last, pausing to catch my breath, I saw a candle flame leap up off in the darkness. It was in a handsome ruin, a place of high granite walls matted with wildflowers and ivy. A vast entryway looked into a room with a grass floor and a roof of stars, as if the place had been built, not to give shelter from the natural world, but to protect a virgin corner of wildness from the violation of man. Then again it seemed a pagan place, the natural setting for an orgy hosted by fauns with their goaty hooves, their flutes and their furred cocks. So the archway into that private courtyard of weeds and summer green seemed the entrance to a hall awaiting revelers for a private bacchanal.
He waited on spread blanket, with a bottle of the Don’s wine and some books and he smiled at the tinkling sound of my approach but stopped when I came into the light, a block of rough stone already in my free hand.
I killed him there.
I did not kill him out of family honor or jealousy, did not hit him with the stone because he had laid claim to Lithodora’s cool white body, which she would never offer me.
I hit him with the block of stone because I hated his black face.
After I stopped hitting him, I sat with him. I think I took his wrist to see if he had a pulse, but after I knew he was dead, I went on holding his hand listening to the hum of the crickets in the grass, as if he were a small child, my child, who had only drifted off after fighting sleep for a very long time.
What brought me out of my stupor was the sweet music of bells coming up the stairs toward us. I leapt up and ran but Dora was already there, coming through the doorway, and I nearly struck her on my way by. She reached out for me with one of her delicate white hands and said my name but I did not stop. I took the stairs three at a time, running without thought, but I was not fast enough and I heard her when she shouted his name, once and again.
I don’t know where I was running. Sulle Scale, maybe, though I knew they would look for me there first once Lithodora went down the steps and told them what I had done to the Arab. I did not slow down until I was gulping for air and my chest was filled with fire and then I leaned against a gate at the side of the path—you know what gate—and it swung open at first touch.
I went through the gate and started down the steep staircase beyond. I thought, no one will look for me here and I can hide a while and—
No.
I thought, these stairs will lead to the road and I will head north to Napoli and buy a ticket for a ship to the U.S. and take a new name, start a new—
No. Enough.
The truth: I believed the stairs led down into hell and hell was where I wanted to go.
The steps at first were of old white stone, but as I continued along they grew sooty and dark. Other staircases merged with them here and there, descending from other points on the mountain. I couldn’t see how that was possible. I thought I had walked all the flights of stairs in the hills, except for the steps I was on and I couldn’t think for the life of me where those other staircases might be coming from.
The forest around me had been purged by fire at some time in the not so far-off past, and I made my descent through stands of scorched, shattered pines, the hillside all blackened and charred. Only there had been no fire on that part of the hill, not for as long as I could remember. The breeze carried on it an unmistakable warmth. I began to feel unpleasantly overheated in my clothes.
I followed the staircase round a switchback and saw below me a boy sitting on a stone landing. He had a collection of curious wares spread on a blanket. There was a windup tin bird in a cage, a basket of white apples, a dented gold lighter. There was a jar and in the jar was light. This light would increase in brightness until the landing was lit as if by the rising sun,