The Bay of Foxes: A Novel Page 12

  He is drawn back into her bedroom. He switches on the bedside lamp and stares at the empty bed with its bright embroidered counterpane. He opens up her closet, pulls out certain garments he has seen her wear, and throws them on the bed. He tries on the ones she wore that he admired the most: a velvet jacket in a deep midnight blue, with a seahorse pin in diamonds on the lapel, a pair of black tailored pants, crocodile shoes in black with little tassels. He stands erect before the mirror in her bathroom. He angles a maroon brimmed hat rakishly, as M. once did, and smiles at his reflection, with a glimmer of his old arrogance in his large eyes. He places a Gitane in her tortoiseshell cigarette holder, draws in the smoke, and puffs it at his reflection in the mirror. He says to himself in her hoarse voice, “Take anything you want, darling. It’s all yours now.”

  “Beautiful,” he says. “You look beautiful!” and he gives himself a kiss in the mirror.

  As night falls, he pours himself a stiff vodka and tonic, drinks it stretched out luxuriously in her armchair, looking over the beautiful bay in the moonlight. He sits at the grand piano in the living room and plays until late that night, playing her favorite pieces, the Debussy she loved. “I’m playing this for you, M.,” he says.

  XXVI

  HE AWAKES WITH A HEADACHE, HIS MOUTH DRY, BUT HE DRAGS himself from his bed. He must maintain the same rhythm to his days. He must not take to his bed. He runs barefoot as usual down to the Piccolo Pevero. He goes on through the calm, sheltered area with its low shrubs and white sand, over the hill to the next beach, panting and hot, the sweat running down his back, but he cannot plunge back in the water. He stands at the edge of the sea, shading his eyes from the glare. The clear emerald water now seems dangerous to him. Somewhere down there, M.’s body lurks. He fears he may meet some part of her if he swims. She is waiting for him. He imagines a hand reaching up for his neck, to pull him under, a foot springing out to kick at his most intimate parts, as she had done on the bed, her white hair veiling his face, blinding him. He turns away and runs fast back to the villa.

  He showers and forces himself to sit at her desk in her bedroom, but what he thinks of now is Enrico. He wants desperately to talk to him. His hand goes to the black telephone on the desk, but it stops in midair. He knows he is not to call him. He cannot speak to him over the telephone. He rises and walks back and forth in the room, looks at his watch. It is near noon. He considers going to the tennis club, but he doesn’t trust himself to speak to Enrico in person. He knows Enrico will be leaving for Rome soon. He needs to talk to him, at least to say good-bye. But what can he say? He does not want to lie to him. He’s not sure he is able to lie to him. He looks out the window at the bay and hears him saying, “Lying is a lonely business, amico mio.” Nor can he burden Enrico with the truth. Besides, thinking about it in the bright light of noon, he is not at all sure he can trust Enrico to be discreet. He imagines him telling someone, blurting the story out in a moment of sincerity. He is not a discreet man. He might even tell his wife, perhaps, whom, despite everything, Dawit knows Enrico loves. And to whom might the wife speak? Might she then pass on the news to her father, who could blast it across Italy? Dawit is not sure that Enrico wouldn’t betray him without even meaning to. He decides silence is the only solution for the moment.

  He sits down again and tries to concentrate on the work before him, but he is terribly distracted. He hears M. saying “an excellent secretary.” He will be one indeed: his own. He forces himself to answer the letters that need to be answered in his neat hand. He finds the letter from the college in America and politely refuses the position. He pays the bills that are due, as he always does.

  He even manages to work on her book, making further improvements freely now, rewriting many of the chapters. He moves the plot along faster, introduces more dialogue, heightens the drama.

  But the thought that he can no longer speak to the one person whom he cares about more than anyone else keeps coming back to him—a dreadful thought. If he cannot speak to Enrico, to whom will he be able to speak? To no one, he realizes. He is tormented by the desire to speak to someone, to tell someone what he has done. He is alone again in all this luxury, with the sun shining, the sea glittering before him, with the plumbago and the hibiscus blooming and the olive trees glinting silver in the sun—as alone as when he lay in his prison cell.

