Dusk and Other Stories

one of them to the other. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did I interrupt something?”

When the time came for her to leave she wanted them to drive to Rome. They could spend a couple of days and she would catch the plane. They weren’t going that way, Frank said.

“It’s only a three-hour drive.”

“I know, but we’re going the other way,” he said.

“For God’s sake. Why won’t you drive me?”

“Let’s do it,” Alan said.

“Go ahead. I’ll stay here.”

“You should have gone into politics,” Brenda said. “You have a real gift.”

After she was gone the mood of things changed. They were by themselves. They drove through the sleepy country to the north. The green water slapped as darkness fell on Venice. The lights in some palazzos were on. On the curtained upper floors the legs of countesses uncoiled, slithering on the sheets like a serpent.

In Harry’s, Frank held up a dense, icy glass and murmured his father’s line, “Good night, nurse.” He talked to some people at the next table, a German who was manager of a hotel in Dusseldorf and his girlfriend. She’d been looking at him. “Want a taste?” he asked her. It was his second. She drank looking directly at him. “Looks like you finished it,” he said.

“Yes, I like to do that.”

He smiled. When he was drinking he was strangely calm. In Lugano in the park that time a bird had sat on his shoe.

In the morning across the canal, wide as a river, the buildings of the Giudecca lay in their soft colors, a great sunken barge with roofs and the crowns of hidden trees. The first winds of autumn were blowing, ruffling the water.

Leaving Venice, Frank drove. He couldn’t ride in a car unless he was driving. Alan sat back, looking out the window, sunlight falling on the hillsides of antiquity. European days, the silence, the needle floating at a hundred.

In Padua, Alan woke early. The stands were being set up in the market. It was before daylight and cool. A man was laying out boards on the pavement, eight of them like doors to set bags of grain on. He was wearing the jacket from a suit. Searching in the truck he found some small pieces of wood and used them to shim the boards, testing with his foot.

The sky became violet. Under the colonnade the butchers had hung out chickens and roosters, spurred legs bound together. Two men sat trimming artichokes. The blue car of the carabiniere lazed past. The bags of rice and dry beans were set out now, the tops folded back like cuffs. A girl in a tailored coat with a scarf around her head called, “Signore,” then arrogantly, “dica! ”

He saw the world afresh, its pavements and architecture, the names that had lasted for a thousand years. It seemed that his life was being clarified, the sediment was drifting down. Across the street in a jeweler’s shop a girl was laying things out in the window. She was wearing white gloves and arranging the pieces with great care. She glanced up as he stood watching. For a moment their eyes met, separated by the lighted glass. She was holding a lapis lazuli bracelet, the blue of the police car. Emboldened, he formed the silent words, Quanto costa? Tre cento settante mille, her lips said. It was eight in the morning when he got back to the hotel. A taxi pulled up and rattled the narrow street. A woman dressed for dinner got out and went inside.

The days passed. In Verona the points of the steeples and then its domes rose from the mist. The white- coated waiters appeared from the kitchen. Primi, secondi, dolce. They stopped in Arezzo. Frank came back to the table. He had some postcards. Alan was trying to write to his daughter once a week. He never knew what to say: where they were and what they’d seen. Giotto—what would that mean to her?

They sat in the car. Frank was wearing a soft tweed jacket. It was like cashmere—he’d been shopping in Missoni and everywhere, windbreakers, shoes. Schoolgirls in dark skirts were coming through an arch across the street. After a while one came through alone. She stood as if waiting for someone. Alan was studying the map. He felt the engine start. Very slowly they moved forward. The window glided down.

“Scusi, signorina,” he heard Frank say.

She turned. She had pure features and her face was without expression, as if a bird had turned to look, a bird which might suddenly fly away.

Which way, Frank asked her, was the centro, the center of town? She looked one way and then the other. “There,” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said. He turned his head unhurriedly to look more or less in the direction she was pointing.

“Si,” she said.

They were going to Siena, Frank said. There was silence. Did she know which road went to Siena?

She pointed the other way.

“Alan, you want to give her a ride?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

Two men in white smocks like doctors were working on the wooden doors of the church. They were up on top of some scaffolding. Frank reached back and opened the rear door.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked. He made a little circular motion with his finger.

They drove through the streets in silence. The radio was playing. Nothing was said. Frank glanced at her in the rearview mirror once or twice. It was at the time of a famous murder in Poland, the killing of a priest. Dusk was falling. The lights were coming on in shop windows and evening papers were in the kiosks. The body of the murdered man lay in a long coffin in the upper right corner of the Corriere Della Sera. It was in clean clothes like a worker after a terrible accident.

“Would you like an aperitivo?” Frank asked over his shoulder.

“No,” she said.

They drove back to the church. He got out for a few minutes with her. His hair was very thin, Alan noticed. Strangely, it made him look younger. They stood talking, then she turned and walked down the street.

“What did you say to her?” Alan asked. He was nervous.

“I asked if she wanted a taxi.”

“We’re headed for trouble.”

“There’s not going to be any trouble,” Frank said.

His room was on the corner. It was large, with a sitting area near the windows. On the wooden floor there were two worn oriental carpets. On a glass cabinet in the bathroom were his hairbrush, lotions, cologne. The towels were a pale green with the name of the hotel in white. She didn’t look at any of that. He had given the portiere forty thousand lire. In Italy the laws were very strict. It was nearly the same hour of the afternoon. He kneeled to take off her shoes.

He had drawn the curtains but light came in around them. At one point she seemed to tremble, her body shuddered. “Are you all right?” he said.

She had closed her eyes.

Later, standing, he saw himself in the mirror. He seemed to have thickened around the waist. He turned so that it was less noticeable. He got into bed again but was too hasty. “Basta,” she finally said.

They went down later and met Alan in a cafe. It was hard for him to look at them. He began to talk in a foolish way. What was she studying at school, he asked. For God’s sake, Frank said. Well, what did her father do? She didn’t understand.

“What work does he do?”

“Furniture,” she said.

“He sells it?”

“Restauro.”

“In our country, no restauro,” Alan explained. He made a gesture. “Throw it away.”

“I’ve got to start running again,” Frank decided.