The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (16 page)

“That time too,” he said. “Not what you actually said, but I could hear you were talking. Let's try if I shut my eyes.”

He did so and strained for the sound, but it was still too faint. They experimented, moving around, Giovanni speaking directly into Dave's ear, but by now the wind had risen again, and then the sun came out and the cicadas began, so they went back to checkers.

More days passed, and the gradual change continued, but now that Dave was aware of it he noticed each small improvement in his hearing—first the ability to pick up the whisper through the sound of the cicadas, then to make out the shape and tone of the remark, enough to hear whether Giovanni had been talking English or Italian, then a word here and there, and then, straining to listen, whole sentences, and they could have a proper conversation.

It was very tiring, concentrating so hard on the tiny sounds, but Dave seemed to be finding everything tiring. He had spent almost fifty days now in the cell, and though he tried to take exercise—knee bends, toe touchings, situps, walking a hundred times each way, corner to corner of the cell, morning and evening—it didn't seem to help much. It was an effort to get out of bed and stand against the wall when the man called to him first thing, it was an effort to concentrate right through a game of checkers, it was an effort to sing more than a couple of songs at the end of the day. And now it was an effort to talk and listen for more than ten minutes at a time.

“How come you talk English?” said Dave.

“My governess—Miss Wolf—English,” said Giovanni.

“Governess!” said Dave.

“Only when I am little,” explained Giovanni. “But she visit often the
palazzo
to speak English with my papa.”

He laughed and gave a knowing little jerk of the head, so that Dave instantly understood that Miss Wolf wasn't one of those grim, gray, thin-lipped governesses you read about.
Hadn't been
, not
wasn't
. Giovanni was talking about forty years ago, or more, only Dave wasn't sure if he knew that. And he didn't feel like asking, nor about what had happened to Giovanni in the end, or anything like that. It was the sort of thing you didn't talk about.

“You live in a
palazzo
?” he said.

“
Si
. My papa has five, but two are empty, and one too small. My grandmother live in that one.”

“Five
palazzos
! Dad's got six homes, but two of them are only apartments, and none of them's a
palazzo
. What's it like, living in a
palazzo
?”

Giovanni started to explain. One
palazzo
was in Rome, and another out in the hills somewhere, and they moved to and fro. There was something about the servants not wanting to come back after the war, but by then Dave was losing it again, so that though Giovanni's English seemed pretty good it was like listening to a foreign language Dave about half-knew. Bits made sense but the whole thing was fuzzy, and trying to work it out just made him tireder still.

“Sorry,” he interrupted. “I'll have to pack it in for the moment. This is too like hard work.”

So they talked off and on through the day, in dribs and drabs, between dozes and games of checkers and stretches of doing almost nothing, with Dave just lying on the straw like a dog in its basket, letting time drift past. In the evening, for a change, Giovanni taught Dave an Italian song, “
Aspetta Qualcuno
?” which seemed to be about a guy trying to pick up a girl and not getting anywhere. Not Dad's sort of song at all, but Giovanni hammed it up beautifully. He wouldn't have had much trouble picking the girl up, Dave thought.

Next morning Dave was settling down to scratch his forty-ninth mark onto the calendar stone when the men came back and took him out to be photographed. When he had crawled clear of the bushes and they told him to stand, he almost fell, and his legs seemed so uncertain that instead of simply guiding him the short distance to the photographing place, they had to support him with a hand under each arm.

Then there was some delay. As he sat on the rock, waiting, his skin crawled with the unfamiliar caress of sunlight. It seemed to be a still, clear day, but he could both feel and smell that it was no longer summer. Forty-nine days. Half of August gone, and all of September. It was early October now, so it wasn't surprising that the warmth of the morning was merely pleasant and the tang of last night's chill still lingered faintly in the air. Even so, the sunlight seemed to strike clean through him, as if he was hardly there at all, a ghost like Giovanni. Suppose Giovanni were out here on the hillside, in this brightness, would he be visible, even to Dave? Maybe if I go on getting fainter like this, Dave thought, next time they bring me out there won't be anything to photograph.

