He froze, not wanting to tell her otherwise. She drifted off again. He quickly went downstairs and across the piazza, to where there was a gelateria. He brought her back a double cone of limone, the refreshing scent of which was somehow enough to rouse her from her sleep. She sat up all by herself and took it from him without hesitating, licking it with the eagerness and focus of a child. Her world was becoming quite small, centering on the simplest things. A sweet, tart flavor. A salve of cold in her parched throat. Sometimes there was nothing better than to offer a little succor. While she ate the gelato he prepared her a heavy dose and when she was finished she surprised him by hugging him as tightly as she was able before lying down again. She even turned herself over when she saw him holding the syringe.
“Is Nicholas here?” she said afterward, gazing up past him, searching, her pupils huge, dark.
“Not yet,” he answered.
“He’ll come back. I know it.”
“Yes,” he told her, now looking her straight in her eyes. “He will.”
FIFTEEN
THEY WERE TRAVELING at what seemed to June a great, soaring speed. Really a wonderful speed. It was Sunday morning and the autostrada was still mostly empty. The sky was shimmering, an electrified vault of blue. They were flying north. She was not up front with Hector anymore but reclined in the back of the sedan, propped up on one side with the pillows he’d bought from the innkeeper of the residenza back in Siena. It was too uncomfortable for her to sit upright or lie flat, and with her knees lifted up toward her chest she could clasp her hands around the backs of her thighs and steady herself with the pressure the way one might tightly press on a bad cut or wound. Of course, she was the wound, but he was being good to her with the needle and although the pain was constant it was routine weather and what she mostly felt in her belly and limbs and in her groin and neck was that certain clinging weight, an ineluctable density that while phantom took its form in a woman’s voice: I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
She took it as Sylvie’s voice, then the cancer’s, and then, finally, a version of her own. It was melodious enough and yet at the same time washed of human feeling, its notes echoing coldly through her bones. But she could endure it. She could endure most anything now. Even if she could hardly walk more than ten paces at a time, her will was undiminished and perhaps even strengthening; she was convinced that if she could remain at attention and make her thoughts hew to the necessities of each moment, string herself from one to the next, the focus of her mind would not allow her flesh to cede. One need not surrender. It wasn’t always the case. She wasn’t crazy. Although she could hardly distinguish anymore between waking and sleep, each state having bled over into the other enough that she could close her eyes and still see, she felt sure she was right about this. She was almost certain that she could hold on for a long time, maybe indefinitely, croon along with the voice ringing in her head and thus stay hinged to the present. Never let herself go.
That they would be in Solferino later today was a blessing, for she could rest after they arrived and still have some good light to see the church. Or they could take their time, maybe even leave it until the next day, or the next, and the thought occurred to her that instead of an inn or hotel they might stay in an efficiency or even an apartment or villa-they had enough money-where Hector could cook again if he wanted to, make that camper’s stew she loved back then and loved now for its sweet, tomatoey smell, the way it had made her mouth water and ache in the hunter’s cottage like she was truly about to eat again.
In fact Hector was being quite kind to her, maybe even gallant, exiting at rest stops before she had to ask and helping her in and out of the low-slung seat of the car. He’d even grabbed a surly cashier who made a remark when she fumbled and dropped her change, holding his collar over the counter and telling him in English to be polite, which by his expression the fellow seemed instantly to understand. Maybe a villa would be better, for they could sit together in its garden and finally talk about all that had happened between them. They would have plenty of room, too, in case Nicholas changed his mind and decided to train up and join them in Solferino.
Nicholas said he wanted to come, to visit the place with her, but he decided that staying behind in Siena, so he could keep working at the fancy art gallery and make a way for himself, would be best for him at the moment. Eventually, it was understood, he would return to New York. She wished now that she had not sold her business, but of course he could start his own. He should start his own, sell only the highest-quality pieces, unlike her. He had promised to keep out of trouble, to write regularly as he had been doing, and in kind, she said, she (or her attorney) would wire whatever money he needed. Maybe Nicholas had been a bit selfish and greedy and his requests somewhat inappropriate but in the end everything would be his anyway, so there was no real obstacle for him as long as he could right himself. She was certain he could master his impulses.
Hector had brought him up to the hotel room practically in the middle of the night and squired him over to her bed with a hand on his shoulder and although she was but a sliver of her normal self it gave her a great joyous boost to see him again, her legs feeling as though they could sprint up a stair, to look upon his still boyish, handsome face (beneath some bad bruising, he told her, from a recent motor scooter fall) and hold his hand and listen to his stories of traveling through Great Britain and Europe. How worthwhile, to have been so persistent with her letters to him! She was glad not to hear any more details of the riding accident, and to see that his leg seemed healed. In fact he showed no limp at all when Hector ushered him away, though perhaps he was making a special effort to mask it for her sake.
She was as certain as ever now that the nightmare of his death and that one middle-of-the-night phone call had been the resulting figments of the almost lethal dosages of the cancer drugs that Dr. Koenig had convinced her to take at the time. But now she saw that the whole horrible nightmare had been a purposeful self-alarm, a stern warning from her unconscious mind that she make amends before it was too late.
The one unsettling element was his amazing equanimity to her present condition. It had stunned her, at first. Although she kept telling him she was going to be all right and that he ought not to worry, it was disappointing that he didn’t ask even once how she was feeling or what her prognosis was, that although he was gentle-faced and soft-spoken as he stood above her in the dimness of the canopied hotel bed, his hand on hers was sweaty and almost twitchy, as if he wanted to shrink from her. And yet she could empathize, honestly and deeply, how scared he must have been to see her like this, to have to know in his heart that there was nothing to be done. He could hardly meet her eyes. But when she told him that he ought to let her rest and should go, he kissed her, leaned down and quickly pressed his lips on her forehead and bravely did not gasp or cry out, did not pause or even linger, and thus offered, ironically, the best proof that he was indeed her son.
Perhaps there would be a future, too. Hector, she noticed, had even given him some money before he left, for which she had to remember to thank him (which in her state was like trying to remember the scene inside every picture in a random pile of photographs after having glanced through them once), to thank him for showing decency in a circumstance that would be unsettling for any man but that he was never cut out for. She kept telling herself not to pressure him to keep up with Nicholas. They were loners both, they certainly didn’t need each other yet, and there was nothing to be gained by compelling any bond. If anything, she imagined that it would be Hector who would someday look again for Nicholas, wish as she did to make a final connection with his son, if for no other reason than not to die alone. She had been wrong to believe she could have ever preferred a solitary end, for the prospect now terrified her, made her think it would be the last true horror. But nothing like that would happen now.