Bougatsa’s new diet included a steady intake of raw cow pancreases, which allowed him to digest other food by replacing the pancreatic enzymes that his body lacked. While there are powdered dietary supplements that contain the necessary enzymes, Cheryl and I decided to use actual meat. I became well acquainted with the local butchers, who were puzzled by my order until I explained why I needed them, and then they were all pleased to know they were helping the dog on the end of my leash, because it’s not often that a butcher gets to feel like a doctor. Every day Bougatsa looked a little better and every day Marianne Engel looked a little worse.
She was pale from lack of sunlight, although she would occasionally wander up from the basement to grab more cigarettes or another jar of instant coffee. She was becoming a framework of bones etched permanently in dust, her flesh falling away under the force of her physical exertion. She was disappearing, ounce by ounce, like the rock chips that she chiseled off her grotesques. She finished statue 5 before the middle of April and immediately began preparing for 4.
The anniversary of my accident-my second Good Friday “birthday”-passed without her noticing. I visited the accident site alone, climbing down the embankment to find that the greenness of the grass had now completely overtaken the blackness of the burns. The candlestick from my previous birthday was still standing where we’d left it, grimy from a year’s weather, a testament that the site had remained unvisited since then.
I put down a second candlestick, another of Francesco’s alleged creations, and slipped a candle into its expectant iron mouth. I said a few words after lighting it-not a prayer, because I only pray when in Hell-as a remembrance of things past. If nothing else, living with Marianne Engel had instilled in me a certain fondness for ritual.
She kept working through the remainder of the month, but her pace was slowing considerably. This was inevitable. When she finished 4, she had to take two days off before starting 3. The revolt of her body could not be ignored. Even though she took extra time to prepare, statue 3 still took almost five full days to finish.
Statue 2 took her until the end of the month, and it was only a formidable display of willpower that kept her moving at all. After finishing, she crawled into the bathtub for a proper cleansing before (finally) climbing into bed to sleep for two straight days.
When she woke up, only the final statue would remain. I wasn’t sure whether I should fear this or be overjoyed; then again, Marianne Engel often made me feel that way.
She emerged from her bed on the first day of May and I was greatly relieved to see how much better she looked. I became doubly pleased when, rather than head directly into the basement to commence her final statue, she joined me for a meal. When we spoke, all her words were in the correct order and afterwards we went on a walk with Bougatsa, who was giddy with the long-anticipated return of her attention. We took turns throwing a tennis ball for him to chase down and return in a mouthful of slobber.
It was Marianne Engel who first broached the subject. “I have only one statue left.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know which one it is?”
“Another grotesque, I suppose.”
“No,” she said. “It’s you.”
During the previous months my statue had stood, covered in a white sheet like the caricature of a ghost, in the corner of her workshop. At first I had been disappointed that she’d lost interest in it, but as she grew thinner I was thankful that I didn’t have to sit for her while she wasted away.
I only had to think for a moment before I volunteered to sit for her again. While I wished that she would give up this idea of a final statue altogether, at least I could keep an eye on her while she worked. There was also the advantage that, if my earlier sittings were any indication, she would proceed with my statue at a much more relaxed pace. I was not a frantic beast screaming to be pulled out from under an avalanche of time and stone; I would allow her all the time at my disposal, never rushing.
Curiosity compelled me to ask Marianne Engel whether, when we’d started the statue so many months previous, she’d already known that it would be her final work. Yes, she answered, she had known. So I asked further, why did she bother starting it at all, knowing that she would need to put it aside?
“It was part of
We started that very day. Being naked in front of her always made me feel awkward, but I felt less self- conscious now that she, too, was physically imperfect. While her unhealthy thinness was not yet a match for my injuries, it did at least bring us somewhat closer in misshapenness.
Work on my statue continued for about ten days, with about half of that time spent on the fine details. Often Marianne Engel would come to my chair to run her fingers over my body, as if trying to memorize my burnt topography so she could map it on the stone as accurately as possible. Her attention to every nuance was so intense that I had to comment on it; she replied that it was vitally important that the finished statue be found perfect, with nothing lacking.
Things went more or less as I hoped that they would. She never approached the intensity of her other carving sessions, usually working for less than an hour at a time despite the fact that I could sit as long as was necessary now that my pressure suit was gone. She seemed to be savoring this, her final work. She smoked less, and the lids on the jars of coffee crystals remained shut. She leaned close while working the stone, whispering into it with a voice too low for me to hear. I leaned forward, trying to catch what she was saying but I never quite could; it didn’t help that my hearing had been so damaged in the accident. I tried to draw out the truth with a casual comment. “I thought the rock talked to you, not the other way around.”
Marianne Engel looked up at me. “You’re funny.”
And so it went, until she stepped back after the inevitable last stroke of her chisel. For what seemed an eternity, she inspected my stony doppelgдnger before deciding that there was no longer any difference between him and me. Satisfied, she said, “I want to add the inscription in private.”
She worked until late in the night and, although my curiosity was almost overwhelming, I respected her request for privacy. When the final word was engraved, Marianne Engel came upstairs. Naturally, I asked if I could read what she’d carved.
“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she answered. “Right now, we’re going to go to the beach to celebrate.”
I liked the idea. The oceanside always relaxed her and it would be a good way to mark the occasion. So she packed me into the car and we soon found ourselves among the driftwood.
The waves beat rhythmically against the shore and her body was pressed wonderfully up against mine. Bougatsa bounded around happily, kicking up sand everywhere. Down the way, teenage boys drank their beers and tried to impress girls by acting like jerks.
“So,” I said. “What now?”
“The last part of our story. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, begins with you being burned by the condotta.”
XXXI.
Out. In. I concentrated on my breathing. Steady. Be simple. Aim. Be calm. I called my target. “Heart.”
I don’t know what I expected the arrow to look like as it flew away from me. I was surprised to find that my eye actually focused on the target at the end of the line, rather than on the arrow itself.
