Arkansas (11 page)

Under the table Nathan kicked me.

“Didn't what?”

“Nothing, I guess. It must have been one of those weird dreams. You know, where you can't quite tell what's real. Like Nathan's story!”

“Try this apricot jam,” Nathan said, thrusting a pot in my direction. “Celia put it up herself.”

“I'll get some more bread.” Pushing out her chair, which scraped horribly against the tiles, she strode into the kitchen.

Ssh,
Nathan gestured.

“All right,” I whispered.

She came back in with a very clever bread board, slats of olive wood through which the crumbs fell into a tray.

“So Celia's just been telling me about her plans for the day,” Nathan announced, and launched into a recitation of food and itineraries that successfully distracted all three of us from the subject of the noise.

When he'd finished, she got up and started clearing the dishes.

“I'll help,” I said, almost automatically.

Nathan stayed put.

“Typical,” Celia muttered.

She loaded the dishwasher. Then she said, “Well, gotta go.” As it happened, she had a date to go to the market with Mauro, who was hoping to take advantage of our visit to try out some new recipes. “That is, if you two don't mind being guinea pigs.”

“Mind? Why should we mind?” I asked as we followed her into the yard.

“Especially if Mauro's the great cook you claim,” Nathan added.

“I don't think you'll be disappointed. Well, bye.”

She drove off.

Nathan turned to me. “Thank you,” he said.

“Nathan, what on earth is going on?”

“I owe you a favor, Lizzie. You covered for me.”

“Did
you
take Celia's car last night?”

He nodded.

“But why all this secrecy?”

“I didn't ask her permission.”

“Oh!” I laughed. “Well, at least
Tm
not hallucinating.” Nathan took the barb without flinching. “I hoped no one would hear me. I was counting on Celia's earplugs—and your being asleep.”

“I wasn't.”

“And I was careful. I drove very carefully.”

“Nathan, you don't have to justify yourself to
me.
It wasn't my car.”

“How would you have felt if it was?"

I thought about it. “Perplexed. Maybe angry. But that's beside the point, because I'm not Celia.”

“Still, I want to tell you
why
I took her car, Lizzie! And what happened. In fact, I probably have to tell you, in case...”

“In case what?”

He sat down on a little wrought-iron bench. I sat next to him.

“First of all,” he said, “you have to promise me to keep this to yourself.”

“Of course.”

“And you also have to promise not to tell me I'm a heel. I know I'm a heel. I don't need reproaches.”

“No problem.”

“All right, then.” And he told me this story:

It seemed that last night Nathan, too, had gone to bed feeling out of sorts—this despite the fact that the room in which Celia had put him he found comforting. The old beams, the slanted ceiling, the bleach-colored couch and the armoire and the writing table, all spoke of permanence and occupation, he said. All invited the hanging of rumpled clothes, the setting out of pens and paper. The room might have been van Gogh's at Arles, except that the walls were bare, Nathan having carefully removed, in deference to his Jewish upbringing, the small Madonna from its nail over the bed.

Like me, he tried, and failed, to sleep. So he switched on the reading light and, climbing out of the bed, looked at his travel alarm clock. Twenty past twelve: early, by New York standards. A mad idea entered his head. In Florence, where he'd stayed a couple of nights before coming to Montesepolcro, there was an appealing stretch of park alongside the Arno to which great numbers of men flocked regularly for sex. The fresh memory of that park now stirred him. Why not go tonight? he asked himself. But no, it was impossible, Florence was miles from Montesepolcro; besides which he had no car.

But Celia has a car,
a voice in his head interrupted. And the mad idea—the criminal idea—took hold.

He pulled on some clothes, then tiptoeing into the bathroom, brushed his teeth and washed his face. The toilet flushed loudly, which made him wince. He didn't want to wake Celia. Worse, it refilled itself loudly, like a thirsty dog lapping water. Still, he reasoned, if the flush woke her, the refilling might at least muffle his steps as he went down the stairs.

