Salvatore Scibona: The End

“When I awoke I was so cold. I felt so small. In the bedroom, the darkness was a liquid in which everything was submerged. I could not find the candle with my hands. And I firmly knew that you were dead. You had taken all the useful parts of me into the grave in your stomach.

“Then I heard the squeal of the pantry door opening. I thought it could only be an intruder in the house, banging around in the kitchen — because you were dead, you see. You hadn’t stayed out playing cards, and you weren’t coming home and slicing a piece of cheese in the pantry to eat with a plum on the porch, as you used to do late at night, creeping courteously so as not to wake me. No, I had lost you.

“I felt my way along the parlor walls to the kitchen. I did not speak; the one I believed was an intruder did not speak either, although I could faintly see him moving about in the room. I found the lamp and the matches on the counter. I lit the wick and lowered the chimney over it, pressing the sleeve of my nightdress to my smarting eyes. I wound the wick down a quarter of a turn. I moved my trembling sleeve away from my face. The cupboards shone and were yellow and hopped menacingly in the lamplight, and I heard the intruder approach me.

“Then — as when you spy the shadow of a fish, imaginary and flat, beneath the surface of a stream; and suddenly, cracking the elemental border, the fish flings itself into the crisp and luminous air, twisting with life — from the blackened bottomless depths above the lamp, your ruddy face leapt to my eyes. And you kissed me.

“Maybe that piece is too big to swallow. Here, let me take it out. Maybe you’d like the applesauce first. I know how you like your sweet, my sweet. I’ll mix in the brown sugar. You don’t even have to chew. Just open your throat and lean back your head and let it slip down like birds let fish fall down their gullets. You planted the trees yourself, the apple trees. And I mashed the apples through the mill just today. There isn’t a single seed, I promise.

“I had received the letter from you that I had so long awaited, but I had never heard of the place where you wanted me to go. So while the nuns were in the courtyard taking their bedding off the line, I sneaked into the library of the convent school and found the atlas page for central North America. Then I heard them coming, and I tore out the page. And I put the book back on the shelf, and I ran away. Late that night, I crept into the lemon orchard behind my father’s house. The odor of the blossoms in that orchard was the ideal of sweetness. There was a high, dazzling moon. I scoured the map, but all I could find was Iowa, Iowa was right there in the middle. And I did not know you well enough to know if you would be careless about such a thing, about writing the right letters of the name of a place in the right order.

“I like this. I like how quiet it is now. You and I sitting alone in a quiet room. You don’t have to talk. Just tilt back your head and swallow.

“If I met someone from my town, would I still be able to speak in dialect with him? I don’t think so. You made me speak the national language like they do in the army, or, I suppose, in the king’s house. I used to feel so embarrassed, like I was putting on airs, when I was first learning to talk the way you wanted. I said to you, ‘For the love of God, I am not from Sienna, I am not a baroness.’ But I was ashamed.

“When we were first married I was so unhappy. We had running water and two rooms to ourselves, and the coal was delivered every month to our building, into a bin in the landlady’s stable. It was so much more than I had hoped for. But I couldn’t bear to look you in the face. And once, you came home from the shop, and it was late, and I had put out boiled beans and fresh broccoli and some chicken necks for your supper. And you washed your hands and face in the kitchen sink, and you sat down to eat. And you watched me as you related the plain innocences of your day, but I could not look up. And you told me to look up. But I couldn’t bear it. And there had been months of this. And you stood up and came to my side of the table and told me, perched enormously over me, to look at you. And I would not do it. And then you struck me with the back of your hand, hard, on the side of my head, so that I could feel my hairpin cutting me. It wasn’t too hard. And you asked me why I wouldn’t look at you. And I said I didn’t know. And you said, ‘Why did you say you would marry me and come all this way, and do it, too, marry me, if you didn’t want me?’ And I should have said it wasn’t true, I should have said I did want you. But instead I told you the truth. I said, ‘You aren’t what I expected.’

“You dashed out of the apartment. I heard your feet going so fast down the shallow stairs that I was afraid you would fall. Then, in fact, I heard you stumble and I heard your body fall down to the landing. You had probably hurt yourself, but I didn’t get up to see. And then I heard your feet going more slowly down the rest of the stairs. And I heard the big door come open and the din of the street gushed up to our rooms. And then the slam of the door. And then silence.

“I like to do only the one thing at a time. Today, for example, I know I should have put the roast in by three, but I had cut out the blouse pattern from the bolt of organdy, and I had told myself I would finish stitching the sleeves before I did anything else. There, done. I like to have a little box and to take everything out of the box and then put everything back in. There, done. I like to read a book from one cover to the other. I like to read every letter inside it and then close it. Therefore, having embarked on the sleeves, I did not so much as peel a carrot for supper until I had finished them. Therefore, having embarked on supper with you, I am going to stay here until you eat something.

“My consciousness is like a very bright light I shine on one thing I have in my mind or on another. Often the light is shining too directly on something and it begins to dry up right in front of my mind’s eyes. There was a you I had in mind for three years, while you were in this country and I was in the other one. In the orchard, staining the map with my oily finger, I could not think of you directly. I could not see you. I could not call to mind the exact sound of your voice. You existed only along the edges of my thought and so could be beautiful. And then — it seemed very sudden — I was living in those two rooms with only you. And I did not love the you across the table. And I was looking down at my feet, trying to remember the face I had had along the shadows of my mind in the orchard, because I wanted to say to my heart, Look, they are the same man. But I could not remember that other you, that idea you.

“Everything I look at head-on, think of directly, give a name to, turns to stone.

“You were not what I had expected. It was at least as bad as you feared: You were a disappointment to me. Unless you open your eyes and tilt back your head, I will tell you something else. I will do it.

“I will do it.

“You are still a disappointment to me.

“I want to take my remorse for feeling this way and put it in a little box and close it. My darling, I have been trying to close it these many years. And yet there is the emotion, unclosed, unclosable; and there is no There, done, ever, there is more in the shadows sometimes, and sometimes less.

“You could say I have no right to notice my heart’s feeble follies, these elusive regrets I feel for an honest confession confessed unkindly, when my conscience has vastly bigger fish to fry. I have practiced and perfected and take pride in my facility with a vicious act for which I take money. I’ve tried to find remorse in myself for this, but where is it? If I wanted to, I’m sure I could invent a defense, but I would only want to if I felt remorse.