William Trevor - Two Lives

I mentioned the visit to the monastery, but the entire day except for that reference to a quarrel appeared to have been erased from Aimée’s memory. Her breathing deepened while we remained with her. I could tell she was asleep.

‘This isn’t good,’ her uncle said.

Of course the man was upset; in the circumstances anyone would be. He asked if he might telephone Dr Innocenti, and did so from the hall. I listened on the extension in my private room, feeling the matter concerned me.

‘Yes, there will be this,’ Dr Innocenti said.

‘The child’s suffering from periodic amnesia, doctor.’

‘So might you be, signore, if you had experienced what your niece has.’

‘But this came on so suddenly. Was it the excitement today, the visit to Siena?’

‘I would not say so, signore.’

Mr Riversmith said he had arranged to return to Pennsylvania with Aimée in four days’ time. He wondered if he’d been hasty. He wondered if his niece should be taken back to the hospital for observation.

‘The journey will not harm your niece, signore.’

‘All day she seemed fine.’

‘I can assure you, signore, she has recovered more of herself than we once had hopes of in the hospital. What remains must be left to passing time. And perhaps a little to good fortune. Do not be melancholy, signore.’

Naturally, in all honesty, Dr Innocenti had had to say that the journey would not be harmful. It was not the journey we had to dwell upon but the destination. And this was not something Dr Innocenti could presume to mention. There were further reassurances, but clearly Mr Riversmith remained far from relieved. No sooner had the conversation with Dr Innocenti come to an end than he made a call to his wife in Virginsville. I guessed he would, and again picked up the receiver in my room. She was not surprised, the woman said. In a case like this nothing could be expected to be straightforward. Her voice was hoarse, deep as a man’s, and because I’d heard it I at last pictured without difficulty the woman to whom it belonged: a skinny, weather-beaten face, myopic eyes beneath a lank fringe, eyebrows left unplucked.

‘What you need’s a good stiff drink,’ I said a little later, when Mr Riversmith appeared in the salotto . He looked shaken. For all I knew, she’d given him gip after I’d put the receiver down. For all I knew, this weather-beaten woman blamed him for the mess they’d got into – having to give a home to a child who by the sound of things was as nutty as a fruitcake. Added to which, the heat in Siena might well have adversely affected the poor man’s jet-lag. I poured him some whisky, since whisky’s best for shock.

10

After I’d had my bath that evening I happened to catch a glimpse of myself, as yet unclothed, in my long bedroom mirror. My skin was still mottled from the warm water, the wounds of 5 May healed into vivid scars. A dark splotch of stomach hair emphasized the fleshiness that was everywhere repeated – in cheeks and thighs, breasts, arms and shoulders. To tell you the truth, I think it suits me particularly well in my middle age. I’d feel uneasy scrawny.

I chose that evening a yellow and jade outfit, a pattern of ferns on a pale, cool ground. I added jewellery – simple gold discs as earrings, necklace to match, rings and a bangle. Not hurrying, I made my face up, and applied fresh varnish to my fingernails. My shoes, high-heeled and strapped, matched the jade of my dress.

‘You’re putting us to shame tonight,’ the General remarked as we sat to dinner on the terrace, and you could see that Otmar was impressed as well. But Mr Riversmith reacted in no way whatsoever. All during dinner you could tell that he was worried about the child.

‘You mustn’t be,’ I said when we were alone. A local man who hired machines for ploughing had arrived, and the General and Otmar had gone to talk to him at the back of the house.

‘She’s suffering from a form of amnesia,’ Mr Riversmith said. ‘She draws the pictures and then forgets she’s done them. She’s forgotten a whole day.’

‘We’re lucky to have Dr Innocenti here.’

‘Why did the German say he’d drawn the pictures?’

‘I suppose because there must be an explanation for the pictures’ existence. It would be worrying for Aimée otherwise.’

‘It isn’t true. It causes a confusion.’

Because of his distress he was as forthcoming as he’d been when he’d felt guilty about his sister. Distress brings talk with it. I’ve noticed that. In fairness you couldn’t have called him ambitious now.

‘Look at it this way, Mr Riversmith: an event such as we’ve shared draws people together. It could be that survivors understand one another.’

His dark brows came closer together, his lips pursed, then tightened and then relaxed. I watched him thinking about what I’d said. He neither nodded nor shook his head, and it was then that it occurred to me he bore a very faint resemblance to Joseph Cotten. I didn’t remark on it, but made the point that all four of us would not, ordinarily, have discovered a common ground.

‘D’you happen to know if they’ve given up on the case?’ he asked, not responding to what I’d said.

I didn’t know the answer to this question. Since the detectives had ceased to come to my house we’d been a little out of touch with that side of things. The last I’d heard was that they considered their best hope to be the establishing of a connection between the events of 5 May and some other outrage, even one that hadn’t yet occurred. I repeated all that, and Mr Riversmith drily observed:

‘As detective-work goes, I guess that’s hardly reassuring.’

I sipped my drink, not saying anything. It was Joseph Cotten’s style, rather than a resemblance. A pipe would not have seemed amiss, clenched between his strong-seeming teeth. You didn’t often see those teeth because he so rarely smiled. Increasingly that seemed a pity.

‘There are mysteries in this world,’ I said as lightly as I could. ‘There are mysteries that are beyond the realm of detectives.’

He didn’t deny that, but he didn’t agree either. If he’d had a pipe he would have relit it now. He would have pressed the tobacco into the cherrywood bowl and drawn on it to make it glow again. I was sorry he was troubled, even though it made it easier to converse with him. Around us the fireflies were beginning.

‘I’ve been trying to get to know you, Mr Riversmith.’

Perhaps it was a trick of the twilight but for a moment I thought I saw his face crinkling, and the bright flash of his healthy teeth. I tapped out a cigarette from a packet of MS and held the packet toward him. He hadn’t smoked so far and he didn’t now. I asked him if he minded the smell of a cigarette.

‘Go right ahead.’

‘You brought up mysteries, Mr Riversmith.’ I went on to tell him about the feeling I continued to experience – of a story developing around us, of small, daily details apparently imbued with a significance that was as yet mysterious. I spoke of pieces of a jigsaw jumbled together on a table, hoping to make him see that higgledy-piggledy mass of jagged shapes.

‘I don’t entirely grasp this,’ he said.

‘Survival’s a complicated business.’

From the back of the house the voice of the Italian with the motorized ploughs came to us, a halting line or two of broken English, and then the General’s reply. As soon as possible, the old man urged. It would do no harm to turn the earth over several times, now and in the autumn and the spring. The Italian said there would have to be a water line, a trench dug for a pipe from the well. There would be enough stone in the ruined stables, no need to have more cut. Dates were mentioned, argued about, and then agreed.