Italian Fever (11 page)

“Oh no,” she cried out, throwing herself against the unyielding wood. She twisted the knob, rattled the door in its frame, but to no avail. The keys were inside on the marble-topped table. “Oh no,” she said again. She pressed her back against the door and slid down into a crouch, covering her face with her hands. Her forehead was hot; the fever was back. A few sudden sharp abdominal pains reminded her that her period was due; she had taken the last of the light blue pills in the cycle the night DV died. Her stomach, though largely empty, felt queasy again. She took her hand from her eyes and looked out into the dark night, too sick to feel afraid. The rush of adrenaline that had carried her boldly into her present predicament ebbed away and she found herself barely able to stand. But she would have to move; it was too cold to stay where she was. On the chance that the man was still near enough to hear her, she called out, “Is anyone there?” The words, querulous
and weak, blew back at her, mocking her. They had not, she realized, carried beyond the arch over her head.

Surely there were choices; there were always one or two. She could try to get back up the steps to her apartment in the hope that, somehow, the door there was not locked. But she knew it was. And she knew there were no windows she could reach, and even if there were, they were all closed and locked. She could try to find the man, the cause of her trouble, who must have gone down into the olive grove at the end of the drive. The wind dealt her a rough slap at this presumptuous notion, and she huddled down against it. Then, as if to finalize the reprimand, the dim light of the moon was abruptly shut away behind a cloud and a soft whispering rain swept down from the hills behind the house. “Great,” Lucy said.

If she had found the car keys, instead of mooning over Catherine’s letter, then she could have driven to the Panatellas’, roused them from their slumbers, and gotten another set of house keys. The rain intensified and a sudden gust of wind sent a cold sheet of it under the arbor. Lucy pressed herself against the door, taking it all on one side. The car was unlocked; of that much, she was certain. Even if she couldn’t drive it, it would provide some shelter from the cold and rain. And wasn’t it downhill all the way to the Panatellas’? If the rain let up, she might be able to coast down the hill. But she would have to do it backward; the car was facing the wrong way. It was a harebrained scheme, requiring more wit and physical coordination than she could presently call upon, but her imagination was enchanted by it, and lit upon it with a great buzzing intensity, like a bee entering the florid, ambrosial chambers of a Venus’s flytrap. Just get to the car, she advised herself, and then see what happens.

It wasn’t far, but it was far enough to get thoroughly
soaked if she didn’t move quickly. She pulled herself to her feet, clinging to the doorknob. Could she run? She shook her head, trying to clear it, but all that did was hurt her eyes, which felt as if they were being struck from behind by hot pistons. The wind was fierce, rattling the thin wooden lattice of the arbor and forcing thick drops through the tight mesh of the foliage. She took a few steps to the edge of the terrace, hunching her shoulders forward, as if a supplicating posture might appease the increasing fury of the storm. The night was black now; she could scarcely see a foot in front of her face. But if she stayed on the drive, bearing always right toward the house, she reasoned that she could not miss the car. She pulled her sweatshirt hood up, tightening the laces at the neck to bring it down close over her face, and rushed out into the rain.

She had gone only a short way, perhaps ten yards, when her left foot lodged in a hole and she pitched facedown onto the gravel. She heard the soft pop as the ligaments in her ankle gave way to the strain, followed by a hard wrench of pain so intense that she howled as she fell. A cynical bystander in the jeering mob that had overrun the center stage of her consciousness informed her that she sounded like a whipped dog. The gravel bit into her hands; two pebbles flew up, stinging her cheek. At once she raised herself to her knees and tried to stand, but the ankle folded under her like wet cardboard and she came down again hard, this time on her arm. The rain poured over her, soaking into the thick cotton of her sweatshirt, adding weight. She rolled over onto her hands and knees and lifted her head, trying to see where she was. A shaft of lightning split the atmosphere and for a moment it was as bright as day and she saw everything—the house, the drive, even the back bumper of the car, which protruded beyond the house wall. The lightning was close. In the next moment, the
world was black again and the deafening clap of thunder sent such a shout of alarm through her system that she fell off her hands and lay flat on the wet gravel. For a few moments, she didn’t move. She could feel the rain penetrating to the bare flesh under her sweatshirt. It was cold; it ran down her back and pooled just under the waistband of her jeans. She was dimly aware that she was crying.
Just what we need, more water
, shouted the mob. “I can’t make it,” she said. “I’m too weak.”

