Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) (2 page)

I
don’t dream the same dreams anymore.

It hurts but the pain is the same one feels when starting to run again after a winter sitting by the fire. Heaviness in the lungs. Tightness of tired joints. And my heart burns when I wake. I have to remind myself that this is what’s best for me, that I have trained myself back to life, and I can’t return. Every morning when I wake, I feel I am conducting a sort of Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with myself. “Hi, my name is Gabriel and I am a…”

A what? A dream-aholic? Well, doesn’t that sound romantic?

I’m sure it would look that way to someone on the outside. But it was all I lived for, for a time. Those dreams. I threw myself into them so deeply, I was nearly lost. I almost drowned. And I owe it to myself not to give up now, to keep swimming.

“Don’t go back to the dreams, Gabriel,” warns my wife, and I listen.

I am constantly anxious, weaning myself off dreams and memories, too.
She
still exists, if only in my head these days. Her face still scorches me. I clutch the pillow to my chest like a child, a grown man approaching senior years. I stare at the mattress and pretend to ignore her ghost hovering over me. The ghost whispers from the corner of the room,
Go to sleep
.

“Don’t go back to the dreams, Gabriel,” repeats my wife as she takes the pillow from me. “Don’t go back to her.”

Her.

I don’t know if I am still in love with her because you can’t be in love with two people at once. Can you?

Is it love if I, for instance, see the ghost’s shadow accompany every living creature? Sometimes, when strolling down the cobbled stones of Corso Cavour, I detect someone else’s shadow billowing out from my wife’s ankles. A dark sheath, transparent like women’s stockings, hovers over her head like an umbrella. Its arms bounce haphazardly while my wife’s remain rigid and just slightly tapered at the elbows. The shadow’s head bobs about in that funny, familiar nod while my wife’s stature, as her mamma
strictly decreed, remains perfectly straight, like a new knife. Wherever she steps, glides too the ghost of someone I once knew. And not only my wife. My father and olive-skinned Orlando are followed by this shadow. Sweet Vittoria and the memory of Alfio Gallo still stomping about my head, who is now also a ghost and probably very angry about it.

But is not death merely a migration? That’s what Volatile used to say, once upon a time, in the vineyard I used to dream about.

I have lived in the vineyard nearly all of my life. In those days, it was not important enough to have a name, and all anyone cared about was that it yielded enough grapes to meet the yearly quota of
Orvieto
Dolce Fantasia
, that sweet dessert wine that leaves sugar crust in the corners of your mouth. That’s all I care about too these days.  

The vineyard lies in a hooded valley in the province of Umbria, barely more than a hundred kilometers from Rome, in a little patch of land where, from the kitchen window, the view of the volcanic slopes of Orvieto can be seen with a slight craning of the neck. Once protected from medieval invaders by the fortress wall carved from volcanic tuff that encloses the perimeter of town, Orvieto once kept secret a Pope with a death warrant. Historically the center of art, wine and culture in a land not yet called Italy, it was a haven of wealth preceded over by the master of corruption himself, Cesare Borgia.

But now, these walls snare tourists from Germany and Sweden and troves of
Americanos
, dining on overpriced wild boar, buying postcards printed in China and pottery replicating our town’s Etruscan history. They speak of their politics and compare their countries to ours, clicking their tongues over Italy’s inevitable bankruptcy, while stuffing their faces with
porchini ravioli
. They wave around pamphlets of the underground labyrinths of Orvieto and gush over the old symbols engraved in the cave walls. They wonder if they can order jewelry made with those pretty designs -- not realizing they were carved by parched skeletons of heretics during the siege of Rome -- because they didn’t read their brochures, they just looked at the pictures. And away they go, bustling about with their lumpy, middle aged thighs, wearing sweatshirts embroidered with the symbols of their Alma Maters, under our vine-wrapped canopies and cobbled tunnels of road, visiting the chocolatier and buying pound after pound of hand-dipped caramels at a whopping three Euro a piece.

And for the past fifteen years, my neighbors, the owners of vineyards much like my own, have opened their cellars to tourists, taking their Wall Street dollars, permitting them to fill their homes with French perfume and the powdery stench of underarm deodorant.  They dirty glasses with lipstick stains and slurp down our wines without a thought of the bouquet, the carefully cultivated aftertaste of almonds. They don’t know to swirl the wine, to let it breathe, to inhale and let layers of aroma tickle the nostrils and fill the lungs. Instead, they glug it down in a gulp, and when my neighbors’ backs are turned, refill the glass and swallow it whole. They do it all afternoon, until they begin to sway into each other and attempt making love in the vineyards, but are too drunk to remember how to unbuckle their belts. Oh, how we love to complain about them in the squares and on market day. We are grumpy old-timers, after all. Our bloom of youth has gone.

When I was young, I used to wish myself away from Orvieto, to the bustling glory of Florence and Milano, the large wine region of Tuscany. Although I had no aspirations to return to Rome, where they tease us for our provincial accents, I wanted to run away and become anything but a wine maker – a carpet seller, a tobacconist, a pigeon trainer.

I used to run though the paths of the vineyard when I was a child, both hands skimming the peaks of the infant vines as my arms stretched out in flight. I made aeroplane noises that caused saliva to bubble and pop upon my lips. It was springtime, and the swallows were returning to Italy from somewhere far hotter – Morocco, I imagined. Madagascar.

I remember every detail of that day. The setting sun on my face, encouraging the freckles Mamma complained of. The cheap fibers of the hand-me-down cardigan scratching at my neck. The smell of liquid sugar in the air and my head fuzzy because I wanted to sleep. I always wanted to sleep, even in those days. Somewhere in the distance, my mother calling out, “Gabriel, five minutes until dinner time,” because unlike the vineyard, I was important enough to name.

