Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) (29 page)

“I want to know if she is really dead,” I responded.

“What do you think?”

“Don’t play games with me, Orlando.”

“Just answer the question: do you believe she’s dead?”

“I thought I did. I mean, you told me she was.”

“I never said such a thing.”

“
When we die, we do not live on
,” I quoted. “Wasn’t that your last piece of advice to me?”

“It was,” he concurred, “but you mistook my meaning. No, that advice was about you, not about her. I know what your life has been like after she was shot. I heard the rumors, saw the evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“You were wasting away in a half-life, unsurprising to all who really knew you, because your character has never been strong. You will always need a protector. First it was me, and then it was her, and now it is this woman you claim has changed. They will always shield you from the real world, from making your own decisions. Don’t you ever wonder what your life would have been like if the ifrit had never chosen you?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” I responded truthfully.

“You being involved in
all this
,” he held his hands up and stretched them wide, “it’s all kinds of wrong. It’s like you’ve always been the anti-hero in a story that was never about you to begin with. Oh, you have the looks of a hero -- the height, the build, the face. Some might even say you have the
air
of a storybook hero, if they didn’t know you at all.”

“And who’s the real hero then, you?” I scoffed, inhaling the strong scent of the whiskey the bartender had set before me.

Orlando didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.

“I knew that she would come for you in the night, she loved you to the point of obsession,” he continued after some moments. “I knew she was capable of it the minute she announced she was going to Rome, how she spied and stole and plotted to bed you that night. I knew she would manipulate your mind, because that is what they do. They are master tricksters, don’t you remember me warning you? They assume the shape and nature of animals within our world, a single disguise of their choice that lasts their entire existence. Do you think anything
good
could ever rise from the blood of a murder victim? And instead of becoming your own man through the pain and the sorrow of loss, there you were, escaping back into your own mind, returning to your protector.
When we die, we do not live on
. We. Not they. There is no life after death for us, do you hear me, Laurentis? We have just one life so painfully short, granted to us by Allah, and we must live it no matter the cost, what it takes away from us. I think it is time, my friend, for you to protect someone else now, in repayment for all that has been done for you, and all the world’s wrongs you have been sheltered from. Now what are your other questions?”

“I think,” I said slowly, taking a sip of the whiskey placed before me, “that I have no further questions.”

“No more?”

“Well, maybe just one. You outgrew me, didn’t you? That is why you left me.”

And this was the gentle response of my first friend:  “Of course I outgrew you. You are a simple man, Laurentis, made for a simple life. You were never meant to contemplate other worlds or see the things you have seen. Do not complicate it any further. Your path is straight ahead of you. Go and walk upon it, and may Allah bless you and your children.”

“Children?” I started, surprised. “You think I will have children?”

“Oh yes,” answered Orlando, smiling a little. “You will have many.”

“Will I ever forget her?” I asked then, filled with sadness.

“No,” he responded. “But you will live like you have forgotten. And you will never forget the honor she bestowed upon you. For a creature like that to love you so completely, it is unheard of in this world and in theirs.”

“Was there a price,” I hesitated, “for loving me?”

“Trust me on this, Laurentis. You do not want to know.” Orlando leaned over the pressed his forehead to mine, and I did not understand then why he did so. “God be with you, my old friend,” he breathed.

It was not long after that I heard the news: Orlando Khan had disappeared from Orvieto, leaving not a trace. His sister Imelda Khan, the famed beauty, had vanished alongside him. After an extensive search conducted by his family, they were presumed dead. Their bodies were never recovered.

It was late that night as I sped the Peugeot up the driveway of
Il Casa di Gallo
. I left the keys in the ignition and didn’t bother closing the door behind me.

Enough, I told myself as I hurried past the fountain and its water dark and peppery, like stardust. Enough of being the secondary character in someone else’s story. It’s time for change.

The front doors were unlocked and I pushed them open, feeling the heavy oak swaying under my strength.

She looked up in surprise from where she knelt in front of a suitcase in the bedroom, burrowing through color-coded piles of neatly folded clothing. “What are you doing here, darling?” she asked, getting to her feet and smoothing out her satin kimono.

“Where are you going?” I demanded.

“I told you already, you silly man. I’m off to Rome in the morning.”

“Do you love me, Darlo?” I stammered abruptly.

Her mouth hung open with surprise. “Well, of course I love you, you dear fool. Why ever else would I hang about, unmarried, all this time?”

And I got down on one knee, like all the leading men in Americano movies with their side-parts and square jaws, and reached for her hand. “Darlo Gallo,” I said. “I haven’t an ounce of jewelry on me at present, but I promise you a diamond double the size of your fist if you just say yes. Will you marry me?”

