Children of the Salt Road Read online

  Then the little gifts had started, left at her office door. That had flummoxed her, and she hadn’t known what to do. At Mark’s suggestion, she’d ended their extra studio time together with excuses about an increased workload from the department, but she never did think he believed her.

  The letters had followed, written in longhand on what looked like real stationery. Maybe he felt letters invited longer replies or conveyed more serious intent. Or it could be as simple as liking the feeling of ink on paper. There was never a whiff of anything improper or threatening about the letters—no love offered, no lust confessed, no desperation revealed. He wanted to be friends, he said, over and over, in many different and sad ways.

  Could that have been it right there? Had she let him down by doing the “professional” thing when what he needed was personal support? She suspects the truth is more shameful: that she was and is so inept as a teacher—maybe as a human being—that she’d failed to recognize serious signs that anyone else would have picked up right from the start.

  Catherine walks to the window. The very first moments of dawn spatter faint grains of light onto the blackness, like a handful of salt thrown onto slate. More and more grains of light appear until she can make out a dense morning mist and, enveloped in it, what looks like a small figure standing in the distance. Nico? Whoever it is stands stock-still, all color washed away in the grayness. Catherine runs out the door and to the edge of the porch. “Nico?” The figure does not move or react in any way that she can see. Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, she sets off across the field calling “Nico! Nico!” She stops. The figure is gone, and she can’t see where he might be. Unless she’s imagined it. A voice behind her calls her name, and she turns to see Mark.

  “What are you doing out here, Cath? The sleepwalking back?”

  “No. I’m awake. I’ve been awake.”

  “Really? Because I’ve been out here calling you for a while now. I couldn’t see, but I could hear your voice.”

  “A while . . . ?”

  “You’re shivering.” Mark looks around. “Come on. Let’s get inside. It’s damn creepy out here. I’m half expecting Heathcliff to show up.”

  SIXTEEN

  Seth

  November 30, 1992

  Dear Notebook,

  Last week there was a huge fire in Windsor Castle. And a couple of days later a palace in Austria went on fire and part of it was destroyed. I guess it was the crazy clown’s week to go after royalty.

  The Queen was in one of their other castles when the fire started. Still, a lot of people were there and they all got out alive. People are talking about it at school. Everyone loves a castle. No one can believe how it went from some curtains on fire to out of control in fifteen minutes. I want to say yes! That happens. That’s what happened to us.

  I don’t get how a stone castle burns really and if that went up the way it did, can you see how a wood house over a restaurant in the Bronx would go up even faster? Of course, the Queen’s son didn’t block everyone’s way out like I did. If he did though I don’t think the newspapers and TV would be saying it wasn’t his fault.

  I can’t even count how many times I’ve asked myself why I picked that night to come home. I could have come home almost any weekend. What if I hadn’t been such a dumb fuck and locked my room in the first place? I mean, the fire escape access was in there. I knew that. Yeah, before I went out the escape I opened my door. I did. Everyone was running around. My mother was yelling at me to get out. I saw them. My father had my sister’s hand. I thought they were right behind me. But I didn’t do the thing I should have. I didn’t turn the lock. I never thought about wind slamming the door closed. When they didn’t follow, I thought they went out the front way.

  It was hell outside. Crazy hell and I couldn’t get around to the front of the building. I should have just pushed past the fire crew and said I have to get to my family. I would have known they didn’t get out before it was too late. I could have asked. I could have asked if they were out there. Then I would have known the fire cut off the way to the front stairs. We could have saved them. If I’d done any one of those things differently—any ONE of them—they’d all still be alive. The whole thing is my fault. It’s simple logic. Saying anything else is just bullshit.

  There was a lot of fire and flames and burning things in my work this week. Catherine asked me if everything is okay. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say a whole lot. Another 171 people dead in 2 plane crashes. One in Vietnam and one in China. You know people burned up on those planes. She probably thinks I’m a pyromaniac or something. I want to tell her. I want to talk to her so badly but not there in the studio where people come in and out. I need a friend, Notebook, one that talks back but doesn’t pump me full of platitudes and drugs to make me supposedly feel better. Is that so much to want? It was really hard to do, but I made myself ask her if she wanted to meet for coffee. A couple of times. She said she couldn’t because of her schedule. I tried asking if we could have lunch together this week and she said no, it wouldn’t be “appropriate” so I thought maybe we could go to an art museum. I asked about a couple of exhibits. I really thought she’d like the Jana Sterbak show since she is so into sculpture. But she said no to all of them. Did I mention that when I say “ask” I mean I stuck notes in her office inbox? I wanted to talk to ask her in person but I couldn’t do it. I can’t blame her for saying no. Those notes must have looked like they came from a 10 yr old.