It was only a whimsy, a fancy that floated into his mind while he waited, but once there it changed. He was slowly becoming fainter. Giovanni was slowly becoming less faint. The two things went together. If they kept him long enough in the cell the time would come when Giovanni would be the solid one and he would be the ghost.

It was nonsense. It couldn't happen. Giovanni was just his own hallucination, nothing more … but once lodged in his mind the idea changed again, growing as it did so, becoming more hideous. These men were not kidnappers. They were friends of Giovanni's, brothers, yes, their brother Giovanni had died, years ago, but now they'd found this way of bringing him back to life by witchcraft. There was a lot of witchcraft on the island, Chris said. And all the stuff about ransoms and photographs was just a cover so that Dave didn't suss out what was happening, because it depended on him trusting Giovanni and thinking he was a friend …

And it was still nonsense, but it wouldn't go away. Dave barely noticed the rest of what happened out on the hillside. Even when at last they took off the hood and he had to endure the shock of brilliant daylight he simply blinked and waited for his eyes to get used to it and then stared at the camera until they had finished. They covered his head again and helped him back in under the bushes and down the stairs.

Though he felt utterly drained with the effort of the last half hour, Dave didn't go and collapse on the bed as soon as they released him, but removed his hood and stayed where he was, leaning against the wall, waiting till he was sure they were clear.

“Giovanni?”

From where he was standing Dave could see straight into the niche. Giovanni appeared out of the darkness at its further end. He looked at Dave, puzzled.

“Sorry about this,” said Dave, “but there's something we've got to sort out. How come you seem to be getting stronger all the time while I seem to be getting weaker? Is it something you're doing to me?”

He'd half-expected Giovanni to give one of his shrugs and laugh it off, trying to get away with it by charm, but he didn't. He looked at Dave for a few seconds, unsmiling, and nodded.

“
Si
,” he whispered. “I do this.”

“Jesus! I don't believe it!”

“You also do this, Dave.”

“What do you mean?”

“You give. I take. You do not choose. I do not choose. It is happening. This place is doing this to us.”

“OK … if you're right, what are we going to do about it? Let's sit down.”

With immense relief Dave settled onto the straw. Perhaps he was simply too tired not to believe Giovanni—suspicion was too much effort. No, it wasn't just that. It was the way Giovanni had taken it. Not that either. It was Giovanni himself, everything about him, his whole nature. When he was there, Dave knew without having to think about it that it was nonsense not to trust him.

“I tell you,” said Giovanni. “When you come—came—to this place you feel I am here. You speak to me. You make me … real for yourself, yes?”

“I suppose so. I needed someone.”

“But you make me also real for myself. I am here—I and others also—a long time before you come. But I am not real. How can I tell you? I am an idea only. Or a memory. Not real. But when you talk to me, you begin to make me real. You give me this, talking to me. I do not take it without you give—giving—it to me. Understand?”

“Yes, I remember. Jesus, I needed you!”

“So. And now you are—were—ill. Very sick. I stayed with you. I am there because even more you need me, only to hold my hand. Someone to hold the hand, when you are so sick. And all of the time you are making me more real. I feel it … move, moving like water …”

His hands explained what he was trying to say.

“Flowing?” suggested Dave.

“Yes, flowing from you to me, so when you are well, now you can see me because you have given me this. I do not—no, I did not think then that when you give, I take. I did not see this, but it is so. When I am made more real, you must be not so real. I take
from
you Understand?”

“Yeah, that's how it feels.”

“So what must I do? I think perhaps if I do not touch you … When I am touching you, I feel the flowing, into me, through my hand …”

“Yeah, I've noticed you've been keeping clear. I thought it was because it felt a bit creepy to you being touched by … by someone like me …”

“No. No, it is good, this feeling. It is like standing in the sun when you are cold inside. Good.”

