Lagoon

For nearly a week they followed him by train west from Istanbul to Skopje by way of Plovdiv and Sofia and then south again to Ohrid, where he rented a car at the airport. They followed him along the lake and then north into Albania to Shkodër and into Podgorica and Nikšić and Trebinje and up the Croatian coast to Split, and from there a torturous if stunning drive around Bakar to Rijeka and into Slovenia, where they crossed into Italy and arrived in Trieste the last Thursday in May.

They had spotted him in a crowd beside the fountains in front of the Hagia Sophia and for a few reasons—his ridiculous plaid hat, like a football coach’s, without the flyfisher nymphs, or his preposterous beard, halfway to his naval, or the permanently sideways tilt of his gait, as if he were a plane and could fly at no other angle, or his shambling walk, as if he were drunk or mad or both—or for no reason at all—since that had usually been the case (for a month they shadowed a man from a Santa Monica grocery store all the way to an art gallery in Old Port district Portland, Maine)—he became a character in their screenplay.

In Trieste they followed him to the Roman ruins facing the sea, where he lay in the grass beside the amphitheatre and talked on a cell phone and smoked Turkish cigarettes. He sat up and looked around.

He fell asleep, she said.

Bad news, her companion said.

They drove up the narrow and turning coast road, past Miramare Park, through Sistiana to Duino. He parked and they followed him up the castle park’s promenade along the limestone cliffs high above the stony shoreline of the Adriatic.

He stopped at a tree and took out a penknife and carved letters into the bark of a cypress tree.

Give me the binoculars, he said.

Wait.

What’s he writing.

I can’t tell.

Don’t tell me he’s carving a heart.

S = k.

S loves Kay. He’s carving a heart? he asked. An old flame. I thought he might be interesting, he’s such a strange looking creature.

No, he’s not finished.

Give me the binoculars.

It’s my turn.

So what’s it say.

S = K log W.

Kellogg. Corn flakes. Rice Krispies.

Have a look.

It’s an equation, he said.

I can see that.

What does it mean?

They sat down. She took a notebook from her purse and wrote it down. I don’t know. We’ll go online and find out.

You hungry, she asked. The lunatic hasn’t eaten since yesterday.

What’s his problem.

Tobacco.

They stood up.

Where’d he go? she asked.

They walked up the path to the cypress tree. Off the promenade up the slope to the road he was hanging from a thin cord looped over a branch and tied into a noose. His legs and head and arms shook and then he slumped heavily. He swung gently like a pendulum at the end of the cord hung from the branch, which bent but did not break. Before they reached him they ran into a wall of stench.

Her companion Will put a handkerchief over his mouth and checked his wrist for a pulse.

Find the knife and cut him down, she said.

Go to the castle and call a doctor.

What about his cell phone?

What’s the Italian 911?

He found the knife and cut the cord and let the man drop to the ground. The body stood upright, as if comically aware of its predicament, and then fell face forward down the hillside. The hat flew off and rolled down the hill, bouncing on the path, and caught a crosswind that sent it sailing off the cliff. Will turned him over and pinching the man’s nostrils kneeled down and breathed into his mouth. Breathed and then pumped the man’s chest. Breathed and pumped, again and again. The odor of sulfur was overpowering. A wave of nausea rose...