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'Giovanni did not fear the horror of his face—he could have looked upon that sight with equanimity at any time. But he feared Erik's eyes now, those bottomless pits of sorrow that would only mirror his own pain. Giovanni heard his ragged, sobbing curse and he knew he must not look at him . . . He would go mad if he looked.'
The oil lamps, still burning in their brackets, showed him Erik's shadow moving slowly across the wall beyond the couch, out and down to the waiting door and darkness beyond. Erik would embrace it. It would enfold him and he would worship it as he had been unable to worship the light of God. The Heavenly Father may very well be welcoming one of His children into His arms this night—but He was turning another one away in doing so.
And it didn't have to be that way. "Erik." Simply that, and nothing more.
The shadow paused against the wall. In a sickly, ghastly way, the shadow danced in the light of the guttering flames, and Giovanni wished he hadn't spoken. Couldn't the darkness just stay still for once, instead of playing tricks with chiaroscuros? Once a connoisseur of classic Italian art, that night Giovanni swore off Titian and Giotto forever.
The shadow had begun to move again against the wall, a huge and silent shade slipping out into the night beyond his door, where darkness waited like a fond parent. Giovanni was not oblivious to injustice; it wasn't fair, a voice within him raged. He should have been that child's father.
It wasn't fair; life wasn't fair; death wasn't fair, Giovanni, so why bother even making the effort? Luciana . . . oh Luciana, love, darling, dove, life . . . gone and gone from him completely, forever; for surely he would burn in Hell for this day's deeds . . . God forgive him. Oh Heavenly Father . . . Padre nostro nei cieli, sia resa santità al nome tuo. . .
It was no use. All Giovanni could see was Christ, bleeding on the cross, and wonder: if God knew what it felt like, to watch his own child die—why then did He do it? Everyday, His children died. And today it had been Giovanni's child. No. No—that was not all. That was not all, because night was reaching out into his living-room and taking his son away, as surely as it had reached it's dusky fingers around that barricade and pulled his daughter down—down into the darkness that she hated.
There was a final flare indignation. His conviction was sudden and emphatic: this child is mine, he thought, with the kind of instinctual possession that can make a man feral. He would not let darkness take him. "Erik." There was a pause, and desperation in the old man's voice. "Don't go. I cannot stand to lose you both."
Erik stayed.
At times in the night, his presence was too much, too painful. There were a thousand times Giovanni almost screamed: 'I was wrong! Let me grieve in peace!' Luciana was dead because of him, because of that terrible darkness within him—but the heart of the matter was, Giovanni was too weak to be alone, alone and in the dark.
Giovanni closed his eyes and prayed for light.
*
In the morning, Erik was gone. Giovanni looked around with crusted, blood-shot eyes, steadily avoiding the crumpled figure lying on the leather, and nodded with a sort of perfunctory acknowledgement. Nothing could touch him now; he was beyond everything.
He stood and went about his morning tasks as if it was every other morning. He washed; he dressed; he remade the bed he hadn't slept in; he even shaved. There were only four nicks and a deep cut that would probably leave a scar as a result. He ate; he redrafted certain architectural plans and decided they were hopeless; he called on the building manager and put him in charge for the next three to four days. He cleaned; he slept; he drank too much Italian wine and wrote the convent to tell them his daughter was dead. He locked the door to the cellar and drank more wine, and prepared for his daughters wake. He did not, however, cry. Nor did he think—about anything. Life was far simpler this way.
To think would have killed him, he believed. It was possible to die with longing for his dead daughter; he was sure of it, and Erik . . . his thoughts regarding the boy were filled with anger and bitterness, shrouded in a doubt that he didn't want to face. Most of all he feared the doubt was of himself—not of Erik; he had known from the beginning what Erik was.
This doubt seemed to shadow him, driving home the realization of his guilt: that this entire tragedy had been his fault, not Erik's, not Luciana's, not fate's and not God's. When he moved, he was almost certain sometimes that a black thing moved with him; he saw it from the corner of his eyes and its presence haunted him in his sleep. It was Death; he was sure of it. Death was standing in judgment of his deeds and assuring him that even he—much less God, Satan, or Purgatory—did not want him; he was to live alone on this world forever with only this shade for comfort.
