Tourmaline (24 page)

Music, laughter, a machine spitting caffè. Wait — sono Signor Murdoch. I’m the one people are talking about. Cosa? You know — the American who can tell you what happened to the Nardi girl.

They didn’t care what he wanted to tell them. But if he was willing to stake cento lire on the first game, he was welcome to play.

He ate spaghetti with them. He played cards. He laughed when they laughed, though he understood next to nothing of their jokes. He was the stranger, the foreigner, as exotic as the dollar bill he passed around. He’d come all the way from New York to play cards with them, and they were grateful.

He lost the dollar, along with the rest of his money, within three hands. He borrowed money from the barista. He played another hand and won — a sign that his luck was changing. Here he was, no longer a presence provoking whispers. His innocence accepted as a fact. His past a story too dull to tell.

He’d play one more hand and go home. But they didn’t want him to go. Look at the rain, Signor Murdee. A deluge. Guarda. They opened the door to show him the rain spilling in a beaded curtain from the overhang.

All right, he’d stay. Bravissimo!

They sang, smoked, played cards. More men arrived. They stamped their feet dry on the boards, shook water from their hats. Antonio! Leopoldo! Massimo! Arnoldo! Tell us, who had the foresight to begin picking in time to finish before the storm? Who will make the best Aleatico this year? Who has a vat to loan Roberto?

They all had to crowd in the doorway to see Paolo’s new motorcycle. And then they needed the warmth of grappa, more conversation, volley of jokes, and news of the world, courtesy of a one-legged, gray-haired man named Ricardo, who hobbled into the bar on his crutch just as some of the men were preparing to leave.

Come va, Riccardo? Clatter of talk, clatter of nonsense. The men who had put on their coats took them off again to trade news about weather, thefts, accidents. Murray gave up trying to understand what was being said and didn’t hear Riccardo report that an old Englishman had been found dead in his room in Portoferraio. Apparently he’d been dead for a few days.

An Englishman. Molto vecchio. Did Signor Murdee know of him?

What?

Antonio rattled a version of what Roberto had reported. There were only a few words that Murray understood, words such as inglese, professore, solitario, vecchio, and morto. But they were enough to draw a nod of dumb comprehension that continued even while the other men genuflected for all the anonymous dead of the world and then pressed on through other news — the price of tuna going up, the price of swordfish going down, and a new hotel being built in the hills above Procchio.

Spodumene, iolite, benitoite. Euclase, phenakite, enstatite. Oh give me some sphene, Gene. A little dioptase in your coffee? How about some fibrolite on your scapolite, Willemite?

It is evidently desirable that you should be able to resist the chemical actions of everyday life. Having failed to. You demantoid, you. Mister Malcolm Averil Murdokite, specific gravity 3.10, strongly dichroic. What do you have to say for yourself?

Um. Did I ever tell you about the time I was walking along East 29th in Manhattan and a woman ran up to me, thrust a package into my hands, and ran on? A man in a dirty apron ran after her, past me. The package. Raw sirloin inside the wax paper. Me and Claire cooked and ate it for dinner. And the time Patrick, just learning to talk, called a man on a bus a boll weevil. C-A-T spells cat. Where did you learn boll weevil, kiddo?

Make like a frog, Granma. Why? Because Daddy says when you croak we’ll go to Florida. Ain’t he a darlin’? Claire, will you watch the kids for a while? I’m going to mine for tourmaline. I guess I forgot to mention that I’ve always wanted to try my hand at mining. That and earn enough money so I have plenty to give away. None of which.

Unknown to the world at large, the industrial manufacture of precious stones. Man’s restless efforts to bridle nature. Unrighteous products of alchemists. Murray Murdokite should have been an alchemist. He and Faust. Homemade sapphires. There’s no limit to delight, ladies and gentlemen, with the purchase of my little machine here.

In 1837, Gaudin produced a few flakes of crystallized corundum. In 1877, Fremy and Feil lined a crucible with homemade flakes of ruby. In 1904, Verneuil and his blowpipe. Oxygen admitted at C, passing through the tube, E, E terminating at D.
Tap tap tap
goes the hammer, A, onto disc B. Coal gas plus oxygen in a blowpipe equals a beautiful pear-shaped crystalline alumina. If only you’d gambled on manufacturing instead of nature, Murray. Now look at you. The reflection your inversion.

