Heloise and Bellinis (12 page)

George would have liked to stop the sky. How could he stop the earth? Not even the room, nor the bed, nor his feelings could ever stop now.

“Heloise.” George said.

“I know!” she replied.

That was the moment when the customers in the bar on the ground floor first heard the sounds and laughter of George and Heloise, and it went on that way for two weeks.

I know you would like to stop reading now that you have learned the things you were really interested in knowing. But since you have come this far, why not stick around to the end?

END OF THE INTERMEZZO BETWEEN CHAPTER X AND CHAPTER Y

The trees in the White House Rose Garden swayed lazily in the caressing breeze that came out of the west.

Two Marine battalions, drawn up stiffly at attention, stood facing each other in the open space in front of the President’s residence. The Air Force Band, brasses glittering, stood behind. George stood at attention in dress uniform just behind the ranks of soldiers. A small crowd of elegant women accompanied by men in tails observed the proceedings from the garden only a short distance away

Four plainclothesmen from the Secret Service came running from around the side of the building and fanned out. They were the President’s advance guard. He made his appearance a moment later, wearing a light gray suit, arid kept his eyes straight ahead. He walked quietly, but there was something remarkably youthful in his step. He stumbled at the edge of the walk but regained his balance immediately as one of the guards leapt forward to help him. The President smiled and made a wisecrack to the guard, who laughed heartily and winked at the crowd,

A gleeful laugh occasionally broke the silence. The President bounced up the three steps to the podium and stopped. He wore a very serious expression on his face. The band struck up the national anthem, and a rapid tremor of emotion ran through men and things alike. When the last note had vanished into the air, George stepped toward the President’s platform. He went up the side steps, made a snappy about-face, and stopped a foot from the face of Reagan II. The two men greeted each other with an imperceptible nod. The Secretary of Defense handed the President an open red-leather case. The President removed the medal and draped it around George’s neck. He put his hand on George’s left shoulder and, continental style, brought his face to George’s right cheek and then to his left. George thought he heard the President whisper something through his rather heavy breathing, but he couldn’t have sworn to it afterward. It sounded like ‘son of a bitch.” George wasn’t altogether sure, partly because the President was giving him such a nice warm smile at the time.

George turned ninety degrees left and headed toward the steps. He stepped down slowly, pressing on the haft of his saber. When he was on the grass, he marched past the two rows of soldiers, who were presenting arms, and headed in the direction of the crowd.

END OF CHAPTER Y

Dear Abelard,

I have just realized that I told you in a letter what went on between Heloise and George in the room over Harry’s Bar in Beirut. And it’s all your fault. That was supposed to be part of the story, but nosy as you are, you had to read it all by yourself. Knowing you, I imagine you were totally absorbed by what are ultimately insignificant details, and you surely failed to notice the one important feature of that meeting—namely, the odor.

If I had to give up all but one of the five senses, I think I wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation. I would keep my sense of smell. The odor of things. The intrinsic essence projected into space. The extension of the invisible skein of reality. Memory’s firmest image.

Our whole life and all our actions and reactions are dictated by one single reality that leads us by the nose back and forth, left and right: smell. We attribute a smell to everything. Think how often we speak of the smell of life or the smell of death—without thinking and, what’s more, without smelling.

But they really exist. The smell of life has a thousand forms. From the smell of fields, the smell of flowers, the smell of sea air, the magnificent fragance of springtime, the perfume of a sprig of mint subtly lurking in summer bushes. The aroma of mushrooms in the woods, pines against the sky, stones in wind-hewn rocks, clouds hovering low over gravel slides pouring down from the peaks to the crest of valleys, to the edge of the woods, where the wild smell of rhododendron waits to receive you before you sink in exhaustion onto the stony path and finally take in the odor of peaceful earth.

And there is the smell of death that comes into the house dressed in the clothes of old Anita, so tired, so desolate, and so desperately alone that the only thing she has left to leave behind is the smell of death. My poor old nanny, dearest Anita.

And there is the smell of church and holy water, incense burning on May evenings, and the ashes of joyful bonfires in August. There is the aroma of corn-meal churned and smoky in a huge copper kettle, and the smell of fresh hot milk blending with the pungent odor of-damp manure in a summer barn. The smell of fresh-fallen rain on sunbaked countryside, the cold smell of night just before daybreak, the smell of my parents’ bed, and the smell of our children at birth.

To keep all of this, I could give up sight and sound, speech and touch.

END OF THE INTERMEZZO BETWEEN CHAPTER Y AND CHAPTER Z

Dear Abelard,

Unlawful crap,
Lawful crap,
Awful crap,
I’m full of crap.
I wouldn’t mind a peek
At the trilling little squeak
Of proper lady readers,
Put off by it,
Curious, excited a bit.
They’d like to know
Where does the crap go.
But,
NO SEX!
We’re clean.
Death crap!
Dear ladies,
There it goes.

END OF THE NEXT TO-LAST INTERMEZZO

Now they were back again on the same street, standing as they had at the end of those first two weeks, the first time they came out of Harry’s Bar, when they idly strolled until they ran into Private Tom Margitai and he lent them his jeep.

They walked to the corner, and then for no apparent reason Heloise started running ahead of George, Perhaps it was her way of giving joyful expression to the happiness she felt. She quivered as usual on the high heels of her dusty black evening shoes. The way George watched her, he might have been a faithful Labrador staring after his master. George did not follow after, nor did he try to stop her. He felt drunk with happiness and with fatigue as well. He wished he could keep everything just the way it was at that moment— himself, Heloise, the dusty street, the blue of the sky and the green of the trees. He could have spent the rest of his life just looking at everything around him at that moment.

