The Italian Teacher(75)
“You’re saying it’s my fault?” He shoves off Marsden’s hand. “What has Charlie even amounted to? Nothing. And he never will. What’s he even do? Translating menus or something?”
“He’s a language teacher,” Marsden says, suppressing his anger.
“Oh, well, in that case! The kid is really leaving his mark!”
Marsden grabs Bear’s wrist. The old man tries to pull free. “I’ve heard you telling every visitor here how your studio is some holy sanctum,” Marsden says. “You fucking liar. You haven’t done a minute of work the whole time I’ve been here!”
Bear struggles to get free, spittle bubbling on his lips, frothy dots hanging off his beard. “You-you-you—”
“Do you even know what art looks like anymore? That’s why you don’t let them sell your stuff. Because you’re a mediocrity soon to be forgotten. You won? Really? Seriously?”
“I’ll break you in two!”
Bear’s threat—its absurdity—deflates Marsden. Abruptly, he sees this scene: a half-blind painter, traduced by his dearest son, bullied. While Marsden was following after Bear, watching that he didn’t fall, the old man was just trying to get away—he was afraid, his ranting the last resort of a wounded animal. Marsden releases Bear’s wrist. The old man falls onto his backside in the muck, ribs rising and falling, eyes hunted.
“I’m sorry,” Marsden mutters, raising his palms in surrender.
Bear sits there, shaking.
“We need to cool down. Both of us.” Marsden turns, exhaling slowly, walking a few steps to gaze over the path’s edge, through trees that sink into the valley. The cottage must be straight below. He gives a tiny shake of his head, sighing in disappointment at himself. He hears a strange noise. “What?” he asks, spinning around. “What, Bear?”
The old man is on all fours, coughing, trying to lift his head. “The matter.”
“What is?” Marsden drops to a crouch, a hand on Bear’s back.
The old man stares, terror flickering in clouded eyes. “I’m not!” he wheezes. “Not done yet!” He fixes on Marsden, grips the younger man’s sweater.
“Bear, you’re okay,” Marsden says, hiding his fright, for something is amiss. “Let’s just rest. We pushed this too far.”
Bear reclines on his side. His jaw closes, opens, like a beached fish. His eyes are fading.
“Bear?” In panic Marsden rolls the man onto his back, rests his ear to Bear’s mouth. No warm exhalations; nothing. “Bear? Bear? Bear!”
Marsden learned CPR years before but struggles to recall the rules, seeing only scenes from television melodrama. He locks his elbows, attempts a few chest compressions. He pinches the old man’s nostrils, blows into his mouth. In desperation he jams down harder on Bear’s chest, causing a sinister crack—but a flicker of the eyelids, the focus returning momentarily to his gaze.
“That did something!” Marsden blurts.
He resumes more vigorously, checking between sets whether Bear’s breathing has resumed, studying the man’s thin dry lips—a mouth that charmed sitters and enraged Pablo Picasso, that illuminated daughters and destroyed sons. Marsden blows a few more breaths, does more chest compressions; the old man blinks again. Yet whenever Marsden pauses for too long, life seeps from Bear’s eyes. Marsden shouts into the forest for help.
What if he runs for help right now? He can’t take the path they came by—it’d be ten minutes of descent, then finding the cell phone in the cottage, waiting for an ambulance, pointing the paramedics back here. No, he must take the direct route, forging right down the mountainside—he’ll reach the cottage in around a minute, phone for help, sprint right back up, resume CPR. That could work. And Marsden cannot let his friend lose his father after that last exchange. They can still mend this.
He notes a gap between two pine trees, does a final set of compressions—again, the old man animates slightly. Marsden leaps up, dizzy for an instant, and he bolts toward the branches, vaulting over the path’s edge.
Too late, he sees.
A ski-slope gradient plunges beneath, trees hurtling at him. He turns his shoulder, slams into a trunk, bangs past it, grabbing for anything, hands spiked by pine needles. He is picking up speed, grasping for any low foliage—and he snags a branch. The canopy swings overhead. He is hyperventilating, needing to vomit. Treetops drop away below him. There’s no way back from this.
The tighter he grips, the weaker his sweaty grasp seems, his legs kicking for any solid earth. Whenever a boot tip hits mud, it immediately gives way. The branch he clutches quavers with his body, drops of melted snow pelting down.
I’m about to die.
He kicks out again, seeking anything firm. One boot tip bashes near-vertical mud. But if he lets go of the branch and tries to scramble upward, will his footing give way? The only chance is to launch in the direction of that foothold and pray that momentum flings his other leg forward, ramming it into the incline. If he hits a root, even a wet leaf, he’ll slide down, somersaulting backward, spine snapping, skull cracked, lying in the cold wet forest, half-alive, devoured. Erase that image! But he can’t: birds feasting on his brain. He plots and replots, palms losing grip. Go!
But he can’t.
Just go!
His shin bangs into a rock, fingers claw the hillside dirt, and his thighs spasm. And somehow, he’s there: on his knees, on flat earth—precisely where he was three minutes earlier.