We Leave Together, стр. 21
Salvatore, deep in his immortal soul, knew that Mishaela loved her husband once, and would love him again someday. In his wisdom, he didn’t tell her these things he felt in her.
Jona looked over at Salvatore from time to time. He listened for their conversation in the quiet room. He drank slowly. He allowed his anger to smolder.
Next to him, Nicola Calipari drank slow, too. He clutched his cup delicately like an egg. He sipped it. He stared into the liquid.
“Hey, Lord Joni,” he said, “You ever think there’s a better way?”
“No,” said Jona.
“I think there’s a better way.”
“There isn’t a better way.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” said Calipari. His voice trailed off into a long silence. The room filled with this silence. The heavy air sank deeper into the lungs with the silence. The wet heat pushed into the silence like wind pushed chimes into song.
“Nic,” said Jona, “You’ll get up in the morning, and you’ll feel like yourself, again.” Jona slapped Calipari’s back. “We’ll find someone to push until he breaks and you’ll feel like yourself. Happens to me all the time.”
Nic made a sound in his throat, low and brusque, like the beginning of a word held down too long that came out all mangled and wrong. He took a languorous gulp of his ale. He rolled the liquid around his mouth by rolling his head around his shoulders. He swallowed slowly with his head straight up, his open eyes staring at the ceiling. Nicola put the half-empty cup down. “I’m going home,” he said. He stood up carefully, like his knees might not hold his weight but his thighs and feet could.
“Go home, then,” said Jona, “Write a letter to Mishaela.”
“Yeah,” said Calipari, “Wait… who?”
“Franka, I mean,” said Jona, “Write a letter to Franka. I said Franka.”
“I wondered what that Senta’s name was,” said Calipari, “You’d best go home to your mother.”
Jona lingered in the chair. The empty night opened up like a bottomless ocean. He looked over at Salvatore with Mishaela.
Jona thought about choking the girl in some far, dark place, while Salvatore ran on ahead. Salvatore’d be thinking about joy and glee, and he wouldn’t know what happened to Mishaela until he turned his head. And Jona would leave a note pinned to the dead girl’s dress, for Salvatore to read every morning, or else, to keep Salvatore away from all girls. It wouldn’t work. He was a creature of habits.
Jona strained his ears to hear Salvatore on the other side of the room. He heard almost nothing. The man and woman sat in a sweltering tavern on a sweltering night, and said almost nothing to each other. It was too hot to form words in the thick air, and push them out with heavy tongues.
Jona stood up. He paid for his drinks. He stepped into the insect hum and gauzy lamplight. He walked home through a sweltering fog like walking through smoke that wept.
CHAPTER 6
With the aborted construction of the new canal, carts had to meander around the ditch that would become a river. Between the mounds of upturned dirt and rocks and the housefronts and storefronts, pedestrians struggled to push past each other.
Stray dogs swerved through the legs of the pedestrians to get to the mounds of fresh tossed dirt. The dogs sniffed through the slowly drying muck for any grubs or trash.
The sweaty faces of workmen slipped in and out of the piles of dirt and dogs through the shopgirls wandering with hot corn, and fresh fruits that weren’t really fresh by now.
Rachel had to push through the crowd to get to work on time. She worked at another inn near the Pens that wasn’t technically a whorehouse, but whores and pimps worked their trade in the tavern and rented rooms by the hour from the innkeeper who was smart enough to look the other way unless a tax assessor was pushing him about it, and then he’d probably turn them all over. Rachel stripped sheets and refilled peter pots the same as if she were at a whorehouse. (The innkeeper was an eater of weed, and he spent every night falling down. He didn’t worry what happened in his home, and as soon as he fell to smoking at the pipes and hookahs, he’d probably sell his establishment to a better pimp and all the formalities would finally fade.)
The chamberpots and waste baskets splashed on the tops of people’s parasols. Rachel had no parasol. She had one eye towards the windows and one to the ground. She didn’t want to step in anything, and she didn’t want anything to fall on her hair.
Jona, with Pup next to him, caught sight of Rachel on the other side of the emerging canal. He jumped up to catch a better look. He saw her profile walking away.
“What is it?” said Pup.
Jona waved his hand at Pup. “Nothing,” he said, “Just someone I know. I think we should split up. We won’t catch any trouble if we both stand around looking like king’s men. We have to move around a bit, and see if we can catch them between us. Trap ’em between us, you know.”
“Right,” said Pup, rolling his eyes, “Who you following? Some birdie with a nice tailfeather?”
“You ain’t been out of the scrivening that long, Pup, so don’t talk like you some kind of something.”
Jona jumped and ducked his way through the mess of bodies on this side of the road. Jona and Rachel weren’t far from the tip of progress. Jona pushed through the funnel of bodies. He lost track of Rachel’s back in the crowd. He moved faster, seeking the lines of her motion in the crowded street.
She was nowhere.
Then, Pup’s finger touched Jona’s shoulder.
“Hey,” said Pup.
Jona turned. He raised his hand like he was