But she wasn’t allowed to rest. Her stomach began twisting and contracting until she was forced to lift her upper body over one elbow, bracing herself with the other hand while she vomited a thin stream of liquid onto the wet stones. When this process was over, she let herself fall back, away from the disgusting sputum. She lay faceup, but not for long, for the rain was so furious, it poured into her eyes and nose, blinding and choking her. She rolled over, following the decline of the drive, and managed, after the first full turn, to come up on her hands and knees. Then, weeping and muttering, she began to crawl, making steady progress in spite of the elements and with such determination that even the jeering crowd in her head was silenced. As she turned the corner at the end of the house, she could see the gleam of the bumper. “Almost there,” she said, and the crowd, fickle as crowds always are, turned from contempt to admiration and encouraged her with an Italian word—
coraggio
.

“Coraggio,”
she said, pushing on.

But it was one thing to reach the car, another to get inside it. She pulled herself up by the door handle, balanced on one foot, and yanked the latch upward. Though she succeeded in releasing the mechanism, she hadn’t the strength to pull the door open. The car was parked on an incline and she had chosen the door on the higher side. Once more, she observed, gravity was working against her. The wind buffeted her as she
tried again. This time, the door opened a few inches, but as she tried to wedge some part of herself into the narrow space, it slipped closed again, catching her sleeve in the process. Struggling to free the sleeve, she lost her footing and slid down onto the soggy ground, her arm twisted up behind her. She was, she knew, well past the point of total exhaustion. Her body was sending distant, unreadable alarm signals, like coded messages. There was throbbing in her ankle and her head; her face was both burning from fever and cold from the icy rain. She held her free hand up to her face and determined that the pain she felt there was caused by a network of cuts and abrasions from the gravel she had crawled across. The rain drove over her; she offered it the wounded hand to wash. “Where am I?” she asked, and a voice she did not recognize responded, “Somewhere in Italy.”

Her arm began to ache; a knot of pain issued from her shoulder joint. She struggled as well as she could, pulling this way and that, and, to her relief, the sleeve came free. This success encouraged her. She resolved to struggle on a little farther. With dull determination, she dropped forward onto her hands and knees and crawled around the back of the car to the other door. Gravity was her enemy; she understood that perfectly now, and she was on her guard. She knew that a door held shut against her on one side, would fly open and try to smash her down on the other. When she pulled herself up by the handle, this time she was careful to stand clear of the path the door would follow. And she was successful. The heavy door, like those magic doors that welcome princesses into the dark realms of mystery and romance, flew open before her. “Thank God,” she cried out with the last ounce of her strength as she bid farewell to consciousness and collapsed across the narrow, dry backseat of DV’s rented car.

Chapter 9

W
HEN LUCY OPENED
her eyes again, a man she did not recognize was leaning over her. At once he began speaking in rapid Italian. Behind him, another man, his back to Lucy, stood shouting into a cellular telephone. It was Massimo. The strange man kept talking. Lucy closed her eyes, which was as effective as turning a radio dial; the man stopped talking. She tried to make out what Massimo was saying, but it was like trying to isolate a teaspoonful from a torrent of water. She gave it up, concentrating instead on figuring out where she was and how she had gotten there. Gradually, the memory of her struggle to reach the car surfaced, but it was confused and dim. She opened her hands and rubbed her palms against the smooth surface of the sheets. She was back in the apartment; this was the bed. Her hand brushed against her hip, which was covered only by the thin cotton of her pajamas. Someone had changed her clothes.

Massimo was repeating the word
no
, each time at a higher
decibel; then he concluded with the time-honored “
Basta, ci vediamo
,” and snapped the telephone closed, evidently much vexed. Lucy’s hand had strayed over her hip and made the embarrassing discovery that someone had fitted a cumbersome sanitary pad inside her underpants. She kept her eyes tightly closed while a hot flush rose from her neck to her cheeks. Now Massimo and the stranger were talking animatedly. A word recurred between them, one Lucy recognized with a shudder:
ospedale
.

If they wanted to put her in the hospital, she must be seriously ill. She might die there, helpless, unable to make herself understood amid uncaring strangers. The doctors would be unsympathetic and cold, the nurses impatient. She opened her eyes again, this time looking out through a shimmering screen of tears. “Please don’t take me to the
ospedale
,” she wailed.

