Chapter 21 Davey

For the second time that night, Davey carried a corpse across the basement floor. When he and Faye had pulled Kip's body out of Soraya's view, Faye had taken charge and the whole thing had been over as soon as it started. Working with Umu to carry the body of her most cherished friend was a different experience altogether.

"There's too much blood here," Umu had said. She was the one who wanted to leave Faye, who wanted to put some distance between herself and the killer, who wanted to go check on Ro, and then as soon as she got to him, she was dissatisfied.

"Too much blood," she repeated.

Davey didn't know what to do.

"There's blood in the arena, too," he said.

"Not his though."

So it was settled. They were ankle deep in torn paper, previous books made unreadable. If she was distraught at the sight of Ro's blood, Davey was distraught at the loss of all those pages.

He took Ro's torso and she took his legs, but they stopped often. With Kip they had mostly dragged him across the floor, but not Ro. Umu wouldn't allow it. They stopped often to rest and they stopped often so Umu could cry.

It brought to mind a cold November morning thirteen years in the past. The first time Davey had ever seen the movie The English Patient, he'd been ten. Not at all a film for children. He remembered Kristin Scott Thomas's perfect breasts from his many rewatches but from that first viewing, he remembered Herodotus.

The English Patientwas the favorite film of Davey's mother, but he was the one who'd asked her to put it on that day. She was brilliant, Davey's mother. She had worked as a translator as a young woman in Ethiopia, and she loved languages. It was her work, her facility with a dozen different alphabets, that allowed her and Davey's father to come to America at a time when so many people at home were starving.

She wasn't sentimental about home, but she taught Davey to speak Amharic and to read Ge'ez so he could fully participate at church. And she taught him Greek. Perhaps she was a bit sentimental about that one.

Davey was home from school, sick. It was the last year he was young enough that his mother stayed home with him when he was ill. In any case, in four years she'd be dead. He'd asked to see The English Patient because he knew she loved it and he wanted her attention.

Like Umu now, though, she wouldn't let them just get through it; she insisted they keep stopping. In The English Patient, the hero, played by Ralph Fiennes, tells stories from Herodotus's Histories to the woman he loves, played by Kristin Scott Thomas and her wonderful breasts. Davey's mother was so overcome that she repeatedly paused the film to retrieve her own volume of Herodotus and read those stories to her son in Greek. They were on their blue couch, sharing an ivory blanket. Davey had a fever. His Greek was not yet good enough to follow the stories. He didn't care. More than once that day, his mother was overcome with emotion, and like Umu, she wept.

Davey's mother died of acral lentiginous melanoma the year he started high school. Diagnosed to dead in the space of six months. After she was gone, he threw himself into the study of Greek. He wanted to know the language as well as she had, so the stories could move him as they had moved her.

Davey's father kept attending church, but Davey stopped. At home, his father continued to speak to him in Amharic so he wouldn't forget the language, but Davey always replied in English.

It was a coincidence that the library had acquired the collection of Ge'ez prayer books the year before Davey started at the college. He hadn't read the language since his mother's funeral service. He was desperate to work at the rare books library. The library had the first-known printed edition of Herodotus's Histories. It was printed in 1474, in Venice, in Latin translation. There were only seventy remaining in the world.

So Davey applied. He delighted his father, delighted Ronald, when he played up his language skills on the application. He wrote descriptions of prayer books and everyone was satisfied but every so often he snuck down to the basement to lay a palm on that 1474 Herodotus, and it felt like being on that blue couch with his mother.

"This is far enough," Umu said. They lay Ro down at the edge of the arena, not in the center of it. "No more nonsense with ointments or rituals, okay?" she asked. "I just want to let him sleep."

Davey didn't think it was nonsense. To stop mourning was to disrespect the dead. To be on the safe side, so he didn't risk disrespect, Davey took the thumb of his right hand and tore the nail across his cheek until he felt the blood come.