Giovanni's Gift (15 page)

A little black leather change purse lay beneath the feathers, an old purse holding ten Italian lire, two wartime pennies struck in some cheap alloy, and a handful of several dozen copper pennies—which, as I weighed it in the palm of my hand, made me think, He couldn't go far on
that.

This handsome brass cylinder, with a plunger at one end and nipple at the other, was the largest talisman here, something whose use I could not fathom, at least on first scrutiny.

Photographs and keepsake cards in abundance.

A miniature diary for 1942, which I leafed through with hope of discovering what Giovanni had done before his emigration from Italy, but in which I found not a single mark other than the letter S—as ornately drawn as a treble clef—penciled in the addresses section at the back.

An amusing booklet, printed on cheap paper, whose cover was illustrated with a man wagging his finger at two women and a gentleman who resembled Fred Astaire, all of whom were laughing merrily, beneath the banner:
Dr. Miles New Joke Book
“What's the idea of the Smiths taking French lessons?” I read. “They've adopted a French baby, and want to understand what it says when it begins to talk.” Jokes such as this were interspersed with advertisements for products such as Dr. Miles Anti-Pain Pills and Dr. Miles Nervine.

And so Giovanni's box, it appeared to me, was a little museum of whimsical curiosities which allowed me some glimpse into the life of this man my uncle had so dearly loved and who knew Helen Trentas from before she could walk or speak. His treasures offered me the chance to envision the history of one who had always been peripheral in my life, a man I never saw as having much to do with me, one whose voice I could for some reason remember, but whose face and figure I recalled only after discovering a formal portrait of him, standing beside an unlikely plinth, his arm settled upon its capstone with an elegance that seemed inherent.

Still, this stuff allowed me only a patchwork portrait. And while it might have been sufficient to satisfy my curiosity a few brief days earlier, now it was not. Now I wanted to know everything I could about the life of this immigrant.

And I was not to be denied. Hidden beneath the gewgaws and bric-a-brac were the letters which would give me my clearest insight into the life of Giovanni Trentas. That morning, the morning Edmé placed the box into my hands, I did not, of course, read them, if only because there wasn't enough time for me to do so and still make any pretense of abiding by my aunt's opinion that I not open the box at all. Nor did I go through its contents just then and touch each of the objects catalogued above with the reverence of a credulous sleuth. All I did was crack the seal, so to speak, then put the thing away, as I'd been asked to do, before returning to the porch, where Henry had joined his wife in a debate about the cause and meaning of the fire. My attentions were divided, though, as I heard Edmé's words “No one would dare—”

“Why not?”

“Somebody would be bound to see them, all those people around. It's just too risky.”

“Nothing risky about it,” Henry scoffed. “If anything, it seems all too convenient.”

“I don't understand.”

“All those people around make for good distraction, that's what I'm saying. Besides, Edmé, listen—face facts. It
did
happen, and the timing, right after we'd opened our place to the community, the mockery of it … ,” and his voice descended into a whisper until we could not hear him anymore, although his lips continued to move. We three sat, as if suspended in that image, quiet and saddened by the allusion. Then my uncle turned to me and spoke again. “Grant, did you notice anybody missing from the party when the fire first started?”

Before I opened my mouth, Edmé intervened. “There were so many new faces, how would Grant be able to tell whether someone had slipped off? What's more, it was getting dark by then.”

For my part, I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You're sure somebody actually set it?”—coming back into the present, out of the curious wonderment of the box.

Henry said, “Well, what caused it otherwise? You think it was a case of spontaneous combustion?”

