Siracusa (14 page)

“She’s staring,” said Snow.

“Do you believe that girl?” Lizzie said later. “Imagine talking
about me that way. Imagine, when you were a child, saying bluntly ‘She’s staring’ about your mother’s friend. About someone sitting right there. I’m not a
she
. How rude. Snow’s in love with you, by the way.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Actually I
was
staring at Snow.” Lizzie barked a laugh. “She’s a ferocious eater. Did you see her demolish that fig? ‘She’s staring.’” Lizzie imitated Snow’s flat delivery. “Doesn’t Taylor teach her manners? She’s too busy worshipping her.”

“Why did that woman stare at you?” Snow had asked on the way back to the hotel. Spooky kid. Shook me up, she’d noticed. Lizzie opposite me at dinner, her back to K, had no idea.

Finn attacked that night by the way, which meant nothing. Called me a liar. God knows it was the first time I was impressed by him. Snarly and righteous. Got a mite feral. Bared his teeth. Perhaps I could use some of Finn for Julien. The class issues, the excitement he gets when he unmasks a superior, proving himself equal.

S
IRACUSA
. Where everything went in the shitter. My kind of town. Easy to hide in, no airs. Any direction seemed worth going and not worth going. I liked the creaky look in Ortigia, the old section. Buildings shabby and shredding but still standing shoulder to shoulder like some straggly army that refused to surrender. On some streets I could walk in the middle and touch both sides. That’s a stretch but you get the idea. The houses shared walls. That sidetracked me. Sidetracked because who gives a shit, and not that I hadn’t seen it before, but it seemed friendly. If one went down, they all did. Camaraderie. Yeah. Each building only needed, of its own, a front and back. Efficient and frugal, that’s what my dad would have said if he’d come here, although he never left Portland except for a few miles out to sea in a dinghy. He built houses. Always admiring a joint or the eaves of a roof. Taught me about business.
Put everything back into it, Finn, don’t borrow.
It served me well.

The nothing-much hotel put Taylor over the edge. In the elevator when I was toting up our luggage, I gagged at myself in
the mirror, squeezed between the roller bags, Tay’s purse hanging off my arm.
You’re a pussy
, I thought.

Over a bridge and isolated, Ortigia was Siracusa’s hangnail. An island paved with stone. Suppose a dog wants to dig a hole? No way, no dirt. On the flight from Rome, Taylor entertained me with its history. The Romans conquered Siracusa in 2 A.D. Hey, let’s build some ships, they decided, and every tree got sacrificed. It kind of made me sick to my stomach. Mass slaughter of the innocents. Imagine waking up one morning and finding all the beauties gone. No trunks to hug—it’s not as dumb as it sounds, I’ve done it. No tree to lean against, take cover, find shade. No rustling leaves or boughs bending and swaying. Imagine wind with no trees to blow through. Desert, right? They paved the place. Ortigia is a stone desert.

There had to be less oxygen. Doesn’t it come from plants? Photosynthesis? I might have overheard that in high school. Funny what sticks.

Bees and pollination too. Where the hell did that happen here? This was one freaky world.

I grew up around water. I’m who I am around water. Been in boats since I was two. Water is home.

So, on balance, I liked Siracusa. Especially Ortigia, as Lizzie knew I would. I still like it even if Dorothy the shrink says I got PTSD there. Therapists love a label. The afternoon we arrived, I went out to escape Tay’s accusing eyes. Dorothy blames her mother. She’s never met Penelope, or Tay for that matter, but tries to make me understand Tay’s fucked-upness. I should cut her some slack, is the idea. Weird, since the one not getting the
slack is me. When Tay hated the hotel room, said Dorothy, it was because she was imagining what her mother would think of the hotel room. Bullshit, I told her. Tay’s a snob. Then I got it in a way I hadn’t before. I’m the hotel room. To my wife, I’m the hotel room in Siracusa. Second rate.

Snow was sitting in a chair by the window when I left, entranced with the sea. Princess Snow. Not quite sure how this kid turned out to be mine. That stillness of hers unnerved me. I remember feeling that and noticing, as opposed to most of my feelings, which Dorothy says I’m not in touch with. Snow at the window, Tay swearing because there was no cell reception, trying her phone from every corner of the suite. I’m a stranger here.

“Where’s the action, Dani?” I asked the receptionist.

“Piazza Duomo,” she said, map ready, brandishing a marker.

“Just point me in the general direction. Want me to bring you anything? A cupcake? Some raisins?”

