He said either I drank it or I should have,
for that bottle was worth all I made in a month.
He told me I could consider myself paid and paid well.
He laughed and his white teeth flashed in his black face.
I was
sober when
he laughed at
me but soon enough
had a head full of wine.
Not Don Carlotta’s smooth and
peppery red mountain wine but the
cheapest Chianti in the Taverna, which
I drank with a passel of unemployed friends.
Lithodora
found me after
it was dark and she
stood over me, her dark
hair framing her cool, white
beautiful, disgusted, loving face.
She said she had the silver I was owed.
She had told her friend Ahmed that he had
insulted an honest man, that my family traded
in hard labor, not lies and he was lucky I had not-
“-did
you call
him friend?”
I said. “A monkey
of the desert who knows
nothing of Christ the lord?”
The way that
she looked at me
then made me ashamed.
The way she put the money in
front of me made me more ashamed.
“I see you have more use for this than
you have for me,” she said before she went.
I almost
got up to go
after her. Almost.
One of my friends asked,
“Have you heard the Saracen
gave your cousin a slave bracelet,
a loop of silver bells, to wear around
her ankle? I suppose in the Arab lands, such
gifts are made to every new whore in the harem.”
I came
to my feet
so quickly my
chair fell over.
I grabbed his throat
in both hands and said,
“You lie. Her father would
never allow her to accept such
a gift from a godless blackamoor.”
But
another
friend said
the Arab trader
was godless no more.
Lithodora had taught Ahmed
to read Latin, using the Bible
as his grammar, and he claimed now
to have entered into the light of Christ,
and he gave the bracelet to her with the full
knowledge of her parents, as a way to show thanks
for introducing him to the grace of our Father who art.
When
my first
friend had
recovered his
breath, he told
me Lithodora climbed
the stairs every night
to meet with him secretly
in empty shepherds’ huts or in
the caves, or among the ruins of
the paper mills, by the roar of the
waterfall, as it leapt like liquid silver
in the moonlight, and in such places she was
his pupil and he a firm and most demanding tutor.
He
always
went ahead
and then she
would ascend the
stairs in the dark
wearing the bracelet.
When he heard the bells he
would light a candle to show her
where he waited to begin the lesson.
I
was
so drunk.
I set
out for
Lithodora’s
house, with no
idea what I meant
to do when I got there.
I came up behind the cottage
where she lived with her parents
thinking I would throw a few stones
to wake her and bring her to her window.
But as I stole toward the back of the house
I heard a silvery tinkling somewhere above me.
She was
already on
the stairs and
climbing into the
stars with her white
dress swinging from her
hips and the bracelet around
her ankle so bright in the gloom.
My
heart
thudded,
a cask flung
down a staircase:
doom doom doom doom.
I knew the hills better
than anyone and I ran another
way, making a steep climb up crude
steps of mud to get ahead of her, then
rejoining the main path up to Sulle Scale.
I still had the silver coin the Saracen prince
had given her, when she went to him and dishonored
me by begging him to pay me the wage I was properly owed.
I put
his silver
in a tin cup
I had and slowed
to a walk and went
along shaking his Judas
coin in my old battered mug.
Such a pretty ringing it made in
the echoing canyons, on the stairs,
in the night, high above Positano and the
crash and sigh of the sea, as the tide consummated
the desire of water to pound the earth into submission.
At
last,
pausing
to catch my
breath, I saw
a candleflame leap
up off in the darkness.
It was in a handsome ruin,
a place of high granite walls
matted with wildflowers and ivy.
A vast entryway looked into a room
with a grass floor and a roof of stars,
as if the place had been built, not to give
shelter from the natural world, but to protect a
virgin corner of wildness from the violation of man.
Then
again it
seemed a pagan
place, the natural
setting for an orgy hosted
by fauns with their goaty hooves,
their flutes and their furred cocks.
So the archway into that private courtyard
of weeds and summer green seemed the entrance
to a hall awaiting revelers for a private bacchanal.
He
waited
on spread
blanket, with
a bottle of the
Don’s wine and some
books and he smiled at
the tinkling sound of my
approach but stopped when I
came into the light, a block of
rough stone already in my free hand.
I
killed
him there.
I did
not kill
him out of
family honor
or jealousy, did
not hit him with the
stone because he had laid
claim to Lithodora’s cool white
body, which she would never offer me.
I
hit
him with
the block of
stone because I
hated his black face.
After
I stopped
hitting him,
I sat with him.
I think I took his
wrist to see if he had
a pulse, but after I knew
he was dead, I went on holding
his hand listening to the hum of the
crickets in the grass, as if he were a
small child, my child, who had only drifted
off after fighting sleep for a very long time.
What
brought
me out of
my stupor was
the sweet music
of bells coming up
the stairs toward us.
I leapt
up and ran
but Dora was
already there,
coming through the
doorway, and I nearly
struck her on my way by.
She reached out for me with
one of her delicate white hands
and said my name but I did not stop.
I took the stairs three at a time, running