Part 3 (2/2)

His blood filled my boots while I stood there, listening to the cheers and the silence of the crowd. By the smell and the color I could tell the lance had missed his aorta. He could live: it wasn't a mercy stroke I offered him, but a deathblow. ”And you, el Zorro.” The sword-not my father's sword, but a sword of cheap modern steel-p.r.i.c.ked his hide. He shuddered as if stung by a fly. I looked up into the booming crowd and found my libeler's regard. ”Antonio, apologize.”

He met my gaze for a moment while the sunlight glittered in his jade-black eyes, and for that moment I thought he would stand and buy mercy for the gladiator at my feet. But then he did-stand, I mean-and he turned his head once, slowly, and spat onto the b.l.o.o.d.y sand. Again.

”Buy it,” he ordered, and turned to climb the stair.

My hand clenched on the blood-slick hilt. I could feel my left arm again, and regretted it. I looked down at the bull, and the bull did not close his eyes. ”No blame,” he whispered.

I closed mine. ”Antonio!” He didn't look back. ”Antonio!” Still climbing. Being booed, and climbing, while I waited for a chance not to kill.

Ah, Benedicto. My father's voice. When will you learn to kill when you should?

Not today, Papa. A defiant gesture completed, the hilt slid from my numb hand. I threw back my head and shouted as the sword tumbled end over end. ”Antonio! I am sorry! Antonio!”

He did not turn. I did.

I turned and walked away in the sudden, comprehending silence from the stands. The hurled sword rang against the stone wall long before my hand found the waiting door, the plain looped handle on the outside. I heard running footsteps: the chirurgeons coming for me, for the bull.

The bull, whose honor was as stainless as Cecelia's. The bull, who would live to father another generation of gladiators to bleed in the corrida.

The bull who would live.

Another failure I cannot regret as deeply as I should.

I stop in the cobbled street, my arm aching in a sling, and look up. At first, all I see is a white wall. And then I see the wall isn't white, not really. Not white like an eggsh.e.l.l, or white like a dove. It was whitewashed once over yellow glaze, but the rain and the sun have baked the limestone paint off, peeled the mustard-colored ochre beneath, exposing the browns and auburns of stucco. There's a window on the second floor, the shutter hanging open on a crippled hinge, a bluebird's wing broken and healed askew. Geraniums red as fairy-tale heart's-blood-and as sharply scented-pulse in the window box. Below, just as crooked, a poorly-hung wooden door.

I hear voices within. Cecelia. Who was my friend-only a friend, nothing more, and I had few enough of them. Who was Antonio's sister, in whose defense I spoke. She lives here now. She is no longer welcome in her brother's home.

I should go inside. I should make amends, if she'll permit, for my failure at the corrida. I close my eyes against the sunlight and place my hand on the warm wood of the door. It's bright outside, but I can smell the cramped poverty within.

If I were adequate to the n.o.bility of my name, I would go inside and I would bite down on my pride and I would apologize to her, as well. I would beg her to plead with her brother and see if he would take her back.

But if I were adequate to the n.o.bility of my name, I would not have been a man too weak to kill a fallen enemy, and I would not be here to think this: How do I get myself into these things.

Which is not a question. Because I know.

It's bright outside, but it's a small, dark window. Too small for looking out. Too dark for looking in.

The wood is splintery, peeling paint, warm with sun. My pride won't wedge through the doorway. I'd have to sc.r.a.pe it off to get inside. I cannot ask Cecelia to plead with her brother; her stainless honor could not support it.

But perhaps her honor can support forgiveness for a friend.

I lower my head and I push hard against the door.

Botticelli.

”Your name begins with the letter K.”

”I knew that.”

”Deranged Soviet.” The American lowered the binoculars, knowing without having to look that his partner's expression would be perfectly deadpan. ”Do you want to play or not?”

A slight sigh, the sound of cold coffee slurped from a Styrofoam cup. ”Am I a communist?”

”No,” the American said cheerfully, keeping his eyes on the one lit window remaining several floors up. Fatal error. He'll never get it now. ”You're not Nikita Khrushchev. That's one.”

Maybe there's a war, and maybe you're a boy, and maybe you're a soldier. In any case, you see things-you are things-that no human being should ever have to see, should ever have to become. Maybe you're seven, eight years old and you watch from hiding as the SS binds Ukrainian captives face to face in pairs, embracing, blood running from the thin wire twisted around their wrists. The Germans line them up along the railing of a bridge and shoot one of each pair. Momentum carries living and dead over the low railing, into the river below, where the difference ceases to matter.

It does save on bullets.

Or maybe you're seventeen years old and carrying a U.S. Army rifle through the minefields of Southeast Asia, and scattered gunfire from a cl.u.s.ter of refugees penned under the span of a railway arch wounds two of your comrades. And the order comes down via a bleak-eyed sergeant, the lieutenant says shoot them all. ”Sarge.” You squint through your scope, watching mothers cover their children, husbands cover their wives as if human flesh could protect human flesh from spinning lead. ”There's women and babies in that crowd.”

”I know it,” he says. A heavy pause. ”Follow orders, son.”

You can't be too careful.

Whichever, it isn't something you talk about afterwards. Even to your buddies. Even to the people who were there. Five years, ten years, twenty years-and the old hurts become the foundation for the battlements that keep the world at bay.

Maybe you adopt a suave and charming frictionless surface, a ready smile and a self-deprecating turn of phrase-and a black belt in judo for the days when those don't suffice. Maybe you turn inward, settling into a gla.s.s-hard, gla.s.s-sharp facade, warded by the barbed wire of cutting wit and disdainful glances, and learn to kill as efficiently as you'd solve differentials.

You don't tell anyone about the nightmares of falling, and bridges, and a corpse leaking brains clutched tight in your arms.

”This is not vodka.” The Russian held the heavy crystal gla.s.s to the light and sighed at its clarity.

”The tax stamp was intact until I opened it. It's been in my freezer since Sat.u.r.day.” The American stretched his long legs, propping his heels on the ottoman. He inspected his own c.o.c.ktail-gin, vermouth, two onions-carefully. ”Unless a spy entered my apartment while we were on a.s.signment and poisoned the liquor supply, that's eighty-proof Stolichnaya. It says 'Vodka, product of Russia' on the label.”

The Russian glanced the length of the curved couch and favored his partner with a rare sardonic smile. ”Wodka,” he said precisely, ”comes in bottles with a tear-off foil tab, because one never opens the bottle unless one intends to finish it. It is not sipped, because allowing it contact with the palate or tongue is the direst sort of foolishness. And on an occasion such as this, one shatters the gla.s.s in the nearest fireplace, so that it may never be disgraced by being put to a lesser purpose.”

”That's Baccarat,” the American answered reasonably, as the Russian lowered the gla.s.s to his lips, measuring his partner over the rim. ”And it's a gas fire. And what's the occasion worth breaking my gla.s.ses over, in any case?”

”Am I a defector?”

”No, you're not Kim Philby. That's two.”

”I can count.” A considering pause. ”Do you want coffee? There is still a bit in the thermos.”

”Yes. I'm not counting that question, out of the goodness of my heart.”

”You are exceedingly kind. Am I dead?”

”No,” the American said, and this time he couldn't resist a sideways glance. The Russian had looked over at the same moment, of course: their eyes met in the darkness and then they turned back to their respective tasks. The American watched the window. The Russian watched the door. ”You're not John F. Kennedy.”

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