Hill Towns (33 page)

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Joe shouted gen-ially, rising from his seat. “Sit ye doon, lasses and laddies.

Name your poison.”

H
E CAUGHT A COLD. OF COURSE HE DID. JOE, WHO PLAYS tennis on the Mountain in January without his warm-up suit, who dashes all over the Trinity campus during cold spring rains in a sodden, flapping gown without an umbrella, caught a virulent cold from the waters of the Canal Grande and was very sick from it and other things all the way to, and nearly through, Florence. I was quite worried about him for a while, and I think the doctor Ada Forrest knew in Florence, who did indeed come to the hotel, was too.

“The water of Venice is bad,” he said, and gave Joe injections for many things, among them hepatitis, tetanus, and something “for the
febbre
…the fever.”

I heard the coughing start the night before we left, a dry, tight sound that I recognized, with dread, from his infrequent respiratory illnesses and Lacey’s frequent childhood ones. I got up and gave him aspirin and found him shivering and turned off the overhead fan. As I was getting back into bed, he said from beneath the muffling

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covers, “Could you close the windows? The wind hurts my skin.”

I lay there for the rest of the night, running sweat and thinking that if we had gone back to the hotel after dinner and summoned a doctor, as Ada and I had wanted to do, instead of going on to Harry’s Bar with Sam and the Cardigans, as Joe had insisted upon, we might have forestalled some of what I knew lay ahead. Joe seldom gets sick, but when he does, it is a baroque sickness, florid and full-blown.

If he had had medication and a long night’s rest, instead of many Bellinis and a great deal of food and many brandies after that, long into the night, we might have been spared this. But somehow I did not really believe it. The bile that boiled in Joe that night was as much the byproduct of his crushed and humiliated spirit as of the canal water. It was going to come out no matter what. He spent his last night in Venice trying to atone, with drinks and food and cleverness, for the foolishness that had plunged him into the water. And he was brilliantly funny and handsome and utterly charming to Lord and Lady Cardigan alike. I truly believe that by the time we finally parted in the Piazza San Marco they had quite forgotten the mishap, and he had forgiven them for witnessing it.

I did not think he would ever forgive the rest of us. Especially Sam. Not for laughing—I could hear that damned braying laugh underwater—and not for rescuing him.

I called Ada Forrest early the next morning and told her he was ill and I thought we should get a doctor.

“I’ll be right there,” she said, and hung up before I could dissuade her. Joe still slept heavily, tossing and coughing, wet with sweat but shivering. I ordered coffee and was sitting at the desk, sipping it and trying to think HILL TOWNS / 275

what to do, when she tapped softly at the door. I let her in, tiptoeing so he would not waken, and she put her finger to her lips and went silently over to the bed and looked down at him. As if he sensed her presence there, he started and woke.

“Not too good, hmmm?” she said, putting her long fingers on his forehead.

“Not too bad,” he said, struggling to sit up. “Christ, I must look like ten miles of bad road. What are you doing here, Ada? Have I died? Is this heaven?”

“A long way from that,” she said, smiling. “You have a dreadful cold. We’re thinking about getting a doctor for you and maybe staying over another day. It’ll be a lot easier traveling tomorrow when you feel better.”

“I don’t want to stay in Venice,” he said fretfully. “I want to get out of this damned…miasma…and get up into the hills. Do you know any doctors here?”

“No, but the Europa will know a good one. I’m sure he would come.”

“Absolutely not,” Joe said, getting up out of bed and stumping on tottering legs into the bathroom. He slammed the door, but we could hear him clearly. “I’m going to Florence this morning whether anybody else does or not.”

She rolled her pale eyes theatrically at me, one woman to another, a testament to the monumental and eternal obstinacy of men. It was a comforting gesture, for some reason, and I grinned, even though I was very worried and annoyed at his pigheadedness. I was annoyed at her too, obscurely, even while I was grateful. If she had not come so early, Joe would have finally let me talk him into staying in bed and having a doctor. I knew he would. He was grandstanding for Ada Forrest.

