The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [62]
Phoebe turned, looking him full in the face. “I lied to you,” she said. “My sister is dead.”
She caught a faint reflexive action somewhere in Pietro’s eyes, an infinitesimal quickening. “You are alone?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling, for something had opened, the world was flooding inside her.
“We go outside, Phoebe,” Pietro said, standing, taking her by the hand. “Soon I take the train, I have already my ticket, but we must speak.”
He led her from the cathedral. Outside, Phoebe encountered a blissful metamorphosis, everything sweet to her eyes. Even the skinny boys battering a soccer ball around the square looked gentle as mice. God’s children, Phoebe thought, we are all the children of God.
Pietro chose a bench and they sat. Phoebe breathed slowly, deeply, relishing the push of her lungs against her ribs, the satiny passage of air through her windpipe. The distant rant of construction sounded like music. How could this world have so frightened her?
Pietro tried to speak, then halted in frustration. “I wish I have some better English,” he said despairingly. “I try to help you, Phoebe.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You helped me.”
He shook his head. “Is no good you are alone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Phoebe said. “Everything is fine.”
Pietro looked at his hands. “Too fast,” he said, and snapped his fingers. The nip of sound startled Phoebe. “Too fast.”
He seemed afraid. Phoebe turned to him, filled with sorrow. “I wish you could be happy,” she said. “You made everything good.”
“I did nothing,” Pietro said.
But it was time for him to go. They hurried, breathless, through the twilight. “I wish I can stay here, Phoebe,” he said. “But they have bought my ticket and someone will meet my train.” Phoebe caught dinner smells drifting from open windows. Each time they crossed a street, Pietro took her arm, looking anxiously in both directions.
His train was already boarding. Hurriedly Pietro retrieved his suitcase and dashed with Phoebe to the platform. At the entrance he took both her hands in his own and held them tightly, looking into her eyes. “I will pray for you, Phoebe,” he said. Again he struggled for words. “It needs time,” was all he managed to say. “Non be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” Phoebe said.
He smiled, vexed. That wasn’t what he’d meant. Abruptly he began rummaging in his suitcase, old and frayed, the sort of suitcase a traveling salesman might have.
Pietro copied from one page of a large notebook onto another, using the same green pencil he’d used to write Faith’s name. He tore out the second page. “Here is the telephone. Three-four-one, is Madrid, eh? I don’t know happens with the phone there, but always you can leave some message, please you will call if you have troubles? Pietro Santangelo. Is me, eh? You will remember? Here I write it.” The pencil shook in his hand. The train’s whistle blew.
“Go—go! I’ll remember,” Phoebe said.
Pietro turned and walked quickly down the platform to the train. Phoebe had thought he might hug her, she realized, craved the feeling of being that close to someone for a second. Almost immediately the train began pulling away. Phoebe watched its windows, thinking maybe one would open, that Pietro would wave. But he must not have had time.
She turned and walked slowly back through the station to the street, retracing the steps she’d taken the night before to the high-rise complex where the youth hostel was. Everything seemed transformed, vast and spectacular now.
Phoebe went to the spot where she’d seen the girls jumping rope and lay face-up on a concrete bench. She stared at the sky. It was pale on the side where the sun had set, darker as her eye moved across it. She thought of those children, the song they’d sung as they jumped, and suddenly, effortlessly, the words came back to her:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All dressed in black, black, black,
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,
All down her back, back, back.
She jumped so high, high, high.
She touched the sky, sky, sky.
And she never came back, back, back,
Till