The Surrendered (47 page)

“Please, Hector,” she said, fearfully gripping at the weather-worn face of the granite. Though it was only slightly canted she was certain she was about to slide off. Her mind was racing, desperate not to focus on the horizon. “Please climb back up. We still have many miles to go to Solferino. I won’t talk about you and Nicholas anymore. I’ll shut up, I swear. Let’s go now, all right? Please, Hector? I don’t like it up here…”

She started to cry, the sudden flood of which took her by surprise, for there was no calculation or aim behind it, no stratagem, just the involuntary release of someone who was genuinely spent. Her cheek lay against the warmed rock, this giant headstone. A marker for them both. She was going to witness him disappear, fall away from existence. But then he stood up and without the least regard for his precipitous position or the poor footing he simply turned and hauled himself up onto the ledge.

“Okay, now,” he said, his hand heavy on her back, “take it easy.”

“I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.”

“You’ve done nothing to me.”

“I have!”

“I’ll handle it.”

“It’s not about Nicholas!” she gasped. She was going to say more, to tell him everything, but she was coughing hard, just as she had begun to over the past few days, the one store of energy left to her, hacking violently enough that some blood was starting to come up, and he gathered her in his arms and held her up so she wouldn’t buck herself against the rock.

“What is it, then?” he murmured, his eyes wide but lit inside by a flicker of dread. “Is it about her?”

But she could not talk, could hardly breathe, and he kept patting her gently on the back, caressing her, and it was in this instant that she decided not to speak another word, retracting herself into the ever-slackening coil of her body. This pile of frayed rope. She shut her eyes, trying to fill her lungs, fill them again. He hoisted her up and she could feel the strength of him as he piggybacked her up through the trees. She would not open her eyes, fearing she might be sick. He lowered her into the pillow-strewn backseat of the car. He started the motor and rolled onto the road, heading again in the same direction.

The ride was smooth, which calmed her. He said he could stop at the next town and look for a doctor but she shook her head. There was no more time to pause. She could recall very little of the past thirty-six hours, could not even remember if she had said farewell to Nicholas. But she knew this: she was being borne on this swift raft, the taste of blood like that of an old coin on her tongue. Would she be allowed to cross over? Would her family be awaiting her? The Tanners? Her parents had not practiced any faith, nor had she, but it seemed reasonable that there should be simple questions now about all that one did in one’s life, and whether those commissions were on balance decent, humane. Whether she would do them again, or else they were regrettable enough to disavow, to try once more to forget.

HECTOR GLANCED in the rearview mirror every twenty or so kilometers to see if June was awake, but all he saw was her mouth hung open or shut depending on the depth of her slumber, her head lolling back to one side or the other. He was skeptical of her regret for whatever she had “done” to him, figuring she was characteristically angling to get her way, contriving to move him forward, yet her outburst had seemed as genuine as her physical misery, which he knew from both wartime and peacetime (if the hours at Smitty’s could ever count as the latter) was as good a truth serum as anything else. Had she told Dora something hurtful about him? Taunted her with the fact of their brief union, and the existence of Nicholas? She was definitely capable of that. He wanted to be angry with her and a flush of heat rose up in his neck but it wouldn’t build to rage, or anything else. What was there, really, to be concerned about now? It was just the two of them from here on in, a pair of souls in a barrel floating down the last stretch of the river, twirling in one of the quieter eddies before being drawn into the chute toward the falls.

In truth, he ought to be asking for June’s pardon, for that final night. His selfishness and need for Sylvie’s love had caused him to neglect his nightly duty of checking the stoves in the orphanage, and one of them had erupted into flames. His lame mode of apology to June was their sorry marriage and even sorrier tryst, which he should have known then would only lead to further difficulties. It was easy for him to imagine how she would have had an entirely different existence, had he simply stayed clear: a chance at a full and relatively benign adolescence; a decent family and husband; and then an enduring bond with Sylvie herself, who would be nearly seventy years old by now, certainly a doting grandmother, or great-aunt, to June’s children, who, in that reality, would never have dreamed of running away. But in the present reality, in this dwindling timeline, June had ended (by her choice or not?) back with him, pitiably dependent on a person who in the span of a single breath could decide to step away from the perch he’d sought in pure desperation just moments before.

