When the Night (19 page)

“Like dancing.”

He’s crazy. What is he talking about? Oh God, what have I said? I’ve let myself fall into his trap; what have I done?

I get up and walk to the door.

“Wait.”

I turn around. He smiles. He’s a monster.

“You want to get rid of him, don’t you?”

I walk toward the bed, my hand raised in a fist.

“You’re crazy! Luna said you were.”

He stops my hand with his.

“Hit me if you like, but don’t yell. The nurses will hear you.”

I lower my hand, but he doesn’t let go. I let my hand slide down into his; he holds it tight, as he did at the stream. We
stare at each other, both thinking the same thing: an emptiness in our bellies, a feeling of weakness. We’re both overwhelmed.

“Your husband is coming for you.”

“Tomorrow.”

He has me in the palm of his hand, just as he always has. He’s the only one who ever has.

I lean over him without realizing what I’m doing. I part his lips with mine, and he lets me. I feel his tongue, the saliva, the inside of his mouth.

I want this woman; she’s the only one I want. I need to find the strength to tell her.

“Don’t leave me.”

I pull away and kiss him lightly once more. A tender kiss, like the kisses I give Marco. My cheek touches his. He whispers into my ear, “Don’t leave the boy.”

I
THINK BACK TO who I was fifteen years ago, when I came here for the first time, and I can barely recognize myself. It’s almost as if that woman—alone, on vacation with her first child—were not me at all. Peering out of the train, I sow my thoughts across the expanse of snow.

MARCO IN HIS stroller. I push him around, under the mountains, at dawn. I’m cold; always, cold and tired. The cows in the field, his ice axe in the entryway, mud from his boots on the floor. Everything is jumbled together: feelings, fears, desire. I trudged up the mountain, and inside of myself.

Many times I’ve thought of giving you the gift of these years, Manfred. Look at me now. And Marco; I think you’d like to see what he’s become. Always angry, with me, with his father;
when he goes out you never know when he’ll be back. On the weekends, he sleeps like the dead. At one in the afternoon, I peer into his room to see if he’s breathing; when he was a baby, he never slept. He doesn’t talk much, and doesn’t appreciate a lot of talk. He studies hard, and he’s never happy.

I have a daughter, Manfred, three years younger than Marco. When she was born, I didn’t want to listen to anyone. No advice, thank you very much. I breast-fed her for four months. Her name is Silvia, like Bianca’s daughter. I tried to give her the strength I didn’t have. She holds her own against her brother, and argues with me, but she’s more accommodating with her father. And she loves to dance.

Many times, I’ve wondered what your daughter is like now. And the little ones? They must be more than twenty years old.

I haven’t tried to keep in touch these fifteen years. I wrote you a letter, a week after I left. It came back to me. You mailed it back to me in another envelope with my address on it, so I would know you had read it. No comment, just like Marco. I don’t know anything about your life, but I’ve thought about you, dreamed about you, spoken to you.

More than anything: desire. The first few years, it made me cry in bed. I felt a pain in my stomach, even on the morning Silvia was born, at the hospital. Come now, I thought, come through that door, I want you to see her. Once again I’ve become a mother.

You didn’t come, you never did, but you were always there. The emptiness in my belly became a memory. No more pain; it kept me company.

“A LONG TIME ago, almost fifteen years ago, I met a man. I feel like I knew him more than any other man in my life.” I told one of my sisters, the youngest. She had lost her husband in an accident, and was raising her children alone. She was inconsolable.

“You had a lover?”

“I wanted to make love to him, I won’t lie, but it never happened. He knows something about me that no one else knows. I never saw him again, but he never left me. He kicked me, picked me up, and returned Marco to me forever. I know what you’ll say; that’s why I’ve never told anyone. You’ll say: you never lived with him, shared a life, children. What do you know about him? Nothing; I don’t even know whether he can walk, or whether he’s with his wife or with another woman. But I know he’s alive.”

She smiled sadly.

“My husband is alive every morning when I wake up, and then he dies again a second later.”

“That’s why I’m telling you. Presence and absence: sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.”

She hugged me and then ran off to take the children to school. Maybe it helped her, who knows.

I SEE THE mountains. I’m afraid. Three more hours and I’ll be there. Maybe you’ve left, gone to Alaska. I’ve considered that possibility. But it’s enough to see the house and go up to
the lodge. Do Bianca’s children run it now? Maybe they’re all gone, but I don’t think so. Hard to imagine that the Sanes could leave these rocks, the stream, the woods.

THEY PARK THEIR cars every which way. It snows, and they don’t move them. You dig out the tires, spread gravel, but it’s pointless: they just don’t know how to maneuver in the snow.

“Don’t rev the engine, softly now, don’t turn the wheel too sharply.”

But they can’t do it. They come from the city, and they don’t know how to drive. They say, “Could you do it, please?”

Can’t they see my leg? Don’t they know I can’t drive? They apologize.

“It’s all right. Try again. Not too much gas, easy now.”

They can’t do it, and I have to call Simon and the cook and ask them to push.