And so, though the sun went on rising and setting for the three days before her funeral, the light never seemed to come to Rome.
*
Afterwards, Giovanni stood at her grave. Night was close; the air was already cool. Petals plucked from their stems floated down solemnly to rest at his feet. They had all brought flowers. He forgave them for it; it was something people did at funerals. They couldn't have known.
'What's the matter with these stupid plants?'
'They're dying of neglect!'
Neglect. Improper care. Erik had singled out the flaw in both of them: the propensity to nourish only that which was useful to themselves, a selfishness that extended to Giovanni as well. He had loved his daughter; he had, but he'd loved her as his daughter, not the woman she would become. When Isabella punished her he'd thought not of shaping Luciana's character but of the way she might look at him the next day, the hurt accusation in her eyes. He had only ever cultivated her love for him, not her soul, and the rest had been left to run wild. And hadn't he done the same with Erik, too? Watching the tension and bewildered pain build between him and Luciana, without reaching out to stop it—because it didn't concern him, because he didn't want to lose either of them? Hadn't Giovanni selfishly clung to Erik without a thought that a boy such as he deserved more than this lonely, foolish old man?
Giovanni swallowed, looking at her grave stone. The funeral had been a silent one, as had been the wake. Not one of those social, rowdy ones sometimes held for large Italian families, this one had been gray and dismal. Giovanni's neighbors, associates, and few, erstwhile friends had skirted him cordially, avoiding his eyes, casting covert glances at the casket—covered, because her body had been too hopelessly mangled for anyone to look on it with equanimity. It was the muffled voices of these friends, the laughter quickly hushed in the corners of his house, that made Giovanni realize that he was truly alone in this world. In this past year, the only living soul to have touched him was Erik—and now he was gone too.
He had wronged the boy, Giovanni saw that now. Luciana's passing was as the light of his life extinguishing, leaving an empty shell. He was a pointless man who had produced nothing, created nothing, possessed nothing, for all his impact on the world. But Erik's desertion left him less than empty, torturing him with his own guilt, his unbearable, defeating shame: if he had not been so weak, if he could have seen beyond himself, if he had just been wise enough to understand all that Erik was—such different things might have happened! Giovanni's own damn thoughtlessness had cost the world what surely would have been its brightest light, and in engendering that cost, his life was not only meaningless, but a burden.
"Erik," he murmured sadly, into the fading light. "I wish I didn't have to mourn you too . . ."
There was a sudden stirring beside him in the evening there, and Giovanni realized that there was someone there. And then he realized that that someone was the very person he was mourning, and he took a startled step back.
"I'll go," Erik said smoothly, curtly, in response to Giovanni's reflexive retreat. His stance was so self-assured, cold—and yet, there was a flash of hurt longing in the eyes, the desperate, all-encompassing grief and guilt that mirrored Giovanni's own, combined with a lifetime of rejection.
Giovanni felt a surge of something within his breast that was indefinable—Erik had listened to his words that night, even after Giovanni's great folly had already been committed. 'Don't go. I cannot stand to lose you both.' Erik had listened—and obeyed. Perhaps Giovanni hadn't lost his hold on the boy completely with that mad moment of utter foolishness, when he had commanded the boy to remove his mask. Perhaps there was still some chance . . . some hope . . .
"Don't," he said, and this time he knew he wouldn't regret it. "Stay, Erik. Please stay," he said. He would resort to begging if it would keep him.
"You—" His voice came with harsh effort. "You can't want me, sir," he managed.
The wealth of guilt in his tone was the first thing, even in the aftermath of her death, that brought tears to his eyes. "It's . . . not your fault," he said at last. "I do want you, my son. I want you to stay."
There was a strangled cry that came out only as a harsh noise, like ragged breathing. But Erik said nothing. They only stood together in the darkness, each apart in their world of grief. In the moonlight, their shadows touched.
*
This time, Erik didn't go away again. They lived in silence for several days, Erik moving around the house, following Giovanni like a looming shadow—or, considering the lost look in his eyes, much more like a forlorn dog. But Giovanni did not consider it; he was too wrapped up in the tenuous peace of it, the tentative fact of Erik's presence and the galling idea that with one wrong move, the boy might up and leave again. But Erik did not leave—though sometimes it was hard to tell. He followed almost every move of Giovanni's, with a stealth and a silence that gradually gave Giovanni to understand that he had not been going mad in those days before his daughter's funeral. Death had not been stalking him, only Erik.
