The Detour (10 page)

Determined, I stuck to my original inquiry. “Cosimo, I know your brother doesn’t care one way or another, but really, tell me what you truly thought about the statue.”

He shook his head because he had no more to say and I hadn’t understood his point.

I pleaded: “Try to remember, before it was in the crate, when you were waiting in the room with Keller and all the others.” Enzo and Cosimo had had all that time to regard a masterpiece while I had been out wandering like a foolish tourist, out of my element, feeling rattled, with time running out even then, in ways I couldn’t admit or understand.

He relented. “It makes you …”

“Yes?”

“It is as if you must …”

“Yes?”

“… hold your breath.”

“Yes,” I said, satisfied with that reverential answer, pausing for a moment as my lungs stopped drawing air, as my own blemished rib cage and imperfect body remained statue-still, imagining. Yes.

“But then,” he said—and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me, trying to impart some great truth, or simply revealing his own lack of artistic appreciation—“that is good for only so long. Life is waiting. Then you must breathe again.”

By the time I scooted out the passenger side, Enzo was standing naked at the edge of the lake. Before I could register my own discomfort at the spectacle he was making—so near the road, where anyone might have seen—he had plunged into the water, toes curling before they disappeared beneath the sparkling surface.

Cosimo chuckled to himself, undressing more slowly. “
Va bene
. Fifteen minutes.”

He walked slowly to the lake edge, dropping his white boxers. When he was knee deep in the water, he splashed at his armpits and then turned back. “Are you coming?”

“
Certo
.” I rolled up the bottom of my pants and waded up to my ankles, toes squelching in the soft bottom of the lake.

Cosimo floated on his back, eyes closed, letting the water lap over his forehead. “It’s not bad. Clean enough.”

“Enjoy yourself.”

A second time: “Are you coming?”

When I didn’t answer, he called back with effort, “I don’t think we’ll see any cars. No one has passed for a long time.” Still floating on his back, he started to whistle. The tune was familiar and pleasant, something I’d heard Cosimo whistle for brief snatches while driving, but I couldn’t place it.

I rolled up my sleeves, dipping my wrists in the cold water. On the far side of the lake, a solitary tree spread its branches over the lake. The water had a deep and musty algae smell, like the olive-colored water at the bottom of a neglected flower vase. The lake’s calm surface reflected the blue sky and cumulus clouds high above, creating a mirrored version that was, in fact, lovelier than the real sky, like a painting that allows one to see something unappreciated in everyday life—only one of art’s valuable qualities.

But my reverie was interrupted. Enzo exploded out of the water a few meters away, shaking his golden mane. He laughed at my startled expression. “How can you wash your body while you are clothed?”

“I’m fine.”

He waded toward me, into increasingly shallow waters,
chest bared first, then well-defined abdomen. “Come on now. The truck is hot. We are there soon again, back in the oven.” He dragged one leg at a time through the water, taking the slow-motion strides of a muscle-bound giant. Though I tried to avert my gaze, it was impossible not to see as his hips emerged, followed by his hairy pelvis, his penis shrunken by the cold water, his testicles shifting with each advancing step. When I turned further away, Enzo insisted even more loudly, “You feel better all the rest of the day. You want that we toss you in?”

“No, thank you. Certainly not.” My hand went to the front of my buttoned shirt, clasping the cloth there, pulling it tight around my ribs like a nervous woman holding her bathrobe closed. Embarrassed by the gesture, I dropped my hands, dipped my wrists again quickly, then waded back a few steps and sat on the dry shore, pulling on my socks with difficulty. My feet were still wet. I was hurrying for nothing. Relax, relax, I told myself, and remembered the postcard to my sister in my shirt pocket, warped by my chest’s damp heat.

We have stopped at a small lake
, I began to write a few minutes later, safely distanced from the lakeshore, and with those words I could see this moment as it should have been seen and experienced: as a congenial, natural, unselfconscious diversion. Who wouldn’t have wanted to take a refreshing swim on a day like this?

And as soon as I’d allowed the thought, as soon as I’d let myself think again of my sister not as she was but as she had once been, I imagined my mother. She was down on her knees so that we were face to face, lecturing me gently on the day I was to leave for a week of nature camp just outside Landshut.

“If you refuse to take your shirt off, if you refuse to swim, the boys will notice and be
more
curious. Don’t let them start, and you will be fine.” But my heart was pounding as she gazed deeply into my eyes, attempting to make a gift of her own confidence. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure my father was out of earshot. He was talking to my uncle, who would drive my cousin and me to the boys’ camp, two hours away. My father had already been through my suitcase once, approving not only each item, but how it was folded and placed. Now my mother pressed something into my hand. Six small, tan bandages and a small roll of tape. The bandages would cover what must stay hidden, if I were to avoid shame, but every time one got wet, it would have to be replaced. “Only six?” I said, my voice breaking with pinched dread. She rested her forehead gently against mine and explained, “The seventh day, there is no swimming. Only youth assembly. Now quickly: pack them away.” My eyes welled up. I was dizzy with relief. She had thought of everything, as mothers do. And if we had lived alone, just the two of us—three, with Greta—we would have been happy.

Enzo’s voice boomed across the water: “Are all Germans like you—embarrassed to take off their clothes?”

“Certainly not.”

