Page 74 of The Sicilian Inheritance

I pulled him to me, brought his head to my breast, and kissed his smooth scalp over and over.

“How is this possible?” I whispered. “I thought you would be close to death.”

“Me too,” he said, sighing in pleasure at the touch of my lips. “But the doctor would not give up. After I arrived, he gave me a shot of something that helped me regain consciousness. I told him to do whatever he had to do. Some days I thought he was a monster. Some days I thought he was a saint. I think you need to be a bold mixture of both of those things if you want to heal the way that he heals. But I am healing. Look at me. I am standing on my own two feet, walking, eating. He assures me that eventually I can return home.”

Home. Our town. The place I would be leaving as soon as Gio and I could get our affairs in order.

“Marco, I have something to tell you.”

“I have things to tell you too, my love. But first can we find something to eat? I was so excited by your arrival that I was not able to eat anything this morning and now the cook has taken her rest. I haven’t ventured too far from here, but there is a trattoria close by with an excellent lunch. You and I have never eaten at a restaurant together out in the open. I would very much like to take you.”

“Let’s go,” I managed.

He grasped my hand, and we strolled through the streets of the city like husband and wife. We arrived at a restaurant called the Casa del Brodo dal Dottore with a sunny-yellow exterior and an impressive stained-glass door depicting the doctor saints Cosma and Damiano, both of them penniless healers of the third century. I raised an eyebrow at the scenes on the door, hoping Marco would explain. “Lombardo’s brother owns this restaurant. It has been in their family since the 1890s and it is famous for its broth, which the doctor believes has medicinal properties. I do not know if that is true, but it is tasty.”

The inside was small, only eight tables. A waiter brought out a carafe of red wine and Marco poured two glasses, toasting us.

“To our future.”

My heart sank at his toast, knowing what I needed to tell him, that we had no future together, that I would be leaving soon. But I wanted to delay this as long as possible.

“Tell me everything the doctor has done to you,” I said in response.

“I do not even know most of it.” He took a sip, considering what to reveal. “He has removed a lot of my blood and replaced it with the blood of others. I do not know where it all came from, whether it came from a body that was alive or dead. He thought it was best that I did not know all the details. It could be animal blood for all I know. Wouldn’t that be something? To have the blood of an ox?” It was clear Marco had an intense respect for this man, and so did I after seeing how well my love was doing.

The waiter brought out two steaming bowls filled with thick broth. “Tortellini in brodo,” he announced.

The tiny hat-shaped morsels of dough fell apart in my mouth, revealing baked cheeses and pork mixed with unexpected spices, cinnamon, maybe cardamom. The broth was hearty and satisfying; it tasted of the sea and the land all at once, briny and sharp. I finished within minutes.

“My compliments to the chef. This is glorious.”

“You are glorious.” Marco took one of my hands in his and I traced the thick blue veins visible through his skin with my free fingers. “I want to take you all over this city.”

“You are still a sick man,” I asserted. “And we are already being too bold, eating out in a restaurant like this. You never know who will see us, even this far from home.”

“Please let me take you around to the places I have discovered while taking my daily walks. The doctor insists on them. He says that staying in bed for days on end is the primary reason so many patients remain ill. The blood must be moved through the body.”

When I finally agreed he left some money on the table, and we headed back out onto the street. I pulled his hat lower onto his brow and hid my hair with a scarf, for all that did to disguise the two of us as we walked hand in hand through the melee of via Vittorio Emanuele. Young boys squeezed in close to us, wanting to sell us painted postcards of the city. We dodged wheelbarrows filled with oranges, lemons, poppies, and sumac. Larger painted carts were pulled by donkeys in elaborate feathered headdresses covered in bells that jingled as they trotted by us.

I was ashamed of my simple dress and black mantilla. Women in Palermo had shed their traditional costumes and wore bright tailored outfits. Some of the stores along the viale della Libertà even bore the signs written in French boasting chapeaux de paris. Marco led with authority, as though he had been walking the uneven stone streets of Palermo his entire life. We tripped up the steps of the grand Teatro Massimo. I stopped to marvel at the massive lion statues flanking the theater and reached up to pet one. “Lombardo told me they brought real lions and elephants onstage for their operas,” Marco explained once we’d descended back to the street. He plucked a pear from a rickety bench displaying fruit and vegetables in every color of the rainbow, some shapes I’d never seen before. We ate it together at a fountain surrounded by seats that were filled with pilgrims and families, priests and nuns. Music came from a bandstand constructed to look like a small Greek temple.

Everywhere I looked, beautiful buildings loomed over us, as high as the cliffs above Caltabellessa, many of them covered in chiseled statues of goddesses who gazed down upon us with concern. Inside the grand cathedrals the golden icons blinded me with their splendor, though outside of each of them the stairs were littered with beggars.

Marco and I passed beneath a stone arch to a calmer, cleaner lane. No more pushcarts or animals, only a couple pedestrians. “This is one of the oldest streets in Palermo, or so they say,” he told me. Intricate blue and yellow tile work surrounded the windows and doors. Wrought-iron balconies, barely large enough for one, teetered over our heads. Sheets hung from their railings, threatening to flap right in our faces. Many of the crooked wooden doors were flung open and I gazed through them into courtyards much like Lombardo’s, the entryways to much grander spaces, their modesty cloaking the wealth.

We strolled in silence for a couple more blocks. Marco dropped my hand and held tight to my arm. I could not tell whether it was in exhaustion or anticipation.

Eventually he paused in front of an imposing stone wall covered in vines and fragrant white plumerias. He pushed aside some of the greenery, revealing a small door in the stone that swung open at the slightest touch.

“How did you find this?” I asked.

“Magic.”

“I do not enjoy teasing.”

“The doctor told me where to look. He knows everything about these streets. Like I said, he truly is a remarkable man.”

What I was looking at right beyond the entryway might have been a church, but it was far less ornate than any of the other churches I had passed in Palermo with their elaborate carvings and stained-glass windows, their spires and cupolas reaching as close to heaven as possible.

---