Pasquale thought he might bite through his own jaw. This was a final indignity, the last thing he could bear. And in his confusion, in his grief, Gualfredo suddenly seemed like some awful thorn in his side. He opened the screen door, went inside, and grabbed his mother’s old cane from the coatrack. Alvis Bender looked up from his wine, asked, “What is it, Pasquale?” But Pasquale didn’t answer, just turned around and went outside, walking purposefully down the steep strada toward the two men, who were climbing out of the boat, the cobblestones falling away as Pasquale marched with purpose, clouds racing through the violet overhead—last sunlight strobing the shoreline, waves drumming on smooth rocks.
The men were out of the boat, coming up the path, Gualfredo smiling: “Three nights the American woman stayed here when she was supposed to be at my hotel, Pasquale. You owe me for those nights.”
Still forty meters apart, with the fading sun right behind them now, Pasquale couldn’t make out the looks on the men’s faces, just their silhouettes. He said nothing, simply walked, his mind roiling with images of Richard Burton and Michael Deane, of his aunt poisoning his mother, of Amedea and his baby, of his failed tennis court, of his flinching before Gualfredo last time, of the truth revealed about himself: his core weakness as a man.
“The Brit skipped out on his bar bill,” Gualfredo said, now twenty meters away. “You might as well pay me for that, too.”
“No,” Pasquale said simply.
“No?” Gualfredo asked.
Behind him, he heard Alvis Bender come out onto the patio. “Everything okay down there, Pasquale?”
Gualfredo looked up at the hotel. “And you have another American guest? What are you running here, Tursi? I’m going to have to double the tax.”
Pasquale reached them just at the point where the trailhead met the edge of the piazza, where the dirt of the shore blended into the first cobblestone strada. Gualfredo was opening his mouth to say something else, but before he could, Pasquale swung the cane. It cracked against the bull neck of the brute Pelle, who apparently wasn’t expecting this, perhaps because of Pasquale’s sheepish demeanor the last time. The big man lurched to the side and fell in the dirt like a cut tree, Pasquale lifting the cane to swing it again . . . but finding it broken off against the big man’s neck. He threw the handle aside and went after Gualfredo with his fists.
But Gualfredo was an experienced fighter. Ducking Pasquale’s haymaker, he landed two straight, compact blows—one to Pasquale’s cheek, which burned, and the next to his ear, which caused a dull ringing and sent him reeling backward into the fallen Pelle. Realizing that his own furious adrenaline was a limited resource, Pasquale leaped back at Gualfredo’s sausage-packed frame, until he was inside those direct punches, swinging wildly himself, his own blows landing on Gualfredo’s head with deep melon thunks and light slaps: wrists, fists, elbows—everything he had.
But then the big lamb-shank hand of Pelle landed on his hair and a second meaty hand fell on his back and he was dragged away, and for the first time it occurred to Pasquale that this might not go his way, that he’d likely need more than adrenaline and a broken cane to pull this off. Then even the adrenaline was gone, and Pasquale made a soft, whimpering noise like a crying child who has exhausted himself. And, like a steam shovel out of nowhere, Pelle slammed a fist into Pasquale’s gut, lifting him and dropping him flat to the ground, slumped over, not a molecule of air left anywhere in the world to breathe.
Big Pelle stood over him, a deep frown on his face, framed with the specks of Pasquale’s vision as he gasped and waited for the steam shovel to finish him off. Pasquale bent forward and scratched at the dirt below him, wondering why he couldn’t smell the sea air but knowing there would be no smelling as long as there was no air. Pelle made the slightest move toward him and then a shadow flashed across the sun and Pasquale looked up to see Alvis Bender fly from the rock wall onto the massive back of Pelle, who hesitated for a moment （he looked like a student with a guitar case strung over his shoulder） before reaching behind himself and tossing off the tall, thin American like a wet rag, sending him skittering across the rocky shore.
Pasquale tried to get to his feet now, but there was still no breath. Then Pelle took a step toward him, and three fantastic things occurred at once: there was an intimate THUP in front of him, and a big crack behind, and the big left foot of the giant Pelle burst forth in a red spout, the big man crying out and doubling over to grab his foot.