  When the phone rings, he startles, and then lets it ring. When he can no longer bear the ringing, feels obliged to answer, he tells the man who asks for her that M. is not there. He is not sure when she will be back. He leaves it at that.

  In the afternoon he makes a point of taking the Jaguar out and going into the bank in Porto Cervo to say a few words to the bank manager, a young, handsome, neat Sardinian, in his dark linen suit, sitting in his little orange office. Dawit knows him quite well, as he would go there to draw money for M. or for himself. His own money transfer has not been stopped, he is relieved to see.

  The bank manager inquires politely after M. He hesitates a moment, and then tells the man she has gone to her house in Switzerland. He has already calculated that the three houses will come in handy. He has all the keys. M. drifted from one to the other as well as traveling to other places for her work or pleasure. It was always hard to pin her down.

  He goes to the small post office in the town with his checkbook and writes out a large check, standing at the high counter under the window. He will send it to Asfa with a little note: “Please go to church for me and say the prayer for the dead,” he writes. There is no need to explain. Asfa will assume he is thinking of his dead parents. Indeed, he does think more and more of them.

  As he stands in the post office writing out the note on the dusty wooden counter, he remembers a moment with his father. Dawit had met him during his holidays in Paris, where his father was staying at the Ethiopian Embassy near the Eiffel Tower. He must have been fourteen, an awkward age. It was one of the few times he had been on his own with his father. He was not used to talking to him alone. His mother was the one who made the conversation, asked the questions. His father told him he wanted to take him to see his favorite opera, an opera by Verdi: Aida. He had taken Dawit out to dinner beforehand in a famous restaurant not far from the opera house, a hushed place with deep red walls and red velvet curtains and chairs. His father spent the elaborate meal telling Dawit about the plot of the opera and how much he loved Verdi’s music. Dawit had heard only something vague about an Ethiopian king and his daughter, who has been captured and made into a slave. He had not dared to say anything, but he would much have preferred to listen to his own music in his room. He was a Beatles fan as an adolescent, playing their records incessantly. “Here comes the sun,” he would sing joyously, his mood suddenly shifting.

  During the long opera he had sat restlessly at his father’s side, hardly able to hide his boredom, moving around uncomfortably in his seat. He found the plot ridiculous. The large singer who played Aida, despite her spectacular voice, her tragic dilemma, did not stir him, other than into fits of giggles, which he had difficulty controlling. His father sat beside him, swaying his head from side to side to the rhythms of the music, conducting with one finger and humming along to the arias he loved particularly. “Celeste Aida,” he hummed, much to Dawit’s extreme embarrassment. He could see that his father was annoying his neighbors but seemed oblivious to their muttered comments. Dawit wanted alternately to giggle—the “celeste Aida,” a large lady in a wig and bright blue caftan who tottered on tiny feet across the stage, seemed hardly divine to him—or to weep with embarrassment at his father’s absurd antics.

  During the first interval, his father asked him how he was enjoying the opera. “Isn’t it fantastic? Have you ever heard anything so beautiful?” he said, and Dawit was obliged to shake his head and say he had never heard anything like it. Then he asked if he might have something to drink. His father bought him an exorbitantly expensive glass of champagne, his first, which he gulped down thirstily, the bubbles going up his nose. He remembers no
w, when the opera was finally over and they had walked outside, his father lingering in the street as though reluctant to leave, looking back at the ornate opera house lit up, with the blue of the night sky behind it. He put his arm around Dawit’s shoulders and asked, “Will you remember this evening, Dawit?” He could only nod politely, looking down at the ground, embarrassed by this public embrace, hoping to forget the entire excruciating experience as soon as possible. His father had looked at him tenderly, standing there beside him in the street, the opera house behind them, as he said—Dawit can hear his voice now—“I know I’ll remember being here with you to the end of my days.”