  New total dead people

  Plane crashes: 703

  Natural disasters: 2578

  SEVENTEEN

  Catherine

  Catherine pulls the kayak onto land and ties it to a scrubby tree. Alone in the studio all morning, all she had wanted to do was sketch the Punic ship. Coming here to Mozia should give her new inspiration and add depth to her vision of Phoenician life, making this—she assures herself—work related. And she’s getting some exercise on top of it. Guilt and kayak both tucked away, she walks inland along a narrow dirt path.

  Patches of thin forest mix in with areas of stone ruins, themselves often halfway covered with flowers and greenery. According to Giulia, there have been vineyards on the island for more than two hundred years. The wine, she said, is unique—pale golden in color and embodying in taste and fragrance the wild herbs that thrive on the salt air.

  Catherine enters a flat, open area with ruins so casual and unkempt that the archaeological park in Marsala is Disneyland in comparison. The ground is a chaotic clutter of pottery shards and broken stone. One corner, however, has enjoyed a modicum of grooming, and she picks her way through the scattered bits of artifacts. All around her lie small jugs, ten to twelve inches high, cloaked in drifts of sandy dirt. Scattered among the jugs are carved stone blocks a foot or so high. A few of these steles are upright, but many are down, island castaways sunning themselves in rakish poses while awaiting rescue. Steles like these generally marked something noteworthy, often a cemetery. She wishes she’d brought a sketch pad, but committing the scene to memory will have to do. Spotting a stele in better shape than most, Catherine squats, examining the relief figure of a man with his arms folded against his body. This fits with the cemetery idea, but the jugs, assuming they were for ashes, are too small.

  After examining dozens of steles and jugs, she sets off toward the center of the island. She finds more woods filled with birds, more overgrown ruins, and eventually the vineyards before turning back.

  At the shore near the kayak, she sits leaning back on her elbows, looking out over the water toward Macri. She feels she has discovered so much, even though she knows she has not discovered anything at all in the true sense of the word. The best finds from here are probably in local museums, yet the things you come upon yourself are always best. One pretty seashell, even if less than perfect, has more power to thrill tha
n the most beautiful shell collection. Holding a found object brings it back to life for a short time. You appreciate it for what it is and what it was. You don’t have to be the first to come upon it. Others, many others, may have encountered it before you, tossing it back at the end of the day. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the emotional bond you build with the object for the precious time it’s yours.

  Not everyone who has come here has “found” something exciting. Most will take the ferry, hire a guide, and visit the small museum she’s heard is on the island. They won’t find a thing because they have not come to this dot in the middle of the water to find, but they’ve come, at most, to see.

  Catherine yawns. This sculpture is not going quite the way it should. Nico has been here all morning, never seeming to tire of the same handful of toys. Still, she makes a mental note to buy more. She doubts he receives enrichment of any kind at home. He’s absent from wherever home is for hours at a time, and no one ever comes looking for him. Are they any more attentive when he’s there?

  She puts the clay aside and picks up a sketch pad, her mind turning back as it has all day to this week’s visit to Mozia. She must make a point of getting to the Marsala Library to research the ruins. Right now, all she has are sense memories driving a powerful need to sketch.

  She’s on her third drawing of the area strewn with small jugs when Nico comes to stand next to her, and she glances at him while continuing to draw. The less attention you pay to Nico’s actions, the better he likes it. She’s learned that much. He’s quite absorbed in watching, moving his head when he needs to for a better view. She is finishing up the sketch of the stele with the relief of the man on it when Nico lays his hand on her arm and looks at her.

  With slow, deliberate motion, Nico moves his hand to her pencil, and she holds it out to him. He takes it. Catherine can still feel the tiny spots on her arm where Nico’s little fingers had touched her. When he stares at her pad, she offers that as well. Nico studies the picture, takes the eraser from the benchtop, and rubs away part of the arms. He changes their angle, bringing the figure’s elbows down lower toward his hips, and upper arms closer to his sides. When he hands the pad back to Catherine, she sees the drawing is imperfect, basic, as you would expect from a child. Yet his changes make sense. Are they correct? Catherine uses his structure and fills in the details as he watches, focused and intense.

  “Nico?” She waits for the response she knows will not come; he continues to look at the page. “Have you seen this stone I’m drawing? Have you been there?” She turns to meet his eyes.

  Nico almost—almost—smiles, and something about his expression triggers a powerful sense of what feels very much like fear, but even more like foreboding.

  The next morning, Catherine sits at a blond wood desk in a quiet corner of the library. A solicitous and efficient librarian has brought her a worn map of the ruins of Mozia. She can, she says, recommend some books, but they are from another library, and this could take quite a while—some weeks, perhaps. In the meantime, there is a bookstore in town, and Catherine can find something there to read while she waits for the more academic works. And how fortunate that right across the way from the bookstore is a shop serving the most delicious granita and gelato.

  As Catherine studies the map, she sees that the area containing the steles and jugs is not only a cemetery, but a children’s cemetery. What a melancholy thought—each of those small jugs filled with ashes of someone’s beloved child. She feels a heavy guilt for having been there, warmed by the sun and enjoying her make-believe treasure hunt. On the verge of rolling up the map to return it, she notices a straight line leading across the water from the northern end of Mozia to the Macri area. She traces it with her finger.

