Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

He suddenly looked very nervous, almost desperate. "What do you think?"

"I'm sorry, but I have a job already. Aaronsen and Son treats me well."

"I'll double your wages. Eighteen dollars. No, make it twenty-five an hour."

"I'd have to think about it," said Eugene. The possibility, perhaps, of working one day with Constance Eakins — if he was truly alive — was tempting, but Eugene didn't want to give up his job with Alvaro only to serve as some kind of a stooge for a deranged, and perhaps violent, old man.

Abe sighed and stooped over, his body seeming to fold into itself like a collapsible cot.

Eugene turned to Alison. She was looking right at him now, her lips parted and her gray eyes wide and imploring. It was as if she wanted to convey some secret knowledge.

"I'll do it," he said, staring at Alison as he spoke." I'd be happy to take part—"

A spasm shook Abe's face. He began to pound his fist on a stack of books piled high on his desk.

"A-HA!" he yelled, as the stack teetered and listed precipitously. "Here we go! Here we go! HERE — WE — GO!"

Mr. Schmitz wakes up from a dream he has already forgotten. His fingers are wet. He removes his hand from the mattress and touches it with his other hand, smearing the fluid.

He flicks on the light with a dry pinky finger, and has to blink several times before he can see anything. His wife slowly comes into view. She is sitting up in bed, staring at him. Her fleshy torso is bent over, so that her nightgown strap falls from a shoulder. Scratchy white hair flies askew in curlers and a dentureless mouth gapes. Her eyes are wild.

"Agnes?" says Mr. Schmitz. The bedsheet between them is stained a pale pink. His hands are smeared with it. Agnes hiccups a sob.

"Let me get some tissues," says Mr. Schmitz, rising from the bed. He comes back a minute later with clean, damp hands and a bath towel.

"My darling," he says. Her face is craven and distorted with confusion. "It's OK, darlingdear."

He hands her the towel, which she promptly puts under her bottom.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

"What happened?"

"I couldn't sleep, and then I felt this strange feeling, like I was spinning." She breaks off in tears.

"Oh dear," says Mr. Schmitz." We'll ask the doctor tomorrow. He will tell us what we need to do."

"Yes," she says. She is distracted and still shaking. "I think it's over now. I suppose I'll take a shower."

"Best to do just that," says Mr. Schmitz." I'll change the bedding."

When she returns from the shower twenty minutes later, the soiled sheets are crumpled up on the turquoise rug. Mr. Schmitz is lying in a fetal position across the half-made bed, his feet by her pillow, fast asleep.

Later that night, past three in the morning, Rutherford finishes taping a massive sheet of bubble wrap to his dining room table. He needs only to cover the table's legs and the dining room will be fully wrapped. He has already done the entire library and the guest room, but there is still his bedroom, both bathrooms, and the set of Etruscan pottery. He will save the sink and the wine cabinet for his final night in the apartment. The kitchen phone rings. Padding and popping, he makes his way down the hall. When he picks up the receiver he hears panting and immediately knows who it is.

"I had the strangest dreams," says Mr. Schmitz. "And now I can't go back to sleep. I didn't want to wake Agnes. It's just that she — she hasn't been sleeping so well recently. Are you still up?"

"Of course," says Rutherford. He eases himself onto a William IV — style flame mahogany chair that he has found to be much gentler on his arthritic back ever since he padded it with three layers of bubble wrap.

"What is that popping noise?"

"I just opened a new box of wine. The packaging. So you were dreaming. ."

"Yes! I think so. The same dreams. I was wandering lost in a foreign city. But what city," sighs Mr. Schmitz, "was it?"

"Let's see. . Was it Perugia? Where the people are excessively polite and have a rigid sense of decorum?"

"It's possible," says Mr. Schmitz. "Yes, I think you're right."

A single bubble expires under Rutherford's weight as he leans back in the chair. He closes his eyes and begins Mr. Schmitz's nightly lullaby.

"In Perugia," says Rutherford, "a man doesn't just hold a door open for a lady, but he bows at the same time. His humility forbids him from so much as glancing at the woman's face. When a man proposes marriage, he doesn't only have to ask the permission of his fiancée's parents, but must go begging to every single one of her living relations in a strictly defined hierarchical order, from grandparents down to cousins and little nieces. But if the father accepts him, the rest of the family usually agrees. For it would be considered improper if any other family member were to oppose the decision made by the patriarch for his own daughter. The suitor must also place white lilies on the fiancée's family plot in the graveyard, in order to appease her forebears, who have been cruelly barred by death from this important consultation.

"Fortunately, Perugian families are highly concentrated in number. Relatives rarely move more than one city block away from one another, fearing they might offend their kin. As a result, the families are very large and very close. Over the centuries, these strong familial bonds have been responsible for the formation of the city's peculiar street design. Whereas Bologna began as a collection of towers, radiating out from the city center, Perugia has grown linearly, to accommodate the expansion of families over time. That's why Perugia is called 'la città della vista infinita' —the city of the infinite view."

Mr. Schmitz is silent, but Rutherford knows that he is smiling, his head lolled back against his pillows.

"What lonely families," says Mr. Schmitz. "No, I think I was in a different city — the one with the impossible name."

"Ah, that's Ferrara, the most difficult Italian city name to pronounce. To do it, your tongue must distinguish between the roll of a double r and the roll of a single r. Only Ferrarans can get it exactly right. Their double r 's are works of wonder — they roll off into the distance long after the neighboring syllables have faded away, like a bicycle gliding down a hill long after you stop pedaling.

"It's fitting, then, that Ferrara is known as the city of bicycles. There are no automobiles of any type. The air is clean and still. The streets are quiet except for the purr of spinning spokes. The people ride and ride. And since the town is shaped like a giant wheel, they never feel like they have to compete. The faster you go, the faster you return to where you started. In the middle of the town, in the hub of the wheel, there is a small garden. If you stand there during rush hour, you can hear nothing but the cyclists, their spokes spinning softly on all sides, making a noise that sounds like 'Fe-rra-ra, Fe-rra-ra.'"

"What beautiful bicycles," says Mr. Schmitz, in what sounds to Rutherford like a British accent.

"Excuse me?"

"The sound of wheels," says Mr. Schmitz. "Spinning."

From the steady breathing at the other end of the line, Rutherford can tell that his friend has fallen fast asleep. There is an abrupt grunt, followed shortly by a brief whistle, and then Rutherford gently replaces the receiver.

He goes to the hall closet, where he tears out a new sheet of bubble wrap. He folds it around his bedside table, careful not to cover his airplane ticket, which is sitting there. He sees he has exactly two weeks before his departure, during which time he must transfer his funds to an Italian bank, clean out the refrigerator, cancel his newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and finish packing. And, of course, he still must break the news to Mr. Schmitz.