Everything Beautiful Began After Part 23

A light mist unfurling across the pond like a spell. The hollow clap of the boat bobbing. The uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g of a thermos. The smell of pond water.

Sometimes you see birds from your balcony. They pa.s.s without flapping their wings.

You imagine what it would be like to simply drift through the air with no effort.

You go to bed.

The days are broken by light.

Most nights you lie in one position. By contrast, your sleeping mind cannot dwell on one thing for too long. Your sleeping mind, like a ghost, drifts from place to place, from person to person.

In the morning, you wake to see what has washed up on the tide of dreams.

You stay in bed.

The morning is very white.

Someone in the square is talking on a cell phone. Sometimes people wait there for things.

You feel the world going on without you. And soon you become starkly aware that in the great history of life, you mean absolutely nothing.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

In the weeks that followed, you spent long spells at the kitchen table in your underpants and socks thinking. Rebecca and your child lay at the bottom of the sea, a world within a world, existence without existing.

Professor Peterson came to check on you. He wanted you back at work, but you had no interest. George kept coming by, too. He wondered if her family knew, and if you should somehow find the sister. But you pushed them away.

You went out once a week to the market, but didn't linger there as you once did. Rebecca liked to pick out oranges with the leaves still on and then arrange them in a terra-cotta bowl beside the bed.

"What about all the little insects in the leaves?" you said, the first time she set the heavy bowl on the bedside table.

She peered admiringly at the bowl of fruit. "What about them?"

About six weeks after the earthquake, you opened your eyes in the middle of the night and realized something was very wrong with you.

It was still dark.

You managed to sit up. It was difficult to breathe and your hands were shaking. You reached for your notebook but couldn't write anything.

Then you realized that you couldn't move your legs.

You looked around the room, at the pattern of weak streetlight chalked upon the wall and the outline of your things in the darkness.

Your life was nothing more than a quick sketch and you a character not fully brought to life by the artist.

Then you must have fallen asleep because the next time you opened your eyes, you had fallen out of bed. You were sweating, but at the same time felt very cold. You remember being able to see a few stars from where you lay.

You were very thin, almost skeletal-but you were too tired to drag yourself out to the balcony.

When you were half outside, you think that you pa.s.sed out again.

When you awoke, there was a strange taste in your mouth, a lead taste. Your s.h.i.+rtfront was also wet.

Then a cool wind blew against your face. It felt lovely and you opened your mouth to swallow.

There was light traffic on the street. You imagined smoking men at the edges of their balconies in unders.h.i.+rts, enjoying the cool evening. And farther down the boulevard, a knot of tired prost.i.tutes dwindling at the curb, dazzled by the glare of a few pa.s.sing cars.

You began trembling violently and felt suddenly that your lips were very sore and wet. When you found the energy to raise a hand to your face, you withdrew it quickly to find blood. You realized that your s.h.i.+rtfront was not soaked with sweat but covered in blood. Your lips were shredded and you didn't know why. Your nose was numb, and you felt the tickle of blood inside.

You had fallen without falling.

You were discovered unconscious on your balcony by the boy from downstairs. The broken was.h.i.+ng machine in your bathroom was not broken after all. The water valve in the bas.e.m.e.nt was simply turned off. When workmen checking the foundation turned a lever to see what it was, the was.h.i.+ng machine in your bathroom gushed to life.

When the ceiling buckled in the apartment below your bathroom, Mr. Papafilippou and his son raced upstairs. He banged on your door. When he heard no answer, father and son pounded on it together. Two large hairy fists, and two small ones.

Mrs. Papafilippou watched from the bottom of the stairs in an ap.r.o.n with her hand over her mouth. When the first few drops fell onto the Papafilippou living room rug, Mrs. Papafilippou shouted at her husband to break the door down.

As Mr. Papafilippou rushed into your bathroom and searched frantically for the shut-off valves, his son calmly explored the apartment. Stepping into the bedroom, he saw a motionless foot on the balcony. Curious, he approached it, wondering who it belonged to. He touched it, but nothing happened.

