The Disappearance of Grace Read Online Free PDF

food and drink is fresh. No chemicals. Makes for a far healthier experience.
    â€œMaybe it’s someone’s idea of a sick joke,” I say, following up with a laugh.
    The noise from the kitchenette stops.
    â€œYou did make a spectacle of yourself at the café this afternoon, Nick,” she points out.
    â€œOuch,” I say.
    â€œI’m merely pointing out the fact that a lot of people saw what was going on. My ring dropping from out of your hand onto the cobblestones. You spilling your beer on purpose—”
    â€œIt wasn’t on purpose.”
    â€œOkay, whatever, we still made a spectacle of ourselves. You were in a foul mood and that creepy man kept staring at us.”
    â€œAnd you don’t like to be noticed, nor stared at.”
    â€œYes, I like my privacy and my anonymity, believe it or not. As an artist, I prefer my work to do my talking for me. You, my lovely fiancé, are a writer who has been to the wars and back. And for that you should be commended. But please, please, please do not become Norman Mailer.”
    I laugh aloud.
    â€œBlind Norman Mailer,” I correct. “I could do a lot worse.”
    â€œThe blindness will pass, baby. Trust me. One day soon you will wake up and see again and the sight will be permanent. Think of this short period as your eyes taking a rest for a while. Soon your troubles, my troubles, our troubles, will all be behind us. You’ll write and I’ll paint and pen the loveliest poems in the world and together we will conquer planet Earth.”
    I don’t know if I will ever see outside my head again, like Grace believes. But like her, I can only believe it will happen. But it will take time. When it comes to all our separate and collective wounds, the healing will come, but it will take its own special time.
    â€œOur troubles behind us,” I say, cocking my head towards the open window and the canal. “What a truly splendid thought.”
    My Grace and I take our dinner to bed. We eat the pasta swimming in fresh tomato sauce and olive oil and we drink the red wine. When the food and the wine are gone we make love again, this time to the evening breeze and to the sound of the wood boats on the canals and the gondoliers who make music with their voices inside them. And when the love-making is done and we are emptied and happy, we spoon into one another and fall to sleep.
    That’s when the happiness leaves me and memory slides her cold body into the bed, settles herself inside the narrow space between my love and me.
    * * *
    In the dream I’m climbing the hill.
    There’s about as much distinction between hills and mountains in this brown, desolate territory as there are friends and enemies. Seems there are no flatlands at all, other than in the valleys. But you don’t want to be in the valleys because there you are exposed. Sitting ducks. Best to keep climbing. And when you run out of hill to climb, you walk down, cross the road while hoping to avoid an IED, and find another hill to climb again.
    Do it quickly.
    I reach the top of this hill and come upon a road carved out of the rocky floor. At the end of the narrow road is the village. The village is enclosed by a small stone wall that rises up no farther than my knees. At the entrance to the village is a gate made out of wood slats. The wood is too worn out and dilapidated by time and wear for it to remain any other way than wide open. Someone once told me that the difference between a Tajik village and a modern city is about one thousand years.
    As if guarding the collection of small huts and buildings made of stone and thatched roofs, is a cow. The black and white cow is chained to a post by the stone wall. The closer my squad and I come to the cow, the more she shakes her head like she’s saying “Nooo” instead of “Mooo,” and all the time the cowbell strapped to her old flesh-drooping neck bangs out a dull, muted metal warning to