Beautiful Ruins (23)

Pasquale started to translate what his aunt had said, but Dee Moray seemed to understand the word acqua, and she reached for the glass of water and sipped it.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble,” she said.

“What does she say?” Valeria asked.

“She is sorry for the trouble.”

“Tell her that her tiny bedclothes are a whore’s rags,” Valeria said. “This is what she should be sorry for, that she tempts my nephew like a whore.”

“I’m not going to tell her that!”

“Tell the pig-whore to leave, Pasqo.”

“Enough, Zia!”

“God made her sick because He disapproves of cheap whores in tiny bedclothes.”

“Be quiet, crazy old woman.”

Dee Moray had been watching this exchange. “What is she saying?” she asked.

“Um.” Pasquale swallowed. “She is sorry you are sick.”

Valeria stuck out her bottom lip, waiting. “You told the whore what I said?”

“Yes,” Pasquale told his aunt. “I told her.”

The room was quiet. Dee Moray closed her eyes and shook with another wave of nausea, her back bucking as she tried to vomit.

When it had passed, Dee Moray breathed heavily. “Your mother is sweet.”

“She is not my mother,” Pasquale said in English. “She is my aunt. Zia Valeria.”

Valeria watched their faces as they spoke English, and seemed suspicious about hearing her own name. “I hope you’re not going to marry this whore, Pasquale.”

“Zia—”

“Your mother thinks you are going to marry her.”

“Enough, Zia!”

Valeria gently pushed the hair out of the beautiful American’s eyes. “What is the matter with her?”

Pasquale said quietly, “Cancro.”

Dee Moray didn’t look up.

Valeria seemed to think about this. She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Oh,” she said finally. “She will be fine. Tell the whore she will be fine.”

“I’m not going to tell her that.”

“Tell her.” Valeria looked at Pasquale seriously. “Tell her that as long as she doesn’t leave Porto Vergogna, she will be fine.”

Pasquale turned to his aunt. “What are you talking about?”

Valeria handed Dee the glass of water again. “No one dies here. Babies and old people, yes, but God has never taken a breeding adult from this village. It’s an old curse on this place—that the whores would lose many babies but would live to old age with their sins. Once you outgrow childhood in Porto Vergogna, you are doomed to live at least forty years. Go on. Tell her.” She tapped the beautiful American’s arm and nodded to her.

Dee Moray had been watching the conversation, understanding none of it, but she could tell the old woman was trying to communicate something important. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Pasquale said. “Talk of witches.”

“What?” Dee Moray said. “Tell me. Please.”

Pasquale sighed. He rubbed his brow. “She say . . . young people do not die in Porto Vergogna . . . no one die young here.” He shrugged and tried to smile away the old woman’s crazy superstition. “Is old story . . . stregoneria . . . story of witches.”

Dee Moray turned and looked full into Valeria’s moley, mustachioed face. The old woman nodded and patted Dee’s hand. “If you leave this village you will die a whore’s death, blind and thirsty, scratching at your dry dead birth hole,” Valeria said in Italian.

“Thank you so much,” Dee Moray said in English.

Pasquale felt sick.

Valeria bent and spoke sharply to their guest. “E smettila di mostrare le gambe al mio nipote, puttana.” And stop showing your legs to my nephew, you whore.

“You, too,” Dee Moray said, and squeezed Valeria’s hand. “Thank you.”

It was another hour before Tomasso the Communist arrived back at the hotel, his boat lurching into the marina. The other fishermen were already out; the sun was rising. Tomasso helped old Dr. Merlonghi onto the pier. In the trattoria, Valeria had prepared a hero’s meal for Tomasso, who once again removed his cap and was quiet with the importance of his job. But he had worked up an appetite and accepted the meal proudly. The old doctor was wearing a wool coat, but no tie. Tufts of gray hair shot from his ears. He followed Pasquale up the stairs and was out of breath by the time they reached Dee Moray’s room on the third floor.

“I’m sorry that I put you to all of this trouble,” she said. “I’m actually feeling better now.”

The doctor’s English was more practiced than Pasquale’s. “It is no trouble seeing a pretty young woman.” He looked down her throat and listened to her heart with his stethoscope. “Pasquale said you have stomach cancer. When were you diagnosed?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“In Rome?”

“Yes.”

“They used an endoscope?”

“A what?”

“It is a new instrument. A tube was pushed down the throat to take a photograph of the cancer, yes?”

“I remember the doctor looked down there with a light.”

The doctor felt her abdomen.