The Jump Artist by Austin Ratner

Author:Austin Ratner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2010-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

3. THE WORLD RESORT

There no wicked Northwind enters;

No evil Southwind wreaks its powers;

How fair the unturning center flowers—

The place to go—especially in winter.

—CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN,

from “The World Resort,” Alle Galgenlieder

THE VILLA ST. HUBERTUS IN MERAN was a grand house that stood at the top of a hill. The Jewish doctor from Innsbruck had lent it to them for free. Meran was quite nice. The street and hotel names were German, but the city belonged to Italy since the War. There were palm trees, just as in Lugano, but no lake. Instead there were radon springs and terraced hills whose sunny trellises were loaded with purple grapes. The autumn cure in Meran was called the grape cure. Wisteria and grape vines grew up the yellow stucco on the face of the villa, curling around the giant lichened urns of birdfeather-blue gentians and tracking over the marble balustrade. A cobblestone drive in front circled around a running fountain where three bronze-black cherubs tiptoed in its rainy pool.

From his chaise Philipp could see on one side the vineyard, on another, beyond the balustrade, a flight of crumbly steps twisting down between the palm and oleander. Even bougainvillea grew there, as if the sea were just nearby. But there was nothing but mountains all around, mountains that began the day dark and cold like the Brandjoch outside his cell window, then mellowed in the rising sun, lightening and receding as the sun revealed the grade of the valley slopes. Elevation, Philipp supposed, had much more to do with climate than proximity to the sea; Meran was in a basin at the meeting of the Vinschgau, Etsch, Passeier, and Ulten valleys, and it was green and mild as the Mediterranean Sea.

Before dinner, he hung onto the cypress tree, which shot up to the sky like a pillar and he swung himself around and called out, “Look, Mama! La donna è mobile!” And he belted out as much of Rigoletto as he could remember, which was fortunately not much, and then he nearly collapsed with green stars in his eyes.

“You’re feeling better!”

“I’m feeling better!” He refused to touch his chest where the blood felt it might spurt out.

“Hurray!”

They ate at the end of a long, long table in a room full of mirrors. His mother did nothing but cook. (It was like those days when she taught him to read in three languages, except that those days had been special and filled with love and the excitement of unknown horizons.) Sometimes he thought that the seat way down at the other end of the table was Papa’s seat, that he was there but for some reason they were all observing an oath of silence and would not speak to him or look at him and Papa would not speak to them. Philipp knew he should take care of Mama and Liouba now, instead of the other way around.

“Why don’t you go?” he said.

“Why don’t I stay?” Liouba said.

“But you do stay,” he said. Every time he tried to make a joke, all he could think of was everyone waiting and listening to him.

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