Chapter 19: Chapter Nineteen
"About the knight who doesn't know whether to speak or die. You told me already."
Obviously I had mentioned it and forgotten. "Yes."
"Well, does he or doesn't he?"
"Better to speak, she said. But she's on her guard. She senses a trap somewhere."
"So does he speak?"
"No, he fudges."
"Figures."
It was just after breakfast. Neither of us felt like working that day. "Listen, I need to pick up something in town."
Something was always the latest pages from the translator. "I'll go, if you want me to."
He sat silently a moment. "No, let's go together."
"Now?" What I might have meant was, Really? "Why, have you got anything better to do?"
"No."
"So let's go." He put some pages in his frayed green backpack and slung it over his shoulders.
Since our last bike ride to B., he had never asked me to go anywhere with him.
I put down my fountain pen, closed my scorebook, placed a half-full glass of lemonade on top of my pages, and was ready to go.
On our way to the shed, we passed the garage.
As usual, Manfredi, Mafalda's husband, was arguing with Anchise. This time he was accusing him of dousing the tomatoes with too much water, and that it was all wrong, because they were growing too fast. "They'll be mealy," he complained.
"Listen. I do the tomatoes, you do the driving, and we're all happy."
"You don't understand. In my day you moved the tomatoes at some point, from one place to another, from one place to the other"—he insisted—"and you planted basil nearby. But of course you people who've been in the army know everything."
"That's right." Anchise was ignoring him.
"Of course I'm right. No wonder they didn't keep you in the army."
"That's right. They didn't keep me in the army."
Both of them greeted us. The gardener handed Andy his bicycle. "I straightened the wheel last night, it took some doing. I also put some air in the tires."
Manfredi couldn't have been more peeved.
"From now on, I fix the wheels, you grow the tomatoes," said the piqued driver.
Anchise gave a wry smile. Andy smiled back.
Once we had reached the cypress lane that led onto the main road to town, I asked Andy, "Doesn't he give you the creeps?"
"Who?"
"Anchise."
"No, why? I fell the other day on my way back and scraped myself pretty badly. Anchise insisted on applying some sort of witch's brew. He also fixed the bike for me."
With one hand on the handlebar he lifted his shirt and exposed a huge scrape and bruise on his left hip.
"Still gives me the creeps," I said, repeating my aunt's verdict. "Just a lost soul, really."
I would have touched, caressed, worshipped that scrape.
On our way, I noticed that Andy was taking his time. He wasn't in his usual rush, no speeding, no scaling the hill with his usual athletic zeal. Nor did he seem in a rush to go back to his paperwork, or join his friends on the beach, or, as was usually the case, ditch me. Perhaps he had nothing better to do.
This was my moment in heaven and, young as I was, I knew it wouldn't last and that I should at least enjoy it for what it was rather than ruin it with my oft-cranked resolution to firm up our friendship or take it to another plane. There'll never be a friendship, I thought, this is nothing, just a minute of grace. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Between always and never. Celan.
When we arrived at the piazzetta overlooking the sea, Andy stopped to buy cigarettes. He had started smoking Gauloises. I had never tried Gauloises and asked if I could. He took out a cerino from the box, cupped his hands very near my face, and lit my cigarette.
"Not bad, right?"
"Not bad at all." They'd remind me of him, of this day, I thought, realizing that in less than a month he'd be totally gone, without a trace.
This was probably the first time I allowed myself to count down his remaining days in B.
"Just take a look at this," he said as we ambled with our bikes in the midmorning sun toward the edge of the piazzetta overlooking the rolling hills below.
Farther out and way below was a magnificent view of the sea with scarcely a few stripes of foam streaking the bay like giant dolphins breaking the surf. A tiny bus was working its way uphill, while three uniformed bikers straggled behind it, obviously complaining of the fumes. "You do know who is said to have drowned near here," he said.
"Shelley."
"And do you know what his wife Mary and friends did when they found his body?"
"Cor cordium, heart of hearts," I replied, referring to the moment when a friend had seized Shelley's heart before the flames had totally engulfed his swollen body as it was being cremated on the shore. Why was he quizzing me?
"Is there anything you don't know?"
I looked at him. This was my moment. I could seize it or I could lose it, but either way I knew I would never live it down. Or I could gloat over his compliment—but live to regret everything else. This was probably the first time in my life that I spoke to an adult without planning some of what I was going to say. I was too nervous to plan anything.
"I know nothing, Andy. Nothing, just nothing."
"You know more than anyone around here."
Why was he returning my near-tragic tone with bland ego-boosting?
"If you only knew how little I know about the things that really matter."
I was treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, because here was the truth—even if I couldn't speak the truth, or even hint at it, yet I could swear it lay around us, the way we say of a necklace we've just lost while swimming: I know it's down there somewhere. If he knew, if he only knew that I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.
But if he understood, then he must have suspected, and if he suspected he would have been there himself, watching me from across a parallel lane with his steely, hostile, glass-eyed, trenchant, all-knowing gaze.
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