Читать книгу Montesereno - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 14

The purr of the running engine awakened Darby before his eye lids deigned to open. Rolling to one side, he rubbed them sleepily; then glanced at the clock. Six a.m. He sat up, yawned, slipped into his robe, and opened the cottage’s door. The taillights of Tunstan’s Mercedes glowed red as the car slipped out of sight around the Villa. Moments later, it re-emerged on the opposite side of the house. He watched as it headed up the lane. Once past the gates, the silvery vehicle sank out of view. So began his day.

* * *

“Oh, I love it!” Stephanie exclaimed as she held the canvas in her hands. “He’s such a nice man! Isn’t it beautiful?”

“That you like it, would please him.”

“I do! All night I kept thinking about his girlfriend and how beautiful Spain must be.” She set the painting beneath a dining room window before seating herself. She glanced about, then whispered: “Did you see those men last night? Two of them stayed here. They’re in a suite at the end of the hall. I heard Mrs. Martin come out of her room in the night. They’re two rooms down from me. Someone else came out. I could hear Mr. Martin’s voice. He was upset. I fell back to sleep. I like him. I wish I were older and he was single.”

“Stephanie, there’s enough going on around here without that. OK?”

“You don’t have to be so bossy! You have a mean voice sometimes. You know that?”

“Not intentionally mean. If so, I got it from monitoring certain types, especially during exams. They’d crimp cheat-notes inside their belts. They’d cough as they brought up their hands. Bad boys! There are a lot of them out there, Stephanie.”

“I know,” she said with a flirtatious smile. “Who are those men, anyway? Mr. Wagner’s supposed to tell us.”

“Firefighters, I believe. On their way to Florida or somewhere.”

“I don’t believe that. That one in the cowboy boots is cute.”

“Stephanie, that’s enough! You’ve got to get back to school before you slip down the drain.”

“I know! It’s hard to be upbeat when you’re sad.”

“There are some good argument patterns that can improve writing, you know? They’d make an admissions committee think twice before rejecting a candidate. Might even result in a callback interview. You game?”

“If you promise to be sweet! Why not?” a sparkle of hope gleamed in her eyes. “Yeah! You’re on!”

“First thing, once it warms up. We’ll sit in the living room or out in the Garden.”

* * *

After breakfast, Darby returned to the cottage. Neither the Martins, nor Donaldson and his witness had come down for prima colazione or le petit déjeuner. He guessed Linda would have to provide room service. She’d probably become accustomed to many mood swings, based on what little he had already observed. Darby looked about for some pads and pens in case Stephanie should follow through. He turned over a multiple slate of ideas for starters. Best to let her choose her own.

He stirred the embers in the fireplace, threw on a new log, and sat in the chair with a sigh. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

He recognized his classroom. Students were staring at him. He opened his folder, but where was his lecture? Not a single sheet, note, or memo lay in the folder. What class was he in, anyway? Logic? Metaphysics? What day was it? Monday or Tuesday? Had he shown up at the wrong hall? The students looked familiar. O God! He had forgotten their test scores again. Nor had he graded their papers in weeks. What would he do if the Dean found out? He was already in enough hot water.

The bed! Look under your bed? Yes, the bed. Darby got down on his knees, threw up the bed’s coverlet, and pulled out a long plastic storage tub. Bundles of dusty ungraded papers lay in rubber-band-wrapped clumps. His heart sank! Someone was at the door. Quickly he slid the tub back under the bed and dropped the coverlet. Just in time, too. They were still knocking.

Darby woke up with a bolt. A subtle waft of perfume tingled the hairs in his nostrils. Its sillage would have awakened anyone. He opened his eyes. There stood Celeste! His neck felt cold and clammy, his face hot. “I must have been dreaming.”

“How about snoring!” she bent forward and kissed his cheek. “But just lightly! Wish I had been in the dream with you.” A far-off sadness flashed briefly across her eyes, then crept softly into her mouth. “We’re leaving now. Just wanted to say good-bye!”

Darby sat up, wiped the corners of his lips, and rose to his feet. She embraced him and kissed his mouth, quickly but hard. “I’ll be back! Take care of yourself,” she looked away. She stepped back and closed the door quietly behind her. Darby could hear her sharp heels on the pavement stones. The Lexus cranked up and drove off. The delicate scent of her perfume still lingered in the room.