“No, thank you.” Firm and proper. Tay had obviously terrified her. “When you come to a corner where there is a little virgin, go right and then—” She gestured straight on.

A little virgin. I liked the idea of a little virgin as the landmark to tell tourists to look for. There it was, a miniature shrine built into a wall, chipped columns, triangle top, and inside a marble Mary, plump and pious. “Right at the little virgin” turned out to be good luck. I fell upon a sundry store, pondered the selection of cigarettes as if they were wines, and settled on loose tobacco and rolling paper. A practical decision—the tobacco came in a small soft roll that would flatten in a pocket—but I was also thinking, when in Sicily. On the way out, a local tossed me
matches, then took a deep breath and held it. “Ten euros.” He held up ten fingers as if he hadn’t spoken in English.

Soon I was heading into Piazza Duomo with a bag of weed too.

Got to say, the Piazza Duomo was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been stoned. I pondered it while I sat dumb and happy in one of the sprawling cafés. Harmony. Everything in harmony. Sunlight sparkled off pink marble. Was it pink or is that the grass talking? These edifices—get that, edifices—were gleaming and polished like the pope was about to arrive in the popemobile and take a spin from one end to the other. Long trip, by the way. Duomo was epic. For the first time I wondered what Tay’s guidebook had to say. Wall-to-wall tourists and still it blew my mind.

I rolled a couple of cigarettes, laced them with pot, while I asked the waiter to recommend a Nero d’Avola, the most famous Sicilian grape. The wine was as red as royal blood, the expensive glass was sexy to cradle. After the weed kicked in, I was in spicy-wine heaven. All wine talk is boring. Lizzie said if I ever said the word
terroir
again she’d kick me, but let me tell you, my tongue was singing and the tangy aftertaste seemed to linger into the next century.

Got a case of the munchies and ordered an antipasto. By that point I was dopey enough to be fascinated by the pattern on a slice of salami. Was considering chatting up a biker chick pierced every which way when I spotted a ripe blonde. I guessed Polish. Too soft and round to be German or Scandinavian, no sunglasses, which meant not Italian. Big blue eyes brimming with feeling. Couldn’t see who she was with, would have had to move my chair, too much trouble, but I didn’t need to ’cause I
knew the story. I’d seen it at my joint, some girl getting twisted into a pretzel by some guy. Watched it play out—the pout, the plead, the tears, and then, boom, up she sat, gave her shoulders a twitch, and jutted out her chin in defiance. Way to go, I thought, give him hell, when the man grabbed her hand, yanked her up and out.

Michael.

I tugged the waiter’s arm. “Water. Very cold.
Très froid.
” Even stoned I’m French. Quickly.
Vite.
Stuffed my face with the rest of the food trying to sober up. Slopped water on my eyes, rubbed and tried to blink my way into coherence. Drank the rest of the water. They’re lovers. I got that far. Ordered a double espresso and gulped it. What was she doing here? I replayed what I’d seen for more information, but it was fuzzy. A hazy stoned dream. Shit, he’d invited his lover here. What kind of cruel game was that?

Not Polish, American. Maybe Polish American. That made me laugh, which gives you a sense of how far I was gone. The brain was on a long leash.

Poor Lizzie.

I sat there not knowing what the fuck to do. Ordered another wine. This time, white, a Carricante.

That night, all through dinner, I watched the asshole. My daughter was goofy for him. Shy little Snow.
Snow’s coming into her own, thanks to Michael.
Fuck you, Tay. She was all dressed up for him, Tay was, looking more art than human. For years I’d wondered, who the hell is she dressing for? Now she knows. If he was nice to Snow, Tay would puff up. She doesn’t have a clue
where she ends and the kid begins. “Fusion,” Dorothy called it. Said Tay might benefit from some therapy—good luck with that.

Michael, present, was elsewhere. Even my badgering didn’t arouse him. No, he was plotting his moves. His after-dinner moves. I know about those. I ordered an Amarone to finish the meal, swooned over it (a big rich wine with flavors of rain, licorice, tobacco, and fig), forced everyone else to partake to mess with him, to screw up whatever rendezvous he’d planned. There was Lizzie, buoyant, adoring, tossing out bonko questions about murder, and I’m thinking, I’d alibi Lizzie as long as Michael was the dead man.

On the way home I wavered in the world of doing Lizzie the favor of telling her and breaking her heart. She lit my cigarette and I thought, that’s how fast I could destroy her, the time it took to strike the match. How the hell did we end up in love with the wrong people?