I wondered if she got up early to put on her makeup 276 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

or simply slept in it. Even at this hour, after little sleep, she looked flawlessly put together and polished, silvery hair sleeked straight back and lacquered, red mouth fresh, crisp white shirt tucked into linen pants, soft Italian flats on her narrow feet. She was perfectly dressed for a day of motor travel. She’s got a ticket to ride, does Ada, I thought.

“Your wish is our command,” she called to Joe through the bathroom door.

And so we set out for Florence, the six of us and Yolanda Whitney, in a caravan of two cars, pinned to the flat, straight road by the relentless sun of the Veneto, buffeted all the way by the sirocco out of Africa. The murder wind.

Ada arranged us.

“There must be someone who knows the road in each car,”

she said, as the Europa and Regina’s launch wallowed along the Grand Canal toward the Hertz agency at the station. Joe sat dumbly, his face blank and thick with misery, on the back bench seat next to Colin, whose foot was buffered with pillows. Sam half stood, half sat, his face under the hat brim turned toward the beautiful stained palazzos we passed. He said little; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Gone away inside himself again. This heaving procession of illness and mayhem must be overwhelming to him. He had thought to come with us simply to relax and paint. What a great bother we’ve been to the Forrests, I thought bleakly.

“I will go with Colin and Maria in the station wagon, and Joe will come with us,” Ada said. “That way there will be room for Colin and Joe both to stretch out, and Maria and I can take turns with the car. I can dose the patients too.”

She smiled. “I have the first-aid kit.

HILL TOWNS / 277

“Sam will go with Yolie and Cat,” she went on. “He’s a terrible driver, but he knows the roads like the back of his hand, and he’s a formidable presence, just in case.”

She smiled at him. He gave her a slight, mocking bow.

“I ordered box lunches for us because there’s really not a decent place to eat between here and Florence. We can stop somewhere and picnic. We’ll need to stretch, anyway. They look wonderful; cold chicken and brioches, and cheeses and a little salad, and lots of wine.”

“You think of everything,” Maria said. “What would we have done without you on this trip?”

She looked as if she had not slept in days. When had she lost so much weight? I thought she and Colin both looked as if they were dwindling away. The hills, I thought. We need to get up into the hills. The wind blew and blew. It did not seem to cool this morning as it had done the afternoon before. It parched you, tightened your face into a mask, picked at your hair with its fingers, sang in your ears. A dry sirocco, Sam had said when we boarded the launch. No rain in it.

“Thank God for that,” I said.

But by noon I would have welcomed the rain. Our battered Opel compact had no air-conditioning, and the wind that buffeted us through the open windows was as hot as the breath of a blast furnace. Moreover, the car’s radio fell out on the feet of the passenger in front whenever the glove compartment was opened, dangling by red plastic wires, and there was a rhythmic grinding deep in the car’s bowels that spoke of hopeless stalling in some lunar sun-parched mountain pass farther on. The glare from the road was blinding, and though we were not yet on the Autostrada, cars whipped by us on

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the left at such high speeds that they left the Opel rocking in their wake. Yolanda drove steadily and well, but she did not talk much, and Sam, in the back seat, was fathoms deep in his sketchbook. I could hear the furious scribble, mile after mile. Once, when I looked back to say something to him, he was so utterly absorbed that I turned back without opening my mouth. Sweat ran down his face and his shirt was wet, but I didn’t think he noticed. I wondered what he was sketching. Not, surely, the back of my head. Ahead of us, the neat silver-blue station wagon swam steadily on, wavering like a minnow in the undulations of heat from the road.

Hot. Dear God, it was hot!

We moved onto the Autostrada. The Veneto, the flat, humid plain that is Venice’s home region, is cupped loosely between the Italian Alps and the Appenines. On a clear day I suppose it is possible to see both ranges; Yolie says so. But on this day we could make out only the Appenines, seemingly so far away as to be unattainable, lying cloudlike on the southern horizon in a strange, colorless, opaque radiance. I spent a long time staring at them, wondering why they were so hard to see. The immediate landscape off A13, the Autostrada, was bleached in pale sun. But all around us, the horizon was nebulous, ghostlike, wavering. Presently Yolie noticed my puzzlement and said, “The
afa
. Back home we call it smog. We’re in a bowl; nothing much gets out. You’ve got exhaust fumes, all the factories and chicken processing plants, all the insecticides, everybody’s b.o. and garlic breath…it’s all here. It can’t go anywhere. Add the humidity to it and it’s like living on Three Mile Island. I wouldn’t live in the Veneto for a million dollars. But on the other side of the mountains it’ll be cool and clear as a bell.”

