Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

"I'd like to go home to the city where I used to live with my wife. But I have to fly through the airport in Trieste."

The man splashes his feet in the water like a child sitting on his mother's lap in a bathtub. "It's easy. The road up there is in need of repair, so turn around, take the next right, and you'llsee a tunnel. After the tunnel, a series of road signs will direct you all the way down."

"Would you like a ride?" asks Mr. Schmitz. A quiet joy is creeping over him now at the thought of escaping from the Carso, and from Italy. "Is that where you're heading?"

"Thanks, but I'm taking a shortcut down. Through the woods."

Mr. Schmitz waves once and skips up the path to his bruised and dented car. The rushing water hushes into a whisper, and then disappears. He finds the tunnel easily and presses down on the accelerator. The windows are open and the air rushes over him, sending his wayward tuft of hair jogging in the breeze. He is speeding now, going toward the city, going home.

The next morning Eugene paced back and forth along the edge of the valley for nearly an hour, in search of the narrow path in the cliffs he and Enzo had descended. He couldn't find it, but he did see a slip in the rock face that seemed to lead out. It was a narrow, twisting dirt pass, accessible to so little sky that it was almost a tunnel. When it didn't end up anywhere after thirty minutes, Eugene panicked, and fumbled through his meager food supplies — all he had left were three of Lang's granola bars, an overripe apple, and a square of dark chocolate. He should have taken food from Idaville. Would he have to go back there to beg? Would they accept him? What further indignities would he be made to suffer? But perhaps it wasn't a bad idea. Maybe Sonia would have changed her mind. And yet he was surprised to realize that he didn't want her back anymore. She was changed. What had she been to him anyway? A fever dream of intimate laughter, an auburn swatch of hair, eyes soft and gray, a wiry voice in a long pale throat, and a curved white scar under one eye. He wanted someone else back. He wanted the girl he had dreamt up. A girl like Alsa.

The path led up an incline to the top of a hill. As he climbed the slope, other hills — some of which were topped by medieval towns and country estates — came into view. Tractors moved slowly through the plains, and solitary cars crept along dirt roads. The four mountain peaks towered behind him — he could see them clearly now, their summits obscured by a thick mass of cloud. Somewhere, within their confines, lay the valley, and at the valley's edge, between the mountains and the sea, Idaville. He removed his manuscript, to make sure it was all still there. It was, and it had dried. Looking over his work, he wondered if the monster was right. Maybe he should go on.

He reached the top of the hill. It was covered by short grass and cashew shrubs. A loose ring of cypress trees formed its perimeter, thin patches of fog dragging in their branches like cotton caught on brambles. Eugene lay down, laughing with relief, his back pressing into the warm softness of the field. He took out his manuscript and opened it to the final page. A sheaf of envelopes fell out: his father's letters, stained here and there by giant grimy, food-stained fingerprints — Eakins's mark. He reread them, more slowly this time. He felt a desperate pull to go back to Trieste and catch the next flight to New York, and find his father. But after Idaville, he couldn't imagine returning home. Besides, what good would it do? His father would be no more articulate. It would be better, he decided, to reciprocate the correspondence. On a new page in the notebook, he began to compose a letter:

Dear Father, it began.

You won't ever believe what has happened to me.

He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, his head lying on the ground and the sun was right over him, so bright that it pierced through his eyelids. When he sat up, he could not make out anything in the glare. Finally forms began to materialize before him, and with a start, he saw that he was surrounded by strangers. There were nearly a dozen of them — muddied, bedraggled, half-naked forms, squatting on their haunches like apes, observing him closely, and grunting to themselves, half-formed words spoken by half-formed people. They stared at him intently, their filthy faces stricken by fear and something almost religious — something like wonder. Two of them, a woman and a man, seemed to be the chosen emissaries, and they approached him.

"Good morning," said Eugene. He didn't know what else to say.

His visitors flinched, as if they had been struck a blow. Several of the group stood and scurried several yards away, before looking back and, with great apprehension, returning.

"I'm Eugene." These people didn't scare him. It wasn't just that they appeared harmless and timid, but also that he recognized in them something deeply familiar — friendly even. He gestured to the man and the woman, and they obeyed cautiously, coming close again.

"Who are you?" He wondered how savages — if that was what they were — could still exist in Italy, almost within view of towns and roads.

The girl whispered something, hoarsely, that he could not quite make out. "And he is Jacinto."

Then the man spoke, though he seemed startled at the sound of his own halting, croaking voice." We've been waiting for you," he said. "Please. What is happening to us? We have vague memories of the jungle, and of an enormous steel city, and of our wedding, on a high mountaintop. But how did we get here?"

The man, he realized, bore a startling resemblance to Alvaro. And the girl, he saw, was beautiful, and had a white, crescent-shaped scar below one eye. Eugene looked down at his notebook, and then he looked up at them, and he realized who they were, and he understood what they were saying.