Tourmaline (29 page)

Funny how often a word slips from your mind when you need it. Nat looked to Murray for help. What had they just been talking about?

But Murray was trying to explain that he —

Nat interrupted, saying anything that came into his head so he wouldn’t hear what Murray was trying to tell him. “And then we, you know, um, we were just, then Patrick, I don’t know, that’s just what he did, and Ollie, he’s such a brat because, that time we found the spiders, actually it was Harry, he’s always finding things, you know, Dad, but still I don’t see why we have to be brothers all the time, I wish I didn’t have any brothers. If I didn’t have brothers…”

Ei fu. “What I’m trying to say…what am I trying to say?” Keep talking, Nat. Don’t give Dad the chance to —

“Actually there’s not a law, we don’t have to if we don’t want to, but since, I don’t know. Dad, tell me about something. Dad? Dad! I want you to tell me about, oh, any old thing, or else I’ll tell you.”

Able was I.

“About once, you know, when, you know, um, well, so, Dad, are you listening, you have to listen, you have to pay attention.”

They kept at it long into the night. Whatever nonsense Nat threw at Murray, whatever nonsense they exchanged, was from Nat’s point of view merely a way to buy time. As if — and this thought only came to him much, much later — as if, with enough time, he could succeed in paying off our father’s debts.

“What’ll Mom say when we tell her?”

“Maybe we don’t have to tell her.”

“Yeah, like she’s not going to notice there’s three of us instead of four.”

“We can say we weren’t there.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

We were sitting on the narrow beach at the edge of Sant’Andrea. Behind us the stack of boulders rose up steeply, though only for a few feet. At the top of the rocks was an area cordoned off by a chain-link fence, and sleeping gray gulls bordered the edge.

While we talked we picked up little stones and threw them one by one into the sea. Whatever we happened to be saying, we’d pause whenever a stone was in midflight and listen for the splash.

Cluck, chuck, silence, splash.

“Is Nat lost forever?” I asked.

“Shut up, Ollie.”

This was a sadness I’d never felt before, sharp and clear and deserved. Nat was gone. Nat had been a little bit bigger than me and a little bit smaller than my big brothers. Without Nat I felt unbearably small, as small as the pebbles disappearing into the dark sea. A sob shuddered through me. Harry shoved me so I toppled over into the wet sand. I cried louder. Patrick clamped his hand over my mouth and promised I’d get it good if I didn’t shut up. Why did everyone everywhere always have to tell me to shut up?

Most of the houses on the point were boarded up for the winter, but a few were lit with a warm orange light. Wouldn’t it be better if we were inside one of those houses? How would we ever get home?

Patrick took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, a gesture that made him look ancient to me. I wondered how he had grown up so fast.

“Some day,” he said.

“Some day what?” Harry prompted.

“Some day we’ll remember this and it will all be like it never really happened.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Penso —” Harry began, but Patrick barked, “Speak in English!” “I think we need a plan.”

“Like what kind of plan?”

“Like a plan to find Nat.”

“The question is, will we find him before the wolves eat him up!” I started to cry again. Harry hit me. Patrick hit Harry. Harry said, “Race you!” I ran after Harry. Patrick just sat there. We taunted him. He threw fistfuls of sand at us.

The night wore on this way. We kept meaning to resume our search for Nat but kept forgetting about him. We fought, we played, and eventually we flattened a patch of sand to make a smooth broad bed. We stretched out side by side. As we grew drowsy we counted the stars. There weren’t many that night because the moon was so bright, like a bowl of liquid light. We remembered the glass star Harry had found inside the pipe. Idly, we wondered if the real star of Elba even existed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, Patrick pointed out. I gazed at his face. He’d put his glasses on and looked very wise.

Sleep crept from our toes to our ankles to our knees.

“Poor Mom,” Harry said quietly.

Patrick yawned. Harry and I yawned.

“Let’s pretend we’re in a war,” I said.

“OK,” Patrick replied. His eyes were closed. Sleep had reached our elbows. Our necks. We could hear the explosions of battle. Enemy soldiers were advancing, but we were well-hidden and well-armed. The calcite in Harry’s pocket was a bomb so powerful it could blow the entire island to smithereens. Imagine that. In the place where Elba had once risen out of the sea, there would only be water carpeted with the refuse of wood and metal, flesh and bone.