The men, startled, turned their attention upon her. The tears welled over her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, and she was too weak to brush them away. “I don’t think you should go,” Massimo said. “That’s what I’m telling this imposter.”

“Tell him I’m feeling better,” she suggested.

He pressed his lips together and raised his chin slightly in a gesture Lucy took to be promising. Then he plunged back into the argument with the stranger, who was, Lucy surmised, a doctor. For a while, the match was energetic and even, each boldly interrupting the other at steadily diminishing intervals, but gradually it became clear that Massimo had the upper hand. His volleys were sustained at greater length and higher volume, while the doctor relied heavily on shrugs, grimaces, and monosyllabic exclamations. A standoff was declared. The doctor left the room, huffy but resigned; Massimo turned to Lucy with the grim, self-satisfied expression of a victorious
combatant. “He’s going for his bag,” he said. “He’ll be back to ask you some questions and take your blood pressure, et cetera.”

Lucy nodded, thinking how odd
et cetera
sounded in conversation. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

“This fool would be the last to know,” he replied. “He says if you take a turn for the worse, you will be worse, but if you become better, than you will certainly be better. I have told him, ‘This is not information.’ ”

“I thought it might be food poisoning.”

“It could be. He has also suggested
colera
.”

“Cholera!” Lucy exclaimed. The doctor returned, his bag in hand, his stethoscope draped across his chest, proclaiming his status as a professional. He approached Lucy with an air of gravity and seriousness so transparently fake, it would not, she thought, have fooled a five-year-old child. He was a good-looking man with thick, straight black hair, dark expressive eyes, well dressed, and carefully groomed. As he took Lucy’s wrist to check her pulse, she noticed that his fingernails were perfectly shaped and buffed. He began his examination. Massimo stood beside him, translating his questions and her reluctant answers, for the questions were of the most personal nature: How long had she vomited? Did she vomit blood? Was there diarrhea, as well? Had her period started on time? Was she taking any medication? Did she experience pain while urinating? Massimo was mercifully matter-of-fact and appeared more interested in rendering precise and accurate translations than in the content of the inquiry. The doctor asked her to sit up so that he might listen to her lungs. When she tried to comply, she found that she hadn’t the strength to do it. Massimo fairly pushed the doctor out of his way, so ready was he to aid her. He lifted her by her shoulders and she leaned over his arm,
taking the deep breaths the doctor requested while he pushed the cold stethoscope disk back and forth on her back. He muttered something Massimo didn’t bother to translate; then he busied himself shaking down a thermometer he took from his breast pocket.

The revelation of her extreme debility had weakened the floodgate behind which a river of fresh tears roiled and swirled threateningly. Lucy struggled against it, but when, after he had lowered her gently down upon the pillows, Massimo laid his palm across her cheek and pushed back a straying lock of hair, she gave up the fight. Tears overflowed and, with them, a hard sob burst from her throat, so loud that the doctor looked up from his thermometer, his eyes still unfocused and his mouth set in his false professional frown. “I’m sorry,” she said through her tears. The Italian equivalent appeared and she added, “
Mi dispiace
.”

Something that was not a smile but nevertheless a genuine expression of some feeling briefly animated the doctor’s features. But it passed quickly. He stuck the thermometer between her lips and addressed to Massimo a lengthy summation of his findings. Massimo’s reply was polite, controlled; having scored his point, he did not press his advantage. The doctor removed the thermometer, studied it seriously, and said, “No fever,” pronouncing each of the three short syllables with care and evident pride. Then, exchanging pleasantries with Massimo, he pocketed his thermometer, closed up his bag, and the two men went out through the kitchen. Lucy took advantage of the few moments alone to dry her eyes and counsel herself into a calmer state of mind. She ran her fingers through her hair; it felt lank, in need of a wash. When she examined her hands, she found the fingernails jagged, lined with dirt, and her palms were crisscrossed with scratches. On the pads of each thumb,
scabs had formed, surrounded by inflamed red skin with dirt caked in the creases. She remembered waking in the car. It was daylight and the rain had stopped, but she had been unable even to take off her sodden sweatshirt before darkness had closed in on her again. Then nothing, until now.