The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [38]
They sat quietly as the sound of the train faded into the forest.
– My father and I took the train from Rome to Turin, said Avery. We sat in a compartment with a young couple. The way they sat next to each other told their whole story, his hand on her thigh while he pretended to read the newspaper, her head on his shoulder while she pretended to sleep. The restless desire in them was so palpable it infected my father and me with an embarrassment that I was too young to understand and we kept getting up to pace in the swaying corridors.
At last we arrived at the huge train station in Turin. Since we each had only a small valise between us, we decided to walk the short distance to the hotel where my father was to have a business meeting. As we walked through the immense station, my eyes were suddenly caught by a small sign, which, if I had only been walking faster, I might have missed. There was a single sentence painted on a wooden board that stated that this station was where the deportations had taken place during the war and gave the number – in the hundreds of thousands – of those who had been sent to their deaths from the very place we stood. It was a small notice, barely visible, and to this day I cannot say why my eyes did not overlook it. When we walked out into the sunny street, within a few feet of the station doors, I tripped on the pavement and fell. I cut my head and I needed stitches. My father had to take me to the hospital and missed his meeting and that is the story of the scar on my chin. I wanted nothing more than to leave that place, said Avery. It seemed to me a city of utter dread.
Jean was quiet. He thought of her quietness, this now familiar quietness of hers, as her heart thinking.
– The countless places in cities that have known violent death, said Jean, not just places where terrible things have happened in wartime, but all the other misery that is always left uncommemorated – a car accident, some violence inflicted – how can we mark these places? One could probably not walk a block without stepping into a place of mourning; we could not mark them all.
Sadness descended. Avery took Jean's hand.
– Let's go, he said.
Outside, the wind moved through the high leaves. The small scar on Avery's chin disappeared in the bright afternoon sunlight.
– Before we left Turin, said Avery, my father, in the hope of cheering me up, took me to the famous old café, Baratti & Milano, with its glass cases displaying chocolates and nougats, the carved wooden tables and chairs and starched white tablecloths and heavy silverware. The trolleys of opera cakes and mousses, the petit fours, the phyllo pastry and lemon custards, the high cakes with designs trickled along the top. My father wanted to distract me, but the dark elegance of the place depressed me. I looked around at the waiters in their black-and-white suits carrying their silver salvers, and it seemed to me that the room must not have changed in fifty years. I could not stop myself from wondering how many children had drunk their last cups of cocoa in this place,