She looked up, then turned away. “It’s not enough for you? Just to-”
“What?”
“You know.”
I smiled. Something she couldn’t say, not even in the hotel, where anything was possible. A well-brought-up girl.
“Go to bed,” she said, still not saying it. “It’s not enough?”
“No.”
“Ha. Since when? You were happy enough to-”
I brushed back a lock of her hair. “Things change. I want to be with you. That’s all.”
“No, I can’t,” she said, moving my hand away. “I don’t want anybody. Oh, what a judge I am. I see you, I think, yes, nice-looking, American. They never stay. They go home. No problems.”
“You want me to leave?”
She looked down, biting her lip. “No. Oh, it’s difficult.”
“Explain it.”
“Explain it. So easy. Some little talk over a drink.” She met my eyes. “I don’t want anything more. It’s better for me.”
“How could it be better?”
“It’s better. Safer.” She hesitated. “Sometimes, do you know what I think you see? Another one of your cases, back in Germany. You want to make everything all right again. Maybe that’s why you want to be with me. You think you can change what happened. But do you know how it really was? When people think you’re going to die, you don’t exist for them anymore. You disappear, become nothing. That first train, none of them even looked. I thought, this is what it’s like, there’s nobody else. Then not even you. So you live here,” she said, pointing to her skin. “And here.” Her eyes. “Food, whatever makes you feel alive. Reminds you what it’s like. Even pain sometimes. Just to feel it. But not here.” Now her chest. “Nothing here. You have to stay safe.”
“From what?”
“The others. Everybody. They’ll leave you alone if you’re playing dead. You think you can get through the rest of it if you do that. But then it’s hard coming back, you can’t do it all at once. Just seeing things. Eating. Simple things, that’s all I can do. Not people.”
“It’s not like that anymore.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Anyway, how do you know? It didn’t happen to you.”
“No.”
“To know that everyone wants you dead.”
“Your friend didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t want me dead. He wanted-” She stopped, then breathed out, almost a snort. “People. You know what he wanted? He wanted me to like it. It wasn’t enough for him, just to do it. He wanted me to like it. To like him. What he could do to me. He wanted to hear it.”
“So you pretended.”
“Well, we can do that. Make sounds. It’s what they like. So.” She looked down. “And then sometimes it would happen. Even with him. I could feel it in me, beginning, and I couldn’t stop it. With that pig. I’d feel it anyway-you couldn’t take your mind far enough away, it would happen. And he knew. He wanted it like that. At first I was so ashamed, and then-then it was a way of being alive. So I let it happen. Maybe that’s worse. Knowing it can happen with anyone. Like animals. So what does it matter who? Does it matter where food comes from? It’s all the same.”
“It doesn’t feel the same to me.”
“No?”
“No. It’s not like with anyone else.”
“Ha, how many-”
“Don’t,” I said, stopping her. “I’m not him.”
“No? You think it’s so different? You want me to like it too.”
“Yes.”
“All right, I do. I like it with you. So you can be happy. Tell your friends in New York.”
“I’m not him,” I said again, holding her shoulders. “It’s different.”
She looked down. “But I’m not. I’m the same. I’m the same. In Fossoli.”
“No. What happened to you-”
“It’s still happening to me. All those feelings. The hate. At first you want to kill all of them, and you can’t even kill one. Not one. And then you know what happens, I think? You start killing yourself. You have to kill someone and there’s no one else.”
“Stop,” I said, placing my finger in front of her mouth without touching it.
“Yes, stop,” she said. “What’s the good of all this?” She twisted her mouth. “Not what you expected, is it? Such talk. A girl you met at a party.”
“You’re not just a girl at a party.”
“Yes, I am,” she said, pretending to be light, but I was shaking my head. “No? What happened to her?”
“Signora Montanari looked at her dress.”
She met my eyes, a little startled, then looked down. “My poor dress. So, what happened then?”
“I knew I was in love with you.”
“Oh,” she said, only a sound, her head bent. “You don’t mean that,” she said quietly. “You don’t even know me.”
“Yes I do. Everything about you. Right then.”
“Oh, all in one look. You’re being-”
“I know. All right, not everything. Just enough.”
“What does it mean, to say something like that?”
“What it always means. I want to be with you.” I lifted her head. “I’ll take Italian lessons.”
She smiled weakly, her eyes troubled. “No. Go to America. Your life is there. Not all this.” She spread her hand. “But thank you. To say that. The opera, even. I didn’t expect-” She leaned and kissed me on the cheek, a flutter of breath. “It’s a good time to stop. While it’s all still nice.”
I reached for her, but she put her hand on my chest again.
“No, go.”
“I can’t walk away from you.”
“No? All right. Me, then,” she said, her hand trembling. She looked up. “Don’t follow. I’m all right on my own,” she said, then turned and started walking.
“I don’t believe you,” I said to her back. “I don’t believe it’s all the same for you.” No answer but the click of her heels on the stone. “Tell me it was the same.”
“Yes, the same,” she said, not turning around, still walking. Then she stopped, her shoulders drooping. A long quiet. “No,” she said finally.
I stood for a minute, then started moving toward her gently, as if she were a bird that still might be scared off. I stepped around to face her, not saying anything. She looked up, her eyes still uneasy.
“Not the same?” I said softly.
“No,” she said, the word not much more than a breath.
“Then let’s go home,” I said, stepping closer, our faces almost touching.
“You’re so sure. How can you be so sure about this?”
“We can get a taxi at the Gritti,” I said, putting my arms around her, feeling her head fall against my shoulder. “Is that all right, a taxi?”
She nodded, resting against me. “To the gardens. Not to the house. Signora Bassi, the owner, she lives there too. The noise-”
We were quiet in the taxi, as if Signora Bassi were already listening. The room was plain, up a staircase at the side of the house, overlooking the small misty canal and a back calle full of clotheslines. We stayed quiet in the room, not making love, just holding each other in bed. I did get to see her asleep, hours later, in the predawn when I usually tried to make out the Redentore and wonder how I was going to spend the day. Now in the light from the window all I could make out was the sewing machine and a dressmaker’s dummy, her own shape standing straight