We had spread plastic tarps over the tables overnight, because after the fire had been extinguished no one had the stamina to begin putting party things back in order. I took this as my opportunity to sidestep my uncle's understandable animosity—not really directed toward me, as such, but dangerous to be near in any case, I sensed—and so I left them there on the veranda and went down into the foreyard to see where to start cleaning up. The tarps were bright blue, and the lawn looked strangely populated by these shiny mounds. As I pulled the covers off, wet with dew, and laid them out across the fence in the upper yard to dry, my mind went back to Giovanni Trentas and what an awful ending he'd met just up in the gorge there. The beautiful small boy he must have been, who had come and made his way in a country foreign to him, who had worked hard during his life and raised his daughter in the absence of a wife who'd left him—that
that
long road would carry him to such a butchering, and the horrid disfigurement of his body besides, seemed to me, as I breathed in the soft morning breezes which moved through the trees and over the grasses, appallingly unfair. No one deserved such a fate as that, I thought. And the idea that whoever had done this to him was alive and well, as able as I to breathe this sweet air, caused a deeply unsettling indignation to come over me. It was as if I could hear Jude's disembodied voice again, chastising me for not pursuing those who'd been responsible for my parents' death that evening so long ago, telling me that here I had in some way a fresh opportunity, one not to miss. So far as I can tell, it was during these moments by myself, before Edmé came down to join me, that my passion to discover who it was that killed Giovanni Trentas was born.

I remembered a book about the origins of consciousness I had read some years before, a book I was able to understand in only a limited way but in which I found an unforgettable line.
The most primitive, clumsy, but enduring method of discovering the will of silent gods is the simple recording of sequences of unusual or important events.
Other than the fascination the words held for me in their proper context of mythology, and of the genesis of religious rites, my interest in the idea was purely intellectual. That is, I believed then that these words would never have any direct impact on my own life. And yet, now look: I find myself writing this chronicle, like a primitive looking for direction from a great, or small, unnamed power. As I stood there that morning, however, I sensed that the will of silent gods was not confined to deep history. Even the most obscene myth and nastiest god manifest themselves here and there every day. All we have to do is notice them.

As I walked down to meet Helen Trentas by the gate, I believed that whatever problem Henry might have with my fledgling friendship with this young woman, I would find a way to change his mind, to convince him there was no harm in it. Indeed, quite the contrary. If it was because he thought it a little precipitous of me, even capricious, to show an interest in another woman so soon after Mary and I had gone our separate ways, I wouldn't be able to argue convincingly that he was wrong. Assuming what Edmé said was true, that I could expect Henry not to be supportive of me and Helen—and there was no reason to believe otherwise—I understood such a response, more likely than not, would arise from his fear that someone might get their feelings hurt. I know my uncle loved me, and I could tell from the way he embraced her, spoke to her at the Labor Day party, that he was devoted, in his way, to Helen. It made sense he might be concerned about the two of us, even apprehensive. It was not like I boasted some sterling history in this regard. My uncle and I hadn't seen all that much of each other this last decade. Why should he give me any benefit of the doubt? Here I was, separated from a woman he and Edmé had certainly liked, a woman I met and married in very short order, and not so long after I had visited Ash Creek with Jude, an entirely different kind of person from Mary, and one quite plainly I adored. What right had I to come breezing into their lives—heart before head, glands before heart—and promptly entangle myself with Giovanni Trentas's daughter? A good question, and one for which I had no ready answer.

“Hello, you,” she said.

“Hello again,” I said.

She was dressed this morning in denim: a faded denim shirt with sleeves rolled back and jeans worn smooth and a little frayed along the cuffs; brown box-toe work boots, also well worn in; and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The sky was not overcast, though it seemed summer had somehow given way to autumn, just after Labor Day, there being a bite in the air that only last week had not been present. I took Helen's hand, since it was presented to me as she said hello, and leaned forward to kiss her but, sensing a subtle withdrawal or hesitation, gave her a rather chaste fraternal kiss on the cheek. Helen Trentas was no easy read, I thought. ‘You ready to do some work?”

“That's why I'm here,” she said, cheerfully.

