And just as Stefano must have looked at Mark and seen a phantom of Christopher himself, Maria must have looked at Isabella and seen the feminized and therefore perverted version of her foreign lover, it must have been disquieting to see Christopher in the soft and feminine curves of Isabella’s face, the same eyes with the same insistent gaze. They continued to gaze at each other, I watched Isabella’s expression change from perplexity to one of vague disdain and disgust, perhaps she thought Maria overly insistent.
Except that it did not appear to be the case, as Isabella continued to look at Maria with an expression of distrust that was too pronounced for a stranger, I began to suspect that she had somehow managed to apprehend (a mother’s intuition) the nature of the relationship between Maria and Christopher, the reason for the fixedness with which the girl was now regarding her. It was as if Maria could not look away, as if the sight of Isabella were too fascinating.
Isabella flushed and turned away. She made an audible sound of disapproval, Strange manners that woman has, and I was reassured, it was entirely in my imagination, how could Isabella have guessed at the link between Christopher and Maria, the fact that he had more recently been intimate with the severe young woman standing behind the hotel lobby reception desk than he had been with me, his wife, by a measure of months?
She continued, That’s exactly the kind of woman Christopher would have liked. I was startled, despite myself I was impressed, she knew her son well, far better than I had known him, how many times had I seen Maria before I had really seen her? Isabella looked at me with a quizzical expression, as if we were merely discussing the peculiarities of a mutual friend, I shrugged and said that I did not know, I could not say, obviously we had nothing in common, this woman and I. She gave Maria another troubled look and then turned away, as if the matter were closed.
It had been closed, until Isabella had incautiously pried the door open again, however briefly. She clenched her jaw as she proceeded in the direction of the stairs as if to say, Enough, no more, and I saw that her mourning was an act of will, just like everything else with Isabella. She said that Mark would tell the concierge to request a different driver, she asked if I would be ready to go in an hour, and I said that was fine, that I would meet her and Mark in the lobby.
12.
Another driver was sent to escort us on our journey. Mark gave no indication of surprise at having been asked to make the alteration, it was true that the previous encounter had not been felicitous, uncomfortable was in fact exactly the word for it. Mark was not the kind of man who liked making a scene and he had done precisely that in the back of Stefano’s car.
No doubt he had no intention of doing it again. He sat in the front seat with an abstracted and somewhat dignified mien, without looking at the driver, who had not introduced himself to us. Isabella and I sat in the back. There had been no question of either of us sitting in the front beside the driver, it was Mark’s natural instinct for chivalry asserting itself, as though Isabella and I needed to be shielded from the driver, the discomfort of sitting beside a stranger.
As we pulled down the hotel drive, Mark asked the driver if he knew where he was going and the man said yes, Kostas had explained everything to him, he knew the place. As if we were going to a local restaurant or tourist attraction. Isabella looked out the window with a tense and bewildered expression, she still could not understand what had brought her son here, it would never be anything but confounding, no matter how long she stayed in Greece, whether or not she saw the place of his death. In that sense she was right to leave, there was nothing for her to learn or understand here. I heard Mark say to the driver, We want to see the place where our son died.
I still don’t know why he said this, he was not the kind of man who was prone to taking strangers into his confidence, he did not have the impulse to ingratiate, nor was he a man for small talk. But although the driver did not respond, apart from a small nod of acknowledgment—it was hard even to know how much English he had, the man had barely spoken a word, he might not have understood what Mark had said, this fantastical statement—Mark continued unprompted, It’s something we need to do before we can leave, and the driver nodded again, as if to say that he understood, that he agreed.