  The librarian, returning with a list of the requested books, glances down at the map. “I see you have found our Greek Road.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “This was the way the Greeks—who came to take over the island after the Phoenicians—traveled from the main island to Mozia. With chariots—yes?—wagons? And even in the early nineteen hundreds, farmers were driving their horse wagons on this road.”

  “Nineteen hundreds? It’s still there?”

  “Yes, yes. You can see it right under the water—”

  “You know, I have seen it. I didn’t know what it was then, but I saw it. Can you still travel on it now?”

  “I have heard that the road is nowhere more than one meter under the water. But I am not sure—maybe we find it is broken along the way now. Who can say?”

  Driving back from Marsala, Catherine pulls over at the place she and Mark had launched the kayak. She removes her left sandal to shake out a pebble. About to put it back on, she stops and removes the other instead. Somehow it’s easier to walk on ground covered in pebbles than on one, however small, inside your shoe.

  She sits on a large boulder and looks out over the lagoon with new eyes. The sparkling surface hides more than a playground for kayakers and the occasional windsurfer, even more than a home for fish or a refuge for birds. A road. An ancient road traveled for more than two thousand years. The lagoon holds that secret close if all you do is look. Even if you look and see the road, as she and Mark had, you haven’t found it. You can’t truly find something you don’t know exists.

  And Mozia as well, with its dusty red soil, keeps its own troubling secrets. Jaunty little jugs and scattered stone slabs, cheek by jowl with yellow, pink, and red wildflowers—that cheery scene hides a sad and dismal truth. She shivers, although the sun is hot on her skin, when she recalls Nico correcting her picture. She can’t be sure his drawing is correct. It could have been childish whim that made him draw what he did. But she thinks it was more, that he knew somehow. Perhaps he lives on Mozia. His family might work in the small museum or in the vineyards. But how does he come each day to Macri? He can’t walk the submerged road yet never be wet when she sees him. Even if the sun and wind could dry him, he’s so small—how could he make that walk alone? It would be waist deep in places on an adult, wouldn’t it? And then Catherine knows she has to try to walk the road herself.

  She tucks the back hem of her wide skirt into the front of the waistband, and wading into the water until she reaches the ancient road, she steps up onto its surface, the stone so slippery with seaweed, living and dead, that she slows her already-cautious steps. She’s been walking for perhaps half an hour, watching her feet the whole time, placing each foot with care. Several times, the water has reached her waist for a short period. Mostly, it has been quite shallow—thigh deep—just as it is now when she stops and looks toward Mozia. A cold hand of fear twists her stomach, and she shrinks into herself at the sheer size of the water’s expanse ahead. To her left and to her right, it’s more of the same. And when she turns, so slowly, and looks back at an equal stretch of water between herself and the mainland, her head throbs with horror. She’s trapped—a jelly-legged speck stranded on an endless, edgeless plane. The constant southerly breeze sends a steady gentle ripple across the lagoon’s surface, inducing in Catherine a dizzying sense that she’s flying across the water, propelled toward Mozia by forces she can’t control. She remembers times as a child, standing at the ocean’s edge when large waves crashed in, first driving water shoreward, past her ankles with a great whoosh, until she would laugh with joy, sure she was moving seaward at high speed. Then the water would surge back out, sucking away the sand around her feet and creating a disorienting sense of zooming back toward land. Now, periodic swells of panic magnify her anxiety. Nauseated and immobilized, she has never felt so alone or so isolated, as if somehow someone has dropped her here and there’s no going back.

  Catherine covers her eyes with her hands and collects herself. It’s not at all dangerous. If the water were a little deeper, she could get in and swim. She can, anytime she wants to, step o
ff the road onto the muddy bottom, although whether that would be better or worse, she can’t say. This whole thing is in her mind. Step by step is the only way. You don’t look down when you’re climbing—she knows that. So now, she must not look around. It’s a simple matter of retracing steps already taken. It will be fine, but not if she allows herself, even for a second, to look at the deceptive scene around her, and lose her moorings in the safety of reality.

  EIGHTEEN

  Mark

  If it’s like this in the middle of June, can you imagine August?” Mark pauses, looking up and along the path to the temple. No sign of it yet and quite a way to go. Segesta has been on their to-do list right from the start. If only they had taken the guidebook’s advice and gone in April, or at least May, before it got so hot.

  Catherine leans against a large rock to rest a moment before turning to continue ascending the dirt path—a series of broad, almost-level steps with worn wooden edges. No single step is a problem. There are just so many of them. Mark is going to have to get back in shape as soon as he runs out of excuses, but Catherine looks more tanned and healthy than when they arrived. She reaches the top first, and when Mark catches up, he notes the huge grin on her face before he sees anything else. Only when he looks behind her does he see the corner of the Greek Temple.