Via Dolorosa (18 page)

When they slept, they all dreamed of creeping silhouettes with machine gun profiles slipping silently along stone walls. Often before bed there was aggression amongst them, but not directed at each other.
Karuptka
said they were fooling around, that the whole goddamn United States was fooling around, and what was so complicated? “We move into Afghanistan and take over Afghanistan,” he would say, “run the goddamn place like a Jiffy Lube, turn it into goddamn Disney World, build a frigging monument to the Trade Center right in Kabul, right in the goddamn
middle of the city,
and then you tell our new neighbors if you give us any shit, any lip, we’re
comin
’ in and sucking your goddamn oil fields dry. That’s it.”

The world wasn’t as simple as some of the men made it sound, Nick knew, but sometimes the glory of their intentions was enough to keep up morale. Yet, now, he found he could not remember full conversations…just nonsensical blips, bits and pieces, floating eternal in his mind…

What’s up, old dog? Come for a visit?

How’s your foot?

Still there. Toe’s intact, too. Good thing. I like my toes.

I think I’ve dreamt of this place.

Oh, yeah?

At least…I think so. You know that feeling?

Like you’ve been somewhere before?

No, no—like you’re destined to go back again.

He remembered things, some things. Vaguely, he remembered someone talking about a whorehouse called the Leaky Dozen, and how they had all laughed at that. Or had that been the
punchline
to some joke he could no longer remember? Shit. Anyway, what did it matter now?

They were all dead.

—Chapter IX—

It was the first nice day since the storm, so they ate lunch outside by the pools.

“I won last night,” Emma said.

“Won what?”

“The contest. The limbo.”

“Is that right?”

“You should have seen how I bent,” she said. “I managed to get real close to the floor and pulled myself all the way back. I never once had to use my hands. It was me and one other woman left at the end and I thought she was going to win. I think I would have liked her to win. She was very pretty. And she could bend. She didn’t even come close to using her hands, and I had come close twice, but I never used my hands, either. But she went right after me and she couldn’t bend as far back, and she fell. She fell right on her back and she started to cry a little, I think, and then she started to laugh. Then everyone else laughed with her. I think some of them thought it was funny the way she fell, but I think most of them laughed to help keep her happy about it all. I think she might have been very drunk.”

“What did you win?”

“Limbo,” she said. “Just like I said.”

He shook his head. “No—I mean, what prize did you win? Didn’t you win a prize?”

“Oh,” she said, “yes.” And she suddenly seemed very upset.

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought you were asking what—” She turned away from him then, quickly, making the hair tucked behind her ears come loose. She looked out over the pools. Her lips took turns overlapping each other, running over each other. Small mouth. Nick thought he saw her eyes fill up with tears.

“What?” he said again.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

He looked away from her. He did not need to continue looking at her. Also, he did not need to ask her what was wrong. He knew what she was thinking. They had always known what each other was thinking; until the island, until the honeymoon, they had never misunderstood each other.

Until the misalliance,
Nick thought.

Emma laughed sharply. She swiped the heel of one hand alternately across both her eyes and turned back to him, startlingly refreshed.

“A parrot,” she said. She was suddenly a completely different person, determined not to be bested by her own emotions. Forced a smile; forced a look. “I won a parrot.”

“Seriously? A real parrot?”

“A bright red one. It was very big. It was in a big brass cage, too, the shape of a bell.”

“They gave you a parrot?”

“A red one.”

“Yes?”

“The reddest red you’ve ever seen.”

“Well where is it now?”

“I gave it to your friend the bell captain. I didn’t want to bring it into the room. It smelled very strongly and I didn’t want to bother you with the smell.”

“A parrot,” he said. “That’s something.”

“It certainly is.”

They were drinking demitasse and splitting a crumbly pie with fruity innards. The weather was warming up but the pools were still empty. Occasionally, a few hotel patrons would stumble out onto the patio, wander around aimlessly for several moments before realizing they did not want to remain outside in the warming, odd, humid air, then disappear back inside the hotel. Nick had counted four couples and one man, all alone in Bermuda shorts and knee socks with sandals, in the time he and Emma had been out here eating.

“Your painting went all right this morning?”

He lifted one shoulder, rolled it, and did not look her in the eye and did not verbally respond. He’d painted this morning—very early this morning—and the colors had all seemed foreign to him. Nothing made sense. And for the first time, he caught himself painting beyond the sketch—painting things that he had not planned, had not mapped out, had not drawn beforehand. Such was not the way. He found himself painting an enormous stone wall around the courtyard, and even before he completed it he knew it was very much out of place. It did not fit. Still, he painted it, and its painting consumed him. He painted the wall and allowed the wall, after some time, to dip down into a steep valley, not of green grass and cobblestone walkways, but of dehydrated desert dunes, camel-hued and corrugated with windswept ribs of sand. Almost in a state of catatonia, he had painted an oasis of desert right in the middle of the lush, green inland. He only stopped once his hand cramped up and he could paint no more.