I suddenly stopped cold as I heard it. A blood-curdling shriek, animal-like, horrifying in its urgency. It was long and wounded, filled with desperation. It seemed to be coming from the monotone woods that lay in the back of our house. Another shriek followed and with it, Mamma calling me, so that the two sounds bonded and I have never heard my name since without the accompaniment of that desperate scream.

I fled toward the house, long white-gold curls of despised hair in my eyes, anything to silence that sound. I felt relief as the warm lights of home engulfed me, the smell of dinner. But as I reached the threshold, my heart twisted inside me, and through my own terror I was struck by the torture within the scream. I swallowed and built up my little-boy courage brick by brick, clenched my fists and charged toward the uproar.

Pushing back the inevitable guilt of disobeying Mamma, I ran. It was difficult to follow, that screaming. It sometimes drowned out and became a barrage of whimpers, varying in speed and volume, and I became disoriented. Then the creature would renew its strength and howl and I would race toward it, only to be lost again in the shadows of the woods, bare branches striking my face and arms.

The heavy pounding of steel-capped boots suddenly echoed all around, sending fresh waves of horror through me until they dissolved into nothingness. I could hear the boots breaking dry branches that had fallen to the earth with unnatural violence and purpose.

I shuddered, remembering that night had fallen. I was so far away from the farmhouse that I could no longer hear my mother’s calls. There was no light; all the stars and the moon had gone out. And suddenly, silence. I prayed not to hear those footsteps, muffled noises only but somehow ravenous and horrible, again.

I felt relief at the sound of water gushing over flat river stones, consoled that I could navigate my way home from there. In my immediate pleasure, I almost forgot the entire reason I was alone in the night, when I abruptly sensed a presence close by. Too close. It was wheezing intentionally softly, its hot breath brushing against my ankle. It was so silent by the water that I could hear its small heart thundering in its chest. I crouched down onto my haunches, and cautiously extended my hand, for it might have teeth. I’m not sure why I spoke then, but I am certain now that it was to reassure myself rather than it, “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” And my fingers brushed something soft like down. I pulled my hand back, a sticky liquid coating it. Blood.

I leaned over and blindly felt around the form of the creature. I detected two large wings, big enough for a crane or even a nighthawk, its body concealed and convulsing beneath a feathery expanse. Something long and sweaty slid over my arm and I shuddered. It felt too human for comfort. It was far heavier than I imagined, but I managed to pick it up with both arms, hooking my chin over it for extra security. I detected blood and goo oozing onto my chest from somewhere beneath its right wing. All the way back, on that moonless homebound trail, I whispered words of comfort to the bird and to myself.

“About time!” Mamma remarked, as I pushed the door open with my foot. Her wiry black hair was caught up in an unraveling chignon scarfed atop her head and her face was flushed with annoyance. “Where have you been? You shall have no supper tonight!”

Her complexion paled when she saw the bundle in my arms, the growing bloodstain on my chest and shoulder. She let out a cry and dashed over to me, and in the tangle of her hands and demands for information, the bird slipped out under me and landed on the floorboards with a dull thud.

And then I began to curse myself. I should have known this would set Mamma off.

I had always been aware of how the Orvietani pitied my father and I. They whispered about my Mamma’s condition behind cupped hands and over steaming cups of espresso. I saw that dreaded word
retard
mouthed at me from other children, and I felt ashamed. “Mamma can’t help it”, my father would say. “Something happened when she was young, a terrible shock.” But I always saw what others did: the way she could be so perfectly normal, like all the other women in town, and suddenly she would snap. Something would alarm her - a loud noise, a strange idea, a visual assault. And she would focus on the last noise she heard – a sentence, a song, a loud smash, and begin to stutter, imitating the noise over and over, louder and louder. She would fix her gaze on an unsuspecting person and stare at them while her head jerked slowly side to side, like an ill-fated bumper car. As she grew more agitated, her body and shoulders would start to quiver and all the while, the noises from her mouth rumbled on and on. The very worst and most frequent was when a near-accident would occur and someone would swear. Mamma would become fixated and Orvietani mouths would drop, children staring in awe as Mamma repeated
merdamerdamerdamerdamerdamerdamerda.
Their mothers and fathers would cover their ears and lead them home, shaking their heads at Mamma, as if the filth was voluntary. And Mamma’s eyes would fill with tears and horror while all that flowed from her mouth was
merdamerdamerdamerdamerdamerda.

But now Papa, his back bent from thirty years of hard labor, emerged from the washroom, drying his leathery hands with a rag and surveyed the sight before him, the creature on the floor.

“Oh, my darling boy, thank God you are all right.” Mamma had tears in her eyes now, and had taken to rubbing her palms over the bloodstain in my cardigan, in a vain attempt to erase it. Then the fifth finger of her right hand began to convulse, like it wanted nothing more than to leap away from the others, who might bully it because it was the smallest.

“Ah, but what is this?” came my father’s languid voice. And he discarded the rag on the table and stooped down to collect the bird. He held it to eye level and gazed at it quizzically. He lightly yet firmly extracted the wings, just a little, to see its face. “Oh,” he whispered, withdrawing suddenly. “God in heaven.”

“What is it, Celso?” asked Mamma, going to stand beside Papa. She stared at the thing for a moment. My heart went dead in my chest as I waited for her scream. I knew what the night had in store: her excitement, the yelling, the convulsing, the words. So instead of rushing to behold the creature like any ordinary child, I planted myself next to my mother and squeezed her hand tight. Please Zeus, I prayed, don’t let her start again.