“Enzo,” Cosimo called from farther out, still floating. “Leave him alone. Let him make up his own mind.”

“
Va bene
. But there is no lake again today, so close to the road. And the truck has a bad smell.”

“Not because of me,” I muttered.

Enzo was in water up to his knees—hands relaxed at his
side, soaked pubic hair catching the light—staring at me, or past me, toward the road. I turned away, exaggerating the effort required to pull on each shoe, oppressed by his display—not the nudeness per se, I was no prude, but the arrogance of his ease.

“Vogler …”

I grumbled in reply, pretending to be focused on my laces, wishing almost that I had disrobed entirely—it really wasn’t worth all the fuss, not as it had been for me once, long ago. That was all over—forgotten, insignificant—the problem reduced to one small, residual blemish. The boys’ camp had been a problem, but I had survived six months of labor service just fine. I could tell you, labor service had been a lot more problematic than the boys’ camp. But now that I was fully dressed, it would have seemed more awkward to swim than to avoid swimming.

“Vogler—” Enzo stopped short, only his feet submerged. “Do you see?”

There was a distant figure—no, two figures—side by side, walking on the road. Toward the truck.

I pulled the laces of my shoe so hard that one snapped. “Get your clothes!” I shouted, and took off running before I could tell if Cosimo had heard or if Enzo was following. The flat dress shoes tore into the grass. I slipped once, gained traction on the gravelly road, stirring dust as I sprinted toward the figures: one larger than the other, walking alongside the truck, tapping the side of it, pausing near the driver’s door. I ran so hard I couldn’t breathe, but there was no need to breathe for this short distance, only to run—fingers pressed together,
palms gently cupped, elbows crooked, chin lowered, as our coaches had always instructed—as fast as I could, hobbled only slightly by one untied shoe and my untrained physique.

The figures heard me pounding toward them. The old man’s lips parted beneath his gray mustache. The boy’s eyes grew wide.

“
Hallo! Halten Sie an!
”

The boy took a step closer to his father, eyes wide, clutching the burlap bag he was carrying.

I interrogated them: “What are you doing? Why are you approaching the truck? What were you expecting to see here?”

Cosimo had pulled on his boxers and rushed to catch up. Now he stood just behind me, one hand pressed to his side, panting as he rambled in Italian while I slowly took hold of my senses and remembered: of course these two couldn’t understand me. They’d never heard anything but Italian this far south. They were villagers. They’d mistaken me for a madman.

Cosimo tapped me on the shoulder several times. In response, I slowly loosened my grip on the boy’s arm. I had been pinching that soft, thin arm so hard that there was sure to be a bruise to show when the boy told his mother, sometime that night, about the
übergeschnappt
foreigner who wanted to interrogate him.

“But why are they so close to the truck?” I demanded when Cosimo seemed to be letting off the strangers too lightly. Cosimo stopped massaging the stitch in his torso and pointed to the burlap bag. “They thought we might buy some lemons. They were walking from their farm to the next village. That’s all.”

He patted my back a few times now, a casual motion, but there was communication in every touch—a brisk pat at first,
then softer, softer. Everything calmer now. He was in control. In that moment, I felt certain that Cosimo had avoided even more brawls than he had endured, that the coming age would be—would have been—a better place with more men like him. It was a different kind of masculine symmetry he presented—not the symmetry of a beautiful face, but the equilibrium of stance and situation. When Cosimo took a casual step forward, closer to the boy and the farmer, I took a step back. The boy nestled under his father’s arm, relieved to be out of my reach.

Now Enzo—half dressed, curls dripping onto his bare chest—joined us, oblivious to the minor, evaporating drama. He chatted with the farmer, eyed what they were carrying, held up a finger, and returned a moment later with some money for the boy, taking the entire burlap bag.

The lemony scent filled the truck. The edges of Enzo’s fingers were drying white from the strong juice. He had eaten five of them so far and was now squeezing a lemon into his damp curls, working the juice through with his fingers. “It is natural—good for adding light color to the yellow hair.”

A fat seed was stuck to his temple, but I said nothing. What kind of man bleached his hair in this way?

“You eat one?”

“Maybe one,” I said, digging into the thick yellow rind and passing a wedge to Cosimo, enjoying the way the citrus scent chased away the odor of smoke.

Enzo pressed his elbow into my side and winked, happy not
only about the shared fruit but also about a shared confidence. Just before we had pulled onto the road, while Cosimo had been placing our folded jackets in the back of the truck, Enzo had lowered his head and whispered urgently, “It is not true.”

“What?”

“I
know
how to drive. My brother thinks I can’t. This is what he tells you, before. It makes him feel better.”

“Why?”

“He does not want me to be”—he paused, looking for the word—“independent. He wants me to live in our family town, always. He wants to be partners and share, always. He does not want to be alone. But I
can
drive. He cannot fix truck, but I can drive very well. Of course!”

Cosimo had pulled open the driver’s door, cutting short our conversation. But it had served its purpose in restoring Enzo’s manly confidence. Now Enzo seemed certain I’d share my own confession in return.

“So, how did you do that?” he asked, after he had finger-combed all his sticky, golden-glazed curls.

“Do what, frighten the boy?” Even I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the boy’s wide eyes. The statue was safe and sound, we were not really being followed, and—hunger aside—this drive was turning out to be easy, after all.