Chapter 1 : Part 6

Spring and Fall
by Nicholas Delbanco

(Page 6 of 7)

There was a building on a cliff he'd read about and half hoped to visit, a structure built by the self-styled Count Fersen underneath the Villa Jovis where Emperor Tiberio took his fatal leap. The villa on the promontory had, or so his guidebook said, a certain architectural distinction and a breathtaking view. But the rain was heavy and the site too far away; he contented himself with a grappa and the promise never ever again to join a guided tour. "We then crossed into DI with PT graphix wire and performed kissing balloon inflations with 3.0 x 15 balloon in LAD and 2.5 x 15 balloon in DI."

ONCE MORE THAT NIGHT AT DINNER he found himself at table with loquacious strangers-this time from Las Vegas and Stamford. The man from Las Vegas had never been out of the country before, and he announced this with pride; I always say, he said, you should see America first. We've been to all the fifty states and every single presidential library and figured we'd give Italy a try-but so far, I have to tell you, it's nothing to write home about. Nancy here has relatives who come from Sicily, Palermo, a village near Palermo, and we'll spend a week together when this trip is done.

Darko glided past them noiselessly, and Lawrence asked for wine. Again he scanned the dining room and saw the grayhaired woman sitting where she sat the night before. Although she was part of a table of six she seemed to be eating alone. This time he caught the woman's eye and this time she half smiled at him; she understood, she seemed to say, how little he enjoyed his meal or suffered such company gladly. She seemed at ease with, complicit in silence, and once more her features looked somehow familiar. Again he tried to place her: had they met before, he asked himself, and if so when and where?

The snatch of song returned to him-But who knows where and when?-and he found himself humming the chorus; the man from Stamford said, "Name that tune," and his wife said, "Don't mind Dicky, he's just jealous, he never could carry a tune."

Then she talked about the musical they'd seen last month on Broadway, a lollapalooza of a show called Wicked, whose whole idea was based on Oz, that wicked witch who used to live in Stamford, which is why the two of them bought tickets in the first place. He, Lawrence, might not remember the actress who played-in the movie now, I mean to say, the woman said, The Wizard of Oz with Ray Bolger and Bert Lahr as the cowardly lion and poor unhappy Judy Garland-but who we're talking about is the Wicked Witch of the West, that skinny and pointynosed actress by the name of-what was her name, Dicky?- Margaret, that's right, that's it, Auntie Em and the Wicked Witch of the West were both the actress Margaret Hamilton, and her life was made, well, miserable by neighborhood children all shrieking every time they saw her and some of them soaping her windows or worse come Mischief Night; she's dead, of course, and this happened long ago, but both of them assured him how Miss Hamilton was nice as nice could be and yet tormented, tormented by neighborhood kids and not excluding theirs.

"More wine, sir?" Darko asked, and Lawrence nodded yes. When the meal was over he stood again, exhausted; the dining room was nearly empty and the Elsinore Lounge had a sad clutch of drinkers and he stepped out on deck to see nothing: the dock, the lights of Naples winking, the cranes and trucks off-loading in the middle distance. In his cabin he did fifty push-ups and tried to read and sleep.

AT NINE HE HAD BEEN VERY ILL, first with a cold and then strep throat; the fever would not go away and became rheumatic fever. Dr. Purvis listened to his heart and informed the family that he heard a murmur, endocarditis of the right mitral valve; the pediatrician looked grave. Larry would have to stay in bed and not even go to the bathroom alone-but Dr. Purvis was optimistic, because a recently available antibiotic could treat and then prevent a recurrence of infection. Bed rest will work wonders, predicted the doctor, and gave him penicillin. It came in a bottle, strawberry-flavored, and he drank it three times a day.

The ceiling spun; the radiator hissed, and he tried to decipher the water pipes or crows in the tall trees outside. Lawrence lay in bed for weeks. His mother watched over him; so did the maid; so did his father on weekends, and friends, but what he saw and could not shake were figures in the furniture, the walls careening madly, the radio beside his bed expanding and contracting. The engines of the M.S. Diana, pulsing underneath him now, brought all this flooding back again: the way his body was and was not present, there and not there in its envelope of skin. He had asked his doctors if angina and rheumatic fever might have been connected, but they told him no.

He slept. Near dawn he dreamed of heedless health and early love; a woman was a statue and the statue was marmoreal but warmed to his hot touch. When Lawrence woke he was aroused but there was grief in it also: what had he done or failed to do that left him here alone? What was he dreaming, had he dreamed, that brought him to this pass?

Again the passengers descended and were herded to a tour bus and, at ten o'clock in the morning, conducted to Pompeii. This morning the tour guide was called Gabriela, who spoke English with a German accent; when someone asked how long she'd lived in Naples she said seven months. But she was pursuing, she told them, a doctorate in archaeology, and she knew more by now than ever she could possibly have imagined or, wirklich, veramente wished to know about the business of excavation and the procedures involved. Gabriela had red, spiky hair and tattoos on both arms. She said, Those of you who wish to be alone should meet me at the kiosk by this entryway at one o'clock for lunch; those of you who wish to listen come along.

Copyright © 2006 by Nicholas Delbanco

About the Author

Nicholas Delbanco's writing has earned him widespread recognition and many literary honors, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. He served as founding director of the Bennington Writing Workshops and, since 1985, has directed the MFA Writing Program at the University of Michigan, where he also administers the prestigious Hopwood Awards. Nicholas Delbanco makes his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and their two daughters.