Palimpsest

Oleg ate ravenously now eggs and bread and tomatoes and a dozen kinds of cheese, bacon and roasted chicken. He did not know how to speak to the lady of the house, the severe, shield-faced woman named Nerezza who had been there, silent and staring, at the lock, who had watched them bring a knife so close to his throat, who spoke perfect English but refused to speak it to him. Whenever he looked at her, she shrugged as if to say: I have done what I have done. Eat my food, take my home, you can do no more to me than has already been done.

Their days, for the moment, were mainly stolen kisses and laughter and long stretches of wrapping themselves around each other. November did not often talk to him, as she could not talk to Ludo, and so the barriers seemed natural to extend. They became not barriers, but a house of no words that sheltered them all. Oleg always brought November tea afterward. He wanted to. He needed to, to serve her, to be her Pecia, to be enough that what she had done to bring them all this far, what she had lost, had been worth it.

Ludo took him walking in the ruins, and though he did not speak, their kisses were frank and unfettered behind cypress and oak and grapevine, and the light, the light in those places was the impossible light of the rafters of heaven, and such lamps showed through, such lamps, and such laughing.

THE CITY SQUARE OF SIGNE-DE-RENVOI looks out onto the great fall of the Albumen into the earth, ringed in both fig trees and pomegranate trees, so that the air is always sharp and rich and sweet. There are dances there, and when the skirts swirl under the high, high moon, there is nothing in the world like the blue lace that shows beneath them. A charming, handsome woman of a certain age keeps everyone's glasses full, a champagne brewed from pears and frozen grapes. Her hair is so long she has braided it all the way around her body, twice, and this serves as enough clothing for her. She has a pet, a stately old tiger with his claws long pulled, his teeth long fallen out. He is a relic of tigerhood, a bygone age when great cats knew calculus and dactylic hexameter and held a court of dreams in the jungle.

She has forgotten her name. I brought her here so very long ago, and when she died I made a copy, and another, and another. She could not speak when she lived, and I have not felt right making her copies speak, and so we have never conversed but in the silent ways of lovers. Sometimes I think that the war struck half my people dumb in her name, in her honor. But that is surely fancy.

The tiger lived, though, and I cannot explain that but I feel close to him, comradely. We have both lived so long, we old cats. We court of dreams.

I do not know why I have done these things. I do not always know why I behave as I do. Does anyone?

But I cannot let her go.

She is there tonight, dancing naked with her braids undone and flying like black serpents. I watch her in the body of an affable man with a loose pocketwatch chain, through hi

s grandfatherly eyes, his age and his wisdom. I dance with her in his feet, and in her perfect ear I whisper the name I know but that she has lost like an earring:

Chanthou, Chanthou, my love, my wife.

Ludovico watches the village dance. He would like to join in, but he does not feel right about it. He stands by the pier waiting for Oleg, patiently, as only he can be patient.

Which is not very patient, he reminds himself. But for Oleg I can try.

“And not for me?” comes a voice across the grass, and he knew it would come, he had prepared for it, he had tested its weight on the river and found that he thought he could bear it.

Lucia stands near him in a yellow dress, the dress of Ostia and the pecan-colored couch. Her skin is lion-golden and her hair a riot of loose, dark curls. He says nothing to her-he cannot. The mound of his severed tongue still aches in his mouth.

You are not Lucia, he thinks. Please don't tease me. You're not her.

“Of course not,” Lucia says as though he spoke. “She would never come here. It is not… within her circuit of fashion.”

She steps into his arms with all the natural grace of a long-wed woman, and their kiss is genuine if she is not, deep and long, and he takes great good from it.

“I'm not Calypso, if that's what you're thinking,” she says.

He laughs despite himself. It is a broken sound, like a plate falling. Even in this, she is a perfect copy-she presents the classical reference like a gift, a way of explaining herself, and so it is a gift.

“I do not come to offer you immortality and love of me until the riotous death of the magnetic poles in exchange for your humanity. There are no such choices. I am an honest city, I think you can at least grant that.”

He nods, and holds her hand as they walk along the little wharf.

“I want to give you what you need, Ludo. It is important to me, as I think you and I will shortly be friends for a very long time. You gave your voice for me, like the mermaid in the fairy tale. I was charmed. I was wooed. I admit it. And you are so close to me now, it is like Christmas Eve. Don't you feel it?”

He nods, helpless to do more. They are quiet, and she skips a stone or two down the cream-churned river.

She stops and stands on her tiptoes to look him in the eye. She is so young and her brow is so clear There are no frown lines in her.

“Are you ready?” she says, and her voice is strong and steady. “I love you. I have loved you for nine years, and I knew it was nine and not eight. I only said that to hurt you. That summer in Ostia was the core of us, and it was shining and warm and the color of pecan shells. All of this I did in a frenzy, a madness, but it did not touch us, in our walls, our lair There, I was yours alone, and I was happy. I am your beast, and you are my saint, and I forgive you, for that is what noble beasts do, and I am a noble beast. And beasts forget, too. It is only the sadness of saints that they cannot.”

She kisses him, and her breasts are warm and soft against his body. “I love you, and I am your wife, and I forgive you of all the sins of this world, all the sins we invented just to commit within our cave. I love you,” and the light of her eyes seems to shift to something darker and cleverer than his Lucia, something vast and old. “I love you, Ludovico. In a world without end. I love you.”

She walks away from him, up the low rise toward the dancing and the lights, and she is carrying her sandals by the straps as she did when last he saw that dress, the torchlight on her hair like an absolution.

FOUR

THE FAVOR OF VESTA