Read Online Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere - Free Book Online Page B

He had not known its like since.
    There was a hollowness near his heart where his feelings
for his grandparents had once existed. His fingers found
that hollowness and pressed against it, as if something
could still be found there. There were many such inner
cavities in his chest. He felt them like tiny black holes that
inexorably sucked the empathy out of him and banished it
to some void, barren universe.
    Mario left his map in his trouser pocket and let his
nose guide him. As he was about to step outside the
station parking lot, something soft gave under his shoe. An
unwelcome odour reached his nose.
    Mario swore. Bad enough that his feet ached from
walking for three days on the rough cobblestones of
Rome — and now this! He located a bench, sat down, and
examined his sandals: the dog excrement had lodged itself
in the grooves on the sole of the left shoe. Both sandals
were in generally bad repair, anyway. Rome had inflicted as
much damage on them as it had on his now blistery feet. He
threw the footwear into a nearby garbage can and, barefoot,
continued walking.
    The street ahead looked like a commercial strip. He’d
have no trouble finding a shoe store. He was, after all, in
Italy.
    Mario located several shops that, in theory, could have
solved his shoe problem. However, in Bari, stores closed
for a few hours mid-afternoon. Mario had two choices:
continue on barefoot or wait an hour or two sitting on a
bench in the town’s pedestrian shopping strip, bustling
with clerks on their breaks.
    The lure of the sea was too powerful. He knew that if
he waited any longer he would get fidgety and grumpy. So,
onward. In less than five minutes, his destination was in
view.
    The sight stunned him into motionlessness. He gazed at
the Adriatic Sea; it felt as if a part of him were stretching
out toward the water, as if his skin no longer defined the
limits of his identity.
    He crossed the boulevard to reach the sea itself.
He had to jump a low stone fence to get to the beach.
He was not the only one who had done so. Along the
entire length of the shore, people sat on the massive stone
blocks, arranged haphazardly, that created a rough barrier
between the sea and the land. Some people had cast fishing
lines, a few were picnicking, most were simply sunning
themselves.
    Mario found a small, shallow pool of seawater lodged
among three of the blocks. He stepped into that little
portion of the Adriatic Sea. The water provided welcome
relief from the stinging pain of his blisters.
    He closed his eyes and let himself be engulfed by the
odour of the sea. It brought back a shadow of some lost
emotion. A sense of comfort he could barely remember,
hadn’t experienced since early childhood.
    But just as the emotion was almost beginning to be vivid
enough to be savoured, that dreadful memory of being
swallowed up by the water gripped him so solidly that, even
though he knew he was hallucinating, he couldn’t snap back
to reality. Instantly, he saw it, just as he’d seen it then: the
monster.
    He felt again its cold, clammy fingers clutching his five-year-old body, that prickling sensation of the monster’s
fingertips hooking into his flesh.
    With a start he opened his eyes and found himself back
in the present, fresh tears on his cheeks — the first tears
he’d shed in twenty-five years.
    After the pizza, there was ice cream. Lots and lots of ice
cream. Chocolate. Vanilla. Neapolitan. Butterscotch. More
containers than he could count. As it was his birthday,
Mario was allowed to eat as much as he wanted. Excited by
the rare permission to indulge, the boy didn’t know when
to stop.
    He’d had difficulty falling asleep when, at midnight,
his grandparents insisted on putting him to bed. All that
excitement. All that food. All that sugar.
    He did sleep eventually, but woke up less than an
hour later. Through his window, in the darkness, the boy
smelled the sea — so different from anything in Toronto.
Not even Lake Ontario smelled anything like