  Then Dawit writes out another check to help the famine-stricken people in his country, hoping it will reach them. As he drives back to the villa he wonders how long he will be able to take M.’s place and use her money as he thinks fit.

  XXVII

  WHEN M.’S EDITOR, GUSTAVE, CALLS ONE AFTERNOON IN LATE September, he startles Dawit, who is sitting at M.’s desk in her room looking over the bay. He has his feet up on the desk in her crocodile shoes and is contemplating the view, pencil in hand. Gustave tells him he’s at the airport in Olbia. Is someone coming to pick him up? “She hasn’t forgotten me, has she?” he asks. Dawit suddenly remembers that M. had spoken of this yearly visit to the island in late September. He has, indeed, completely forgotten about it.

  He thinks fast how to handle this, but all he can come up with is, “No, no, of course not, she would never forget you.”

  “She’s not ill, is she?” the editor asks.

  “Oh, no, not ill!” Images of her face, her white hair, her white robe filling with air before sinking down through the water, come to Dawit vividly.

  “Will you come and pick me up, then, or am I going to have to get a taxi?” Gustave says, beginning to sound annoyed.

  “Of course, I’ll be right there. I’m so sorry. A slight mix-up. Have some lunch,” Dawit says, stumbling over his words. He is trembling, afraid his voice will betray his panic. What is he going to do? A mistake like this can be disastrous, he knows. How could he have been so absentminded? Why had he not called to put off the visit?

  “Has she finished her book? Do you know?” Gustave asks.

  “Oh, yes, it’s finished,” he can truthfully say with some assurance. “It’s waiting for you to read,” he says, staring at the manuscript, which is in a neat pile stacked up before him, typed up on M.’s old Olivetti. “Look, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll find you in the restaurant?” Dawit says, attempting to sound businesslike, cheerful.

  “You’ll find me in the bar!” Gustave says. Dawit hopes the man is drunk by the time he arrives. From the look of him, the broken veins in his cheeks, he is probably a heavy drinker.

  Thank God the house is tidy, Dawit thinks, looking around M.’s bedroom, as he picks up the telephone to call the couple in Abbiadori. He has kept it orderly, the bed neatly made, the clothes put away. Breathlessly, he tells them to come as soon as possible to get the guest room ready: “Il signore Francese, un signore molto importante,” he says and tells them to pick some flowers for the room, to get something special for dinner that night, a seafood platter, lobster if they can find it.

  Then he races out of the house, goes up the hill, and gets into the Jaguar. He drives into Olbia as fast as he can, screeching along the winding road that hugs the coast, trying to make a plan. He sees the sea glittering on one side, distracting him with thoughts of M., and on the other, the shrub-covered hills. His mind is a jumble. He is shaking so much when he steps out of the car he can hardly walk into the airport. Why has he forgotten this visit? What is the matter with him? Has he lost his mind? His agitation increases with every step he takes, afraid he has lost the ability to think clearly, to protect himself. He has quickly fallen into a false sense of security, wandering around the empty rooms of the villa, sitting writing at her desk, talking to no one, pouring himself a first drink at seven, as M. had done. He has drunk too much of her vodka. Now he can hardly find his way through the airport. He is almost at the bar when he realizes that he is still wearing M.’s rings and quickly slips them into his pocket. A foolish mistake like that could cost him everything. He looks down at the black crocodile shoes and thinks he should have changed them.

  Gustave has obviously been drinking while he waits and looks red-eyed, sitting slumped over at the bar, his tie loose, his blue linen suit crumpled. He looks up and smiles when he spots Dawit. After slapping Dawit on the back and telling him he’s glad to see him, he follows him through the airport to the car and then falls asleep almost immediately, head back, mouth open, snoring. As Dawit takes the sharp curves along the winding road that follows the coastline, he glances at the heavy Frenchman, helpless in his deep sleep, his plump hands open at his sides. He recalls Gustave’s proposal to use Dawit as a gift, a brown diamond, for his wife’s birthday, as if he were a commodity, a stone, or rather a penis to be bought and sold. He thinks of the arrogance of these French intellectuals, their endless and pointless discussions of theoretical matters, their inaction. He sees himself tightening the loose tie on the thick throat and almost goes off the road on a steep curve. He must remain calm, make a sensible plan.