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I found my breath sticking in my chest for a time after that, but soon even the impulse to breathe shallowly faded, and I laid my head back against the seat and wiped sweat off my face and neck and looked at the mountains. Please, I thought dully, over and over. Please. Let us get to the mountains.

Just let us get there….

Just outside Ferrara, Ada flashed her turn light and gestured toward a wide place on the freeway verge, where a clump of willows spoke of water of some sort and there was what I took to be a rest area. One or two other cars were parked near it, but at first I saw no people. There seemed to be shade, though. Yolanda pulled in behind the station wagon and we got out stiffly into the monstrous heat, to have our lunch.

There was water, a small fetid trickle of it in a concrete drainage ditch, but it was enough to spawn a canopy of sheltering willows, and under these, along the banks, tufts of grass struggled to grow in hard-packed earth. Down at one end of the area a few picnic tables were occupied by families, and there were wire trash containers, largely ignored, set about, and a bunkerlike concrete structure labeled GABINETTI. Ada indicated a place at the other end, with no tables but deeper shade and a thicker growth of grass, and she and Maria and Sam set about unloading hampers and a cooler and blankets and a picnic cloth. I would not have been surprised to see flowers in a Venetian glass vase, but none appeared. Yolanda spread the road map out on the steaming hood of the Opel, and I went to see about Joe.

He lay stretched out on the back seat of the wagon, his head resting on a small traveling pillow, covered lightly with one of Ada’s beautiful shawls. The wagon was air-conditioned, and the lingering chill of it puckered my wet skin.

Joe’s eyes were shut, but he opened 280 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

them when I opened the back door. Despite the chill, his face was flushed, and when I laid my hand on his forehead it was damp and hot. The crease of his neck was damp, too.

He was shivering slightly.

“Hey,” he croaked. “Are we there?”

“No. Lunch stop. Want some cold chicken and wine?”

“Christ, no. Nothing. Except maybe some Pellegrino over ice. Ada’s got some of both. How far are we? I’ve got to get to a doctor. This feels like more than a cold.”

“Not too far.” But I knew we had many miles to go yet, hours. “Let me bring you just a little something,” I said. “You haven’t eaten since last night. That can’t help. And I have some aspirin in my purse—”

“No. I don’t want anything. Ada’s got some stuff that makes me feel a little better. Would you get her for me?”

“Joe, I can—”

“Cat, don’t hover,
please
. I can’t handle it. Would you just call Ada?”

I turned and walked away, shutting the door carefully behind me. My face burned, and there was a hard, painful lump in my throat.

“Joe would like to see you,” I said to Ada Forrest. “He wants some more of whatever you’re giving him, and some mineral water over ice. I think he looks awful. I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t try to find a doctor somewhere. What’s the next big town, Bologna?”

She got up smoothly from the grass where she was kneeling, setting out lunches and wine.

“Oh, he’ll be fine until we get into Florence,” she said. “I’m giving him antibiotics along with aspirin. It might not hurt to sponge him off a little with ice water, though. I’ll be right back.”

“Ada,” I said, “I appreciate it, but I can sponge him HILL TOWNS / 281

off. You go ahead and give him your magic bullet, but after that I will sponge him off.”

She smiled and inclined her head.

“There’s a clean washcloth in that plastic bag inside the cooler,” she said. “And some ice water in the thermos. I’ll be back in a minute.”

And she went off across the matted ghost of grass, lithe and silent-footed in her soft moccasins, her back straight and her shirt unsplotched. I stared at the earth, embarrassment humming in my ears. I had sounded like a jealous fishwife.

Maria and Colin and Yolanda looked at one another and then away. Sam stuck a lazy finger into his glass and flicked a spray of cold white wine at me. It felt wonderful on my hot face.

“Come sit down and leave the succoring to the Angel of Mercy,” he said, grinning evilly. “She’s in seventh heaven and he’s plumb out of it. Everybody wins.”

“He looks pretty sick to me,” I said, as neutrally as I could.