She told him no. He was frantic but she calmed him with an embrace. They were on their knees. She let him go and the boy sat on his haunches. She reached for the big oil lamp that she had fetched from outside. It was still quite heavy with fuel. She gave it to him and he hefted it from the bottom; he knew what she wanted him to do. He threw it into the stove, the glass globe shattering without much sound. June shut the hearth door, neither of them moving back. Min hugged her tight now. She was still holding the book, its cover charred but the inner pages still intact, and she could smell the smoke and her ruined skin as she wound her arm around his neck. She thought she heard voices outside but it was too late. She kissed him on the cheek.
“We don’t need anyone,” she said softly in his ear. “We’re going to stay here now.”
NINETEEN
SHE KEPT TALKING about la chiesa dell’ossario. The Chapel of Bones. She was still flush with the double dose Hector had given her, riding in the splendid chariot. The three-hour drive had taken nearly five because of jammed traffic and then getting lost several times, Hector having to pull over and check the map himself. June was no longer able to help him. There was a question as to what she could even see, her eyes opaque and darkened, the color of muddy coffee. But they were close now, ascending the road to the village on the next hill, and as if she knew they were making the last approach, she was preparing herself, reviewing. She had not been to this place before but she spoke as if she had seen it many times, as might a guide, telling him how the church was consecrated in 1870 as a reliquary of the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Solferino. It was the simplest church, nothing about it ornate, the only spark of color on the cream-and-white façade a mural of Saint Peter in a blue robe, a red shawl about his shoulders, a golden halo encircling his somber head. She said he would know it by this. But the car had sounded funny in the last half-hour, and now something was clattering in the undercarriage, and as Hector careened ponderously on the steep curves banking up the hill, he wondered if this last effortful stretch would prove its demise. He shifted to a lower gear and lurched the rest of the way, the heaving strain of the motor shaking the tinny sedan, and when he looked in the rearview mirror he saw her slumped against the door, her face pinched up as if she were tasting something bitter. The road widened on a plateau and he stopped across from a small hotel whose patio and cocktail tables were set practically onto the pavement. He was simply going to park, to give the machine a moment’s rest, when to his right he saw the church. It shined starkly in the late-afternoon light. It stood atop a brief rise of land opposite the old hotel, a wide gravel walking path lined with cypress trees leading up to its dark wooden doors. Above the doors was the figure of the saint, his colors just as June had described.
“Look,” he said to her. “Up there.”
But now, in the lee of the drug rush, she was too weak even to turn her head. Her color was ghastly.
“Is your back hurting again?”
“I want to lie down,” she said breathily, talking through her teeth. “I want to lie down right now.”
He was going to circle tightly in the wide street and let her off in front of the hotel, but when he tried the ignition it cranked and cranked, and then it simply clicked. Finally it didn’t even click anymore and he told her to hold on and he walked across to the hotel and arranged for a room. When he returned she was nearly passed out and he had to catch her head as he opened the rear passenger door so that she wouldn’t tumble out. He lifted her and held her as several cars and scooters passed, one of them peppering its horn at them. He bristled until he realized they were probably being taken for newlyweds. The honking startled her and she gazed at him as if waking from a long and restful sleep, craning her neck back before resting her cheek on his shoulder, happy to be once more cradled in his arms. And yet he wasn’t completely sure she recognized him. The elevator was out of order and so he carried her up the four flights of stairs to a room in the tower, led by the manager of the hotel, a gaunt-faced young man in a crimson tracksuit. He let them into a large spartan room with two double beds and an armoire with one of its doors detached and leaning up against its front. There were large armchairs in the corners, placed, it seemed, more for the inhabitants’ punishment than comfort. But the main feature of the room was its tall, large window, which framed perfectly the church on the hill. The manager pointed it out in Italian and broken English, obviously accustomed to hosting its visitors.
Hector laid June on the bed next to the window, but she didn’t turn toward it, as if she had no desire to see the church, or had even forgotten why they had come. The young manager considered her gravely, and when Hector extended some lire for a tip he refused it, saying instead that he would fetch their bags. Hector pointed out their car, parked across the way, but couldn’t explain that it had just died.
“I wish Nicholas were here,” June said, after the manager had come back with their bags and then left once again. She was somewhat revived. She wanted to change her clothes, for some reason, rather than have him bear her immediately to the church on the hill. He didn’t say what he was thinking, which was that she might never leave the room, or at least leave it alive. They were finally here after the fitful sojourns of recent days-and now she would devote precious minutes to this? But he didn’t protest.
She said, “He would have liked this place.”
“You think so?”
“He was always an artistic boy. He would have liked the landscape here. The colors and the hills, just like in the art books he used to look at. All the cypress trees.”
Hector was surprised, wondering when she might have noticed.
“I don’t much like those trees.”
“No? Why not?”
“Makes me think of cemeteries.”
June nodded, waiting as he unpacked her bag to look for the pieces of clothing she wanted. “Of course you’re right,” she said, almost able to smile.
“Are these the ones?” he asked her, holding up the things she’d asked for from her bag. An outfit constructed from a stiff, coarse white linen.
“Yes.”
He placed them on her bed. June explained to him that the outfit wasn’t a traditional death robe exactly, except for the fact that it was white. The mourners would wear white as well.
“I don’t have any clothes like that,” he said.
She laughed weakly. “You’re not going to mourn me, so what does it matter?”
He didn’t answer. Back in the car she had told him what to do with her after she was dead: she should be cremated and then her ashes spread about the grounds of the church, or perhaps even snuck inside, dispersed however and wherever he saw fit. She joked that he might perhaps prefer to do the job himself, though following the old manner, swathing her body in cotton dressings and then building a wooden bier on which to set her aflame.
“Do you think we should have had Nicholas come with us?” she said, now lying on her side, her head propped on two pillows.
He peered into her eyes to see what she was thinking or could possibly be hoping for now. But there was only flatness in her gaze, an unfocused stare, as though she were looking upon a shape more looming than defined. What she believed or wanted to believe, he couldn’t tell anymore.
He said, “It’s better that he stayed back in Siena.”
“Yes. You’re probably right. What would he do here? Except I was thinking just now that perhaps he might have wanted to spend more time with you.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think he took to me much.”
“How could you tell?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“Did you take to him?”
He didn’t answer, for although it was obvious how she hoped he would reply, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything good about “Nicholas.” In fact, this renewed mention of the fellow was making his chest pound, his fists ache. On the road he had scolded himself for not beating him to within an inch of his life. And now he wished that he could have met the other Nicholas, her true son, and his, if even for just a few minutes, not for any longing or want of a bond but simply so he could say something that wouldn’t be such a burning, raging utterance. To simply greet the boy. So he pictured the old school photograph of Nicholas, the color washed out, yellowed, his long hair parted in the middle, framing an expression that was more a question than a statement, as though he were waiting for some long-hoped-for instruction.