The Last Don - Mario Puzo [225]
Don Clericuzio had been specific in his banishment: Cross was never to return to Las Vegas. How happy his father, Pippi, had been here, and Gronevelt had built the city into his own Valhalla, but Cross had never really enjoyed their ease. True, he had enjoyed the pleasures of Vegas, but those pleasures always held the cold flavor of steel.
The green flags of the seven Villas dropped in the desert stillness, but one hung from the burned building, a black skeleton, the ghost of Dante. But he would never see all of this again.
He had loved the Xanadu, he had loved his father, Grone-velt, and Claudia. And yet he had in some sense betrayed them. Gronevelt, by failing to be faithful to the Xanadu; his father, by not being true to the Clericuzio; and Claudia, because she believed in his innocence. Now he was free of them. He would begin a new life.
What could he make of his love for Athena? He had been warned of the dangers of romantic love by Gronevelt, by his father, and even by the old Don. That was the fatal flaw of great men who would control their worlds. Then why was he now ignoring their advice? Why was he placing his fate at the mercy of a woman?
Quite simply, the sight of her, the sound of her voice, the way she moved, her happiness and her sorrow, all made him happy. The world became dazzlingly pleasurable when he was with her. Food became delicious, the sun’s heat warmed his bones, and he felt that sweet hunger for her flesh that made life holy. And when he slept with her he never feared those nightmares that preceded the dawn.
It was now three weeks since he had last seen Athena, but he had heard her voice just this morning. He had called her in France to tell her he was coming, and he had caught the happiness in her voice because now she knew he was still alive. It was possible she loved him. And now, in less than twenty hours he would see her.
Cross had faith that someday she would truly love him, that she would reward him for his love, that she would never judge him, and that like some angel she would save him from Hell.
Athena Aquitane was perhaps the only woman in France who put on her makeup and clothes to try to destroy her beauty. Not that she tried to look ugly, she was not a masochist, but she had come to regard her physical beauty as too dangerous for her inner world. She hated the power it gave her over other people. She hated the vanity that still spoiled her spirit. It interfered with what she knew would be her life’s work.
On the first day of work at the Institute for Autistic Children in Nice, she wanted to look like the children, to walk like them. She was overcome with the sense of identification. That day, she relaxed her facial muscles to their soulless serenity and limped in the weird, lopsided way of some of the children who had motor damage.
Dr. Gerard observed this and said sardonically, “Oh, very good but you’re going in the wrong direction.” Then he took her hands in his and said gently, “You must not identify with their misfortune. You must fight against it.”
Athena felt rebuked and ashamed. Again her actress vanity had misled her. But she felt herself at peace caring for these children. It did not matter to them that her French was imperfect, they did not grasp the meaning of her words anyway.
Even the distressing realities did not discourage her. The children were sometimes destructive, did not recognize the rules of society. They fought each other and their nurses, they smeared their feces on the walls, they urinated where they pleased. Sometimes they were truly frightening in their ferocity, their repulsion of the outside world.
The only time Athena felt helpless was at night in the small apartment she had rented in Nice, when she studied the literature of the Institute. They were reports on the progress of the children and they were frightening.