The History of the World

 robin black The History of the World 1. A dding up the silences would be an unkind thing to do. Still, if Kate Rodgers were to add up all the pauses in her brother Arthur’s speech, all of them, over the last nearly sixty years, it would make for several days at least, several days of her own life spent waiting for the creaky gears of his brain to locate the proper word. He’s struggling now to find tollbooth, and Kate is again waiting, wanting to give him a chance. And as she waits, she thinks about his brain in just those terms—like a watch that’s been dropped and possibly stepped on, so the gears still move, but they move with a hitch. The kind of hitch in the works that makes you lose a few minutes every day. “Tollbooth.” She’s the one who says it first. This is an instinct in her as old as any she possesses: knowing when and when not to finish her twin brother’s thoughts. “Yes, right. So I was driving up to this tollbooth yesterday, and the car in front of me is this enormous . . . what are they called . . . minivan like everyone drives in the States. But I’d never seen one quite this big, or maybe it’s just because in . . . in . . . Italy, in Italy what I’m used to seeing are those toy cars speeding around. That and the . . . the . . .” “Motorinos. Vespas.” “Motorcycles. But yes, motorinos. Motorini? Anyway, this thing was really strange.” “I’ve seen so many American cars this trip,” Kate says. “Many more than ever before.” But as she speaks, she isn’t sure that’s true. She doesn’t actually remember noticing cars one way or the other since arriving the day before. She’s had other things on her mind. “I suppose that’s right,” Arthur says, though in fact he has noticed no more than she. “Blame it on the global economy and all. Cable television. American imperialism. All the usual CRSUM09 fiction.indd 3 5/22/2009 12:33:17 PM colorado review  suspects, right?” He lifts yesterday’s Herald Tribune to his face. He’s read through it once already on the plane, but it’s better than nothing. “It feels,” he says from behind his shield, “seeing that van, that minivan . . . it feels . . .” Another pause begins its unmistakable stretch. Peering over the paper, he finds his sister’s pale blue eyes, his own pale blue eyes, staring back. These seconds, the empty ones, move slowly for him. Knowing she has what he wants. Preferring to produce the word himself. It’s funny how this, the language thing, has never bothered him as much with anyone else as with her. He squints as though he might find the words written on her face, and Kate, who has lived with this look, with its silent, insistent pressures, for over six decades, begins suggesting possibilities to him. “Wrong?” she asks. He shakes his head. “Not foreign enough?” No. Not that either. “Sad,” he pronounces, the cloud lifting this time. “It just feels sad.” “Oh, it is sad,” she agrees, though she barely remembers now what the it in question is. So much is sad these days, Kate is willing simply to assent to the word and leave it there. “So, we’re off to Orvieto today?” he asks, back behind the Trib. “I’d like that. I’m still feeling jet-lagged and not too ambitious . Unless you have work you need to do. I’d like to sit together in the square and watch the passersby. Maybe talk.” She stands, tightening the belt on her travel robe, silk—not for its luxury, but for its negligible weight. “I’d like to talk.” “I think that sounds perfect,” he says as he puts the paper down. “Work can wait. I didn’t come on this trip to work. I came to be with you. Half an hour?” “Yes. That sounds right.” “I’m looking forward to seeing the . . . the . . .” But it’s gone. “Cathedral?” He shakes his head and slowly moves his hands together in the air, as if signaling...