As sleep reached our ears, I felt, and was ashamed to feel, that I’d always remember this night as one of the best nights of my life.

And while you all were having such a swell time, I was trying to drag Dad back into the world of the living.

Sorry, Nat.

Even if Murray didn’t say outright that he was ready to quit, he was thinking it.

He’d been thinking it for a long while. He came to Elba in order to allow himself to think it. Came so he could get away. Came to escape. There he was, trapped by the wish to escape from the wish to escape from the wish.

Whatever. I was just a dumb kid and didn’t put two and two together. Our old man was drunk. Really drunk. It was the first time I’d seen him this way, and I didn’t understand. But at least I could tell he needed help. He’d scraped his knuckles raw, his hands were bloody, his words were slurred, and his eyes had a weird foggy glare. Turns out he hadn’t eaten anything since the evening before, but he’d forgotten he was hungry. I thought if I could get him home, home to the villa first, then home to America, everything would be okay. I did my best to convince him.

What did he say to you?

I’ve told you what I remember, Ollie.

Nothing else?

No.

And so we’re left to imagine.

That’s your job.

You telling Dad what it was like to be a small boy on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Whatever.

Dad telling you about Balthazar and Erasmus and Pico. Whatever.

You telling Dad about quartz and pyrite, calcite and tour-tour-tourmaline, Dad telling you about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Garibaldi and Galileo, you telling Dad that the first thing you were going to do when you got back home to America was set up your trains.

Maybe.

Dad explaining that there are things a father can say only to his son, you telling Dad about an old episode of
Popeye,
Dad telling you something about the something he’d been wanting to explain, something having to do with the Nardi girl, you telling Dad about the time Popeye went overboard with his anchor, Dad warning you about the explosion of nothing into something, all you have to do is look at a girl for the fun of it, you reminding Dad about the BB gun you’d been promised, Dad reminding you that there are confidences a father can share with his son, his wife never needs to know, no one else needs to know what the father says to his son on this balmy moonlit night on the island of Elba after too many days of rain, you telling Dad you were kind of tired, asking, Can’t we go home now and if we can’t go home, do you want to play Ants? Dad asking, Why the hell did we come here anyway? but you weren’t sure whether he was asking why did we come here to this place in the woods or to this island, Dad pointing out that we could have gone to Mexico or Alaska or Louisiana while you tried not to yawn and to keep yourself awake you decided to explain what a periscope is, Dad cursing his Averil uncles, you reminding Dad that your birthday was in ten-and-a-half months, Dad reminding you that you were an innocent child, you telling Dad that unlike your brothers you don’t actually fall asleep, you just lie in bed thinking about sleep, Dad saying that even if you didn’t understand what he was saying, it sure felt good to talk, what a relief just to talk, father and son, you unable to suppress a great big yawn, Dad giving a sad chuckle of resignation and cuddling you against his chest, you hearing his laugh as a crackle echoing from the cave of his ribs, Dad shifting you a little so he could free his arm, rubbing his face as if he had a towel in his hands and were blotting his wet skin dry, you lying there thinking about sleep, Dad saying, if only, you telling Dad you were cold, though you weren’t cold at all, you just wanted him to put his arm around you again, Dad saying that what he’d like right then was a scotch, you thinking lazily about blowing the fluffy parachutes from the head of a dandelion, Dad repeating, if only, you enjoying the vibrations of his voice against your ear, Dad telling himself, if only he hadn’t come to Elba, getting only this far in the hypothetical, Elba being the place where his troubles began as far as he could see, and he couldn’t see very far, not in the dark, not with his son asleep across his chest, not with his head aching as the evening’s alcohol dissolved, not with regret fogging his vision, regret an effective cover for the terror of self-knowledge, the story he could tell himself the story of an American guy who fucked up, don’t we all fuck up sooner or later, he’s sorry, Claire, he’s sorry, Adriana, his deception, her deception, his cowardice, Francis Cape, all of which kept him from considering his original purpose in leaving home and thus he was able to make the decision to feel nothing worse than guilt, which manifested itself visibly with the hint of a smirk, a smirk which would never entirely disappear from his face, marking him as the kind of person who, with a shrug, was always ready to acknowledge his potential for fucking up, no matter what he did he kept fucking up, sorry about that, girls, regret lit with the soft glow of virility, that radiant Y chromosome, that sexy X, the story such people could tell always the same story — Sir Winston who loved Lady Jane who loved the Duke who loved Lady Jane’s sister who loved Sir Winston, never more than that, never less, you know the kind of people I’m talking about, the edge of their personality a little dulled, their eyes a little blank, ambition a little muted, and always that smirk to signal to others that they’ll never be registered saints and, guess what, they don’t give a damn, let someone else rise to the challenge, they can have it along with all the trouble, the confusion, the uncertainty, the suffering, the intensity of thought and feeling, no thanks, Malcolm Murdoch is going to ease himself into sleep by thinking about the only thing that really matters to a man who hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours, the antidote of food, in particular, a bloody steak just off the grill, green-bean casserole, and the well in a mountain of mashed potatoes filled with steaming gravy.