Darby expelled a slow breath, slipped into his woolen jacket, and left the cottage. Halfway through the orchard he heard men’s voices along the road. He peered through the apple trees’ limbs, past the property’s fence and dried vines. Donaldson and Dominetti were strolling along. They appeared to be returning from the overlook. They seemed not to notice Darby. Dominetti was gesturing with his hands, while the marshal was listening.

At the overlook, Darby stared out across the bulky mountains. The foliage would soon be gone. A few hickories and oaks retained a smattering of citrus-brown leaves. So too, scarlet bunches of sumac emblazoned the slopes below. A cold wind stung his ears; a russet colored hawk spread its wings and cried overhead. The lonesome shriek pierced Darby’s soul.

Back at the Villa, Darby entered the living room in search of Stephanie. If she wouldn’t come to him, perhaps he should go to her.

Hettie, Garnett’s housekeeper, called to him as he shut the door. “Well, well, if it ain’t Mr. High-n-Mighty hisself! I figured Mr. Wilson would call on you. You ain’t still teachin’, are you?” She paused with dust cloth in hand to rest beside an end table. The tiny woman had bunched her red hair up in a bun. Her forearms were splotched with bruises and age-spots. The roots of her hair were turning gray. “I ain’t broke nothin’ yet,” she fretted. “I’d rather it’d be you than some shrink. They ain’t worth the prescriptions they scribble. Been to one and that’s all. He didn’t care a hoot for me or Curly. We was just white trash. Poor Curly’s losin’ it, Doc. He cain’t remember half the time who I am. He’s got dementia bad. He’s out there right now helping Jon Paul rig up that rusty tractor that ought-a been trashed years ago. Well! How are you?”

“Hettie, I’m alive, I suppose. You haven’t changed a bit. It’s good to be back. You look as fit as a fiddle.”

“Well, hell, I ought to be! I don’t do nothin’ but slave around and cook for that worthless husband of mine,” her face lit up with a frown. “Lord, I’d be lost without him. What cha lookin’ for? I ain’t never seen you when you wasn’t lookin’ for somethin’.”

“Stephanie. The young girl!”

“That one? With the sad eyes? She’s out there with Curly and Jon Paul. Like she’s gonna help ’em or something. Poor child.”

“Hettie, you’d make a good shrink yourself. Thanks for telling me.”

Once outside, Darby found Stephanie easily enough. The coughing, chugging, ear-popping sounds of the tractor’s exhaust gave their presence away. The sinewy, gnarled man next to her smiled as Darby approached. His brown brogans had long since lost their color, and the cuffs of his jeans had disintegrated into scruffy pale threads. Gray hairs poked from his ears, alongside a mole near his left chin.

“She’s doin’ right fair,” Curly commented as he looked up at Darby. “How’s yerself?” he asked. “We ain’t seen you in quite a while.”

“They’re letting me drive,” Stephanie exclaimed.

“Be careful!” Curly warned. “Don’t let up on that clutch so fast.”

Suddenly the tractor jolted as it rocked unwieldy forward. Stephanie gripped the steering wheel firmly and guided the huge tractor slowly toward the orchard, pocketed with its intermittent patches of grass.

So much for delving into critical thinking! Darby mused. If the girl were happy, wasn’t that therapy enough?

Following lunch, Darby returned to the cottage. He selected a few books to browse, namely, Plotinus’ Enneads and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and searched for the sunniest spot he could find in the Garden. He adjusted one of its metal chairs to face the sun, sank back, and, with closed eyes, raised his visage toward the orb’s warm rays. After indulging himself, he turned his attention to the Enneads. He hadn’t read the Neo-Platonist’s chapter “On Beauty” since assigning it last semester. Somehow the autumnal colors and Tunstan’s painting had reawakened an aesthetic undercurrent that wished to surface. He turned the pages slowly, noting the Greek text on the even-numbered pages and the English translation on the odd. The world of Neo-Platonism came back to him with nostalgia. The ascent of the soul from the material to the intellectual, and thence to the ideal, the good, and God, struck him as inconceivable anymore—especially in light of the immense intellectual distances that separated the modern era from the classical age.