Mr. Papafilippou and his son carried you to their Fiat van and took you to hospital.

As they sped through central Athens, the boy reached back and put his hand on your forehead. You vaguely remember this, because you wondered who they were. His father nodded and said in Greek: "Good thinking, son."

Then you came back to life and remembered being lifted from the van.

The desk clerk at the hospital wasn't really a desk clerk-he was an Alzheimer's patient who had simply chosen what he thought was a comfortable seat in a safe place. The real clerk was outside arguing with her boyfriend on a cell phone.

"We found him on his balcony," Mr. Papafillipou said breathlessly as he carried your body through the foyer.

"How kind of you to bring me flowers on such a pretty day," the fake receptionist said, getting up to kiss Mr. Papafillipou on the cheek.

Mr. Papafillipou drew back. "We didn't bring flowers."

His son looked on the ground. "No, we must have dropped them."

When the pretend desk clerk asked about the spinach pie, Mr. Papafillipou just carried you into a ward and put you into the first empty bed he saw.

The other patients sat up and wanted to know what was going on.

It took George three days to find out where you were.

Then he visited you every day.

At first you both just sat in silence, as if waiting for news to arrive. Then he brought a book and read it aloud. When he finished that book, he brought another, and then another. It went on for weeks and weeks. The last book he read to you was The Wind in the Willows.

You were also on heavy drugs. One day George showed up with a small suitcase. He wore a suit and was freshly shaven.

"You smell good, George."

He sat on the bed.

"I'm thinking of leaving Athens," he said.

"When?"

"This afternoon."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've accepted a job with an American university in Sicily."

"I see."

"Will you be okay, Henry?"

"Yes. Are you still not drinking?"

George nodded.

"How long now?"

"Forty-nine days tomorrow."

"I'm proud of you, George."

"I'm proud of you too," he said.

"You've been a real friend to me," you said.

George looked away. You could tell he wanted to cry. The echo of his footsteps was steady and pure.

A week later, you were told you had to leave hospital.

The doctor insisted.

"You're better, Henry-go home."

"I'm not better," you said. "And I don't think I should leave."

The doctor was quite young. He generally joked around with you, but this time he folded his arms.

"I can't leave," you insisted. "I like it here."

"It's not a hotel."

"I'm still not well."

The doctor kneeled at your bedside. "I know what happened to your girlfriend was tough, and that you are depressed, and all those other things which led to you coming here-I know all this, Henry-but now you're making progress-the broken nose from falling out of bed, the malnutrition, the virus, we've cured you of everything-all you need now is a shave and a haircut, and maybe something to look forward to."

"I'm not ready."

"You're still a young man," the doctor said standing up. "I know you don't feel like it, but maybe one day you'll realize you've got more ahead of you than behind you."

An old man in the next bed with an oxygen mask over his face turned slowly to face you both-then he carefully removed the mask to say something.

"I wish I was you," he said, smiling.

"No, you don't."

"I do," he insisted.

"Put that mask back on," the doctor ordered. "You're supposed to be resting."

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

You left the hospital in a taxi still wearing pajamas and a hospital gown. The driver smoked and said in Greek: "You sure you're better?"

Your apartment had been taken over by someone else. You didn't even have to go in-the curtains had changed and the balcony was overrun with tall, thin plants.

You imagined your few things in a box in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Your Vespa would be locked up at the university or stolen. The professor had visited you in the hospital too. He was planning on closing up the excavation and heading back to North Africa-you forgot where exactly because the doctor had you on some new kind of drug that week.

You took one final look at your apartment from the back of the taxi and then asked the driver to take you to the airport.

You had drachmas in your pocket from wages the professor had brought in a brown envelope.

You entered the terminal in George's pajamas. They were light blue cotton with white piping. He also brought you a pair of black Church's slippers, which you were wearing. He'd sewn his new address in Sicily into the fabric of the left slipper. The dressing gown was the property of the hospital, but you'd grown quite fond of it and so decided to take it with you.

You half expected the airline staff to look at your plastic wristband and call the police. But they just glanced at your pa.s.sport and counted the money you gave them.