I’d like to hurl insults at them, but I can’t. They are our customers. Luna has taught me to be nice.

“We have to pay the mortgage.”

The mortgage has changed my life. She agrees: “You’ve improved, Manfred, you’re almost normal now.”

What choice do I have?

“The hotel is doing better than your brother’s lodge, or than Stefan’s business. You should be happy!”

We do it for Clara, who is studying in the city, and for Simon, who will take over the business when we’re old. Or tired. I’m already tired. I try to get out as often as possible, to do repairs,
shovel snow, discuss plans and bills. I look up at the three-story hotel which was once my house.

Once a week I hike up the mountain on my own. I walk slowly, with a cane, without being seen. I keep the good leg fit. It’s even stronger now, the muscles are hardened and it works for two; my customers don’t even notice my bad leg.

I leave the shovel next to the garage; I’ll do the rest later, when everyone is on the ski slopes.

I brush off the shoes by the door. When my father died, we took back the rug. Luna put it here in the entryway, next to the bench. Every time I come in, I think of him. Simon is on the phone with his girlfriend, who lives in the city. I torment him a bit about her; I don’t want them to get married too soon.

“Where is your mother?”

He points toward the kitchen and says into the phone, “Hold on a minute.”

“Room 10 called. The shower is acting up.”

“I’ll go look. Get off the phone.”

“OK, Pop.”

He swallows his words; he must be imitating something from TV. It doesn’t bother me.

“Manfred, do you realize you’ve only said three words all day? I’m not exaggerating; exactly three.”

I talk less and less; maybe it’s some sort of disease. Or maybe I have nothing to say. I wonder if there is anything left to add, but I can’t think of anything.

Up on the mountain, when I sit down to eat a sandwich and have a beer, in silence, I would like to have someone to talk to.
Once I screamed, just to hear my own voice, and then I started to laugh. I felt like I was trying to call someone.

I don’t feel like talking. Luna has too much work to do to complain or feel lonely. The kids know what I’m like, but I make an effort, especially with Clara, when she comes home for the holidays.

“Do you enjoy school?”

“Of course.” Clara is brusque, not like when she was a kid and she tried to keep me happy so I wouldn’t get mad. “I don’t want to live here, and I don’t want to look after the hotel.”

“You’re right. You should do what you want to do.”

My acquiescence irritates her; she likes to do battle, like me. She looks like me too. But I don’t want to fight. Maybe all that rage died, along with this leg that I drag behind me. Luna is right: since the accident, I’ve changed.

I go up the stairs to Room 10, on the third floor, and knock on the door. They’ve gone out. The bed is unmade, clothes on the chairs. I go into the bathroom to fix the shower. I need to change the washer, so I take the shower apart and leave it on the basin; as I turn, I catch my reflection in the mirror. You’ve aged, Manfred. The news of the day is: the shower in Room 10 is leaking. The rooms are completely different now; the architect has created showers, bedrooms, hallways, added doors, knocked down walls, built partitions. The house is unrecognizable.

“HAVE YOU BEEN here before?”

“Once, a long time ago.”

The young woman leads the way. “The town hasn’t changed much.”

“I noticed. The pastry shop is still in the same spot, and so is the bakery and the butcher’s. Fifteen years ago I rented an apartment on the road that leads up to the large meadow.”

She opens the door. The room is small, and the windows look down on the piazza. I put down my suitcase, open the curtain, and see the tables and the band. It’s the day of the town fair.

“Is the room all right?”

I turn around. “Yes, it’s lovely. The place I rented back then belonged to Manfred Sane.”

“He runs a hotel now.”

Maybe she means someone else. In small towns, sometimes several people have the same name.

“His brother used to run the lodge up at the pass.”

“Albert. He still does.”

Over the years I’ve imagined him here, or on the mountain, or traveling, alone, with his wife, or with someone else, but I never imagined him running a hotel.

“Does he actually run the hotel?”

“Yes, with his wife and son.”

With his wife; I should have guessed. Marina, that’s not what you wanted. You just wanted to see him again, that’s all.

In the doorway the girl asks, “Are you staying one night?”

“Yes, I’d like to go up to the lodge tomorrow. Is it open? Can I stay there?”

“Yes, of course. If you’d like, I can call. They’ll come pick you up with the snowcat at the gondola station.”

I sit down on the bed. “I’ll think about it and let you know at dinnertime.”

I’m alone now. The house has become a hotel, and he runs it, like his brother, with his wife. You’ve lived with your husband for fifteen years; you have a daughter, a new house, you’ve traveled a bit.

I lie down on the bed. I should unpack; dinner is early up here. I close my eyes. There was a reason why I returned, a fantasy I had entertained all these years.

IN BED AT night, the light on my side is off. Mario reads.

Nighttime, darkness, cold. I hurt my baby boy when he was very little. He doesn’t remember, or maybe some part of him, deep inside, still does. Manfred is the only one who knows, and yet he is the one who entrusted me with the boy. That is why I was able to raise him, and why Mario is still with me.