“I didn't realize. But it's still going on, isn't it? The reason I can hear you isn't that I've got better at hearing. It's because your voice is stronger. Hell, what are we going to do? I don't want you to go away, but when the goons took me outside just now I could only just about stand.”

“But I take so little, Dave, so very little … I show you. You put the checkers on the floor.”

Dave groped down under the straw against the wall and found the two envelopes of newspaper that he had made to contain the checkers.

“Two only,” said Giovanni. “One stone, one straw. So. Now you lift the stone. Good. Now the straw. So. You do it easy—easily—yes?”

“Well, they don't weigh that much, not for me … I see what you're getting at, though.”

“Now, I do it,” said Giovanni.

He crouched over the two checkers and with his forefinger and thumb took hold of the end of the knot of straw that projected upward, but there wasn't enough for him to grip properly and it slipped from his grasp. To help him Dave tilted the checker onto its edge so that he could take hold of it using both thumbs and forefingers like two sets of pincers. He heaved. His hands quivered with the effort of maintaining their grip. The checker rose a couple of inches from the floor before once more he lost his grip and let it fall. By then he was gasping.

“OK, I get the point,” said Dave. “Don't kill yourself trying the other one. Maybe it's because I've still not properly got over being sick, so I notice the little bit extra you're using. I ought to be able to spare that much, I'd have thought. We'll give it another couple of weeks, shall we, and see how we're doing. The goons must have noticed I wasn't up to much. Maybe they'll try and feed me up a bit now. I'll have a bit of a rest, and then I'll mark up the calendar, and then we'll try a game of checkers. OK?”

The day fell back into the usual pattern, games of checkers with rests between, and a few minutes' talk, and another rest, and another game, and time drifting by until something—perhaps mere habit, perhaps a heightened awareness of the tiny changes of sound and light from the airholes—told Dave that evening was coming on.

“All right,” he said. “Time for the concert.”

He settled cross-legged with an imaginary banjo across his knees. He felt stronger this evening, so they sang half a dozen of their favorites, “El Paso” and “
Aspetta Qualcuno
?” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and finished as always with “Tom Dooley.” Giovanni rose as they were swinging through the final chorus:

“
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
.

Hang down your head and cry
.

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
.

Poor boy, you're going to die
.”

He nodded, walked to his corner, smiled his wide, easy smile, and raised a hand. His lips moved.

“
Ciao,
” he was saying.

“
Ciao,
” said Dave, and watched him disappear into the darkness of the niche.

He's a really good guy, thought Dave. I was just being stupid out on the hillside.

The man came as usual, bringing food and a fresh bucket. He didn't speak, and there was nothing different about his visit from most other evenings. The days were shorter now, and it was almost too dark to see by the time Dave had finished his supper and groped his way into bed. He was lying there, waiting to fall asleep, when doubt and distrust came sidling back into his mind. It was something to do with the man's visit, something about the way he had moved round the room, that seemed to tell Dave that he knew Giovanni was there, knew all about him, that even now, at this very moment, Giovanni was out with him somewhere on the hillside, telling him what had happened, telling him that Dave had somehow guessed about their plot but that he, Giovanni, had managed to persuade him it was nonsense.

And nonsense it was. Dave knew that perfectly well, but it was no use telling himself, or trying to drive the idea away by thinking of other things, doing sums in his head, mapping imaginary journeys or whatever. It was like a door whose catch won't hold. The moment you let go of it, it pops open, and the stuff you were trying to tidy away is there in the open. When at last he got to sleep it was only for an hour or two, and he woke with the same stupid suspicions already fizzing in his mind, so strong despite their stupidity that he thought he must be getting his fever back. In the end he slept deeply, and woke only just before he heard the man's footsteps on the stairs. By the time Giovanni appeared it all seemed so silly and childish that he was ashamed to mention it.