The Inconstant

M
ORE THAN ONE HUNDRED
E
LBANS CAME TO
F
RANCIS
Cape’s funeral, though not because they’d ever cared about the Englishman while he was living. They came because they were curious. They wanted to see for themselves the body that was said to have turned miraculously into wax. Francis Cape had died of heart failure a full five days earlier, the coroner had confirmed. But instead of deteriorating with the usual rapidity, his body had remained unchanged, emitting no trace of fluids, no blood or excretions, and no foul smell, according to those who’d helped transfer the corpse to the little morgue behind the customs station in Porto-ferraio.

Signora Nardi paid for the service and burial. She ignored the rumors about the mummified body of il professore and went about the ordinary business of arranging a funeral. First she sent cables to Francis’s relatives in London, which went unanswered. Then she contacted an Anglican minister, the Reverend Nigel Fink, who lived in Livorno. And she managed to convince the parish priest of the Chiesa della Misericordia to allow a Protestant service to be conducted in his church.

The coffin was high-quality cherry wood, but the mourners were disappointed when they arrived to find the coffin closed and Francis Cape’s uncorrupted body hidden from view. Some of the guests snuck out through the side door and went home. Among the mourners who remained were Lorenzo Ambrogio and his wife, Carlo the mine surveyor, Ninanina of the enoteca and her husband, Massimo, our cook, Lidia, Adriana Nardi, our mother, our father, and of course Signora Nardi herself, who sat in the front pew beside her daughter, both of them wearing black Burano lace veils that were said to have belonged to Napoleon’s sister.

The maestrale had blown in cool, bright weather for the day. White chrysanthemums lined the aisles and the base of the altar and filled the Chiesa della Misericordia with their sweet dusty fragrance. Candles cast flickering shadows on the nave columns. People blew their noses frequently, not because of strong emotion but because the winter’s respiratory viruses were beginning to spread. Reverend Fink said the Evensong and read the Absolutions of the Dead in English. “He cometh up and is cut down like a flower, he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.” Lorenzo delivered a short eulogy in Italian in which he praised Francis for his dedication to history. He quoted Aristotle, St. Augustine, and, of course, Napoleon — “Do not be surprised at the attention that I devote to details: I must pay attention to everything so as never to leave myself unprovided.”

Francis Cape had been a man of detail. In recording a small segment of history, he’d wanted to include everything that could be known. Elbans would remember him for his noble effort, if not for his accomplishments.

Too bad he was Protestant, people whispered. If he’d been Catholic, they might have let themselves believe that his body truly had been the location where God chose to work a miracle. But in fact, they pointed out, refrigeration will keep meat fresh. Taking into account the cool weather…

Mamma mia, what disrespect. Shhhh.

People whispered about many things. Gathering outside on the steps after the service, they whispered about the solitary professor who had been dead for days before anyone bothered to check on him. They whispered about the consequences of loneliness. They whispered about the stealth of heart disease. They whispered about our father as he and our mother walked past them, holding hands. They whispered about Americans and their love of drink, for by then everyone had heard about Signor Americano’s four-day spree that had taken him across the island from Marciana to Porto-ferraio to La Pila to Sant’Andrea. They whispered about American foolishness and American greed. The rumor passed among them that Malcolm Murdoch had paid five times for his patch of Elban earth what they knew it to be worth. They speculated about when he would take his family and go home.