Page 76 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Seventy-Three

‘Sal, what happened?’ I ask as soon as we are alone.

‘Let’s walk and find a place to talk.’ Sal leads us out of Floriana and towards home. The streets seem quieter than usual. People go about their daily lives as always, but they are quieter, as if they sense the storm building out at sea and are waiting for it to break.

Sal comes to a stop just shy of the street where the half-house is. Looking around, he sees an abandoned shop and ushers me in. Its front shutters and door stand open deliberately to reveal that the shelves are empty of anything worth stealing.

Going in first, I step over broken glass and empty wooden crates to find my way to a small back room with a narrow, barred window. Every surface is covered in dust; a broken sink hangs off the wall.

‘Tell me.’

Sal sees an old stool in the corner and, drawing it to him, sits on it. He stares into a shaft of steep light that cuts through the gloom to reveal a million particles of dust dancing in the air.

‘It didn’t work?’ I ask.

‘It didn’t work.’ Sal lowers his eyes. ‘Not as it should. I should have woken up there. In the bed, just as you have described. But that is not how it was.’

‘Then, what happened?’

‘I remembered the directions you gave me to the hospital,’ Sal says.

‘So much has changed. So many more buildings and people and cars – so many cars. Even more than in the nineties. I thought your time wouldn’t be so very hard for me to understand, but I suppose I have grown used to a quiet time, at least before the raids started. Everything was so loud.’

‘That’s not why you came back, though, right?’ I ask.

‘No.’ Sal glances up at me before continuing.

‘I went and stood across the road and waited. You said they come every day, and they came a little after 2 p.m.’ He smiles faintly, tears standing in his eyes.

‘What a gift to see them, Maia. What a treasure to see again all that I thought lost forever. I saw Elena arrive with my son and, I think, his wife – a very attractive young woman, blonde hair. They had three little children with them, running ahead, taking the steps into the hospital two at a time. Such sweet, happy little souls.’ Sal draws in a ragged breath.

‘Elena looked so beautiful; in my eyes, she had not aged a day. Her grace, her smile was exactly the same. The way she looked at our grandchildren – my heart almost burst from beating so hard. All the years we have been apart, and my love has not cooled one degree. I burn for her, just as I did on the day we met.’

‘Oh, Sal,’ I say. ‘But why did you come back here?’

‘It was then that I realised I had waited too long. There is no way back to that life for me now. That other man who lies in bed surrounded by a family he cannot know – he is lost forever. This body – this is who I am meant to be. This time – this is where I belong. And, at last, I know why. I know my purpose.’

‘What do you mean?’ I press him.

‘I had some time, and I saw a kind of junk shop, full of things no one wants anymore: old microwaves, out-of-date mobile telephones, piles of magazines and books. I thought I could pass the time in there. There was so much to look at, familiar and new – to me, at least. It calmed me. And then I found a copy of a book about Malta during the war. I picked it up and flicked through it. I saw your Danny and some other faces I know. Friends – good friends – staring back at me from these pages like ghosts, as though the flesh-and-blood people that I know were never more than half-forgotten memories printed in two dimensions. It is the way, I thought. It is fitting that the names of people, their lives, fade into dust and are let go. That is how life continues. That is how it should be.’ His mouth twitches into a smile.

‘And then . . . I don’t know why, but it was as if I heard a voice – my own voice – loud and clear in my ear, telling me to look in the index.

At first, I thought it was the young man behind the counter talking to me, but he had these tiny white plugs in his ears – I think he was listening to music through them.

So I looked for my own name in the index. And I found it.’

‘There are dozens of Salvatore Borgs,’ I murmur. I’m starting to see the path this is taking.

‘Perhaps, but this Salvatore Borg is me.’ Sal lifts his chin. ‘There is no doubt.’

‘What did the book say about you?’ I ask.

‘There was a chapter detailing the worst tragedies of the war, and then, at the end, one that was averted.

A bomb fell onto a school where the children were sheltering in the cellar.

The building collapsed in on itself, filling the cellar with masonry and sucking out the air.

The teacher who was with the children was able to find a tiny hole in the rubble, big enough for the half-starved children to escape through.

He saved them, all nine of them, though he himself was lost when a second collapse crushed him.

‘You save the children,’ I whisper.

‘I save the children,’ he says. ‘Of course I do. I know every one of them. I taught most of them to read. I know their hopes and dreams, what they want to do in the world after the war, everything they have to offer their homeland. And there’s more.’

‘What?’ I ask.

‘David and Eugenie are amongst the children I save.’

‘But . . .’ I falter. ‘They were at the airfield; they saw Stella die.’

‘Not anymore,’ Sal says. ‘Your friendship with Stella – your influence – must have made her think twice about that at least.’

I think of our conversation earlier today. She will not stay out of the battle, but she will make sure her children are safe.

I pace from one end of the debris-strewn ruin to the other and back again. ‘Sal . . . you came back to die.’

‘Not to die,’ Sal says. ‘I don’t want to die, Maia. I came to atone. I can’t change what happened in Milan or the man I was then, but here is the chance I have been waiting for: a way to make peace with myself and the heavens. It is written. I must do it.’

‘You were so close . . .’

‘I cannot let those children die so that I can live. I cannot let your father die. That would mean I would never know you. You have always believed that this miracle happened to you for a reason: to save Danny and your grandmother, to change your father’s life and yours.

I never knew the reasons why I had been taken from life – until today.

I didn’t come back so that I might die; I came back so that they might live. ’

‘But, Sal . . . there is no future, remember? Only nows. If we stay in the nows, then maybe . . .’

‘You will not try to talk me out of it,’ Sal says firmly. ‘You will know that just as some fates may be changed, others may remain the same, and I have chosen which.’

‘Of course you have,’ I say. ‘What other choice would you have made?’

‘Then let us go home, Maia. Let us live the rest of the hours of this bright day as if they are our best and our last.’

Sal offers me his arm, and I take it.

All too soon night will fall, and what the dawn will bring, none of us knows.