Because Giovanni had asked him to stay that night, he had stayed, but he hadn't been able to convince himself he was truly wanted. But when Giovanni had spoken his name that night at Luciana's grave, Erik had sensed an opening, and taken it with all the paralyzing fear of a man who is lowering his defenses to an attack. Giovanni, of course, had not attacked, but begged him to stay, and only lived in fear of his leaving. Erik filled him with the possibility of redemption, and that hope was too precious to be risked. For a long time, they did not even speak to each other, Giovanni fearing that if he spoke he might be assuming too much too soon and shatter the fragile idea of hope altogether.
It was Erik, surprisingly, who broke the silence. Giovanni was sitting before the fire, mindlessly watching the dancing flames. He was dimly aware of Erik in the background, somewhere in the shadows, his sharp eyes shining from the darkness. They sat like this often, Giovanni steadfastly not thinking, Erik continually in a turmoil of emotion that Giovanni did not understand.
Erik did not voice these thoughts, when he spoke. He said merely: "Shall I get you tea, sir?"
The question was so bloody colloquial, and the tone was so damnably uncertain. Giovanni suddenly understood that he had been wrong to prolong the silence between them. All this time he hadn't spoken a word out of fear of scaring the child away, while Erik had waited in the silence, unsure of whether he was even wanted. They were a fine pair, the two of them. "Erik," Giovanni said simply, and choked on the word.
"Sir?" As polite as he was being, Giovanni could see now that the boys eyes were filled with a shying, miserable fear of rejection. The foolish boy, when would he learn that even men needed other people, just as Erik needed them, and that Giovanni couldn't bear to live alone—without him?
"Come over here into the light, Erik," Giovanni said, after looking long enough. Reluctantly, Erik came, standing uncertainly in the light. No longer this looming shadow, he was only a boy, Giovanni saw, remembering meeting the child and his simple propensity to glory in beauty—in light. "Sit down there, where I can really see you," Giovanni said, pointing. Warily, Erik obeyed, sitting just outside the small pool of light Giovanni had indicated at his feet.
He didn't know what to say, how to start. Giovanni suddenly realized why Erik was reluctant to inch down his defenses—it was so bloody hard. "We'll return to the site tomorrow," he said at last, avoiding it altogether.
Mutely, Erik jerked his head, flinching as he did so, as if Giovanni had hit him.
"Well, what is it?" Giovanni asked wearily, slumping back into his chair. "We haven't worked in too long and you know the building master can't handle the plans on his own." Giovanni paused for a moment with the effort of speaking normally. "It's a perfect mess already."
Erik was stiff, silent for a long while. Finally, he jerked his head again. "I can't go back to the site, sir. You know what . . . you know what they are saying."
Giovanni scowled. "What are you talking about, Erik?"
Erik's eyes widened and he looked away in an uncontrolled movement. With effort, he controlled the trembling of his limbs. "They say . . . they . . ."
Giovanni didn't want to hear. Negligently, he waved his hand. "I don't care what they say. If they won't work for me any more, I don't want them." He paused, staring into the flames. "We could move away. What do you think of that? We could move away and start all over."
With uncomprehending eyes, Erik stared up Giovanni. It was as if the older man didn't even know what had happened, much less who had done it, and Erik was filled with a sudden rage. At Giovanni, at the world—at himself, for not having realized that the only reason Giovanni was keeping him around was because he had gone mad. Suddenly, Erik stood up and turned away. "Don't you get it, sir?" he hissed, tension fraught in every line of his body. "I am a killer."
The cold reality of it washed over Giovanni like a wave of chilled water. He had known in that first encounter with Erik that the boy had probably killed, or worse. He had known it—and understood why. He could almost forgive it, considering what the boy's life must have been. But now, the rest of Rome knew it too, and it would not forgive so easily.
But the fact of the matter was that now, as before, these ignorant strangers had no idea of what they were dealing with; they blamed Erik for the death of Luciana because of the things in this world that they feared and couldn't understand. Giovanni had done the same, for a short while, until he had come to understand that the darkness within yourself is usually much greater than that within those around you. . . How wilt thou say to thy brother: 'Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye'; and, behold, a beam is in thine own . . .