So he felt at least right, if not righteous, for bringing Nick again to her for a final time. Back in Siena, he had met up with Bruno in the piazza. He told him how after talking to him in the café Nick had doubled back to the hotel to get there before him and had June sign over the traveler’s checks. Bruno nodded, not even asking what Hector wanted to do, and said he had an idea where they might find him: there were some clubs that were popular hangouts for students and younger revelers. In the hotel, June had risen and slept and risen again, Hector getting her another gelato before putting her down for the rest of the night with another heavy dose. He had begun drinking in the room, a four-pack of beer to fill his empty belly, but he wasn’t yet sated in the way he needed, which was the feeling of being completely sodden, like some corpse long suspended in the water. He was drinking because he wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t hesitate when he saw the young man again, so that he wouldn’t decide to let him go without leaning on him, maybe like any disappointed father; he wanted to eye the boy once more, too, offer a last word, but here his impulse was not to reform but rather to be the bearer of ill tidings, a malediction from the world.

The first club they tried was mostly empty and quiet, as it was still early, only eleven p.m. By midnight Bruno said they ought to try the other club, which was nearby. When they got there it was more crowded and smokier than the last, the dance floor spilling over with people, which kept him and Bruno from moving too far inside. They stood in one of the vaulted nooks near the entrance of the underground club. They got drinks and stood where those entering had to pass by to get to the bar. But after another hour Bruno shouted over the music that they should try another place and Hector agreed. He was finishing the last of his drink when Bruno tapped him.

It was Nicholas, striding in with Laura, the young woman from the gallery. Bruno stepped forward but Hector cuffed him and had them stand back in the shadows. Something made him want to observe the boy for just a few beats longer. Was there a certain smug gleam in his face? A wholly remorseless light? The couple looked contented, even happy, as though they had no great worries; or at least Nicholas did. He seemed taller, more upright than earlier, as if he were rigged inside with new girding-the prop of fresh funds. Hector could tell that Laura didn’t know a thing about it from the way she brightened when he kissed her, perhaps more deeply than he would have on another night, and as Nicholas ordered drinks for them and made a toast, Hector could figure this was the eclipse of her as far as Nicholas was concerned. He would be leaving her, along with everyone else.

At the side of the short bar a scuffle suddenly flared up, two men in brightly colored shirts pushing and taunting each other; they were from different
contrade
, by their shirts. The men tipsily grappled with each other, not punching or kicking, as if there was an acknowledged code of battle, rather clasping each other in a palsied, theatrical manner, like in a silent film. But they rolled back hard into Laura and made her spill her entire drink onto Nicholas; a large splotch bloomed darkly on his light-blue shirt and white linen pants. The
contrada
man was very short and built thickly and he held up his hands in clear apology, but Nicholas kept shouting at him, tugging to show him his soaked shirt, and the scene would have been over quickly enough had Nicholas not become instantly, unreasonably, furious; he even brusquely dismissed Laura’s attempt to blot his shirt as he accosted the man. Standing much taller, Nicholas hotly scolded him as he would a child, and in a lull in the music Hector could hear that he was doing so in English, though this time with a much sharper British accent, and though Hector didn’t know enough of the world to place it or give it a name he would have said it was a workingman’s tongue, what you’d hear dockside or in an alleyway bar.

This confused Hector; maybe Nicholas was an accomplished and elusive thief (this gleaned from the papers in Clines’s folder) but this openly volatile temper didn’t quite jibe, not to mention how sensitive and quiet and artistic June always said he was. He wasn’t someone who would strike a match in a place he shouldn’t. To his momentary credit he was impressively aggressive, enough that both
contrada
men and their respective mates were initially silent, slightly amazed that this lone foreigner would address them so; but then, soon enough, as Nicholas persisted, they pushed in around him with anger in their faces. This was a locals’ club, after all, and as locals’ clubs went, Hector could see from how the bartender and bouncers now stepped back without pause that this was a serious one, intramurally run, a place where a certain kind of visitor could get himself in trouble.