Never caring that he never had a chance to:

1) Wade through high water at night in Venice. The challenge of figuring out where the flooded street ended and the canal began.

2) Run for office.

3) Witness the birth of a child.

4) Witness the slaughter of a lamb.

5) Talk with us. To us. You never really talked to us, Dad. Other fathers. Oh, forget it.

Here I sit, imagining you as you were before I remember you. The melting of sedimentary rock into magma. Once a man looking forward. Afterward, a man looking back. Every investment a mistake. Every casual gesture a provocation. Your habit of looking for friends in the wrong places. One thing leading to another, and the next thing you know a girl is missing, your son is deaf, and il professore è morto, flattened by a punch meant to deflect a butter knife. Then and then.

A nun inside her cloister for seventy years. Bliss of faith. Compare her to, say, Nietzsche, and his ascetic ideal derived from a degenerating life. What’s the point of thought? Dad wondered, walking along a road in the rain at night. And for that matter who decided for us that cut stones are more beautiful than stones broken through some convulsion in the earth’s crust, roughened by attrition, carved by solvents?

There he goes, walking away from La Pila toward wherever. Drunk again. Geez. Don’t you know when to stop!

How dare you.

I’m just pretending, Dad. A little game I’m playing here on the page. My review, having watched the video of your life. The night we almost lost you forever. At last, having reached the place you’d been heading toward and having found what you were looking for. The transformation complete.

You have no idea, Ollie.

No more than scraps of possibilities. It’s possible, Dad, that the thought of Nietzsche crossed your mind when you were heading away from La Pila after learning about the death of Francis Cape. It’s also possible that you were exercising your mind, trying to remember a long sequence of numbers, moving backward from the end. Flexing your corrugator supercilii. Or maybe you were thinking about Giorgione’s
Three Ages of Man.

You will never know.

And so I am forced to make an educated guess, Dad. You. He. Thinking about that sweet little natal cleft between his wife’s buttocks.

Stop it, Ollie.

Walking at night through the rain. Like any man upon realizing that he will never be innocent. Programmed to generate the events that would result in this state of mind. Setting off for Elba in order to become what you became. Our father, Signor Americano. Walking. Releasing himself to madness. Howl, spit, eek, suffamoaninacheron. Who out there wants to go mad with me?

Voices.

I wasn’t hearing voices, Ollie.

Skin pricked by the nibs of invisible quills.

Not that, either. I walked. That’s all. No thunder, no lightning. Just walking along. The rain letting up. The rising moon glowing behind a silky mist. He was just walking along. A little more than a year after arriving on the island. Shrug. Nothing much to say about it. Shrug. Doesn’t it feel good to shrug? A gentle tightening of the trapezius. Oh, there was that thing with the Nardi girl. Didn’t amount to much. Shrug. Some money he owed — shrug. That bout of fever. His son having trouble hearing. They’d take him to the doctor tomorrow. Shrug. And the old man they’d known — Francis Cape. Heard he’d passed away a few days ago. Rest in peace. Shrug. That’s all. A short history of Nietzsche’s sickened soul.

Listen to the gods. Their catcalls.

That’s me whistling. Shrug.

As though nothing had happened.

Nothing out of the ordinary scheme of things.

You being an ordinary man who once upon a time wanted to be more than you were. The prompt of your ambition. Before Elba, you were the one who rounded us up and ordered us to live, live well! Show me what you’re made of! On your mark, get set, go!

You see, it’s not my fault I use too many exclamation points. My tendency for exaggeration a gift from my father. He was like so many others — men and women who, in resigning themselves to their fate, must forfeit their spirited ingenuity and become ordinary. Not even madness to enliven their story. They are the ones left out of history, the explorers, inventors, artists, teachers, doctors, electricians, ophthalmologists, chimney sweeps and plumbers, bus drivers and farmers and lab assistants, etcetera, etcetera, who set out to accomplish something extraordinary, and after a series of setbacks just gave up.

You can write whatever you please, Ollie. But if you publish it, I’ll —

Our father, Signor Americano.

You’ll never know what happened to me that night.

Holding yourself responsible for everything else. And now for the death of an old man.