"Erik," he said gently, his soft voice carrying from his chair. He did not move, lest the boy flee. "Let it go. You did not kill my daughter. I told you before: I don't blame you."
Erik looked stricken, and his hands went lax. "Why?" he gulped at last, apparently appalled. "Why, when you should? Why do you keep me with you, sir?"
"It was my fault I let things get to the point they were between you. I saw it happening and I couldn't stop it. I'm the one to blame—for Luciana's unreasonableness, her selfishness, and my own."
"You weren't the one she was running from," he said savagely. "You weren't the one she threw herself over because she'd seen."
Giovanni caught his breath in shock. "Erik—my son—no. She fell. Erik, Luciana fell."
Erik suddenly turned away and was silent for a moment. Preoccupied by the sullen tautness in the figure before him, Giovanni didn't even notice that it was the first time he'd spoken her name aloud after his daughter's death. At last, Erik gave a little shrug. "It doesn't make a difference," he said indifferently. "You told me to fix the parapet."
"In autumn!" Giovanni exploded, anger filling him quite suddenly as he stood up. "Erik—you cannot help the crumbling of random stone work! I won't let you. No matter what your past life has been, face this truth now: you are not a killer!"
Slowly, Erik turned to look at him. The expression in his eyes was deep and dark, and Giovanni realized what a fool he'd been to let Erik suffer with this burden. The guilt which should have been his was killing this boy with far more strength than it had cared to exert on Giovanni. The old builder wasn't sure he'd ever met a man with such a weighted conscience—such a firm belief that he was unworthy of redemption or forgiveness.
"I may not be," Erik said at last. "Underneath, perhaps I am quite . . ." he trailed off, the ironic tone slipping, and he hastily regained it. "I am quite . . . innocent. But something murdered Lu—. . . your daughter, sir." He met Giovanni's eyes with dull, unending misery. "My face is a killer. It will go on killing, no matter how hard righteous, God-fearing men try to stop it."
"It's not because I'm righteous or God fearing that I'm trying to save you, Erik," Giovanni said wearily, and turned around blindly to find his seat.
"Then why?" Erik asked at last, passionately whirling, suddenly kneeling at Giovanni's feet, pressing close but not touching, desperation in his voice. "Why? I killed her, Father; I did!"
"This is why," Giovanni said simply, and removed Erik's mask.
Erik shied away, his arms rising hurriedly to cover his face, his back turning even as he scrambled away on his knees. Giovanni grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, like a reluctant pup, and turned him back to face him. "Move your hands, Erik," he said, prying away the boy's fingers. "Move your hands, so that I may look upon my son."
Erik hand's dropped simply out of shock. His eyes involuntarily met Giovanni's and found no fear, no revulsion—only gentleness and pity, and something else—something warm, something bright, something he had thought could never be.
"This is why," Giovanni said again. "Because you are innocent underneath. Because you are only a boy, Erik, and because you are all I ever wanted in a son. Because when I look at you, I see only beauty—the beauty of your soul and the beauty of your creations, and the beauty of the love within your heart."
Erik blinked several times, trying to avoid the tears trickling down his face. His voice was choked when at last he said, "I did love her, sir. I couldn't help it."
"Neither could I, my son," Giovanni said, and for the first time since she had died, allowed himself to cry.
He cried for her, but for himself as well, and for Erik, who might never know again the exquisite passion of a woman, and had had to stand his only experience of it from Luciana, who had been too selfish to stand giving of herself in that way. He cried as Erik hovered beside him, a shadow, unafraid and uncertain in the face of this man's tears. His hands itched to reach out, but he knew he must not.
It was Giovanni who reached out, who placed a heavy hand on Erik's shoulder. He leaned over and in the most simple of paternal gestures—a movement reenacted thousands of times, in front of countless hearths, between fathers and their sons—he leaned over and kissed the boy's brow.
Struggling with the torrent inside of him, Erik looked up with shining eyes. "I'll—I'll go get that tea I mentioned sir," he said at last.
Giovanni swallowed tears and a smile at the same time. "Alright, Erik. I'd like that," he said.