“You probably know better than I where Henry keeps tools for this sort of thing,” and we walked up the slight grade to a shed next to the barn, where there hung, on pegs, a scythe and a rake, and on a workbench that ran the length of the small building lay a pair of clippers. “What's this?” I asked, pointing at a great zero of heavy iron, a mammoth contraption with rusted jaws and teeth, to which she answered without a moment's thought, “A bear trap. See this? This is the anchor, this staked chain, that keeps the animal from getting away once you have caught it, and this is the spring bow, and this is the opposing spring, and this disk is called the trigger pan. The bows are pulled apart, you place a piece of meat on the pan, the bear releases the springs by tampering with the bait, the trap teeth and chain hold the bear until you come the next morning.”

“And kill it.”

“Kill it, of course. Why trap a bear and not kill it? Unless you want to train it to walk on its hind legs in the circus.”

“Have you done that? Trapped a bear and killed it?”

“With my dad and Henry, a few times, sure. Back when your uncle kept livestock here, one bear could do a lot of damage. They had to take care of things, so they'd set a trap or two.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Is it awful? I mean, just killing it in cold blood like that?”

“What choice was there?”

We had left the shed by this time, and walked together down to the ruined bridge. “I don't know,” I answered, feeling suddenly immature, or unsophisticated, or what have you. “I've never killed anything.”

“Henry told me you're a good fly fisherman.”

“I'm all right at it.”

“Then you've killed.”

“Trout? It's just not the same.”

“Not the same? You're probably one of those people who believes someone can be a vegetarian and still eat fish and poultry. Flesh is flesh, killing is killing.”

“Look, trout don't feel. They have the most rudimentary brain stem, not even a cortex, I don't think. Mammals have brains, therefore feelings, emotions. They have warm red blood like us. I'd just think that their closeness to human anatomy would make it much more emotional, harder to look them in the eye and shoot them.”

“Don't look them in the eye, then,” Helen finished as we made our way into the copse at the top of the east meadow, and from there climbed up the steeper slopes.

Strange girl, I thought, following, doing my best not to feel overwhelmed by her.

As the sun baked the crispness out of the air, we performed our task in the most curious silence, a mute calm that was fragile and edged by paradox. The fragility arose from the fact that though we desired to speak to one another, get to know each other better, the sober stark purity of the small cemetery forbade it, somehow, this morning. A visual caress, a frank kiss, seemed further away than they had the other evening, when the wine encouraged me and the embracing dusk covered us. The paradox I sensed arose from how physically close Helen and I were up here, alone, side by side cutting overgrown orchard grass, raking, trimming with the long stiff shears around the headstones and the fence—and simultaneously how distant, as I say. I could hear her sigh and groan when she worked; could smell her perspiration, saw out of the corner of my eye the bead of it run from her temple down over her cheek, all of which I found erotic, despite my efforts to dampen such sentiments, given where we were and what we were doing. Eros and Thanatos, as equivocal bedfellows as ever. They were with us in this mountain meadow, as we labored with little sense of the passing time. If we traded more than three words, I'd be surprised. After what must have been hours of hard work, the cemetery began to emerge from under the years of growth. A great pile of cut grass had been raked together outside the fence and remained to be burned or moved to a place out of view where it could rot into yellow mulch. Otherwise the job was finished, and we agreed that the small graveyard looked beautiful. Glancing up at the sun, I could see that the day had dwindled well into afternoon.

Helen said, “Follow me.” She'd brought with her a knapsack and in it lunch—olives, sandwiches, sun-dried tomatoes in oil, a mason jar of water, Anjou pears. I watched her hands, mostly, while she unpacked. We sat, ate, at the edge of the high field, some distance from the cemetery, looking out over the valley. “Thank you,” I said, as she presented me with a checkered napkin.

“Thank
you,
” Helen remarked. “You don't know how many times I wanted to come up here and do this. I couldn't ever face it by myself.”

“You don't strike me as the kind of person who'd be spooked by anything.”

Helen looked away when she said, “You don't know me.”

Startled once more by her forthrightness, I kept my mouth shut.