many of ambition. Bolstered by his family. The prop of us. Following one little crack in the foundation, the slow collapse. Not even a chance of finding what he was looking for. Scripted failure. Marked by destiny to be a man whose most useful function would be as a contrary example — a warning to others. Look what happened to Murray Murdoch, who hauled us all to Elba for no good reason.

Where is Elba?

I told you I don’t know!

Darkness like the darkness of an unlit room seen at noon from across a street, across a yard, across a piazza. Darkness like the bottom of a well. Darkness flattened by distance. A dark so dark that it had no dimension. This was the dark in which our father lay, thinking.

Musty, earthy smell of potatoes. Velvet skin of a peach. I am underground. Hello! Can’t anyone hear me? Enormous pressure developed gradually on the hanging wall. Surviving pillars gave way. Sudden propulsion of air shaking the whole tunnel. Excavated to a maximum depth of 200 feet. I am alone. He is alone. My brother. My mother. My wife. My sons. He couldn’t even remember his father’s funeral, though the many funerals he’d attended since then all felt like repetitions.

My turn. His turn. How do I want you to remember me? How do you want us to remember you? Monsieur Petit in your pocket. Your hat cocked at an angle. Clocking our sprints with the second hand of your wristwatch. Napping on the couch on Saturday afternoon. Mowing the lawn. Riding a motorcycle. Our father, Signor Americano. Too late. You are what you were, and now you’re stuck in a little room in a little village on a little island, it’s the middle of the night, and no one can hear you calling for help.

He fell asleep at last, woke at dawn, slept some more, and woke again shortly before noon. He ate bread soaked in olive oil, he chopped vegetables, drank wine, played cards with the owner and his wife. How could they possibly make a living from this bar with so few customers? our father began to wonder. And then on Friday afternoon the bar filled with men — young men smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, old men playing rapid hands of a kind of poker Murray had never seen before.

The owner introduced him as Signor Murdee. Signor Americano, sono io. Not a single man in the crowd of two dozen knew him or recognized his name. “Sono Malcolm Murdoch.” Shrugs of “Piacere.” He was the most infamous man on Elba, and they knew nothing about him. How was it possible?

Anything’s possible on this island of dreams. When Napoleon wandered the island, he was sometimes mistaken for a common soldier. Now Signor Americano was being mistaken for an ordinary tourist. Possibly, he’d found a hamlet so isolated that the people here hadn’t heard the rumors. Or possibly — time to consider this, Murray — there were no more rumors to hear.

Non ho capito.

Suspicion rises like steam from water as the air cools at night. And then disperses. Without evidence, suspicion always disperses. Murray, those dreams Francis Cape was telling you about — he wasn’t making them up. Those dreams were being dreamt, told and retold, measured and compared. But for weeks, new dreams had been dreamt, dreams that had nothing to do with either you or the missing Nardi girl, dreams that weren’t worth retelling. You were being forgotten.

There were grapes that needed to be picked. Figs, oranges, apples, lemons, pomegranates. Let’s taste the Sangiovese, peel the chestnuts, fry the squid. Ciao, Alberto, come stai? Did you hear? Elena, the one who played the girl at this summer’s festival in Capoliveri — why, she’s marrying Marco, who played Barbarossa. Elena e Barbarossa si sposano!