“You’ve been quiet about it,” she said.

“About what?”

“The painting. The painting of the painting.”

“It’s just become a little hard.”

“I’m sorry.”

He pressed his lips together, said, “It’s nothing you did.”

Emma slid her eyes away, not knowing where to let them settle. Finally, she brought them down to her plate. “The dessert is very good,” Emma said, tapping her fork against the plate.

“Sure.”

She said, “Did you hear about those Chinese divers that drowned over in England?”

“No,” he said.

“There were about seventeen of them, I think. They were diving for cockles, working for a pound a day. Not a pound of cockles, I mean,” she clarified, “but, like, a British pound. You know—money.”

She was trying very hard, Nick could tell.

“I understand,” he said.

“Is that cheap?”

“What? A pound? It’s not a lot of money, no.”

“How much is it in dollars?”

“Not sure,” he said. “Maybe like two.”

“Two dollars?”

“I think so.”

“That’s it? That’s not very much at all.”

“It’s not,” he agreed.

“But you’ve never been to England.”

“That’s right.”

“So then how do you know about the pounds and the dollars?”

“I must have read about it somewhere, I guess.”

“I don’t even know what cockles are,” Emma said.

“Shellfish,” he told her.

“Really? Is that all? I thought it was…I don’t know…something better. To die for, I mean. To risk your life like that, to die for it like that, I would think that it would be for something worthwhile.”

“Just shellfish.”

He could tell she did not want to continue talking about the seventeen dead Chinese divers, and he did not want to hear anything more about them, either, but there seemed some ounce of safety in continuing to talk about them.

Emma said, “Well, they were out collecting cockles, and then it got too late in the day and the tide came in and they all drowned. I think they were on a sandbar off the coast. I think they had walked to the sandbar earlier in the day, when the water between the sandbar and the coast was shallow enough for them to walk it. But when the tide came in—and maybe they had lost track of time—but when the tide came in, the sandbar was submerged and they could not walk back and it was too far to swim, and so they all drowned.” Her eyes were suddenly heavy on him. “You didn’t hear about that, Nick? Those Chinese divers?”

Again, he told her no.

“It’s been on the news all morning, and it was even in the newspapers. I put the newspaper on the nightstand for you this morning. Did you see it?”

“Yes. But I didn’t read it.”

“Oh,” she said. “Cockles. Cockle-shells.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Imagine,” she said, “dying over shellfish.”

“Yes.”

“The damn waiter,” she said abruptly, looking around the patio. They were still the only two souls in existence. “Do you want more demitasse?”

“Do you?”

“I think so. I’ll get some.”

She stood and Nick watched her walk across the patio. He saw her reflection move swiftly across the surface of the pools before she vanished inside the hotel. The way she walked summoned the image of her from when they had first started seeing each other—back before his deployment when they had been in the early stages of falling in love. He had taught her to drive the Impala through a wooded Pennsylvania back-road. He had anticipated hesitance and fearfulness on her part, but she had taken to the vehicle quickly and adeptly, surprising them both. She took them down the wooded back-road and into an open dirt field. She’d asked if it mattered that the dirt got on the chrome and the dust got into the car, and that had made him laugh. No, he had told her, it didn’t matter. And he’d meant it. Then, at that moment, at that time, she was the only thing that mattered. Her hair had been longer then, and with the windows down it streamed about her face. Dust had made her skin bronze. He remembered watching her while she drove, and knowing so soon that he loved her, and how goddamn lucky was he that he loved her? And how goddamn lucky was he that she might
some day
love him back? Already in his mid-twenties, he had been in love twice before, or so he had duped himself into believing at the time. Fleeting, universal things. But in the face of this new love, this power, stupid in the face of its complexity and weakened by the tidal wave of it, he had become uncertain as to what it all had been in the past. Suddenly and from nowhere he did not understand anything that came before her. Ever. What was true? What was wrong? Could anyone be certain about anything? Abrupt as a kick to the shin, this young woman had, from nothing, made him suddenly and unceremoniously doubt his own certainty concerning all he had been previously so sure about. What was certainty? Nothing—it was nothing. And maybe that was the way it was intended to be. He didn’t know. He was a fool, really—a child. What did he know? Life was a country with many hills.