Farro Fescu is the proud and observant concierge of Echo Terrace, a condominium in New York City. Passing through his lobby at all hours is an exotic cross-section of the world's population: an Egyptian-born plastic surgeon who specializes in gender reassignment, a fighter pilot who flew for Nazi Germany during World War II, an Iraqi spice merchant and the world-famous quilter with whom he's having an affair, the adulterer's son who dreams of becoming an undertaker, and the widow whose apartment is a jungle Eden filled with a menagerie of specimens. Farro Fescu knows them all, knows all their secrets. Yet he does not know what is in his own heart -- why, after a long, hard life, he is still alive, and still alone. Nor does he know what he will be capable of in the face of sudden, overwhelming tragedy. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Nicholas Rinaldi is the author of two previous novels, The Jukebox Queen of Malta and Bridge Fall Down, and three collections of poetry. His stories and poems have appeared widely in literary journals here and abroad. He teaches literature and creative writing at Fairfield University, and lives in Connecticut with his wife, Jackie

Between Two Rivers
A Novel

Chapter One

A Green Dream of the Jungle

In Nora Abernooth's ninth-floor apartment, there are finches, canaries,three marmosets, a defanged cobra, a tortoise, and a macaw with blue andgold feathers. There is also a rhesus monkey that answers to the name ofJoe, and a glass-enclosed formicarium loaded with ants.

She lets the finches out of their cages and they flit about from room toroom, perching on the chairs and lamps, and on the lemon tree in the livingroom. In the kitchen, which is hung with white cabinets, they flutteramong the morning glories by the window, and in their busy way they pokeat the grapes and the apricots in the fruit bowl. Her husband, Louis, whohad had a burgeoning career as an entomologist, has been dead now for sixyears, yet there are times when it seems he's still alive, moving among theanimals. She hears him in the library, browsing through his books, or in thekitchen, fumbling with the coffeepot. There are moments when she seemsto glimpse him from the corner of her eye -- but when she looks up, there'snothing, merely a finch gliding by, or one of the snakes readjusting itself onthe sofa. She lives with echoes, shadows, dim rustlings, as if every wall inthe apartment were a foggy mirror tossing up tarnished images and vague,elusive glimmers.

In the winter months, when the heat is on, robbing the air of moisture,she keeps a humidifier going day and night. The animals suffer when the airis dry. She turns on the showers in both bathrooms, letting the steam flowwarm and wet into the other rooms. The air thickens and grows heavy, likethe air of the rain forest in Ecuador, where she spent several months withLouis soon after they were married. Their jungle honeymoon, she called it,their lush, decadent romp in the tangled wilderness.

For the finches, there is a mix of millet and canary seed, with cuttleboneand grit. The macaw is spoiled on peanuts. For the tortoise, a mash offresh fruit and vegetables, with bonemeal. Because of the moisture in theair, there's a problem with mold. Dampness clings to the white walls, formingpatches of varying shapes and sizes -- in the living room, above the mantel,a magenta smear that shades off to pale yellow, and in the dining room,above the buffet, a gray smudge tinged with red. In the master bedroom,small green spots have appeared on the white louvred doors that open ontothe walk-in closet. She used to be diligent about wiping the mold away assoon as it formed, but now it's simply there, growing at will, allowed tomake its way in whatever shapes and colors it chooses.

After her bath, as she towels herself dry, she wanders from room toroom, wet feet leaving a meandering trail on the beige wall-to-wall thatcarpets the apartment. Her trail winds through the bedroom, the diningroom, Louis's library, through the long foyer, and ends in the large butsparsely furnished living room, where she picks up a Bible from the coffeetable and stretches out on the floor, on the bearskin in front of thefireplace.

She is pink and warm from the bath, and pleasantly drowsy. The Bibleis a Gideon that she took, years ago, from a motel in Ithaca. It's the onlyBible she's ever owned.That time in Ithaca, it was her first night with Louis,before they were married. "I want this," she said, taking the Bible, tenderly,as a reminiscence. It disappeared for a while, buried in a box of books, butafter Louis died, when she was cleaning out and rearranging, she found itagain, and now it's a comfort for her, a source of solace and consolation.Scarcely a day goes by that she doesn't linger over a few verses, deriving ahaunting satisfaction from the old words and rhythms.

The bearskin is from a giant grizzly, Ursus horribilis -- this one wascinnamon-colored, the fur thick and reddish brown. It was given to herlong ago by her grandfather, when he was very old and she was very young.She runs her fingers through the fur and leans down into it, into the bear'swarmth, into the hard-soft clumps of hair, and the Bible falls open to a pageshe's looked at many times before. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.She lies down into the bear's fur, into its silence, and thinks of Louis, goneforever, yet at this moment, in his vague way, he is here in the room withher, breathing as she is breathing, and waiting to be touched.

Her face is deep into the pelt, into its rugged smoothness, and this, shethinks, is death, the beginning of it, the slowness of it, the valley of theshadow, shaped in darkness.And yes, she thinks, yes, I will fear no evil. Herfingers clutch lightly at the bear's wool and she breathes heavily, tugging atthe humid air. The rhesus watches her. The cobra glides across her ankles. Afinch flies from the mantel to the lemon tree, and she lies there, on thebearskin, in a green dream of the jungle, thinking of Louis.

In the rain forest there were monkeys in the trees, high in the canopy,and birds with warm, burning wings, toucans and tanagers, and always theinsects, the glorious, swarming insects, incessant among the flowers androtting logs. It was because of the insects that they were there, she andLouis, those slow three months in the first year of their marriage.

They were gathering specimens. Louis was on leave from the university,on a government grant, studying the insects and finding some that no onehad ever seen before. He searched and collected, and she used the camera,her father's old Leica ...

Between Two Rivers
A Novel. Copyright © by Nicholas Rinaldi. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Between Two Rivers: A Novel by Nicholas M. Rinaldi
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