Beautiful Ruins (61)

He put the note in his pocket. “I’ll be fine, Mamma.”

“Yes, you will be, Pasqo,” she said. “You are a good man.”

Pasquale wasn’t used to this outward affection, especially when his mother was in one of her dark moods. Maybe she was coming out of it. He walked into the room and bent over to kiss her. She had the stale smell she so often got when confined to her bed. But before he could kiss her, she reached out with a clawed hand and squeezed his arm as tightly as she could, her arm shaking.

Pasquale looked down at her shaking hand. “Mamma, I’m coming right back.”

He looked at his Aunt Valeria for help, but she wouldn’t look up. And his mother wouldn’t let go of his arm.

“Mamma. It’s okay.”

“I told Valeria that such a tall American girl would never stay here. I told her that she would leave.”

“Mamma. What are you talking about?”

She leaned back and slowly let go of his arm. “Go get that American girl and marry her, Pasquale. You have my blessing.”

He laughed and kissed her again. “I’ll go find her, but I love you, Mamma. Only you. There’s no one else for me.”

Outside, Pasquale found Richard Burton and the fishermen still drinking in the piazza. An embarrassed Lugo said they couldn’t borrow his carbine after all, because his wife was using it to stake some tomato plants in their cliff-side garden.

As they walked down toward the shore, Richard Burton nudged Pasquale and pointed to the Hotel Adequate View sign. “Yours?”

Pasquale nodded. “My father’s.”

Richard Burton yawned. “Bloody brilliant.” Then he happily took the bottle of port. “I tell you, Pat, this is one damn strange picture.”

The fishermen helped Tomasso the Communist dump his nets and gear and a sleeping cat into the piazza and they used the cart to wheel his outboard motor down to the water. Pasquale and Richard Burton climbed in. The fishermen stood watching from what was left of Pasquale’s beach. Tomasso’s first yank on the pull start knocked the bottle of port from Richard Burton’s hand, but luckily it landed in Pasquale’s lap without spilling much. He handed it back to the drunk Welshman. But the little motor refused to catch. They sat rocking in the waves, drifting slowly away, Richard Burton suppressing little belches and apologizing for each one. “Air’s a bit stagnant on this yacht,” he said.

“Bastard!” Tomasso yelled to the engine. He beat on it and pulled again. Nothing. The other fishermen yelled that it either wasn’t getting spark or wasn’t getting fuel, then those who’d said spark switched to fuel and fuel to spark.

Something came over Richard Burton then and he stood and, in a deep, resonant voice, addressed the three old fishermen yelling from the shore. “Fear not, Achaean brothers. I swear to you: tonight there will be the weeping of soft tears in Portovenere . . . tears for want of their dead sons . . . upon whom we now go to wage war, for the sake of fair Dee, that woman who so makes the blood run. I give you my word as a gentleman, as an Achaean: we shall return victorious, or not at all!” And while they didn’t understand a word of the speech, the fishermen could tell it was epic and they all cheered, even Lugo, who was pissing on the rocks. Then Richard Burton waved his bottle over his two crewmates, in a sort of benediction: Pasquale, huddled against the cold in the back of the boat, and Tomasso the Communist, who was adjusting the choke on the motor. “O you lost sons of Portovenere, prepare to meet the shock of doom borne down upon you by this fearless army of good men.” He put his hand on Pasquale’s head: “Achilles here and the smelly bloke pulling on the motor, I forget his name, fair men all, pitiless and powerful, and—”

Tomasso pulled, the motor caught, and Richard Burton nearly fell out, but Pasquale caught him and sat him down in the boat. Burton patted Pasquale on the arm and slurred, “ . . . more than kin, and less than kind.” They chugged away into the grain of the chop. Finally, the rescue party was away.

Onshore, the fishermen were drifting away to their beds. In the boat, Richard Burton sighed. He took a swig and looked once more at the little town disappearing behind the rock wall, as if it had never existed at all.

“Listen, Pat,” Richard Burton said, “I take back what I said before about being from a small village like yours.” He gestured with the bottle of port. “No, I’m sure it’s a fine place, but Christ, man, I’ve left bigger settlements in my rank trousers.”

They walked ashore and straight into Gualfredo’s recently remodeled albergo, the Hotel de la Mar in Portovenere. The desk clerk required even more of the money from Pasquale’s payoff from Michael Deane, but after they’d negotiated his outrageous price, the man gave them the bottle of cognac that Richard Burton wanted and the number of Dee Moray’s room. The actor had slept a little in the boat—Pasquale had no idea how—and now he swirled the cognac like mouthwash, swallowed, patted down his hair, and said, “Okay. Good as gold.” He and Pasquale climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway to the tall door of Dee’s room, Pasquale looking around at Gualfredo’s modern hotel and becoming embarrassed again that Dee Moray had ever stayed in his grubby little pensione. The smell of this place—clean and something he thought of as vaguely American—made him realize how badly the Adequate View must stink, the old women and rotting, damp sea-smell of the place.