Do this, Ollie. Cup your hands over your ears. Close your eyes. Imagine a girl’s muffled sob.

I did. And then a car backfired on the street below, and I blinked and saw a flock of pigeons rise and curl, silver swirl tilting into a white arc around a tree.

Always the interruption of the world. Proof that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to imagine your way into my mind.

Night. Fog. And out of nowhere, the snuffle of a girl. A girl crying softly to herself. Hidden amidst the stalks of barley. In the gorge. Behind an empty military redoubt. Behind the crumbling stone wall. Between two rocks. Her face bruised, her lips bloody. Signorina, where are you? Where? Sweet child. I’ll find you. Are you there? Where? A wayward girl is easy to charm, to use, to beat and leave for dead. That old tale. If only you’d cry out, I could find you. The gray darkness of a misty midnight on the island of Elba, and somewhere in the mud, an injured girl. I’ll find you. In the grass. Beneath a bush. If you’re not over here, then you’re over there. Where? What girl? On a night like this. I must be mistaken. But how could I mistake the unmistakable sound of a girl crying softly in the dark? Me, a father, a husband, a soldier afraid of war. You must be cold, Signorina. Hungry. What good does it do to cry? Don’t cry, Signorina. I’ll find you, if you’re there to be found. If you’re not. But I heard you, I’m sure I heard you. A sound without equivalent. Puff snuffle of a cry. A girl in the night, unable to sustain herself without help. I’ll help you. First I have to find you, then I’ll help you.

What in the name of God am I —

I’m looking for a girl.

What girl?

How can I answer that until I find her? Signorina, where are you? And when I find her?

I’ll take her home.

Where’s home?

Puff snuffle. Come on, Signorina. You’re here somewhere, I know it. I can feel you in my bones. On my hands and knees in the mud, looking for a girl. A night like this. Sting of nettles. Clothes soaked through. I’ll do some good yet. Where are you, Signorina? If the Averils could see me now.

Stop it!

Dad?

Stop it this instant.

Geez, Dad, I’m sorry.

The boundless foolishness of your imagination, Oliver.

That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.

As if I’d lost my mind.

I’m way off, aren’t I? You weren’t crawling around on your hands through the mud that night and through the next day looking for an injured girl. Of course you weren’t. But what were you doing? What happened? Something happened. I’m trying to understand but am hampered by the boundless foolishness of my imagination. My penchant for exaggeration. The distortions. Unreality a temptation for those of us used to fiction. At least tell me what you were intending, Dad. Tell me the truth. If you tell me, I promise I won’t write it down.

Josephine loved Napoleon and was beloved. She pleaded with him, “Dearest, do not forsake me. Recall my skillful conduct during your Egyptian expedition.” Still, he divorced her in December of 1809 and a few weeks later asked for the hand of the archduchess of Austria, Marie-Louise.

He met his betrothed on the road to Soissons and introduced himself. Her immediate emotion was plain relief.

“Why, Herr Napoleon, you don’t look at all like your portraits!”

He was there at her side while she groaned her way through the difficult birth of their son.

“Emperor,” asked the accoucheur, “which life should be sacrificed, in the event such action must be taken?”

“Why, save the mother, of course,” said Napoleon. Not because he loved his wife but because he considered it her right to live.

And then the son: voilà, the king of Rome.

And then banishment.

The dust rose behind the wheels of his carriage. Seven hundred infantry and one hundred and fifty cavalry of the imperial guard volunteered to accompany the emperor into exile, along with a ten-man band and fourteen drummers. But where were his wife and son?

Tuh-dum, tuh-dum. In exchange for his empire, he was given an island. Long live the king of Elba!

The great grand king of Elba. “We will live because it is our right to live, my people! I bid you welcome. Your beautiful island is mine to share, and I will reign justly.”

Turning a map of the island on its side so the west coast was at the top, he saw in it the silhouetted bust of a hatless man. Capo Sant’Andrea the brow. Punta del Nasuto — why, the nose, obviously! The long cravat extended between Marmi

and Acquabona. And the bulk of the pedestal between Capo della Vita and Punta dei Ripalti. The bust of a king. The land a shadow of himself. His dukedom in a poor isle, and all of us ourselves.