Laura evidently knew this and had stepped forward to get between him and the local men, pleading with all for calm, but from behind her Nicholas got right up in the faces of them, and they right at him, the shouting escalating into finger-pointing, nudging, hands raised and ready. Hector instinctively approached now, Bruno close by. Someone behind the
contrada
men shoved forward, jamming one of them hard against Laura and Nicholas, and it was then it began, perhaps because Nicholas saw Hector, while Bruno tugged Laura away as the first punches were thrown.

Hector approached to help, given that he was here to retrieve him, but in the mess of the moment, in the mayhem of fists and grunts and flying sweat and spit, a region in which most decent folk perceived only senseless blurs and flashes but was pacific and deep-etched for Hector, a life-sized diorama he could move about in at his own pace and pleasure, he decided that the extent of his help would come in the form of not allowing Nicholas to be maimed or blinded. He had no issue with the
contrada
boys, doing the same as they plenty of times at Smitty’s, and he only had to pull off one of them from doing uncalledfor damage, the others allowing him (this gentleman-appearing tourist) to move in and cover the offender from more kicks and blows. When they stopped, he hustled Nicholas out to the street. Bruno and Laura quickly trailed them. Nicholas, who was propped over his shoulder, tried to break from him and run but caught his foot on a raised cobble-stone and fell. He rose to get away but suddenly a very different impulse compelled Hector to trip him, sending him hard to the ground. He lay there prostrate, and instead of helping him up Hector pressed his knee on the back of his neck.

“What are you doing to him?” Laura shouted. “Why are you doing this? Get off of him!”

Hector didn’t answer her, but Nicholas did, surprising them all by telling her to go away. His face was swollen, his lip puffed and cut. His entire head of hair was sopping with sweat and he was breathing heavily. Laura was still yelling at Hector and not listening but Nicholas now screamed at her, cursing her, so cruelly and profanely dismissing her that one could believe he could have slit her throat in a slightly different moment. She stepped back, horrified, incredulous, perhaps waiting for him to explain himself or try to amend his words, and Bruno took it upon himself to take her by the arm and accompany her home. But she wouldn’t let him touch her and she began cursing Nicholas in Italian, stomping on his legs, trying to kick Nicholas in the groin, spitting at him, Hector collaterally receiving a part of her fury, which was no doubt trebled by what she had likely suspected of Nicholas from the beginning but had not heeded and was now wretchedly taking the full measure of. Finally Bruno was able to corral her and lead her away, though she kept her eye on him as they went, as if she were still unsure of what had occurred, wondering if Nicholas might still call for her, say everything was a mistake, that nothing was what it seemed.

“Get the hell off me,” Nicholas cried, getting up after they had gone. “Get off me!”

Hector did, pushing him forward with a firm hold on his shoulder.

“Where are we going?”

“To the hotel.”

“The traveler’s checks are already gone. I sold them, to pay my debts. I’ve got a couple of hundred from the cash you gave me, that’s all.”

“Give it over.”

“Those checks were mine, you know, she said they were mine.”

Hector punched him hard in the kidney, Nicholas buckling as if he’d been shot.

“What the fuck?” he groaned, down on one knee. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Here, here, just fucking well take it!” He threw Hector his wallet. “Now leave me alone.”

“You’re coming with me,” Hector said, lifting him up by the shirt collar.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he cried, struggling to keep up as they walked. “I’m not him. I’m not her son.”

“I know.”

“You want to know my name?”

“Isn’t it Paul?”

“That one’s fake. It’s Nick.”

“Nick?”

“That’s right. Isn’t that a laugh?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“But what for? She must know I’m not him.”