What then is our way of escape, and how shall we find it? We shall put out to sea as Odysseus did, from the witch Circe . . . not content to stay though delighted by the eyes and the beauty of sense . . . For one must come to the sight with a seeing power made akin and like to what is seen . . . You must become first [of] all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and beauty. First the soul will come in its ascent to intellect and there will know the Forms—all beautiful—and will affirm that these, the Ideas, are beauty. [For] that which is beyond we call the nature of the Good, which holds beauty as a screen.2

Darby closed the book and stared at the aurora about the sun’s outermost sheen. Its blinding glow forced him to look away. Slowly his eyes readjusted to the light his retinas allowed him to see.

While still basking in his contemplative shell, the sweet notes of Pavarotti’s voice emanated from the French doors of the Villa. Bemused, Darby turned to see what was happening. Amid the majestic urns, Signore Dominetti had seated himself in the sun, to listen, no doubt, to the tenor’s arias. The CD player had been turned up full blast. Just inside the door, sat Donaldson, vigilant, yet relaxed. Darby listened to the aria being sung. It was Aquinas’ Panis Angelicus, written for the Mass in the thirteenth century. It was all he could do to keep from humming it under his breath.

Panis angelicus

Fit panis hominum.

Should he speak to the old man, or let him imbibe his sacrament of loneliness? After several interludes, the gray-headed don rose and walked out toward Darby. “May I sit with you?” he asked. “One can only take so much opera! Sì?”

“My honor, sir!” he replied, as he stood up to shake his hand.

The two reseated themselves. Dominetti spoke first. “My father, he loved music. The arias of the church. Our uncle, the priest, raised us to cherish them. You know, we are a dying breed. This trial coming up, we’re one of the last families to go. The Russians and Chinese have moved in. The Ukrainians, they are the thieves. Now it is the Internet and politicians. The great families are gone.

“You know, with us, it was a way of life. Sì, crime; lots of crime. But for a reason. You are a priest, no? A professor, too? Yes. You were? Si? So Linda has told me.”

“Yes. Both at one time, or other,” he smiled.

“Well, the priest I like,” he half-crossed himself. “Did you ever study Sicilian culture? Huh? Yes, or no!”

“Not in the way you’re asking. No!”

“Well let me tell you. It was our way of life. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, someone had to take charge. Someone had to expend a little muscle. Even in its last days, there were grandees, dons even then. They owned what estates remained. Gathered what armies they could. Yes, imposed themselves, determined what ports were open, who sailed what and where, and what fees collected. Bribes, yes! That’s how it worked. From the lowest shops in villages to the highest signores in towns, even to the papas, the grandees skimmed off profits. You moved nowhere without their will. As Italians, we inherited all that. No?”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s always been that way. Sì? Our first family to come over brought it with them. New York was hard. Families had to band together, protect themselves; take a little here, a little there, bribe the police, the judges and bailiffs, whatever. You wanna a job? Only the don could get it for you. Your sons needed shoes, then the shoemaker knew he had to provide. Simple, but it worked. I grew up that way.

“My father, he owned the butcher shop in our vincinanza, our neighborhood. It was a front. Sure, we had to pay for the slaughtered cows and pigs, but we made the best sausages in town. Mama made pasta! Myself—my brothers and sisters—we cleaned up; we had our chores to do. I was always big, big hands, you see,” he clenched them. “It became time for me to collect the rents, you know. I was smart. Once I beat up three men, bigger than me. No one held back after that. But change was coming. Unions, the dockworkers, cabbies, drugs, police, bookies, racketeering big time. I moved into prostitution and strip clubs; kept the cops bribed. They was the easiest to corrupt. They had families, ya know, and mouths to feed. Plus, they had grown up with us in the streets. But you know the rest. We got into politics, bribing senators and majors, paying them off big. My first murder involved using these,” he held up his hands. “I was sent out to strangle a capo. Yeah, he had insulted a neighbor’s sister-in-law. I was good at it. I left no fingerprints behind. I became my father’s negotiator,” he smiled. “No one ever double-crossed us. My father was proud. Then, another family moved in. Killed a carload of cousins. We struck back, but only through the police. The judge was one of ours. All of them got life! Things settled down.” He glanced uneasily toward Darby. “You know what I mean?”

Darby nodded in concurrence.