In the kitchen, he switched on the light. He had expected to have to search for Celia's keys, but she'd left them on the countertop, and, removing from the chain one sheathed in black plastic, he stepped quietly out the door. Here the air was still and carried the smell of jasmine. Nathan was careful to tread softly as he made his way down the gravel driveway. Then, getting into the Fiat, he put it into neutral and pushed it along the road until the house was no longer visible. Only once he thought himself out of earshot did he turn the key in the ignition. The engine stirred, and he took off, retracing the route Celia had led him along two days before, through the hole in the town wall, along the winding folds of the turban, over the wooden bridge and down the hill and past the station. Here, miraculously, a sign occurred that said firenze. Within moments he was on a clear, open road.

Tavarnelle ... San Donato ... San Casciano.... On Celia's odometer, the kilometers collected. Nathan only hoped she wouldn't notice the difference in the numbers. In any case he drove fast, and as there was little traffic, found himself entering Florence around one-thirty. His good sense of direction enabled him to locate the Cascine without much trouble.

Pleased with himself, he stepped out of the car and walked. The moon was high. Beyond the long, thin stretch of parkland the river glimmered dully. It was a warm night, a kindly night, so much so that even the transsexual prostitutes plying their trade along the Viale seemed to him swathed in innocence.

Meanwhile the trees rustled in the wind, and men rustled in the trees.

He turned off the Viale and entered a wooded enclave in which the tidiness of city planning—tree, bench, tree, bench—did not obviate a certain wildness. This was because of the bats. They were everywhere, swarming the riverbanks, swooping over the water that seemed itself filled with trees: a second park, subaqueous, through which, if he dove, Nathan might stroll upside down. Cicadas played themselves, and as his eyes adjusted, the shadows coagulated into men and boys, some sitting on benches, others chatting in gangs, or attached to trees. Finding a tree that was unoccupied, Nathan assumed his standard position for this sort of enterprise: legs parted, one hand hooked through the belt loop of his jeans, the other resting on his hip, which was thrust slightly forward.

Thus he arranged himself, and opening his eyes wide, stared out into the involving dark.

A boy leaning against a tree opposite stared back.

Nathan spread his legs wider.

What an extraordinarily comfortable tree! he found himself thinking. It seemed to have been constructed specifically to accommodate the contours of his body: a Birkenstock of trees. It seemed to hold him. He thought he could feel fingers of bark working the small of his back, and wondered at the mind's capacity for tactile hallucination.

The shadowy boy now departed from his own tree, cutting a path just south of Nathan. They stared at each other as he passed. Yet the dark was vexing; he could not get a good enough look at the boy to decide whether he was attractive.

Next the boy turned around, retraced his steps, assumed, as if for no particular reason, his habitual stance—but this time next to Nathan.

“Ciao,”
he said.

“
Ciao
Nathan answered.

Silence. The boy had dark hair and fair skin. His thin white T-shirt delineated perfectly the hollows and hills of his chest.

Nathan didn't need to look at him: even from a distance he could feel the waves of anxiety that radiated from the boy's body, he could feel, as if it were his own pulse, the thumping of the young heart.

He untucked and reached under the boy's T-shirt. The boy took in his breath; his abdomen heaved. Nathan pretended to pay no attention. With his eyes he scanned the other men in the area, while his hand, inevitable, continued its upward journey, resting finally on the boy's chest and working, with the laconic ease of ownership, first one and then another small nipple. Then all at once Catholic oppression gave way, and the boy embraced Nathan, pawing his chest, planting his mouth on his cheek, reaching under his shirt and grabbing hold of muscle and fat and hair. But he had no delicacy, he was a sexual pantomime; he twisted Nathan's nipples only because Nathan had twisted his. A neophyte, then. And how tired Nathan was of initiating neophytes! It seemed inevitably to be boys like this who gravitated toward him, never men his own size or age...

At that moment the tree spoke.

Nathan froze.

It spoke. Its voice was river reeds in a breeze.

“Cosa?”
asked the boy.

“Ssh,” Nathan said. “Listen...”

“Poliziar?”

“No, no ... a voice...”

