Hotel of the Saints Read Online Free PDF Page A

fish, the stands with jewelry and combs and lace. Italy was far more exciting than my own country with its somber, guttural sounds that often were like the beginning of a cough. I liked the laugh of the dark-eyed men who sold us tiny golden-crisp fish that crackled when I ate them whole; the plum-shaped tomatoes that still hung on wilting vines; the taut peaches and grapes whose juice would run down my neck when I’d bite into them. Some vendors said I carried the sun in my hair and tried to tease me into bartering a touch of my blond hair in return for so many lire off whatever I wanted to buy. Though my father would shake his head, I’d usually laugh back at the men and let the quick warmth of brown fingers into my long hair.
    Every morning, my father and I played a game of tennis behind the hotel and ate the breakfast he fixed for us on our balcony; then I’d run into the blue-green water of the Adriatic Sea, swim out far into the waves, and let them carry me back to shore. The day I got my period—my fourth one ever—I swam as usual, waving to my father, who was setting out for one of his solitary hikes along the beach, carrying his anger and grief in the stiff angle of his arms. He never talked about my mother, and if I mentioned her at all, he’d get very quiet. Sometimes I was afraid he’d just keep walking on that beach, past the city of Trieste, past the border, and into Yugoslavia.
    About an hour after my swim, my insides began to cramp with pains that pulsed into my legs, my chest. I tried lying on my bed, sitting up, walking. Nothing helped. One hand against the wall, I made it to our balcony and scanned the long ribbon of sand for my father. But another cramp took hold, and I dropped to my knees. Crying, I curled up by the railing, kneespulled against the front of my swimsuit, wishing my mother were here. But she was far away, in India on a medical project. That’s what my mother had dreamed of doing when, at age nineteen, she became a nun: travel to exotic regions to help the poor who really needed her. I’d grown up knowing that—had it not been for falling in love with my father, the convent accountant, and being surprised by motherhood—my mother would have left Germany long ago to work in those exotic regions with other nuns. Instead, she ended up assisting doctors who took out the tonsils and set the broken bones of ordinary Germans.
    Sometimes I thought she had divorced me as much as my father, leaving both of us behind when she met a group of American Mormon missionaries in Berlin, who sent people like my mother to foreign countries where she could heal far more interesting ailments than any she might find in Germany.
    But maybe this pain that felt as though my body were turning itself inside out would interest my mother. And maybe the lush setting would contribute to making me a worthwhile patient. Another cramp ran through me, and I moaned, certain I was about to die.
My mother, all dressed in black, stands by my open grave, sobbing as my coffin is lowered into the wormy earth. “I’m sorry, Christa. I’m so sorry. How can I go on living without my only child?” As she tries to throw herself across my coffin, three men—no, four—have to hold her back….
    Hot gusts of wind blew in from the sea, carrying specks of sand and the smell of fish. My lips felt dry,
but my mother’s cool hand elevates my head as she guides a glass of lemonade to my lips. “Here, drink this, Christa.” Her thin face looks tired from traveling so far to be with me. But at least she is here. Worried that she has not arrived in time to prevent my terrible illness, shewhispers,
“You
need help, dont you?” And I moan, louder, just for her, just to keep her here. Here—
    â€œYou need help, don’t you?” The voice, I could hear the voice clearly—but it no longer belonged to my mother. And the woman’s hair, a lighter shade