There was a sudden blinding flash of light to the east. For a brief instant everything around him, and Heioise ahead of him, turned as white as the glaring snow of a sunlit glacier. In a fraction of a second the blinding light seemed to annihilate all color just as surely as darkness would have. George did not complete this train of thought, because something caught his eye. It was a small white spider that had shriveled on a bright rock. It was just like the one he had seen one night on his bedroom ceiling. That was in 1988; he was a child then and was vacationing with his aunt in the country near Udine. It happened only a few seconds before the big earthquake.

This spider turned into a tiny ball vivid against the blinding surface of the rock. At that very instant Heioise turned round to smile at him. They silently looked into each other’s eyes for an endless moment, as if an irresistible force held them apart. George could barely move his arms and legs. A violent hot wind sprang up, driven forward by a black cloud out of the east, the direction of the blinding light, A gigantic wall of sand swept the horizon, roaring like a thousand sea waves.

And the cloud brought fear in its wake.

“Heioise!” George shouted. He made a superhuman effort to reach her.

‘“George
r
She moved toward him. She held out her hand, and George took it. The two of them were swept up from the ground by the fury of the incredible storm. The light was almost gone, and a terrifying darkness was swallowing all the colors of the world.

George held tightly to Heloise’s hand as they whirled through the air. With an immense effort, he drew her near and wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his lips to her ear and shouted over the roaring wind: “I love you!.”

She just had time to reply. “I love you!” Then the heat melted everything. The bushes that swirled around them caught fire, and their torn clothing burst into flame, but they felt no pain whatsoever. And they were not afraid. Instead they felt an unexpected calm, a fortifying strength in their inmost parts, the bosom out of which we all are born. And that was their last sensation in this life.

THE END

The big cracker went off on the Beirut heights on October 10, 2002. In a matter of minutes, four hundred million people and sixty camels were dead.

For humankind it triggered the wise beginning of a long era of peace.

The camels probably could have done without it.

Dear Abelard,

So ends my manuscript, and if you are still with me, then, come what may, 1 know 1 have one reader at least.

In my last letter, I want to direct your attention to something that has never engaged your mind or your imagination. Death. I want to talk to you about death.

In the last couple of years before my father died, little things would come into his mind suggesting that the end was not far off. When we had breakfast together above Harry’s Bar in Venice, he often seemed quite happy to discuss arrangements for his funeral.

“Listen, Arrigo,” he would say, “I don’t want any mass or priests when I die. All I want is a gondola with shiny brass fittings. I want a fir casket like poor people. That’s how I want to be taken to the cemetery.”

I would say, “All right, Dad.” And I would also say, “There’s plenty of time yet.”

“Not that much,” he would answer. He would forget that we had probably had the same conversation just the day before. And we might repeat it even two or three times in the same week. He had used his brain so much all his life that he was fully aware of the fact that he was getting arteriosclerotic.

“My brain isn’t working today.” he would say, “but remember that if I say anything about Harry’s Bar, I’m sure I won’t be wrong about that.”

And he was right too.

Two years later he had a terrible flu and sent for me. “Arrigo, it’s not that I want to die, but I’m dying all the same. And nothing can be done about it.” Then he asked me to get some olive oil and warm it up.

“Now oil me like my poor mother,” he ordered. I rubbed the warm oil very slowly over his whole body. It was the first time I had ever seen my father naked, but it had no effect on me. I turned him first on one side and then on the other, until his whole body glistened with oil.

“Now I’m fine,” he said.

It was another two months before he died. The funeral was just as he wanted it, except that there were seven gondolas instead of one, and four gondoliers rowed the one carrying his body.

I have had absolutely no warning signals, but I’d still like to take advantage of the end of this story to talk about my last wishes for the day I die. I might just as well start talking about it with you.

Well, my one great wish is to be remembered by the florists. What usually happens is that the deceased is not consulted and the family discourages floral displays by telling people “no flowers, but good works.” This wretched little phrase is meant to foster good deeds that will eradicate those little stains that in the course of a lifetime inevitably will have soiled the pure soul of the dearly beloved and help him win plenary indulgence for all eternity.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A florist’s curses are far more powerful than the distracted prayers uttered by the proteges of Saint Vincent de Paul.

So I categorically insist that the following words be printed in my death notice: “Lots of flowers and no good works”—-and my death will be remembered for years as a red-letter day in the forsythia-and-gardenia trade. Don’t worry about the salvation of my soul. In the years I spent in boarding school I accumulated thousands of prayers and enough indulgences to cover the sins I have already succeeded in committing, the sins I may yet manage to commit, and a great many more besides.

The spiritual exercises we did once a year at my priest-run school, for example, were always worth one plenary indulgence. Moreover, I did them at least three times. I followed all the rules—i.e., 1 didn’t speak for three days, and 1 paid close and terrified attention to the preachings of a Jesuit who had been specially selected for his skill in describing the unspeakable torments of the eternal griddle. You heard things that would have made the toughest killer tremble in his boots. Solemn anathemas were rather wasted on us, because our sins hardly went further than coveting somebody else’s girlfriend. Luckily for me, as I mentioned before, the memory of the blond hairs of Cousin Wanda’s groin that time we were sailing at Torri del Benaco always outweighed the idea of taking out a soul-insurance policy with Lloyd’s of Vatican City.