I finished my nightly prowl in a packed dive painted a devil’s red. Sitting bombed in a corner, I watched some jerks play pool. Every time one signaled a hole, he gave it the finger. Every time it amused them. Karaoke in the next room, some babe belting out “Rude Boy.” I was still trying to get somewhere with the information I had, but I hardly had any, and since the afternoon, except for a short stretch at the beginning of dinner when effects waned, I had been either high or drunk. That made the whole deductive effort a joke.

It was a straight shot along the quay to the hotel under a slice of moon and a dazzle of stars. Saw Lo Scoglio for the first time. Big fucking boulder. Eerie at night, not so comforting in the day
either, but at night it rose up black and prehistoric. A small crowd of revelers teetered over a bridge to get to it. I could barely see a railing. It looked like a miracle, people walking on air. The wind was up, waves crashed against the boulder, throwing up a white spray. The people shrieked and retreated.

I stumbled on, got back to the room by three, and passed out on the cot. When I woke up the next morning, I wasn’t sure the day before had happened.

I
WAS A BIT
put off by our guide. Gina had a hard quality—flat face, narrow aggressive black eyes, swarthy complexion, long straight stringy pitch-black hair she kept off her face with sunglasses perched on her head. I particularly noticed her sandals. The sturdy tough style turned out to be quite common here; black leather straps with silver studs crisscrossed her ankles. Her red pedi was peeling. She was packed into skinny white capris and a tank top with Mickey Mouse on her ample chest. (That also turned out to be common; many women wore cartoon characters, Mickey, Minnie, and Donald Duck being the most popular, although also occasionally in Siracusa I saw a Woody Woodpecker.) Hard, tough, cheap, that was my first impression.

Nevertheless it was a relief to have someone in charge, and we followed her like puppies. After that unpleasantness at dinner the night before, I was dying for a day off from Finn. He had been planning to go to the open-air market with Lizzie, but she had decided to sleep in. He would meet her later. In the
meantime, he limped along with us, monopolizing Gina, quizzing her on everything. She had three sisters, and in her tourist business, she had two partners who were her girlfriends. What was the copper coin hanging on a leather thong around her neck? I forget the answer. She had studied classical singing for a year in Verona and did not play the mandolin—one of Finn’s more ridiculous questions.

Barraged by him, she forgot her job. I was hoping these crumbly streets might come alive. Instead we rolled on, one antiquity after another passing us by like billboards on Route 95. Finn never seems aware of the purpose of anything and could end up in Madrid on his way to Beijing just from prodding and poking at random irrelevant curiosities. What a relief when he took off in search of a spicy provolone, but with Finn finally gone, Gina revealed herself to be a robot. She must have memorized guidebooks, telling us the most boring things in the most boring way. “The oldest part of Siracusa, they call Ortigia, is founded in the eighth century B.C. by the Greeks. Romans capture it in 212 B.C. during the Second Punic War.” She spoke always in the present tense with no feeling or special emphasis. I’m sure she had no idea what a Punic War was. Even I didn’t and I came prepared, although my profession is not Siracusan tour guide. She had none of Giorgio’s fun Italian passion. She couldn’t bring the past to life, yet another disappointment.

She did manage to navigate us to the Caravaggio located in the Church of Santa Lucia alla Badia.

Only about eighty of Caravaggio’s paintings exist (also he seemed bipolar to me, reading between the lines), and one of
them was right here. It had to be the most famous thing in Siracusa; still, the unassuming reddish brown metal sign,
Caravaggio
, screwed to the wall was easy to miss. One might not notice the church at all—a jumble of styles, mostly Baroque, and of modest architectural interest—except to avoid the blind accordion player sitting outside on a folding metal stool, serenading us with “Cielito Lindo.” How odd, isn’t that Spanish? He wore dark glasses and a navy plaid shirt. His backpack was the same navy plaid. I had never seen a person whose shirt matched his backpack, and it was especially peculiar because he was blind. I suppose he had a wife.

In front of him, on a wooden box, stood a fancy glass goblet. For a blind man to display such a desirable object was foolhardy. The base was navy (that amused me because it also matched his shirt), the thick round stem navy banded with gold, and the bowl gold.

I gave Snow a coin to drop into it and followed Gina into the church.

Snow and I had read about Caravaggio, and we had laughed because, in his self-portrait, his thick eyebrows arched all the way down to his ears. I was about to remind Snow of that when I was captivated by the floor tiles. I had never seen anything so whimsical: identical squares, each an intricate abstract mosaic of black and white squiggly lines, curlicues, and funny dots of royal blue. They had been inspired by the sea, I am certain, because, well, I’m sensitive to art and its influences. The mosaic background of tiny scallop-shaped pieces could be made today only somewhere like China where they probably have no child
labor laws. I could imagine the teeny-weeny fingers necessary to make them.

