But how long was it going to take? That’s what O‘Kane wanted to know. Six months? A year? Two years? Three? “But just last fall I was playing golf with him,” he heard himself saying, “and now he can’t even talk. And you’re telling me a bunch of monkeys or hominoids or whatever you want to call them mounting each other six times a day is going to get him up out of that bed?”
Again, a silence. The doctor patted down his pockets till he produced his pipe, tobacco and a match. He took his time lighting the pipe, watching O‘Kane all the while. He was in control here and he wouldn’t be rushed. Or provoked. “I’m telling you, Edward,” he said, emphasizing the name in that irritating way he had, “that as Charcot, Breuer and Chrobak all observed, and Dr. Freud’s brilliant Drei Abhandlungen sur Sexualtheorie reaffirms, all nervous disorders have a genital component at root. Do you doubt for a moment that Mr. McCormick’s problem is sexual? You saw how he attacked that woman on the train and that female nurse at McLean, what was her name?”
“Arabella Doane,” O‘Kane said mechanically.
“Sex is the root and cause of every human activity, Edward, from getting up in the morning and going to work to conquering nations, inventing the lightbulb, buying a new coat, putting meat on the table and looking at every woman that passes by as a potential mate. Sex is the be-all and end-all, our raison d‘être, the life force that will not be denied.” The doctor had moved a step closer. O’Kane could see the dark bristles like flecks of pepper on his chin. “We are animals, Edward, never forget it — and animals, these hominoids that don’t seem to impress you all that much, will one day reveal our deepest secrets to us.” As if on cue, one of the monkeys began to howl in orgasmic ecstasy. The doctor’s eyes were blazing. “Our sexual secrets,” he added with a failing hiss of breath.
It was just then, just as the very words passed the doctor’s lips, that O‘Kane happened to glance up and see Giovannella Dimucci crossing the path behind them in a brilliant swath of sunlight. She was wearing a pair of clogs and he could see her bare ankles thrusting out from beneath the hem of her skirt, the bright trailing flag of her hair, her breasts shuddering against the fabric of her blouse and her hands moving at her sides with rhythmic grace as she disappeared round the bend. O’Kane looked back at the doctor, at the monkeys clinging to their cages in lust and hope and at the big orange lump in the crotch of the tree. He wiped a hand across his face, as if to erase it all. He was sweating, and he was conscious of a corresponding dryness in his throat, the parched ache of the saint in the desert.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, as if he could barely tear himself away, “it’s a fine ape you’ve got there, doctor, and I thank you for taking the time to show it to me and explain everything — I feel better now, I do — but I’ve got to be getting back… Mart’ll be wondering where I am. So. Well. Good-bye.”
Giovannella Dimucci was the daughter of Baldessare Dimucci, who hauled manure from Crawford’s Dairy Farm in a creaking horse cart for sale to orange growers and wealthy widows with flower beds and half-acre lawns. She was seventeen, strong in the shoulders, eager and quick to please, and she’d been working in the kitchen for the past week while the regular maid, a hunched little wart of a woman by the name of Mrs. Fioccola, recuperated from the birth of the latest of twelve children, all of them girls. O‘Kane caught up to her as she was ascending the back steps, an empty slops bucket in her hand. “Giovannella,” he called, and he watched her turn and recognize him with a smile that spread from her lips to her eyes.
“Eddie,” she said, and it was his turn to smile now. “What a surprise to see you this time of day.” She set down the bucket and let her smile bloom. There was movement behind the screen door — Sam Wah at the stove, his back to them, and one of the other maids, O‘Kane couldn’t tell which, at the sink with a pile of dishes. From around the corner, by the garage, came the sounds of Roscoe tinkering with the cars, an engine alternately roaring and wheezing, and the faint, sweet smell of gasoline. Still smiling, a busy finger between her lips, Giovannella let her voice drop: “Aren’t you supposed to be with Mr. McCormick now? Or did you change shifts?”
O‘Kane moved toward her, as if in a trance, and sat right down at her feet on the lower step. He could smell the perfume of her body, soap on her hands, the sour vinegary odor of the slops bucket. “Yes, yes, I am — a wink, squinting up the length of her and into the sun framing her head and shoulders and the dark cameo of her face—”you really know my schedule, don’t you?“
No blush, but the smile faltering for just an instant before it came back again. She glanced over her shoulder at the silhouette of Sam Wah, then tugged at her skirts and sat lightly beside him. “Sure I do. I know everybody’s schedule — even Mr. McCormick’s.”
“Smart girl,” he said.
“Yes, I’m a smart girl.” The trace of an accent. She was nine years old when her father emigrated from Marsala and she was as American as anybody, as Rosaleen even, but darker, a whole lot darker, darker than any Irishman ever dreamed possible. Rosaleen’s skin was china-white, chalky, lunar, so pale the blue veins stood out in her ankles and wrists and between her breasts; Giovannella’s was like Darjeeling tea steeped in the pot and dipped into a cup of scalded milk, one drop at a time. He was in love with that skin. He wanted to lick her fingers, her hands, her feet.
“He’s a very dangerous man,” O‘Kane said to distract himself.
“Who?”
“Mr. McCormick.”
The sun, the flowers, the soft gabble of the chickens, the roar of the motor. Giovannella lifted her eyebrows.
“He’s what they call a sex maniac — you know what that is?”
She didn’t. Or at least she pretended she didn’t.
“He needs — well, he has physical needs all the time, for women, you understand? He gets violent. And if he’s not satisfied, he’ll lash out if he has the opportunity and attack a woman, any woman — even his wife.”
Her face had turned somber and he wondered if he’d gone too far, if he’d shocked her, but then the mask dissolved and she leaned in close, her hand on his elbow. “Sounds like the average man to me.”
Suddenly O‘Kane was on fire. It was as if an incendiary bomb had gone off inside him, three alarms and call out the village companies too. “Listen,” he said, “you know I really like you, you’re a real kidder, but it’s such a grinding bore here, isn’t it? What I mean is, I think I can get Roscoe to take us into town tonight in one of the Packards, that is, if you want to come… with me, I mean… together.”
She looked over her shoulder again, as if someone might be listening. Her head bobbed low and her eyes took on a sly secretive look. Her father would never let her go, O‘Kane knew that, though Baldy never suspected O’Kane was a married man. It was just the way the Italians were when it came to their women — especially their daughters. They were wary of every male between the ages of eleven and eighty, unless he was a priest, and no matter how drunk they were on their Bardolino and grappa they always had one eye open, watching, waiting, ready to pounce. He was sure she was going to say no, sure she was going to plead her father’s prohibition and her mother’s lumbago and the crying need to look after her ragged shoeless little brothers and sisters and keep the fire going under the big pot of pasta e fagioli, but she surprised him. Compressing her lips and sucking in her breath, her eyes leaping round the yard to fasten finally on his, she whispered, “What time?”