A Separation(40)

I’ve ordered a taxi to take us to the police station, Mark said, once the waiter had gone. We’ll need to make arrangements.

I don’t want to go, darling, Isabella said. Surely there’s no need.

He stared at her for a long moment, as if making some internal calculation, then shook his head and said, Fine. He turned to me. Will you come? Or shall I go alone. I’m happy to go alone.

From across the table, I saw that he had buttoned his shirt up incorrectly, so that the fabric puckered in the middle of the shirt’s placket, an unusual slip in a man so fastidious about his appearance, it was an indication of how distraught he was, he could hardly have looked in the mirror before leaving his room. I was embarrassed, it was as if the man had thrown his arms about my neck and commenced weeping. Mark nodded to the waiter as he brought him his coffee, laid out a little jug of warm milk and a bowl of sugar.

I’ll go with you to the station, I said.

He looked up, startled.

Fine, he said. Good. Thank you.

The pucker gaped even wider as he leaned forward to drink his coffee, holding the cup in both hands. He had large and rather beautiful hands, fine-boned but still masculine, hands that were not in fact unlike Christopher’s, I thought. Isabella took no notice of Mark’s hands, I supposed she’d had a lifetime to notice them.

What will you do while we are gone? Mark asked her.

She shrugged and then gave a little gasp, there is a great deal to arrange, she seemed to indicate, and no doubt this was true, I had already told her, when it became apparent that she wished to take control of the funeral arrangements, that she should feel free to do so. She had appearances to maintain in London, whereas I had none. And she had patted my hand again and said that she thought it best, I was too overwhelmed to take on such a task and besides, I didn’t know the people to contact, it was much easier if she did it.

I’m older than you, she had said, I’m afraid I’ve had recent experience in organizing such things.

And she had paused, perhaps remembering friends, family, recently deceased, the phone call informing you of the bad news, perhaps it was sometimes secondhand—a hushed do you remember so and so, an obituary in the newspaper—in any case, death was all around you at a certain age. Even just an actor you vaguely remembered from the movies, two years younger than you at the time of death according to the newspaper article. However, you would never expect for your own son to die. She had been looking the wrong way, the death she had been watching for had come from behind.

You must get them to release the body, Isabella was saying to Mark. As quickly as possible.

I imagine they’ll release the body when they are ready to release the body, he replied. Have they conducted the autopsy? There was a head wound, Mark said.

Stop! Isabella said, and she covered her ears in a gesture that was childish and somehow offensive, it was hardly a time for such theatrics. But she was right to stop her ears, once she was told the particulars of Christopher’s death, there was the danger that this would become the overriding thing, not just of his death, but of his life. Everything that came before—her memories of him as a child, his wit and exuberance, his charm, even as a child he had been able to charm her—all that would fade, it would pale against the incontrovertible finality of the wound to his skull, the wordless violence that silenced everything else.

As quickly as possible, she repeated, lowering her hands from her head. And we’ll get him back to England. One of the worst things about this whole—she waved her hand through the air, indicating the breakfast table, the terrace, the sea and the sky—situation is the fact that his body is lying in a strange police station in rural Greece. It will be better, I will feel better, once we have him safely home.

Safely home, and then what? But that was not a question they could understand, for Isabella and Mark the course they would follow was clearly demarcated, painful as it was, grief had a familiar path, it was easy to believe in the specificity of one’s grief but in the end it was a universal condition, there was nothing unique about sorrow. Isabella and Mark would return home with their son’s body and they would mourn him, his unnatural death and his too brief life. But what would I do? How and who—husband, ex-husband, lover, deceiver—would I be grieving?





10.





Stefano stepped out of the car, he was wearing a button-down shirt and had not shaved. His expression, as he greeted us, was polite and somewhat sheepish, he looked, in the bright sunlight, entirely innocuous, suddenly my suspicions of the previous day seemed nothing short of absurd. I noticed, for the first time, that he was a small man, shorter and slighter of build than Christopher. The evident intensity of his emotions had built him into a larger figure than he actually was, in reality, Christopher would have easily overpowered him.

Still, as we stood outside the hotel, and I greeted Stefano, I felt Mark tense beside me. This is the kind of man who killed my son, I could see the thought pass through his mind. As Stefano opened the doors for us, Mark’s distaste seemed to increase. I introduced the two men. Stefano’s face grew reserved, it was as if he looked at Mark and saw not simply a bigoted foreigner—although he would have also seen that, Mark shook Stefano’s hand with an expression of both disdain and consternation, impossible to misapprehend—but the father of his rival.

Was there any likeness between the two men, between Mark and Christopher? It was always said that there was not, but the impression the two men made was not dissimilar. The same confidence and ease and entitlement, perhaps all Englishmen would seem that way to Stefano. He shut the door behind us and got into the driver’s seat. As he sat down, he glanced at Mark in the rearview mirror, his expression guarded, as if the father might now steal the affections once possessed by the son.