  By the time they arrive at the villa, Dawit has thought of something. He carries Gustave’s brown leather bag, which is ominously heavy, to the guest room. The couple have prepared it in haste, but the two single beds with their cream counterpanes are made up neatly. Everything is clean and orderly. A bunch of pink hibiscus in a round blue-and-white vase stands on the bedside table between the beds and beside the telephone.

  “Well, this all looks very nice,” Gustave says, apparently somewhat mollified, surveying the comfortable room with its two pretty blue headboards painted with sea scenes by an artist from the island. He opens the linen curtain and looks out on the garden behind the house, with its olive trees and blue plumbago tumbling down the terraces. His room does not look over the bay as Dawit’s does, but it is cool and attractive and has its own yellow-and-white-tiled bathroom. Dawit tells him to make himself at home, to settle in. He will bring him M.’s manuscript to read.

  “Good idea,” the editor says without much enthusiasm, lifting his suitcase and putting it on one of the beds, beginning to unpack.

  Dawit says he has to pick up something at the shops for dinner. He’ll be back soon. Will Gustave please answer the telephone if it rings? M. has said she will call this afternoon to see if he has arrived. Then he gives Gustave the manuscript of her novel, putting it on top of the dresser, and leaves him unpacking in the room.

  He drives to the hotel at the bottom of the hill, goes to the phone booth, and telephones the villa. He waits, his mouth dry, his hands damp and shaking, for Gustave to pick up, which he eventually does.

  “Gustave, darling, did you get there safely? So sorry to miss you. I’m afraid I’ve been held up,” he says in M.’s hoarse, quavering voice.

  “Where on earth are you?” Gustave asks. “What has happened?”

  “Oh, God, I can’t go into it on the telephone. I’m in Switzerland. A problem in the house here. I’m going to try and get back as soon as possible. Make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything you want. Get Dawit to open the champagne. Have him chauffeur you. I’m sure he has already given you my manuscript.”

  “I’m reading it now,” he says. “I look forward to seeing you, darling, and talking about it. Come soon,” and Dawit hangs up the telephone, though he would like to hear what the editor has to say about the book, his book, he thinks.

  XXVIII

  HE DRIVES UP THE STEEP HILL TO THE VILLA STILL SHAKING. The night in M.’s room comes to him vividly. The moment that he cannot fathom is how he was able to take the rings from the bowl and slip them so easily onto his fingers. Everything followed from that. He recalls his mad scheme to drug her to death with her own medicine, using the vodka and sleeping pills. He hears again the glass shattering on the floor and sees her thin white arms thrashing about wildl
y, feels her kick out at him.

  How is he going to care for this unwanted guest for several days, with these images coming to his mind? What will he tell him? He fears saying something that will give himself away. He determines to bring out the champagne immediately, to get Gustave drinking again. Perhaps he himself needs a drink, too.

  But Gustave has other things in mind. He is waiting for him on the terrace. He has changed into his navy blue swimming trunks, which look new and shiny. His considerable stomach bulges under a light blue T-shirt. He tells Dawit he wants to get some exercise before dinner. The sea looks wonderful, that clear blue water. He drank too much in the bar.

  “This is such a gorgeous place, isn’t it?” he says to Dawit, making a gesture toward the bay, where the sun is already low in the sky. Dawit just nods his head, speechless. Gustave says, “I can’t think why M. would have left here just now. She usually loves September here, always says it’s the best month, when the water is still warm but the crowds have left. Sometimes she even stays through October.” He looks at Dawit as though he expects a response, but Dawit can only shrug his shoulders and sigh. “Could we take the boat out to the islands?” Gustave asks. He adds, “What’s that island M. likes so much?”