“Non capisco.”

“Ssh.”

They remained still. Once again the boy twisted Nathan's nipples. Nathan shooed him away. Removing his hand, the boy retucked his T-shirt and, with an insolent “
Ciao
strode off. Nathan hardly noticed. For the voice had returned, vague, caressing.

Then all at once two branches descended and twined around Nathan's chest.

Panic is instantaneous. It considers neither consequences nor impossibilities, only the quickest way to safety. And panic told Nathan to get the hell away from that tree. So he tried to step forward, but the branches tightened over him, blocking his way, and when he pushed, they tightened more, squeezing the air from his lungs. He would have screamed, but he had no breath, all he could do was push, with both fists, even as the tree struggled to keep hold of him.

The tree seemed to him to be collapsing with effort, and yet taking him in. He could feel bark crawling over his skin, into his pants. He could taste bark in his mouth.

He knew only to push blindly, mightily, to take advantage of what he perceived as the tree's momentary exhaustion.

Then he was away, torn branches in his hand.

A howl filled the air, and subsided. Nathan turned. The tree was at a distance. An ordinary tree. He was on his knees, on the ground. He could not get enough air, he was gulping huge mouthfuls of air. Meanwhile all around him men were hurrying away, for he had made a commotion, and such a delicate atmosphere as that of the Cascine at two in the morning fractures easily.

Still he could not catch his breath.

A fan of bats swooped over the river. He wanted only to get out of there, so he stumbled back to the car, got the key into the ignition, and drove off. But his hands were shaking, and, fearful lest he might stray into the opposite lane, he pulled into a twenty-four-hour gas station. Parking the car, he sat back, closed his eyes, counted his breaths until they were once again steady, even. Next he went into the bathroom, and was standing in front of the sink, wetting his hands, when he looked in the mirror and saw that his shirt was streaked with blood.

He pulled off the shirt, looked at himself once again in the mirror. Not a scratch.

Not blood, then. Juice from some sort of berry. Something smeared against something ... tomatoes ... someone else's blood...

Thrusting his shirt under the tap he rinsed it furiously until the stains faded to a soft pink. Then he stuffed it into a garbage can, and, shirtless, got back into Celia's car.

All the way to the autostrada exit he wondered if he was going mad, and by the time he drove into Montesepolcro he was sure of it. Then, as he approached Celia's house, he realized that he could not be mad because of the shirt.

The shirt he had thrown away.

Was he dreaming? He must be dreaming, he decided, and remembering how once, when he was a child, his mother had answered the question “How do I know when I'm dreaming?” by telling him to pinch himself, he pinched himself, and it hurt, so he supposed he must not be.

At Celia's, nothing seemed to have changed in his absence. The farmhouse breathed in sleep. Below him, in the darkened valley, a train glided by. It looked like a pale stream of moving light.

Stepping quietly into the arbor, he checked his watch: three o'clock. He could still manage five or six hours sleep, though it would be thin, meager. Anyway, perhaps the morning would bring with it a sense of resolution.

Then he reached for the kitchen door, and discovered that it was locked.

In his pocket, only the one key, the car key—

For a few seconds he rattled the handle, as if this would make any difference—then circled the house and tried the front door. It too was locked.

He closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against the cool stone wall, tried to cry, and, failing in the effort, walked back to the arbor and lay down, in despair, on a chaise longue. Remember that he was shirtless, and that the night was full of mosquitoes. Recognizing his vulnerability, he reached for a towel that Celia had left out, covered his chest with it, and contemplated his options. He could wake Celia; to do so, however, would be to risk her finding out that he had taken her car, and he wasn't a good liar. Alternately he might sleep in the chaise longue, and let her discover him in the morning. When she asked him what he was doing there, he could claim he'd gotten up early to take a walk and been locked out. But then how to explain the mosquito bites with which he would no doubt be covered, not to mention the absence of his shirt? And more fundamentally, how to persuade Celia, who knew him better than anyone in the world, that he—a notorious late riser—had done something so unlikely as get up at dawn to take a shirtless walk?