The Italian Teacher(82)
“It’s not necessary!” she says with a brisk smile, face red as a tomato, the sobbing baby needing milk, not this chatterbox neighbor. She shoulders the building door open. It slams behind her. She calls out from inside: “Sorry! No free hands.”
Sometimes, Pinch conducts tutorials at his home for longtime students, among them an aging ex-boxer who works for the London Underground and is studying Italian to keep alert as retirement nears; a thick-eyebrowed Catholic sister aiming to make the case for nuns’ rights at the Vatican; and a stockbroker who, having survived a brain tumor, is learning every Lorenzo Da Ponte opera libretto.
Jing schedules the tutorials on Pinch’s behalf, intending to raise his spirits. But they demoralize him. At Utz, his status derived from mastery in the eyes of his pupils. When they view his shabby flat, witness him moving around like a man of ninety, he senses himself shriveling in their perception.
At his next meeting with the surgeon, she finds enough progress to rule out an operation. “You will always have pain, but it can be managed. Who doesn’t have a war wound or two at your age?”
“Not sure it qualifies as a war wound,” he says, buttoning his shirt. “I got this running from a falling dictionary.”
When a nurse signs him up for a hearing test, as mandated for those his age, the results are worse than average. Nothing to worry about, she says.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” he responds lightly. “They’re not your ears!” If one faculty is deteriorating, others must be in equal decline. His body is decomposing from the inside—he keeps seeing the image of an apple rotting within its skin.
He looks at the cordless phone, intending to call Marsden. They haven’t spoken often since what happened at the cottage. But Pinch longs for that voice now. He picks up the phone but there is no dial tone—somebody is already on the line. (He forgot the ringer was off.) It’s one of his siblings’ lawyers.
“I haven’t sold any of the paintings. Stop contacting me!”
“Excuse me, Mr. Bavinsky, sir, according to legal records there was indeed a bill of sale. From your name to the name of a Mr. Dwyer of Omaha. Occurring back in—”
Pinch slams the phone onto its base, the impact reverberating through him. Widgeon too is hounding him with requests for money to expand her business selling handmade greeting cards and candles online. And Birdie asked in a letter if something will go to her kids, noting that Bear never even bothered to meet them.
“What I think,” Marsden contends when they speak, “is just dump all the paintings on the market. Bear himself was doing an inventory, right? Perhaps he was thinking of selling.”
“Why are you pushing me, Mars?”
“Because I can’t stand that you feel obligated to him. Sorry—it’s not my business. But I hate it.”
Pinch is ashamed to admit that he’s clinging to these paintings. If he cedes control, what has he got? Everything feels like more than he can manage, from washing himself, to the thousand phone messages, to opening mail. He’s on disability leave, but the school won’t tolerate this indefinitely. He dreads returning there. Everyone at Utz has become so young, and they’re all more accomplished than he. His students talk casually of stock options and postings abroad. They brag of weekend getaways to Prague and check flashy Motorola flip phones. Previously, he always thought: None of this matters; in secret, I’m an artist! But away from the cottage for so long, he can’t understand why he ever went. His attempts at art seem the height of futility.
As a boy in Rome, he once calculated that when the Year 2000 arrived, he’d be a half century old. Thankfully, he never pictured his true millennial New Year’s Eve—fireworks fizzing outside, the muffled countdown of revelers in adjacent flats, his murderous rage at them, at everyone, even Marsden.
Why, Pinch wonders, have I become so angry? Because of the pain? There are pharmaceuticals involved too. Or was I always this way, detesting those who outstrip me, at school, in university, in painting? He thinks of Temple Butterfield, that great artist. I’m so petty, hating people who don’t even think of me. The truth is that I have achieved what I deserve.
64
The new century begins with fanfare, the world marching toward ever more democracy, economies growing infinitely, the Internet guaranteeing better versions of everything. On a distant sideline, Pinch observes, buried under misery—until something unexpected happens: He wakes with almost no pain.
Gingerly, and withholding belief, Pinch steps around the flat, testing this resurrected body, repressing any expectations, until they culminate in a sob of joy and a defiant stamp on the ground—only to chastise himself for forgetting his neighbors and their sleeping baby. Still, this is amazing. Is it real? Will it stay?
He parts the curtains, peeking at dawn. I could just go outside. But it’s too early. He’s become fearful of hoodlums, having no ability to protect himself. Now? I’d punch those druggies in the nose! He tries to calm down, but cannot stop this jittery high. The pain will come back. Be careful.
Instead, he kicks a pile of unopened letters, months’ worth, and halts to see familiar handwriting among the scattered envelopes. He stoops, atrophied thighs shaking, and flops onto his backside. He rips open the letter, finding condolences about his father from Cilla Barrows. She found him through Marsden, and is saying—or rather, she said; this is from ages back—how much she has come to admire Bear’s work, and that she shudders to recall her callow self in France. She inserts a gloss of her past quarter-century: publishing books, teaching, raising a family. “I still owe you money for our European vacation,” she writes. “How much was my share?”