I had to share the tiles with Snow.

I glanced toward the apse where the Caravaggio was hung but then, on an instinct, peeked back outside to find her with the blind man, her hand in the goblet.

“Snow?”

She took her hand out.

I had to laugh. “Are you testing to see if he’s really blind?”

“Shush,” she said.

Of course she was right. He could hear. I was so embarrassed. Later I wondered if perhaps my catching her doing something innocent and curious, but behind my back, prompted her subsequent behavior. Inadvertently I might have provoked her.

No one was allowed close to the Caravaggio, hung as a sacred object between two overwrought Corinthian columns, behind a velvet rope. Tiles aside, this church with its bright white walls and electronic candles for offerings did not seem the proper venue for
The Burial of Santa Lucia
, I was thinking, as Snow and I squeezed into the crowd and got our first glimpse of the large gloomy oil painting.

In the center of the composition were two half-naked gravediggers illuminated with golden light. I suppose Caravaggio intended to imply the light was celestial since this painting is about the burial of a saint, although the light didn’t appear to come from the heavens the way it usually does in religious art. There were no diagonal streaks emanating from above, for instance, more like arbitrary spotlights here and there to highlight
the men’s nakedness. It seemed that Caravaggio was more interested in those gravediggers than anything. Their bodies were muscled, articulated, and gigantic. They could have been on steroids. The men, bending over, wielded shovels, about to dig. Between them on a pallet lay a young girl a little older than Snow, her skin waxy as if all the blood had been drained from her body.

She lay there in a cave as if it were exactly where she was killed, in disarray, her dress pulled down to expose a single bare shoulder. Is this an erotic painting? I was confused and anxious. Should I have brought Snow? Those gravediggers, so massive, wore only what looked like giant diapers made of white sheets.

I reached out to put my arm around Snow, but she edged sideways out of reach. I remember wondering if people noticed my daughter snubbing me.

Gina, hovering behind and reeking of a sickeningly sweet perfume (the kind that can give you a migraine), recited the story behind the painting as if it were a recipe for minestrone.

“Lucia refuse to marry a pagan. She want to be holy. A virgin. The pagans get angry. They say she has to have sex in a brothel.”

“What is a brothel?” said Snow in quite a loud voice.

“A house of prostitution, kiddo,” said a man to a rumble of amusement.

Please don’t talk to my daughter
, I wanted to say, but that’s dangerous, isn’t it? To have a contretemps with a stranger. We were trapped too. People pressed in from behind. Everyone was listening to Gina, who, like a top, once she began, kept on until she ran down.

“They try to take Lucia. Lucia, she is like, how do you say, in cement. They bring oxen. No one can move Lucia to brothel.”

Snow, gazing up at this enormous male sexual fantasy, fiddled with the strap on her tank top, easing it off her shoulder.

“My daughter doesn’t need to know everything to appreciate an oil painting,” I told Gina, but she moved in between us.

“To punish Lucia, they take her eyes with a
forchetta
.” Gina demonstrated, working her arm as if she were prying the eye out of a whale.

“Forchetta?”
said Snow, her gaze on the painting.

“Fork,” I snapped. I fear I did snap, which is not like me. How could Gina know the word
brothel
but not
fork
? There was something sick about that painting, something evil. Something evil about Gina too. I wanted to sweep Snow right out of the church.

“When that not kill her, they stab her in the neck,” said Gina.

Snow sank to the floor.

“Get up,” I said. “Are you crazy?” Everyone was looking at us now. I yanked Snow’s arm. It was dead weight. A man leaned over her. I pushed him away. “Mind your own business.”

She was faking. I don’t know how I knew but I did. I slipped my arms under her, wrapped her waist, and pulled her up. She kept her legs limp. I pinched her hard. “Ouch,” she said, finally standing. I led her away from the crowd and through the church. A woman chased us. “Is she all right? Does she need water?”

“What was that? What were you doing?” I said as soon as we were outside.

Snow straightened her skirt.

“Snow, answer me.”

She looked around curiously as if the world were a fascination and I wasn’t part of it.

“Lucia visit her,” said Gina.

“Don’t do that again. It’s not funny.”

Snow murmured.

I leaned in to hear.

What she said hurt me deeply.

“We won’t need you anymore,” I told Gina.

Somehow I got us to the hotel.

Looking back, things deteriorated very quickly after that.