She had tears in her eyes, quickly brushing them away with her newly polished nails, a lacquered apricot. “Oh, darling,” she cried, “does it even matter that I asked you first?” She reached for me and held me close, and I felt her heart beating near my own, and it was no dream. But what was that long-forgotten feeling rising within me?

Happiness.

It was happiness.

O
n the morning of my wedding, I awoke alone in my bed on the farm. We had agreed to sleep separately the week before the ceremony, and I missed Darlo terribly at nights. I threw on my dressing robe and hurried to the kitchen, where my father’s newspaper had already been leafed through and discarded on the bench. No doubt he had been in the vineyard since early light.

I made myself an espresso using the remains of the coffee grounds in my mother’s favorite canister. I sighed when I thought of her. How she would have loved to see this day. Her favorite aria from the opera
La Tosca
would be performed later that day in her honor, Darlo had arranged it.

Instead of having the coffee in the kitchen as was customary, I took my cup and the rolled up newspaper to my bedroom. I opened the curtains and slid up the glass plating, feeling the summer warmth on my skin. I settled again on the bed and thought about my auburn-haired bride, our honeymoon on the white beaches of Thailand. “You’re going to love it, darling,” she shouted, waving travel brochures in the air like banners, “the feel of the ocean on your skin.” She had bought us matching pairs of sunglasses, despite my protests, for the occasion.

I slipped a vinyl record on the player I had procured on a business trip, a beloved old record that I had once listened to over and over.

Can you hear the drums, Fernando?

When it was almost time to leave for the church, and I could smell from the hallway my Papa’s rarely used aftershave, contained in a glass bottle so yellow with age it must have been at least fifty years old, I opened the box Darlo had left for me.

True to her impeccable taste, there lay encased in tissue a beautiful black suit made from the finest material I had ever touched. It ran through my fingers like a river. I dressed slowly in front of my little mirror, and slicked back my short blonde hair with water from the nightstand. It was still so light colored that it was difficult to notice the strands of white that had begun to creep in. I had shaved the night before, and my face was still smooth and pristine, without a hint of a shadow. I slipped into worn yet comfortable leather shoes that Freddy had kindly polished, placing them outside my door.

When I was done, I sat back down on the bed. It was silent in the room, and I couldn’t hear my father hobbling through his preparations anymore. I looked around my chamber for the last time. I felt between my fingers the bed sheets I would never lie in again to dream the dreams I don’t dream anymore.

I turned to face the window and saw the farm beyond it, the vineyard that my forefathers had toiled upon stubbornly, refusing to give it up to strangers or bullies. It was in its age of glory now, and I could only be happy my father had lived to see this day.

And then I heard something. It sounded just like the call of the swallows from so long ago, but I had to be mistaken.

Suddenly, a breeze disturbed the branches of the olive tree outside the window, and I crossed over to inspect it. My mouth fell open as I looked up: there in the sky flew a familiar flock of swallows, a gust of wind bearing bodies of silver and sapphire and ivory. I watched in awe as they descended into all their old haunts as if they had never left – the vineyard, the awnings of our roof, the barn. Some perched in the olive tree and I leaned out the window to study them with wonder. I’m not sure what made me say it – nostalgia? But I said it anyway. “Where is Volatile?” I asked them.

Nothing. Just the breeze, the trees, their chatter.

Then:
She’s here
, they sang.

And my eyes alighted on something. A swallow. As I peered at the bird, its curving speckled wings, I realized with a jolt that its eyes were not the customary black. They were green, like the bellies of pond-frogs in summer. The swallow’s head bobbed about in a funny little nod and it had no shadow.

I began to speak, but my voice sounded strange and frothy, and I knew that I was crying.

And then the swallow turned and she spoke to me, not in a voice I heard with my ears, but in that lovely, familiar speech she had, and I heard it with my heart.

“I’ve brought my flock back to Orvieto,” she said.

I was speechless, as I always am when dumbfounded, when I am full of wonder.

“I’ve come to tell you that though the swallows stay, I am migrating,” she continued.

“But it’s only summer,” I reasoned.

“You are my winter,” she said, and I understood.

“Will you come back after I am gone?”

“Yes,” she replied, and the happiness I felt at knowing she would return home, to this farm where she belonged after I had passed on, was the kind of happiness I could never again hope to achieve in this lifetime.

“Goodbye, my love,” she said, and after a moment of gazing right inside of me, she spread her wings.

I gripped the windowsill and watched as she flew away, as she left me for the final time, left me safely in the grip of an ancient city atop a volcano, Orvieto bathed in light.

And I whispered then to an easterly wind, the kind created just to carry messages.

I whispered the words she’d always wanted to hear.