“We did a lot of good, especially my father. The family honored him. On feast days and saints’ masses, people in the Bronx brought gifts to us and laid them in front of my father. At every wedding and funeral, he was seated first, down front, along with my mother, before the service could begin. But an uncle became jealous. He wanted to be the don. He undermined my father’s business, set up a rival gang, and murdered some of our family. Then, the worst happened,” Dominetti paused. His voice turned hoarse, barely audible. Tears welled in his eyes. “They came to me with a threat. I was to leave the family, or they’d kill my father, along with my mother and sisters. My wife was already dead, my only son, in college—now a lawyer. I refused to budge. We rallied and fought back, tried to regain what we could: brothels, unions, casinos, retirement funds, judges, you name it. I knew too much. They knew it too. They put out a contract on my father. Two months later they killed him, right in front of our shop. My mother got away, but not my sisters. That’s when I went to the cops, to the DA. ‘Hey! I’ll make you a deal.’ They knew who I was. They showed me their file. ‘OK!’ they said. And, so, I’m here. Dead meat,” he smiled. “Cowboy there,” he motioned over his shoulder. “For all I know, they’ve bought him off, too. Why not have a glass of wine with me! I’d appreciate it.”

“Of course! The Villa’s got quite a cellar. But what a story! Here, let me show you the way. Come on.”

They went by way of the kitchen to find Jon Paul and Linda. “Good!” said Dominetti. “After this, I’ll bring a bottle of my own down for supper.” All four of them descended the steps to the cellar.

“Hey, whut’s goin’ on here?” asked Curly. He’d crept down in the basement to check on the pipes. “Ain’t you got no respect for me or Hettie?” he coughed with a smile.

“Tell her to come on down,” Jon Paul motioned. “But, remember, one of you has to drive home.”

“Huh!” snorted Curly. “Since when’s bein’ sober got anything to do with drivin’?” He held out a cup from a rack near the wine, grinned, and wiped his lips in anticipation.

Within minutes, Hettie joined them. Darby took a long drought and excused himself to search for Stephanie.

He found her sitting on the front steps of the Villa in its cold shadows. “It’s warmer in the back, you know,” he nodded. “Kind of cold here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t feel like basking in the sun,” she said, as she glanced up. “I don’t want to go home. Grandmother’s coming in the morning,” she looked out despondently across the drive. “I don’t deserve better, I guess. I’ll probably end up being a waitress somewhere, if I don’t get off my butt. I know it’s my fault. That’s what everybody tells me. ‘Stephie, you have to try harder.’ Like I’m not trying all I can. I can’t focus like the rest. I’m the butt of everybody’s jokes. They think I’m weird, different, some kind of kook. But I’m just me. Just Stephanie Gay, shy, like any other kid from a broken home—not that Grandmother doesn’t try. There’s just no way she can understand. Motivation’s not my thing. The Zoloft I’m on doesn’t work. I wish I were dead or had never been born. You ever feel that way?” she forced herself to smile.

Darby reached out and clasped her hands. “Come on,” he pulled her up. “Let’s walk up the road. I’m a sun person, you know. In another twenty years, I’ll be dead, or lying somewhere in a cold grave. Eternity’s a long time. Why not enjoy the sun while we can?”

“You’re right! I wish my daddy was here! Or someone to be proud of me. Girls laugh about their dads, how silly and clueless they are, but their eyes light up when they talk like that. Come!” she pulled on his hand. “I want to show you where I mowed. You’ll like it!”

Darby followed her to the orchard. She had concentrated on the area under the trees and about their grassy perimeter. In the process, she had created an oval design, lending a touch of grace under the gnarled limbs of the knobby trees. “Not bad for a waitress!” he teased. “Maybe you should be a cosmetologist!”

“No! I’m going to be a painter, a writer, or scholar. I’m gonna work my butt off. Charleston’s Ashley College’s not the only place I can go. You’ll see.”

“I’ve never doubted it. Not for an instant! Let’s eat an apple, if we can find one, and gather a few to throw off the cliff.”

“I like that! I really do.”

Soon they had collected an armful each. They ran happily through the orchard toward the overlook. “Here’s to you, Admissions Committee!” Darby hollered, as he lobbed one far out and over the face of the cliff. They waited to hear it splat, but the bottom was too far below to accommodate their hope. “Ah! That’s life!” Darby laughed, as Stephanie hurled one farther out than his.

“Look at it sail!” she said.

Far better to throw apples off a cliff than oneself, he thought, as he cast a worried but buoyant eye toward the girl!

2. Plotinus. Ennead. I. 6.